by Jerome du Bois, with Catherine King
Tomorrow: two more installments of La Pionera And The New Mango.
In the meantime --we write a lot, Catherine and I. We craft a lot of sentences, and then we have to move on. We don't often reread our own writing after it's published, but we edit nearly every sentence at least a dozen times, every sentence that doesn't arrive entire like an angel's sceptre, or a curious wheel, or a gleam of genius laid in your lap like a sword --which has nothing to do with oneself. But it isn't only those moments a writer lives for . . . Beside, before, and beyond these gifts from The Great Concourse, we labor to produce sentences which respect the ticking moments of unrecoverable time of those who read them. We wrestle with words and meaning, always. Every red moment swells, as it must, as the green fuse feeds it, until it sways into the swollen inevitable, and falls. We labor to produce future.
I just checked the sitemeter, and someone hit our piece called "Inside The Writers' Bloc Clubhouse." I'm not here right now to reslam these tepid weenies. I just reread the piece, and the end, I realize, is worth repeating here, so here it is, without further comment or ado:
Why do I write? Why does Catherine? We can't help it. We have to. Partly because of the way we're made, constantly wanting to make sense of the world, and partly because of the ways we've been bent, broken, and had to bootstrap ourselves back to reality, we know we're on our own; we know we have to grab every day by the biceps and wrestle it down.
Crazy is a place: you go, you come back. When you go, nobody wants to know; when you come back, they want to read all about it. We two have to know what we are trying to say to ourselves and to others. That's why we write.
By comparing our life's experiences, Catherine and I know we have always been outsiders.
By reading others --I mean thousands-- we know our thoughts are not of the common type, but run against the winds of convention, and are therefore worth nourishing.
By practice, one hones one's words for future use.
Why are we giving it away? Because I believe our ship will come in. When La Pionera and the New Mango is finally polished it will glow with undeniable fire. In the meantime, we are full of ideas. Hell, we even give them away. We'll put "The Collective I" or "Furthur The Backward Bus" up against anybody else's mojo. Our Bentley Projects installation, "American Gothic," profoundly elegiac, would have been an important notch in American Historical Art, if only they had been serious from the beginning. No matter in the long run. The important points are these:
Just Show Up.
Show Your Work.
Show Your Hand.
Show Your Name.
Every Word Flesh.
We say it.
Posted by Jerome at October 26, 2005 06:45 PM | TrackBack