My Writing

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Why would anyone want to write, read, or listen to someone read out loud a "piece of fiction," let alone a fucking poem?

Why would anyone want to write, read, or listen to someone read out loud a "piece of fiction," let alone a fucking poem?

Personally, I have never written any fiction, and I don't plan on starting any time soon.

Some habits are naturally addictive, like smoking cigarettes or eating large bags of Kettle chips, and other habits are only willfully, stubbornly repeated--one of these is sitting down and trying to write "interesting" sentences to create "literary art."

I have never written any interesting sentences. What's more, I have never been, myself, interesting, nor can I imagine an interesting person. There are no interesting people, and, if pressed to try really hard to find just something interesting about myself--my diverse education at both mixed-race public schools and white-ass private schools; my philo-psycho profile: a learned detachment from formative years of Camus, Suzuki, and hanging around other introspective nobs mixed with a kind of corny, deep-rooted optimism fostered by childhood Sundays spent at a gospel church, aggressively earnest parents, and the more sentimental of the Beatles songs on which I grew up--I can't do it, because there's nothing interesting about me. And I mean not to be negative, but rather, calmly accepting.

To the person who says, "Don't write about yourself, make stuff up, it's the aesthetic beauty of the sentences is what we want." To that person I'd say, I have no talent, and even of the people who have talent, allegedly, one in ten writes something I enjoy reading, and it is a strange mystery what makes me love their work--it's not just who they are or how they place the words--why is Beckett so gut-beautiful, why do I finish Franny and Zooey and need to call a friend?

But if, during this speaking, I effectively utilize a sentence structure of multiple clauses moving rhythmically one to the next, compound modifiers studded throughout to increase that pleasure of specificity, and if I maintain a sarcastic, irreverent tone, crack a few unexpected jokes, belying the relative formality and linguistic fluidity of the writing style, I will succeed in making a few educated people chuckle.

I am actually very happy today, I am excited to report. I may have misled you. To someone asking me, "What's the matter," I would say, "There is nothing at all the matter."

Today I woke up dehydrated and hungover in fine spirits and drank water from a mason jar. I made coffee, drank it, and ate a crust of bread and some blueberries. What else.

Every poem I have ever read is a very good poem. I forgot to mention that. Strangely, there is no reason to ever write a poem, and I don't know why anyone does it, but they do, and, as it is, each poem is wonderful.