As a Canucks fan, I was disappointed when we lost last night against the Bruins (who did, unfortunately, play better for more games this series and deserved to win). As a Vancouverite, I was disturbed by the post-game riot.
I wasn’t “ashamed,” as so many people here declared themselves to be, because I honestly don’t identify enough with my city to feel responsible for the actions of a bunch of criminals, thugs, low-IQ yahoos, and drunks who found an occasion to burn off some of their anti-social energy without suffering an immediate shut down.
But disturbed, yes. Disturbed afterwards, in particular, as my two teenagers told me about all the classmates they know who were proud of sticking around through most of the riots and who were consequently running out of their last day of class today at regular intervals to cough, puke, or dry-heave because of all the tear gas they sucked into their lungs last night. Also a bunch of Seniors who were sick because of too much drugs and alcohol ingested at last nights “camp out.” And tales of how, at last week’s after-grad party, which was supposed to be a dry event, not only were lots of people drunk, but ecstasy was making the rounds and making lots of the already-oversexualised youth strip off their clothes by the end of the evening.
This isn’t a rant about what are our youth coming to (though I’m tempted), but more a long, disturbed look at the forces which drive so many people to escape reality, bust out of the normal codes of social conduct, kick loose in ways that harm others, then laugh and blog and Facebook about it as if it’s a cool thing.
And disturbed is always a good place to start a story. What scares you? What angers you? What disturbs you? Write to understand, to moan, to make things right somehow. Because you can do that in fiction – make things right. You can restore order and sanity. Or you can tear it apart and explain why it is so.
Either way, you, the writer, get to be in control of what is sometimes a world that seems out of control.
Writing as therapy. Writing as reassurance. Writing maybe even to influence change.
There’s the impetus. The particulars, I’ll leave to you for this week. I’ve got more brooding to do.
