A Writer Unraveled

Just a bit of Coldplay for you this morning.

Complete with lyrics tossed in.

I was listening to this music when I was struck by how much it resembles the fate of a popular journalist who seems to have fallen off the rails through a series of rambling Facebook posts. Perhaps it was predictable, given that he'd wrongly been compared to Ernie Pyle, a writer of great dexterity, wit and could jump from funny to poignant in one single sentence. People might make the comparison, but believing it is a distraction from the reality: writing skills are continuously honed. Wordsmithing is hard work.

Earlier this week, I (along with many others) took him to task for assuming and writing from a point of view in which he had no authority to be filling in the blanks. He also compared the staff charged to help him crazy monkeys. Now he's pissed off that he's been shut out of a key office because he forgot: they're the gatekeepers. Perhaps he was spoon fed for way too long. He forgot that new and better writers are already on the same path.

Anyway, going through this and watching his general unraveling, I know how people felt when they watched Dylan Thomas drink himself to death.