my near death
Sugar coated for the masses
Smack for the rest
It was my death
Death to desperation and bring forth
New and afresh; boring and depressed
Glory stories and other narcissistic ambitions of vanity
Save that,
I'm nearly dead
Hipster Reimaginations
I am obsessed with Fabian Ciraolo. It started with an uncredit image on Miss Kittin's wall, slightly modified from the original. A short search later and I stumbled upon his Facebook page and, even better, his blog. Above, he reimagines Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali as hipsters and pimps.
He has an eye for the trendy and the trending and manages to sneak in all my own personal heroes into his work. How could you not love Edward Scissorhands in a bowtie, Cleopatra with black bandages on her nipples, Marilyn Monroe adorned in terrible tattoos or, my personal favourite, an awkward yet handsome Harvey Birdman in argyle?
Autobiography
Just before Christmas my brother died, and was buried at Bruges. In the following February my father died, and was buried alongside of him,—and with him died that tedious task of his, which I can only hope may have solaced many of his latter hours. I sometimes look back, meditating for hours together, on his adverse fate. He was a man, finely educated, of great parts, with immense capacity for work, physically strong very much beyond the average of men, addicted to no vices, carried off by no pleasures, affectionate by nature, most anxious for the welfare of his children, born to fair fortunes,—who, when he started in the world, may be said to have had everything at his feet. But everything went wrong with him. The touch of his hand seemed to create failure. He embarked in one hopeless enterprise after another, spending on each all the money he could at the time command. But the worse curse to him of all was a temper so irritable that even those whom he loved the best could not endure it. We were all estranged from him, and yet I believe that he would have given his heart's blood for any of us. His life as I knew it was one long tragedy.
-Autobiography of Anthony Trollope, Chapter II
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
'What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!'
'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.'
'I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, 'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'
-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
I used to worry relentlessly about who I was. I could never answer that question, even as a cheap insecure lie. I was nothing but a wavering fool who could be anything to anyone to the point of self-dissipation. How could I claim as my own anything I did when I could not explain myself? For so long I felt as if I was floating through life, without being able to account for a single action. I look back on the things I've done to the people I believed I cared for and I have no way of reconciling my supposed emotions with my actions. There was no coherence to my narrative.
A thief could explain the person they are as to their circumstances that necessitated theft, to the plans they made to steal. A teacher could explain their vocation as to their desires to help, to their natural ability with people, to their opportunity to pursue the relevant education.
Me? I can explain nothing. I was confronted often; both by my own internal dialog and by those who've caught the charlatan that I happened to be. I responded as a dumb mute. Too smart to claim stupidity, and too aware to claim naivety.
The inability to articulate haunts me always. It is in my worst dreams that I am voiceless. It is a constant struggle for me to try and say what I mean to say. This language that I have grown of and into and am so intimate with is at once my only vindication and my absolute nemesis. I am an ever bigger failure with any artistic medium that steps outside of language. At least I know words. I can touch them, and lay with them until they become familiar. I can revisit them and they require no physical talent, I need no steady hand, no watchful eye, no patient body. With words at least I can hobble my way through them, stumbling awkwardly until I land.
It's said the self is nothing more than a fictional narrative -- one that you write of yourself and one that everyone you've ever met will write of you. I see this nowhere better than when I read Trollope. There is a man of such confidence in his writing. He does not question the narrative he builds. He knows exactly what kind of father he had -- a strong man, of good will, and terrible temper, who cared very much for his family and was doomed to tragedy from the day he was born. His mother? An enterprising woman, ruled rightly by emotion, defiant even in the face of the deaths of her children. Such conviction in his writing!
But me? What do I know of myself, let alone anyone else? I barely know my father, a man who is as absent from my mind as he was from my life. My mother, bless her, but I cannot find the words to describe the impossibility of knowing someone so perpetually preoccupied. It is my own failing to really know others, despite the keen insight which I reluctantly admit that I do have of others. I am perhaps too cautious in pretending that I can draw out any one's narrative when I can never truly understand my own.
In which a story is made
I have always been interested in how a story is created. I was watching Talking Funny last week with Ricky Gervais, Seinfeld, Louis CK and Chris Rock as they spoke of how a joke is slowly built piece by piece into a compelling story and how that becomes one thread in a 90 minute narrative.
I wonder how often we get to see the very same sort of thing happen with authors. Apart from the manuscripts and revised editions, there's not much to be said for the tiny revisions that are integral in that move from a good story to a great story. In writing these very few words (post edit: very few indeed!) I see countless edits and rewrites, slight changes to structure and syntax that alone may not mean very much but combined contribute to providing the specific and singular voice that is mine.
Short sidestep (turns out this will be quite long): when I first started taking English courses at U of T, I was hoping to unlock some mystical secret to the writerly process. I was after some insight as to how Joyce wrote The Portrait but instead all I found was discussion about the story itself: its plot and elements and things I thought too familiar and too easy for a university course. Sure, we spoke briefly of stream of conscious and narrative modes, but what was it that made Joyce uniquely Joycean? Was it sufficient to consider the elements of a novel, as if they could all be identified and brought together then we would recreate a classic?
It turns out I was, perhaps, still too young to understand the questions I wanted to ask and was more concerned with the answers I was not finding. This is the world of criticism, where every detail is analyzed exhaustively until there is nothing left to squeeze out of that poor book, where every bit of joy and love is detailed until there is no pathos left for anyone or anything. Oh, and those damned structuralists! Trying to find a function and form for every nuance and every bit of breath -- and if it fits not in their mold then it must be some superfluous detail that exists only because it exists.
Writing, I've found, is a far trickier thing than any course could hope to illustrate. It is not a thing which, upon close inspection, reveals itself in all its intricacies. Writing is the opposite, complimentary domain to criticism. It starts with a simple joke, a little story, a written melody, a tiny bit of string and then it builds. Both backwards and forward it builds. It builds.
It builds like an orgasm. Slowly at first, with tiny pecks and faint touches, those little ones that make the hair on the back of your neck and thighs rise. Then it grows, and grows, and rises up, then down, and all throughout and finds its way behind your ear and to that little spot over there, and it climbs and moves and dances and teases and flirts and toys and has you cursing every pause and bracing for every breath and it goes, and it goes, and it goes.
Then when it's ready, and when you are too, it waits just a little more, just a touch (but not too long for you to lose interest and wish it over already) and it let's you go, and it releases you and the story unfolds. Your mind rushes as every prior touch and breath and pause and sigh and pant finally makes sense, and every point of the web finally connects with the rest and you close your eyes and think - oh!
And you both lie next to each other, and slowly unwind and bring the climax to closure, and tidy up and wipe away any sweat and stains. You lay with each other until you've both felt it's time to go, and you close the page, and walk away and never speak to each other again; though occasionally there will be that thing, that sight or that smell or that sound, that brings you brings you back and in an instant the whole adventure replays but you know better--you know the second time around will never be quite like the first. But you do smile, how could you not? You smile and move on to the next book.
And so a story goes.
