Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Sometimes your mind, which is the subject of today’s Prairie Lights column, might tell you that you need something to illustrate your column, and that something like this will work. And you believe him!
People often ask, how does the mind of a newspaper columnist — or that of a digital newspaper columnist — work?
The short answer is that it rarely does. Instead, it seeks diversion and distraction and asks to be plied with coffee, or, later in the day, alcohol. Ostensibly, these are stimulants that will help the mind do its work, but in fact they are merely different kinds of diversions and distractions.
Ed Kemmick
Why does the mind do this? I’ll tell you.
We sometimes say of a person that he is “of two minds,” by which we mean that he is torn between two courses of action or cannot choose one option over another.
In another sense, we are all of two minds all the time. There is one mind that we, the animated carcasses that provide a permanent domicile to our brains, use to process information and perform all those functions that we need to do to get through the day.
Alongside this mind — at any rate, this is how I see it, in my mind — is that other mind, that separate part of the brain that we converse with, and attempt, usually in vain, to control.
This is the mind that the newspaper columnist humbly sidles up to, full of deference and humility, and asks if it could please buckle down, if it isn’t too much trouble, and within a reasonable period of time work with that other part of the mind to produce something worthwhile for his reading public.
Immediately, this mind, this font of creativity and the cradle of all one’s hopes and aspirations, realizes what an enormous advantage it has over you, its host. You might have fooled yourself into thinking that this mind was primed and ready to work, champing at the bit to do your bidding.
But once you have made that fatal request, your mind instantly assumes the appearance of a corpulent pasha settling down on a pile of the softest pillows. He begins snapping his fingers, asking for coffee, delectable viands, dancing girls and his hookah.
Oh, yes, it assures you, it will do its work. All in good time, all in good time. But how to work without all those things it has just begun demanding? So perhaps you give in, throwing open the doors to any number of distractions, telling yourself — against all the evidence of a lifetime — that maybe that mind really does need all these things to get the job done.
Or say you have a cold, a wretched head cold that makes thinking almost painful. That other mind, that independent contractor immune to threats that he is going to be fired, latches onto this cold as if it were his oldest friend.
“Work?” it asks. “You want me to work when this head cold has debilitated all my senses, robbed me of cognition, wit and fluency? What kind of monster are you?”
You want to argue, but this head cold…
You try to play nice, telling your mind that it isn’t work, not really, it’s just putting words down on a screen, merely interrupting the constant flow of the words that thoughts are made of and snatching a few of them away, expending a wee bit of labor to line them up in acceptable order.
Just look at all the things in the world you could pontificate on, you tell it, or perhaps out of which you could milk some humor.
“Humor?” your minds thunders back. “Humor! With a head cold? Of all the presumptuous, heedless, inconsiderate things I’ve ever heard, that takes the cake. It’s humor you want, is it? Well, give me a few minutes and I’m sure I could think of something hilarious to say about Syria. Or maybe…”
And then he’s off to the races and you couldn’t shut him up if you tried. His thundering doesn’t really hurt, though, because you realize that this is simply another of his diversions, one of the countless things he finds to do when he is called to work.
And so it goes. You repeat the process again and again, sometimes introducing a variant on a plea or an argument, sometimes combining several familiar approaches in a new way.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that he always gives in in the end because this is your job and he’s got to eat, too. But you never know how long it will take, how exhausting it will be, how fully he will cooperate once he gives in and begins to get something done.
Sometimes he will surprise you, just as the Muse is said to do, presenting you with something so pleasing and unexpected that you want to hug him and forgive him all his childish tantrums and maddening intransigence.
Sometimes, of course, he fools you. Having worn you out, he persuades you that what he finally comes up with is brilliant. It is only after a good night’s sleep, by which time you have already put his work out there for all the world to see, that you realize how wretched it really is.
And sometimes, say when you have that head cold we were talking about, you don’t even care. Just give me something, you will say, anything. And that other mind will answer, arrogant and fully aware of his power over you:
“Animated carcass, take a memo: ‘People often ask…’”
