Indiscretion thread, or: How I botched certain of my books

part 1:

for me, an aspect of utopia would be that anyone who wants to make art can do so

currently if you make art, the general attitude seems to be: you are a waste because art is useless; unless you are able to SELL your art

this idea of selling art lures artists to make shocking displays, to grab the buyers attention... it's the same problem with news-for-profit

instead of trying to be the shockingest artist so as to make big bucks at auction, i wish that artists could simply refract existence however they feel inclined

i'm mostly against judging art: i think that we should all accept everyones artworks, not reject them; so if you like an artwork, praise it, and if you dislike it, let it be

negative criticism is not worth the energy: artists are their own worst critics anyway: whatever is bad in the artists artworks will work itself out naturally without outside antagonism: plus life is too short to forgo celebration in favor of instruction

nonetheless i too make my own negative judgments about art, but the key is that they're personal, private, kept to myself alone: & my positive judgments are made known by way of my conversation; for, what i love, i mention

the act of publicly judging art possesses worth inasmuch as it saves time: being mortal, our time is limited and thus we want to spend it only on the most rewarding perceptions

the idea of earnestness is important to me: at this point in my life, it seems maybe to be the most important aspect of art: so i say, i'd rather behold an earnest failure than an insincere success

whether or not my own artworks, my creative writings, are successes or failures, is not as crucial to me as whether or not they are earnest: let me succeed or fail, i am at ease about my attempt so long as it was earnest

here now i realize that i should write an intro before continuing with this next part of the confession

INTRO to "Indiscretion thread"

the idea of being able to communicate in the same medium as the u.s. president; that is to say, in a twitter meltdown; typing a series of tiny individual texts that, when taken altogether, form a complete essay or full meditation – also the stupid-simple gimmick of forgoing capitalization and standard punctuation... these things are all that i need to charge me up, to excite me so that i wanna contribute more entries to this here public-private diary; that's why, of late, i've been confessing so many boring things so boringly...

two opposite concepts that equally thrill me:

1. the concept of a mysterious book written for unknown reasons
2. the concept of an author explaining her own personal artworks

in the first category we have shakespeare and the bible and homer (etc., etc.)...

and among those in the 2nd category are artists like duchamp, who published at least one box of his own handwritten preparatory notes for his "large glass" masterwork, after declaring it "definitively unfinished"; also john ashbery who gave many public readings of his poetry and often explained for the live audience something that was not available to be learned from the text alone, such as where a piece came from or how he arrived at its form (for instance, i remember him saying something like "this piece was just the result of me browsing thru a book about movies: i took a list of titles pretty much as it appeared in the index at the back; i just switched around one or two words and it became the poem") (or like when he said about his book-length poem "flow chart" that he composed it sorta like a daily journal, directly after the death of his mother: he would jot down an entry at the rate that one would normally contribute to a diary, and all the entries piled up until they became the book, which he then heavily revised)... and even dante was of this latter group of artists who demystify their own work, in a way, because he explains in great detail the conception of the sonnets & ballads that alternate with the prose of his book NEW LIFE (la vita nuova), which he completed before he began his famous COMEDY (inferno-purgatorio-paradiso) ...& lastly raymond roussel, who is at once wholly mysterious but also willing to pull back the curtain on his own wizard – here's a quote from wikipedia:

Roussel kept his compositional method a secret until the publication of his posthumous text, How I Wrote Certain of My Books...

when i first read that last title, i assumed that it'd ruin his works for me; that it'd dull their glow; but it had the opposite effect: i'm now even more thrilled at his accomplishment, yet in a deeper and richer way; also (perhaps more importantly) the knowledge of the mundanity of his techniques, which are surprisingly banal, caused me to want to try my own hand at authorship: the baseness of the methods made me feel that even a fool like I could rush in... I think that's really a fine thing for an artist to do: to lure fellows into the fun...

(would shakespeare's HAMLET gain or lose from our discovering an authorial disclosure unveiling its origin & methods of composition? for me, part of the allure of the idea of an ur-Hamlet preceding the existence of the now-famous play is precisely the fact that such a thing can neither be proven nor disproven... in other words, i hate science and love religion; or rather i truly love both parents but religion is my fave, whom i hate just as well)

so with all the above acting as a spark to the fuse of my mind, i wanna spend today's entry stripping my earliest writings of their mystery... and i hope that in the process i might deprive them of whatever worth they might have, and destroy their value in the eyes of the reader, so that the reader will say to herself "wow bryan really sux at cultmongering: i'm gonna go make a cult of my own, cuz i believe i can do better" – thus let this confession be like a skywritten urge to every aspiring dilettante: YOU CAN DO BETTER INDEED

He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

—from "Song of Myself" (sec. 47) by Walt Whitman

in all seriousness, however, my claim of wanting the future to outdo me is a perfect example of "saying something in hopes of barring its occurrence", cuz i most truly wish that i could remain mysterious like shakespeare but also as apparently honest as dante's new life

INDISCRETION THREAD II:
the part that comes after the intro; or, as its computer file was titled, "REMEMBER TO POST THIS SHIT SOMEDAY"

so like i said above, the idea of earnestness is the most important aspect of art to me; and, whether or not my own works are successes or failures is not as crucial as whether or not they are earnest

i think my own religious writings failed; but this does not sadden me much, cuz i gave it my all; it was an earnest attempt: now the works remain a snapshot of my mental development; if they had been successful, they could bring important imaginations to others; but they are a failure because their worth is biographical, documentary

i mean that, instead of offering any good insight, my religious writings document the stages of development in my artistic mind: i as an artist am born into a religious tradition, which i must master in order to fulfill & abolish it: it must get surcharged like a vessel so that it bursts: then one can get to the place where one can make unfettered art (break the mind-forged manacles)

when i broke thru the religion of my upbringing, i was then able to blossom freely into my creative writings, my truly imaginative offerings (again, whether they are successful or failures is beside the point; for at least they are an earnest attempt: "childe roland to the dark tower came")

i was raised in the protestant tradition, which holds the christian bible as the word of god: it was stressed to me that no priest or human teacher has authority, no, but only that single book possesses authority: everything is subordinate to that book, which is really a collection of books: an holy library

so the bible was the thing to beat, if i wanted to exit my ephebe-cocoon and enjoy the self-reliance of an artistic butterfly

now the bible had total dominance over my soul, and one way that i tried to break out of this prison was to contribute a work of my own to the scriptural canon:

so the very first time i set out to write my own religious text, the idea was to show how the last biblical book, "the revelation of jesus christ", becomes or leads to the very first biblical book, "genesis"

that last book ends with a new heaven where everything is fine, god and humans are at peace: from here, i argue, it is only a matter of time before the so-called original sin RE-OCCURS

a word on my unholy scriptures

[please understand that the reason i provided a hyperlink to the volume that collects my religious texts is NOT to advertise or beg for sales – everything i said about art at the beginning, up there in part 1, would be certified hogwash if i were to act in such a low manner – but rather i thot it might be convenient for the interested reader to be able to click upon the image of the book that appears on Evilzon's webpage – lo: the graphic says "look inside!" – because a lot of the text may be browsed for free; i think that even the whole first scripture, which i'll analyze & explain immediately after this bracketed passage, can be skimmed in its entirety.]

1: "the birth of satan"

my parents' church taught me that the original sin was humankind's disobedience of jehovah's command, but i say that the original sin was jehovah's jealous insistence on being the sole authority: he does not want to allow equality-fraternity-democracy-liberty; he does not want to admit that wisdom, his consort, is his equal (in my text, i imply that she's actually his better); thus he renames wisdom "satan" and deems her his adversary

thus unfairly does jehovah judge HER, whereas SHE does nothing to HIM but murmur the truth (just as the serpent does in "genesis")

so i called my scripture that joins the bible's last book with its first book "the birth of satan": i hoped the reader would mentally contrast it with the title of the preceding scripture ("the revelation of jesus christ"); also i hoped to bring to mind "the birth of venus"

for this first text, i was too terrified to allow myself to write my own phrases words or sentences: instead i made the work entirely out of collaged passages from the king james bible itself

i was 30 years old when i decided to do this: that age scared the heck out of me: i knew that i wanted to write, that i had a world inside me that fancied to get out, but i had no idea how to start, and i was afraid that i'd already waited too long and that perhaps i'd never realize my literary aspirations, therefore i sorta forced the bud to bloom

by so doing, did i blunt my buds beauty? – i still wonder this, and i do not know the answer... part of me thinks that i couldve waited till i was at ease and itd be more natural to begin; but part of me thinks that i'd never have begun otherwise and thus it was necessary for me to jump the gun

i ponder a lot about joseph smith and his book of mormon: i think he jumped the gun too; i think he was anxious about beginning and thus wrote a big ambitious work too early, and his work is ruined because of it (the book of mormon is unreadable, in my opinion; as opposed to his king follett sermon, which i adore)

one side note: altho i call my religious writings a failure, i say with confidence that they are far better than joseph smith's lifework; smith and i are both earnest failures

the other thing i have in common with smith is that we both love to hate the apostle paul

scripture 2 of 5: save the lord

but back to my religious writings: i collected my personal scriptures into one big book: my own personal bible: there are five scriptures total (just like the pentateuch); the first one i told you about already: that one was very short, just a couple pages long; but the next scripture was a full-length book of many chapters

this 2nd scritpure was my 2nd attempt at writing, but it seemed like my 1st, cuz not until now did i allow myself to write my own sentences (as i said, prior to this i stole all my phrases from existing biblical scriptures)

for this 2nd book i decided to attack directly a book that i hate:

i hesitate to name the enemy book, because i know that doing so will only lure people to read it, and the last thing i want is to popularize a work that i'd rather see vanish forever, but there's no way to talk about my own book without giving its opponent's title

there's few books i hate more than c.s. lewis's "mere christianity": and i know that hate is a strong word which implies an investment, a passion: i have invested much passionate hatred in "mere cristianity": so much that i decided to wage a book-length war upon it

i called my own text "save the lord"; i hadnt yet studied deeply in p.b. shelley's "prometheus unbound" but i now realize that my idea was roughly the same as his: that prometheus (my satan or wisdom) only continues the damnation cycle if he FIGHTS the lord (zeus or jehovah); instead, the truly superior god must FORGIVE

this is the advantage that satan/prometheus has over jehovah/zeus: the latter can only damn the former, but the former is able to forgive the latter; and from forgiveness upswells harmony

forgive & forget so as to realize equality-fraternity-liberty-democracy

c.s. lewis is all about serving heavens fascist dictator who wants to "damn the devil"; my devil and i urge all to "save the lord"

i did a purposely silly and crazy thing on that first book (again, my earlier attempt wasnt really a book but only just a couple pages): i got up every day and read a chapter in "mere christianity" and then penned a chapter on my own, in reaction – that's how the whole damned book was made

this idea was a conscious one, and i knew how "wrong" it was: that's what attracted me to it; i recall reading an essay by harold bloom where he posits that blaise pascal composed his "pensées" probably often with a copy of montaigne's essays propped open before him

perhaps bloom was being knowingly outrageous by proposing this image: that was all the more reason for me to embrace it and twist it up into a reality. I put myself intentionally in the role of the inferior artist, so as to neutralize the venom of my vengeance: i wanted to replace the smug argumentativeness of "mere christianity" with a cheerful gnostic absurdity. To BUY INTO my own scam would've soured the fun. But i always believed in the grand gesture of the blague; so i still call my failure earnest.

scripture 3 of 5: perchance to sleep no more

i was very proud of the result when i finished "save the lord"; but the problem immediately became apparent to me: i could never share my accomplishment with anyone, for, at the time, none of my friends could read, and all my family were churchgoers who would take offence at my pointing out the robe·less·ness of their deity

so i had the bright idea to challenge myself to create a similarly absurd anti-gospel but without any overtly christian names that churchgoers could take offense at (the names are all-important to orthodox believers; the concepts, not so much): thus was conceived the idea for my 2nd book (3rd scripture) "perchance to sleep no more": it's like a clean or church-radio-friendly version of "save the lord" (or at least it was before it got away from me)

scripture 4 of 5: the teller chases her tale

i was equally proud after finishing this next provocation, but i had to endure the sad fact that, despite its "technically inoffensive" condition, no churchgoers had any interest in attending to my vision.

this really pissed me off; so i decided, for my next book (the 3rd big codex, 4th of 5 scriptures total) i'd made a huge vast commentary on that last text, and in it i'd lay bare all the offensive anti-church stuff that i tried so hard to camouflage in "perchance"

i called this next failed project "the teller chases her tale": it amused me to write my own book-length literary commentary on my own scripture; i also saw in this a good analogy of what the christian "new testament" attempts to do to the original hebrew scriptures (what the church has underhandedly titled the "old testament")

so at once i was able to explain overtly all the hidden jabs that i intended for the churchy views in my previous book, and also i could see myself as the apostle paul wrenching the earlier scriptures to mean something belated, via the act of interpretation

so it was great fun misreading myself, misquoting my own words, preposterously conflating and confusing half-existent ideas nonsensically, tripping myself and getting tangled in my own web of arguments, just like saint paul does in all his biblical letters

so i made that self-commentary very big: that was the idea; it has very, very many words inside it

scripture 5 of 5: aha!

then finally the last of my scriptures, after which i blasted away from the religious realm and into the creative paradise of self-amusements, was a work that i titled "aha!" just so, with an exclamation point

what i did is take a whole bunch of writings that i found from our childhood; and by "our" i mean my brother and me: we wrote lots of short stories and weirld little texts for grade school and even before that time: we were prolific little artists in our infancy

so i took these childhood writings, which all had a gentle naive charm to them, and i rewrote them and revised them and stuffed them with gnostic references (i mean the doctrines and concepts that i had gleaned from reading deeply in the gnostic scriptures – & in case you don't know, gnosticism is what certain scholars now call the branch of esoteric christianity that was killed off by the orthodox church)

there's something sick about revising one's own childhood writings so that they comply with the superstitions of adulthood: but this sickness seemed weirdly attractive to me, i found freedom in the deviousness; and i think the work ended up an earnest failure, on account of its uniqueness: for where else are you able to find trash like this?

"aha!" pleases me because it's like heterodox theology presented in the form of a coloful pop art comic book; but i worry that no one will ever enjoy it because very few people are as interested in ancient heresies as i have been; and all the scholars that ARE interested in gnostic theology are devoid of a sense of humor, so they'll just roll their eyes at the scenes of paul and ezra battling jehovah's army of angel-thugs, or of my slanderous presentation of the author of the book of revelation as "little johnny patmos" (another jerk i love to hate)

*

i recall that the next book i wrote was a collection of brief texts called "twelve short borings", but those are filed under the category of self-amusements, therefore i'm done with my morning meditation on my failed religious writings, so i'll stop here, bye!