Another long interval between posts, and I find myself almost world-weary. A more-than-full-time schedule at school, unrequited love and my own personal demons have left me exhausted, stressed, worn out. Amidst it all, I have little time to write, or little time that I decide to spend writing. I wonder if that is part of my recent instability. Regardless, I am here now, and even though I am not writing fiction, my sentiments make it to the page.

One of my most recent pastimes has been browsing Star Trek forums, in anticipation of the coming movie. As previous posts have shown, I am not optimistic about it, and as I have browsed the forums I have become even less optimistic about the fans. If this film is what I expect it to be, it speaks to the sad state of the modern audience, so susceptible it is to seduction by light and sound, glare and noise.

As an artist and a storyteller, I endeavor not merely to entertain, but to touch something of the vast eternities which lie just outside our perception: that realm of mystery and fancy where new ideas, great and mean, are born. That is the mythological function of art. It disappoints me that not only are modern movies largely hum-drum collections of explosions, chases, crashes with no appreciation of these larger issues, but that audiences are all too content to lap up all the pablum Hollywood can pump out. People have become complacent in their viewing, their reading and their thinking: they want nothing more than to turn their brains off, their hearts off, their souls off, and they want a clown to help them. I once held out hope for the average viewer and the notion that they desired something more intelligent and meaningful than what the modern movie industry has to offer. It seems I was wrong to do so.

It is humbling not only to see people embrace what seem to be bad movies, but also act vindictively against those who disagree. It is humbling in that I once thought, on some emotional level, that being liked by a lot of people meant something. But having seen how mediocre the workings of the average mind are, I cannot say that popularity is a virtue in art. For all the torture I have put myself through, telling myself that "no one likes my ideas" and therefore they are "worthless"—well, even if that's true, what of it? If the judgment of people is so warped that all they care about is meager entertainment, comfort, reassurance, I say to hell with them!

I once thought I wanted to be the best author in the world. Now, I have no idea what that means. Is the "best" the most popular, the most liked? If so, that is a hollow definition: being liked by fools is worse than not being liked at all. More and more I just want to create something fresh, something new. Not necessarily for the sake of acclaim, but my own satisfaction.

E.B. White once said that a writer navigates "by stars disturbingly in motion." I think he wrote those words with the knowledge of how difficult it was to set out on one's own, abandoning the "good" and the "popular" for the compelling and the inspired, the known for ideas not yet known, the understood for the easily misinterpreted. It is frightening to let go of all external reference and judge one's self by one's own standards: it may indeed feel like letting go of ground and tumbling through the stars. Yet, I suspect, that is the only place I shall feel at home.