Dancing With the Gods...

Dispatches from the machine shop; 

Thanks for taking an interest; I appreciate the support. 

If it wasn't for you...I'd be in the fuckin' ground, H.  

Now...this is just more musings on the process of...writing, and I guess living, because for me, you can't separate the two.   It's all crap I deal with in the book...but in a book, you just write it differently.   A lot of this stuff is just occasional what have you...incidental little nibbles, sociables at a party.  Some you won't like- maybe you don't like anchovies, I do.  Some you might.  

But working this stuff out helps me with that big bastard that has eluded me a lifetime...

the book.  

My routine is, usually, I don't know, 6, 8, 10 hours writing in my room, then I try to get to the library, to clear my head.  Then I write this stuff.  I helps keep me on track.  It's...still writing, but it's very different in style.  It...it's like a break, but not a break, if you get my drift.  

It's...like...did you ever read Steinbeck's "Diary of a Novel"??   It was basically...while he was writing 'East of Eden' in his notebook, he used the offhand page to write a few notes about the novel he was writing.  Sort of a commentary.  Here's me with a statue of the Beck, in Carmel, maybe Big Sur...Ken could help me here...anyway, JS used this to help keep him on track.  & I guess, to convey something of the intricacies and minutiae of process to his readers.  

It's a good idea.  It helps keep you in the zone.  You need something; for that  fucking book, like my life, is like scaling Mount Bullshit, but I cannot stay away from it.  

This is what I was born to do...it's in the blood.  Can't argue with that; well, you can, but it will kill you to do so.  Seems to want to kill me either way.  But you have to be true to yourself, right?  No matter what happens???  All my ancestors were infected with the same disease, and it killed all of them in some pretty pathetic ways.  So...if I can't get it together, then no one can say I didn't try.

  

Hubert Selby Junior said, “Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.”

So there it is; if I feel like this 'job' has taken everything I have...it's because it has.  It will.  It does.  I don't imagine it helps being mad as a cut snake...writers...artists...are mad bastards.  Does the writing make us mad?  Or are we mad to be writers?  who knows.  

Oh...by the way...writers think they are a cut above.  Most artists do.  We think we have been blessed- or cursed- with the job of creating art.  We are suffering...for you.  

Like we are somehow...special.  chosen.  

It's bullshit.  Inconceivable, unimaginable, irretrievable, irrevocable and inexorable bullshit.

It's the worst kind of bullshit...like fame; somehow, some people are better than others because they are 'artists', or they have a lot of dough.  

It's a con job.  Don't buy into it.  I know you won't.

You know the truth...it's why I like you.  

You know...

   

We all have it tough.  

We artists think we invented suffering...but it's bullshit.  

All the pain that goes with being a human- families, past life, man's inhumanity to man, god's eternal silence- we think we have some patent on how it pains us. 

Bullshit.  

We all suffer.  If we listened for a second, shut our brain off for five goddamned minutes and listened to other human beings...we would know...it's tough for everyone.  

Just because we feel it more, or differently, or choose to make it last longer, or hurt more...doesn't mean we are worse off than anyone else. 

Other people feel the same things, suffer the same things...& they get on with it.  

You wanna' write?  

Then be the best goddamn writer you can be.  

You feel as though you are in hell?? 

Spare a thought for the poor bastard who takes your money at the toll on the Holland Tunnel in the Apple.  Or those poor bastards busting their hump, walking along narrow beams building sky scrapers.  You think you got it tough, because you can't make your book work?

Go fuck yourself.  

Take a ticket, and join the agony cue.  It's a long one.  

Just because other people don't bleat like I do...

Doesn't make me special.  Never did.  

Yeah, I had crap in my past.  It's only because I have given the writing an extra special shove, I uncovered quite a few buried memories...one...when i was little, I was beaten so severely one day by dad, I wandered in a daze out into the garden outside our house, & lost consciousness.  

I forgot it...probably because my brain never worked properly after that.  

Sad.  Tough luck.  

Now...what seems to be working for me, at the moment, is realising that this is the case, accepting my brain doesn't work properly, trying to deal with a few memories that plague me and rule my conduct, and deleting them like bad files.  

Then...we can take a look at the operating system, and see what can be done.  

I think most computer boffins are agreed...when the hard drive has been damaged, by viruses, or whatever...it's best to dump the files onto a hard drive, and return the computer to a factory setting.  

Or...you dump the prick.  

I can't do that with my brain, as much as I would like to.   

Which, I guess, is why I spent a lifetime trying to figure the shit out.  

As I'm stuck with this mess...I keep on going.  

I write, I live (as best I can)  I fall down, hard, I threaten to shut the system down, I slowly recover, and then I go again.  Over and over, again and again.  

I roll the dice.  

Which is basically what everyone else still alive is doing. 

I don't always see it...because I bought into the bullshit mythology that artistic souls are 'special'. 

I can see this.  

Which means...I might just be sane enough to get back in there.  

I might be just normal enough to know...

I'm still in the race.  

Yeah...I lost a lot...

but I'm still in the race, goddamn it.  

& you are cheering me on. 

If you are reading this, indeed anything I write...

it means you give a shit about me, and what happens to me.  

It means you think I am worth the bother.  

Taking the time to read my humble shit.  

That makes me feel...I am worth bothering about.  

It gives me...

it makes me want to keep on going.  

My job seems to be trying to figure shit out.

It's not an ideal job...but what can I tell you.  

This is the only time I feel the fire in my belly...when I sit here, and I am making the words work for me. 

dance for me.  

i can feel them...

i can barely breathe.  i am typing like a mother fracker...

i can barely type fast enough, getting the words out.

& I know...you're out there.  

rooting for me.  

it means something.  

i know you're not supposed to care about the reader...

but you mean the world to me.  

I won't forget what you've done for me...just being there. 

hanging in there with me. 

I'm no bargain...I'm a selfish shit.  

most mental people are.

but you make me want to be...

better.  

person. 

writer.

human.        

It's a gamble; either I will make a go of it, and my instincts were right...that I am a writer, and I do have something to contribute to humanity...

or I'm a useless piece of shit, as dad predicted.  

It's one more assault on the Mount, I guess;  who knows...maybe one day I'll wake up, look at that 500 pages of...whatever the hell it is...& I will see, in total clarity, it works.  

I did have something to say. 

Or it was all a futile waste of time.  

Whatever...if I fail?  I have me to blame.  

If I succeed...I have you to thank.  

So...it is only common courtesy to give you some insight into this...new attempt at the summit. 

A lot of you have invested a lot of time and effort in me...& only a shit would ignore that.  

It's been a tough road...but you are in the process of saving a life.  

& if I can make all this work, once and for all...

I too can dance with the gods!        

 

Dammit...WE ALL CAN!!

YIPPEEEE!