Most people leave few traces. An heirloom vase. A nice watch. A self-published family memoir that slumbers in a drawer unread. An amateurish painting. No great tragedy. Even the most famous person quickly sinks into obscurity. To the upcoming generation, Bruce Springsteen is an old guy occasionally glimpsed on YouTube video chuckling with some talk show host they also never heard of. Probably not even that. Long-lasting fame beyond a person's life doesn't help the actual person. Mark Twain isn't happier in heaven than Petroleum V. Nasby because his books are still read.
While I can't say I am pleased that my writing leaves the smallest ripple the day it's published, sometimes, then sinks to the bottom of a very deep pool and is promptly forgotten forever, I do accept it. There's not a lot of choice in the matter. Plus I've known too many guys, particularly older men, who spend what's left of their lives blowing off their big bazoos about what a big honking deal they are, if only in their own minds. It's a bad look.
So it's fitting that a favorite metaphor of mine is one that speaks to this very situation. I wish could have reached some kind of currency, but didn't, because nothing I write does.
It was in the post on Dec. 30, 2017, recounting "The State of the Blog," a particularly self-indulgent flop into the stats of this web site. I was pointing out that a post comparing a song by Amanda Palmer to a song by Pink got 50,000 hits. Without — I almost said "shamefully without" but I hope it was an oversight and not obfuscation — my mentioning that the reason it got 50,000 hits was because her then-husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, retweeted it to his two million followers. I tried to move on, talking about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art had enhanced the blog's visual presence by putting 375,000 images "available for free and unrestricted use." Then I circled back to the subject and uncorked this confession:
While I can't say I am pleased that my writing leaves the smallest ripple the day it's published, sometimes, then sinks to the bottom of a very deep pool and is promptly forgotten forever, I do accept it. There's not a lot of choice in the matter. Plus I've known too many guys, particularly older men, who spend what's left of their lives blowing off their big bazoos about what a big honking deal they are, if only in their own minds. It's a bad look.
So it's fitting that a favorite metaphor of mine is one that speaks to this very situation. I wish could have reached some kind of currency, but didn't, because nothing I write does.
It was in the post on Dec. 30, 2017, recounting "The State of the Blog," a particularly self-indulgent flop into the stats of this web site. I was pointing out that a post comparing a song by Amanda Palmer to a song by Pink got 50,000 hits. Without — I almost said "shamefully without" but I hope it was an oversight and not obfuscation — my mentioning that the reason it got 50,000 hits was because her then-husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, retweeted it to his two million followers. I tried to move on, talking about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art had enhanced the blog's visual presence by putting 375,000 images "available for free and unrestricted use." Then I circled back to the subject and uncorked this confession:
I'm painfully aware of what small ball the blog is, on the scale of kid toy testers raking in millions on YouTube. I must admit, when I see Sheldon Cooper taping his poignant "Fun with Flags" on "The Big Bang Theory" I squirm a bit in recognition. Counter-intuitively, the big numbers generated by the Amanda Palmer post were more disconcerting than encouraging, because they reminded me what the blog isn't: a significant cultural force. It's a whisper in a hurricane of screams. Then again, my vegetable garden is not ConAgra either, yet I still plant tomatoes every spring. Small is fine if it makes you happy, and in general, EGD does.The "whisper in a hurricane of screams" isn't bad either, and a reminder that it's best, when coining metaphors, to limit yourself to images the reader is familiar with. But I particularly like the garden metaphor, even though it depends on knowing something about Conagra Brands (they lowercased the A in 2016, ahem, the year before I wrote this, when the company moved to Chicago, as an attempt to deemphasize the "agriculture" part of their operation), a $20 billion food processing behemoth employing 18,000 people.
Started in 1919 as Nebraska Consolidated Mills, it milled grain and sold cake mixes, founding the Duncan Hines brand in 1951, then branched out into a dizzying array of brands and products, from processed turkey to tires. They changed their name to ConAgra in 1971. (It's Latin, meaning "With Soil.")
Headquartered in Chicago, I see — I really should phone them up, invite myself over, arrange a field trip to a farm. How would they respond? Silence, probably.
See, that is the value of being known. Yes, popularity is a salve to the old ego. But it is also grease that slides you into ConAgra and out to the farm, which would be fun. Without it, we push forward, our sagging undercarriage scraping against the bare concrete, throwing sparks, the binding gears shrieking and seizing up. To coin another metaphor.
