When I was
a young boy
my father…
stole away my trust in parental figures and taught me humility. Not in some grand lecture or orchestrated lesson, mind. No, rather by… example. He was not a humble man. He was an egocentric narcissist. A crude bully. A pebble who thought himself a mountain.
Odds are, he still is. I wouldn’t know.
But his example taught me well. Never to toot your own horn. Never slap your own back. Never look upon your achievement and smile, but worry it for cracks and mistakes. Not only never to rest on your laurels, but never be the person to judge whether there’re laurels to rest on at all.
In short; never be your own hype man.
Which, as it turns out, is a problem in this our current state of affairs.
Selling yourself is a fundamental virtue in our hyper-capitalist society. It matters nothing what you can do, or who you are, but only what you can convince other people of you being and doing. Seeming is infinitely more important than being. Marketing, making splashes, making an impact, is all that matters. Whether we’re talking about getting a job, getting a raise, inventing a solution to world hunger, or instituting world peace. Belief, faith, the perception of ability is the same as the real thing.
We live according to the gospel of spin doctors.
And I have never been a fan of spinning myself. Feels insincere. Feels slimy. Makes me sick to my fucking stomach, truth be told. I don’t lack for pride, oh no, not by far. But when the difference between being good and seeming good is being shit, I cannot help but to veer toward capable anonymity.
Which makes this whole self-promotion thing, when you have a published novel on your hands to peddle, a bit of a conflict of interests. Especially when such self-promotion means sitting in front of a camera for four hours, try to be entertaining, and talking about my labours like they were the second (third?) coming. Because, yes, pursuing the promotion of my book has driven me into streaming as a way of talking about it to disembodied prospective readers.
I’m proud of my work. I am proud of The Last Box, warts and all. I think it is a beautiful piece of fiction, which says things both new and fresh in a stale genre. I am proud of what I’ve made since. But in a world of integrity, I should not have to be the one to convince you of that. The work itself should, in lieu of a vanguard. But alas, we do not live in a world of integrity. We live in a world of saturation. Where it is all too easy for a book of wisdom to get lost in the wash of dregs and drivel.
Which leaves me starring as the proverbial rope in a tug-of-war between observed demand and imagined virtue. But perhaps that’s not such a bad place to be? Perhaps that’s the point? For morality to not serve as an end, but a counter balance. A tether to the other side to let us dredge for success in a modicum of safety.
Either case, now I’m not just a published author, but also a fucking streamer to boot. Another drum of mine own to beat the shit out of and provide some more wash to the media flood.
That fucking tether better have enough tensile strength…
/Sebastian Lindberg 11/7-2023
WastedWords 