I'd like to know my thoughts on Pychon too. I haven't sidestepped him I've read him a bit and read gloopy chunks the biographies, more than I'm letting on, but not enough to give you my thoughts. What i think of Pychon, I don't think we'd get along in life, I think if we met in real life it wouldn't be what you'd think. Again, I enjoy these conversations, but I don't like the no-it-all or holier-than thou like I know anything, I have to read Gravity's Rainbow, but it was the same with David Foster Wallace, not exactly, I have Read Infinite Jest. It's one of those egregious things you do. There's just not enough time to grasp the mythology of who I'd like to be. I thought fuck it one day, someone will ask, so I laid in bed and when the alarm went off I read ten or 20 pages of Infinite Jest, and put it down and Read this great new version of Proust Kilmartin I forget. I dabble Swann's Way all through the years in shit editions, mostly because Kerouac and Cassady swore by Proust. They were right, I get it. It's like trying to recommend someone to read the Bible. It's said, someone said, a girl, every guy I know has an unread copy of Inifinite Jest. A different girl, a different party came in, you have a stock answer. "Have you read all these fucking books?" The answer was "All but that one over your shoulder, that one," but there's always been an easy way to tell. When I was young, I guess it was cute or whatever, family members were buying me first editions of shit, don't do that. You can tell if I've read a book because I've destroyed it, I fuck my books up. These are books to be bought, they're spellbooks. This is magic, no? Magic. A dead wizard, A dead wizard brother, smarter than you gave his life to say something put it down jerked from the soul or he would die. That shit is sacred. I have a million spellbooks and chunks of what I say is just them talking, or my version of trying to honor them. The goal, was never defined, but I have a bookstore not far away, I've know this man since I was a kid, my aunts and uncles,, he's family, I bring him Xmas cards, sometimes he takes my money, mostly he gives me my books and wont take my money. I come in sometimes and he goes behind a curtain and says I thought you might like this one.
wall of text hang on random parentheses ./// insert.
You see how easy it is to come off as a self-involved asshole.
It's a little crazy the ones you asked my thoughts about. I will post something and you'll see why I don't. I hurt my back in a lumber mill, by hurt I mean the foreman was crying and I'm laying on cement with a broken back, couldn't move, they called my mom, with all my mind I couldn't move I could just move my head to see people crying, people you don't want to see crying. I was gonna die, and then I was gonna be in a wheelchair, and then I got a check from the mill for 9 thousand dollars and six years of college with a two year degree. My hero professor when I was transferring, I'm in the offfice with unbeknownst is gonna be one of two heroes. And sitting in chair and hear this great man talking to this other great man out loud, these are true words, I was trying to taking 32 credits and that's just not gonna happen. my money was running out I have a wife and kids 121 miles away, if you saw the Rick Grimes avatar, man it wasn't about the bachelor's degree I just wanted these fucking classes I bought books for the other classes I wasn't in. Over the phone, this giant says, I know he's asking a lot, and this is the situation, he can do those classes, I wish you would let him, I don't think you'll be disappointed. That's rough to type, me me me look at me.
I was taking classes from this man, and I got kicked out of a writing class and they put in this poetry class and the woman took me outside of class, this sounds ridiculous, she said I don't want you in my class because you have a voice and my job is to help people find a voice, I don't want to fuck you up.
I didn't always know this, but I got tought a fucking lesson at Sherdog from Matt, my good friend and lost moderator, this should be in the archives, I had a crazy young girl living with me taking selfies in my top hat and I had a toothache, I was in the bedroom talking to Matt and I said she's watching Rory Calhoun in Motel Hell and we need to get to bed but first there's this creek a ways away, I have to go sit in this creek for a minute. (similar words it's in the archives better I'm sure, it's been a long time) but the gist, I came back and was talking to Matt and he said the one thing that ever said to me and broke my fucking heart. He said, you just went and sat in a creek. I just thought you always speak in metaphors. That was a thunderbolt. Is that really what you think of me. Is that what everyone thinks. I don't speak in metaphors. It was like being raped, your best friend says something like that. That must seem fucking stupid to anyone still reading but it was no joke to me and still isn't it forever fucked me thinking as I'm talking to you my life is metaphors. It took me a long time to digest that, I still haven't digested that. To tie up some loose ends. I was at the bookstore years back and bought a biography of Alan Arkin and in the introduction he's talking about Madeline Kahn, you remember her, it took all those years and I had resentment for Matt saying that to me, I was wounded.
Well there are two things now from that, and they're the same thing but I had to process these two things before I die.
thing one: Alan Arkin, fuck it hang on why paraphrase
"Some years ago I did a film with Madeline Khan. A lot of it was shot on location, and one day we found ourselves at a particularly beautiful spot overlooking a panoramic view of the Hudson Valley. During a lull in the shooting while the cameras were setting up, we went out on an extensive lawn and sat there for awhile, lost in the scenery. While we were musing and chatting, I found myself thinking of Madeline's many gifts. She was a fine actress, an excellent pianist; she had an exquisite operatic voice with impeccable technique. I asked her which of her talents she considered to be her primary focus. She thought for awhile and couldn't come up with an answer. I don't think she ever thought about it before. "Well, what did you start out wanting to do?" I asked. "What was your first impulse? Was it acting?" She shook her head "no" but she didn't seem sure
"Singing?"
"No."
"Playing the piano?"
"No."
"Did you want to be a comedian?"
"No, not really."
"Well, what was the first thing you thought of doing? There had to be something."
Again, she tried to thread her way back to her childhood ambitions. "I used to listen to a lot of music." She paused, trying to find the words for what she was thinking. "And that's what I wanted to be," she finally said.
"I don't know what you mean." I said
She answered, and it sounded as if she'd never formulated this thought before, as if it was news to herself.
"I wanted to be the music," she said.
It was a revelatory and somewhat disturbing moment. With that one statement I realized what she'd said about herself was the impulse behind all of my own interests, all of my needs, all of my studying compulsions and passions, and had I been aware of that idea when I was starting out, had I been able to assimilate it, live within it, I would have saved endless years of frustration and work and confusion because that thought was at the very bottom of what I was looking for. So much had been invested in craft, in externalization, in looking for something solid out there that would fill the void, create a sense of flight, of getting out of the oppression of self.
We don't want to DO it; we want to BE it. Only we don't know it. No one tells us.
This is dedicated to everyone who want to be the music.
That's pretty tight and worth the typing out is some right guy is still reading thing, someone. It feels good to post that being the whim it was to find that book and whim he said that about her to introduce his book. I thought it was great, and I'll never look at Madeline Khan just quite the same. She was perfect to begin with.
2. through the years (and Salvador Dali saying "I don't do art I am art." which is just pure Nietzsche. Sigmund Freud said about Nietzsche, "Nietzsche developed more penetrating knowledge of himself than whoever lived or is likely to live"), (and the guy on the other end of the phone was a Nietzsche professor who was the main reason I was there. I got to take his Nietzsche course and his course on Postmodern Literature, way back before today was what it is is Don Delillo and David offing himself). There's a picture of me in the eighth grade yearbook asleep in first period on "No One Here Gets Out Alive" - I've said I don't exist without Jim Morrison, I thought I would die way younger, everyone who knew me thought so. On the best night of my life with the whole world I was leaving a house, buried the spedometer and turned of the lights, it was good enough. I did that shit all the time. I think a huge portion of who I am is the death wish, it's always been there. After a raft race I needed to piss so we pulled into this bar, motorcycles, I go it's just leather one open seat by a grey guy. I sit in the seat, immediately surrounded by fuckers, he waves them away. I said as we're looking across the bar at this massive painting of a mountain man and grizzly, ...That's my grandpa Clint, probably still there. Those are some stories for another day.
The death wish thing was always and is always. Like the old court jester, if you're dead already the world is yours. I'm only here because of that. And to get back. to
2. better with a clip.
