One Little Song
I do this bad thing where I adopt the writing/thought patterns of books when I'm very struck by them. This is problematic in the case of first-person books with unreliable or unsavory narrators, but even with nice narrators it is disturbing.
Right now I'm reading The Philosophy of Andy Warhol for class, and I don't like what it's doing to my inner monologue. Some people think he didn't even write it. I am impressed and appalled with Andy Warhol, partly because I don't know if one person should be able to take so many ideas all too himself and then be so unhappy. Also, the ability to hide your real self is scary because it's like cheating at life, like wearing mirrored sunglasses over your personality. Complete enigmas are unsatisfying.
Last night I had a very different literary experience. It was very late but I was awake and in that lovely melancholy mood I get when I spend a cloudy day by myself. I wanted to keep recording music on my laptop but I didn't want to disturb my roommate and her boyfriend upstairs by singing and playing (even though they disturb me a lot by having really loud and apparently quite athletic sex, but that's one of those things you just have to excuse, whereas harmonica at 1 a.m. is not) when suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted most in the world, and it was lovely because it was something I could actually have.
Here is what I did.
1. Went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of very hot cocoa (with milk, of course. Water cocoa is an abomination).
2. Got an anthology of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
3. Lit one of my very precious few indoor cigarettes because Lisa was out of town
4. Put on Nina Simone's "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair"
5. Opened a window, leaned my chair against the sill, drank my cocoa, smoked my black cigarette, listened to my music, and read poems that made me feel like another woman had lived exactly the same life as me.
Right now I'm reading The Philosophy of Andy Warhol for class, and I don't like what it's doing to my inner monologue. Some people think he didn't even write it. I am impressed and appalled with Andy Warhol, partly because I don't know if one person should be able to take so many ideas all too himself and then be so unhappy. Also, the ability to hide your real self is scary because it's like cheating at life, like wearing mirrored sunglasses over your personality. Complete enigmas are unsatisfying.
Last night I had a very different literary experience. It was very late but I was awake and in that lovely melancholy mood I get when I spend a cloudy day by myself. I wanted to keep recording music on my laptop but I didn't want to disturb my roommate and her boyfriend upstairs by singing and playing (even though they disturb me a lot by having really loud and apparently quite athletic sex, but that's one of those things you just have to excuse, whereas harmonica at 1 a.m. is not) when suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted most in the world, and it was lovely because it was something I could actually have.
Here is what I did.
1. Went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of very hot cocoa (with milk, of course. Water cocoa is an abomination).
2. Got an anthology of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
3. Lit one of my very precious few indoor cigarettes because Lisa was out of town
4. Put on Nina Simone's "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair"
5. Opened a window, leaned my chair against the sill, drank my cocoa, smoked my black cigarette, listened to my music, and read poems that made me feel like another woman had lived exactly the same life as me.