Music and Movies

Smash the old world / Establish a new world

Maoist poster, Cultural Revolution.

Raccoons lope intoxicated across thoroughfares, four pawed jaywalkers with an acute aversion to traffic decorum, adorably rabid little thieves with sticky fingers and dark circles round their eyes, probably from all those late night rubbish raves. Catch the garbage when it's cold, condensated and fresh, like recently sprayed market produce; not overly ripe but a subtle sweet and sour, a little burn down the throat akin to a fine red wine. Lazy halts before twice-white lights, apple cores and bits of meat wedged between needle point fangs, pausing, presumably ready for a close-up--you know the kind that leaves fur matted with blood (and guts if you're speeding)--but conceit blossoms unhindered when danger looms imminent. Strike a pose and it's pancake city, poor thing, road kill. Scavenger now scavenged, cute little crook maggot-riddled, insides coated with wiggling, flesh eating babies, new meat turned mold meat under the thrump bump of those 22" rims.

How I feel today!

"Terror, grief, and desolation--
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Come to every Earthling nation!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!--
Earth eat fire! Earth wear chains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Break Earth's spirit, spill Earth's brains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Scream! Tup, thrup, fo!
Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!
Die! Tup, thrup, fo!
Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm."

-Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

I bake when upset.

Second attempt at red velvet cake, two attempts at snickerdoodles, matcha sugar cookies (first time around).

Things aren't looking too good.

It's routine now. I sit down in front of my computer or make motions to open up a notebook and force words out of my fingertips to convey something meaningful. A compulsion? Maybe. But sadly, a fruitless one.

The writer's block has lingered for some time and the frustration is unbelievable. I want to spend my life telling stories--not necessarily my stories, but any story worth telling--and to make them come alive through my words. I'm not sure if I'm capable of doing this yet, but I have many thwarted attempts to show that I'm trying to become capable. A for Effort.

Writing has become an enemy, a familiar comfort and an obsession. All my thoughts are laced with an itch to write; sometimes I can see the text scroll behind my vision, as if on an invisible marquee. I never really know what it says though, like a dream where you wake up with a feeling, but no concrete recollections of people, places or events. The feeling is important--but the process behind its creation is indispensable.

My ideas are not original but inanely repetitive; my voice, diction and even knowledge of grammar and punctuation are fuzzy with mold, sour to taste. I possess the tools but have yet to wield them (self doubt?). The nuances in words and rhythm tend to command me, not the other way around. I seem to have lost control or perhaps gained too much control and have plateaued in my prime. My diction is predictable, my pacing is dry. Wit has abandoned me and left only an echo.

There is no distinction between poetry and prose; I can write neither. I write only self-indulgent essays, pertaining usually to nothing in particular. I long, always, to write fiction. I want to write organically, directly from my imagination, to tell stories about struggle and revolution, to craft characters with pithy, clever retorts to everything, complex personalities and mysterious, dark histories. Literature is always the aspiration, something sick, twisted and so grotesquely beautiful that it spawns addicts out of readers. Reading to completion, reading multiple times, both imperative.

A story as an heirloom, to be passed from generation to the next because truths never really change.

My problem is that I want and may not be able to do. I must learn to do what I cannot.