I have eight weeks of school left. I don't know where I am. There are old ladies in all of my classes, and they like to bring me cookies and teach me physics. By studying their wrinkles, I get ideas about erosion; by examining their hair, I notice the nature of the wavelengths; the light reflected from their oversize glasses teaches me about electro-magnetic fields. A different one accompanies me back to my room after each class, and I have to show her how she could get home. Don't read that the wrong way. I'm watching you.
If there were a way to change your structure such that you could be the biological parent of puppies, would you do it? They would have some resemblance to you, but would definitely be puppies. But maybe there are risks involved. There are usually risks involved.
A word to the wise: Leonard Cohen. (And girls, in case you didn't know, he's from Canada! Isn't that cute? He jams sometimes with Sarah MacLachlan and Joni Mitchell! Isn't that fun! Neil Young and three members of The Band went to high school with him! Isn't that great? Radio stations called him occasionally in the mid-nineties and asked him what he thought of Barenaked Ladies and Our Lady Peace! Isn't that just amazing? It's so fun I might just bust a gut when I hear him say "about" in "So Long, Maryanne", oh me oh my, yes. Well. I've done soiled myself with laughter.)_
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
I woke up this morning dreaming of vampires. I blame Martin's server.
They only had to touch me and I was infected. They had gravelly hands. They were, perhaps, ninjas.
Telegram Sam, you're my main man.
This Dylan lyric (upper left) and the next one (tomorrow), by the way, can never be topped. The job of poetry was done once they were written. Don't believe me? That's your problem.
Another word to the wise: Joan Miro. With a little grave accent over the "o" of "Miro" which I can't reproduce here. But if you're wise, you already know what I mean.
They only had to touch me and I was infected. They had gravelly hands. They were, perhaps, ninjas.
Telegram Sam, you're my main man.
This Dylan lyric (upper left) and the next one (tomorrow), by the way, can never be topped. The job of poetry was done once they were written. Don't believe me? That's your problem.
Another word to the wise: Joan Miro. With a little grave accent over the "o" of "Miro" which I can't reproduce here. But if you're wise, you already know what I mean.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
The failure wakes up just at dusk, so that the sun is sinking over the mountains, even farther west than he is. Some nights are crazy, minor epics in themselves, but most are like caverns. Life falls into them and looses its way. Small actions, amounting to nothing in themselves, reverberate against the water and the stale air and waft back in little puffs of doom. Thoughts ram themselves against the looming walls everywhere pressing in, in, they just go up forever, those walls, no opening, no ceiling, they have nothing to hold up so they become loads pressing down and toward and against and upon. And then there are the zombies. Sometimes I hear them bumping into things and calling to each other about beer and dance clubs and pool. Every so often, they catch me and hold me down and commence eating, sapping, but I can escape them when I want to. Usually they just make a spectacle of themselves.
It is spring break. I am now at the library, working for $8.50 an hour, and God only knows how I got here. There is a man who was in my seminar last semester, sitting at a desk ten feet away from me, reading. He has several books open. It is doubtless intellectual stuff, stuff I ought to know by now and probably never will. He is trying to show me the Way, but I doubt that I can follow. He has been here since nine o'clock this morning. I wonder how much of his life he's devoted to learning. I have failed to complete any of my projects. Perhaps this is because I always took on too many, but perhaps I never had a chance. Variety is bad. Distractions are bad. It's just me with my ambitions, and that should be enough, but I'm all alone and lost. I've been reading old e-mails and getting wistful. I never knew these people, and I don't know them now. It is particularly interesting when they are replies to my own e-mail, and they neglected to delete my writing. I've said everything and nothing in the past five years.
Faulkner had it figured out, but then again he didn't. Kerouac never had it figured out, but sometimes he did. And Kant. Ah yes, Kant. Even now I haven't shamed myself enough to actually work on Kant. Anyone for Latin flashcards? Do you know how to play Go, and would you like to teach me? Isn't sunlight strange, the way it beats everything into submission?
It is spring break. I am now at the library, working for $8.50 an hour, and God only knows how I got here. There is a man who was in my seminar last semester, sitting at a desk ten feet away from me, reading. He has several books open. It is doubtless intellectual stuff, stuff I ought to know by now and probably never will. He is trying to show me the Way, but I doubt that I can follow. He has been here since nine o'clock this morning. I wonder how much of his life he's devoted to learning. I have failed to complete any of my projects. Perhaps this is because I always took on too many, but perhaps I never had a chance. Variety is bad. Distractions are bad. It's just me with my ambitions, and that should be enough, but I'm all alone and lost. I've been reading old e-mails and getting wistful. I never knew these people, and I don't know them now. It is particularly interesting when they are replies to my own e-mail, and they neglected to delete my writing. I've said everything and nothing in the past five years.
Faulkner had it figured out, but then again he didn't. Kerouac never had it figured out, but sometimes he did. And Kant. Ah yes, Kant. Even now I haven't shamed myself enough to actually work on Kant. Anyone for Latin flashcards? Do you know how to play Go, and would you like to teach me? Isn't sunlight strange, the way it beats everything into submission?
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
The Moon Pays Cash Money
In the back alleys and barroom brawls
Where everything happened I once thought real
One night a chimney puffed gray bricks
And the sad faces stared at the dart board
Pierced it every once in a while
Three men sat at a broken table
One in a cheap suit with torn pockets
One in what used to be a pea coat
One in soot stains and charcoal beard
They drank hard liquor in succession and grinned
It might have been pain but I think it was show
They were looking nowhere in particular
One winced and waved his hands and opened his mouh
And after a pause for effect said,
"There's a guy in my building playing anti-brain-waves.
They come out of his speakers at two in the morning.
It makes no sound but it wakes me up somehow."
There was a wait and then another man spoke
(This time I believe it was the one in the suit)
"There's a place in New Jersey with unlimited parking.
I drive out there each Sunday and have a look.
After a couple of hours I drive back home."
For a second I think the guy in the pea coat looked up
Then he caught himself, had some liquor, and grinned.
"My mother yelled at me often when I was young.
One day I stood in front of her with empty pockets.
She took a long look at her shoes and never yelled again."
Then the man with the soot or maybe the one in the suit
Put some money on the table, tied his shoe and left.
The other two sat for a few minutes more
Then followed suit, or soot, payed and got out.
I go back there now for a few hours each Sunday
Sit on a bar stool and think of my empty pockets
Then go back home and wake up at two in the morning.
In the back alleys and barroom brawls
Where everything happened I once thought real
One night a chimney puffed gray bricks
And the sad faces stared at the dart board
Pierced it every once in a while
Three men sat at a broken table
One in a cheap suit with torn pockets
One in what used to be a pea coat
One in soot stains and charcoal beard
They drank hard liquor in succession and grinned
It might have been pain but I think it was show
They were looking nowhere in particular
One winced and waved his hands and opened his mouh
And after a pause for effect said,
"There's a guy in my building playing anti-brain-waves.
They come out of his speakers at two in the morning.
It makes no sound but it wakes me up somehow."
There was a wait and then another man spoke
(This time I believe it was the one in the suit)
"There's a place in New Jersey with unlimited parking.
I drive out there each Sunday and have a look.
After a couple of hours I drive back home."
For a second I think the guy in the pea coat looked up
Then he caught himself, had some liquor, and grinned.
"My mother yelled at me often when I was young.
One day I stood in front of her with empty pockets.
She took a long look at her shoes and never yelled again."
Then the man with the soot or maybe the one in the suit
Put some money on the table, tied his shoe and left.
The other two sat for a few minutes more
Then followed suit, or soot, payed and got out.
I go back there now for a few hours each Sunday
Sit on a bar stool and think of my empty pockets
Then go back home and wake up at two in the morning.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
How does one react upon realizing that one knows, has always known, "I am not a genius"? It's such an obvious thing to realize that it shouldn't have any effect. Nevertheless, I am aware that I will never be inspired to write anything special. I might write good books, but I will never produce a classic. I'll never be a masterful songwriter, either, or a genius at playing an instrument. I'll never be part of a brilliant group of friends who say such witty things that everyone listens. I'll never revitilize science, or anything much that doesn't relate directly to me. There's no chance I'll become a brilliant artist, whether I start training myself or not. I won't develop a system of philosophy, probably at all but certainly not one so radically new that people want to study it. I couldn't become a brillaint chess player, or get rich off the stock market, or become a worshiped national figure, or make perfect movies. I don't have the potential for any of this.
This shouldn't require much of a realization. People like that must just know what they're capable of, whether they do it or not. I only feel special when I'm around miserably poor people, such as many of the juniors on this campus. Even there, I'm judging based on too little information to know that I am verifiably smarter than any of them, more capable of grand action. It is likely that I'm not.
Is there a support group for people without creative passion? Wannabes Anonymous, perhaps? But then, the "anonymous" would be too cruel. Aspiring Creators United. Mediocre National.
Still on some level I believe that if I put enough time into it, I might get there. There's a level of work required, and no one is necessarily excluded. Ah, puritan work ethic, come back to me in a perverted form. Maybe, though. It's possible that I could decide, willfully, to become capable of great art. The fact that I haven't yet made this decision, and that most people make it when they're young, and unconsciously at that, the fact that it doesn't seem like a decision at all . . . that's nothing! You can do anything you want, right? Shit. Didn't they teach you that in Elementary School? Originality is just premeditated passion. Great work not only can be willed, it must be. Talent is undefinable, and probably along the lines of fortunately stumbling upon a certain kind of brain activity which which everyone is potentailly capable of.
Yes. Tomorrow, we win.
This shouldn't require much of a realization. People like that must just know what they're capable of, whether they do it or not. I only feel special when I'm around miserably poor people, such as many of the juniors on this campus. Even there, I'm judging based on too little information to know that I am verifiably smarter than any of them, more capable of grand action. It is likely that I'm not.
Is there a support group for people without creative passion? Wannabes Anonymous, perhaps? But then, the "anonymous" would be too cruel. Aspiring Creators United. Mediocre National.
Still on some level I believe that if I put enough time into it, I might get there. There's a level of work required, and no one is necessarily excluded. Ah, puritan work ethic, come back to me in a perverted form. Maybe, though. It's possible that I could decide, willfully, to become capable of great art. The fact that I haven't yet made this decision, and that most people make it when they're young, and unconsciously at that, the fact that it doesn't seem like a decision at all . . . that's nothing! You can do anything you want, right? Shit. Didn't they teach you that in Elementary School? Originality is just premeditated passion. Great work not only can be willed, it must be. Talent is undefinable, and probably along the lines of fortunately stumbling upon a certain kind of brain activity which which everyone is potentailly capable of.
Yes. Tomorrow, we win.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Yesterday I received a hand-addressed package from Athens, GA. Cloud Recordings had sent me the two Olivia Tremor Control albums. Suddenly the world rocks a whole lot harder; classical music is that much less cool.
Last night an old woman with brown, wrinkled skin cried in a garden in Combray as the rain broke over her gray hair. I have started The Big One.
Last night an old woman with brown, wrinkled skin cried in a garden in Combray as the rain broke over her gray hair. I have started The Big One.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Haiku written at Beethoven string quartet concert this Friday:
I. poor innocent bows
dragged by players tired of life
dhoking on music
II. each laxly held box
spits up notes like a baby
nauseous with cholic
III. four bored, slack faces
intent upon sheet music
like factory workers
IV. they bounce up in time
excited to ease the pain
of their flattened butts
V. poets of the note
they burn with all the passion
of a Rent-A-Cop
VI. sat through two quartets
watched two forced rounds of applause
had a cigarette
VII. dear first violin
either resign from your chair
or learn how to play
VIII. with such subtle squeeks
why are they not recognized
as the avant garde
IX. shake it for me now
rock me like a hurricane
kill that Beethoven
X. were it up to me
this last one would rip your soul
right out of your throat
XI. juxtaposition
of unimpassioned faces
and stunning music
Notes: X spoken by Englishman townie who sat next to me at previous quartet concert. He then turned to his wife and said, "Brecht was right."
VIII was perhaps due to the fact that the instruments used in the concert were constructed in the seventeen-hundreds. Regardless, they were getting some sounds uncomfortably close to the Kronos Quartet.
Do not hold my Haiku to the classical standards, e.g., "aren't Haiku supposed to be about nature?" They're supposed to be in Japanese, too. Take the aesthetic and run with it.
I. poor innocent bows
dragged by players tired of life
dhoking on music
II. each laxly held box
spits up notes like a baby
nauseous with cholic
III. four bored, slack faces
intent upon sheet music
like factory workers
IV. they bounce up in time
excited to ease the pain
of their flattened butts
V. poets of the note
they burn with all the passion
of a Rent-A-Cop
VI. sat through two quartets
watched two forced rounds of applause
had a cigarette
VII. dear first violin
either resign from your chair
or learn how to play
VIII. with such subtle squeeks
why are they not recognized
as the avant garde
IX. shake it for me now
rock me like a hurricane
kill that Beethoven
X. were it up to me
this last one would rip your soul
right out of your throat
XI. juxtaposition
of unimpassioned faces
and stunning music
Notes: X spoken by Englishman townie who sat next to me at previous quartet concert. He then turned to his wife and said, "Brecht was right."
VIII was perhaps due to the fact that the instruments used in the concert were constructed in the seventeen-hundreds. Regardless, they were getting some sounds uncomfortably close to the Kronos Quartet.
Do not hold my Haiku to the classical standards, e.g., "aren't Haiku supposed to be about nature?" They're supposed to be in Japanese, too. Take the aesthetic and run with it.