RUDIMENTS, pt.182
Making Cars
I'd have to guess that no one likes
conjecture, or things about which
they have to guess - they like things
nailed down and spelled out. Makes
it easier. There's a whole school of
people who teach otherwise; who
seek enigma and mysteriousness, so
that no one is quite ever sure what
they're saying or where they're
going to with something. Idea-wise,
I mean. That's what makes some of
that writing workshop stuff so creepy:
others telling you how NOT to write
clearly, so that they're covered for
themselves, having made you such a
writing wreck that nothing good will
ever come from your pen again, while
they can satisfactorily sit right where
they've always been, secure that you'll
be no threat. Leastways that's the way
it's always seemed to me. That's what
grammar is all about anyway - keeping
you, as the writer, in bounds. I like to
make words up, and I don't particularly
care if things are said 'right' or not.
Sometimes I like to elide over words,
or jam things together or even use
them incorrectly - just to make a
point, or to rattle any one of those
pointy-butts who may be reading.
If you go to writing-school, or any
of those over-generous writing-session
things, the first observation you make
is that it's a bunch of crap - insider
type people who could be doing any
of a hundred other things in place of
'writing' and still maintaining their
tired, old world-view and probably
getting the same satisfaction from it.
Gardening. Bicycling. Tent-making.
There used to be news boxes all
over New York (before all this
Internet gibberish now) that always
had newsletters and brochures and
news-packets for things like the
New York School For Writing, or
or the New York Writing Academy,
or Institute, or any of that. There
was even one called The Famous
Writers School. (I don't know or
remember what sort of apostrophe
they used). As you can see, all it
was was a scam-industry dedicated
to fleecing people out of six hundred
bucks every couple of months so
they could feel they were intently
writing the new Huck Finn, or
Quo Vadis, or Catcher In the Rye,
or 'V' or Seven Days in May, or
As I Lay Dying. Let alone those
God-forsaken every-holy tomes
like Gravity's Rainbow or The
Great Gatsby. It used to make me
laugh just to see what suckers
people could be. Authenticity goes
right down the drain when some
blowhard starts plucking the feathers
off some real, raw talent and calling it
'excessive' or 'untrained.' Fifty years
later, of course, the next batch of
shitheads are teaching that very same
stuff, as being the 'raw, inspired talent'
of 50 years previous. It all makes
no sense and it's a ship full of holes.
-
Most people use things as excuses to
use things, covers for what they'd like
to be but really are not, or can't ever be.
And the reason for that is that they're
far too fastidious, worrying over every
crumpet and droplet falling away from
their hand. You've got to have a devil-
may-care attitude (not even sure what
that means, especially in this context)
to really 'write'. You need to cut right
through - and always be willing to cut
right through - anything in your way.
And usually that's not going to make
the anal-retentives among us happy
at all. It all has to with just going forth.
It becomes OK when some nitwit outfit
like Nike, or whichever one of them
sneaker outfits do it, says 'Just Do It' -
to buy techno-sneakers, and all the
crumbums line up to get the latest.
Try it with real, American writing,
and you first get slashed to bits -
as if you were first in the ghetto
playground with all those sneaker
dudes and had just gotten caught
double-dribbling. Blood on the
pavement, baby.
-
There are all different kinds of
people, for sure. I saw that, right
off the bat. Somebody with, say,
a good nose about jokes or a good
way to debate, can be a real loser
with a bad head for facts, getting
nothing straight and twisting
everything all up. Some can do
nothing 'good' except for following
rules, orders, and procedures, while
others have to have the cart being
constantly upturned and all those
contents spilled. To be a good
person, a good writer anyway, you
have to watch, and sense, and 'react'
ahead of the reaction time. That's
where the best stories are. Before
the things actually occur. What kind
of advance-scout reporting that is,
I never know; but that's the key to
writing. Whatever's coming, you
have to stay ahead of that.
-
Try telling that to a lamppost
sometime. (You might have
better luck). You can't always
just be following rules. Sometimes
they need to be broken - you
have to 'engage' your situation.
When I got plucked up, for
instance, and dragged to Whitehall,
the old induction station, then the
tag-house for processing cannon
fodder for Vietnam (thank you, NYC),
I saw immediately that the entire
place was filled with death and dead
bodies - all these people, even the
lowliest clerk or typist among-them,
or some ample-breasted orderly
or snickering janitor, they were as
good as dead. It was all just rules
and the processing of the rules, in
this case that processing being the
rounding up and distribution of
able-bodied New York boys to the
lie-based charnel-house of Vietnam.
These people never had to face-off
with some mother of a dead kid,
or a father whose son was blown
to smithereens by some Vietcong
sapper, shooting people off his
land, as it were. Endless laws for
endless lies, and all these totally
non-creative types were doing
was following orders and
processing forms, all because
that's what they were told to
do and they never had to answer
for it. They were never 'ahead' of
anything at all. There are, have
to be, ways of engaging one's own
life not just dictated by knowing
the rules, but by getting around them
because they stink. You can read a
hundred instruction manuals, each
which will tell you how to carry out
a task, but you can never interpret
them past their own last point - a
juncture which 'you' (that such person)
will then need the next instruction
book to tell them more. Because they
do not know how to free-float
in space. They're coarse and dumb.
I saw tons of that. Ludwig Wittengstein
put it like this: "If there has to be
anything 'behind the utterance of
the formula' it is particular circumstances
which justify me in saying I can go on
- when the formula occurs to ME." Each
one of us must have a way of knowing
what our particular situation is - a
different, more intuitive, way of
knowing how to sense and adapt to
each new moment. For me, it worked
that way, and still does. Heidegger here:
'The nearest kind of association is not mere
perceptual cognition, but, rather, a handling,
using, and taking care of things which
has its own kind of 'knowledge.'
-
Yeah, and 'philosophers' don't bake cakes
either. At some point (I think) life is
maybe less thought, less following, than
it is action, making, doing. Outside that
tired, old, ordinary (Avenel) way of
being - by the book, quiet, passive,
and old, and dead.
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