Friday, July 18, 2003
Writers of fiction are often stay-at-homes. The writing is hard work. But fiction can come from pure imagination & fantasy., building a world. I'm not especially talented in that respect. I have to go out, observe, listen, witness, eavesdrop. Even be invisible if I can. My art comes from within, the content usually from without. This is why poets & The Fourth Estate are fond of each other. For millennia prior to the invention of the printing press, we had the same job. The modern novel happened in the 18th Century. Objectivity in journalism is even more recent.
It's not about talk, talk, talk. It's about write, write, write. Writing is not talking. The only way to show respect for a writer is to read the writing. If you don't read it, the writer might look for ways to make you read it. What changed in me, slowly, over the past few years was that I began respecting myself as an artist, at last. & I had so much work to to do, dragging over twenty years of writing & ideas, none of it "collected" much less "selected," sorted. Other concepts had followed the "Boardwalk," assemblage & been put aside. Experimental work had been put aside. 100 short essays had been written, published in the newspaper, & put aside. WFMU, as great an experience as it was, had grown up, expanded & gone off in a direction I wasn't up to following because my literary work & music knowledge hadn't kept up. I couldn't get a clear reflection of myself as a poet / performer. A few people who bullshitted me had to go. People who disrespected or were indifferent to my art had to become engaged with it in some way or other - I could not afford hiding it for the convenience & comfort of those who refused to deal with it. Most unsettling of all, I know I have to protect my art - try at least - from having it all tossed in the paper recycle bin when I die. Which means I have to get it all out of New Jersey & into a university archive next to some poets with whom I've shared a kinship of purpose over the years. It's a world & work & art I created without the endorsement of a single blood relative, but with the support of another small "family" of friends & allies.
The Pier, a webzine
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
It's not about talk, talk, talk. It's about write, write, write. Writing is not talking. The only way to show respect for a writer is to read the writing. If you don't read it, the writer might look for ways to make you read it. What changed in me, slowly, over the past few years was that I began respecting myself as an artist, at last. & I had so much work to to do, dragging over twenty years of writing & ideas, none of it "collected" much less "selected," sorted. Other concepts had followed the "Boardwalk," assemblage & been put aside. Experimental work had been put aside. 100 short essays had been written, published in the newspaper, & put aside. WFMU, as great an experience as it was, had grown up, expanded & gone off in a direction I wasn't up to following because my literary work & music knowledge hadn't kept up. I couldn't get a clear reflection of myself as a poet / performer. A few people who bullshitted me had to go. People who disrespected or were indifferent to my art had to become engaged with it in some way or other - I could not afford hiding it for the convenience & comfort of those who refused to deal with it. Most unsettling of all, I know I have to protect my art - try at least - from having it all tossed in the paper recycle bin when I die. Which means I have to get it all out of New Jersey & into a university archive next to some poets with whom I've shared a kinship of purpose over the years. It's a world & work & art I created without the endorsement of a single blood relative, but with the support of another small "family" of friends & allies.
The Pier, a webzine
