Arts and Culture #118: I’d Like My Obsession Rare: Creative Obsession as a Burnt Steak
It’s the old adage that John Irving once said, “You don’t choose obsessions, your obsessions choose you.” The idea that no writer is equally compelled, consciously, to think about bad things, but to write about it, obsess over the minute details in a murder scene, is not what most normal people tend to think about. They just want to go to work five days a week, find some good quality entertainment to come home to, when they aren’t with their wife and kids, and destress.
Sometimes, as an obsessive person, I like to think about things too much. I equate the simile as “chewing on a burnt steak.” Sometimes you can dress it up, and maybe it will taste good. Sometimes large pieces of steak taste good if cooked well done. But the outcome is also tasting on one bite so that it can be good, too.
In my sound area of expertise, Writers are the only people chasing a depressing ending. If you think the Lord of the Rings Scouring of the Shire, where the Shire is destroyed by Saruman and the Hobbits then save the day, wasn’t an intentionally bad ending to sour the Hero quest, you wouldn’t be wrong and right. If you’re Nicholas Sparks huffing paint and saying, “It’s all right guys and gals,” that’s not my obsession, most of the time. Obsessions on the weird, fantastic, strange, and disturbing are my subjects, and I can’t find any other reason to not write about them in my stories. It’s disturbing to me how people go to work every day and somehow manage to find some humor in life. It’s not that people don’t have dark thoughts, but most factory workers don’t have to think about it for long.
Nobody wants to think about crushing their brother or sister, or the Theomacy, a battle among the Gods, in Greek Mythology. To think about that is considering power struggle, and how fascinating it can be to watch Titans fight their siblings in order to prove who can dominate over the land. Because betrayal is another dark piece of meat I chew on, too, as a writer.
Writers in their own right don’t have to write about bad things, but for me, my obsessions on the demented, demonic, and horrifying world both in space and outer, is the clear reason of why I continue to chew on dark thoughts. Because someone has to say the things that people clearly don’t like.
It’s like the idea that someone says, and doing so in casual conversation, “You know why we should be closer to the sun, is that we can burn to death,” is a funny but also demented idea. It’s funny to me, at least how I see the world and how we should approach our eventual demise. But people can’t handle that dark obsession that brews within.
Sometimes chewing on burnt steak isn’t always good, and returning them to the page is where I always find myself, and it doesn’t mean I always have to chew on those thoughts alone. That’s why when someone reads me and sort of pisses themselves laughing at what I say, I think it’s a rare accomplishment to share a dark thought, and laugh at our own inadequacies as humans. And sometimes burnt steak isn’t always so bad, because I as a writer see it as my duty, to do so. For those who can’t express what they say and think.
Because I am that voice and the obsessions we all think about are inside us, and it’s okay to think darkly. That’s how the best Art is made.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 21 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline Part 2: Chaos, The Data Chase, The Disintegrating Bloodline part 3: Solvè, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, The God of Curiosity, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One, City of Sand: Book 1: The Holy Terror, and The Voices Are Alive, and The City of Sand: Book 2: Jerusalem Ignited. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Twitter: https://twitter.com/LouisBr88881650. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His newest books, The City of Sand: Book 3: America the Free, is out now.