TBT #12: Senseless

Interview I did a few weeks back was published today. I couldn’t believe what they did with it. I don’t remember sounding so damn positive. Could that really have been me? It’s hard to remember. I don’t like the idea of changing so fast. It’s wrong somehow. It’s scary, even. I don’t know what happened.

The interview was published in an article called The Best Things on October 15, 2004.

1. “Of course I get that question a lot. From fans, I mean. ˜Where do you get your ideas?’ And I sort of have to tell them, you know, I don’t know where I get my ideas, really. They’re just sort of there. I’m not convinced that there is a way to find ideas. The only advice I can give you is that you should go out, see the world, have an adventure, and the ideas will find you.”

The blank pages are laughing at me. I have a fucking deadline. Wrote 90 words today about the sound my dresser drawers make when I open them. It was crap. Deleted it. Moved on. Can’t get hung up on these things. Read over some stuff I wrote on Monday. Crossed out most of it with a gigantic red pen. Wordy arty crap. I’m trying too hard. I need to stop trying.

I’m beginning to think pronouns are pretentious and unnecessary. And commas. And punctuation in general, really. They get in the way. They’re not pure. They’re not beautiful.

2. “I try not to think too much about my success. It was randomness as much as anything. I’d be lying if I were to say… I mean, yeah, I think I’m a good writer. And I’m proud of Highway on the clouds. It’s a novel I really put my self into, and I couldn’t be happier with its success. But I’m not the greatest writer in the world –not by a longshot — and I try to keep perspective on that.”

All the characters I’m writing today are the same fucking guy. Some smug bastard who won’t stop cracking jokes about how lonely he is. And why the fuck does it end up raining in every scene I set? I can’t believe how fucking cliché I’ve gotten. With every paragraph I get closer and closer to being the perfect picture of a no-talent hack.

I wish I could write women. Real women. As something more than vague objects of affection that my loser main characters pine after. I tried to write a woman the other day, and it didn’t work. And you know why? You know what the problem was? Once I had her — an idea of her — it became so clear that there’s no way she’d ever really be with any of my male characters. It just didn’t make any sense. How could she love someone so fucking spineless, so overly sensitive, so out-of-sync with the world?

3. “I guess I’m unique that way. I know a lot of writers — friends of mine, even — spend, you know, months — literally, months — just coming up with character sketches for their books. Honestly, I’ve never done that. My characters just sort of [he pauses] they just sort of are, you know? It’s like I’ve known them all my life.”

My girlfriend is on my case again. I haven’t seen her in three weeks. I haven’t talked to her in six days. It’s better that way. She wouldn’t want to be with me right now, anyway. At least now she’s able to think of me as a somewhat confident and talented person. I wrote her a nine-page letter that included three poems and a long metaphor about waterfalls. It’ll all go right over her head. She’ll love me for it anyway.

I’m an artist. Allowed to be weird. Supposed to be eccentric. Creative people don’t make sense. It’s what makes them so great at what they do.

4. “Okay. I’ll admit it, yes. Sometimes it gets frustrating. I get writer’s block, just like every other writer out there. But when I do, I just turn to something else. There are ideas just bouncing around the universe. Like neutrinos, you know? They’re invisible, hard to detect, but they’re there. And I just happen to be, yeah, good at seeing them, I guess.”

The phone won’t stop ringing. Wrote 200 words about the way my microwave dinner tastes. Summation: It tastes like crap. The goddamn lights are too bright in my apartment. Wrote 300 more words about that. Summation: They’re really fucking bright. Pronouns are definitely unnecessary. Anyone who uses them is fucking stupid. This writing isn’t pure enough. Look at me, so fucking wordy and gross.

Girlfriend’s voice on the answering machine. She’s crying. She loves me, she says! She loves me! Every time she says it I lose some respect for her. I’d love to say goodbye to her in an airport, leaving a perfect image of character that she could carry with her forever, without me.

Wrote 50 words about love. Too many pronouns! Too much punctuation! It’s not fucking pure! I have to be simpler.

Writing dissolves. Still hearing her voice. Wrote 35 more words about love. Just stringing nice sounding words together now. At the 80 word mark I’m just typing “ecclesiastical quietude of paradise” again and again and again. It’s senselessly beautiful.
Senselessly pure.

5. “The thing I love most about writing is that, with writing, you have endings. Satisfying endings. In life, there’s no such thing. Things end — absolutely, that’s of course true — but things often just sort of stop, or peter out. Rarely, if ever, in life, do you encounter a truly satisfying ending, one that isn’t too obvious, but that also isn’t forced. Novels give you the sorts of endings that leave you feeling like you’ve just read something important. Something relevant. Something that matters. Life… life just ends.”

Rain on the window. Not afraid of sadness. The sound the radio makes when you change stations quickly, only hearing seconds and half-seconds of every song — love that sound. Glass bottles on the coffee table, reflecting green on the wall. Gorgeous colour subdued by shadow. Faucets in the bathroom have been dripping for hours. Slow, rhythmically, a kind of beauty only they can share with the world. Consistency is something human beings lack.

I wish I had plants. I wish I had flowers. Roses, daffodils, carnations, magnolias, daisies, lilacs. Bringing me love and peace and happiness. Gorgeous arrays of happy feelings cushioned on chocolate place settings underscored by quiet elegance that goes on and on and on. A fucked up superpower that allows you to ignore the inherent end to all things.

No ending. Broken thoughts of warm feelings. Memories of perfect times. The past looks so good because memory is so broken. So incomplete. Cashmere swallows on rosebud branches. Belief in heaven. Snow-covered valleys below volcanoes. Brilliantly coloured explosions below scattered dimensions of supernova stars. Entire cities lit with candles. The way she laughs. Shattering crystal echoing into eternal space. Bouncing off velvet jellyfish, arching into the sky. Cloud through fingertips. An ecclesiastical quietude in paradise. An ecclesiastical quietude in paradise. The ecclesiastical quietude of paradise.

Senseless, I know.