Travis the Writer

Connection

People love to feel together. We want a loving family and close friends. Most people desire a spouse one day, someone to feel special about, honest with, and connected. We find these meaningful connections from people in various ways. Some people have the same religious or political views, others laugh at the same jokes, or play the same games. Many people like to feel connection to their heritage. They go out and search the history books for traditions and symbols of their past. All around us are communities of peoples: the film critics, the gamers, the metal heads, the political pundits, the football fanatics, the philosophers, the parents, and so much more. We all have unique differences, like our gender, race, and religion. Our differences are important, but just as human beings we have far more in common with everyone. Everyone in the world is seeking some kind of meaning in this life. Everyone feels emotions of love, fear, and anger. I firmly believe if you brought together two-year-old children from all around the world, they would play and have fun without care to the color of their skin, religion of their parents, or even languages they speak. Prejudice and division are learned and unnatural.

In the fullest sense, we are connected because we all speak through art. Every culture has painters, musicians, sculptors, poets, and performers. We display creations to communicate a message to unify our souls. Beautiful themes of peace, love, harmony, freedom are understandable to anyone. Art brings us together.

I choose to write my poems and stories, not because I want attention, money, or even because I feel I have something meaningful to share (sometimes I do). I write because I want to be part of a community. I want to connect to the world in a way I normally cannot. YouTube channels have the same feel to them. They create connections for people through their video content. Writers have done the same thing for centuries. I can create my own fantasy world, but when I share it, I am sharing myself with everyone, but also the world I experience. It's a strange feeling.

When I have an idea for a story in my head, it's not entirely my own. I don't mean I am stealing from someone, but that nearly everything has been told before. Most things are sequels, remakes, and reboots. The craft of storytelling has become very standardized with formulaic tropes and cliches. There's nothing new under the sun. I don't think this means we are reaching the peak of human creativity or anything. I think it means that we like the fictional worlds around us. Stories aren't usually retold because writers are lazy. They are told and retold because they are timeless. They speak to the universal spirit of humanity. 

Classic works like Romeo and Juliet, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Old Man and the Sea all have fairly simple plots. They have been told before with different characters and settings. Why are they "classics" then? Maybe they had some unique style to the writing or marketing in the publication. There may be some truth to those reasons, but I think classics best capture that universal spirit. They present characters we can connect with on a personal level. Everyone loves Spider-Man because we can relate to his journey into adulthood. We haven't fought a war against the Trojans for ten years, but we all wish we could conquer our fate and just return home like Odysseus. And, people who know almost nothing about the Bible want to be the underdog David and conquer their Goliath.

So, when I draft a story in my mind, some of it comes from my personal experiences, but some ideas come from the movies I watch, the video games I play, and the novels and comics I have read. And, when I present my story to the world, it's mostly a conglomerate of my history with other stories. Not everyone connects with my favorite anime, Dragon Ball Z, and certainly not my favorite historical figure, Erasmus of Rotterdam. I cannot create a lasting community of connections around the, admittedly, odd things I've been exposed to in my life; however, I can tap into that universal spirit of us all if I apply the lessons and themes that are eternal in human nature.

It doesn't matter the genre or the setting of the story. What matters is we all believe in the characters because we can put ourselves in their shoes. I write to create a world and character that I personally want to live, but I hope that, by publishing it, others can live in my world as well. I don't need them experience my world, but I hope they can benefit from it. In just under four months of writing on this site, I've had readers from Costa Rica, Belgium, the Philippines, Indonesia, and, of course, the US. It's nice to connect with people online. I could simply meet people from those countries through some sketchy online chat rooms or even online video games. Although, I could never express or reveal myself like I can through my stories. I can never connect with people in the same way as I can through my writing. It's a gateway to my deepest most personal thoughts, but also a network to the universal spirit we all connect to inside. Our differences are important; they make us who we are, but there is one community we all share: art.

My art is writing. What's your art? Some people mistakenly believe they aren't artistic or even that art is girly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Everyone is an artist because everyone has something creative to share, something that makes them human.

Why bother sharing it? Cannot we just create things for ourselves? Why bother having an audience? I'd say because it is powerful. It changes us. Maybe it will change the world around us. Historically, totalitarian regimes have banned or censored art because dictators understand the power of symbols and expression. Hitler was no idiot. It wasn't enough for him to kill Jews; he knew he needed to kill the memory and culture of Jews by burning their literature, paintings, and music. Art is a threat to tyranny because it expresses what is natural. You'll be hard pressed to find an artwork willfully created to promote sex trafficking or animal abuse. Vices are contrary to the conscience we all share. I not saying art has only a moral purpose, but we certainly share morals. More than that, we share humanity.

Share art with the world because you can. You're free to show the world that you are same as everyone else. There are nearly seven billion people in the world.  And every single person can relate to your story. We all live the same life in some way. If you think about, we all go through puberty, we all experience love, we all get old, and we all die. It's comforting to know you're not alone. We all create fiction worlds in our heads, but they are really a mirror to the world we share. Fiction isn't new anymore to us because the history of the human experience hasn't changed much. We just don't realize it until we are adults. So, I believe you're not just connecting with the present world, but also the past and future by creating art.

You might receive some hatred and even lose some friends because of your art. There are always people who are immature and shortsighted. Just ignore them. Be you. I am me because I write. I am the world because I write to an audience.