Thursday, September 24, 2009

Anger = Fuel




"I will confess to you now that anything I have ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, as anything I have ever done in life down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up and wrong and that I was the fucking center of the universe, and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be … That’s what’s going on in my head."

-David Simon,
creator of "The Wire"

I am an unabashed fan of The Wire and David Simon has in many ways become the end-all-be-all to me, not only in his being a journalist, a screenwriter, a novelist, a newspaper advocate, etc., but because his anger seems palpable in anything he pours himself into. His ego may seem bigger than Baltimore, but at least he's a screenwriter with convictions.

His statement also brings up one of the bigger(biggest?) questions about writing, whether it's short stories, poems, essays, articles, novels, blogs: Who are you and why does what you're writing matter to me in my separate universe?

Sometimes, definitely in Mr. Simon's case, anger and self-righteousness can help the writer blaze on through that question. Others, as Dubus' quote a few posts back about Hemingway's "lack of talent" shows, have doubts about their worth as writers and their perception on the human condition.

So maybe we should take a lesson from David Simon every once in a while. If we hit a brick wall or come to an impasse filled with doubt, tear that shit down and shout, "I am the smartest motherfucker who ever constructed a sentence."


You Got Served



I'm a waitress and a poet. Sometimes these two roles intersect: I try to focus in on "the image" of a customer who's ordered something specific. What does calves liver say about you? How about French-toast-style bread pudding? So far many assumptions commonly made based on food prejudices have been wrong.


In the case of a woman I call “Veggie Burger,” she is not super friendly and organic-crunchtastic as one would guess. She’s actually a big time complainer and one of the most impatient and unhappy people I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how her husband puts up with it.

And then there are the old men who order spaghetti and meatballs. You expect them to be pretty uptight and a little mean, but they turn out to be the sweetest customers and the best tippers.

How about the guy who always orders orange juice, even with dinner? Is he concerned about his tooth enamel, because if so, I should really give him a straw. Does he have super evolved health consciousness? Is he warding off a cold? Was this his favorite childhood drink? I have so many questions and only one object- a citrus beverage- to act as the answer. So in the spirit of trying to use my day/night job as fuel for my writing, here’s a little poem (it’s bad) that I wrote the other night as an exercise in streamlining my money making talents with my love for lyricism:


orange juice


you ask for

orange juice,

and we’ve joked

about this drink

for weeks—whether

you’ll have that or

cappuccino instead—

and I want to tell you,

“forget the OJ

and take me,”

but I carry the cup

to your table. this glass

of orange juice

is nothing. it’s all the things

I could give you:

watercolor sketches

of west end avenue,

free tickets

to the new museum,

my body to hold

as you sleep,

homemade lentil

soup on saturday

mornings.


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

In Defense of the Word

"One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one's solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read... One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with-- the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth-- and the majority of them are illiterate."~ Eduardo Galeano, 1978, translation by Bobbye Ortiz

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Andre Dubus' "Letter to a Writers' Workshop"



"We can't make them perfectly, only as best we can. Hemingway once said that he had very little natural talent and what people called his style was simply his effort to overcome his lack of talent. Don't take it lightly. What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?"

-Andre Dubus
"Letter to a Writers' Workshop"
MEDITATIONS FROM A MOVABLE CHAIR


Saturday, September 5, 2009

Hiatus

Youwillgetpapercuts is hereby resurrected.

The summer hiatus is over.

Let the posting begin.