About passion, about art, about life, about excitement, about happiness

The sad fact of the matter is, _______, I will never love anything as much as I loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close when I read it for the first time. I will not be equally happy, in proportion or sincerity, as the first time I heard the key change in Wolf Parade’s “Modern World”. I will never be as excited as the first time I rode through a mountain and called a friend who had never left the state just to let him feel what I felt. And there will never be such solitude, such purity or peace, as at 3am, when I am holed up in a dirty garrett or basement or underneath a table with nothing but a pen or a word processor. Which is not to say, stop trying. These are just facts. Facts.

Update: Grand Rapids

September 10th’s reading in Grand Rapids, Michigan will include literary shenanigans by Stephanie Lane Sutton, Nate Olison, Kevin Kern and myself at a top secret location to be disclosed in yet another top secret location. If you would like to come and see us read, and you’re in the area for whatever reason, you should email me and I will give you more information. I love to give people information.

To distract myself from the fact that my co-worker and I are both skipping out on work for a whole would-be-lucrative weekend of business at our miserable dayjobs, I will be keeping a travelogue and probably annoying the piss out of Kevin and Stephanie as they’re driving by asking them annoying questions into my voice recorder about where we are at any given moment and their relationship to particular trees.

More to follow.

Whetstone Parish

(a story posted here because I have decided that this story is for readings exclusively and I will never attempt to publish it, ever)

Whetstone Parish

On the day we buried the richest man in town,
The preacher stood up on the hood of a silver 1979 Datsun 280Z
Raised a bottle of bourbon above his head and said:
Brothers and sisters,
May all of our scores be settled
And all of our sins be paid for in cash
But not today

There were children folding marigolds
Out of yellow paper to tuck behind their ears
And the old boys were strapping trombones to their bodies
And rolling their pants up past their ankles,
Their knees knobby and calves the color of fishbones,
As white as the hair of the man
They were burying

The whole town showed up that day:
My nephews were popping candy into their mouths
Shaped like colorful skulls
And the ghosts were grinning in storefronts
Like it was their holiday too.
When we walk on days like this,
We walk as they do:
Feet dragging trenches into the dirt roads,
Scar tissue for the earth to heal up after it takes you.

The pallbearers were men with prison tattoos
That they wore poking out of their suit sleeves
Like cufflinks and they carried 40s jammed into
Paper bags marked with Xs
Like the eyes of cartoon corpses.
There were chorus girls weeping
Whose makeup never runs past their eyelashes,
Fingernails done up like razorsharp sunrises
And around their necks they wore the jewelry
We looted from his mansion on Main Street
Passed down from a series of ancestors
Who had looted our home countries just generations before

As for me, halfway down the sidewalk,
I forget I didn’t just come for the music.
There were trumpets blaring electric and golden
and drums pounding like they meant to shake the dust out of Heaven’s rafters.
We carried the dead man out of the house to the Datsun
And the pallbearers took up their places behind the bumper.
I have heard say that Death is a grinning skeleton
In a top hat who spends every day drunk at the crossroads
And his name is Saturday.
He has a fondness for tobacco just like we do
And his hands shake when he talks just like ours do
And he often spills the glass of rum he carries
As he makes vulgar passes at the women spirits
Who absolutely hate him but can’t resist him
It is possible to live forever if you can stay alive
After a night of drinking at his side
Until he passes out in a chair and you have enough strength
To hoist yourself out of your grave for the night.
Without saying so, everyone of us knows we are indestructible.

As we approach the banks of the river,
Our procession stretches back for miles.
The pallbearers labor to keep the Datsun moving
Through the wet sand but they move forward valiantly.
With a final shove, the Datsun is afloat on the river’s current
And we stand together in the shallow waters
To watch nature take back the man
Who worked hard from an early age to defy it.
In time, the car will become waterlogged
and sit at the bottom of the basin
rusting and becoming a home to fresh water creatures
Who will know nothing and care even less
About the sleek and stylish way their new habitat is constructed.

As the sun sank into horizon,
The sky as red as the face of Death
Drunk at the gate of the apocalypse,
The brass section disassembled themselves
And the preacher, standing knee-deep in the water,
Turned to us and said:

Come closer, because I’m gonna let you in on a little secret
We’re all going to die someday
And there isn’t enough money in this world to save you.
There’s the fairness you’ve been looking for.

All the judgment and vengeance for your selfishness in this world
Will come from those whose feet you will not live to see swept
From these shores
And if you really want to be saved,
Use them coins over your eyes to tip the bartender who best comforts you today
And listen close to anyone who can tell you something new,
‘cause the only thing I can tell you about the man waiting for you
At the crossroads
Is that he’s tired of our lame-ass excuses.

Things I Have Yet to Understand About My Colleagues

(A local magazine recently approached me about writing an advice column. I wrote this and then decided not to do it because of my new policy that I don’t publish any nonfiction I write while going through a manic phase. However, I’m posting it now, for different reasons).

1) Why you would be completely comfortable with being the poor/lazy man’s (better poet than you). Seriously, it’s not that I don’t like (better poet than you), it’s just that you are not (better poet than you). (Better poet than you) has written bad poems in their time too, has had several years to work at and hone their own voice and (where applicable) performance style. And there’s a reason for that. Everyone has someone that they look up to, someone that they admire and aspire to make proud, but all of the best artists of any medium that I have ever met have come to realize that the thing that separates their hero from everyone else is the simple fact of originality– whatever it is that hero does well, they do in a way that is totally their own. If anything, imitation cheapens it. It is the opposite of flattery. This realization is the real path to finding your own identity. Give big ups to your dreamboat, then sail away on it. And stop that asthmatic shit you do. Seriously, I’m frightened for you.

2)  Why, when told that what they are doing is not art, young talented poets seem so terribly unwilling to look a long-past-expiration but somehow highly opinionated veteran poet in the face and tell them to shut the fuck up. It’s easy. Just say, “look, you haven’t written anything in almost six years and yet you’ve been performing the same eight or nine poems for almost ten. I like what you did in 2004, seriously it changed my life and I’ll always be grateful for that. But you’re not involved in this anymore. You’re preventing the growth and progression of the thing you helped create, you’re standing in the way of human progress. I understand that change can be scary, and I understand that this is precious, that this matters to you, that you want to protect it, and that is why we have collectively decided to give you some options: 1) either create something new that shares the place where you’ve been in relation to where you are today and/or where you hope to go, and stay relevant, 2) shake our hands, sit back, and reflect upon the good you have done, maybe go and work on that drinking habit you picked up, maybe go and see your family or 3) shut the fuck up, because time marches on and the rules you have fought for no longer pertain to us.” And then you go and create something yourself, to back up your signature on this letter.

3)  Why people personally attach a modifier to their title. _____ poet, ____ writer. It reminds me of people who give themselves nicknames. I’m okay with you defining yourself however you want, but me, I don’t understand it. Someone start attaching “human poet” to my name. Or robot poet. I’m cool with that one too.

4)  If you think competition is stupid, then just stop competing. Really. There’s lots of other ways for a talented writer or even a talented performance poet to make a name for themselves and just because this is the most get-rich-quick-looking scheme on the scene doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you. We listen to your bullshit year after year about how much you hate competing and then you invite us to come down and cheer you on at a slam you don’t even want to be at, and then we have to listen to you bitch for months afterward when you don’t win (or deal with that smarmy little grin when you do and pretend that you don’t really care about it). Furthermore, there are people out there who really do value competition and I hope they trounce you in front of all of your friends in the next bout. My feelings on competition completely aside, there is absolutely no reason you should put yourself and your writing through that, and the only reason I can think of is fear. If that is the case, I’m sorry for yelling at you but it’s time someone did.

5)  Popular and bad are not synonyms. If you think they are, you don’t really care about art, you care about aesthetic, you care about being underground in some exclusive club of which not everyone is a member. You should admit that now.

6) Pretentious and smart are not synonyms. Higher concepts should be explored, esoteric ones can be beautiful and universal. That’s right, can be. People of real genius usually work with the purpose of uniting people rather than alienating them. People who really want to understand are not offended if they don’t right away. Furthermore, even having put my love for Dave Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon out there for all to plunder and tease: everyone can tell when you’re trying to sound smarter than you are. Nobody likes it.

7) The internet is your friend and it’s here and it’s knocking on your door. You’re using it right now. Why do you want to fight it?

Why I Am Alive Today (2007)

I tried to attempt suicide yesterday. I ran into a few problems though.

1) I don’t know how to tie a hangman’s knot. I never paid that much attention in knotmaking class, because while they were doing that, I was studying quantum physics behind my knotmaking textbook. I regretted it.
2) I don’t have any pills with which I would like to commit suicide. I could picture someone laughing at my pathetic corpse, saying “this bitch killed herself with Flintstones chewable tablets! Well gol-ly! what a world!” and I hated that.
3) I have been fed, over the years, a lot of very misleading information about the proper way to slash one’s wrist from both emo kids and movies. Given this confusion, I didn’t feel confident enough to try and do it myself. If anything’s worth doing, it is worth doing right.
4) I don’t believe that citizens should carry guns. What the fuck would I need a gun for? Apparently this occasion. Perhaps I ought to reconsider my gun policy.
5) I don’t think that I possess the necessary skill to consciously choke on my own vomit.
5b) the same goes for swallowing my own tongue
6) Jumping out of my window would certainly hurt because I would land on the parking structure, but it wouldn’t kill me. It would leave me alive, disappointed, and with a limp. And nobody wants a fucking limp.
7) Drano. Fuck that.
8) At the end of my rope, I considered sticking my head in the oven. I mean, I know, Sylvia Plath already did it, it’s kind of passe, and after all the jokes I’d made about Sylvia Plath being the world’s worst baker, I didn’t think that I could stand the possibility that when I died, people who weren’t me would be able to make those kind of jokes. I picture going to Hell (let’s be honest here) and running into Sylvia in the depressed pretentious writer wing of Hell, sort of like a bad chatroom, and she has this long list of one-liners ready for my sad demise, and you know I can’t take that. But I decided that it was time to man up and I marched into the kitchen with my head held high and ready for the racks. After a half hour of sweating and mild burns, I realized what the problem was. I have an electric oven. I need a better job.

However, I was undeterred in my decision. I found a mix of optimism that has always gotten me through. My teachers, delusional with the prospect of success, had always told me I could do anything I put my mind to. And moreover, this is America! By Job, if I want to die, I should be able to do it! with some hard work, faith, and that good ol’ fashioned can-do American attitude! So I embarked on my mission to die. I lay down on the ground and just tried to die. I mean it, man, I gave it my best goddamn shot, but after a while, I had to go to the bathroom, and after a while of writhing there uncomfortably, I just felt foolish. I got up, a pale failure, and decided to reconsider my options.

Rejected Entry for the Rogers Park Community Website

And if you are indeed that type of person, to whom actuality is so easily stepped over, to whom fact is but a membrane through which beauty and breath pass as easily as a pair of elevator doors, then you should know: it is possible, quite possible, to stand on Rogers Park beach, the northernmost beach within Chicago city limits, and looking east, pretend that you are looking at the very end of the earth. There are no equations to determine the perfect time, the perfect night, but it must be summer, and it must be late, so late that anyone who might get laid has already gotten laid and gone to bed, so late that the unlucky have already fallen asleep clutching their substitutes of choice. You must walk to the edge. If you can stand it, walk into the water. Walk past the sandbar, let yourself sink a bit. When the cold has subsided, you will be swimming in space, half of you gone now to that glittering abyss. Gaze upon it. Let yourself hear the water splashing over the last bit of submerged walkway and spill into the endless beyond. Hear the stars below it sizzle, like droplets of water on a griddle. Everything at your back will fall away. You will forget that you were born. But, for all of your worth, look away when the shivers reach your chest. Turn back, you mighty destroyer, turn back, for these nights, these stars, they can be too convincing. These nights, these stars, they can break your heart.

How Novels Are Begun

5:19pm me: Apparently it is easier and more common than I thought, the problem of setting your own dick on fire.

Quoting: Nabokov, “Good Readers and Good Writers”

“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three—storyteller, teacher, enchanter—but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer. To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the pleasure of traveling in some remote region in space or time. A slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the teacher in the writer. Propagandist, moralist, prophet—this is the rising sequence. We may go to the teacher not only for moral education but also for direct knowledge, for simple facts. Alas, I have known people whose purpose in reading the French and Russian novelists was to learn something about life in gay Paree or in sad Russia. Finally, and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, and it is here that we come to the really exciting part when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or poems. The three facets of the great writer—magic, story, lesson—are prone to blend in one impression of unified and unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought. There are masterpieces of dry, limpid, organized thought which provoke in us an artistic quiver quite as strongly as a novel like Mansfield Park does or as any rich flow of Dickensian sensual imagery. It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science.”

Upon reactions to last night’s festivities, I thought it best to issue a formal apology to my family, friends, and teachers:

I’m a writer, not a stand-up comedian. Piss off.