Distractions in the Modern Age

I like Lacan's notion of the Real as being that which returns into place. If I could keep to that distinction between the real, and the unconscious then I would be a much more productive individual able to stand witness to a self-defeating delusion against a tide of unsavory self-hatred.

To be able to write with less distraction. Endless distraction is the reality of modern life, and unavoidable to get into the touch of what is going on inside this technological revolution spiraling into the generation. I can only hope to lessen the distraction enough to get to the core of my writing self. It is a showdown with Truth as I feel it that trickles out of these hands, and if the hands are stained with the blots of the the unsavory dribbling of my soul then so be it. Writing is possibly one of the most democratic art forms there are. This means that there is a lot of crap written all the time, which doesn't make any of it less true. A serial killer can write as much as a rapist, as much as an insurance salesman or arms-dealer.

In terms of distraction, checking email is worse than smoking half a pack of cigarettes. As long as one doesn't go for an extended cigarette break to chat with neighboring balconies, you can be sure to smoke it and get right back on the idea as it's hitting you in front of the screen, or notebook.

One's attitude can be as important as one's words. In this written universe, we can feel the futility of words to other mediums in everday life. We're constantly attempting to use words to 'convey' to 'denote' things like emotions, attitude, intentions, all the things which are so much or expressive and easily available as a human-being through other mediums like facial expressions, or the voice.

Words, words, words.

They rattle off in the mind like the sound of dice falling wherever they may. It's either luck, or some divine monkey on a type-writer keeping me going as I'm barely conscious in this drunken-commando haze. It's hazing, but I seem to do the best writing on the verges of passing out. There's something just so right about not being able to stand it any longer, and succumbing to slumber that makes the whole experience less than self-aggrandizement and murder at the same time.

Writing Early in the Mornings

There is something to be said about writing in the mornings. Surprisingly sleep came early last night towards the break of midnight, and I awoke to the early Chinese (I'm guessing from the way their language sounds, but most likely) joggers in the playground behind the house and of course my friends the rats. While I've thinned their population to say perhaps the last family in the house their complete extermination/removal/relocation has been elusive. They're now wise to my traps and I must change strategy (which gets me thinking why rats aren't symbols of cleverness like foxes; probably bad PR). Any suggestions?

    Unfortunately, the early sleep did not yield scribbable dreams. To me this is a night lost. From the dream comes my best work. What is better; waking up tired with ideas but unable to write, or waking up fresh without a idea to begin exploring, but able to write? Perhaps a schedule could be arranged to have both, yet I have a sinking feeling that one is cheating the other.

I finally feel in the right position to be able to discuss certain other books finished, and work on current projects. A nice beginning to another hopefully productive day.

Have we built a life complete for human existence? Have we even built a life sufficient and necessary for ourselves, our individuality?

I don't know why I don't just publish the blog posts the day that I write them. Perhaps I figured that I'll do some editing. Alas there is rarely time for that. The mind moves on, and you can never step in the same river twice. This was a couple of days ago. It's almost been raining every single night.

I don't know why but I seem to write better when there is a thunderstorm on the horizon. Perhaps the weather is appropriating my mood. Or perhaps the prospect of rain in this superheated city has cooled down my body temperature and thus my brain enough for a steady stream of coherence through the voltage storm between these ears. Whatever it is I should waste the feeling.

 

Reading a narrative fiction which wanders about and rambles on and on, if you do fall in love with the writer's voice then you're sold. It brings a lot of things into perspective with a coherence of vision that is much in lacking in this century of cut-off time. The pause button will be the motif of this generation. We're always in the middle, in between a thing and another while live grows more passive and passive each day. The spectacles are all around, and unbinding me, my thoughts, my dreams, and desire from the simulacra is puzzling. Constantly I am asking myself this: how did I become so fragmented? How did a life once whole, honest, and straight become so twisted in false dichotomies and complications? For my weapons I have my instincts, which in a pure past perspective has guided me better than future projections of failure and disaster of fear of instincts. For one, it has guided me to just the right books that I need to be reading now. And now that I'm reading them I begin to understand that what modern society had fundamentally broken was: life.

    I did not understand it fully at first when I read the Elementary Particles, but I got the sense at the end that the author had made us question the possibility of a human existence as we know it (or perhaps a humane existence) at the turn of the 21^st century. What do I mean by this? The characters showed fragmentary humans, attempting to find that whole. As if that whole could make their life more complete in a society which had categorized them, marked them, tagged them, and projected their futures all on a time line. All of them could be a statistic. That hollow feeling of fate closing upon the characters felt so inhuman and alien that one wanted to rebel against the character's impending fate. Yet, I the reader derived a satisfaction from witnessing the characters succumb to their fates. I judged it proper, and would have felt cheated if they didn't. That gave the writing a quality of verisimilitude which modern commercial writing so dearly lacks. The characters were driven into the pit of doom by their own hand, their own devices. Their fundamental flaws, despite all abstraction, lead them to their fall. They were not merely foil for the main character to chop away, shoot, or blast with a special effects explosion. There is a logic to them that elevated them from mere puppets on a puppet theater to living, breathing human-beings for moments, more real than social reality. For those of us that live in cities, walking down the glam street (or glam streets as the case may be) we do not live anymore in a human reality but in the belly of a machine. You can feel the edges of this machine on the outskirts, churning away, non-stop, but to be in the middle of it, to see each interaction as income, exchange, output, commodity fetish, etc. to see abstract rational economics conducted by a human hand, a human face, a human voice devalues that of the breathing man and adds to that of abstraction man. But the worst of all is the sense, when watching from the outside, that absolutely nothing of worth is going on in shopping. For the shoppie, dominated in minds, possibilities, dreams, the brain is kept alive on the static glow of remembered advertisements and TV screens. Pictures of products never touched never smelled, never taken in by other sense than the ears and the eyes become… real? The minor of ah-ah of witnessing the phasmagoria in the flesh. But I who does not watch TV, having only perceived this piece for the first time, know it is there, not knowing its qualities and its labels, not understanding why this or that design looks better than this or that see small, same looking bottles, and not understand the difference until I try them. Yet even when I try them there are just things… in others I see their lives have been taken over by the Thing. Everything needs to resolve itself around The Thing. All constructed human conflicts; belonging, lifestyle, choice of mate, presidents all revolve around the acquisition of The Thing. And if we are all just objects swirling around the phallic symbol of The Thing, the indeed the abstraction of it has taken over Life. Hence I finally understand the title of Minimum Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life.

    If life, an eventual abstract thing to come into existence can be said to be human then the definition of that, the asking of 'how' questions, and finally and importantly the limits of what constitutes human. A good definition should be; sufficient, and necessary. Therefore, what is the necessary for a life to be human? What sufficiently can we call a human life? These were the questions addressed.

    Have we built a life complete for human existence? Have we even built a life sufficient and necessary for ourselves, our individuality?

May 20-21

The first part is not spell-checked. It was simply written on the spur before passing out. Somehow I like it that way better. The second part is only moments ago. I'm either going to pass out again, or get back into veiling my ideas in their letter body bags.

--

Rage is boiling inside of me at what had happpened yesterday. I'm at a point right now where everything is coming together. I understand now that I'm gong to have to type with my eyes closed to get the world out. I see the visons of this inner world where the stories ring true, but I can't neglect to keep my eye out for this one. This one world this one where the moment can pass ou by just liethat. There's no inifinite time on a plane to be wsting waway getting drunk and hihgh and unreactive. There's been too long that I've just said to myself that I'll take antoehr drink then I'll do it, but then I don't I justkeep watching the next damn thing on TV trying to hide from what I have to do , but no more even if the desire for alcohol take me I'm giong to keep on writing, I'mg going to write no matter what the keep the images moving inside of thi callibir head of mine. I'm going to keep the whole lot from falling with my mind. I'm going to use this vison that I see the vison in the dream.s that come to be from night on to the next to keep guiding me towards the next revolution in rightiong. If I it isn't a revolutonfo or them it is a revolution for me, because I can feel what everyone shall being feeling that alineted from this sense of reality proud nad ostaligic, the mood and lthe listening, it's in the music in is in the underground... am I making the right choices, but I'm only the writing the novel that I can write right now in this moment . I'm only going to use what I know right now tot keep myelf going. I'm going to high speed the hell out of wriitng meocride crap, and keep heading toward the benveable goals. I know what I'm gong to hve to learn to type faster to keep with the flow of my thoughts into language. This lagnuage which spikes and thrills. I 'm wiriting electicity off from my head into my fingers.

2:23: AM Can't sleep. The rats are always knawing at the roof at 3 in the morning and it's too damn hot even with two fans on me. Since I can't sleep I decided to read some of Henry Miller's letters. Now here is a man who knew about making art by writing. Unfortunately I'm almost at the end of the book when I discovered where the injuries foretold in an earlier blue ink warned. The bastard had cut out and stolen most of the last chapters! He's so damn indecent as well to steal the pages after the letters have begun! I'm left hanging... and cursing the bastard who had the gall to call me motherfucker in his note! Whoever you are, I have to say I had been amused reading your note but I want those damn pages back and damn your scrap book or whatever you chicken shit! I can barely read your handwriting, and the sentiment was fine, until you had to insult me, carr.
Well on the bright side it got me back in the new office chair to write. Meditations upon the visions in the back of my eyelids. What is writing? The question simply popped into my mind as I finally got up to drink some water. What is writing? I could ask: What is art? But: What is writing? Is writing some sort of special medium, where working with the very basic tools of language we are sending straight bolts of telepathy hurling into the minds of others? And what constitutes good writing? I know commercial success appears to be what everyone around me is striving for. I'm wondering if we're simply a verbal puppeteer, dragging characters out of the closet to enact our private pains for another audience. What people want to read about are other people, doing human things. That is the sphere of fiction. We have the scientific language which leaves one bored to sleep, maintaining that detached 'objective' perspective. Yet what is 'good writing'? I'm clearly unresolved on the issue.
I dream of a style being variations on a theme. There is the main concept, and then the small parts. Yet to create something totally new, something original, I see that one has to work with the basic colors, the nuts and bolts of the craft. And yes, despite everything being so uncertain there is certainly a craft to doing this.

Brain Cell

You must catch the dream before it's all gone. It's all gone now. Damn it, it was so fresh just a minute ago.

I had a dream of soliders. Of being soliders in an enternal struggle. An ember, and ember what is that? Is that me

Everyline is me burning out another brain-cell.

City-Drift, Bangkok (Raw)

Here's a city-drift I did of Bangkok walking home drunk one night. I typed it in a raw text file, to be edited later. Enjoys.

Some people would call this city, the city of Angels. I would call it the city of lies; but then all cities lie. Underneath all the bill boards, LCD screens, and facades, it's a mess of congrete, swet and exploitation. There hasn't been a major city I've been to that isn't built on the backs of provincial indentured servants. Attracted by the lure, the glitter and glamor from the electrotube they come in trains, buses, even sometimes planes. In beat up cars they come, walking in on the mass transits. They walk the street brown skin, and stinking, or sell trinkets on the walk ways in front of department stores.

They are my companions in the night.

Some people try to make it in the city. They say there's more opportunity. This is a city where people who fail come. In Isaan where havest season comes only a year, people move to the city to drive taxis. People will always need a taxi, as they say. Because walking is so passe.

People think it's dangerous to walk at night there. Watching the news, they spread the fear. Yet as cities go this one is quite safe. Of course, that usually a function of how you dress. Black supermarket Tees and my mom's hand me down jeans, a chain for the wallet and a fist full of change. And only fools joj down dark dead-end alleys. It's safe until you meet a police man. After all, you know that one has a gun. There's usually a problem when one man has a gun, and not the other one.

Most of all it's important to smile. Especially to the waiter boys, the flower merchants, to give them a small time, don't wince, but smile. Smile don't say a word. Let the smile say that I know the struggle brother.

But I stand apart.

People have confused selling themselves to art. Its all self-promotion, the propaganda people say. You've got to sell, make money, slave. You don't need that much money to live, you probably need more to die and expect to be burried.

Those that never wrote, and tire of their souls wouldn't know. They wouldn't know, nor taste the bitterness in this, the sweetness in that. Each line a hit of acid, searing away memory, rewriting history. I'm uncovering the secret... my secrets. Those that I hold so dear that I won't let myself know.

You can look at a mirror for your own reflection; but the mirror lies those aren't my eyes. Faded innocence.

Encarta used to call it the city of whores, until the government had it removed. Many things are removed. Like rotting waste food on city streets, or glue bags, child prostitutes. It's all the same really.

I stay up and watch the street clearers wait for the sunrise. They recycle the plastic, the glass. Rubber gloves, and face masks, the brooms, the sweeps. A water truck and gardeners.

The trees can't water themselves, someone has to do it. That someone also had to sleep with another or not get shelter?

But it is a city. For one that barely sleeps, to walk a city that never does, we know the expression is a lie. You and I. It's always you and I. Do we dance to regret?

I dance under the city light post, tracing the shadows with my arms. You could learn to love the spots in the shadows of the canopy.

It's a drug hallucination; charm.

We were built as a fortress.

I refused to work. I don't want exploitation. I come from a cross the river and the cannals. I say. A place far and far away.

I couch surf, and I lie still for days, looking out at parking lots; nursing the drug. The drug that shafts my hands, and burn my eyes.

Some would call it sleep. I call it a compromise.

I'm fighting for this existence, every minute, every hour, ever day. I'm fighting to keep these eyes from shutting. From the dream of being dead and gone, from the dream of being forgotten.

Begining ear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

Wrote this about two weeks ago while reading... well it's in the title ;)

I am sitting here nursing a midnight hangover (don’t ask), trying reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Ah, what a world it must have been to be back there in that age and writing for Rolling Stone magazine! If only these things were possible now a days. It is partly publishing’s fault, though the blame is constantly shifted to ‘the Reading public’. Yet as an unorthodox social scientist in training I can safely say ‘that just ain’t so’.

A word before I start the ritual massacre of modern customs and conventions. We had an interesting discussion at the last Bangkok Writer’s Guild meetup about editors, after the official meeting of course and everyone had had enough wine and food, those that had better places to go went, and those that could stay were really getting into the bare knuckle parts of being a working writer.

We’d somehow gotten onto the topic of Raymond Carver and his editor (his name), and how that heavily influenced his style. I remember window reading up the only copy (no, no I will not blame the reading public) of at the biggest, most modern bookstore which shall remained unnamed (because I refuse to name drop them), at the swankest department store in the capital (I was awaiting a FREE emerging female Japanese directors film festival; now if that doesn’t give it away, then you don’t know our lovely capital. NOTE: Awesome indie films, but the theater location still made me feel guilty) finding that the later stories didn’t seem like the Carver I studied in school. I could think of about a good dozen examples of such editor/mentor figures in the memoirs of great writers, a list which included the likes of Thompson, and Hemingway.
“These days, it’s just not the same,” our guest speaker said, in that pleasant American drawl I associate with being born a generation before my time. “These days’ editors just want to sell what you give them. They’re not interesting in mentoring the young writer anymore.”
“If you look at his earlier work, as compared to his later, even the meaning’s changed.” Phillip said.

“You know, you could try writing a story about that. About trying to find such an editor or agent.”

“Good idea,” I said. “As an idealist young writer fresh outta college I want to develop fast, and I know I’m going to need someone like that if I’m going to get to my goal at the end of the year.”

Very good idea. I thought. Very good idea. I want to learn to not only express myself, but do it good.

“Like in the music industry,” another member said, “you develop talent.”

Catching a cab home (protesters had just bombed the subway that night, so I figured I could justifiably afford a bit for safety) I then thought of those other group of writers though that had their peers acting as mentor and editors, like the Beats, the mud raking Socialists, the post-war Paris Americans, and the even the Auteur in film. Perhaps as a young writer attempting to find the voice to bend into control chaos (your controlled chaos) on that empty canvas, it might not be such a good idea. Hemmingway might bully Fitzgerald into tips about writing, but I bet he would’ve have gotten so insane and great without Zelda, nor Henry Miller without June or Anais. Perhaps where I’m going I can’t ask for traditional mentors, not from the writing world, nor from the ideals of an anti-heroic society. Perhaps where I’m going I need more than just words, thoughts, egotistical rationality, and my dulled senses. In trying to light my own fire I can’t keep looking off at distant flames across mountains for guidance. I’m on a strange mountain of my own shrouded in darkness and immense beauty. Unexplored wonder. Like a pioneer, like an impotent caveman, I’m peering into the mist not knowing what will come next. The voices in my head, my mentor and muse, can only extract me from the mundane into this reality but they cannot help with the exploration. They can help keep me strong, but they can’t learn my dream, nor learn my song for me.

Like an act of faith, I’m stumbling blind into rapture.

Long interlude aside; it’s pleasant to read a mind attempting at grasping something. The author’s note about jettisoning hindsight is a rare gem amongst books written about a subject. Why must people constantly want that 50/50 look at things? Historicism will kill, it has killed. The very notion of comparing past events to predict the future is as good as driving an oil tanker with the rear view mirror that instead of reflecting, is painted of a congealed consensus of all the passengers on board. And people wonder when it hits an iceberg, or runs aground on a reef!

To quote Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ‘We don’t learn that we don’t learn.”

Getting that blow-by-blow account of attempting to understand an event is a better example, perhaps the only true account of what’s actually going on. After years of college I’m tired of arguments, and studying politics, I’m especially tired of arguments over nothing, about nothing, or doing nothing definable. I’m convinced that there are enough experts and talking heads on TV to drive pharmaceutical sales that I’d be quickly out of job if I’d even wanted to join the peanut gallery. They can make a rat-race about anything thanks to those damn people who clap at the wrong moments (refer to Catcher in the Rye, pg. 84), if you know what I mean.
I’m more interested about how one gets the story, and what that speaks about the process. Anyone and everyone with a little bit of fame in the social sciences have written a book whose title could have all been switched to: ‘Where we went wrong’. We’re endlessly discussing problems, and possible solutions, and the problems with those solutions. Meanwhile, actors influence global politics, incompetent politicians are allowed to continue to mumble through their ‘political careers’ while bankrupting countries, and a new generation of young people become zombiefied, raterized, and chop sues and stir fried rice to feed the pigs. The really, really fat pigs.
Side-note: I don’t know why, but CEOs always look like they want to eat you smiling in front of their corporate logos.

And unlike people who speak at air-conditioned, climate change conferences in suits, I’ve neither solutions nor facts to awe nor scare. I’ve got no call to action, and in fact I’m not acting at the moment because I have no life. I don’t know what life is. I do know that it’s not a knowledge problem, though. I don’t know where we went wrong, nor do I particularly care at this point. I don’t even know where we’re going, or where we came from. In a society that denies first-hand experience of self-knowledge, but increasingly manufactures and sells second-hand experiences of it, I’m content to be a little man living under a rock right now to figure out certain things. I’m contended to represent the disunited republic of myself, but I wonder… Am I a toad, or a frog? Are my hallucinations revealing, or are they concealing (please don’t tell me they’re not real; everyone hallucinates, everyday. Read a Zen story.) what I want to know? What do I want to know? Aren’t they just as valid as blue or red for spring fashion? Some wouldn’t like to think so.

Whatever solutions I’ll come up with, I can guarantee this: it won’t be rational. I’m traveling a different path. If like Don Juan reflects, all paths ultimately lead to death, I’m just hoping this path I’m a walking has a heart.

Ah… what is heart?

A month's absence

Well, it's been a month since I wrote last but that's all good. A busy month of traveling, reflecting... and what do you know the writing has improved. Now it's just about forcing myself to get it down on paper. I'm going to make an honest shot of attempting to get this blog to do something again.