What Matters Most
Some good conversations have come up after the post I made just before this one and I kept thinking of the perfect Bukowski line [and subsequent book title] ‘What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.’ This is as good of a mantra as you could have, I’d imagine, and I think that it’s sort of been ringing louder and louder as I’ve been thinking about the whole art thing. And it’s not just art but it’s literature too and, most importantly, it’s about life in general and as a whole.
Everybody has their own fires to walk through and what’s hard to you might be easy for me. What’s hot to me might be breezy for you. What’s art to you might be crap to me and what’s good solid work to me might be kid scribbles to someone else. I mean, really, I can’t hardly navigate through until the end of some of Allen Ginsburg’s writings. And I know plenty of people that find Salinger more ponderous than poetic. It’s all subjective, of course. And all we can do is just do our very best work and leave it at that.
But, in the interest of being contrary and while we’re on the subject of Bukowski, I cannot understand how anyone could ever just simply dismiss Bukowski as being little more than a misogynistic drunk. Have you ever really read any of his work or is that just some point of view you learned to express is your Womyn’s Writing Workshop?
[Why does all of this stuff always get me so goddam excited anyway? Sorry. Sort of.]
Filed under Art, Notes and Writing, Pomes | Comment (0)Obituary
I had always sort of considered what I’d like to have written on my headstone when I am dead. It’s a big thing to consider and I have always refrained from having any text tattooed on my body after all of these years because I can’t quite come up with something perfect enough. Although I suppose that with a tombstone it might not matter as much since a tattoo is something you have to live with for a while and a tombstone is something that you get to make other people live with.
Charles Bukowski always was one of my favorites as far as epitaphs were concerned. His just says, “Don’t Try.” It beats hell out of Keats’ any day. And another favorite is the one that Bernoulli chose for himself and was a nice play on his Miracle Spirals as well as his belief in reincarnation. It reads, “Eadem mutata resurgo” which is translated from Latin to mean, “Though changed I shall arise the same.”And how can you not love Royal Tennenbaum’s inscription? [Go see it if you haven't.]
What I have so far would be nice to use on opposing sides of the thing and that way, depending on how you felt about me when I was alive, you can choose to be reminded of the good or the bad.
This is all of it so far:
A quiet man, not given to law, quarrel or wrangling, not vitious, but pleasant, neat and spruce, loving mirth in his words and actions, clean in apparel, rather drinking much than gluttonous, prone to venery, often entangled in love-matters, zealous in his affections, musical, delighting in baths and all honest merry meetings, or masks and stage-plays; easy of belief, and not given to labour or taking any pains, a company-keeper, cheerful, nothing mistrustful, a right virtuous man, often had in some jealousy, yet no cause for it.
Or, on the other side of things is this bit:
The man was riotous, expensive, wholly given to looseness and lewd companies of women, not regarding his reputation, coveting unlawful beds, incestuous, an adulterer; fanatical, a mere skip-jack, of no faith, no repute, no credit; a goldbricker, chronic malcontent, spending his means in alehouses, taverns, and amongst scandalous, loose people; a mean lazy companion, careless in the emotions of others and not careful of the things of this life or anything religious; a mere atheist and an unnatural man.
This is adapted from a 17th Century book by William Lilly called Christian Astrology. It’s somehow supposed to be how the planet Venus can change people depending on where it was when a person was born or something. And I have no idea why I was even reading that in the first place.
[I'll keep you posted on the developments and the final edits.]
Filed under Daily Notes, Documentation, Notes and Writing, Pomes | Tags: Buddhism, Daily Notes, Journal | Comment (0)Make Me An Offer
[This one has been going on for years and years and years it seems.]
Part One: Steeple Chase
I don’t recommend any of the processional wives. I wouldn’t take a dollar from a dead, dying man. I’ve tried to last without exploding into a million star pieces but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I could never be quiet or delicate. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Couldn’t mistake one for the other. This for that. Could not exhaust all of my options. Couldn’t swear at the steeple. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Couldn’t speak to droves of people.
No, I don’t recommend the processional wives.
Part Two: Cancer in April
I wouldn’t bother with any of the children. It wouldn’t be fair and they are far too needy. Tomorrow has a bellyache that can’t be driven out.
And that bitch still sleeps on my couch. Continue reading »
Filed under Notes and Writing, Pomes | Tags: Notes & Writing, Pomes, Words | Comment (0)Kerouac’s Essentials of Spontaneous Prose
Essentials of Spontaneous Prose
SET-UP The object is set before the mind, either in reality, as in sketching (before a landscape or teacup or old face) or is set in the memory wherein it becomes the sketching from memory of a definite image-object.
PROCEDURE Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.
METHOD No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas –but the vigorous space dash separating rhetoricalbreathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases) –”measured pauses whichare the essentials of our speech” –”divisions of the sounds we hear” –”time and how to note it down.” (William Carlos Williams)
SCOPING Not “selectivity” of expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement, like a fist coming down on a table with each complete utterance, bang! (the space dash) –Blow as deep as you want –write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.
LAG IN PROCEDURE No pause to think of proper word but the infantile pileup of scatological buildup words till satisfaction is gained, which will turn out to be a great appending rhythm to a thought and be in accordance with Great Law of timing.
TIMING Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time –Shakespearian stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue –no revisions (except obvious rational mistakes, such as names or calculated insertions in act of not writing but inserting).
CENTER OF INTEREST Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion –Do not afterthink except for poetic or P. S. reasons. Never afterthink to “improve” or defray impressions, as. the best writing is always the most painful personal wrungout tossed from cradle warm protective mind –tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow! –now! –your way is your only way –”good” –or “bad –always honest, (“ludicrous”), spontaneous, “confessional” interesting, because not “crafted.” Craft is craft.
STRUCTURE OF WORK Modern bizarre structures (science fiction, etc.) arise from language being dead, “different” themes give illusion of “new” life. Follow roughly outlines in outfanning movement over subject, as river rock, so mindflow over jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arriving at pivot, where what was dim-formed “beginning” becomes sharp-necessitating “ending” and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle –Night is The End.
MENTAL STATE If possible write “without consciousness” in semitrance (as Yeats’ later “trance writing”) allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so”modern” language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich’s “beclouding of consciousness.” Come from within, out –to relaxed and said.
BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
LIST OF ESSENTIALS: Continue reading »