2 of 171

Write now Article Tools

I feel like I should apologize...
It has come to my attention that I can be offensive. Which got me thinking...why do I write the way I do? Sometimes it's because I mishear a song lyric and turn it into a winding, post-modernesque street-lamp poem. Sometimes it's because I want to praise or worship. Mostly, I can't help it.
Sometimes, though, my writing can more like a soap box - and a glimmery-clean one at that. But - woe to me if I don't! - I write. It is more than just your typical inner drive to express those mushy-down depths that would otherwise tangle and knot around your heart. It is more than just an up-and-out effort to release the strangle-hold grip of yet unspoken experience. It is a desire to shake the world awake, much beyond the make-you-think. There is a certain focus and attention that anger and offense brings to a subject, the kind that usually births action, or at least a reaction, but enough to spark. There is a sharpening of one's mind and intellect when he's getting hot-in-the-face furious, and it turns into more than just receiving an argument. This is what I'm after.

We need to start paying attention...
I don't like offending anyone as much as the next guy, but if that is how people like their coffee, then so be it. I realize I run the great (read: thin ice) risk of sounding pretentious, but I want people to wake up! I don't necessarily agree with everything I write (which may be a strenuous but beneficial exercise in itself), but we have to start thinking - not for thought itself, but for the sake of action! Capriciousness is a blunt-force tool of the weak - we need our strong opinions for the dousing of those otherwise under-developed political, cultural, economic, and religious flames. I write to induce soul-searching - what do I really think about this? - and sometimes do it in a way that boils. But, there are things that shouldn't be ignored any longer, and if I've produced anger, I've produced charged-so-you-can-charge! thought.
So, I guess I won't apologize...
We need the nineteen seventies shakers, and those nineteen nineties moshers in the comparatively philosophical world. We didn't start this fire, but I don't want to stand around and let it get weak. This is not a critical diatribe against the apathetic and the dilapidated - I have no right to judge - but a hopeful shout-out for voice, for song, and for jump.
This gets me thinking so that we can get going.

Learn more about this author, Megan Risley.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Essays: Why we write?
We want to hear your view. Write now!