Day 242-244: Vincent and the Doctor and Our Futures

 This past week, I was informed that Doctor Who was getting pulled from Netflix on February 1st. So I have not seen most of the Matt Smith episodes and none of the Capaldi years. I buckled in, called it research for my SFF writing, and went for it.

When I reached the award-winning episode entitled "Vincent and the Doctor," I was excited to see what the hub-bub was about. Everyone I know loves this episode, and I wanted to know why.

I think I know why.

For those of you who haven't seen it and don't mind major spoilers about the episode, Vincent VanGogh is a drunken artist who is suffering a real horrible mental illness. He says he is alone in the world, he says no one cares about him, that his life is a sham.

Before the Doctor and Amy leave him, they try to convince Vincent not to kill himself in a year by bringing him to the future to show him the Musee d'Orsay's special exhibit on Vincent VanGogh's work. He hears Bill Nighy tell them all about how great VanGogh was and how he may be the best artist of all time.

Vincent bawls. And so did I.

But I don't know if people who aren't artists have the same reaction we do.

I think that this scene is such a cathartic experience for those of us who don't have a certain future. Maybe other career paths can go to work every day and know that if they work hard, they will get that promotion, they will get a better job ...

But for us? There's a fine line between a person wasting their life on silly stories and someone who will do something really great that people will appreciate and read and cherish.

We all have felt a special kinship to, say, a music artist who starts off small in our hometown and then explodes into the SuchnSuches. It makes the jump realistic. It makes it something that could happen to anyone. It makes our heroes human.

And it's a little heroic to take a chance. As Chris Pratt wrote on instagram this evening, "There was no Plan B." He scraped together money for gas money on a given day. We don't know if we'll get that promotion. We don't know if it'll pay off, and we're seen as egotistical or absolutely bonkers if we think it will.

I don't know where I'll end up. I don't know which one I am. This blog could be something that's forgotten to the times with a bunch of other blogs that aspiring young writers kept before they went onto to something else or just outright fail. Or it could be something that is looked back on as part of my juvenalia, to say, "Look at this, she wrote this before she was her."

Even writing that feels stupid. Even thinking that I could be someone is egotistical and scary.

There's something else I saw this week. This old notebook:

Pretty egotistical, right? This is ridiculous.

It was also a picture taken from the Huffington Post. It was written by Octavia Butler.

All artists want to share something. That is why we make art. We make it for ourselves, but we also make it so there's some physical, tangible form of our pain and happiness.

What is wrong with wanting that to make a difference?

So here's mine. I know I'm not Octavia Butler. But I am willing to work to be J.R. Dawson. And maybe someday that will mean something.