One Of The Greats

It's not often I get upset about a celebrity dying. After all, I'm very self-centered and their disappearance from the world will not affect my life whatsoever, especially retired celebrities. I know a lot of people got really upset when Heath Ledger died. When I saw The Dark Knight, I was like, dangit, he could've done so much more, that sucks. But I wouldn't say I was legitimately sad. When Patrick Swayze died, I had a friend who cried (*cough cough* Stephen *cough cough*).  When Michael Jackson died, everyone got up in a tizzy about it, and yes, I love his music, but whether he is alive or dead doesn't affect me, because he's not producing anything new anyway. Whatever, I'm a jerk. 

As you may or may not know, yesterday Ray Bradbury died. Or at least I found out about it yesterday. A quick google search could confirm when it actually happened, but that's irrelevant. Even though he was, in fact, a retired celebrity, I got a little sad.

For nearly a decade of my life Ray Bradbury was without a doubt my favorite author. Really he probably still is, but a lot of times I forget about him because OMG HARRY POTTER JK ROWLING OMG! However, while Harry Potter was an instant classic, I've been reading them since the 90s, and I've read each book at least a dozen times (with the exception of book 7 which I've only read thrice), it just hasn't affected me like anything by Ray Bradbury. 

When I was in Junior High I had a teacher assign the book Something Wicked This Way Comes (Thanks, Mr. Caldwell). This book was my first Bradbury. I'm fairly certain we read the book around Halloween (because, really when else would you read it). And I've read it just about every Halloween since. As I've grown older, which character I identify with the most changes, but every year, I identify with one character or another very strongly. I think that in and of itself is a testament to his writing. Every single time I've read the Harry Potter series I've only ever identified with the Weasley twins and Hermione, and those are only to a certain degree, never as strongly as Jim, Will, Will's dad, or the various carnival workers/ townspeople. 

My second Bradbury book was Farenheit 451, which I also read at Mr. Caldwell's suggestion. This book spoke to me very deeply as the vehement book nerd I was. It's probably a lot of the reason why I continue to talk myself out of that iPad or Kindle Fire I've been lusting after. There's just a certain thing about books: the feel of them, the smell of them, the look of them. It's a love affair I've been having since I was very very young, and will win out with me through this age of technology.

After I read those two books, I was hooked. I was a Bradbury fan for life. I mean, look at my myspace page (which I haven't touched for probably four or five years), the very first person under "People I'd Like To Meet": Ray Bradbury. Being the nerd I was, I started finding more out about him. Not just what books he wrote but about him: where he lived, how he was educated, his writing process. Keep in mind this was in the late nineties and the internet had not yet come knocking at my door. I had to find magazines with articles, and do crazy things like read Forewords. It was taxing. Of all the things I learned, the majority had come from the same teacher who had got me hooked in the first place.

Learning about him and how he came to his success was one of the first moments I thought I could make it as an author. For as long as I can remember writing professionally has been a dream of mine, but I never actually thought that I could pursue it, until I learned more about Bradbury. He was from a small town in Illinois, he mostly succeeded just because he worked really hard at it, and he truly loved what he did. Although these aren't all true, this was my view of him as a young impressionable Junior High girl. It was that view that inspired me. And if just learning about him could inspire so much, what would meeting him be like? I could only wander.

I continued my Bradbury obsession through High School, reading every book by him Ms. Newingham (the English teacher) and the school library had to offer. I read a lot of his works (the majority was, sadly, from Ms. Newingham, and not our understocked library). And the love affair never ceased. It’s been cut down a bit in recent years, having run out of new stuff of his available for me to read.  But he’s always remained an active voice in the back of my mind. Anytime I think of the hopefulness and the wildness of summer, or the adventure sneaking around the routines of fall, I think of him. Anytime I think of how I still dream and sometimes even believe I could have one of my works published, I think of him.

I'm a little devastated my dream of meeting him can never be. I always held on hope, and of all the famous people I've ever wanted to meet, he was the most likely. He's an author, so it's not like he has fangirls throwing their panties at him, so he's probably not anti-fan. And HE LIVES IN ILLINOIS. The same place I have lived my entire life. 5 hours or less away in any direction. There's got to be a book signing or something somewhere. Yet now it's too late. I'll never meet him, but it's not the end of the world. I just need to take what I've learned from him and how I've been inspired by him and use it in my day-to-day life. Write more, and write for love, don’t be held back by your roots, strive for greatness. Lessons I’ve learned, not by his writings, necessarily, but from his life as well.

Something Ray Bradbury was most well known for was the fact that he wrote every day. I think (midyear) I may change one of my resolutions to that. Instead of finishing a short story or script, I think my goal should be to write every day. Whether it be a blog, a journal entry (Yes, the two are very different), a short story, part of a longer tale, part of a script, all of a short, or anything else, I should try and come up with some piece of writing at least once a day. I guess here's mine for June 7, let's see what I can come up with for the 8th.

-Shannon