(Graphic by Nick Meador*)

The following essay is the introduction to the first Supraterranean e-book, “Seeking the Upward Spiral” – a collection of early works by Nick Meador. The e-book will be available as a PDF on the Books page via a “pay what you want” system beginning on Tuesday, July 6, 2010.

No one has ever really asked me why I write, yet I constantly find myself attempting to answer that question. Every time it happens I inevitably start talking about certain authors or books that have inspired me. Anyone who has read an article on my Refractor blog is probably very familiar with this trend. Maybe it was a symptom of my not being able to answer that question ­– the one that was never posed to me. A part of me must have felt like I’d need to answer it before becoming a “real” writer.

Of course, no other author (or group of authors) is the only reason that I write. A few lit firecrackers under my feet until I danced wildly enough for their tastes. But they were only slightly more effective in that regard than film directors and musicians. The creative drive is translated into myriad different forms of human expression, which are not as divided as it often seems. And nothing created by others can generate the sustained energy required to detangle one’s own creative urges.

I suppose the work you’re about to read is a survey of my subconscious attempt to answer the questions of why I write, how I want to write, and what I want to write about. On the other hand, maybe I never had a choice in the matter. I often think of the creative process like the old game Battle Tops. All the tops have different kinds of potential energy – from external inspirations or internal drives – and the kinetic energy is unleashed when the tops collide and interact. Both my laptop and my notepad have become battlegrounds for ideas, styles and experiments.

Really the theory was an altered version of a broader belief: we all have an enormous amount of unused creative energy, and that energy is finally starting to boil over on a mass scale.

As for choices, I guess I did choose to let it flow naturally, instead of continually stifling the urge to express myself. Even so, I had to figure out how to express myself. I hated the feeling that I didn’t understand myself, why I acted certain ways or said certain things. I felt that there were forces at work in my life over which I had little to no control. While that was undoubtedly a factor, my attempts at writing came in response to a very mysterious calling, one that to this day I don’t fully understand.

Until 22 years of age, I considered both reading and writing to be abhorrent activities. As far as school went, I always considered myself first and foremost a student of science. And after school I was content to repress my budding need for a personal mythology, and surrender my psyche to movies and the increasingly fascinating world of video games.

I remember my 12th grade AP English teacher asking us to compile a list of everything we’ve ever read, in preparation for the college application process. She scolded me after seeing that my list contained almost nothing but required reading from classes. I thought, “Well, what the fuck do you expect? If those last 12 years of English, literature and composition courses were designed to make me like reading and writing, that comes as a total surprise to me!”

And I did try to make the best of it… at least, I’ve convinced myself that I tried. I stuck it out through five years of advanced English classes before that 12 AP class. I even enrolled in a private reading program in 10th grade to try to build my reading speed and comprehension.

My mom tried as well. I know I used to enjoy our trips to the youth wing of the Troy Public Library, even if, after playing that old floppy disk computer game that let users create a face, I usually came home with only a Reading Rainbow-approved book and a hand puppet (we were really into puppets). And my mom tells me that, as a child, she couldn’t stop me from reading. I just read and read and read. I even read to my little brothers. Hearing that lends a near-tragic air to the present story of my life.

Scattered throughout my memories of English class are stale composition formulas, tiresome busywork exercises, and forced observation of symbolism without any meaningful interpretation. In elementary school we studied grammar and syntax like it would someday save our lives. In sixth grade I was asked to write a story about the future, and all I could think of (all that seemed relevant) was a Christmas list of futuristic toys. In seventh grade I was told that a paragraph starts with a topic sentence, continues with three to five related sentences, ends with a summarizing sentence, and transitions well to the next paragraph. In high school I learned how to compose a variety of verses, yet gained no commanding sense of what made something poetic. And in 12 AP I read Dante’s Inferno without ever getting the impression that it was a reflection of individual psychology. It seemed to be an outdated description of the horrific place to which naughty little Catholics would surely be delivered (so much for separation of church and state…).

The first dim beacon of light came in middle school, when we started the nationwide program known as Wordmasters. It was some kind of sadistic system designed to prepare us for the S.A.T. test. We literally studied lists of words, looked up definitions in clunky dictionaries, and then worked through analogy sets. And while that sounds painful (it…was…very…painful), I somehow came out of the experience with a newfound love of words – mostly long, complicated words that I hadn’t heard people use in conversation. Of course, when we were told to look for those special words out in real life and then report them to the teacher, I first found “imminent” in the film Return of the Jedi. (The Emperor says something about the “imminent demise” of Luke’s rebel friends.)

After that it was clear that words – certain words, arranged in a certain way – do have a power and music that were previously hidden from me. Through all the textbook bullshit I endured, the power and music were revealed only a handful of times, in The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those aren’t the authors or books I’ve credited repeatedly for fueling my inspiration, and they certainly weren’t present in my conscious mind when I started to write. But they were the only evidence I had until the age of 18 that writing and reading could be worthwhile – that there was some purpose to “literature and composition” other than to provide boring schoolwork.

In other words, the institutionalized public school system had allowed no way for me to develop my right brain – the more innovative, “artistic” side of the brain. The schools do cultivate in us a hunger for creative development, for the first six years anyways. Kindergarten through 5th grade are chock full of crayons and Elmer’s glue, cotton balls and popsicle sticks, story time and sing-alongs, and recess, recess, recess. Then you arrive in 6th grade and they start the process of specialization, of robotization, of personal industrialization. Students aren’t allowed outside to run on the playground; they remove the playground altogether! You have to go to six different classes per day instead of remaining in a single room with a surrogate mother. Music, art and foreign language classes become “electives” which are not required curriculum. Even my family’s trips to the youth wing of the public library stopped around that time.

It hit me recently that this education method creates a fractured psyche in the individual. We experience creative bliss – organized at school, spontaneous at home; indoors with video games, outdoors with nature; sometimes by ourselves, other times with friends or family – but then it is forcefully removed. In this way society is designed to withhold a great resource from us, akin to the removal of foreskin in circumcision. The tribe gains power by taking joy from new recruits, shoving them into pre-designed roles, and convincing them that suffering is the path of the righteous. This makes the individual more vulnerable to manipulation as an adult, and more likely to believe that the creative bliss can come from an external source. Hence, why so many people try to buy the bliss, steal the bliss, pray for the bliss, gamble for the bliss, etc. All the while we have an aching feeling that we’ve been duped.

By the mid-2000s more and more people were spending their spare time producing creative work using computers and the Internet. Traditional media organizations saw this and asked, “Where do they get the time?” Well, the average American still watches six hours of TV per day. Chipping away even one or two of those creates a lot of time for spontaneous daily productivity. It seemed that this boom of blogs, YouTube videos and even Facebook applications coincided with an increase in concern over what was happening in the world and how that affected people at individual level. Maybe that was why I wrote a research paper in grad school based on the theory that creating anything online would lead to greater social participation or civic efficacy.

Really the theory was an altered version of a broader belief (later rounded out by the ideas of Clay Shirky, who has now written two books on the subject): we all have an enormous amount of unused creative energy, and that energy is finally starting to boil over on a mass scale.

These early works are the result of just such a boiling over. In 2005 I kept a consistent online journal on a MySpace blog. In 2006 I started a music blog at Blogger.com and wrote album and concert reviews. In 2007, upon arriving at MSU’s School of Journalism, I started the MusicEdge section at Spartanedge.com and tried my hand at being a music reporter. I attempted to freelance write for magazines and alternative weeklies in Michigan and Chicago. Behind the scenes I worked on fiction, since that was always my long-term goal in writing. I’ve included two fictional stories in this collection which were previously unpublished (they were rejected by various literary journals). The first part here, entitled “Sowing Supra Seeds,” is comprised of those early sputters of creativity.

The questions and yearnings left unanswered by an institutionalized science education have lingered with me far longer than my one-time desire to become a doctor.

That part is so named because I felt like I was tending a creative garden, patiently watering saplings and pulling weeds. And then in June of 2008 the giant beanstalk took to the sky when I launched the experimental self-publishing magazine Supraterranean.com. The second part, “A Prolonged Case of Indigestion,” begins there and runs until December of 2009. It contains stories, essays and poems that I self-published on Supraterranean, and also articles from my Refractor blog (originally called the Supraterranean Admin blog) and MusicEdge blog. This phase was essentially a test of what I had been telling myself since 2005 – that it was worthwhile to write no matter what came of it. Of course, it wasn’t until recently that I realized nothing can come of writing unless it’s a byproduct of some other development – a means to the ends of expression and development. Those seeking to “be a writer” as an end in itself seem to be swerving headlong into a brick wall. It’s the whole career mentality that we’ve been brainwashed to endorse. It’s hurting our artistic potential!

The second section also represents my battle to quell the gastric acid accumulating from constant immersion in an absurd world. By 2008 I found that my four basic food groups had become Prilosec, Zantac, Pepto Bismol and Metamucil. I might have called the section “A Prolonged Case of Depression,” but depression isn’t something that happens to your mind and your gastrointestinal tract. (I also could have used the title “A Prolonged Case of Residing in Ann Arbor” – but that didn’t have the same ring to it.)

* * *

While this collection embodies my attempt to figure out why I am compelled to write, it also marks my process of catching up. In order to write or speak, one requires an adequate grasp on vocabulary, grammar and syntax. If one lacks these skills, one is also severely limited in thought. Considering that the school system directly contributed to my ignorance and poor vocabulary, I had quite simply been kept in a state of mental retardation. They killed the will in me to learn and create, and it took a long fucking time for me to resuscitate it.

Whereas I had read four books for pleasure before turning 22 in December of 2004, I’ve read about sixty books in the time since. (I realize that’s still slow by most standards. I now read more quickly, but I’ve developed the time-consuming habit of underlining and taking notes with pencil). And while I had focused on science, Spanish language and psychology in school and college, my independent studying has consisted largely of Existentialism and the fictional work of American iconoclasts. Each year I’ve worked to build up my reading speed and comprehension, not to mention my vocabulary – because doing so allows me to work faster and gather more information. These pursuits also make the writing process more efficient, and advances in thought flow from there.

A third way to describe the period these writings come from is that it was like an alternate dimension into which I had accidentally slipped. In 2005 I had just taken a senior seminar class to finish my Zoology program at the Lyman Briggs School of Michigan State University. The seminar topic was “Nature vs. Nurture,” and we discussed concepts as various as intelligence, language, race and religion – each time trying to discern whether genes or “environmental factors” play a bigger role. I wrote my final research paper on the potential influence of facial imprinting and odor preference in human mating. That same semester I was rejected from veterinary school for the first of two times.

And thus began a long, difficult process of figuring out who I am, what my greater purpose is, and what I intend to do with the ever-shrinking amount of time I have in life. The questions and yearnings left unanswered by an institutionalized science education have lingered with me far longer than my one-time desire to become a doctor. After college I spoke with a “life coach” who explained his belief in an underlying order to the flow of the universe, which I could only interpret as some watered-down ode to a singular, omnipotent god. But he also stated that human beings can gradually ascend into an upward spiral. Only recently have I begun to understand that concept. Currently I think of it as the deconstruction of instinctual life patterns, which result in so much needless suffering. That helps explain the title of this collection, Seeking the Upward Spiral. It’s been a long, painful search that more often felt like navigating a dark tunnel on hands and knees, with an occasional mudslide of despair.

In the process of piecing together the various puzzles, I eventually found myself returning to the study of science. Or more precisely, I stopped letting myself think my background in science was a disadvantage – as if I should have devoted myself to a single field in order to be more successful. It’s now clear that the problem was not mine but society’s, for relying on rigid over-specialization when human beings are capable of so much more. I could no longer afford to stifle my creative potential, and the same will soon be true for people worldwide. On the horizon there are no boundaries between science, culture, technology, history, psychology and philosophy. Those are the topics that have dominated my writing over the past few years, and those are likely the sources I’ll draw upon when synthesizing information in future works.

I realize it must seem a strange idea to self-publish a collection of early works before releasing any primary works. But that is one of many ways in which the realm of publishing will likely change in the coming years. Previously most books weren’t just written; they were molded from a manuscript by a gaggle of editors and literary agents. It seems that this trend worsened in the second half of the 20th century – one of the primary reasons for the withering of literary prowess in the English-speaking world. There’s far too much power concentrated in the publishing institution, most notably in the great fortress of the American Empire: New York City. Now we must once again take full responsibility for our writing. Now we can edit ourselves, if the editing is indeed necessary in the first place. Now we will get to take full creative control over our own creative works.

Still, an early works collection is customarily released later, often only to accentuate whatever the author has done later in life. It’s almost a pat on the back that says, “You’ve improved – good job!” Mine may someday demonstrate how I have transformed as a writer or as an artist. I certainly included some pieces that are far from what I consider to be my best work. My real goal here is to provide an open and honest account of my personal creative evolution. For now it also stands as a challenge to myself to keep learning, changing, growing – and then to watch in wonder as new and unexpected developments arise, perhaps in the form of words.

I myself have thoroughly enjoyed gathering and sculpting the work for this collection. And I expect that it will say much about the path I am going to plot in the years to come.

For more information on the e-book “Seeking the Upward Spiral,” please visit the new Books page.

*Graphic created using the image “Realization of Mind” by GollyGforce on Flickr.)

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