Stick Figures and Karaoke

They sit, they stand, they run, they jump

I consider myself a writer.  Perhaps I am not a natural, driven writer.  I was not, as Mark Twain said all writers must be, a terrible liar as a child.  I do not, as John Steinbeck did, write large numbers of personal letters every day.  I do not, as Jack London did, lug heavy crates of books around with me wherever I go.

But, I’ve written 7 books of poetry and counting and I churn out this every day, so I guess I’m a writer.  I’m not saying I’m a great writer, but I don’t think it’s too much ego to say, simply, I am a writer.

Of course, one of the reasons I write is that I have absolutely no talent for music, have never managed to learn how to play an instrument and couldn’t carry a tune on a tray.  I also can’t draw for beans.  I wish I could.  I admire people who can sing.  I admire people who can paint.  Writing is just stringing words together.  If you can talk, you can write.

I like to sing.  This is why I’m such a big fan of karaoke.  It is a musical outlet for those of us who really aren’t good enough to sing in any other forum.

As to art, I occasionally have to draw something on the board, as a teacher, so I do stick figures.  Also, it’s pretty easy to draw a house, a tree, a car, a fish and 100s of other English nouns well enough so that people can recognize them.  It’s not art, but it gets the point across.

So, there’s one book I want to get illustrated now.  It’s  something I’ll probably use mostly in teaching, as it is a rhyming pronunciation guide to the various vowel sounds in English.  Since nobody else was enthusiastic about illustrating it, I decided to do it myself.  Stick figures.

I’ve just started, I’ve done like 6 pages, but I am encouraged.  Stick figures, I suddenly realize, bear the same relationship to art that karaoke does to singing.  An opportunity for those of us who want to play the game, but really aren’t very good.