In baseball, “defensive indifference” is ruled when the defensive team is indifferent to the actions of the offensive team. Go ahead and steal second. You won’t get credit in the box score, however. The team in the field didn’t try to defend it.
I’ve been thinking of the term in a different way, though. Indifference as a defense mechanism—to skip the hard work of engaging and solving issues by writing them off. Not to get all hipster-bashing, but this seems to have evolved from the seeds of sarcasm that my generation planted. It started by deriding what we didn’t like, until the overflow of information made attention more scarce. It was hard to offer judgement on everything, after all. Your only defense is to opt out of a strong emotion. Let it pass.
As an artist, indifference is the worst outcome. You are trying to communicate, to inspire, to provoke. You want some kind of reaction. Positive, negative—either is better than indifference.
How will you create a story that connects? A story that’s worth the effort on the reader/listener? One that survives the filter?
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Equipment: Naked Fender Jaguar through Swart STR, Garageband for iPad
Copyright 2013 Michael Boezi
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