Zachary Adam Cohen’s Personal Blog

Eclogue 1

June 6, 2010
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June 6, 2010

in Poetry

Scene

MELIBOEUS

Can you honestly tell me that you coherently argue with yourself?

TITYRUS

All day, every day.

MELIBOEUS

But that is a near impossibility, you can’t just go around arguing with yourself. One side, one argument is always going to win out depending on which one you want to win out, so that you have the justification for going on and doing that thing you wanted to do in the very first place.

TITYRUS

That may be true, but so what if it is? It’s not the outcome that matters as much as the playing out of the argument. All sides, or at least the sides I am least familiar with have to come out.

MELIBOEUS

Least familiar?

TITYRUS

Yes the least familiar. The arguments that are the most familiar to me are also the most hidden. I cannot even begin to access them, their rules and tribulations, their tangles and their motives. The familiar arguments are the most distant. It’s the ones that tear at the surface, skimmers, that I can recite rote.

MELIBOEUS

What are we really talking about then? Can you tell me the last argument you had with yourself? Who won, who lost, what happened after the victor was anointed?

TITYRUS

Yes I can tell you. But there are no winners. At least not yet. I mean, the winner may have ascended the podium. But the ceremony is a long way off.

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Where Is The Tea Party On The Left?

May 23, 2010
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May 23, 2010

in Politics

Right now the Republican Party is going through a spasm of self-analysis. The current result of this is the Tea Party rebellion. One by one, compromised consensus-builders are being tossed out of the party. I welcome this. From my perspective, Republicans have strayed from their core principles of smaller, leaner government, the pursuit of liberty and fiscal responsibility. Critics say well where was this movement during the Bush Administration’s reign, when government spending began to explode.

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Write What You Want To, Then What You Have To

May 17, 2010
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May 17, 2010

in Favorites,Personal Essays

As a writer, I’m still getting my sea legs under me. But I have the luxury of blogging which means that I don’t have the displeasure of having to deal with an editor telling me what to write. To be sure, I lament this fact sometimes, especially when I don’t feel particularly strongly about writing anything at all. I am not the kind of person who cannot do what I am supposed to do, and be OK with it. No. When I don’t write, I suffer. No matter how much else I might have going on at the time, I was put here to write. When I don’t write, I tear myself apart.

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What It Feels Like To Be a Creator

May 12, 2010
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May 12, 2010

in Arts and Culture,Favorites,Personal Essays,The Theater

I had a nagging feeling tugging at me last night as I attended a performance of August Strindberg’s 1888 play, “The Creditors.” I almost feel bad admitting that I wasn’t entirely present for the performance. Instead, I was led astray by a single thought that popped into my head shortly after the play started. That thought was simply that I cannot simply enjoy art for art’s sake any longer. That whenever I come across a work of creativity, whether it be a painting, a jazz album, a film or a poem, I cannot simply allow it to wash over me, to effect me, to own me. In fact, the feeling was that it was somehow my responsibility to own it.

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The 21st Century Needs to Retire Some Things

May 10, 2010
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May 10, 2010

in Favorites,Kinetic vs Static

The pace of progress is accelerating so rapidly that even pretending to be informed of all the new businesses and trends and occurrences could be a full-time job. There is just so much going on, everywhere and anywhere you look. But every now and then we see or hear something that just doesn’t quite fit in. Something that is a vestige of an earlier time and no longer feels right in today’s context.

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The Tea Party Is a Reaction Against Decay

May 9, 2010
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May 9, 2010

in Personal Essays,Politics

Yesterday afternoon I returned from a long afternoon walk and lay down in bed and started channel flipping. I came across CNN’s breaking news coverage of a small but important state convention in Utah. Bob Bennett, the Republican Senator, had been defeated by two little known incumbents, and would be prevented from running as a Republican for his 4th term in the United States Senate. But what really caught my attention was the fact that in a ten minute report on CNN, there was not a single mention of the term Tea Party. (No wonder CNN is in the absolute crapper. They cannot and do not perform the most basic facts of a story)

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A Million New Novelists

May 8, 2010
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May 8, 2010

in Arts and Culture,Blogger Evolution,Favorites

What Will Blogging Bring Our Culture?

We are on the verge of seeing a creative explosion in our culture. There is one reason for this: the advent and adoption of self-publishing. In particular, I am speaking of the future outlook for the novel. Although self-publishing effects all artistic forms, photography, video, audio, visual art; the art form that is most immediately affected by self-publishing is creative writing. By a wide margin, most blogs are dedicated to the written word in one form or another.

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