Monday, March 07, 2005

lost cause

What is it with this thing about writers having to be hopeless lost causes, forgetful nymphs with inkstained fingers, dangerous lives, bad manners and social skills? Where did that particular stereotype come from and why is it so attractive? Just last week i was having lunch with a dramaturge friend who mourned her hopeless history and new found stability. Because it was so much easier, she said, to create art when everything else was going wrong. She used to sit up with her bottle of Jack D and her notebook and write sonnets. Make crank calls to the boy who wasn't returning her calls. All fuel for the tortured soul. What was she doing now, she mused, making appointments, enjoying weekends out in the country, living the soft life, imaginably like cholesterol for for the artistic artery.
Right?

Or is it really?

I mean, i remember being miserable and carefree, fucked up and crying on the bed, i remember my life being a mess, i don't remember getting all that much done though. I remember the one really amazing thing i wrote was write after the whole mess was over. My break up poem. I saw some homo theatre student at Queen's last year and he was using it for his monologue class.

Hilarious.

when i was in University there was this boy who fell in love with my roommate in this very odd lolita way, although they were both roughly the same age. I remember one night listening from my room as this doo told my friend that part of his artistic path involved drinking a bottle of scotch every night. Because that's how the greats did it. The REAL greats. I wish he had listed them so i could have looked them up.

Of course there's some precedent for it right? What was that story about The Basketball Diaries, which was based on this notebook Jim Carroll kept through a drug induced stupor, that he pissed all over before he published it.

Then there's me, i can barely stand it when my notebook gets WET.

What was i saying?

Not sure.

I guess i'm just thinking about crisis lately, running my finger around it like the emergency button on the elevator, that mysterious nub on the back of my cabage patch kid's neck.

xx
me

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home