Lichtenbergian Precepts: Audience, part 3

We’re looking at the eighth Lichtenbergian Precept, AUDIENCE, and today we’ll look at your second audience, those people right here. (The first audience is those people out there.)

Whereas your first audience is that mass of people who are going to make you rich and famous (hey, it could happen!), your second audience is that circle of people within which you create. It could be a writer’s group that meets once a month, or an open studio (like Backstreet Arts — go donate!), or your knitters’ club that gets together every week in the coffee shop to trade ideas and chat.

For me, it’s the Lichtenbergian Society, the group of friends whose creation launched this whole procrastination thing into the universe. We meet irregularly, but when we do it’s an evening that allows us to touch base with our creative instincts and areas of thought/concern. And of course the RITUALS of the Annual Meeting and the Retreat keep us grounded.

For J.R.R. Tolkien, it was The Inklings, the group of scholars and writers who would meet most Tuesday nights at the local pub for a pint or two. They would share their writing, reading aloud and offering criticism and support for one another. (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, plus C. S. Lewis’s work, went through this group.)

Musician Brian Eno coined the term scenius when he was an art student: a combination of scene and genius, it means that vibrant scene where artists of all stripes find each other, support each other, amplify each other, steal from each other. Think the Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan England, the Lost Generation, etc.

For us mere mortals, finding our scenius means finding a place where we can breathe a sigh of relief because we belong — we are not weirdo loners who are doing something so out of the ordinary that we have to do it out of sight of the rest of society. We are, in fact, doing what humans are meant to do: Make the Thing That Is Not.

Find your scenius — and if you don’t find one, make one. (I cannot recommend a better resource than Bandersnatch, by Diana Pavlac Glyer, a history of the Inklings; she literally gives tips on how to do what they did throughout the book, then summarizes them in the epilogue.)