A continuation of the hazy concept method writing
I wrote two poems today. I'm in the process of reviewing a very strange jazz album that I picked up at a record store in Minneapolis. It was one of those shopping trips where I didn't know exactly what I was looking for - I've been listening to a lot of jazz recently, so I was in a jazz mood. I walked out with a Coltrane record and this other one. It's so experimental I had to split my listening into two sessions. I'm only halfway through. After listening to side A, we went for a walk. I thought about the Fourth of July fireworks we went to the night before, about the walk back to the car after the show. There was a group of four kids, early twenties, had been rowdy the whole show walking up ahead of us by about a hundred yards. They were loud and obnoxious, mildly inappropriate for a setting with children present, but harmless. In between us and this crowd was a drunken, top-heavy redneck mountain stumbling back and forth with his two young children, possibly grandchildren, two steps ahead of him. Something had transpired between the rowdy boys and the cantankerous old drunk, but I had missed it. They were jawing at the drunk, loudly and the drunk was (loudly) yelling "Let's Go Brandon. Let's Go Brandon", over and over again, trying to talk over the youngsters who probably deserved a comeuppance that this old man was too drunk and, let's face it, too incoherent to provide. Earlier in that day, Erin and I had jogged through the same park where we had just watched the fireworks display. We spotted a bald eagle on our jog and after I pointed it out Erin said something to the effect of, "Ain't that America? Something to see, baby? A bald eagle on Independence Day! It's the perfect American metaphor. As we unsuccessfully tried to overtake the drunken idiot waddling and wailing, "Let's Go Brandon", I came to realize that a bald eagle on Independence Day was not the perfect American metaphor. In addition to the two poems I wrote, having been inspired by the insufferable wailing of the experimental jazz record and the drunken idiot, I wrote the beginnings of a story (or something) with the working title of Allegory No. 1. It's rough right now, but I enjoyed banging it out on the typewriter. America may have just celebrated its birthday in a way that estranged families celebrate Thanksgiving, potentially fraught and actually violently, but my mind has been rather preoccupied with Russia. On today's walk, in that same park I might add, I began to think about Nikolai Gogol's Diary of A Madman. The dots are there if you care to connect them. As it is nearly midnight I don't particularly care to - I want to get to the point of this rambling post. Allegory No. 1 will undoubtedly become something entirely different by the time it's done. What it is now is a bit of method writing. Method writing is a key component of Literature as Collage. In the beginning the collage was formless and void. Unlike God, I can't just conjure the light ex nihilo. Method writing is still a pretty hazy concept. Here's the principle that I'm trying to get at in a nutshell, because Allegory No. 1 is a perfect example of it as it stands right now. Russia, for better or worse, has a bit of real estate in my head right now. I have a feeling that this isn't too strange given the current state of the world. For whatever reason, I was walking in the same spot where I told Erin that, "this is America and it is embarrassing", I thought about an insane asylum and Nikolai Gogol's A Diary of A Madman. Method writing has a lot to it (I think). One component completely steals from automatic writing. It's a mystical practice, for sure. There's some of that ineffability that makes descriptions a bit tough (and some of the nonsensical stuff that makes reading it a bit tough). With that comes the delusions of grandeur and associated arrogance, the pompousness bordering upon presumption. I confess! I like to dip my toes in that pool. Sometimes I even skinny dip. My goal is to keep from being baptized in it. The only way I know how to achieve that negative goal is to humbly accept that when I write, I do not have an omnipotent foreknowledge. I don't know where the story goes. That makes it exciting for me. It also means that sometimes I end up somewhere like Sylvania, GA. You know what's in Sylvania, GA? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What truly gets me excited about this concept though isn't the potential for satiated curiosity at the end of a dirt road between Augusta and Savannah (or peril). The gambling- like quality to writing stories without knowing the ending has some appeal to me, of course. I'm compulsive; gambling is exhilarating. As an aspiring adventurist the thrill of the gamble catches my attention. But, the thing that really jumps out at me in this whole method writing endeavor is the power it has to blur the lines between author and reader. If I as an author of a story come to the ending, the twists and the turns as they come then in essence, I come to them at the same time as any reader would come to them. Actual spacetime be damned; its reliance on relativity makes it just as questionable as my own inner reality. I come to the end of a story (as an author) as any reader does. I may have an inkling, but there might be a twist. The point is to get there to find out. Since the spacetime reality no longer has the moral high ground - and, since its claims to real reality are just as shaky as this esoteric solipsistic reality I am conjuring up as we speak and, - since I am coming to this end in the same way as you (as a reader) are, we might as well say we're coming together at it at the same time, relatively speaking, (of course). Thus, through this aspect of method writing we arrive together at a deeper reality, a truer truth. Which in my opinion, is the entire purpose of art. If this sounds like bullshit to you and you find yourself saying something to the effect of "there can't be more truer truths than others", take a moment and look around you. The world abounds with truths that are more or less true than other truths. There's a whole cottage industry based upon it. Isn't that the American Dream, though? We see someone become wildly successful, enriching himself at the expense of all others and we try and emulate it. It is the gambling aspect that drives us on, boom or bust, baby. Exceptional artists create the zeitgeist of an age. I am content with portraying it. *The asterisk at the top has no purpose other than ornament. I happened to like the way that it looked. That is all. As I said, I am content with portraying rather than creating...