13,024. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,033

RUDIMENTS, pt 1,033

(nearing the clearing)

Sometimes you think and

other times you find you

can't think. Nothing's there.

They say that, for instance,

it takes 10,000 hours at a

piano, to master it. I don't

where they come up with

this stuff, but whatever. I

think that one comes from

some book called The Tipping

Point, or maybe that guy's

next one, Outliers. (Malcolm

Gladwell is his name). Anyway,

it's completely outside of

reason to approach piano

that way, as if the accumulation

of time is all that's needed. I

always liked to think of the

tipping point being at maybe

the 8th beer, but someone like

Gladwell wouldn't get that;

or maybe he'd write another

book about that, and call it

'The Tippling Point.'

-

I had an artist friend who could

produce nothing unless or until

he was drunk. Many of the old

New York School abstract painters

were like that, in a way, but their

solution was simply to stay drunk

and then be able to paint at all

times. One problem was, they

did that for driving too, and it

didn't work, as a few found

out. But, sobriety is always a

consideration, for me, when I

see some of their art, from that

era. I sometimes wonder, 'how

toasted was this guy when he

did this one?' The same with

words, and writers  -  a lot of

them were crash-land basket

case drunks, and they too ended

up in mean deals, like Berryman,

jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis

and waving to the world all the

way down. I guess he was waving

goodbye, but, hey, who knows?

That was about, oh, maybe 1972.

Before that, he'd published a book

entitle 'Recovery'  -  supposedly

about how he kicked all that, but

apparently that wasn't quite the deal.

I have the book here, on a shelf

somewhere, but I've never read it,

not even half. Each time I started,

I got bored stiff, even when I just

began reading wherever the book

fell open, to whichever page; thinking

perhaps there'd be some surprise to

hold me; alas. Not.

-

My writer friend came over and,

finding that book on my shelf, got

all crazy over it (he was always

going overboard on grievances and

such) and started going off about

what a betrayal that was to 'throw

the craft of writing' overboard

through therapy and clinics and all.

I said I thought the only thing he

threw overboard was his self. I

had no real feelings about it either

way, but he got incensed. Paul's

point that any writer should know

to work off the aberrations, use

them as fuel and fodder for new

work, not try to cure them.
Maybe that's true.

-

I used to think he lived in a haunted

house that he could never get out

of. It was sometimes, I admit, 

difficult to get along with him, but

we managed. One time, about 1980, 

he came out to Metuchen, to visit the

house we were living in. He saw a

motorcycle on my grass, and freaked

over that, saying he was very surprised 

to see that I'd gotten a motorcycle. Like

it was a sin or something. Then, as he 

entered, he saw that we had a cat, 

and began tht whole 'I'm allergic to 

cats, and I don't like them anyway,' 

routine; and then lastly, going into the
house he saw I'd been power-sanding

the wood floor throughout, plus then

adding new coats of gym-seal, Marine

Valspar, whatever it was. It was 

odorous, and sanding wasn't exactly 

a clean project. Let's just say he was

back on the train to NYC in short

order. Sometimes he just didn't

get it; the real world and all that.

Paul died of something, some

cancer or other, at 53, in about

2010, as I remember. It's always

a shame. Always.

-

I hated surviving my friends. I hated

living on. Now, of course, I'm glad 

for it, and I admit to being scared of

dying  -  not for any reasons other

than leaving things behind. Leaving

others behind; all my junk, and papers,

and writing and photos and everything.

Including unpaid bills, I suppose, but

once your dead that shouldn't really

even enter the picture, for the dead 

anyway. In fact, some fool said o

me, 'Run up the bills; pack on those

cards. I'm told when you die they're

forgiven.' I don't know how true any

of that is, and once I'm dead I'll

still never know; or at least it's not

the sort of thing I'll ghost back as

to snoop around over. I'm already

tired of everything, so maybe I'll

be glad when it's all finally done?

-

People talk about regrets and sorrows,

all the time; like it was a constant and

always developing thing. I find it's not.

I can't even figure cemeteries out, though

I go there a lot. There's a million of them,

and they're all wasting good space; like

golf courses too. Dead people are just that,

and the kind of memorialization that goes

on has a shelf-life of maybe 20 years, and

that's long; after that fewer people even

know who that old person was, and with

the big monuments or those silly rooms

in mausoleums, etc., you can see it's

the living who have the interest in any

of this; certainly not the dead. Just

because you 'can't take it with you,'

doesn't mean you have to leave junk

cluttered all around like that after 

you're gone.