My name is Ken Alexopoulos.
Sometimes I go by Alexander Kurtis when the mood strikes.
I am a writesperson.
A lot of people have criticized me over the past few months for my distinct inability to take anything I do seriously. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions. However, I feel that it should be strongly mentioned that anyone who writes must possess a level of absurdity themselves. Consider this, if an individual came to you on the street with no connection to your personal life or shared a single familial bond and suddenly began to tell you an outrageous tale, you would think them insane. With every word that spilled from their mouth being an obvious lie or gross exaggeration of past events, their eyes would shine with hope and promise that you wished them to continue until they had finally exhausted their mental reserves and began to walk away only to turn around and politely request that you provide them with an honest review and to tell your friends. Any sane person would immediately seek assistance to get this individual committed and ignore their story, the most that it would be mentioned would be in a retelling to friends and relatives about the crazy person who had accosted them in a supermarket.
So too must we view the plight of the writer or the artist. We are all mad. Even the most stable and grounded of us are plagued with a mental malaise. Reality is a construct that binds us to a strict adherence to immutable law; a legislation that we have, for whatever reason, seen fit to abandon in the vain hope that we will be able to lie to a mass audience on repeated occasion and be asked to do so again. It is not a vocation for the reasonable or the mundane. I could quote numerous experts on the subject, though I find that when one uses the words of another the message is lost in transit.
Madness is a gift.
Where others see a curse, the artist sees a blessing. Where most see nothing but torment, the writer sees advantage. We exist to pick apart and to build, to view the insignificant as outstanding and allow others a peek into our minds. That is what the writesperson does. It is not a path of righteousness, but rather a path of solitude and tumultuous spiritual masochism; the act of yielding to the inner voice and stepping aside for the broadcast.
At some point we had forgotten that the madness exists and allowed a formula to take its place. Somehow, over the last three decades, we have begun to manufacture Dali and mainstream Thompson. As a civilization we have allowed what was considered to be an oppressive theology to make way for an oppressive gnostiphilia where the study of a god has been seamlessly interchanged with a faith made of science. The artistic world has been crippled in the process. Where it had once been thought heretical to dream of anything outside of God's domain, we now see the artist being held with scorn and contempt for any thoughts that might lie outside the boundaries of Newtonian decree.
Thus, we see the creative mind slowly begin to rot. The easy, non-invasive, road has been made for any who wish to engage an audience.
1. Start with a happy child.
2. Add a level of angst and childhood trauma.
3. Place them in a supernatural scenario.
4. Introduce an interchangeable counterpart.
5. Reveal that the protagonist had powers of their own.
6. Have everything work out in the end with the exception of a minor detail in order to leave room for a sequel.
Granted, while this may describe nearly every story written since the 16th century and will most likely continue to be a staple of the modern market for centuries to come, there is a problem. People are going to get bored.
While I may come off as something of a pessimist, there is nothing that could be farther from the truth. I am a grand optimist. If I weren't, I would've stopped writing before I even started.
You see, I believe that people are more intelligent than they credit themselves. I believe that if given the chance every man, woman, and child on the planet could strive to overthrow the shackles and boundaries of an industry burdened with constant pandering and surgical manipulation. They are out there, the restless and the malcontented, waiting for the day that someone will come and break them from their prisons of shallow words and empty brush strokes. They are starving for stimulation, wanting for a challenge.
They are waiting for us, all of us, to change their minds.
That is the call of a Mad Writesman.
Change the world. Die trying.