1/13/20
“You’re the youngest person I know who could write a memoir”.
It didn’t lend any credence to the statement that the person saying this was my mom. Lately, I’ve had writer’s block. I was in jail for the two years, and I haven’t transitioned to prison well. In jail, at least the jail I was in, they mostly left me alone. Kind of. Not really. Maybe it’s a greener grass thing.
Anyway, the idea of me writing a memoir seems…well, I’d feel kind of like an idiot. I’ve written a few short stories that are mostly true, but…most people who have interesting lives never write about it because their life is so interesting (read: fucked) they forget, or they’re too busy. I’m in the situation that, since I’m now in prison, I have the opportunity to write.
“it used to be writers’ lives were more interesting than the things they wrote about,” said Celine, “now neither their lives nor their writing is interesting”. That’s form Charles Bukowski’s pulp. He’s my favorite writer. He wrote about his life as a drunk, a gambler, a womanizer, who hated society. At times he seems to perceive himself as a fraud, other times he seems to be aware that he is a genius writer.
Are my experiences worth writing about? Maybe it’s not the experiences themselves but the ability of the experiences to interpret them. Take Proust. He turned that teacake or whatever it was into so much beautiful prose. Not my type of thing but if Proust can write a book about some cookie he ate when he was a child, then maybe I can turn my futile attempts to escape the system and shirk civil responsibilities through drug abuse and voluntary homelessness into a respectable piece of writing.
That life feels so far removed from now, and I fear it will only seem further and further away as I wait out my sentence here in this adult daycare of a prison. Not that I’d prefer a worse one. It just seems so petty. I couldn’t process it here, now that I’m removed from everything. I’m not the type of person to lie to myself that I have an answer, or that anything I do will ever matter to any measure, and that’s part of why I haven’t tried very hard to accomplish anything, but only to escape, escape, escape. The only measure of writing or arts value, from that perspective, is how effective it is as an escape. And yet, I want to do it more, The idea of giving up doesn’t appeal to me, on a visceral level where logic and sophistry have no place.
To be a nihilist is to be detested by your own philosophy. But for me, no other way is true. Other philosophies might be more conducive to accomplishment, but I can’t bear to tell myself these lies. Nothing is for certain, ethics are so frustratingly arbitrary in light of that. Happiness, love, self respect, ambition, they are merely baubles dangled by the mind to manipulate the organs into a concerted effort to the benefit of our species. A species that, much as I was never given the option of birth to be forever branded property of the USA, I was never given the option to choose to identify myself with the things that constitute the human population. Desire to achieve is desire to be looked upon as an achiever and to write is to bear witness. Why should I bear witness for the benefit of you, all of you, who I reject as brothers? All the same, like the trained dog it gives me pleasure to exercise what skills I possess. Why?
Nihilism is a philosophy, which puts the host body to rest. It is meant to quell suffering by quelling desire and attachment. Man has a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with his ideas. In the case of nihilism, the way I see it is “nihil est” (nothing is) is the core statement and it is the role of a so called practicing nihilist to keep in mind always that nothing is.
By keeping this in mind he attempts to sever attachments from this reality and thus become increasingly immune to its abuse. Could I remain in that state? Probably, yes. Maybe I’m a failure as a nihilist and a Buddhist but I think I must like a bit of suffering. Even though I know it’s a pointless effort, writing, art - not only is it pointless but I lack the drive and the talent required to create something that would measure up to the other creations that, while tragically unnecessary, are at least respectable from a standpoint of effort and skill…despite all that, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of giving up, and I want what I make to be better, to be up to the standards of that small and egotistical part of me that cares about those things. If I could conquer that part, maybe I’d be a better artist and writer, or maybe I’d quit altogether.
It’s pathetic to my own eyes, but the truth is, I don’t want to be one of those people who considers themselves an artist but who’s material is utter crap, who puts in an amount of effort that costs them their time for a result that isn’t worth that time. That’s why I’m afraid to openly call myself a writer or an artist.