Contextually Transmitted

August 4, 2011 Contextually Transmitted

On the surface, adults don’t make any sense.

If you consider the overall behavior of any particular individual, it will seem rather, well, odd.  It seems improbable — no matter which personality traits/flaws develop — that a person would grow up to be any specific way.  The statistical chance that, at birth, you would end up like you, or that your frienemy would end up like your friemeny, round to zero.

No chance.

Statistically speaking, people are strange.

Only after you obtain perspective about the fundamental influences in a person’s life (e.g., learning about parents/upbringing, discussing traumatic or otherwise crucial life happenings, etc.) can you finally begin to understand an individual.  You begin to triangulate, and begin to see the person not as an irrational thing-doer, but rather as a series of (usually) reasonable-given-their-perspective reactions based on an amalgamation of past experiences.

In other words, context is everything.

For the most part, I think we are generally willing to accept the experiences-shape-personality theory, though it seems fair to say that we are less enticed by the concept when this lens is turned inward.  The idea that my behavior and social instincts may be based on something other than my innate, natural charm is a bit more disturbing than that same notion used to explain your lame story.

The reason I bring up all of this (nonsense?) is because I have recently started considering which, if any, creative influences have molded my writing style.  My first instinct — narcissism, as it turns out — immediately had me considering the notion that I am a perfectly distinct, creative snowflake, floating down from the heavens in my perfectly distinct creative snowflake-y way.

Untrue.

As it turns out, though I never had dreams (delusions?) of becoming a writer (I was more interested in having the largest Lego-slash-MicroMachine collection in the world), my writing style makes perfect sense when you consider the media that I was gleefully consuming at such a influential time.  That said, I can barely understand what drove me to these particular sources.

Keep in mind, I was a weird kid.

(But you were, too, probably.)

Erma Bombeck

I could be mistaken, but it’s entirely possible that the first book I ever read cover-to-cover was, at 11 years old, If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?  This book, published four years before I was born, inspired Art Buchwald to rave, “[Bombeck] has done it again–this time taking a hilarious swipe at husbands, honeymoons, tennis elbow, marriage, lettuce, the national anthem, and a host of other domestic dilemmas.”

What more could a prepubescent Zach ask for?

(I have no explanation for this.)

Tom Lehrer

If you asked me who my favorite musician was around the time when I was reading Erma Bombeck in the bathroom — circa 1995 — I would say, with a straight face,  “Tom Lehrer!”  Of course, I had no idea at the time that most of what I was listening to was recorded in the late 1950′s and 60′s.  And I really had no idea at the time about the history and social awareness required to understand even a fraction of what Lehrer was carrying (a tune) on about.

For those who are unaware of Lehrer’s work, he was a brilliant songwriter, mathematician, and political satirist.  (I say “was” even though he is still very much alive because, so far as I am aware, he is no longer engaged in any of the aforementioned activities.)

Lehrer’s tapes were always at arm’s length from the front passenger seat in my mom’s 1988 Volvo stationwagon, so there was some comfort provided as I was being whisked away to Sunday School.  Only in retrospect am I able to consume Lehrer’s work the way it was intended, although I clearly remember laughing at the appropriate parts as a young’n. But listening to his songs still give me a unfiltered feeling of joyous naivety, even if now I’m laughing for the right reasons.

Dave Barry

This one is the biggie, at least in terms of writing style.

My curiosity about Dave Barry peaked right about the same time that high-speed Internet meandered into my life.  Dave Barry’s page on the Miami Herald’s website was actally one of the first things I ever bookmarked (in Netscape, after searching for his name on AltaVista, probably).  Thanks to magic of the current Internet, we can take a ride in the WayBackMachine to see what his website looked around that time.  Reading Barry’s column became a routine, even though I was still pretty confident at the time that I “didn’t like to read.”

His writing was always fun and pointless.

Which kind of explains this place a bit.

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