Life and Art
Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003 at 3:41 p.m.


I'm thinking of buying a t-shirt, probably the "Thought Criminal" one, but since I have some iron-on shirt transfers laying around and a great new printer I might make one myself. I'm thinking the phrase "I AM MAD" printed in red on a black t-shirt. It describes how a lot of people feel about the current political climate (angry, frustrated) and how we are perceived by the rest of the population and those currently in power (crazy, disposable). I'm also starting up another mix-CD, inspired by my taking out my Nick Cave CD for the first time in a year, Let Love In, and therefore reminding myself that Red Right Hand is one of my all time favorite songs. My favorite songs all have this bluesy, root shakra vibrating feeling in common. I love Red Right Hand, Cold Irons Bound by Bob Dylan. I love Revenge by Patti Smith, and her slowed-down, bluesy version of Dylan's Wicked Messenger.

On a related note, am I the only one who goes out and downloads songs off Kazaa when someone mentions them on their diary? I recently downloaded a few Yves Montand songs after they were mentioned on witch-baby's diary (I recommend "Sous le Ciel de Paris", for the record) and "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" by Magnetic Fields after reading razberryjam. I just take my music recommendations where I can find them, I guess. I also get this wave of pride and approval when someone downloads something from me off Kazaa that I deem "cool," and especially so when it's an obscure song. It's a shame that people don't take advantage of my Beck collection as often, though. I didn't make my screen name GodofBeck for nothing!

An example of disappointment in the same vein would be the fact that the last time I ran banner-ads no one new added me to their favorites list. It's a shame that when this diary was a place to wallow in my self-pity (Diary of an Impostor) I had lots of readers, mostly teenagers who were feeling the same things but couldn't articulate it in the same way. I like being read, but I've been having trouble coming up with things to write about! It's probably because I've been writing a few scattered poems again after a long, long break from poetry and actually sat down and wrote two-and-a-half pages of horrible fiction the other day. I think after giving myself a long break I'm finally over my need to write something brilliant and revolutionary, which is no way to try to write. I began my break when I was finally starting to figure out how to write my magnum-opus poem about September 11th (what else). All my favorite poems and songs can be described in one way, I think a quote that was ascribed to Patti Smith's first album, "a declaration of existence." I was fascinated by this idea and wanted desperately to write something similar for myself.

Still, as much as I idolize Patti Smith and, not the style of his writing so much as the effect it had on fellow artists, Allen Ginsberg, the poet that I related to was, and is, Lew Welch. Lew Welch was obviously (and I should know) a cyclical depressive. As much as I love his poetry, I most relate to his unfinished novel I, Leo. (Don't be fooled by Amazon.com, BTW, the list price is $3.) Proof of depression comes in the Proem:

I am a Beginner. What the others are I don't really know. All I know is I am wiped out every six months or so. I die. I have died hundreds and hundreds of times. It is always the same death. I do not know what dies. Why must I always begin again and again--always with the same high hopes, the identical death?

In the fifties and sixties, however, there was no diagnosis called "cyclical depression," no therapy as we know it, and sure as hell no medications that, although not "cures" per se, are immensely important in the difficult task of helping yourself (and again, I should know). Instead he dealt with his moods by matching Jack Kerouac drink for drink. But what was really important, I think more important than a lot of the writing and also the reason why he was never satisfied with the final product, is what he wanted this writing to do. This is from the grant proposal (which, incidentally, was denied) for I, Leo:

"Alternatives" is the key word to my book. I have had a rare and rich opportunity to observe alternatives. There are many, but America seems to believe there are very few. It distresses me to see the meager little range most of us allow ourselves, and if I write this book truly perhaps a lot of frightened people will give a least a small try . . .

He never managed it, instead writing poetry about how he wanted so badly to write poetry but he couldn't, because it would never be what he wanted it to be. I don't know why I thought I would fare any better, but it took nearing my goal, figuring out at least the beginning of my opus, my declaration of existence, that made me realize that I did not want to be Allen Ginsberg and I am sure as hell not Patti Smith! And why should I be?

I took a long time off from poetry in order to get this idea, this need to be brilliant, out of my system. In the meantime I realized that of all the young poets that I know personally (especially the group I participated in, Collide, in January 2002) the only person who's work I really like is my friend David's. And the reason is, no matter what his intellectual interest is, however much he's influenced by Language Poetry (which is a point that's already been made as far as I'm concerned), his work is beautiful. And he, as an individual and a writer, is in it.

This is why I typed up Lew Welch's essay "The Basic Tool is Speech." It was written not long before his suicide, and I think he was starting to figure things out. Maybe you can't make everything brilliant when you're working in such a flawed medium as the English language (or any language for that matter). And maybe that's enough.

I imagine all the language poets standing on the edge of the flat plain that is language, pondering the edge, creeping up as close as they can get and sometimes hurtling themselves off the edge (as in the case of chance poetry or poetry that removes the signifier from the referent, making the language pure gibberish). They're so busy looking over the edge (and I think every artist has done this) trying to figure out how to get even closer that it doesn't occur to them to turn around, to explore the hundreds of thousands of square miles that the plain represents, most of it undiscovered. Maybe there are other, different edges that you'll only reach by setting off on foot for a couple of years, but even if you never reach one, what does it matter? It's still new territory, because no one writes exactly the same as anybody else.

And if you make someone's breath catch in their throat from the sheer beauty of your work, even if it doesn't make them reinterpret everything they've ever thought about life and art, shouldn't that be enough?


I'm listening to a bunch of MP3s that make my nod my head
I'm reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont, and so should you
I want to heat up some coffee, which I am now drinking at my computer

Previous:
- - Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005
back yet again - Thursday, Aug. 04, 2005
Batman - Friday, Jun. 17, 2005
Just fucking around today - Sunday, May. 22, 2005
pre-birthday - Saturday, Apr. 30, 2005