Myriad Ways

I know why my blog stats are not numbers with lots of zeros after them; after several years I gained a daily double digit audience. I know that most people don’t have the time and mental energy to read a broad range of literature. They are working and dealing with life, family, maybe trying to figure out some of the immense problems facing the world. Mainstream literature is accessible and  useful to many people and therefore has as much value as anything else. If I wanted to I could write more mainstream material and so sell more or get more notice. I write what I like to write, and actually I would love for other people to be interested in my work, but I won’t change what I write to suit others so I don’t expect others to change their reading habits to suit my taste.
There is a reason why Ron Paul or Ralph Nader or any other fringe politician will not be president, because they refuse to compromise their values for votes. Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton and anyone else who became president moved toward a middle position at least a little, or pretended to do so. They compromised in order for the moderate middle to accept them. It’s not that their values are necessarily better than more middle of the road people, but there are ideas included that are often challenging and need a bit more time to digest. The same goes for literature. If you want to gain an audience, you have to write for that audience. Maybe like Obama, you can be intelligent about it and shift things gradually in ways that reflect your values, but you can’t expect people to jump off a cliff for you, especially when they have to work hard to understand your message. Sometimes I don’t even know what I am trying to say, and I am sure that all that fuzzy, gray area drives some people away. But, I write what comes when it comes. Inspiration is my muse, not popularity. And, so I am resigned to toil in obscurity for myself and that handful of people who, if they don’t always get my message, are patient enough to stick around until I say something worthwhile for them. To those patient readers I wish to say I will be here plugging away trying to make sense of things from my own small point of view. I hope that you are out there looking for the things that inspire you. Maybe I will read about it or see it or hear it as I wander around off the beaten track. I hope so.