In which I try to explain the blog's title, with digressions

What exactly, I can hear you asking, does “A Mirror and a Hammer” mean? Or, rather, I’m sure I would hear you asking if anyone read this less-than-12-hours-old blog.

In order to give the full story, I need to provide a little background. Don’t worry, it all leads somewhere relevant. There is a show that is, if not my favorite television show, than at least in the top 3. Like so many other shows I love, it airs in the UK. UNLIKE so many other shows I love, it does not then air in the US if you just wait long enough. The name of this show is QI. It is hosted by the incomparable Stephen Fry, a man described as having "a brain the size of Kent". The format of the show is ostensibly that of a quiz show. Points, however, are not awarded merely for CORRECT answers, they are awarded for INTERESTING answers or, in many cases, for interesting things that come up in the conversations following each question. (Points are deducted for giving obvious answers that "everyone knows" are correct but which are not.)

By the way... you can usually find episodes of QI on YouTube, though the full episodes are usually pulled down after a few months as they're not actually posted by the BBC.

So, QI is one of my favorite shows. It's brilliant, funny, and should be brought to BBC America, or at least have the DVDs released as Region 1. But anyway...

This Christmas, I made gift-buying easy for my mother. I set up an Amazon Wish List. My friends, if you truly love someone, you will do this for them. Put enough on it so that they can pick something out and you can still say that thought went into it, set it so that it doesn't tell you what's been purchased during the month of December/your birthday/your anniversary, and send out the link to all and sundry who would otherwise spend hours at the mall trying to find parking running from store to store listening to mall Christmas music trying to find the perfect gift trying to remember if you mentioned you wanted this or that and how much should you really spend and AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Sorry. Better now. SO! Amazon Wish List for Christmas. Yes.

One of the books on there was Advanced Banter, the QI book of quotations. Not quotations from the show, just general quotations, spanning Plato to Lenny Bruce to W. I could never sit down and read something like this straight through so once in a while, when I feel the urge, I flip to a random page and scan a few quotations. Usually this is good for a chuckle; occasionally something will make me stop and think. One day, just before New Year's, there were two quotes that brought me up short. They have spend the last week and a half wandering around my brain and, in the process, have fused into a sort of lens through which any memories, feelings, or ideas that bubble up into my conscious mind have been viewed through. They are:

“There'll be two dates on your tombstone and all your friends will read 'em, but all that's gonna matter is that little dash between 'em” ~Kevin Welch

and

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it" - Bertolt Brecht

And so, when it came time to name this blog, it was fairly inevitable that I would name it with a reference to one of those quotes. My first thought was "That Little Dash." Then I thought about it and that's what my old LJ was: an account of the little dash that will one day appear on my headstone, and a usually boring account at that. That's not what I want to do here. (If I'm to be totally honest, the final nail on the coffin for that name came when I found out it was already taken. D'oh!) I don't want to write about my day, my life. I want to write about my WORLD. I want to hold a mirror up to the world and show you a new light, a new angle. I want... well, there's really no good metaphor for the hammer in blog terms. "I want to weild my words like a hammer that reshapes your brain"? Too gruesome, not to mention reminiscent of They Might Be Giants lyrics.

So that's the story behind this blog's title. I'm setting another goal for myself here and now: every day, Monday - Friday (life-permitting), I will write something about whatever is going on in the news, politics, art, something... if there is nothing going on that particularly strikes me, I will open that book of quotations, find a quote, and talk about it.

~JMS