Last week, the city of Los Angeles officially celebrated Ray Bradbury Week in honor of his ninetieth birthday. All across the sprawling urban landscape, plays were performed, films were screened, and books were signed. Circumstances, unfortunately, dictated that I could not attend any of these incredible events, but my heart, as always, was ablaze with the same reverent passion as their participants. As upsetting as my absence was for me, I knew that, much like Christmas, the most important part of any celebration is keeping its spirit alive and well all the year round. In this case, it is stoking the flames of inspiration every day for the remainder of a lifetime, and beyond. That, truly, is how you honor Ray Bradbury’s incredible contributions to the world and universe.
It is the beyond portion of the above sentiments that has been captivating my thoughts as of late. This can, of course, be strictly defined as one’s legacy, but I believe that the term’s connotations unwittingly limit the scope of endeavors to only those that are retold and printed in history books and literary journals. Bradbury, beyond a doubt, will have such a legacy, stretching as far into space and the future as his own imagination has taken him and us. However, not all of us will have the historical literary clout that Bradbury has earned over the course of his thus-far seventy-eight years of writing. And yet, he still issues to all who hear his words the same decree that was given to him at age twelve by Mr. Electrico: “Live forever!” How do we do that?
I unknowingly began contemplating this very question when I began working on Of Sirens and Sand. I suppose it was inevitable the moment I put pen to paper, for the very nature of writing was born out of a need for at least a certain semblance of permanency. Indeed, the core inspiration for the book was my inability to capture in some physical (and therefore permanent) medium the beautiful images that were quickly rotting away in my mind. I was, in essence, trying to make my memory live forever. Over the course of writing the six stories, two vignettes, and single poem that compose Of Sirens and Sand, I discovered what I decided was my personal lesson to be taken from the experience, and the secret that I believe is the key to truly living forever: Realizing that our work is never done, even in so-called death, and the torch must always be passed to another.
We pour our love, our spirit, and thus ourselves into our creative endeavors. When I hand a copy of my manuscript to someone to read, I am giving them more than just the words on the page; I am scooping out a cup of my core self and asking them to drink. All of us have been the receivers of such an offer, because we have spent lifetimes building our minds out of ideas the same way we do our bodies from the food we eat. We consume and digest countless thoughts, notions, and philosophies, laying them down as bricks in the foundation upon which we construct our own tower to the unreachable heavens. In choosing these materials, we continue the work that was begun by their creators, make them a part of who we are and what we do. Through us, and our actions, they continue to live on, their spirit carried from the past and into the future.
I see this as a metaphysical, across-the-ages version of a subject I have touched on before (“The Creative Geode” & “The Tiles”): the need to make connections. Just as we’ve the biological drive to have our genes passed onto another generation, we also have the similarly intense desire to have our ideas (and thus ourselves) be integrated into the stream of time as it flows forth into the infinite future. This is because, on some level, we instinctively grasp what Mr. Electrico knew and Bradbury has been driving at all these years: there is indeed a way to live forever, through your ideas and the connections they make.
It might be argued that such a sentiment only holds true for those whose names history has decided are worthy of documentation, but I must respectfully disagree. The remembering of names and specific actions are indeed great honors, but hardly a requirement. Ultimately, names are meaningless. Anyone can know my name. It can be recorded, written, and recited for all the ages, but it is meaningless and empty without my ideas attached to it. Sure, legends will have their names and philosophies forever bound, but this is simply additional recognition. Who I am, the nature of my actual spirit, is contained more in my words and thoughts, and therefore my work, than it is in my name. In the end, “John J. Walsh IV” is nothing but a label on a container. It is what’s inside of that container that is most important, the stuff in which I dip my inked quill. Therefore, I do not concern myself with tapping history on the shoulder so that it might take notice and jot me down, but rather about making sure my ideas connect with people, whoever (and however few) they might be. This is my ultimate goal as a writer, not fame or widespread recognition. As creators, we must never lose this distinction, else we will most likely fail and fall victim to our own premature hubris.
In this same vein, I harbor no delusions as to my own place in the universe; we are all so small against the backdrop of Creation. Yet, I cannot ignore that we make up some part of that infinite fabric: threads that may be finite, but can be stitched and lashed together to form a string that stretches far beyond our own individual reach. Our spirits carry forth as far as our ideas’ connections. Against common conception, it is not who you know, but who your ideas find. The creative efforts we pour out of ourselves may not reach an audience of millions, but all they need is to connect with one other person, who can make it a part of themselves to be passed on in turn. This is the nature of creation.
In fact, it is this very nature that has led me to the realization that our work will never be finished, no matter who we are or what we do. There is always another story to write, another picture to paint, one more song to be sung. The inevitable death of our physical bodies always draws the line somewhere, and rarely (if ever) where we would draw it ourselves. It forces us to reevaluate how we fit into such a strange and seemingly random universe. If, by definition, the soul is immortal, and we’ve poured that very soul into our work, then we live on in those it affects, no matter who they are, and the great chain continues.
The lesson is simple: put everything you have into that which you create, and even if you think it has no effect upon the world, put it out there anyway. Toss messages in bottles into the sea and let the currents of time carry them. Let your ideas find their own connections; don’t force their direction. If you’ve truly put yourself, your spirit, into your words, your brushstrokes, your musical notes, then they will find their way.
Seventy-eight years ago, that was exactly what Ray Bradbury did when he sat down to write his stories. He wrote to preserve some part of himself and his love in words, and then tossed those words out into the world. Some sixty-odd years later, a bottle landed in my hands in the form of Dandelion Wine. I popped the cork, drank deep of its words, and it changed my life forever. His philosophies were the magic elixir that granted me the secret of immortality:
Do your work, that thing you love above all other things, pour your entire soul into it, bottle it up, and toss it into the universe’s infinite expanse. When it washes up upon another’s shore, when your ideas, and thus yourself, make that connection across time and space, you will continue on into the future. It is in this manner that we can all hope to live forever, even if our names do not long outlast our bodies.
And so, with ninety amazing years of life to celebrate this year, we all wished Ray Bradbury, “Happy Birthday!” In return, he decrees as he always has, “Live forever!”
I know that he will. And, with his words as my guide, I do believe that I shall as well. I raise this bottle in toast, and then toss it into the digital sea.
As I wrote before, yesterday I finished the revised draft of my book Of Sirens and Sand and sent it off to author Marcus Alexander Hart. While a small handful of individuals have read early versions of the stories in various orders, he was the first to receive a polished manuscript with no real prior knowledge of the details contained within.
Tonight he responded with an email that pointed out a few typos; informed me of the historical battle between that and who; gave a good, solid suggestion for one story; and put tears of joy in my eyes. (More on that later.) What follows is an excerpt, and what I can honestly say is my very first review.
I read your book today. I have to admit, for the first few pages I was a little worried. I thought your prose was overwrought and your dialogue unnatural and arch. After all of the work you put into it, I was afraid to have to tell you what I thought of it.
Then I realized, it’s not you. It’s me.
You don’t write like I do. You don’t hammer words together to satisfy the textbook mechanics of storytelling while sometimes managing to be clever. You use a lyrical kind of prose so baroque that it becomes poetry. This is not a collection of stories. This is a painting of the sea rendered in words. You don’t write like an author. You write like an artist.
Once I stopped trying to shoehorn your artwork into my template the whole thing became strikingly beautiful in its execution. The characters and the stories don’t stack up like bricks into a wall of story. They flow together like trickles of rainwater pouring through tendrils of fog, emerging and mixing and falling away into a sort of lucid dream that lets you know secrets as you need to know them. You’ve managed to deftly paint beauty through the Captain’s longing and horror through the old man’s fear—opposite ends of the spectrum rendered with equal skill and passion.
You have done a wonderful thing here, John Walsh. This is going to be a fantastic book. I’ve already read it twice.
You should be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you.
Without my having breathed a word about the intentions behind the book, he understood them, perfectly. Each and every endeavor I set out to accomplish met with unqualified success. That alone was reason to rejoice, but I had another.
First, a little back story.
Early in his published career, Ray Bradbury met with Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) at the latter’s behest. After they sat down, Huxley leaned forward and asked, “Mr. Bradbury, do you know what you are?” Bradbury replied that he did not. “You’re a poet.”
Up to that point, Bradbury had attempted writing poetry since high school, but had (by his own admission) failed miserably. So he wrote short stories instead. And yet, here was a famous, well-renowned author telling him that he had succeeded at publishing poetry, when he didn’t even think that he had ever tried.
Thus went the day that Ray Bradbury discovered he was unknowingly a poet. Because of that meeting, he came to recognize his preferred style as prose poetry, and has since shared that realization with a great many people, myself included.
This is relevant to the subject at hand because the impetus for Of Sirens and Sand was the maddening frustration of my own artistic shortcomings. I grew up with the sea somehow in my blood, but believed myself, merely a writer, incapable of capturing it the way an artist could with a brush.
Yet, now, here is one of my favorite writers, telling me that I am an artist. To borrow Bradbury’s response to Huxley, “I didn’t know that.”
So I, armed with this freshly-acquired revelation, began to weep tears of joy. Ray Bradbury has been guiding me for seventeen years, be it through his work, words, or personal advice. The man has shown me the path, promised that great things lie ahead.
He was right.
Thank you, Marcus, for your exceedingly kind words. I shall cherish them always.
