august 13 vhs
The thing I wrote yesterday felt really good to write. The sentences came out fully-formed and required minimal edits. The paragraphs were just the right size and shape, and if you didn't know that kind of thing mattered to me, it does. I like lines and I like shapes and I can tell you when a shape is wrong from like fifty feet away. It is a terrible, terrible power.
A friend's reaction to yesterday's post was to suggest I write a Chuck Klosterman-esque book of essays. This made me try to remember what my life was like when I first read Killing Yourself to Live, and while I could recall the broad strokes of it all —— where I lived, where I worked, and who I was dating —— most of the memories of that time in my life are 404-ed. Maybe it was the booze and maybe it was a bunch of bad shit that happened; either way, when I try to set my motherfucker to receive I simply cannot.
There's this idea that writers just, like, sit at the keyboard and it all just comes out, all smooth and sexy, like syrup getting poured out of a bottle. I used to think this because I used to be young and young people are stupid. It never pours out, it's more like there's less friction sometimes. This isn't to say it feels bad, because it doesn't. If it did, no one would do it except the kinds of people who think that feeling bad is the point, by which I mean young people, and young people are stupid.
Young writers all write about themselves, and I was no different. I wanted to be better than myself because a friend of mine showed me that Faulkner quote, so I went about trying to write about anything except myself. Turns out I had set my motherfucker to receive and had received all the wrong things, because along the way I had processed it all as "young writers shouldn't write about themselves," and so I didn't. Eventually I got so good at self-effacement that I disappeared.
Life is looking forward or it's looking back. That's it.
🌲 gonna the reward
🌼 go for
🌱 touch good work
🌳 grass is
🌷 now sleep, thankfully
Be good to yourself.
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