some frustrations

the most delicate art, courtesy bibliodyssey

It is an odd thing: usually, there is much i want to write about, only that i don't have 'stories', ideas, or frames to hang my themes in. At present, i am having one very decent idea a day, only none of the juice to write it all out. My notebook has become full of first lines, paragraphs, odd portions of narratives and so on; and i've finally worked out why.

REASONS I CAN'T WRITE:

1. there are things you read (see, hear, etc) that change everything. (everything). One such thing was.is Ulysses. Though this particular text has a strange power- I remember after finishing the the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami) I was completely inundated with ideas, with methods, with myselfisms, as though this book, for whatever reason showed me how much more myself I could be, opened doors in my imagination, style... it changed everything. (Neruda, Marquez, Foer- all have that ability). Now, we come to Ulysses, which has a stifling power, a presence that silences everyone, like a grumpy old man no one wants to stir up. We all sit in this room, and drink our tea, just the sounds of sipping and teaspoons clinking against the edges of cups and saucers, biscuits being chewed, and this old man, sits in his corner, intransigent, all-knowing, waiting for someone to say something so he can grasp them and disprove them and humiliate them. Like a sagacious music professor no one wants to play in front of, like trying to tell Beethoven what the Appassionata was about.
   
   So part of the problem is Ulysses. It's not just in an academic sense that I feel a little unworthy (what an odd word) to continue, but even in a sense of style... I'm confused. I don't remember how I used to write. After reading Murakami, I realized how much I could do that was novel and unique and myself, after Joyce, I can't remember anything that came before. (to solve this problem, I'm going to read Kafka on the Shore when I finished my current two reads)
   
   
2. I like 'challenges' when I write. I like that feeling of addressing myself to someone. If I find that there is a particularly avid reader of this blog, for example, then I suddenly become very conscious of what I write and want very much to impress them and make them happy. Also, this is why I write best when I am in love, and am writing myself to her, also, this is why I love letter-writing and confession-emails and all those sort of letters, those direct-communication type things.
   
   I mention this because a certain AG set me a challenge many months ago to... simplify. don't write me a Prokofiev sonata, write me a 3 minute pop-song that uses 4 chords
   - but they suck
   - does 'Yesterdays' suck?
   - no.
   - exactly. the best art is the simplest
   and he has a point. he really does. And there's no doubt: my (so-called) 'art' is... complex, difficult, requires some effort. So in my head, whenever I come to put pen-to-paper, I hear his voice in my head, telling me to simplify, or telling me he feels left out, I wanna be involved, but it's all so far away from me.
   

The difficulty is, I can't breathe. I mean that in a figurative sense, I sit and hold the pen and try and get soo many things out that I need to say. All sorts of miss-yous and please-helps and yes!es and no!s and not-agains and i'll-do-betters and all those things that a person has to say when he sees beautiful women's blond hair, or those anomalies- the warm day in the middle of winter where everyone smiles, and the sound of nothing as you walk across a park at sunset- all those things. I keep breathing in, hoping to get one full breath, but can't. I feel like I can't orgasm. It's something of a despairing feeling. Also, my chest feels heavy, like I am becoming less a man everyday and more a tree and the only way to rectify my unwanted transformation is to write to the world: Dear World, it's ok! let me tell you a story! Only that I can't be me enough to write it all out at the moment.

And for me, here's one thing that I want to say, the story is not about characters, or plots, or even stories. The story is about echoes, reminiscences... about the story after the story has already happened: when we lie awake in our beds at 3am and think about what was said, or how the flesh of a chest feels against your cheek, or the color of grass; when we sit in cars at redlights and the sweat of our backs wrinkles our clothes, and we feel the fabric tense up around our thighs and notice we've been gripping the steering wheel so tight for the last half-hour we can't feel our palms and our fingers are bright red. The most important parts of the story, the crucial parts, the parts that we can't forget, those are what I am concerned with: some details, some feelings, some, merely a 'sense' of things as they were, then, at that time, and that have forged some sort of a home not in our bodies but in our soul, who has folded each of these little stories of ours, memories, hopes, nightmares into a little origami crane, and when my soul flies across the sky, i see a cloud of paper cranes, blurry words printed on them, floating behind her, singing their notes. And not just that, but the blurring with time of these after-stories, as they fold, merge, contract, dilate, dissolve, grow, form, self-destruct, collapse into each other, away from each other, coalesce, merge, hurt us, heal us, and let us live on.

Dear Joyce, Dear AG, Dear Common Reader:

i don't want to tell you a story. i don't care about stories. i don't want you to care about them either. i want you to care about what came before the story, what came after, and how everything that ever was urged that moment, and how that moment urged everything that ever came after. (and the bending of time. and the bending of space. and the bending of love. and the bending of hearts. friendship. gravity. sounds drifting out of key with time. bodies growing lighter with love. oceans dissolving into snowflakes with kisses. earthquakes are just the earth laughing heartily when it's pleased. all these things.

i promise, as of tonight, i am to renounce everything i've ever read, i'm going to proceed (once again) only trying to be myself- with my own (flawed) sense of logic, literature, and style. (and probably lose every reader i never had)

with best regards dear reader
q