True reasons

Talking to like-minded people widens horizons. The key word being 'Like minded'. I am hopelessly impractical but am still not comfortable being so. My ideal talk companion is comfortable being impractical, thinks about life on more than a day-to-day plane, thinks about the good movies he/she has seen and reads. I can spend hours listening to such a person.

Yesterday, I listened to Elango. I talked but mostly listened. I am good at that. He has interesting ideas and the conversation was to my liking. If he writes down his ideas, I intend to post it on this blog. Yesterday's conversation made me think of my motives about doing stuff. The real motives I mean. Not the ones that can be freely shared (and is made entirely of cliches) but the innermost ones. As I have said before, I am writing something. I have frequently thought what is making me do it. I realise that its the hope that what I write will be popular. That people will know me. That I will be famous. And that I will get a big, fat advance and royalties for life which I believe will make me happy.

I have a cousin who is a budding cartoonist and 'like-minded'. I have never told him the reasons why I am writing. But he seemed to know exactly. He told me once that the best creations(books, musics, paintings, movies) are the ones the creator passionately believes in. The reason for their being is because the creator could not keep it within him any longer. He had to share it, otherwise he would burst. I agree with him. That must be the reason why the first movies, the first albums and the first books of most people are usually their best works. And that must be the reason why Harper Lee wrote only 'To kill a mocking bird' and nothing else all her life. Because thats enough. I can re-read that book till all the words in it are memorised and still not feel bored. Because the book has a story, a setting, real characters and a glow to it that can never be duplicated artificially. I believe she never wrote another book all her life because she was spent after this one. I think she must have started writing other books but would have realised that the same passion did not exist. That she would be cheating her readers by trying to write something that she genuinely wasnt passionate about.

I will have to rejig my priorities about my own writing. There is no end to the lure of money and fame. Aspiring for it is to deviate from my true self.