Keep on riding

Listen, the big realization: I am happier today than I've been in 10 years, easy.

I've been writing a novel. I've been talking about it at least. The start is so clumsy and ugly, the hardest part: but it's important to begin. So I've begun.

I try a few words. I talk a bit about how it's winter here and the poetic fallacy of that - or do I have that wrong? Like when the bolt of lightning erupts, in the film, and the horrible monster emerges from behind the door. The kind of link to the weather that is life: but opposite, yeah.

"It is winter and I am alive."

I've been meaning to get around to giving you a book report on that Henry M. book, and I've been waiting for the right time to do it proper. But it doesn't look like that's happening, and seeing as I've moved on to Hemingway, I guess nows a good time to just get the drunken bastard out of my ears.

OK. Obviously I talk about him too much, and probably attempt to meet him too much in my writing. In my defense, I realize that it is just as naive to boldly search for a 'new' way of writing. This is not possible. Me admitting that I am hack is freedom. Artistically, I am free. (elbows. nudge. nerds)

Here's a very brief sketch of the important points, and why you should read Black Spring.

Henry Miller knows exactly how to write. But he is not a writer. Henry Miller is a drunk, a sad and lonely man, who is ecstatically happy at once. At once, toujours he is an artist, a seer a prophet and a blind man. He writes exactly what he sees. You cannot be an artist if you cannot describe what you see.

George Orwell liked Miller's writing, alot, but criticized it because it was irresponsible. And it did nothing to thwart the Nazis or stomp out the flames of the disaster approaching: World War Two. Miller's books are about Miller in Paris, either sleeping with prostitutes, drinking a little aperitif, writing, or simply remember his childhood in Brooklyn. Black Spring is a lot less sensual than his iconic Tropic of series. And a lot more about, hmmm, people. People that Miller knows. He really knows people.

(This circular writing is killing me. It is 5 am. I have spent the last 4 hours editing a video.)

This review isn't going so well.

There's this one really good part where he talks about painting a horse picture. He describes the entire thing so magically, so 'visually'. You see the lines hit the canvas, the water colours seep into the white, them blend, them erase, them. You feel it all. In the end he destroys the original plan and ends up with a piece of genius abstract. This is just like how he must write (that's the point.) Things don't go as planned.

Read this book if you want to be a writer.

Aside from this: moments of good old machismo keep the read entertaining, voyeuristic and vicariously pleasing.

Also, his Whitman mystic shit gets a little dry and you can skip these parts. They occupy the real-heavy first 30 pages. And is why people stop reading the book before it even really begins.

It really begins with his memory of his childhood working in the tailor shop with his poor father.

You see, he begun his book, probably just to begin it. There's no plan to it, and he just goes. Zip. That's it. He's very good at handling, managing, the chaos.

What else?

The end.

(fail - sorry)
***

Coming soon: my interview with the New York Dolls. A write up and a link to the Spinearth.tv video.

Never again: a book report feeling this tired. I just really missed writing. So here it is. I begun.

"It is winter and I'm wintry." Nah.