There are only two types of people: the writer and the journalist.
The writer gets pregnant with an idea. The journalist vomits out words.
The job of a writer is to digest the world. The job of the journalist is to point at the world. The car bombing; the death of a pop star; the assassination attempt. The journalist hurries to bring the latest fact to the reader in that beaming beak, hard as stone. The writer goes on a two week drinking rampage or cuts off locks of unruly hair with paper scissors because all words under the sun are the wrong words.
The journalist is fascinated with the Kennedys and the Hiltons. The writer is fascinated only with what the Kennedys and the Hiltons represent.
The journalist is interested in the now, the fleeting, the current. The writer is interested in the deep, the hidden, the evasive. The journalist skims. The writer dives.
The job of the journalist is hard. The journalist is forever sweating with only one hour for the breaking story and only one chance to get it first.
The job of the writer is hard. The writer wants to write about beautiful flowers and three hour orgasms. The writer is forever stuck with books that won’t go away.
The journalist works with the formula: time of death, major achievements, media scrutiny, funeral arrangements. Every article is the same article because it has been written by the journalist.
The writer is only interested in the unique. The writer is the unique.
We will always have journalists. We will always have writers. We need both.
Now is the time of the journalist. Everybody wants the latest news. Everything written has to have a poignant relevancy to the now and the today. The forever means nothing. There is no perspective.
I am a writer. Words, sentences, songs have to live inside me, earn their write to exist, blend into my DNA and come out without a sound, like a breath.
My best obituary is my silence.
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