Trying to Start Again, Again.

Obviously, I'm no good at this whole "Blog" thing. When I started, my wifey told me it would be a good way to keep writing, to keep my head in the game, and to stay sharp. I thought she was right. I still think she's right. So, what's the problem?

Well... here's the problem. I've been trying to consider my self isolated from my social context. I've forced myself to ignore certain paradoxes (I seem narcissistic, I am self loathing, I seem primed for success, I continue to sabotage myself, I'm happy, I'm sad, &etc) about how I've been experiencing life, experiencing the world. I've also skipped around a lot in trying to find who I "am." When I was younger, I tied myself to vegan/straightedge punk subculture, and it fit for me. I have always feared drug and alcohol abuse, so abstinence was a no-brainer, and I felt that veganism was a natural extension of my concern about the environment. Now, it's 8 or so years later and I'm not vegan or straightedge any more -- the titles stopped working for me. I was unhappy when I identified with those things, I'm unhappy now. So, part of the problem must be that I'm not confident enough about my knowledge of anything to write about it. All I know is that I don't know nothing.

Here's what I think, though: I think that what I want is what most people want. To figure out what I want then, I have to assume I can know what most people want. Here's the assumption I make: I assume that most people want to know that they've been valuable in their lives, and that they've lived lives that they were proud to live. Arguments about what constitutes a good life are older than me, and beyond me. I know that for me, especially after my brother passed, I've felt "Time's winged chariot,"and have lived in a state of almost-constant panic. Maybe you think I'm exaggerating. Maybe I am. But, I don't think so. I'm restless, I bounce from job to job (more on that in a minute) and don't feel anger in a traffic jam as much as a deep, drawing despair, like there's a drain in my stomach and that sinking feeling is all hope rushing out of it. These negative feelings I relate to my desire to get to my "life," which I've pretended is somehow outside of or beyond me. My twenties have been mostly a fugue state, or like a video game on pause.

That's the fantasy, anyhow. The truth is harder to take: I've been living my life. That makes me shudder, makes me anxious, makes me afraid. Because if it's the case that I've been living my life, it must also be the case that I've been exceptionally bad at it. My wife and my dog are the two great parts of my life, and my earning my MA is probably in a third position. Beyond that there's a vast wasteland of going to shows, buying records and books, and bouncing from menial job to menial job. Since we moved to the bay area, for example, Stephanie has worked a single job, throughout her time in grad school, for two years. I have had, depending on how you count them, between 6 and 9 jobs. "Hey, Eric," you're asking, "how many of those positions have helped you build the academic career you keep saying you'd like to pursue?" Good question, savvy audience member: 0. Maybe 1. I'm stalled in the pit-of-paying-the-bills in the land of there's-never-been-more-than-$3000-in-my-bank-account, and-there's-less-than-$100-most-of-the-time. Fuck.

My parents have been exceptionally supportive, certainly more supportive than I deserve (shame, hallowed be thy name), but I still haven't started to take control of my life in any meaningful way. Straightedge and veganism were, or are, fantasies of control. So is poetry. This may seem like an angular insertion of an "unlike" thing into a series of "like" things to you, but you're sooooo wrong. Poetry shares my fears and shame, poetry shares my desire for design and control, and through poetry, I feel as if I can exert some shaping power over the world, or my experience of it.

How did we get here, from yet another blog post somewhere on the internet about anxiety and frustration?

Let's let James Baldwin explore the theme, since he'll always do a better job than we mere mortals:

     "Leo," he asked me, after a moment, "can you tell me what it is -- an artist? What's it all about? What does an artist really do?"
     I had never known Caleb to be cruel, and so I couldn't believe that he was baiting me. I stared at him.
     "What do you mean, what does an artist do? He-- he creates -- "
     He stared at me with a little smile, saying nothing.
     "You know," I said, "paintings, poems, books, plays. Music."
     "These are all creations," he said, still with that smile.
     "Well, yes. Not all of them are good."
     "But those that are good -- what do they do? Why are they good, when they're good?"
     "They make you -- feel more alive," I said. But I did not really trust this answer.
     "That's what drunkards say about their whiskey," he said, and he nodded in the direction of my wine.
     "Well. I don't mean that," I said.
     He watched me for a long while with his little smile, and he made me very uneasy.
     "Why are you asking me these questions?"
     "Because I  want to know. I'm not teasing you. I don't know anything about it. And you say you want to be an actor. That's a kind of artist. Isn't it? Well, I want to know."
     "I think it -- art -- can make you less lonely." I didn't trust this answer either. (pg386-387).

                                                     Tell me How Long the Train's Been Gone, 1982

Here, Leo's older brother, who converted to Christianity after an experience in WWII, is needling Leo about the lies that art tells people, including its practitioners: art is creation, art is a salve against loneliness, art helps you feel alive. The context is that specific and old debate about art vs. god(s). The best artistic creation is not an absolute truth in the way that the love of a god is supposed to be absolute. It's not foundational, it's not something from which you can build your life. Being an atheist, myself, I'd postulate that the concept of god is a lie, itself, but one foundational enough, through its infallible nature, to support an individual's life and sense of self. I guess the difference is the lie you tell yourself that you know is a lie, vs the lie you tell yourself that you're sure is the truth. In the final case, it doesn't matter if God is real or not, the idea of a god carries out all of the same functions as the god itself.

So, anyway, here's a microcosm of that conversation -- art vs god, which of these will actually help you feel control, feel mastery over life, feels as if your life has meaning? I've chosen, perhaps by default, since one can't really will themselves to believe something they don't believe (uh... paging George Orwell ), to side with art over god, as Leo does, here. There's more truth in it, I think, because doubt and anxiousness are the natural companions of art, they're what propels it forward.

These are the things I have in my mind while I'm training students to "beat" the PSAT exam, or, while I'm bagging your groceries. But I can't simply have them in mind if I am to do something with them. It's time I bring my life into concordance with my feelings about it. That's the stumbling block. How to accomplish this. An Idiot's Guide to Accomplishing Something, Anything?" My sense that I haven't been good enough, am not smart enough, will not become smart enough, has stood in my way long enough. I was fortunate enough, a few months ago, to go out to lunch with some poets I admire, including Blas Falconer, the owner of an absolutely compassionate and thoughtful disposition, and the writer of some very beautiful poetry. I talked to him because he sometimes lectures at USC, school of my fantasies. He gave me great advice that I'll paraphrase like this: "You think you are old, but you are not old, you think it is too late, but it is not too late. Writing is what matters to you: write."

He's right.

So, this is where I'm starting, again. Working menial work. Hoping there is something more to me than there might be. Searching for something I can't name, define, or defend. Why? Because like all people I fear death, like most people I want life, and like some people I find life in art. In Frank Bidart's new book, Metaphysical Dog, he's already written the poem that the rest of us have been wanting to write. It's called "Against Rage," (and is clearly against that rage that Dylan Thomas felt we should experience, "...against the dying of the light.") and is as concise a statement about art and death as one can expect to find:


         AGAINST RAGE

He had not been denied the world. Terrible
scenes that he clung to because they taught him  

the world will at last be buried with him.
As well as the exhilarations. Now,   

he thinks each new one will be the last one.
The last new page. The last sex. Each human  

being's story, he tells nobody, is a boat 
cutting through the night. As starless blackness
  

approaches, the soul reverses itself, in
the eerie acceptance of finitude. (pg 81)

When I talk about control in poetry, this is what I'm talking about. Ten lines, five couplets, almost perfect pentameter, an economy of language with vast stores of meaning underwriting that economy. The poem has lines that imagine the full range of time, from the past to the future, because he remembers scenes that will, "... at last be buried with him," at some undisclosed point in the future. His anxiousness about the coming darkness expresses itself in the fear that "... each new one will be the last one." The list that follows, because of the suspended half-meaning created by the line break, includes not just sex and writing, but "... Each human," the acknowledgment that what you lose when you die is not only your experiences, but your ability to match your experience with that of every other person living.

This poem, I think, is as asymptotically close to prayer as poetry gets, and perhaps Leo wasn't completely lying to himself: I feel more alive for having read it.