| NOW WHERE WAS I? - Part Three (final) |
[21 Jul 2004|11:43pm] |
the old block and the chipping thereof...
not to put too fine a point on it, the last six months have been a disaster creatively speaking. in the madcap (if successful) pursuit of the almighty dollar, i've not really managed to write a thing. yes, a couple of lines here, a passage or two there, but as the pages of this neglected journal sadly evidence, i've kept myself carefully insulated from anything vaguely resembling real work. of course that word real is itself suspect on the face of it -- is the writing that i do for myself (that is, for the sake of my long stalled artistic career) actually more real than the stuff I churn out so successfully for wads of cash?
well, it's always seemed that way to me, but recently i've had my doubts. with a half finished manuscript accusingly pointing its bony metaphoric finger at me everytime i sit down to work, i really can't be blamed for grasping at philosophical straws, no matter how brittle they may be.
while i'm sure it's not an original thought, we should never forget that writing is, after all, a solitary vice. and in contradistinction to that other, older and more popular solitary pastime, frequency of practice generally results in a greater volume of expression. crudely put perhaps, but let's face it, the literary muscle, as it were requires at least as much exercise and care as the one that permits us to form a fist. the imaginative faculty would seem perforce to require not merely a free and wide range of expression, but simultaneously (and abit ironically) also a fair amount of hardcore discipline.
it's the latter where i inevitably stumble and fall and, being the past master of the excuse and justification,where i wonder did that marvelous ability arise? is it perhaps the but-end of a frustrated creative urge? the first requirement of a good liar is a vivid imagination i'm seldom at a loss to explain to myself all the good reasons why i can't or oughtn't or shouldn't finish the half-done piece or start a new one. (this is part of my genius or perhaps all of it, i honestly do not know.)
but of course there comes inevitably a point at which all the carefully wrought excuses and justifications simply fail to satisfy the case and ensues then the predictable bouts of self-loathing and self-recrimination that are the precursors to a real literary block which is to say, to a self-perpetuating fallowness.
let's face it, writing is hard work and mrs. x's boy brad has never really managed to whole american work ethic thing very well. it's a damn good thing (and thank God for it) that i'm so damn clever and good at biz or otherwise i'd have long ago ended-up caging nickles and dimes on some foggy and forlorn frisco corner.
since it's really about telling stories (which, as an aside, is how my dear sweet-hearted, may-he-rest-in-peace father always referred to lying), i'm struggling to tell mine here in a way that won't immediately and forthwith engender those very emotions that prevent me from writing in the first place. yep, there's no sword like a double-edged sword, unless of course it's one with two blunted edges.
one story that comes to mind concerns my l.a.-based pal, archy D., who came to visit us in rome this may. archy is the nicest and funniest guy you'd ever want to know and it was a delight having him stay with us for most of a week. during his stay, archy let slip that he has long availed himself of the professional services of several young male, er, escorts and told me without a single blush or stutter how thoroughly satisfied he was with their, um, work. 'but,' says i, all blushes and stutters, 'it all seems so mercenary and cold.' 'au contraire,' replied my friend, 'not cold at all, but really quite seriously hot and very friendly too.' a vaguely amusing colloquy made pertinent and to the point cause i've been thinking that just such an arrangement might well be the eminently practical solution to my own improbably extravagant longings and all too sodden and unsatisfied desires. except, i'm sorry to say, the very idea sends icy shivers up my spine, the thought of sex without the solemn silly ceremonies of courtship, the vain and dainty dances of love (whether real or imagined) is almost impossible for me. for better or for worse (and i'm fairly sure the latter), i can't see how such an arrangement would work -- i've a hard enough time getting and staying hard with someone i think i love, the notion of doing the down-and-dirty, the bumping-and-grinding without a single emotion, but greed and, if lucky, a tiny semblance of lust seems not only horrible, but horribly unexciting. god, i'm so sickeningly old-fashioned.
well, if the thought is actually father to the deed, maybe i've a chance, but i reckon that i'm condemned to a practical sterility with all the trappings of a fanciful and fully unrequited romance. adventure for me means always and only another person, preferably one young, slim and full of a conflict that only passion can resolve -- that's my vision of myself and, like it or not, the stuff of which my interior dialogues are made. i'm afraid that someone meeting the physical requirements but lacking the emotional and/or intellectual ones is of not interest to me. what price aetheticism?
and so onto brighter, beachier subjects. my blog buddy ![[info]](http://library.vu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/000100A/http/web.archive.org/web/20041023032354im_/http:/=2fstat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) manosa whose journal contains some of the best and brightest poetry around has asked me to share my summer reading list. as my long personal history demonstrates, who am i to refuse a charming poet whose greek antecedents only inspire the wildest of imaginings? i fear this list is not so brilliant or varied as in years past, but that too seems all too typical of this particular period. here's what i'm reading or have read this month at the seaside:
Survivor, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Dark Lover, a biography of Rudolph Valentino by Emily Leider
Queen of Scots, a biography of Mary Stuart by John Guy
Heaven's Command, a history of the British Empire by Jan Morris
Farewell the Trumpets, a history of the British Empire by Jan Morris
Port Mango, a novel by Patrick McGrath
Storming the Reality Studio, an anthology of cyberpunk and post-modern writing edited by Larry McCaffery
The End of Time, a history of the apocalypse by Damian Thompson
The Devil in the White City, a history of the Chicago World's Fair and Serial Killing by Erik Larson
The Hollow Man, a mystery by John Dickson Carr
Flush, a novel by Virginia Woolf
The Jane Austin Bookclub, a novel by Karen Jay Flowler
last note about last night. we got so blissfully high, the b/f and i, and lay on chaises staring up at a sky ablaze with stars, muttering the kind of inanities that people mutter only when they are really stoned, listening to a wild selection of cd's -- best of the worst was burt bacharach songs, best of the best was franz ferdinand, the debut album. one more proof (as if any were needed) that there's no hope without dope.
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after finishing with god, i usually find myself walking down the long tree-lined street that leads past the aerial balloon to the porta pinciana (at the top of the via veneto) and it's about here that the conversation starts getting good. today, i was thinking about this hot-looking american dude i passed on the street a few days ago and i kept asking who the fuck it was that he reminded me of. suddenly, like a bolt from the blue or, if you prefer, an answer to a prayer, it came to me -- why it was old tony dow a.k.a. wally, the beave's brother. son of ward and june cleaver and the stuff of which pre-pubescent queer phantasies are made. no wonder i turned and stared at the boy as he passed like he was some preternatural flash from the past -- because in a sense, he was! at this point, i can't help but ask myself if it would have been a better thing or worse if i had lived in a world where wally and beave could have had an incestuous relationship on their tv show. it's a hard call, though the dialogue possibilities are almost too delicious not to imagine outloud: c'mon beave, just one more time...
by the time i make it home, the b/f's up and out with the pup. i'm in the mood for some fresh voice and he obliges by reminding me that i have a thousand new improved tasks awaiting me in the hours remaining before my departure for american version of homeo-home. not the confab i was hoping for, but after 18 years maybe it's the best you can expect. that line from a flick that i badly mangled a few weeks ago really goes like this: 'it's being together at the end that really matters' and of course it's from the women. but it's more appropriate here since we're once again at the end of one scene and the beginning of another. 
the man said some stories are more amusing than others. take running round l.a. in april, hanging out with old friends, getting high, getting drunk, being glad that friendship actually does mean something, especially when it's 10 or 20 or even 30 years old. and especially when it means reconnecting with long lost (but not forgotten) pals like mr gilbert coronel, fabled friend of fabled youth and not glimpsed nor heard from for over 15 years and then the simple and simply profund realisation that everything between us was just as it was and ought to have been, as if -- oh yes, you heard it coming -- just as if we'd seen each other yesterday. and also equally true the joy to meet up with mr. mark b. not seen in a decade or so and whose brilliant blog here (
in a few hours, we'll be at the beach and, man o manishevitz , i'm telling you it literally could not be a minute too soon. the last week has been outrageously intense -- intense heat-n-humidity, intense socializing, intense working, intense prep to get outta this town. it got so bad yesterday that i had to dig into my emergency xanax supply. my poor assistant wasn't doing much better, especially after having to spend two hours at the post office trying to send off all the various and sundry letters, parcels and packages that have come to symbolize, in some hellish metaphorical way, the end of one season and the beginning of another.
we leave for the beach in a week and, believe me, it ain't a minute too soon, mister man. i'm dead beat and way seedier than the watermelons i'll be scarfing on a sunlit terrace this time next week. it's been a strange and bumpier-than-usual half-year, notable less for its lows than its absence of any real highs. we used to say 'no hope without dope,' nowadays it's something more akin to 'no life without strife' or at least the day-to-day petty annoyances that pose as its punctuation.