Speaking is a manifestation of the belief that at least one other human being cares. Writing is not. I asserted that in a poem I wrote last week, and it's probably an appropriate disclaimer for what follows. Don't say you haven't been warned.
I've spent the past few days working on an odd assortment of writings--some poetry, some fiction, and some screenwriting. That last genre was almost entirely accidental. I'm taking a class with Denis Johnson part of this term, and the scene I wrote was in response to a prompt he'd given us on Wednesday--a single line of dialogue from which our own writing was to follow. Sitting on the bus thinking about the line, this dialogue started to play itself out cinematically, so I decided to write it that way. Because I don't know the first thing about screenwriting, it was fun. I put the characters in a room. I started them talking to each other. And then things got a little auto-pilot in a way that pleased me. A similar thing seems to be happening when I dabble in fiction.
It's both thrilling and mildly disturbing, because my poetry doesn't unfold that way at all. With poetry, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm also highly aware that I have no idea what I'm doing. And I think I know what at least part of the problem is.
Earlier I said, "I've developed a strong antipathy toward the pressures exerted by all schools and movements over the past few months." And it's true. I lack whatever it takes to be able to absorb all that shit and keep writing. I'd prefer not to think of myself as "impressionable" but lately my process looks something like this:
ID writes a line or two. Shiva-armed SUPEREGO reaches around and puts a hand over ID's mouth. EGO yanks hand away. ID tentatively pens another line. Shiva whips out the protest signs. In one hand, "You Suck!" In another hand, "HUH?" In yet another "Boring!" "Closet Republican!" "Pinko!" "Whiner!" "Cold Fish!" Sign after sign after sign--each one the imagined rejection of a poet or group of poets whose aesthetic agenda made sense to me at some point.
They all make at least a little sense, but I've yet to hear the one thing that would compel me to get religious about a particular set of concerns and techniques. It's not that I imagine myself more enlightened than thou. Were that the case, none of this would matter much. It's that I can't imagine a sympathetic reader for the work I want--and more importantly am able--to do. (That is, even if I could decide which kinds of writing I most admire, it's possible no amount of learning and practice is going to render all approaches equally fruitful. It's possible my best writing will be a poor indication of my tastes as a reader.)
I can't remember the last time I finished a poem and thought so-and-so is going to love this. Unfortunately, that's exactly why I think I write. To quote Billy Bragg: I don't want to change the world / I'm not looking for a new England / I'm just looking for another girl. I can't change the world. I have a hard enough time changing myself. I would like to be less starkly fucking alone in it, and making something that simultaneously creates pleasure for one's self and for someone else--that's one way to feel connected. I'm not talking simple affirmation, but the multitude of pleasures reading and writing afford.
Maybe that's why the idea of compromise is so thorny. If I give you pleasure at the expense of my own, or please myself but no one else, I haven't achieved anything different than everyday social relations. I haven't managed that rare coincidence of interests and desires which I might go so far as to call part of my personal definition of beauty. Beauty = Pleasure, when pleasure is neither wholly masturbatory nor achieved at another's expense (?)
I'm not aiming at some sort of Keatsian pronouncement. Just trying to figure out what drives my engine. For better or worse, the pursuit of beauty as I idiosyncratically define and experience it, as something more than just decadence, is the closest thing to an organizing principal that I can detect in my life. Even justice is subordinate to it in that justice seems to be required but not in itself sufficient. And love? Nice if it finds you. Nicer if it sticks around. But totally untenable as an axis around which to spin one's subjectivity.
(None of this, by the way, has anything to do with Cornell--or else it does, but not in the most obvious way. No one here has pushed an agenda on me, or asked me to be anything but my own writer. That freedom at the local level makes the factionalism "out there" seem all the more strange and oppressive.)
I wish I had the bravada to say Fuck your aesthetic agenda! And yours! And yours! And yours! Flashy. Strong. Passionate. And kinda bullshit. Instead, my manifesto of one goes something like this: Thank you. You make some good points, but unfortunately, I can't hear myself over them, so I'm going to turn your volume down now. Good luck with your work!
