Hey! Take a trip to the Canada Free Press… and take a look at Jeff’s, the owner of ”My Nasty Romance,” take on the congressional re-write of our constitution made it up to Canada 
Congratulations Jeff!
Cheers!
A solicited guest column by Jeff Begley:
The Outdated, Outmoded, Old... Oh, never mind!
Congress shall make laws disrespecting established religions, and prohibiting the free exercise thereof in public areas; and abridging the freedom of speech by calling certain speech “hate speech”, and of the press through the hilariously named “fairness doctrine”; but not the right of the people peaceably to assemble for these assemblies will simply be handled through media outlets and labeled violent, racist extremists in order to dismiss them rather than address them.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall be infringed. We will also hedge on the definition of the word militia, ignore the original intent of the founders, and make certain that once liberal hegemony is established it will be impossible to disrupt through force of arms.
Soldiers shall, in time of peace-keeping, be figuratively drawn and quartered for any mistakes made in front of a journalist. We shall also attempt to quarter soldier pay, benefits, and at least put a dent in any honor once felt in serving the nation by claiming people only join as a last resort.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable or even reasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause as defined by the current administration, supported by oath or affirmation of a federal judge appointed by a Democratic president, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Under no circumstances shall the possibility of the person being an illegal, er, undocumented… um – insufficiently-naturalized citizen be broached.
Amendment 5 shall be phased out to make room for the implementation of an adult day-school for the reeducation of those with a diminished capacity to follow laws. These poor souls simply need dignity and love. Kumbaya.
In all criminal prosecutions, if we must, the accused shall enjoy the right to a supportive and closed trial so as not to impinge upon their sense of dignity, by an racially diverse jury with as few privileged, bigoted white people on it as possible, of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed unless we want to move it for political posturing. It should be noted that, as in the case of the 5th Amendment, trials are to be avoided as much as possible due to self-esteem issues they appear to cause in the accused.
In cases where political opponents disagree, no civil discourse shall be initiated. Instead, agreeable media outlets shall be engaged in order to impugn the character of said opponents in order to dismiss them as some sort of crackpot, whichever is considered the lowliest type at that particular time. If the term “racist” can be used without fear of reprisal, it shall.
Being that punishment is considered mean by those being punished and the term unusual is vague, we shall pretend to rehabilitate those poor, misguided souls who asserted their wills over the wills of others. Only if a crime personally affects us shall we even consider punishment as an option because, hey, it’s us and not you that are suffering at that point.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall be construed as the absolute limits of rights retained by the people. If the people need more rights, we will determine what they are and grant them. Maybe. Ok, not really.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people… LOL! Okay, we were really just yanking your chain here. Gotcha! Seriously, the central government shall retain all the power. States are for hillbillies clinging to their bibles and guns.
My Nasty Romance - Author's Website
It’s here! The newly published freshman novel by J. Ethan Begley is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Lulu – the publisher! In the recent past I sweat my way through a book review of The Gospel of Lazlo to somewhat competent effect and even wider readership – it’s been in the top ten posts for some time now. Take a look at the review, or not, but buy the book – it has the important elements of modern literature… it’s fun and entertaining, screw the deeper meaning, it’ll slap you on the back of the head after you read it =)
From Amazon’s page, here’s a small blurb describing the story:
Apparently the reprinted scrapbook of a possibly disturbed individual, The Gospel of Lazlo tells the tale of Mr. Lazlo Epps, a suicide clean-up worker who takes up residence in a dead man’s townhouse. His “really real” world is soon shredded by a chocolate peddling holy man, a deranged Goth clown, and a would-be penguin terrorist.Stumbling through the wreckage of his life, Lazlo finds himself hounded into a relationship by Sophie Bogota, an enigmatic password psychic, and embroiled in a cultural revolution he cannot personally abide.Lazlo must either find truth within himself or step aside as a fictional messiah pulls back the veil of belief to expose the reality most people fear too much to accept. Decide for yourself whether this fantastical urban fairy tale is real or merely the product of a diseased imagination.
Cheers all,
Enjoy!
One Brick at a Time @ Responsibility
My apologies for not posting regularly these past several weeks, especially since I’d promised to attempt a minimal once a week update. I had considered blowing this whole enterprise off as a wasted or failed effort, but again, reconsidered. As I promised in my last post, I planned to give an account of my absence – I think this will go a bit further than that…
Why this extended absence? Illness, anger, and an unusual despondency are the straightforward explanations. Very nearly two weeks were consumed with a flu that kicked my old tired ass around the work place, home, and… “does it really make sense to disappear on your motorcycle when you have pneumonia?” While my wife is absolutely right to pose the question as though I were a teenager, it is also true that sometimes, that little teenage rebellion might be worthwhile. Little rides like this help me. As I mentioned to an online blogger buddy “I needed some time by myself to recharge, get my shit straight, and screw my head back on.”
While that explains part of my failure to provide regular posts, the other parts are at once more personal and more public. I received a few phone calls and several posts enquiring as to my well being – all much appreciated! So, on the other end of a little despondency, and in response to those initial communications I threw up the last post with every intention of getting right back to business. Here’s where the story gets a little squirrely.
With great thanks to a gift card to The MacStore from my daughter and son-in-law, I purchased a new Mac Book Pro. I’ve often found that the quickest and most direct route to learning something is “total immersion.” I resolved to avoid my desktop until I was reasonably proficient with my new laptop… I’ve answered many emails LATE because I failed to sit down at my desktop and check mail. Though I am getting the hang of my Mac 
Poor excuse, but it is the explanation of record. You have my sincerest apologies for not answering emails much sooner.
I ran across several [emails] that both entertained and admonished – which made me rethink continuing this blog. I received several versions of a very similar sentiment: “You said once a week,” “Hey, WTF? Once a month updates??” “Get your lazy ass back to work, and don’t make excuses, POST SOMETHING.” “You need to post something more often than once each month or so…” From a subject line: “I sure hope you are on vacation” Thanks to all of you that wrote or called – even being called a “lazy shit” made me feel special
What does that have to do with the anger and despondency? Daughters and patriots? So here’s the post!
T.A. Barnhart, a contributor at Blue Oregon, wrote an article on July Fourth of last year entitled We are all patriots, not just arrogant generals with big mouths. In it, he castigates General Bednarek for the following statement:
“Honor. Duty. Patriotism,” Bednarek said. “Unfortunately, there’s way too many people in our country who have forgotten it, don’t understand it or never got it.” - Savannah (GA) Morning News
By the nature and tone of Barnhart’s reporting, I suspect he wasn’t there for the whole event. I suspect this because Barnhart doesn’t marshal any other real evidence of Bednarek’s supposed offence, and yet spends a tremendous amount of space attributing various vile character defects to the general for that one statement. He variously calls the general or his words a “fool,” “grotesque, shameful, and unprofessional,” “And stupid.” Read the article, you’ll pick up Barnhart’s “inappropriate, irresponsible and reprehensible” comments about the general.
In addition to the character attacks Barnhart launches without one whit of evidence, he also attributes beliefs to the general that are patently of Barnhart’s own invention. According to Barnhart the general’s arrogance “is unbecoming of an officer, an American and, above all, a patriot.” First, the notion that the general was directing his comments at Barnhart is an absurdity. It’s common to many people. Imagine a manager, not wishing to call out a few employees, mentions that “everyone needs to do [enter chosen task here] better.” A fair share of employees will immediately take offense even though none was proffered. Second, to throw out a challenge that the general’s words were unbecoming an American and patriot reveal Barnhart to be a hypocrite. How is it that Barnhart is allowed to define patriotism and denies that same right to the general? Simple, Barnhart is a self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-centered hypocrite.
I didn’t comment on that post, nor did I comment on his follow up a week later entitled, Fear, anger, and a son too far away that was loaded with more unreasonable vitriol. Except there he does precisely what he accuses but never demonstrates the general of doing. He claims his anger, then accuses the American people (hyperbole or not, this is BS):
I am angry at the American people whose self-centered, piss-ignorant fearfulness (where is our cherished trust in God?) let them approve with hearty cheers and huzzahs the tossing of their children into the maw of war. The steadfast refusal of too many Americans to learn a goddamn thing about the world and people who are neither bad nor wrong but merely “foreign” has resulted in this obscene war and occupation. The blood of all those who’ve died or been torn apart by this war is on the hands of an American populace with no desire to care about the rest of the world unless they can feel all warm and fuzzy via a tax-deductible charity.
Why didn’t I comment on the posts? The reason was simple. His son was in harm’s way and I had two daughters and two sons-in-law in the same sandbox. I understand being angry. In fact, I believe Barnhart is a patriot, just as I believe the general is a patriot. More to the point, I agree with the general, that there are too many today that have “forgotten… don’t understand… or never got…” honor, duty, and patriotism. Witness the past (ENRON et al) and current crop of corporate thieves (pick a bank that passed their risk on to his fellow citizens) who have raped our economy. Moreover, think about the various groups of American citizens saying things like “Goddam America,” etc.
Hmmm. Should I assume Barnhart was addressing me as one of those “self-centered, piss-ignorant” Americans? Perhaps. I didn’t, but perhaps he was referring to people like me. I disagree, strongly, with a great number of things Barnhart writes, but I rarely doubt his love of community, and by extension, his love of country.
I was passionately opposed to the war in Iraq, as was my wife and many of my friends. Many, on the other hand, supported the invasion of Iraq. So why was I angry? Because my president (yes, I say that, even though many on the left wouldn’t call Bush their president) still hasn’t got my kids out of Iraq, and more important, he [the president] just sent one back for another tour of duty. I am angry at my government for not delivering on one of the promises made during a campaign. Moreover, I am angry at writers like T. A. Barnhart who create a clamor out of imagined insults and contribute to the very divisiveness they claim to abhor.
At this point I think it’s worth defining patriot. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first listed meaning of the word is rare or obsolete as a compound “a fellow-countryman, compatriot.” However, the primary meaning with a caveat about usage before the late seventeenth century is:
2.a. One who disinterestedly or self-sacrificingly exerts himself to promote the wellbeing of his country; ‘one whose ruling passion is the love of his country’ (J.); one who maintains and defends his country’s freedom or rights.
In this use, at first, as in French (see Littré), with ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘worthy’, or other commendatory adjective: cf. ‘good citizen’. ‘Patriot’ for ‘good patriot’ is rare before 1680. At that time often applied to one who supported the rights of the country against the King and court.
Why mention the definition? Because of Barnhart’s title “We are all patriots…” This kind of political correctness is a chain and anchor to mediocrity. Let’s not indulge in this kind of nonsense. Here’s a wonderful bit of dialogue from one of my favorite Pixar flicks, The Incredibles that demonstrates the point:
Dash: You always say ‘Do your best’, but you don’t really mean it. Why can’t I do the best that I can do?
Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else.
Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.
Angry – and maybe a little despondent that I’m not sure I’ll change a thing. Do I take the long view or the short view? Do I stop this silly writing and activism, or keep on going? Like Barnhart’s challenge to the general, I’d match my patriotism against Barnhart’s any time – and probably for similar reasons. I’m an optimistic pessimist – I believe countries, communities, groups, and even individuals are capable of change… whether I believe in it or not.
I stole the above photo from Tom over at Responsibility – click it for a great post. I’m working on my next brick. I said thanks for the encouragement earlier, but it wasn’t specific enough – thanks to Tom, Jeff, Mr. Grim, Tony, Andy, Cindy, Moira, and Billy.
Cheers all!!
Let’s keep marching forward.
Monday Monday, so good to me, / Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be… so far! Please, press play (I still like the Mama’s and the Pappas, so here are three songs for your pleasure) I’ve written my entry for Susan’s Microfiction Monday and am looking forward to my weekly visits of new online buddies that also participate in this fun weekly meme. With the advent of tweeting (though I don’t), it is not just a fun idea, it is a challenging and entertaining goal to accomplish each week. The rules are relatively simple – write a story of 140 characters or less that is triggered by an image provided by our hostess. I encourage my visitors with blogs of their own to join in – the fellowship alone is worth the price of admission. So, let’s get to business!
The Triggering Town (click Richard Hugo)
All the grass is green
and the sky is grey
I’ve been for a walk
on a summer’s day
California Cows happier??
*cough* Bulls@&t! DREAMING!
Try the second song 
Had to take that somewhere, so it seemed music might be nice.
Now I’ve some exciting news: Jeff, over at My Nasty Romance, a sometime fellow traveler in this weekly meme, has a new book coming out soon. The moment I get a link to the Amazon purchasing point I’ll post it here – as well as at my book review of The Gospel of Lazlo. Please take a run through the review, forgive me for not being quite the polished reviewer, and know, it’s a damn fine book despite my reviewing inexperience!
The best of Mondays to all of you, and thanks again Susan for a marvelous Monday meme!
Cheers All!
“Strip away the penguin bombers, kung-fu gothic clowns, and underground cafe societies and what you have left is a boy and a girl…” ~Jeff Begley – Author of The Gospel of Lazlo
I delightedly received an advance [reviewer’s] copy of a new book, and was of course asked to review… the… book. The fact that I don’t know the first thing about writing a review didn’t deter me – I like books, what could go wrong? I figured, like the seven words you can’t say on TV, I’d find a “what not to say” list and muddle my way through. Here’s Carlin’s list:
[Everybody knows these seven cuss words, if not, follow the link] Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.
Wow, pretty easy. Certain that the “thou shalt nots” were fewer and easier than the “thou shalts,” I found my list of “don’t words” on the New York Times:
“Poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft, muse, and lyrical” [those are the heavy seven. The ones…] It’s possible to (mis)use all seven words in a one-sentence book report: “Mario Puzo’s intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob.”
At this point I knew I was screwed. I should have mentioned the title and author’s name right up front – oh wait, I did! While I still think I’m screwed here, let me tell you why the book is a must read without the above words… on the second list. So pretend this next paragraph is the first 
Jeff Begley’s freshman novel, The Gospel of Lazlo catches the reader by the throat up front and promptly throws him into the company of Lazlo, our protagonist and primary narrator. The details throughout are as real, graphic and gritty as the characters in this thrust at the fringes of dystopian cyberpunk. I say the fringes because, like the opening quote, it’s more than cyberpunk – it’s got a romance of the best sort, the kind that happens while you’re busy getting on with life. More on the romance later – I like the religion, sex, and politics!
The book is about an out of work, homeless, skeptic of a journalist named Lazlo Epps. Though initially stumbling his way through the process of living, he manages to stumble into both a bit of journalistic work and a home. The stumbling continues as Lazlo finds himself making choices that disquiet both he and the reader and put him in the middle of a cultural rebellion. The story is well plotted and spends more time on narrative (action and storytelling) craft (oh shit, I’ve used two of the forbidden words) than description or exposition.
Begley, like Richard Bach in Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, leads us to the problems between perceptions and reality and the contingencies involved with individual experience. Again, it’s graphic, gritty, and to the point. Where Bach leads us gently, “Perspective – Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that –” Begley grabs us by the short and curlies and shakes us where we live and lets us know “It’s horrifying how the lens of your life can change with a single event.” This lens shifting is a recurrent theme that is put to excellent use and is introduced early with Lazlo’s recounting of his divorce. The perceptual shifts, the accretions of gradual and sometimes horrifyingly abrupt curtain lifting, cause us to share the lens shifts experienced by Begley’s well formed characters.
For example, Lazlo is involved in a “reconditioning service” specializing in cleaning up after suicides, murders, etc. Describing the lens shift suffered by the clients availing themselves of this “reconditioning service” Lazlo graphically shows us:
For the customers of Discrete Reconditioning Services this was also the case. Before they required our help, their home was a sanctuary, their default location, and a safe haven. After their loved one bled out in the bathtub or ate some buckshot, their home was a tragic site. Their default location became their cars or any public place they could sit and avoid their house. Their safe haven was the source of their insecurities, fears, and pathos.
Their promise of a father or husband replaced with a crime scene. Their sanctuary, a forensics exhibit.
When his daughter is graduating from high school and she thinks how much she wished her father was there, she’ll have a moment where she remembers his head broken apart in the bathroom. When his widow makes the final payment on their house, she’ll feel the irresistible need to go look at the toilet where they found her husband. She’ll remember all the invented fictions of their retirement before it happened, two old lovers working a garden into their twilight, and in the middle will be her husband sitting in front of a wall turned into a semi-truck mud flap for brains.
This particular day, we were working for the Army on a “rapid, wide-effect cranial evacuation,” DRS lingo for a head blown all over the wall. To tell the truth, most of our work was military. Channy sat on a barstool that looked like a giant yellow suction cup for his ass. This was a Sergeant Major’s house.
Lens shift.
Discussing his friend Channy’s lens shift, Lazlo relates the old aphorism that there are no atheists in foxholes. Begley manages to put a wry smile on our faces while still maintaining a firm grip on our throats:
But there’s nothing natural about having the upper left quadrant of your skull shaved off with a bullet. Nothing natural about a tipped over baby carriage exploding next to your truck sending scraps of metal and screws into your belly and pelvis. That type of stuff makes it hard to be an atheist.
I didn’t really know that Channy was an atheist.
In Bosnia I was Catholic.
Channy never really talked about God or an afterlife or anything, other than to criticize religion. For all I knew he was Wiccan.
In Kosovo I was Buddhist.
Now here’s the hard part… how do I keep going without giving up the story? Do I tell you the obvious? Life isn’t a fairy tale. That it’s important to take the time to look behind the curtains as best we’re able? Life has good things for us too. Like that romance stuff I said I’d return to later… There’s this girl named Sophie…
“Alright, Mr. Epps. Do you want me to be in your fairy tale?”
Could I handle a woman who might catch glimpses of my mind through passwords when I didn’t want her to? I wasn’t sure. But that wasn’t what she was offering. She was offering to catch those glimpses and then let them go. I didn’t think it would work, but if I didn’t say ‘yes’ I’d regret within moments not knowing for sure.
“Yeah, I want that kind of fairy tale.”
Sophie winked at me and half-smiled. “Then the last two hours never happened.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “Just like that.”
Something made me believe. Big eyes and a pair of breasts could get me to believe a lot, but this was different.
…Sophie made her whippet-sniffing grin permanent; it was carved into her face and wasn’t going away. I shrugged off my seatbelt and climbed into the back seat with her. I didn’t want the distraction of Mack. The hardest part of being a romantic is other guys watching.
So then, I’ll give you some privacy to pick up a great little novel that pushes a few boundaries, conjures up notions of spiritual growth without being religious, and provides transformations as stunning as Neo in the Matrix or Bach’s reluctant messiah. As soon as it’s available, I’ll remind you and post a link for the purchase HERE at my site!
Update: Also available here! and here!
It is that time again, Susan’s Microfiction Monday that is – and it happened before I managed to get my post on the Middle East up and running! I’ve a book review going up later that will introduce a talented new writer, so buy the book when I give the link!!
Microfiction Monday is hosted by Susan over at Stony River, and it is a wonderfully direct and short short short story based on a picture she provides. In fact, the story is so short, well, it’s tweetable! Tell a complete story in a 140 characters or less – and join the Monday Fundays.
This Monday’s Trigger:
Lapine? A Language?
Of course I’d like to be El-ahrairah Fiver,
he’s only the best trickster ever.
Were I like him I’d have us to Watership Down in no time!
I suppose I lamed that one a bit by relying so heavily on a book… but my kids and I LOVED that book! It’s a great one to read aloud to kids – it reads like poetry – it’s the best kind of prose for the young and young at heart… if a bit scary! Stay tuned here, a book review of one of our fellow players is due here shortly!!
Cheers fellow travelers!
Susan at Stony River hosts a fun little writing exercise each Monday that encourages a 140 (or less) character story triggered by a picture. Be sure to drop by and check out the many thoughts on a single image. Join in and have some fun with the crowd that follows her around that weekly image Hope to see you there!
And the triggering town this week?
That one kicked my hooha! I’m really looking forward to dropping by everyone’s place to see their take on this photo. I wound up going with the stoner spot in the mountains… a place some high school kids back in the day… Well, they weren’t exactly flower children…
The new header picture is courtesy my brother’s excellent photography up in the hills near Quartzville – after the fog had cleared, and nearer the source of the creek. If you’re ever of a mind to see some truly stunning photography, my brother goes by the moniker ClickClan over at JPG Magazine. For those of you who liked the previous post’s photo, my brother took one of same area of Green Peter Reservoir that is astonishingly beautiful. The man’s an artist – drop by some time! I promise you’ll enjoy his imagery!
Here are a few of mine (my brother talked me into photography, and I’ve been following him ever since) from the same trip up into the hills. The people on the trip… yes, Einstein is a people Please click on the photos for a full size view.
Cheers all!
Wazzup?
Silly Puppy!
Dad, put the camera down...
Eric mulling over the optimal settings.
Yes, I am that cute.
I’ve been reading bits, blogs, and books on writing again. Thanks in part to a vacation I picked up my journal again – for more than cursory entries – and gave it a serious working out. Another part I owe some thanks to is Jeff, an online buddy over at My Nasty Romance (MNR). I took a book on vacation with me called The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo. While reading The Triggering Town, I also ran across one of Jeff’s posts concerning the “Journey” known as writing… To turn this into a nice trifecta (though I won’t necessarily give places), The American Spectator (TAS) had an article entitled Look at Me by James Bowman. Though the Am Spec article wasn’t specifically about writers, it included them in the pantheon of creative riffraff who seem not to be concerned with freedom of expression:
Our concerns lie instead with that more recently discovered but, if anything, even more highly valued freedom, the freedom to be attended to by the world at large. You will of course tell me that there is no such freedom in reality, and you will be right. I have said so myself in this space (“The Shock Is Over,” TAS, May 2008) in the course of noticing how Saskia Olde Wolbers, one of the army of mostly unattended-to artists in our heavily overpopulated “creative” world, has referred mournfully to “the meaninglessness of being unobserved.” Since then, our national crisis of inattention has only grown more acute. Now it’s not just those ever-growing numbers of obscure artists, poets, actors, and other such riffraff that the wider world is neglecting, but the once enormously popular news media, with their delightful fables and fantasies of American public life (TAS October 2009).
Bowman’s entire article is definitely worth the read, especially as it relates to the fantasies and self-indulgence of our current crop of “creative types” who seem to conflate the notion of art with publicity. He notes “It’s hard to tell whether this assimilation of art to publicity has percolated down from the high to the popular culture or risen up, like sap, from the popular to the high. But there’s hardly any difference between the two now anyway” (TAS October 2009). That’s a sad finding.
I like to write, especially poetry – guess I’m part of the riffraff. On the other hand, Jeff over at MNR wrote a post that tells a short story of conversion. In his and Joseph Campbell’s words:
I’ve heard it before. Writing is a journey. Work on your craft. Feel the story. Stock your toolbox. Create characters so real they tell the story themselves. Melt your heart down in a small lead bowl and pour it onto the paper like molten soul and then the world will ache at your truthy tellings…
Blah.
It all sounded like hippie crap to me. Writing was an intellectual pursuit. It had plot, characters, and theme. Cross those three streams and, like in Ghostbusters, you could achieve anything. Well, like most things I encounter in my life, I was wrong. Writing is, indeed, a journey in more ways than one.
First, it is a hero’s journey in the classic sense. Joseph Campbell summarized the hero’s journey, or monomyth, thusly: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (MNR 20091024).
Jeff goes on to include the journey of self-realization in his conversion story, but worries that writing might be a tad (maybe even irresponsibly) self-indulgent. Makes me mindful of Robert Heinlein’s only half jesting notion that “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” What immediately captures me in Jeff’s commentary is Campbell’s notion of the hero’s journey. The reason is that it is a repeated theme in both art history and art criticism… if one steps back several decades. There was a difference between personal notoriety and art worthy of notice. Bowman put it like this:
All art needs heroes. In modernist art, the artist was the hero on account of his art. Now he’s a hero if he can just figure out how to get his art noticed. That’s the whole point of conceptual art, which has little or no content qua art (in the old sense of something beautifully wrought) apart from the concept that promises to get it talked about (TAS October 2009).
Finally, the third part of this trifecta is Richard Hugo, though not my favorite poet, he is one of my favorite teachers. Ever. In The Triggering Town, his chapter called “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching” has a few things to say that tie in here:
Roethke used to mumble: “Jesus, you don’t want to say that.” And you didn’t but you hadn’t yet become ruthless enough to create. You still felt some deep moral obligation to “reality” and “truth,” and of course it wasn’t moral obligation at all but fear of yourself and your inner life.
Despite Roethke’s love of verbal play, he could generate little enthusiasm for what passes as experimentation and should more properly be called fucking around. Real experimentation is involved in every good poem because the poet searches for ways to unlock his imagination through trial and error. Quest for a self is fundamental to poetry. What passes for experimentation is often an elaborate method of avoiding one’s feelings at all costs (Hugo, 1979).
I sometimes think it’s a matter of figuring out that reality isn’t necessarily what is real. Jeff put it like this: “…you let the words come out from under your fake self – the self the world knows – and you put it all out on paper as ugly as it was born. It’s slippery with nasty juices, vulgar, and raw as a rug burn. And most of all, it’s real” (MNR 20091024). In Jeff’s worries about irresponsible self-indulgence and Bowman’s charges of art as publicity (getting noticed) there is, I believe, a commonality of interest and intent. Bowman, after sarcastically ripping up Julie & Julia and to a lesser extent the author, he concludes his article:
Hooray for Julie! Who could wish her less successful, less rich, less famous, or played in the movie by anyone less adorable than Amy Adams? But I’d prefer to rent the video of With a Friend Like Harry…, a French film of 2000 by the German-born Dominik Moll, about a poet whose comatose genius is shocked back into life by the discovery that his long-disregarded juvenile oeuvre has found an audience solely on its dubious merits and not on account of his mastery of publicity or compelling personal story. True, it is an audience of one, and that one a criminal madman, but for any real artist that ought to be enough (TAS October 2009).
That isn’t a far jump to Jeff’s closing paragraph concerning self-indulgence: “I would suppose the answer is that it’s self-indulgent, yes. But not irresponsibly so since if even one person feels a kinship by reading the story, I’ve bestowed a boon” (MNR 20091024). Whether the boon is poetry or prose or both, it will have been a shame to fail to shout in the shower those most primitive sounds we make when alone in those reckless moments that trigger our hearts to sing sentences – which maybe only the person in the shower will ever hear. Like Hugo, I hope your “truth conforms to the music” and we meet to hear it.
Cheers.
Fuhgidaboudit!
