The one you get when you didn't sleep enough. And the sleep you did get was active and unrestful.
And yet, when I woke up this morning to the alarm going off, and I was in a rare state. The comfort level that I had achieved was amazing. The blankets were just right. All I had on were sweatpants a hoddie and my shawl still wrapped around my head. The temperature in my room was perfect the light was low, NPR slowly telling me the truth. I didn't want to move.
The only thing that was missing was her.
But I wanted to just fade back into the dreamless oblivion.
Sweet dreamless sleep.
My mouth still tasted like the cigar, Crown Royal and Cola. I was in a state of bliss. 3AM had come so fast while I was pounding away at my keyboard. Putting down the story that I've had inside of me for so long, but have tried to mask as fiction. There is no need to put a front on that. It is brilliant and beautiful, a little sad, but it gets better in the end. Why the hell have I been faking it for so long? Trying to write everything as terror and horror, when I wanted to say so much more.
I think that is where my fixation on language and words over the last couple of days has been coming from. I'm looking at what I'm putting down here. And what I'm putting down in this larger work (which I may or may not share here someday), and realizing that there is no need for me to sugar coat what I have to say, and that what I have done, and am doing is interesting enough without putting it after the Apocalypse or anything dumb like that.
It has been hard for me to let go of fiction, but I want my words to mean and be something real. I want to write what I want to say, and it is ludicrous for me to hide behind something else. I hope that means I'm coming into some kind of writer's voice. I really do.
Here is to more long nights of writing.
Now I ache all over.
But damn it was worth it.
File under Virtue.
6 comments:
It'll probably make it into a song if I write music fitting of it. Sometimes I just get so inspired with my fingers already on the keys that I just spill it out right there.
I just have to write my musings when I think them and actually like them otherwise they get lost somewhere in the ether.
Also, sometimes I feel like I rely to heavily on metaphor to talk about what has happened to me. I like to make it far more poetic than the raw disaster that it is in my head.
I think fiction really does the same thing. Fiction is real... although that makes little sense. Every story is made up of real people in real places doing real things, just metaphorically.
There is something irresistible about stories of worlds that aren't that completely describe the one that is. And besides, get that shit published and decades from now someone will be trying to dissect you and your writings to see what they really meant.
My goal as a musician is for someone to psychoanalyze me to figure out why the hell I was writing what I was.
No need to be too obvious.
I disagree.... to a degree.
Mike, you are at a perfect age to be oblivious as opposed to obvious. These are your prime years, where you are discovering what really makes you tick. And you are well on your way to making your 20's roar! And then....
You discover the real you. You are forced to swallow who the guy in the mirror is (not that you are fake now or anything). It is a moment where you will have to look at that guy and say, "Fuck yeah!" or "Fuck you!" I hope you say, "Fuck yeah!"
G. had to say, "Fuck You!" And when you gotta say "Fuck You!", obvious, 'non-fiction', is the only way to survive. Its the only way to fix the trail of dead you left through the roaring of your 20's. Its when you say, the only way to be free is to be true.
The truth shall set you free.
We will wait for the truth as it is written.
tryingtofindabalance
I was going to say I disagree with both of you just to be a dick. But Mike. Got to go with Dave on this one.
I had to have a come to jesus about what I write.
I have been published. Short stories and a novel, all fiction. And now looking back on it. No one gives a shit, and neither do I. They weren't a waste of my time. But the were a facade.
You don't really know me (which is ok and not meant to sound as whiny as I know it will). But I lived a lie for a really long time. Now coming out the other end I'm realizing that the wake of fucking destruction that I left behind me, just by being unreal with people is staggering. And better than any fiction I could ever write.
I get what you are saying about fiction. But that doesn't work for me. I get to wrapped up in the artifice and forget that I really do have something to say. About true love, and hope, and the most vile pit of despair, and death and violence, and the works. There is a lot more to my life than making up stories, so I'm tired of doing that. I leave that to good writers and stick to telling myself off in the written word.
Fuck I need a drink. And to write all night.
damn it, now i have to say my piece. we have to clarify what we are talking about. with G.'s relationship to writing it is to his benefit (at least it appears to be) to be more autobiographical. whether or not this may just be a new method of suicide is yet to be determined. the other war being waged between these lines is fiction vs. non fiction. Literally, what is Truth? i feel a bit like pontious pilate, i always have. i really wonder what went on in the discussion between Jesus and Pontious.
What is Truth, what is fiction, non-fiction. What defines the terms? i have read and re-read multiple translations of every book of the bible regarding the meeting between the two. Every Book is different, records the activity differently. the stories contradict each other from a critical stand point by ommision and chronology. So what gives, who is telling the Truth, Matthew, Matk, Luke, or John? Maybe all of them are true, even though they are different and at odds with one another. Maybe they all contain "fabrications" for lack of a better term. Maybe a thing can be true at one point at time then a fabrication at another point in time based on change in barometer. What i am saying is that barring the One into the jail of human understanding of Truth is quite constrictive.
So here we are with Fiction vs Non Fiction. in all fairness it might not even matter, in a recent study it was shown many people in the world who have heard of Homer's Odyssey believe it to be mostly factual. Does this make it true? Does it matter if these people are living as though it is true? Gabe, have you ever thought that 500 years from now when all of writings are discovered people won't be able to discern our voice at all, the author will be dead. They will read new meaning into the works for themselves creating new life. This is just one possibility. Just one school of thought.
i guess i have firmly taken ahold of the middle of nothing - i firmly believe it is important for Gabe to write with a more autobiographical voice. i also believe it is vital to his growth as a writer, if he cares about the craft, to not abandon the pursuit of fiction indefinately. i can't pin point my exact beliefs on writing or the impact or constraints of fiction or non fiction. what i do know is there is something magic that happens when a fountain pen traces out a perfect draft of a final poem that has been editted 300 times in a nubby #2 penciled journal. there is mysticsim in a ball point rolling out a one off rant on the back of a napkin that turns into a hit song and there is some sort of cosmic flux that flows through fingers and noses too close to the keyboard, drops of sweat mixing with tears and blood so red with oxygen i know i am high.
i also know there is a lot of shitty writing out there and i am a culprit of much.
there is not necessarily a formula some will say there is and they are "right". depending on what you are trying to achieve there certainly may be a way to quantify or measure good and bad writing. i personally think if you are hanging it out there in public it is open to the highest scrutiny, you might not get it all the time but you are exposed. just because it doesn't hail doesn't mean it can't. On the other side of the notion because writing is a craft, with enough practice anyone can become a writer. i think one of the best sources for this is stephen King's "on writing" - in it he pretty much diagrams his methodolgy. i hate to say it but if i bust john grisham's balls for writing predictable legal tripe then i need to hammer away a little at a guy like Asimov for predictable SciFi. let me put it another way, i hate to say it but there is a little bit of beauty in the crafting of a can of bud light. it may be mass produced but c'mon, it does the trick, every time, you know what you are going to get, it delivers. i think writers like King, Grisham, Clancy, unfortunately i think someone like Asimov might be moving into or out of this group. Maybe he is like Pabst, he delivers but only a few people drink him and those mainly out of some weird pride. The next level of brewing is the micro brew. Here you have some larger brands - Sam Adams is technically a micro and so is new Belgium, shipped internationally even well crafted, delivering, a little more expensive, maybe trendy, probably trendy. in fact some of the micro brews are shit compared to the good ol' bud light just no one has the stones to tell the trendy kids off. however a lot of them are great. treasures in fact. Palahniaukakakaueajaui (mr i have a destroyingly hard polish vowely name) to be honest i don't read a lot of these type of writers, i hang to more older classical writers (long dead euro brewers) i should read more. i should read as much as i used to drink. and then we get to our level of writing - the home brewery and distiller - i want you to know i have distilled my own moonshine - not a lot, enough though, garbage bag and crock pot styly, i collected it in an old pace picante sauce jar. liquid clear. deadly hot. it burned and i was proud. i brewed my own beer. G has the last remaining remnant. or did the last time i checked. it was a cross between steel reserve and blue moon. and that is what i see our writing as write now. we are creating a literary legacy. we are trail blazers. we are starting a new tradition of letters. our own. and damn anyone who wants to stop us. we are a home brewed northern colorado mix of steel reserve and blue moon. and whether it be fiction or non fiction i think matters but i don't think it matters as much as that we keep the brewery and the pot stills boiling.
sorry about the long post, i am rolling on drugs - allows illegaly at work. j.
I can see what you were saying. And As per our conversation today. When writing, nothing is going to stop me. If I don't remember, or don't know what happened, nothing is going to stop me from going. Especially if I'm on The Roll, as it were.
Trying to finish a work is like trying to get a splinter out. Sometimes working on it makes it worse. But once you get the X-acto and just cut that shit out, it feels a lot better.
That is what I'm going for.
Post a Comment