Here’s to the essays that never made it onto paper. Or into a Word document. Here’s to the stray thoughts that formulated themselves into outlines, sentences, even some full paragraphs. Here’s to the ideas that were bandied about between friends, but occurred at times it was too inconvenient to pull out paper and pencil or sit down in front of the computer and write.
Making a point of writing one essay per week means many more of those thoughts, sentences and paragraphs do make it into essay forms, but
not nearly all of them. It is not unusual for me to be declaiming about a topic and say, “I’m going to write an essay about this!” which for me is a way of saying, “I’m going to take my ball and go home.” Essays often seem like the best way to have the last word on a topic. It’s also a way to say that the topic at hand is important, it deserves to have ideas parsed, sentences written, and paragraphs formed and edited.
So here’s to essay topics that were once close at hand, and their moment has passed. Let’s take a moment to recognize:
MPAA ratings, the primary system and the Electoral College.
Why we are stuck with them forever.
This was the first topic I put on my “Essay Ideas” document in my computer. It was during, you guessed it, the primary race, when I was frustrated once again, at being disenfranchised by the late date of our primary. Both the MPAA ratings system and the Electoral College have bugged me for years, the former because it’s so arbitrary and has a bigger problem with sexuality (especially female sexuality) than it does with violence, the latter because it is a disenfranchising force enshrined in our Constitution. All three of them will never, ever change because the amount of momentum required to reform them is nearly impossible to muster.
Anna v. O’Brien. Watching the first season of Downtown Abby
got me thinking about the personality differences between the housemaid and the lady’s maid. Then I started comparing their personalities to my own. I came out more on the O’Brien side and that pretty much killed any interest I had in shaping that topic into an essay.
Intimate Theater and NWCTC. About the time I began writing essays, NPR had a story about intimate theater. They were reporting about really cutting edge
stuff like one person sitting in the back of a cab with the actor and experiencing the performance that way. It got me thinking about one of the reasons I love Northwest Classical Theatre Company so much, namely because the audience is so close to the actors. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Nora Ephron. I was deep in the midst of writing other things when Nora Ephron died, which meant she was added to the “idea” list, but I lost the momentum of the shock of her death. But Nora Ephron was a seminal figure in my adolescence and she deserves a full-form essay. I’ll leave her on the list and hope someday I get around to giving her a proper tribute.
With that, I bid those topics, and many others who didn’t even make it to list, goodbye for now. Thank you, ideas, for infiltrating my head and thank you for giving me something to think about.
