Let me start this off by saying that I am NOT an absurdist. Not in any way. I despise being labeled as one, and it peeved me to no end when one of my professors told me that "Just because you hate the label doesn't mean you aren't one."
Allow me to explain:
During my first semester in college, I was tasked with developing a monologue composed of various sections of already-existing work, imbued with fresh meaning and depth (an "intertextual," they called it). I struggled with this assignment. I'd come right out of high school theatre, where the concept of "deeper meaning" was eschewed in favor of picturesque staging and loud delivery of lines. It was a fair trade, given those kids' levels of commitment and attention spans, but all the same, I was ill-prepared for the intensity of college theatre.
So, I went to my student mentors for help. When I asked them how I was supposed to find meaning in the texts I'd chosen (the "Deadpool" film script and a Bo Burnham comedy show), they responded with a question that shaped the rest of my college experience:
"Does it have to have meaning?"
To say that I "ran" with this idea would be an understatement. You can see my intertextual performance "Blueberries" here. It's quite a chaotic ride, but the audience loved every second of it.
After that, I moved on to become an icon in the Theatre Department. I tried to imbue that same sense of meaninglessness into my other work. I lived by the mantra that we as consumers of art place meaning onto things that don't necessarily have meaning attached; "meaning" is an internal, subjective concept.
Thus, because my work was strange, unique, and nonconformist, they decided to slap the label of "Absurdism" on it. My peers introduced me to their friends who were "big fans of absurdist work," and I was even gifted a book of absurdist plays. During a student's presentation on "Woyzeck" (a very weird play), he called me out and asked if I'd like to speak a bit about Absurdism (I declined, with more than a hint of displeasure).
Thus was my descent into the identity of the Weird Kid.
For a while, I almost bought into it. I became so caught-up with the attention that it distracted me from why I was receiving that attention. When I actually did some research into what Absurdism really means, I realized that this was not at all what I was trying to achieve. It's an almost nihilistic viewpoint that basically states that the universe is chaotic and purposeless. See August Strindberg's "The Ghost Sonata" for a great example of this.
I tried my very best to convince people that I was not an absurdist, but simply an individual who enjoys making work that is fun and different from the norm. They didn't buy it, so this Absurdism nonsense continued throughout my college experience and into my senior capstone project, which was a theatrical interpretation of my "Fickle Chronicles" that was meant as a flamboyant "screw you" to the Theatre Department. I got an A-.
Then, I blasted my rhetorical shotguns at the department through a series of brutally honest course evaluations and left it in a heaping, bloody mess, only to enter the adult world with the realization that I had no idea how to write something meaningful. I'd spent so much time sticking my tongue out at those who tried to slap me with a label that I forgot to learn how to create art that actually meant something to me.
This brings us to the present.
I've written a book that I am considering to be my first real book (we can consider the other ones practice). For the past year and a half, I've been working on developing my writing and building my skills. I've rewritten and restructured this book countless times in an attempt to craft it into a story that will mean something to the people who read it (as opposed to the single quick edit that my other books suffered). I want readers to laugh with my characters and cry when I kill them off. I want them to stay up to the ungodly hours of the morning because they can't stop turning pages. I want it to mean something to them.
It's quite cramped in the field of literature nowadays, but I'm going to do my best to spread my wings and rise. So, I invite you to join me on my journey as a budding author. It's gonna be a difficult trek, but I'm sure it'll have it's fun moments, too.
Thank you all for your support, and I'll see you next time!
- Tyler
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