More thots ending in a Q&A

(I drew lines and my business associate colored them in.)

Dear diary,

My sweetheart informed me that our ally Mike said to her: “Ask Bryan which film director he would rather have a conversation with, David Lynch or Wes Anderson.” Right away, I answered: I’d rather have a conversation with Mike! because directors make movies so that they don’t have to hobnob with their viewership: the film is their contribution to all future discussions, a provocation to us to talk amongst ourselves. Every soul is equal in the realm of verbal intercourse: there’s no reason to expect Lynch or Anderson to have any better chance of striking conversational gold than another mind. And I also wanted to explain that the Ineffable only acts and is in David Lynch; it does not chat; so even though Lynch is my favorite, I’d choose Anderson to talk with, because I think that Anderson would really have something to SAY about his films; I imagine (wrongly, I’m sure) that he, when joking with friends, mock-analyzes his works; whereas I can’t see Lynch doing that. To my mind, Lynch is Surrealism, Anderson is Mannerism: I love them both deeply and truly; yet I think that I myself (representing Rayism) am more fulfilling to converse with, even when I’m at my least interesting. So if you ever see me, you should try to talk to me. If you’re wondering what book I’m reading at the park, come and ask: I’ll tell you about it. I’ll tell you why I chose it, I’ll tell you what it’s doing for me, and I’ll tell you how I would have preferred it to be written.

(By the way, I’ll drop one word about last night’s Twin Peaks in the postscript.)

*

I wish that we humans were better at raising our children. I wish that we knew what to do with them. It seems that we all care about improving our species, but most parents, if I am to judge them (which I will, on that day when the scorching fire will make Earth’s mountains like tufts of carded wool, to paraphrase Alcoran sura 101: “The Calamity”), the majority get a failing grade.

Why would I give all parents a failing grade? It’s unfair. And who am I to judge them? Well anyone can judge anyone; that’s why death was invented. But the fact is that I watched a movie last night about a young man and a young woman who were pregnant with their first child. Since this couple displeased me in the way that they went about preparing for the birth of their baby, I assume that all couples are every bit as awful. (They were manic and obsessive rather than alert and collected.) But I need to remind myself that this film was a stupid fantasy from the stupid mind of a stupid writer who was more concerned with landing wisecracks than with getting to the bottom of human nature; and his stupid ideas were filtered through the stupidity of the minds of the stupid actors and their stupid director.

I wanted to write an upbeat entry today, believe it or not.

Scary music on the soundtrack and people warning their country about the upcoming unrest: I just watched a video about the current state of USA’s hate-culture. Why are so many ideologues itching to engage in violence? An ideologue is an adherent of an ideology; and ideology is a system of ideas; an idea is a thought, not an action. To paraphrase Godard again, the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. Let songs fight songs in the realm of song. Let ideas slay ideas in the realm of the mind, via language alone. If violence affronts you, you can choose whether to retaliate in kind or take the blow like St. Matthew’s Jesus (5:38). But I think that at the very least, if you end up physically WARRING over your philosophical or political views, you should at least call yourself a FAILED ideologue. I think that truly superior beings should be able to suffer wrongs of the mind without flinching: and from the standpoint of the eternal imagination, physical retaliation is a type of flinching: it’s not strong, it’s weak...

I hate dealing with this conundrum. I worry that humankind cannot graduate past the mind-body mark. And that’s OK; I just wish that we wouldn’t trip over ourselves so incessantly.

Or maybe it’s good that there’s nothing new under the sun: it makes the bad times easier to digest. Accustom yourself to the unwanted moments in the tale, grow desensitized, and you can thereby sleep through to the happy ending.

*

Yestermorning, among the weblogs that I subscribe to, I saw that an independent author published a post containing the transcript of an interview that he recently gave. When I see other writers get attention, I sincerely wish them the best; I am joyous for them when they achieve fame and success; yet in order to remain content with the fact that Luck has hidden me, I allow myself to...

“Is this my espresso machine? How did you get my espresso machine?”

“Well, uh, we fuckin’ stole it, man.”

That’s an exchange between marine biologist Alistair Hennessey and “bond company stooge” Bill Ubell, from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach.

What I’m saying is that it’s my duty to appropriate the questions asked of other authors, whenever I find them, and address them as if I myself were the subject. So I’ll end this entry with my own responses to that other guy’s interview:

What are you working on next?

Just fixing the damaged wall in our bedroom. Or if you mean what writing comes next, then the answer is nothing. As far as BOOKS go, I’m not working on anything. I’m proud of all that I’ve written, but my attitude now is: Enough of that thankless task. I already published everything that I want to be known for. Now all I need to do is decline.

What is the story behind your latest book?

I wrote A Book about What after finishing all my other publications: I tried to dissolve myself in the acid of the Internet. I asked myself, What type of text results, when the arts of reading and writing go extinct? But I could never answer that question, because the work, despite all my efforts to the contrary, remains eminently readable.

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?

Well I never grew up – tho I don’t mean this in the sense of being delightfully childlike; I mean my growth is stunted – because I’ve lived my whole life in Minnesota: in the city of Eagan, an uneventful place in the southeastern suburbs; it is undeveloped mentally, cold and reserved: the populace is best known for having squared the circle of making nice mean. And the way this waiting-room of a hometown influenced my writing is that it caused me to withdraw from externality and to invest all my energies in the imagination. If I had lived in a fine city with warm, friendly, caring people and exuberant culture, I probably would never have written a single word. The reason one writes is to hint what the world should be like. But if your world is already utopia, you simply and happily LIVE. Only gods write in paradise.

What motivated you to become an indie author?

AM I an indie author? If so, this state was thrust upon me: I was thrown here – I did not come voluntarily. No, I hate this. I would much rather be whatever is the opposite of “indie.”

What is the greatest joy of writing for you?

I love the beginning stage, where you get to blast out words with abandon; and I love the middle stage, where you move the words around and change and blot them (remaking time’s ‘it was’ into ‘thus I willed it’, to paraphrase Nietzsche’s Zarathustra); and I love the end stage, when you get to survey your imperfect mess and declare: IT IS FINISHED. —In sum, I love to forsake my creations as much as I love to blame God for forsaking his creations. (Mark 15:34)

Who are your favorite authors?

Whoever wrote the Book of Jonah; whoever wrote the Book of Job; whoever wrote the Song of Songs; whoever wrote Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers; whoever wrote Amos; and whoever wrote the books of Samuel and Kings. I also love Ralph Waldo Emerson, Franz Kafka, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Anne Carson, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Christina Rossetti...

When did you first start writing?

At thirty bare years I began composing books in earnest. (It took me a long time to wake up.) Seven years later I was finished – the same age Walt Whitman was when he published his first edition of Leaves of Grass. (Now I’ve gone back to sleep.)

Describe your desk.

I have no desk. I sit at a sofa. Also I often ride my bike to the park.

What inspires you to get out of bed each day?

Love of potential, fear of the probable. A mad hope to mend fate.

When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?

Reading and thinking. That’s all I do. I saw a film recently where one of the character’s weekend plans fell through; all his friends were out partying, and he was stuck at home; he was bored witless, he didn’t know what to do with himself. That’s not just weekends but every night to me: Sat. Sun. Mon. Tues. W. T. F. Once I’m finished with the day’s menial, necessary work that lacks glamour and is soul-killing and repetitive, I do nothing but think and read. This bolsters my spirit. I also watch movies and look at paintings, but only paintings that have been represented in books, because I’m too scared to go to museums alone. But if a friend is willing to accompany me out-of-doors, I’ll gladly go anywhere. I’ll even fly an airplane or go horseback riding... And I should also add talking to the list that includes thinking and reading.

---

P.S.

Last night was the penultimate episode of Twin Peaks: The Return. Now there’s only the finale remaining. That airs next Sunday.

So, at long last, Special Agent Dale Cooper has awakened. We got a brief couple scenes demonstrating his attractive character, but that’s it – it seemed like less than five minutes total, and this comes after we sat through more than fifteen hours of buildup. I would never have guessed the writers Lynch and Frost would...

I predicted wrongly that Cooper would awaken about a month ago. If things had gone MY way, we’d have had five extra full hours with the man, not including the movie-length finale.

So was it worth the wait? Not really. Am I excited to watch the final episode? Yes. Why do I believe this last show might be sublime when none but three of the preceding sixteen hours were even passable? Because I am incapable of learning... credulous, gullible... cursed with baseless expectations.