Where I'm From

Let's pause for station identification. This may or may not turn into a new occasional feature. "Where I'm From" was a blog post that never got finished, itself an idea to change the way I was using sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. The title was the echo in my head of reading the title of Joan Didion's Where I Was From on Wikipedia. Now, writing this, I'm perhaps (hopefully) at the most likely place for this blogaday to fall apart. Sensical, isn't it? Once I began mentioning "blogaday" here and once I started creating blank posts to run out the end of this little tear, I would be stressed. Hmm... I'm just paranoid, I know. Somehow I did something seriously to my ankle today. It hurts but is maybe getting better. "Where I'm From" is an amalgam-style-post. After the jump, I will quote my original concept from the drafts page of this blog.

The Future of Publishing

A bit of random musing. It's all inconsequential. I'm bloody useless.

"The pot is full; let me take control."

These introductions are influenced both by the sort of "I'm still here" posts from Warren Ellis where he often announces the name of the location you've found on the web. I'm really into that. And also the bumps that Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 gets on [adult swim]. The sort of inside view given to this season with little snippets from the creators before every new episode. Huh, using this intro as a reflection on my attempts to change my own intro writing ways, it seems I've mucked up the chances to actually introduce this piece. Oh pooh! I will only just add that this post is helluva long one, quite the doozy, do not start it if you're off to bed in five minutes or suchlike.

When at last you give in...

I think the ultimate test of understanding an idea is being able to recognize it elsewhere. Anyone can string useless words together as some sort of definition, anyone can write, but it is actually seeing this concept outside of its initial context that allows you to truly claim understanding. It's like waiting on a girl to grow her hair out just to see if you're only attracted to the current boyish cut. Because you'd never know. I would say that being unable to recognize ideas that connect across different contexts is one of the major faults in ideology. Let's have ourselves a little experiment, then, in locating the concept outside of its context.

Sporty Spice

Melanie Chisholm got herself the moniker of Sporty Spice because of the big As, apparel and attitude. Her athletic wear and tomboyish ways were thought to be embodied perfectly in the name she took. [I might as well come out now and mention the fact that I am not a Spice Girl aficionado and I'm simply wiki-ing to make a point here. As some readers of this blog might (and likely are) more knowledgeable in this pop music field, I must ask that any perceived inaccuracies be sacrificed to the point.] This is something you have to deal with as a blogger, if you are going to go through the motions of naming your posts, picking a name that matches important concepts you are trying to get across. You can then choose to develop that name in a sort of introductory piece created to be put before the jump. At least...this is something I have to deal with as a blogger (and have dealt with just as described).

Layering

One of the perhaps subtle bits behind the genius that is Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming is a theme that we can track back to Rousseau. It's basically the Doomsday Device from Dr. Strangelove and it's an idea of which any archaeologist is familiar.

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (Didion, 2005)

There are times of realization. They can be recorded and tracked. In these days it is often not the question of "Can we?" but "Should we?" Every second we are pushing the realms of the possible further apart.

"Slippery," my father corrects, "just slippery. That was the nickname."

My spirituality is rooted in coincidences.

It's just that easy.

When Andrew Hurley had some difficulty in titling his translation of Borges's El hacedor, he ran into the good luck of hearing that JLB had originally named the book in English, The Maker, and simply translated it into the Spanish. With ease, then, he could bring back the original title, rather than attempt to identify which specific definition Borges's had had in mind when he chose the word hacedor.

The blue bus speaking in my mind.

About dreams, DeLillo, and the like. Sort of a mental note, which is why I'm not putting much introduction here. (Trying to change what I use this blog for, so this is one way to do that, I guess.)

"See if you can spot this one." (3)

Another piece of fan fiction. This one is tirelessly self-reflexive. A part of the final run, with five posts in one night to finish thirty only a few minutes into July. I offer this because it'll be the reason that this is a bit weird, a bit too complex or not really complex, but confusing. My mind was already fried when I started writing.

The price of the stereo depends on the stereo type.

Still in the punning mood. Not sure what this one is about. This is the long haul at the moment, seeing if I can get a lot of posts in while it's still June. I'm doomed to fail, but I've got nothing better to do. My writing style at the moment is a lot of fun to work with. It's been a productive month: moving the fiction back to the end was quite helpful, because it allowed me to do a lot of writing in the length that I want (~1000 words) and then adapt that to fiction. Plus it was fan fiction so it was all kinda new. But I'm wasting time here. This is the introductory bit saying au revoir.

"See if you can spot this one." (2)

This turned out quite well. Amazing fun to write, but maybe not so good to read, because you won't know who anyone is or any of the references I'm drawing. Finally finished listening to Imperial Bedrooms tonight so maybe it'll make sense then that there's a few throws to Bret Easton Ellis. (Maybe it already made sense, since his name has been everywhere on this blog for-like-totally-ever.) I'll give away the main stolen stuff at the end. Another influence is Bright Lights, Big City which is written, like this sketch, in the second person. As always there is a piece of boring meta in the middle of this, so just yawn over it, please.

To infinity and beyond--

Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story, metafiction, Borges, a single reference each to DeLillo and Gaiman, another to Stephen King, and some other words there as well. If you feel like it.

Land gauge.

A stupid pun of a title like a poem in my book called "Fascist Nation," which is playing off the word fascination. It might be apparent that this'll be a post on language, along with translations and a semi-focus on Jorge Luis Borges. Listened to the June Poetry issue's podcast today and Claire Cavanagh speaking on the publication of Anna Kamienska's notebooks recollects my view of recording thoughts here or on Facebook or in text messages, what have you. It's for yourself, but you think others might be interested--for Kamienska she showed people her notes and they reacted positively, for me it's more of a feeling along the lines that you can't keep your ideas to yourself, that writing in a dark room with no one in hearing distance might be a productive technique, but is also somehow snobby and not to be supported. Err...so without further ado...

Uh, yeah...

This is just a filler post. You'll know that if you read it. But I put some ideas in it. And anyway, I think I mention it is so while writing it. As long as it captures something, however ugly and un-brilliantly it might do so, then it was worth it. It's a Monday when I'm actually writing this, although it's dated otherwise, and since it's mad, it gets that tag. I've gotta sleep. Night, folks. (6/21/10, 11:34PM)

You and me and "you" and "me," but not "you and me."

Bret's in here as a tangent. This is about Borges, him, but most of all me, and what I wrote in my journal going on like four years ago now. Bit of a small post before the jump here, so I'll just point the finger to Say Hi, who I've been soundtracking this blog entry and the past hour?-ish to by way of the stand-by youtube. Another one-man band, so it elicits the issue of pronoun, they?, he? I'll go with "they." They make better music than I make blog posts, but go ahead and read this one if you wish, it's one of the better ones, until the end where I have no idea what I'm doing.

"Translation is the closest reading one can do of a poem."

Read this in an interview of Charles Simic. Actually scanned it. This is not a blogaday entry, but rather the sort of thing that I would love to use my blog for more often than I do--basically it gets eaten up in Facebook notes these days--it's basically an idea.

Simic is, of course, a translator. I say "of course" because the quote makes it obvious. So he's speaking literally. I've only scanned the interview, but this jumped out at me. I can take it and apply it figuratively, because there is a sort of translation going on when you read a poem, or rather when you read anything. Easton Ellis talking about film as the medium that forces itself upon you. The written word doesn't do that. I'm not linguist or brain specialist or what have you, so I won't pretend to be able to pick into the ways that language sets off thoughts and what reading actually means inside our heads.

I just thought that "translation" could fit well as a metaphor to what we all do when we see art. And here I'm speaking more cosmopolitanly than Ellis, because I think you can steer films into corners in your own mind, as well as anything else. It doesn't even really have to be art, because this is basically the same process as the one that I use, anyway, to create art. You're translating what you are taking in into your own personal language.

The idea I've been having for a while now for a story about an old author who's now translating his old novels into his wife's language--I want to be able to capture the above as part of its theme. Maybe I can't, because it isn't even horribly well stated above, but what the "Smitten"/"Found" stories have taught me is that I can write prose that is pretty ugly but that I can still be somewhat proud of. Poetry is completely different.

From "Found" (1/5)

I'm cheating here, catching two birds with one stone, or rather possibly ten birds with five stones. The next few days will have entries plucked from the short story/novel chapter that I am currently writing called "Found." Today's bit focuses on Eddie and is the introduction scene for him in the story. Also, I'm tearing this unedited out of Word, so it might not read perfectly. If I get around to look through it on blogger then I might make the changes, but they are probably only going to happen in the Word file. Just a disclaimer. And now, I'll give it over to the omniscient narrator...

Cannabalizing

It’s a neologism of sorts, but really just a bad pronunciation, that has grown, to me, to mean taking an old work and injecting it into a new one. It’s not quite cannibalizing as Raymond Chandler put it, so I’ve grown to make it into something completely new. Wait, stay with me here for a moment, I’m simply sharing a thought and it doesn’t have to mean anything, because I’m framing another concept.

In Life is Elsewhere, as I detailed yesterday, there are many snippets from various poems written by the main character, Jaromil. Reading the novel, I am led to see these as perhaps sections from Kundera’s own poems. Before settling in as a novelist, Kundera was a poet, amongst other things, and Life is Elsewhere makes that readily apparent, because it is such a condemnation of the poet that it would be completely farcical if not for the fact that Kundera likely saw himself as a poet at one point and is, in fact, lampooning himself.

I feel like this is the kind of novel that any poet should read and be able to fight against it or should give up his or her chosen art—it’s a romantic view of poetry, but it links the art with immaturity, with youth, to the extent that with the working title, The Lyrical Age, Kundera is referring to youth—what’s so enlightening is that there are beautiful definitions of what a poem is, what poetry should do, and all of it lies in the usual uncertainty of Kundera’s work. What I mean to say is that reading this book as a poet is like picking through history as a socialist, where you have to look at the various failures and the characters you disagree with and you have to have a sort of inner monologue about what you think your purpose as a poet is. I had similar fun with an article from Fidel Castro that we read in my Latin American seminar last semester; someone who is claiming to be supporting an idea that you support, this is the transitive property, and this person should be your friend. So reading becomes a game of dramatic irony; as I’ve said before bending art to my worldview has become a pastime, so you simply know more about the world (or your personal view of the world) than the author of whatever you are reading. Maybe you could try it, or maybe everyone already does it? I don’t know, I’m simply sharing it because it’s like tons of fun.

Ha-ha, that said, let me get back to the point—if I were able to create history, I would have the snippets of poems in Life is Elsewhere be clipped directly from Kundera’s poems written in youth. It would be fictive layering, of a different kind, since the reality would be injected into the fiction. This would not be without its precedents in my knowledge, meaning that my imaginings over the origins of these poems are not entirely original.

They come, in part, to what I’ve read that Grant Morrison did with a character in The Invisibles, a comic-book series so crazy that I’ve yet to make myself pick it up. The Gideon Stargrave stories in this series, Morrison states, “are direct quotes from the Michael Moorcock-inspired short stories [he] wrote obsessively when [he] was 17,” which presents us with an interesting comparison. However, the layers on this story do perhaps run deeper, as Moorcock sees the stories as pure plagiarism.

Is Morrison then simply claiming to have quoted stories he wrote as a teen in order to somehow bring up cryptomnesia as a defense for plagiarism? The answer to this question is unknowable and ultimately not all together interesting. No matter what Grant Morrison did, what is of interest is what he said he did, so in this case words are louder than actions. Why exactly would Morrison take stuff he had written as a kid and put it into what he’s writing later on?

Well, we’re getting back to the question of getting better as a writer, then, aren’t we? In a currently abandoned novel I created the character of Philip Forger without much thought to his actual name. Now, looking back on it, I realized that Philip would obviously specialize in forgery, the aptronym forming on its own as a moment of revelation. This suddenly presented an answer to an issue that had been bothering me—what do I make of the novel that I wrote during National Novel Writing Month a year and a half ago? Do I trash it or gut it or simply edit it?

I came to the realization that I could effectively not do anything and still have the book exist. It’s like what Stephen King does to Insomnia in the Dark Tower series. Dark Tower is essentially the culmination of all of King’s writing: it presents a multiverse of all his stories and also ended up impacting many of his books that he wrote to allude to this series. For Insomnia, King ran up against a corner, because he basically reached a plot hole. He was finishing the Dark Tower seven-book series, but the ending wasn’t meshing with the novel he’d written earlier. So he simply writes it off, has a character say that he was interpreting the universe wrong, so the book was messed up.

It’s not a fulfilling or fair answer, but it does the trick, surprisingly enough. Sometimes the easiest way out is the best. So I got to thinking that I should look for the easiest way out for myself and I determined that I could take the book I had already written, already put the hours into, if you will, and I could inject it into the fictional world by way of Philip Forger. He wrote the book and all of the simple slip-ups with the universe I’ve been created, all of the stories that can’t quite make sense now, they are explained away because the book is a forgery. It’s the work of not the writer who escapes into the fiction but of the fictional character who pulls out just far enough to see the world for what it is, but only temporarily. Like Deadpool or Agent Smith.