I sit and watch my own intent absent-mindedly destroying all production.
I attempt to judge myself by everyone else’s standards and become swamped in my own versions of other people’s potential criticisms.
Archive for the ‘Reasons’ category
On Songbirds
In Reasons on 18 June, 2009Fats; a starving rigor; a curious man admires the form of his wife’s curling iron: these are the elements of writing.
An enchaînement of stolen bodies, rearranged; disemboweled ideas; an eye becomes an item, or an index, a frenzied movement of the bergamasca: these are the forms of language.
My task as a writer is that of the mad bird keeper; the pen is the key; release the songbirds from their cages!
The Journey
In Reasons on 14 April, 2009A famous Irish writer said that he was a drinker with a writing problem. I’m not sure if I’m that seasoned yet, but as I type this I’ve been drinking since noon. That is almost nine hours ago. I also plan on going to the bar later, about midnight. In a few days, none of this will matter. Read the rest of this entry »
If all else fails, you can still write
In Reasons on 5 April, 2009Question: when someone suggests that you should write for a living, is the most appropriate response always to blush and feel extremely flattered?
Answer: no.
Verbal compulsion
In Reasons on 16 March, 2009What’s that Neruda line – “It was at that age poetry arrived”? Quoting Neruda’s a bit of a cliché. Except that everyone likes Neruda. Except those who don’t.
I feel like he said something really basic but meaningful in that tiny excerpt, though. About that particular point when words started falling out of your fingertips as well as your lips.
These words are ghostings
In Reasons on 13 March, 2009I. At the beginning, all I find is an out-of-focus vision. An incomplete image, gradually forming in my mind. It comes from nowhere, it’s a black and white slide. At times, the seminal image glides, as if it were a coat slipping off the chair, or a trolley which slowly runs on rails. Read the rest of this entry »
You have balls to call yourself
a “writer” you fucking loser
In Reasons on 9 March, 2009
I didn’t let on to anyone that I like to write for twenty-eight and a half years, give or take a few agonisingly illiterate ones towards the very beginning. I didn’t think I was good enough (still don’t) to even suggest such a stretch. And yet I wrote. I always wrote. I didn’t save it, I didn’t submit it anywhere, I didn’t show it to friends, but if I wasn’t quietly self-destructing through abuse of hallucinogens and bad relationships, I wrote.