Back at Cintrex, one of my coworkers supposedly committed suicide a couple months before we were to graduate. He was a good friend, a cool web designer and artist. I admired his skills and gifts. I longed sometimes for his freedom to express himself in coherent ways it seemed I wasn't allowed. So one morning the Human Resources Director announced he was found dead in his bathroom by his girlfriend. Counseling was available for the employees who needed it. I was mostly numb even after hearing he'd shot off half of his face. After a few days though I started to recover and perhaps in efforts to jog myself from that apathy I wrote a story about suicide.
I think about that story a lot because not only is it about suicide or the want to end one's life it was also about friendship and what really matters when your finger is on the trigger. To squeeze or not to squeeze? It's ironically a very simple binary function, like the foundations on which these computers operate. On or off. Off or on? The flip of a switch the pull of a trigger... I talk of this story because I feel it was one of the best prose works I've ever done, emotion in every word. It pulsed with it, as if alive, to this very day I remember how I felt when I first read it to myself.
Like that favorite song or poem or painting that sparks the response that makes your heart sing or your chest bong or your butt shake, that story moved things in me. That I think is the answer. You spoke about the things your have not done but is it not more a matter of the things you have not given life?
Months ago when I was on a rant about Hamlet and it being life affirming, I don't think I was clear about what I meant in all the psychoanthropobabble. Hamlet willed himself to be fuckin insane and voila, instacrazy Prince of Denmark. It blew my mind that Shakespeare could pull that off believably. What I was trying to get at is ritual, and likewise ART, were created so that we could quantify the intangible. Ingest it and make it a part of us to give us life. I think it's also there, as Hamlet seemed to prove, to help us create or imbue things with life ourselves. So I think the question is, what haven't you given life to? What haven't you put your mark on?
Much of the anger we have toward God stems from this. We are told creation is His affair alone, we have nothing to do with it. But that's wrong because with the bit of divinity in us, we have the ability to do things and create things that have a life of their own. Whenever that song comes on that makes you wanna spin or sing or clean or make love is it not giving you something unique?
That's what I want to do with my own writing. I want my pages to breathe and live and be. My job is "not done" unless that's accomplished. And Shakespeare knew that, he knew it all too well. . As well as other people do, though perhaps less clearly, less panoramically than he but that's the main objective. We don't have to say "Let there be light" and voila but maybe if we say "Johnny's playroom is a bunker full of sand, he's become a third world man" someone will feel the sweat down their back and the sand in their boots and it will be just as real as it was years ago in the trenches. And real art, the good shit, is maybe made of the shit you think about after you've had sex and you're staring up at the ceiling basking in the afterglow and the sudden rush of blood to the brain and you've shifted into super creative mode. Maybe its made up of the stuff that happens after the funeral of someone close, or someone you admired, or after your first child is born. Maybe it just comes from those images you can't get out of your mind, the song that won't stop looping in your head, the dream that keeps coming back in one form or another.
If you grab that one image it then sculpt it, draw it, paint it, write it, poem it, tag it, or interpretively dance it you've "done" something. You've made a mark, because it resonates from somewhere within you. Maybe losing your grip is ok if it's done in the context of ritual or art. Maybe it's not so bad to run around smearing shit on yourself yelling at the top of your lungs if you videotape that and send it off to Sundance. For people such as we it's ART that brings solace. That's the only ritual that works.
It looks like I won't be sleeping much tonight. I have much more to say that only bears saying to a live audience. I know my style has changed but also i dont have the same full throttled conviction so i dont produce that kind of clarity now. Experincing the life and loss of others makes me realize my own passion that's so deep its to the core of everything of me. I could bleed with every step and never go dry. My upbringing however, frowns down on such fire. from the WASP elementary school to my baptist indoctrination coupled with a controlling primary care giver i never felt right being completely expressive. Writing became a way of hiding my expressiveness while also letting it loose. i became very adept at it, using it as both a tool and a weapon. my vocabulary of course helped that. But after awhile i stopped that and moved onto less temperate climes.
My problem is without a way to be passionate i
lose who i am and i dont function. soon after i stopped writing, the reasons i
stopped dont really matter, i started having sex. i had it indiscriminately at
first, guiltily. i had always been very curious about the nuances as well as
mechanics of sex, perhaps that was why it was my next choice to express myself.
though again, as with writing i did it schizophrenically insomuch as i could
hide from everyone i was being expressive and yet be expressive. Ive dabbled
into arts of all kinds now, painting, drawing, music, writing, film. fucking...
some are more amenable to being hidden while engaged in than others. im not sure
which one is really the right one for me now even so, i know i need to engage in
art of some kind. i feel all this leads me to a higher purpose, perhaps knowing
and fulfilling your true self always does? maybe its just that i know i can be
much more productive and evolvent if i live as i must.
Of course I really wrote you to talk about bicycling:
I think the world needs less one-touch internet access and more bike-lanes. Why
are bicyclist's made to ride in the same city streets with stressed out yuppie
scum, soccer moms, maltaught teen car drivers? It's bad enough driving a car
around with all the hacks and illmannered bitchass cut-me-off-at-the-knees you
shiteating rat bastard"s. No that's not enough of taking one's life into
one's own hands. No no, if you decide you'd like to make the most healthy
choice, both for yourself and for the environment, if you want to act like the
Chinese you red commie cocksucker, we're gonna make you ride alongside crazy
wacked out caffeine addicted masses! And so what if you're riding along and some
halfblind sleep deprived soccermom bitch slips in too close and rips off one of
your arms and legs? Serves you right for not being a good obedient piece of
consumerist chattle. I swear now to all holy beings in attendance, I'm gonna
start carrying a baseball bat around in my trunk and if I see another sticker on
the back of a Chrysler minivan that says something like: "SHARE THE
ROAD" I'm gonna calmly take out that bat and bash the ever-inanimate hell
out of that windshield.
I can tell you right now, what a beautiful world it
would be if I could safely ride a bike anywhere in town without fear of getting
mowed down by a 15 year old that's barely legal enough to drive with his 16 year
old cronies. I see it like this, ride to and from work, get some exercise, get
some clear thought going with the oxygen flowing, get a new perspective and work
on it as im on my way to work. or even maybe think of how i can improve my
performance at my job, instead of worrying whether or not i'll live long enough
to get there. There's always the concern of getting mugged or robbed while im
Schwinning to work but that's what the 2nd amendment is for. Much of modern
convenience has made us lazy and complacent. I'm not tut-tutting our
covetousness of motorized transportation, im guilty of it just as much as the
next person, but i gotta tell ya if i had a dollar for every time a ford
expedition hung on my ass for 20 seconds only to pass me at1.5 impulse and make
the very fucking next left turn, i would have enough money to pay off all my
outstanding debt.
It's time to reclaim some shit we've ever so gleefully tossed off the side
of the boat when we thought it was the titanic all over again. The Cold War left
us bereft of more than we think.
like to hoist
in clearer water
gulls quail
sharp overhead
like them subway
tunnels routinely swallow
humanoid traincar sardines
manacled together
for uncomfortable moments
on the passionate flight home
love's confused
with sentiment
I float through your apartment
bumpered by couch
lamp, computer
microwave, bus sofa,
remembering our archive
four hours of freedom
drawing blanks
dreaming of skies
and strange dark men
in the foreground
true passion has
not dripped from fingers
onto metal string
climbed out larynx
and pressed itself mic-ward
music holds the hanging blue
like chains of glue
you know your flower
tickles my chin
