Do you ever find you're coming back to the same idea over and over and over?
I do. And it's something that fascinates me, because you normally don't realize you're doing it. The idea seems as new to you as it did the first time you thought about it, or in this particular case, wrote it. But it's not. Or is it?
I don't know, I seem to be of two minds on this subject. Because when it comes to conversation and day-to-day, I think it's not new and furthermore, that it's bad for you to think the same thing over and over, to never absorb any new information and just regurgitate the same thing time and again. There are many people like that and in that particular case, privately I suppose I mean, it's bad. It's a sign you've stopped growing mentally. And that's not what you want. Probably.
But then, there's coming back to something as an artist, be it a writer, painter, sculptor. You know those stories, about painters who paint the same woman in every portrait - it's the same person, just with different faces. and then, for some reason, this repetition ceases to be wrong, in my opinion. It becomes fascinating.
Stephen King's novels famously intersect and have common elements. Throughout a career of what? Four, five decades? Anyway, through all that, he's kept coming to the Dark Tower series and world. If you look closely there's a reference to that world and to that story in most of his books. And he himself stated that the idea had fascinated him for many years before he actually wrote the books.
To me, that's amazing. It's compelling, that you can keep coming back to something, that the same idea draws you in so many times. Why does it happen? Why do we come back to the same idea?
Because you might say that oh well, it's just something that's on your mind at the time. Like love. I'm in love, so I write about love - pretty natural, makes sense. I lost a pet - I write about grief and animals. But what about when someone comes back to the same idea or character over two decades? Or five? They can't be feeling the same thing for 20 years. OR thinking the same thing.
So, what's the explanation to that? Why would a painter paint the same person obsessively? Why would a writer write different variants of the same character? Where does this obsession come from? From someone you've met? Possibly, though I would say unlikely. Rare. From someone you'd like to meet? From somewhere you'd like to exist?
Okay, but why there? Why them specifically? And where did they come from, how did they get into your mind?
What if you're not exploring a place or person, but a theme? You obsessively come back to the man who lost his wife. But you're not a man. And you've never had a wife. Where does that fascination come from? And why does it come?
I find psychology fascinating and I do think that by listening to someone or, in the case of Steemit, reading what they write can be an extremely insightful journey into their minds. People betray a lot of themselves by what they say. Writers betray themselves through what they write.
And yet, sometimes I don't understand. I look at my own words and I just don't understand. Where some things come from and why and who put them in my mind...And I might be mystified, worried, frightened. But it wouldn't matter in the end.
I'd come back to them tomorrow, anyway.
Just some thoughts. Thanks for reading.
