It's funny the way poetry sometimes appears, unexpected and unknown. Even when I try write something else, even when I mean to write another way, even my essays, even my prose, turns into a poem.
From a bed in a bedroom, to a bathroom, to a mirror, to a kitchen, to a sink, to a stove. Through the vertical rectangles with a handle or a knob, into a garage, into a car. From the squared off edges of a parking lot, yellow and white lined squares within, into a office building. We live in a world of little boxes...
On his substack, @delong makes connections between Hornblower, Vorkosigan, Elizabeth Bennet and @marthawells 's Murderbot (he just read the new SYSTEM COLLAPSE)
We spend so much of our time trying to use our time more effectively, more orderly. Trying to be more productive. More structured. Trying to streamline all our procesess. But what if the best of what we have to give, the best of what we have to offer, the best of what's inside us, might come out best through inefficiency?
As a species we specialize in calculating with and by what we can observe. Coordinates by which we measure all things. Four cardinal directions on a compass. An angular distance in a spherical system. But "a wealth of possibilities breads dread" Walter Kaufmann says. Couldn't it be condensed or simplified?...
There are two things that direct all my efforts. Two things I give all my time to. Two things I try so hard to be good and I just quite seem to do it. And then there’s Grant Snider who writes and makes art seamlessly.
Even bound and covered, books never stop releasing oxygen. Never stop planting seeds. Never stop taking root. They never stop trying to reach up and out. Never stop trying to branch and grow. They never stop trying to help us do the same.
"There are four kinds of people in this world", Umberto Eco says, "cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.” But it could fewer than that. Or couldn't it be?. Some one like me is capable of being stupid, imprudent, half-witted, and mentally-ill. All in one day, all before noon. Four horseman of apocalyptic idiocy in one living being.
The negative space is essential. It is the art itself. The stillness. The staring. The wait. A nothingness that dictates everything. Padding fingers pressing keys. The jagged lines of scrawl. A phrase that finds a turn. A turn that phrases me...
“I thought of the deep, mysterious reserves of feeling we all carry around with us that are suddenly and inexplicably triggered by small recognitions of our common struggles.”
"Tomorrow" feels like a dirty word. At least, it does to me. It's repugnant. It's illicit. It elicits a certain kind of repulsion. It's one of the most vile parts of speech. Wash your mouth out with soap and it still won't rinse away clean.
No part of me wants to live forever. Take me to the top of the tallest mountain. Show me the kingdoms of the world. Offer me infinite time. Offer me an unfathomable number of years. No part of me would ever say anything other than “fuck that shit”. And, I’d be happy to take a flying leap off the edge.
Hope is the silent letter of our hearts, upholding the language of who we are. The small voice whispering the secret of water pouring over our desert parts. Hope is a seed sown in the damp and in the dark.
It’s because books are made of paper. Because they're made of trees. Made of something that was living, breathing thing. That it makes you think they still could be. That it makes you believe that they still do.
"We all think we know how we do things. We think we know how we write. We think we know how we tell stories. Over time we super-glue ourselves to our process, and in fact that process can become a part of us in a problematic way as we mythologize and even fetishize said process."
It's not at it's best with a clear picture. Nor when things are perfectly described. It falters the closer it gets to perfection, to something stagnant, to something still, to something stable, to something concrete. Imagination works best when things are hazy, when things are implied. The brightest visions from subtlety and decisions just over the horizon, just out of view.
The bratty child, already developing a taste for self-loathing and deceit. Desperate for attention. Never satisfied. Never sated. Always wanting more. It's easy to forget that was me...
At some point we all have to consider why we do the things we do, why we pursue what we pursue. Especially when the world is so loud. When it all seems so futile. When the most harrowing of questions on our every exhalation, after "how's my breath?" is "why bother, what's the use?
The artist is an insider and outsider all at once. Each belongs to a lineage, a history, a tradition, an ancestry. Every forbearer a foundation to build up more. And yet, every artist is different, never quite fits in, each lifted, in some way, from the fold. To be an artist is to be a stranger and to to be at home.
Community is so neglected, perhaps not by everyone, but especially by me. How many creative blocks could have been undone, or avoided all together if I could manage to be good company?
