explaining myself

Do I want to be a journalist? I’m not sure. I don’t want to be my profession. To be honest I started out with journalism because I felt uncertain where my majors in English and Philosophy (the two subjects that really get me to smile) would take me. I have realized, however, that I started journalism with some prejudices. I have been until now prejudiced against the real and in support of the abstract. People have different psychologies and the way I have grown up I have preferred the intangible because you do not have to be connected with it. Or rather nobody can tell that you are not connected with it, with anything, because they cannot witness the intangible – and your relationship with it is enclosed in your experience of it, so it allows you to remain disconnected without anyone noticing. It is safe, no one can judge you. Just recently, however, I have discovered the importance of the real, the tangible. Real people and real events. I could never before understand how people can get excited about politics. But politics is about people, real pain and happiness, hunger, fear, passion and victory. Now I should not make the mistake of saying that literature and philosophy is not about real people. A lot of literature is about real people, and philosophy also concerns itself with the human condition in a fundamental if intellectualized way. What is different about journalism, or at least journalism and literature, is that you have to imaginatively sympathize with other beings in order to appreciate it. I have sneered at reality because I have not sympathized with it. And that is what a journalist is – someone who sympathizes and is excited by the realness of things. Sartre speaks about a search for “something solid, something not just mental”. If we are locked in our consciousnesses the best we can do is to use our imagination to sympathize with other beings. I can only know what it is like to be you because I can imagine the pain that you feel and through imagination feel it with you. Journalism is then not self-expression but an attempt at connecting with others, to put down things that may be recognized by other people. I can only hope that when I mention the brightness of these oranges to you that the same image and feeling will be experienced by you as by me. And Gonzo is the way to go – objectivity does not exist and fictitious ways of describing events are more powerful than sticking to dry facts.