RUDIMENTS, pt. 226
Making Cars
I always found that I could
never be safe. Never be
complaisant either. I was
a natural-born autopsy
performer, always piercing
back the skin to find what
was under the rubble. Maybe
that great tumor was a thought,
that cancer a runaway dream.
That's all what I wanted, like
fire under a bedsheet, or a
raging river in a time of
drought. I took chances. The
pen, being mightier than the
sword, BECAME my sword.
My own world was a dream
of new targets.
-
I did find that when you're out
on the streets you pretty much
have to talk like that - since no
alternatives exist. You can't fake
it. You can't not cut it. The other
ward, over there, is death. I went
somehow from the curdled milk
of the seminary to, in a few easy
lessons, the dead-street decrepitude
of 1967's streets in about a dime's
worth of matter. If you haven't
lived those times, you'll find all
this hard. If any of you may have
been around, I'm pretty sure you'll
find my tune harmonic. I blew
into town like a tumbleweed that
maybe has just blown through
cat piss and dog poop together.
(No one picked up their animal's
stuff back then; you rolled in it
or stepped in it - maybe even
found out the next day you'd slept
in it). If Satan had a welcome mat
out, it was a street named Bowery.
Some said 'The Bowery' like it was
a high-class district or something.
I never did. Every other business
was a slime-house bar or a mission
stall. Bums and derelicts. Hippies
and jail-bait. As I was saying, you
end up having to talk like that, like
you've been there all your life,
because the defining characteristics
of that station in life call for it. Some
nitwit from Channel 13 can come by
with a microphone and a filmcrew
and find some supposed genius now
caught out and living on the street
but full of precious ideas and energy.
Who talked like Einstein? Who
lived like Jesse James? Who read
himself to sleep reading Faulkner
and William James? 'Fraid not.
Believe me, lies about the bottom
usually start at the bottom.
-
There are no false stories there -
in no way does anyone go about
saying 'I'm really not this at all.'
Like Hell you're not. Your undershirt
reeks and there's shit on your pants.
Nobody wants to look at you. You're
drooling, and you're half drunk again.
Nothing you can say is going to give
this any sense, nor will you find a
way out. There's no use to a false
snobbery. I remember seeing kids
from Larchmont and places like
that, totally whacked and wasted,
time after time. They probably had
freaked out parents looking for
their kids - or maybe they didn't
and that was why they were there.
In any case I used to think that
if these people had no pocket
money, who was I then to worry.
Evidently no one did. I figured
they always had reserves and this
was all play-acting to them. I'd
seen some of that at the Studio
School - this tall guy, Tom
Embling, half snooty all the
time and you could just tell he
was rich. He gave me a sandwich
once and I ate it in about four
seconds, to which, of course, he
responded with some level of
disgust about how hungry the
animals in the jungle must get.
The jerk probably never wanted
for anything in his whole fake
life. I couldn't pretend, and didn't
have a mind to anyway. I wolfed
it down. No use pretending a
false snobbery with someone
else's free sandwich. I said
something like, 'Well, you gave
it to me. What else did you
expect me to do with it except
eat it?' Don't know what that
sounded like, but he changed
subjects. I don't know how he
ever ended up, or what he's
doing. Probably the maitre'd
in a morgue somewhere.
-
Just like when writing, you have
to identify, or be able to identify,
with your own level of narration
and language. You can't talk like
a soldier if you're on a baseball
field. Whatever that level is, it's
pretty much all you're going to be
seeing and hearing, so get used to
it. Others are only going to reflect
that same situation. One motto
might be, 'Don't bloat.' I've never
seen a really poor person bloat
anyway. First off, they don't
know how to; just haven't got
the skill. Things for them are
both too real and too raw. Too
direct. The rooms they live in,
let's say, are too close for comfort,
as if the walls were closing in.
A bloat just wouldn't fit.
-
Another thing that always caused
me grief - looking at my miserable
life and affairs from a 'writer's
secret perspective : I was always
troubled by the difference between
points of view, the particular to
the general, or the general to
the particular. Inductive reasoning,
it's called, versus deductive
reasoning, the other one's called.
Never quite have I worked that out;
I think the particular to the general
just really ends up irking me, but
I'm not so sure. Like school art,
always trying to get a lesson or
a moral across. Just tonight, for
instance, I was sitting in a room,
for a reading, and the walls were
covered with some horrid catholic
high school prize-winner art-student
art. Man the stuff was horrible. No
different from something a 6th grader
would be doing. No though, no
anything except doctrine. Miserable,
adolescent, bullshit art - all full
of angst and pity.The one I make
mention of, because in a very
emblematic way it went from
the particular to a very general
(not really good for art either)
was a chalk-color poor portrait
of a large 'Welcome to Las Vegas'
sign, and then the name of wherever
that last big shooting was, from
the hotel tower, scrawled on the
left side, and an automatic weapon,
of sorts, at the top left inside one
of those international symbols for
'banned', the red circle with the
slash bar. I found it very pointed,
and useless as art, useless as
doctrine, and useless too as
any form of high discourse. First
learn how to speak like the bums
you're speaking to speak.
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