Chateaubriand: it's not just what's for dinner.
Last night, Sharon and I hit up my soon-to-be second home, Barbes, to see Paul Auster read from the works of Chateaubriand and some other French guys whose names I didn't quite catch. This is particularly unfortunate in light of the fact that I wanted to repeat what one of them wrote right here, about how when you're writing, if you already know the last word, it makes it much harder to write the first word. But since I can't properly attribute it, I'll have to go a different direction here.
The first reader of the night was a French novelist named Celine Curiol, whom I'm told is very talented but I can't vouch for that firsthand being that what she read was entirely in French, which I do not speak. It was, however, an enlightening thing to see someone reading and have to focus on how they're reading rather than what they're saying, and it certainly gave me a new perspective on that.
And then after a brief and unexpected musical interlude by the incredibly awesome lit-geek band One Ring Zero, there was Paul Auster. He seems like the kind of writer you could have a beer with - he's got a lot of personality, and a lot of love for what he does, and he clearly knows a lot about a lot of different things. You can immediately tell that there's a lot going on in his head just because there is and not because he necessarily cares whether that's how he comes across or not. It's a little bit nicemodernistic, in a way, though I'm not sure the nicemodernist movement has a patron saint of authors yet.
(It's not going to be me. I am far too flawed. Much like doubt is the essence of faith, I have to actively work to keep myself on the straight and narrow path of antisnark and avoid the traps and foils of snarkery, which is just so easy to do!)
But I'm very stuck on something Auster said in his memoir, Hand to Mouth: "You don't choose (writing) so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hardroad for the rest of your days."
I used to feel that way. These days, it's been hard to get at it. It makes me feel like something of a fraud because I could probably go on like this for the rest of my life - get up, go to work, blog, play pub trivia, play the guitar badly, kickbox, drink diet coke, rent my living space, bitch about not dating - and it wouldn't be a great existence, but I could reach old age on the low road. If my entire being isn't consumed by having to get a story on paper, what if that means I'm not a writer?
And I've never been the type to actively let other people's revelations about themselves define who I am, but I know what he's talking about and I think he's right, and I know I don't have it now and maybe I never will.
(Someone emailed me the other day and told me I should publish my blog as a book. Not this one, obviously, but the other one on the slightly more interactive, inarticulate-teenager-heavy site. I understand the good intentions behind the statement, and I did take it as a compliment, but it's still ridiculous. Blogs are not substance. If I sell a book, it had damn well better be a Serious Work Of Literary Substance. Not to be confused with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But I digress.)
And although I'm trying really hard not to make this blog into a blog about not writing, that fear that maybe this isn't the thing I'm cut out for, and that I've chosen it instead of allowing it to choose me, paralyzes me just as much as the other things that paralyze me - the fear that I might pour everything I've got into something that winds up not being very good, and the fear that all of these people who think I do have talent will be terribly disappointed by my eventual output.
I mean, if this is what I'm supposed to be, this should be an absolute feeling, right? And right now, I'll be honest, it's not the sole thing driving me and keeping me going, though it definitely has some share of the copiloting duties.
But here's the part where I do a little bit of a 180 to tell you that this blog can't be strictly a blog about not writing because last night I DID write. SEVEN pages, biatches. I rushed home on the good old B68 so I could start putting words on paper (or, in this case, flash drive).
Granted, most of this is ideas and not actual prose, but hey, pages is pages. I'm not picky now that my imagination has finally woken up again and sort of blinked at me all, "Oh, you needed me to do something for you? (yawn) Okay, I guess." I imagine my imagination (heh) as a surly teenager.
Perhaps if every reading I go to makes me dash home and start writing more, all I have to do is keep going to a lot of readings and little by little I'll somehow continue to absorb the literary mojo of others and regurgitate something of my own.
(Incidentally, Paul's daughter, Sophie, is one of the musical acts performing at the same Summershakes event at Piano's where I'll be reading on July 12. He played a little bit of her album for us at last night's reading, and I must say she's got quite the chops for someone so young. In fact, I'm going to be reading directly after her set. The idea that he might possibly be there has crossed my mind, and I've spent the last few days praying that if he does show up, he'll duck out the instant she's finished.)
The first reader of the night was a French novelist named Celine Curiol, whom I'm told is very talented but I can't vouch for that firsthand being that what she read was entirely in French, which I do not speak. It was, however, an enlightening thing to see someone reading and have to focus on how they're reading rather than what they're saying, and it certainly gave me a new perspective on that.
And then after a brief and unexpected musical interlude by the incredibly awesome lit-geek band One Ring Zero, there was Paul Auster. He seems like the kind of writer you could have a beer with - he's got a lot of personality, and a lot of love for what he does, and he clearly knows a lot about a lot of different things. You can immediately tell that there's a lot going on in his head just because there is and not because he necessarily cares whether that's how he comes across or not. It's a little bit nicemodernistic, in a way, though I'm not sure the nicemodernist movement has a patron saint of authors yet.
(It's not going to be me. I am far too flawed. Much like doubt is the essence of faith, I have to actively work to keep myself on the straight and narrow path of antisnark and avoid the traps and foils of snarkery, which is just so easy to do!)
But I'm very stuck on something Auster said in his memoir, Hand to Mouth: "You don't choose (writing) so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hardroad for the rest of your days."
I used to feel that way. These days, it's been hard to get at it. It makes me feel like something of a fraud because I could probably go on like this for the rest of my life - get up, go to work, blog, play pub trivia, play the guitar badly, kickbox, drink diet coke, rent my living space, bitch about not dating - and it wouldn't be a great existence, but I could reach old age on the low road. If my entire being isn't consumed by having to get a story on paper, what if that means I'm not a writer?
And I've never been the type to actively let other people's revelations about themselves define who I am, but I know what he's talking about and I think he's right, and I know I don't have it now and maybe I never will.
(Someone emailed me the other day and told me I should publish my blog as a book. Not this one, obviously, but the other one on the slightly more interactive, inarticulate-teenager-heavy site. I understand the good intentions behind the statement, and I did take it as a compliment, but it's still ridiculous. Blogs are not substance. If I sell a book, it had damn well better be a Serious Work Of Literary Substance. Not to be confused with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But I digress.)
And although I'm trying really hard not to make this blog into a blog about not writing, that fear that maybe this isn't the thing I'm cut out for, and that I've chosen it instead of allowing it to choose me, paralyzes me just as much as the other things that paralyze me - the fear that I might pour everything I've got into something that winds up not being very good, and the fear that all of these people who think I do have talent will be terribly disappointed by my eventual output.
I mean, if this is what I'm supposed to be, this should be an absolute feeling, right? And right now, I'll be honest, it's not the sole thing driving me and keeping me going, though it definitely has some share of the copiloting duties.
But here's the part where I do a little bit of a 180 to tell you that this blog can't be strictly a blog about not writing because last night I DID write. SEVEN pages, biatches. I rushed home on the good old B68 so I could start putting words on paper (or, in this case, flash drive).
Granted, most of this is ideas and not actual prose, but hey, pages is pages. I'm not picky now that my imagination has finally woken up again and sort of blinked at me all, "Oh, you needed me to do something for you? (yawn) Okay, I guess." I imagine my imagination (heh) as a surly teenager.
Perhaps if every reading I go to makes me dash home and start writing more, all I have to do is keep going to a lot of readings and little by little I'll somehow continue to absorb the literary mojo of others and regurgitate something of my own.
(Incidentally, Paul's daughter, Sophie, is one of the musical acts performing at the same Summershakes event at Piano's where I'll be reading on July 12. He played a little bit of her album for us at last night's reading, and I must say she's got quite the chops for someone so young. In fact, I'm going to be reading directly after her set. The idea that he might possibly be there has crossed my mind, and I've spent the last few days praying that if he does show up, he'll duck out the instant she's finished.)
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