Who Killed Hemingway...

Video may have killed the radio star and then killed itself (have you seen music videos lately?) But I think that Technology Killed the Hemingway

I stumbled upon this anecdote yesterday:

A young photographer showed his portfolio to an older more experienced photographer. He hoping to gain an insight into his work and how to improve his craft. The older photographer assured him his work was technically good and that he should carry on shooting as he had. Unsatisfied with that response he asked "But how do I make my photos more interesting?" "Live a more interesting life." Replied the seasoned pro.

It's become vastly simple to live a very uninteresting life. I myself am guilty on numerous counts of being boring. Thank god I have other counts of being the opposite, so, as for now, they balance out.

As a society we have ease of access to food, water, shelter, we have 24 hour a day entertainment, music, movies, videos all at our finger tips. What have all these treasures made us? Boring and lazy.

We have no great struggles, men no longer have to prove they are men in the fields (yes, in the rest of the world they do, but I'm talking about the city dwelling, blog reading, Starbucks drinking part of our population). Most of us go to work, come home, watch tv, read blogs, look at people's facebook photos, have a drink and go to bed. The next day we get up and do the same thing again and again. This passes on for days, then weeks and finally years. We are boring. So we have nothing interesting to write about, nothing interesting to sing about, no interesting plays to write, no great stories to tell or images to capture. We have monotony.

I continued to think about this little anecdote for the rest of the afternoon as I worked away. I thought about great artists of our time, for example:

Ernest Hemingway:
On his route to the Italian front, he stopped in Paris, which was under constant bombardment from German artillery. Instead of staying in the relative safety of the Hotel Florida, Hemingway tried to get as close to combat as possible.

Soon after arriving on the Italian Front Hemingway witnessed the brutalities of war. On his first day on duty an ammunition factory near Milan blew up. Hemingway had to pick up the human—primarily female—remains.

Hemingway wrote about this experience in his short story "A Natural History of the Dead". This first encounter with death left him shaken.

The soldiers he met later did not lighten the horror. One of them, Eric Dorman-Smith, entertained Hemingway with a line from Part Two of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Act III, Scene II: "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death...and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next."[4]The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", one of his famous short stories set in Africa.)

To another soldier, Hemingway once said, "You are troppo vecchio (It. too old) for this war, pop." The 50-year old soldier replied, "I can die as well as any man (Hemingway, for his part, would quote this line in "

From here the man went on to be involved in several more wars, became a friend of Castro, travelled through Africa. Won a Nobel prize, caught on fire and was in two different plane crashes.

How's that for interesting? Similar great artists have life stories that are full of adventure and conflict. It fuels their creative life. Hemingway's story continues from there full of adventure, travel and writing.

Want to be a great artist? Writer? Poet? Painter? Photographer? Designer? heck, even a great person? Then fill your life with interesting people, places, experiences. Get off of your couch. Cancel your cable, cut down on wasting time. Before you do something that could be considered frivolous ask yourself

Will this add to my life? Will I become a more interesting person? What will this experience add to my life?

Who knows, maybe you are a great writer and just need something to write about.

oh and ps. actually a shotgun killed Hemingway.

What some motivation?

Go find it.