process

There are many reasons I write. Above all the reasons that I won't bore you with at this juncture is to relieve myself of an idea or a story that has been growing restless in the dungeons of my mind. I get a lot of these ideas in that mind of mine, most of which either don't warrant or won't conform to the paper I would consign them to. Those that don't warrant the paper treatment get sent down to the dungeon where they can either grow strong enough to rise or die - it's totally in their hands once their unfair punishment is meted out. Those that are so abstract and obscure they refuse to be put on paper are likewise thrown into the dungeon. 

The punishment of these obscurities is not only warranted, but necessary. Obscure and abstract thoughts tend to be the loudest in the room (which if you have forgotten through my tortured metaphor, signifies my mind). I have no fear that they will die in the dungeon like some of their quieter and weaker kin. What I fear is that if they aren't confined they will make such a racket that I won't be able to think on anything else. I will be unable to function in both the world that I am making and the one that I am actively trying to graft said world into. Have you ever tried to make feijoda while pondering Pythagoras' prohibition of beans? That prohibition has haunted me for twenty years. I'm convinced it has something to do with air, spirit and flatulence. It's very distracting to think about and I have thrice burned a perfectly good feijoda while pondering such nonsense. I fear that if I don't banish them to the dungeon for a time that I will end up putting their nonsense to paper, like the three times I burned the feijoda.

There is a part of Collage as Literature that I call, method writing. It is the process through which I hope good, readable stories will come about. At the moment it is so obscure and so abstract that it defies my paltry ability to make it concrete, let alone good or readable! I confined it to the dungeon months ago with the hope that it would take the confinement to do some soul searching, maybe so yoga and find clarity, if not conciseness. Instead, it has screamed bloody murder and riled up all its fellow inmates. The whole prison complex is in an uproar. 

Eventually the guards are going to have to let it out. By the content of its screaming I doubt it has reflected one iota. Unfortunately, that means that at some point I will write something very unintelligible (not to mention borderline megalomaniacal). I will derive conflicting feelings in making concrete this abstract notion, relief and guilt. The reader will probably not see either of those. I have a premonition that the reader will wade into that abstraction only to find that concrete is still wet. Who knows? Maybe that's the entire point, to entrap the reader.

Now that you know what's going on in the bowels of my brain, now that the prisoner called method writing has a promised release, now that I have preconfessed my sin of future obscurities we can talk about the more concrete part of that idea we call process. Let us proceed with caution. There is a delightful aroma wafting through my apartment at the moment. It isn't feijoda, but a delicious and intoxicating arrogance.

This is a tenet of Collage as Literature that proceeds from another tenet mentioned already. It is a little hazy and I ought to give it some times down in the bowels, but my judgments are at times (as I have already confessed) unfairly meted out. Technically speaking, all of the tenets proceed from one another. There isn't a core that all are attached to and there isn't really a distinction between the individual tenets. Collage as Literature is pantheistic. That isn't a core tenet, but it may turn out to be a meta-tenet. See, this is what happens when you don't let an idea cool out in the dungeon for a bit - the arrogance just oozes out doesn't it?

Collage as Literature is pantheistic in nature. We'll leave that as it is for now, whatever it means. At the moment let us focus on the truth that every thing has the potential to become paradoxical and that a thing's utility to literature depends upon how much it gives into becoming paradoxical. The physical process of writing for me begins handwritten in a notebook [1st draft], moves from handwritten to typed on the typewriter [2nd - penultimate draft] and eventually to the mac, either on a blog or word document [presentable work, hopefully].

The handwritten notebook allows me to see the former prisoner in the full light of day, so to speak. I think that if I had good handwriting there would be no need for the typewriter. The notebook would have been sufficient to make words flesh. I don't have good handwriting, in fact it is atrocious. Often I can't even read it. The typewriter is the necessary artifice for the ideas to become free. That was my justification when I bought it and I'm going to stick to it.

The physicality of the typewriter (a writer with good handwriting might not need this step) makes concrete the freedom for the abstraction that was hitherto imprisoned in dark, dank cells in the belly of my mind. I'm sure that the abstractions are much happier in their freedom than they were in bondage. I know I am at peace when I can expel the unruly concepts. It's a win-win situation. That would be the end of it if it weren't for my ego. Hmm, if it weren't for my ego would I be at perpetual peace? TO THE DUNGEON, DAMN YOU! 

Here is where the paradox plays into the tenet that Collage as Literature necessarily expresses itself most completely through a physical component. The concretizing of the abstract is paramount to the whole thing. Unless you are me, you are likely reading this on the Internet, a virtual reality that is by design antithetical to concreteness. It is a minor paradox, for sure, but paradox, all the same. 

This blog serves two purposes: to be the repository of the cutouts necessary to write novels in the style of Collage as Literature; and, to stroke my ego. I like to imagine that one day the posts here will some day constitute a body of work interesting enough to a person with the right literary connections to sign me to a book deal. I'll publish a story, get an advance and go write in Paris - there is an idea (he is in the dungeon, of course) concerning every single metro stop in Paris. (Part satire, part memoir, part travel book, in case you are the person with the right literary connections to sign me to a book deal). Then, we shall all live happily ever after. I like to imagine...