Why am I up now?

[ericsalinger]

I haven't written here in a while and I feel like I owe a contribution to the collective live journal consciousness. I used to feel so devoted to here (most of my best therapy coming from here) and for some reason it is still my home-page. But now I dont really write here anymore (not like I used to anyway). I've moved on from it, not purposely, but on from it none the less. I wonder what that says about me and this new life I've sculpted. Moving to a different state makes it so easy to completely reinvent yourself and now I walk around a confident patchwork of identities and pretend that by admitting it I somehow have a greater understanding of personality, life, or the human condition or that I am at any level better than the orange skinned hollister-ites i feel an odd connection and distaste for. I was discussing this with a professor I actually respected and was constantly surprised by her actual interest in our conversations. I mean we both followed each other for a good five blocks simply to continue it. She kept engaging me, forcing me to rewrite this paper three times only to give me an a on it finally. Which leaves me wondering why have me re-write it? I mean teachers always pretend to care about my writing but it is rare to have one that honestly means it. But after ten weeks of extended conversations she told me I really should read A heartbreaking work of staggering genius. So I am reading this book like it is the code-book to all these conversations. To understanding if she found my writing troubled, tragic, found me tragic, found my writing funny, engaging, found it poetic, found it broken, jumbled, lost found it above the rest, below the rest, or lost in the rest. Or if she just thought I would like the book. Which I do and I don't. I find his "innovative writing techniques" inferior to those of the 'classical' writers of stream of consciousness but I find thinking that cliche and precocious so I continue reading it genuinely intrigued. But the main reason I logged on was to ponder about my state. Reading this book I have started to realize I have begun to consider writing as the mostly likely avenue for me to ever contribute anything of artistic and cultural worth. Which is odd, because I'm not a writer. I play a writer sometimes on tv or in front of people who wish they were writers but are too shy to pretend to be writers. I always wonder how much I pissed off real writers that way. I know musicians, or comedians who just fell into an acting career without any work pissed me off. Not like celebrities who got some crappy film but when boy band drop outs and rappers would start to be considered oscar worthy. I say pissed because now I kind of hope to be them. Someone who dicked around for years in a venue they had minimal success at and then by shear chance finds a calling that they immediately succeed in, propelled forward by they previous, and drastically different successes. I want my future wikipedia entry to be like their's. Eric salinger started of as a classical pianist before doing a commerial for his piano company and then being cast in the remake of terminator and winning an oscar. And I want 3 million caffineated teenage fans to email their friends being like. NO FUCKIN WAY MAAAN MARK WALLBERG STARTED OUT AS A RAP-ER!!. I know it is my ringtone too. I want that drastic and sudden change in my life that will vault me into a new world, one I never even daydreamed about. Not perfect obviously, just new. But seriously, I hope to become an actual writer. Well hope is a lie, I expect to become an actual writer but it is conceded to say expect. But I expect to, but in much the same way as some of my parents older friends have. By publishing some sort of half-assed novel, cookbook, or auto-biography that gets sold to all their friends. And suddenly I'm a writer and at by 60th birthday party someone gets me a book signing table and I sign a book for all their kids, that ends up stuck on their sons book shelf all the way until college because she swears one day he'll read it hoping to find out his parents and friends are drug dealers. Only to read four pages of introduction and give up. I expect to be there. And most likely will be. But I have this lingering hope that now that my dreams of performing somewhere in front of a packed house with my name under the marquee are dead that I will somehow have something to say. So far I've only been able to say things interestingly. For the most part anything I ever written, and likely will continue to write, was written arbitrarily for performance. A randomly picked topic and dramatic writing quickly thrown together so that I could sounds like a bad-ass, or a weathered soul, or a deep thinker in front of an audience of drunk people. Sadly this sort of worked. I am not shitting you here I have fans in chicago. By fans I mean three people who boo anyone who gives me less than a ten really loudly and stop me to tell me "you are so angry...I love it" after I improve a poem about ninjas or fijitas or whatever word an super drunk audience member just yelled. Because I was pretending that night that I didn't care about any of this and I could just totally relax and be an artist even though I hate people who do that and suck totally. And the only reason i dont suck totally is because for almost 6 years now I've been practasing looking like I don't practice. But through it all I knew it was bullshit. I never took myself seriously for longer than it took for me to impress someone I hoped to sleep-with or more realistically eat lunch with one day when I was bored. Which is always. Still it was a role that I played mostly because I had done it for fun in high-school and now was out of other theater opportunities so I did this.
So here is my prayer for myself:

That one day I find something to write about

This has become to get pretty sad. I'm still clinging to my depression laced High-school years so I expect for it to be something hyper depressing ( a tragic relationship, body image issues, or a political event I become connected to) and I find myself hoping, if not praying, for my life to suck more so I can write it. I even start to consider the best case scenarios for dallas to cheat on me and then dump me in the rain as i wonder around realizing every thing reminds me of her cursing the heavens; so I could have some fodder for a new poem. But in the same instant I realize she is without a doubt the best part of my sad little life and even if I did lose her in a perfectly plotted way I wouldn't be able to write it. For two main reasons. One, I love to suffer and would instantly be unable to offer any perspective and would only be able to eat a shit load of pizza,and drink lots of caffeine and alcohol. And second, I can't write.