Stranger on Earth

When a totalitarian regime or a theocracy imposes its narrow rules on the written word, dramatic things can happen to a people’s history. This point is touched upon early on – in Book 1, Chapter 20 – by Tengo when he is introducing Orwell’s 1984 to a clueless Fuka-Eri. He tells her how in the novel the regime is constantly rewriting history, distorting it to the extent where no-one can remember the actual past. He tells her that “robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves,” and labels the act a “crime.” “Our memory,” he says, “is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us – is rewritten – we lose the ability to sustain our true selves” (257). Simply put, individuals who live under a totalitarian regime will always have to suppress their true selves – if they do not want to suffer punishment. W...

Inspiration, as most artists already know, is that rare glimmer that shines at the most random of moments. It is elusiveness personified, utterly indifferent to your summoning and pleading. “Writer’s block,” that is what we modern-day writers call it when it refuses to obey our wishes, leaving us high and dry while the clock is ticking away deep into the night. Classic poets John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke show us what needs to be done if one is to be inspired. In Keats’ celebrated “Ode to Psyche,” we find the speaker singing the praise of Psyche because she is the “latest born and fairest vision far/Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!” Psyche’s beauty is so astonishing that even Eros, sent by Aphrodite out of sheer jealousy to punish her, injured himself with his love arrow and fell head over heels for her. However, Keats says Psyche, despite her earth-shattering beauty, is without her worshippers: “though temple thou hast none/Nor altar heap'd with flowers/Nor virgin-cho...