One quote and no joke

I'm still outta images so here's the junk-mail that arrived today.

Dear diary,

I am careening off the rails; so, to get back on track, here is an excerpt from David Lynch’s memoirs (Room to Dream, p.164):

When I was awake I couldn’t stand being awake, and when I was asleep it was solid nightmares. I thought it would be better to kill myself, because I could hardly stand to be in my body. It was something so powerful that I thought, How can anyone stand to be in a body with this torment?

What led to the above is as follows. Lynch had spent a great deal of time working on the makeup for the main character in his movie The Elephant Man, and when the moment finally arrived to put the makeup on the main actor, it did not work.

I copy Lynch’s words here not to sadden myself, but to…

Actually, yes, I copied the above quote to sadden myself. Why not. I was going to try to argue that Lynch survived this bad episode of life and made many sublime creations in its wake; but I’d rather focus on the flipside.

The genius film that Lynch made before this crest was Eraserhead. That was his first feature-length film. It reminds me of the ultra-depressing indifference of the movie world to his intended second feature, Ronnie Rocket, which never got made.

I’d also had one meeting at a studio about Ronnie Rocket, with this guy who produced Car Wash. He said, “Okay, hotshot, whaddya got?” I said, “I have this film called Ronnie Rocket,” and he said, “What’s it about?” I said, “It’s about a man who’s three and a half feet tall, with a red pompadour, who runs on sixty-cycle alternating-current electricity.” He said, “Get out of my office.”

This reminds me of the scene from Quentin Dupieux’s film Wrong Cops (2013), where Officer Rough brings his musical collaborator—a man dying from being hit by a stray bullet—to a meeting with a prominent music producer. When the latter expresses disdain for the duo’s demo track, Rough says:

Produce my song; it’s no worse than any other. I know it’s not the biggest hit of the year, but it is a good song. Produce it, please. You can keep the rights to the song—I don’t care; I’m not doing this for the money.

But the producer answers:

You know what? Get the fuck out of my office, you and your dumb friend. Get the fuck out of here.

Now, returning to Lynch: after Ronnie Rocket was rejected, he agreed to abandon his own project and direct someone else’s script; that’s how The Elephant Man came about. I like The Elephant Man – I think it’s a good movie – but it’s nothing of the work of genius that Ronnie Rocket would have been. (I’ve read and re-read the screenplay plus interviews & background info about that stillbirth, obsessively; so you can trust me: I’m a self-anointed expert.)

This tragic abortion of Ronnie Rocket is the shock that charged me to avoid the money-world of publishing: it’s the major reason I chose to print all my books myself. I wanted total freedom, to fail in my own way. (I prefer a daring botch to a fussy victory; although I fear that a few of my efforts might’ve stumbled into success.) Also, in doing so, I’m in good company, with Blake and Whitman. So that’s why this topic is important to me.

P.S.

During my entire speech above, this heckler in the front row kept shouting “But, where are you at, in your translocation fiasco?” —I’m sorry I never answered you, dear heckler; I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Here’s where we’re at in our translocation fiasco: We found a buyer for our apartment; now we’re waiting for the closing date to arrive. In the meantime, we made an offer to purchase an old ugly house, and this offer is contingent upon an inspection occurring. Yesterday that inspection occurred. So we sent an amendment to our purchase agreement requesting that the Seller take three actions:

1. hire a licensed electrician to remedy all double-tapped switches in the breaker box;
2. repair the leak at the base of the laundry tub;
3. verify the dining room light is working properly—if not, repair or replace it.

So now, if the house’s owner agrees to these terms, there’s nothing else we need to do but wait for the closing date, which is set for the end of the month—it’s the same day as the one for our apartment. We’ll go to one lawyer-meeting in the morning, and then a second lawyer-meeting in the noontime. So I won’t need any alcohol that day; that day will be naturally fun, naturally soothing relaxing stimulating and interesting; not annoying at all.

And yet if the owner of the old ugly house that we’re attempting to purchase says “Hell no” to our amendment, then we’ll need to return to the wasteland of the housing market and find another sad shack.

Also my sweetheart discovered a spectacular deal at the rental place where we’re getting our moving truck. In addition to owning a fleet of large vehicles, this place offers climate-controlled storage garages, all of which are situated indoors!—the environment is spotless; and the sliding panel on each unit is painted fire-engine red. Now, as a bonus, with any truck rental, this establishment will include a free month of storage in one of these deluxe garages. We inquired of the wizard who answered their business’s phone line “Can we begin using the free storage immediately, even tho we don’t plan on abusing your truck till September?” And the wizard answered “Yes.”

So the other thing that we did yesterday, after the home invasion oops I mean inspection, is make two trips to our big beautiful indoor storage unit. We brought 37 boxes there. So now we don’t have so many boxes cluttering up our garage.

P.P.S.

When we were at the storage place, there were people unloading their moving trucks in the other lane of the lot. For there was a large lot with two lanes, and we were in the “park here to access storage” lane, and they were in the lane labeled “truck drop-off”. And when we swiped our key card in the security slot, and the electronic screen said “Hello Judas” (I used the pseudonym Judas Booth because I heard that that’s the name that David Lynch chose as his credit for the TV version of a movie that he worked on but didn’t want to be associated with), I reached over to take one of the carts near the sign that said “FREE CARTS” so as to load up our boxes, but, right when I touched the cart, a police siren blared. The siren continued for a long time. I looked all around me, to see if I could figure out what might’ve caused it. And I met eyes with one of the huskies in the neighboring lane (there were a pair of Alaskan huskies nearby who were dropping off their rental truck), and she yelled something and smiled. I couldn’t hear her over the siren, but I smiled and laughed as if I understood, because I was flustered. Then the siren stopped; and we kept unloading our boxes. As we worked, I noticed that the husky who had shouted to me earlier kept looking over at me and smiling, like we shared some inside joke. So now I wonder what she said that was so darn funny.