#110: SPARK BIRDS, JOKES, STORIES, BLOGS

I first ran across the idea of a “spark bird” in the book Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear. It’s a simple, and hopefully familiar idea. You see a bird that you think looks so amazing that you become a birdwatcher, a lover of nature. This is a common story, and question among birdwatchers. If I had a spark bird, it would be the American Kestrel, a small falcon I used to watch hover above hay fields and swiftly swoop down to catch mice. 

There can be such things as spark: typewriters, trees, mushrooms, stories, paintings, photos, jokes, flavors, sentences, insects, songs, meals, buildings, words, books, poems, games, skills, sports moments, stretches, feats of strength, tragedies, headlines, accidents, and all manner of catalysts.

Gateway drug is a similar idea. I would imagine that many subjects have specific terms for this phenomenon. I’m excited to find these. Spending a decade among teenagers has allowed me to provide a few sparks, and also meet many folks who haven’t yet fallen in love with books, history, words, stories, art, or even people. And some won’t. This is how it works.

Let’s look at three spark case studies: a joke, a story, a blog.

A JOKE

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, B.J. Novak talked about listening to the comedian Mitch Hedberg. This joke, particularly:

“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.”

He talks about how this joke showed him things you could do with language, and inspired him. I don’t think it’s fair to say “made him a comedian” but (and I would have to go back and listen to write any more about this) it’s fair to say it had an influence on him. Jokes and sentences can be sparks.

A STORY

So can stories. I was reading in What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas and she writes this on page 17:

Then one day somebody told me a story that stuck in my head. I wanted so badly to tell it. I was obsessed. For the first time, the story was more important than my ego, and after failing, I tried again, and then again.

She writes about how this experience made her a writer. (And also that she kind of stole the story from someone else.) A spark story.

A BLOG

In a note at the beginning of her book No Time To Spare, Ursula K. LeGuin writes about her skepticism and dislike of blogs, the word, the form. And then she read Jose Saramago’s blogs that he started posting when he was eighty-six years old. She writes:

But seeing what Saramago did with the form was a revelation.

Oh! I get it! Can I try too!

There are spark birds, jokes, sentences, stories, blogs…and much else. Poems, cars, mammals, subjects. It’s a privilege to be around teenagers that have, and haven’t, experienced sparks from all corners of existence.

What spark stories can you tell?