kindly handicap

[ashcanprobably]

I've been writing like crazy lately. No useful surface is spared when I get that itch to write in spasms. I've been writing so much with pens and pencils & crayons & eyeliners & anything handy that, when I get on the keyboard, I notice that I've regressed into committing whole new patterns of typos. It used to be about errors of brevity, my battles

Comments

[finnekee]

HOW IS IT, sir, that you've trained people to tell you when they flinched and when they laughed and when they shed their single tears? the whole lot of my readers subsist on silence.

also, "bodily make-up" doesn't sound like you. nor does the sentiment about the hands.

[ashcanprobably]

Of course it doesn't sound like me. Whatever inconsistencies you happen to spot in my writing at the moment can be blamed on the influence of my mangled toe, which is poisoning me from the bottom up, and working its evil changes like a slow acid.

I don't attest to know why people comment or how, but I can conjecture patterns. That I've trained them in any way is absurd. The best I can do is boast an understanding, suggest that I'm composed of essential stuff, and that they should like and indulge me as reliable correspondence. Users like trickeration above deserve all the comments they get because their journals are very funny, and in this sense, interactive, for people feel grateful for all the laughs, and they respond in thanks. Journals like yours and mine are more introspective, more thorough, maybe they attempt to be beautiful or engaging, instead of entertaining, but they are so constructed that readers feel that all has been said and there's nothing to add. All they have to include is their reactions and some people might feel that their

[finnekee]

i was just thinking, remember a long time ago we were internet-arguing or something and you wanted to talk with the mouths and the voices? you really had me pinned there. strange, almost, that words avail my hands and voice descriminately.as a quick smack to the toe, i wasn't serious about the training.

and i think you've got the thing caught, here, really. you and i are of the same mind as regards what we'd git if we'd our 'druthers.

and my problem is, a comment feels like a thing IN TIME, so i write back even when i'm not in the mood for writing. which is a bigger influence on my writing than it maybe should be. in any case, what you've said above doesn't feel like an egotistical rant. it feels like an im-mense attempt at communication; one so thoughtful that it almost precludes what it's after. but that's not your fault, it's mine.

[ashcanprobably]

Yeah, you type out your ideas much faster than I can, faster than I ever could, and I wanted to level the playing field. The speed of the argument was frustrating me to the point where I wanted to sweep the keyboard aside and commence to dumping. It used to be that I considered myself a language spinner and not an idea man. Now that I'm trying to be the latter and failing, I'm losing my faculty and ease of language. It'll be back to the drawing board in no time.

[finnekee]

tell me about it. there should be some kind of loophole found in the intellectual property laws such that i (and apparently you) could go listen to those people who brag about having "a million ideas" and enter into ghostwriting contracts with them, to their eventual murderous detriment. i guess the loophole would have to be found in more than the copyright.

do you have a switch? i don't know can't tell whether it's some kind of defense mechanism or just a habit of my character, but i've got at least two distinct Modes of writing. both are the children of my Old Old habit of overwriting, not yet deceased. but the one with the heavy hand only comes out when i'm thinking posterity.

[finnekee]

WAIT BACKTRACK this looks (mind you i say LOOKS) like the same not-wheedle i just commited below.

i have never seen you write informally, is all i'm asking.

[ashcanprobably]

I'm almost positive I lost the thread of what you were getting at. I think the way I write can be best summed up in the words of Gene Fowler.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

I am probably a better conversationalist than I am a writer. Writing has become such a rigid task for me. I have to squeeze myself into these symbols like corsets and the outcome is always very dense. I get one good sentence that doesn't seem stuffy out of the several paragraphs I spill and I'm satisfied with that. In the end, I just want to get it out and behind me and start something new. Often times I will go back to it after I let it sit for awhile. I'm a fastidious editor this way.

A better place for me would be the vocal tradition of the old Greek poets, which must have sounded the way Ezra Pound used to read his stuff, like a serious chant. My readings and tone would be more matter of fact. None of that jazzy jive bullshit you get at slams.

[finnekee]

i like the rigidity. conversations tend to elope with themseleves without my permission and blessing, lately. i really enjoy vocalised debate, and i have built up an ability to chit-chat with people i don't know which amazes even myself, on account of how i don't really feel like i "Know" that many people a'tall.

what you're talking about reads to me like you're about to pop the seam on your most recent cocoon d'style. which is always a good thing, i think.

ezra's my favourite. i used to listen to a tape of him reading on the way to and from school every day, a fourty minute drive. i'd give rides to people and they'd laugh, and i would almost kick them OUT.

the very CONCEPT of slam poetry eludes me. not rap, not poetry, it's a SLAM. it's a bunch of people who should be Slamming about vintaging and eating low-carb, if they were being honest. most of them only go by one one-syllable name, though, so i'm afraid to tell them that.

[uberdionysus]

I've been fascinated with which entries get a lot of comments and which do not. The ones that get a lot of comments are either funny, like you said, or open-ended and interactive, like Jenny's used to be. Jenny would be incredibly confessional and open-ended as if you were her new friend and it was late at night and you were both playing a private game of Truth and Dare, and you would feel her vulnerability and openess and want to respond with the same. You analyzed your posts the way I would; there is a certain level of completeness that isn't interactive and open-ended, and is not conducive to pithy, confessional, or witty comments. You're still an amazing read.