Month: May 2024

  • Just Not Feeling It

    I know the conventional wisdom here is that you have to fight through it, but I’m questioning that. I have been looking at my computer, and listening to music for the past forty-five minutes, and I can’t come up with a single idea to write about. I did some free association journaling for about twenty minutes, and nothing came of it except me complaining about all the bills I have to pay.

    That leaves me to the tried and true “I have nothing to write about so I’m gun’na write about not having anything to write about,” trope! Ta-Da!

    I might have shot myself in the foot by deciding this morning that I was going to use my afternoon to research magazine/lit journals that I want to submit to, and not use that time to work on new material. It was like that part of my head just shut off, and now I am left with nothing but an urge to look at my phone to see if anything has happened.

    I checked; nothing is happening…

    But I’m not going to beat myself up over this. Somedays you get the bear, and other days, the bear gets you.

  • Paul Auster (1947 – 2024)

    I read the news today that Paul Auster had passed away. Kind’a always thought that Paul Auster would just be hanging around forever. Somewhere in Brooklyn, scribbling away, and walking around. I don’t know if any of that is true, it’s just what I expected.

    I first read Paul Auster in 1997 or 1998, and the book was Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure. I’m not 100% sure how this book came to me, but I’m pretty sure it was a Christmas gift from my parents. Maybe I put it on a list, but for whatever reason, it was the right book at the right time. For you see, I had just dropped out of college to peruse my career as a writer/artist, and then I read this book, wherein Paul Auster is pretty much telling me that I have ten awful years of struggle, disappointment, and failure headed my way. But he told it is such a funny and depressing way that, for all the wrong reasons, this book inspired me to continue following my path in the arts. And also, to read as many books by Paul Auster as possible.

    I had hoped to have met him one day. Not to have a conversation, or tell him how much I enjoyed his work. No, I just wanted to say “hi” to him on the street, like neighbors. And that’s the other great thing that Paul gave to me; he presented New York City (Brooklyn, actually) as this great place to meet and make friends with people who are nothing like you. There are all kinds of great things about the City, that artists have been talking about for years (the arts, nightlife, money, danger, excitement, scandal…) but he always gave me this feeling that, yes those things are here, but the people of this place, these characters of the City, are what makes this place magical.

    The other thing that I loved about Paul Auster was that the guy just wrote all the time, and produced so much work. This is the “hard working American” side of me that still sees production as one of the measuring sticks of artistic excellence. He created nonstop. He tried things, and sure, maybe not all of it was The New York Trilogy, but I have respect for the people out there that keep trying something new and producing.

    So I guess, thanks Paul Auster. Thanks for trying to talk me out of being creative.