Monday, March 19, 2012

Something indecent


In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us, so we blink our eyes as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

Ars Poetica Czeslaw Milosz

Something indecent. The writer (particularly the poet) sneaks over the border into territory unknown, territory best left undisturbed. The writer (particularly the poet) has a way of seeing through the veils. Veils which are there for a reason, to protect us from reality, from the monstrous reality which lurks inside all of us. Watch your daily news. Be honest about your purest rage. No, don't, because even though we feed off it in other people, it's not socially acceptable and we can't stand to look.




Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother…the true self is aggressive, rude, dirty, disorderly, sexual; the false self which mothers and society instruct us to assume, is neat, clean, tidy, polite, content to cut a chaste rosebud with a pair of silver-plated scissors.

Jeanette Winterson

Is this true? Have you looked in the mirror lately? No, I don't mean Facebook. I mean a real mirror, in someone else's eyes, someone who doesn't mind paring you down to the seedy core of your soul.

Art has quite a pair of hips and is barely contained by that dress. Art slinks. Art bites rather than kisses, draws blood. Why?

Theft, armed robbery, not pleasing your mother! Which is worse? Which is more heinous? Are we aggressive, rude, dirty, disorder. . . wait. No, that only applies to "them", the ones who have all the "nervous breakdowns", the ones who don't even earn a decent living wage but spend all their time screwing around with words.








Then why do so many people aspire to something so useless? Everyone's a novelist, and everyone can sing. Anyone can "epublish" and call themselves an author. But why?

Most of what they turn out is dishwater and requires no risk. They want the revelation without the "nervous breakdown", which is just a polite term for why doesn't she just pull herself together dammit.

Nobody wants human vulnerability shoved in their faces. Nobody wants these predatory females who not only want, but insist on sex. They're dangerous because they want want want want want so much.




There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.

C. G. Jung

It's rude and not decent to climb into these caves, to curl up inside yourself, to listen. It's narcissistic to pour your lifesblood out onto the page in the full knowledge that because you will never make a living at it, it's a complete waste of time, not to mention mad.


Why's it so good, then, to have that "creative fire"? Why does everyone want to be Hemingway when Hemingway blew his brains out? Even Hemingway wasn't Hemingway, which was perhaps why he blew his brains out.






Art wears a triple-D cup and smokes too much and demands happiness and demands orgasm and demands Truth. It's much too much too much too much, much too much of everything and more, and more, and more.

"You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."



And thus Virginia Woolf loaded stones in her pockets and waded in, convinced everyone would be better off without her. Was she right? Why does every source continually mention her multiple "nervous breakdowns"? What is a "nervous breakdown"? It's nothing, it does not exist! It's a delicate lace-doily term for somebody who just can't cut it. Who is so pale and weak that they can't poke their head outside the door, who lives on tea and those brown digestive cookies. A nervous breakdown is an indulgence, a choice, something weak people embrace when they just want a little time off. Nothing to do with raging, wrenching, gut-hollowing, soul-haemorrhaging manic depressive illness which is infinitely worse than all the cancers of the human body put together.

It was not her choice to enter the cauldron, it just happened, she had that awful stamp of greatness on her which in her case meant unbearable pain and death. She knew how indecent and disorderly her soul was. No doubt this "drove" her mad. Would it have "driven" her to heart disease or cancer? Of course not. Madness is somewhere between self-indulgence and demonic possession. This is why we tiptoe around it so delicately.




Aggressive, rude, dirty, disorderly, sexual.




Saturday, March 17, 2012

Jonquils, jonquils. . .



". . . I had malarial fever all that spring. The change of climate from East Tennessee to the Delta - weakened resistance - I had a little temperature all the time - not enough to be serious - just enough to make me restless and giddy! - Invitations poured in - parties all over the Delta! - "Stay in bed," said Mother, "you have fever!" - but I just wouldn't - I took quinine but kept on going, going! - Evenings, dances! - Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics - lovely! - So lovely, that country in May - All lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! - That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said "Honey, there's no more room for jonquils." And still I kept on bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I'd say, "Stop! Stop! I see jonquils!" I made the young men help me gather the jonquils! It was a joke. Amanda and her jonquils! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I'll hold them myself!"





 

I'd be rich

From demo tapes to Mrs. Fields: a Canadian success story




(From Wikipedia: Barenaked Ladies) The full band's first commercial release was 1991's The Yellow Tape. It was a demo tape originally created for the band's performance at South by Southwest and was the first recording to feature all five members.[3] They spent between $2000 and $3000 on it, and sent a copy to all the labels in Canada; they were refused by all of them.[6] The band turned to selling them off the stage, and wound up selling a lot of them. Word of mouth spread, and people began asking for the tape in local stores. The stores began asking the band for copies of the tape, and the demo tape became a commercial release.[6] Sales began to snowball based simply on word of mouth and their live shows, and the tape became the first indie release by any band to achieve platinum status (100,000 copies) in Canada.[2]

OK den. Dis is an example of how someone can "epublish", or take things into their own hands, because the "establishment" has turned them aside over and over again as "not commercially viable".



This storylet is carved from a much larger (read: too bejesusly larger) entry in Wikipedia recounting the phenomenal success of the "alternative" Canadian band Barenaked Ladies. Essentially this was a garage band with some very talented kids on-board, and it just evolved. By the time their first "official" album came out (with the nonsensical title Gordon), their star wasn't just rising, it was skyrocketing.


More than any other music of that time, I remember Gordon because we played it to death in the early '90s when my kids were teenagers still living at home, and we all liked it, even my husband who didn't like anything. We loved the goofball lyrics ("this is me in Grade 9") and oddball concepts ("be my Yoko Ono"). We especially loved Steve, the fat guy who danced around wildly in shorts and just seemed to rule in this sublimely dorky Canadian universe.



And yes, it was a tape, just like the tapes them guys sold right off the stage. That's kind of like handing out cookies and ending up as Mrs. Fields.


What brought all this to mind? Yesterday I got fiddling around with the lyrics to a superb song, Bittersweet, by another dork-ish band of the same era called Moxy Fruvous. I don't know what MF is doing these days, if anything, but I don't hear of them much (while the Nakes, as I call them, are busy recording theme songs for the likes of the wildly popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory). Moxy Fruvous was obviously a Nake wanna-be, and as far as I'm concerned they never quite made it. The imitation was too obvious in songs like King of Spain ("Once I was the King of Spain/And now I work at the Pizza Pizza")and My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors, often played at literary conventions during lunch break to induce tea-splattering titters.  Anyway, Mox, as I call them, had one really good song and then went who-knows-where.


No, I haven't really kept up with the Nakes cuzzadafact that when Steven Page left (and was since involved in some sort of cocaine sting just before releasing his children's book), I sat there cross-legged for three days throwing ashes over my head. Without Steve and his good-natured goof persona, it just wasn't the same.




Gordon, as I look back on it, was remarkable because it had no duds. You could listen to all of them. Nobody was doing this, this whatever-it-was, dorky high school memories with the odd bit of poignancy around the edges.  I could post any of them, really, but I think I'll pi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ck . . . this one.



Friday, March 16, 2012

This life is bittersweet

 
Now all of the planes have landed
The soldiers are in their beds

 



Smoke rises from their clothing
And sweet dreams through their heads




Truth faced leaves a strange taste
When joy and sadness meet


 



A country rain on a city street
This life is bittersweet
 




The boy with the bloated belly
Hears today's trucks arrive


 



He puts down his baby sister
And makes his way outside
 

 



Truth faced leaves a strange taste
When joy and sadness meet
A country rain on a city street
This life is bittersweet
 

 



Everyone's a novelist
And everyone can sing
But no one talks when the TV's on...


 
 



The lightning flashed, and the thunder rolled
Dark clouds filled the sky




A country rain on a city street
This life is bittersweet 
 



Moxy Fruvous

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

You'll never get off the playground (short fiction)


She knew it was ridiculous, she knew she was obsolete, and most of all she knew she was alone.

There were days when everything just seemed to be in spin. Not that it was exciting or anything, in fact she could barely see or remain upright. A person her age? Should be able to see by now. Or make sense of things at least.

It was the computer, no, the way things had changed, no, the expectations on her, no, the way you were just supposed to know things without any learning process at all.



Did she really need to review all this again? How many times was this, anyway, the fifty-thousandth?  Didn't she remember when she couldn't skip double-Dutch and was thrown off the team and then after a while stopped trying and hid in a corner of the playground?

That was where she was spat upon. Literally, some boys from the other side of the playground. They banded together and held her down. Because she was such a loser. Loser loser loser loser loser loser loser. She stood there hunch-shouldered and crying, looking like the thing she was.



Years later, and oh yes this was in public, a woman she knew old biddy really, stood behind her and grabbed her shoulders and began pulling and yanking and pulling and yanking. "Stand up straight! I can barely stand to look at you."

That, too, was her fault.

So she wondered why, no, she didn't wonder why certain things just ripped the top off, ripped off the carefully-constructed facade she lived behind and exposed the raw unhealed flesh beneath. The unacceptable her, the real her.

The thing is, you're supposed to just know how to do these things. You're born knowing. Boy, I got to the party late, very late, so late that everyone else knew each other already and was proficient at things, party games and the like, that I knew nothing about and would never know anything about because it was too late.




She has been writing and deleting, writing and deleting for several days now, trying to get rid of feelings she doesn't want to have. She can only talk about a tiny fraction of them now, because she is beginning to realize that the internet is just one big stage, a protracted performance and a huge popularity contest. Just like back in school! If you're a good performer and have lots of "social skills," you do great. The more Facebook "friends" you have, the more successful you are as a person. But it must be a bare minimum of 300. That's the quota, don't you know? If you

(No, strike that, it was "bad" and someone would see it.)
I was always rotten at all of it. What makes me think it's going to be any different now? I constantly have a feeling of being hopelessly out of my depth. I came to the party late, far too late, and everyone knows each other already - wait, I already said that - and has no interest in talking to that odd person standing awkwardly in the corner with her head sunk between her shoulders like a dog that has been treated very, very badly.




When did this start? Probably before the egg met the sperm. Laugh now, laugh like the therapist did, not once but twice when I was trying to express a pain beyond language. "Oh, Sarah!" she exclaimed, and threw her head back. She thought I was being witty, entertaining and ironic. Or else performing, which for once I was not. Or else so outrageous, I had no right to be that way. Oh, Sarah!

Not that anyone's listening, but, see, I learned to be entertaining and I learned it young because it was the only way I could survive. If I didn't constantly play the court jester I would be almost literally thrown on the scrap-heap, so I kept on frantically performing. I got especially good laughs when the mask fell off and some of my pain slipped out.




I will never forget. It was the time I was really teetering, and for once I just could not wear the mask. Someone close to me said, "You're just faking this to get attention." It was a double-twist, one of those deliriously sick half-nelsons that may have caused all this insanity in the first place. I was faking being sick, when it was one of the rare times I was NOT faking. The rest of the time, I was faking being well, but to almost everyone I knew, it was "real" and this self-indulgent whimpering was "fake". When your brain is twisted around into a corkscrew, can you help being in pain, can you help crying out? Yes, you can, so SHUT UP.




Anyway, back to more important things.  This Facebook stuff, everyone else gets it, but all she gets is blunders, criticisms, awkwardness and more pain. Like double-Dutch, she does't even know how to do it. There are no instructions, and everyone is too embarrassed to show her any of it because you are supposed to know. This doesn't just damage her self-esteem, it reminds her once again that she doesn't have any.

(A few weeks ago she was publicly ripped apart on someone's blog in a way that was truly breathtaking. But it was HER fault, for putting her stuff out there! Everyone told her so, especially people who "loved" her. If she actually had those mysterious social skills that everyone else seems to have been born with, it never would have happened at all)




So she ruthlessly cut two paragraphs. Then three more. What am I going to do with this? But it was only her diary. Her diary? Why was she editing a diary no one would even see? She didn't even read it herself. Because it was just too bloody difficult. Even if no one ever saw it at all.