My oma.
Welcome back, fellas.
We are bringing this blog back to the world, and what better way to do
so than having my mom chop and strike to clear some space for us. This clip was taken almost a year and a half
ago, December of 2011. It was right
after she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer. Yes, right after being diagnosed, she performs disco-karate. This is my oma. So much has happened since our last blog
post. Babies were born, adults
reborn. I’m sure our artistic lives have
also gone through some changes. We’ll
get to all that later. I just wanted to
let y’all know that I’m happy to be here with you.
I’ll be posting from Busan. My mom is living in Korea because they have a type of “targeted therapy” that works by a matched DNA process, which allows for much stronger treatment without the side effects of chemo. They don’t have this drug in the states. I know this blog was supposed to be about writing, but what is writing without the ballast of experience? Without experience, without loss or joy or the incomprehension of the stars, our words grow out of themselves, which is fine for some folks. I can’t operate on words alone. I’m not that smart, and my vocabulary is impoverished, like a literary ghetto compared to you guys, you GENIUSES! So here’s to the lived life. We are food writers, too, but first we must eat. I’m looking forward to some good convos. Even though we’re not sitting in a Saturn in the Asheville heat, slapping headrests and center consoles with every exciting idea about writing, this blog is just as good. I mean, I can see Seth’s gorgeous picture to the right of the post. Alex, you’re hot, too. Josh…please reveal your male beauty! Love to all. Let’s talk soon.
Tommy
I'm pretty sure there's an air guitar in there somewhere. And of course awesome that you'll be sending us all updates from Korea. I can't wait to read them.
ReplyDeleteAs a lame initial response, I have to say that reading this post makes me feel nervous. In the interim howevermany years since I last blogged, I've spent a lot of time not writing about myself - or at least, not attempting to publish the enormous shitload of writing I've done about myself. The idea of going back to self-examination in this kind of a public, direct, artless, and frankly kind of embarrassing way hits my taste-o-meter as "wrong". It's the fart in the elevator aspect of blogging, which has always appealed to me, but which also makes me feel when I read or write this stuff that I'm wasting my time.
In other words, this seems "risky" to me, although maybe I'm wrong and it isn't risky at all - maybe it's among the least risky things any of us could be doing with our time. It's hard to tell. Which is the whole fucking problem, right, since what I secretly want is not to create great art, but to spend the set amount of time and energy I've been given on things that will succeed, pan out, not end up being wastes of time.
Josh! I love you!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I understand your hesitation. You know, when I was working on the novel, I wrote lots of artless and embarrassing scenes that would make you ask, "You actually write? Like, with words and stuff?" I suppose since the scenes were tossed, they were a waste of time, but like many of the choices in my life, which resulted in catastrophe like the airport this morning, I've learned how essential they were for some larger project that is beyond a novel or a blog post. What is that project? I felt some of the vibrations of this project through my job, through my family, through writing, and I know at some point all of these creations, some of which are awful, will amount to something. Or not. Either way, I must keep creating, in all forms, in writing and in my life (are they separate? We've been trying to figure this out for years, chicken and egg stuff). I'm sure some of my choices will continue to explode in my face, artistic and personal choices, but hey, the air-guitar show must continue. There is no harm in trying. I'm what they call a late/never bloomer:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell
An experimenter. Mozart, Picasso and Jason Williams (White Chocolate) were more the "conceptual" types, having a vision of what they want, and executing precisely that vision. Let's keep this conversation going!
Basketball (vis a vis White Chocolate) seems like a great framework to talk about experiment in. I don't really watch it, but I read about it a fair amount. It's a similar relationship to the one I have with jazz, where a fundamental ignorance of the music means that I have to appreciate it through second-order paraphrase. So in other words, what I really enjoy is not these things but the language that these things provoke into existence. This is lame.
ReplyDeleteAlright, so the whole question for me essentially revolves around that "Or not," which you set up as just another possibility but which feels to me most of the time like a disaster of Deep Impactian proportions. What if none of it ever amounts to anything?!? What if I've been wasting my time, not in a "well we're all just wasting our life" kind of way, but in the more provincial, earth-bound and tangible sense of "I did less with my life than that other person, and that makes me feel like I've squandered some sort of Biblical portion of grain"?
I ask because the two poles seem distressingly far apart to me most of the time, and especially when I write. Then, instead of the free-form equanimity of a creator, I more often feel the weight of expectation and the poseur's guilty bad faith. Such constipating pressure! And thought I can agree mentally that the whole point is to turn that off and get to the point where it's all good, I have a very hard time doing it, because deep down I admit I wonder if it is a matter of "Either way", or if there isn't some judging conscience somewhere holding me responsible for my life in a way that is far less forgiving than even Malcolm Gladwell.
No doubt this sounds self-pitying, but don't you think stakes are important? If we might as well be emptying the trash, then why go to Korea? Why do any of this to ourselves?
Man, I feel like we are existing in one of DFW's footnotes. This stuff is rich, and we should be sharing it out there, you know, in the blog!
ReplyDeleteYeah, there is definitely a selfish impulse behind my starting the blog, but it's the same with my job as a teacher. I get meaning and fulfillment when I get to share, and have stories intersect. Sharing. Wow, I want to now bust out the reading rug and serve cookies. I guess I haven't been able to share some of the important and profound parts of my life with the reflection and steady gaze that writing could provide. And I suppose I could have just emailed my thoughts to you guys. Yeah, there is some bad faith involved with this blog, but I'm trusting some instinct to write it anyways. It may be the crap scene I throw away, but it may also turn out to be meaningful to me. Ultimately, this meaning comes from me. I think when examine where these expectations of greatness or relevance come from, we see that it's really coming from us, prompted by some weird, amorphous Writing God/s. I'm learning how these expectations can body check us like Dion Phaneuf. Justine and I were just talking about this very topic. Who determines relevance? Who determines our worth? Some book award? Other writers? Family member who can't even speak English?
I may be delusional, but here is my way of thinking. As long as the choices I make are mostly based on my expectations of life (which is nearly impossible, I understand), whatever "mistakes" I make become essential to where I'm at, and where I'm at is all there is. It's that "amor fati" that Nietzsche talks about (thanks Robert Harrison! I'm not a fan of the sound of the new shows. Harrison sounds like he's in an oven) If it's a "waste," it was an essential waste, because the alternative is a life that cannot stay present, cannot be inside now:
"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it."
Okay, I'm going to stop. I can't even seem to stay on one point. Again, Josh, these are great talking points. We need to explore together. I need to finish reading NOWHERE MAN. I broke my promise and didn't finish it. I have 17 pages left!
Tommy, you make a convincing case for amor fati, but I am still not going to show you my male booty.
ReplyDeleteJosh! How it glistens! Damn, I miss you.
DeleteHey guys: I've only now read this post (and the post above) as well as your comments. I have so much I'd like to say--so many points to acknowledge and discuss--but I have little time. In a way, though, that might be my first response: my lack of time (since the birth of my daughter, at least) has, in a way, resolved some of these dilemmas for me. I don't mean to be one of those parents speaking to you from high atop my mountain of shitty diapers. I only mean to say: my current lack of time feels far different than my prior, pre-Ella, lack of time. Which is to say: I've finally acknowledged that if I do not take advantage of my few opportunities to write, I will not write. And maybe it's completely selfish, but that's enough for me: if I have time to write, I feel like I'm using my time wisely. Recap that sentence, deleting everything but the personal pronouns: I, I, I'm, my. Right now, writing-time just seems luxurious to me, like I'm eating a roast chicken and drinking an entire bottle of wine--and I never ask myself when I'm eating roast chicken and drinking wine: "Is this a good use of my time?" Perhaps as I find more time, the thoughts you guys describe here will creep back into my consciousness. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I will never really discover unbridled time to write again--at least not until my fifties. Ugh. Please keep up the convo...
ReplyDelete