Above It All?

I just read a quote from a celebrity I'll leave nameless (except to those who happened to read the same thing) that set off a new train of thought--or more precisely, set my thoughts on a completely different track. As I said in a recent essay on Senior Women Web, one of the reasons I write is to figure out what I think. When I read "...an alienated world view..." some chord was struck. I saw I should see if I know how I feel about that.

Those three words seem so capable of multiple definitions, they might apply to as many personalities and purposes as there are ways of interpreting them. Is the speaker feeling apart from all other human beings? Apart only from the majority of them? In a world she's incapable of understanding? In a world she's incapable of sympathizing with? Is she feeling like a stranger among her fellows, or on this planet, or in our limitless universe? She claims it's a good place for her to be. I can think of a number of reasons for feeling that way.

There might be an argument in favor of some kind of alienation for a writer of scientific enquiry or of history, but hope not. There might be a shallow case to be made for the writer of sci fi or fantasy or horror. Is some plane above or below or beside ordinary human experience useful? I even wonder if it would be a good approach from the business standpoint. Would it help sell articles and/or books?

Should a poet or a novelist or short fiction writer, or an essayist or journalist be thus separated from life? It may not be admirable to be hysterical, empathetic, involved at all times in every situation, but somehow it seems to this would-be writer that those times (except for the hysterics) should be darned few and far between for the sake of the readers!