The Muse Says, Hey Buddy, I hate to tell you...

What if the muse, the angel, whatever, (your death as seen in retrospect) were to visit you and say, "Hey, buddy, all this effort you're putting into being a novelist? I'm sorry to tell you. It's misplaced energy."
What would happen if you knew this now?
What would you do differently?

Questions:
Would you still "hate" the summer so much--the kids messing with your precious art time?
How would it feel to be "normal" as in "no one's gonna discover you (kid)"?
Would you play more?
Would you paint more?
Would you transfer your search for fame to painting?
Would that be better or worse? How? (discuss)
Would you garden more?
Would you wander more?
Would you make glue gun sculptures (more)?
Would you see your friends more? Less?
Would you travel : more or less?
Would you be "happier" or less anxious?
Would you fall into some sort of depression (or chemical use)?

Um...hey...psst

The Muse has some bad news...

Successful Writer's Day Off

OK. I had a good day yesterday. My agent said my (x) novel is likely to be sold quickly and for approximately double the advance I got on the first one. They're calling it crossover, thriller to literary. It's rare and at an early stage, but it's possible it's exactly where I've been aiming my zen arrow all these years. It would be nice to be "taken seriously" at writers' conferences, though I don't hold out too much for that. I mean, afterall, with the NPR crowd, success is pretty much not a good thing. I call them the snicker crowd. That's the peak of their creative expression--the snicker at middle America who doesn't and will never "understand" or appreciate them. They like to laugh, that's sort of a good thing, even when it's at the expense of others. Wait, I take that back. I just got a mental image of a group of Taliban types snickering at the mess they made out of an American GI they tortured. Hitler and Stalin and Mao might have had more than their share of laughs (and temper tantrums for that matter). But I diverge. I have a day off. Should I write or walk around in my loincloth? Dare I watch a movie. No, I can answer that one. But "veg"? Maybe. Maybe I should veg a bit and call it--what did she call it?--meandering time.

Famous Artist Problems: Ghosts & McGivvers

Goddammit the gardeners are here. My wife's project--where is she? off meeting with a "spiritual" type (read loney cranky bitch) while I'm here dealing with the neighbors cows (yes, cows, there were two on the road and I had to do a McGivver thing and loop a garden house between the front posts to make a fence...oh, never mind). The dog needed a potty then the gardener with his entourage arrives but where is the "sculptor" with his piece de resistance, the candle shed for the pagans goddies. Jesus. Oh, yes, Jesus. I need a Byzantine christ if I'm gonna have any goddam religion at all.
So then there's the channeling thing. I've talked myself into a corner here, giving my "ghost voice" too much power. Like he's real now, crabby, smoking, laughing in the corner with a martini in his hand. Jesus Byzantine Christ.
Should I go back to painting? But that's channeling, too. I've painted myself into a poltergeistian corner here. Yeah, sure, let the spooks and muses in to help you and see if you're not like me, chasing the neighbors cows and they'll never know I was the McGivver!

Famous Artist's Problems

Today my agent called and asked if I would be willing to do a "quick trip" to Europe, just a few stops, London, Paris, Berlin. I was going to say there is no such thing as a quick trip to Europe, but said instead let me think about it. I got the idea that if I could put together a counter-offer of cities I'd actually be interested in visiting, like Barcelona, Tel Aviv, and Zagreb, we might be able to do business. But this would be pushing it. I'm not that beloved outside of Germany. But what I thought if I could combine the tour with a show of my paintings at a hot gallery in Berlin? That would be cool. I might propose that.
PAINTING PROBLEM: Does the lightning wreck the naive beauty I had going on that one? Do I accept that the lighting is there? I could still paint it out? But it that like killing a plant? Or animal. It came to me, for safekeeping.
WRITING PROBLEM: My voice is like a tired, bored, alcoholic. Maybe I've gone too far down the "channeling" path. Combining that with "I don't care" and I'm pretty damn stuck.
When I'm stuck I want sex.
C'est la lie.

What would Kerouac do? WWKD?

Things are bad for me. No gallery wants my work. No agent wants my book. My boyfriend dropped me. My wife doesn't like sex anymore. Well, maybe she does, but not with me. Maybe I can't fuck her anymore. My house is falling apart. I'm a househusband, kept, tied down, and my kids are turning out to be selfish pricks. One's a fat selfish prick and one's a narcissistic selfish prick. And why do I dote on them so? Why did we get a dog? I hate it, but I take care of it. That's it: I'm addicted to taking good care of things I hate and things that hate me.
Maybe I should find Jesus (again) or drugs. Maybe I should live alone and drink wine hidden in a paper bag. Like Jack Kerouac did. WWKD? What would Kerouac do? Get drunk, close one eye and pretend his best friend wasn't blowing him? Ha.

The Agitated Artist

I'm the agitated artist. Maybe I should go back to drink and drugs. Was I happier then? Maybe. My wife's about had it with me. With the boyfriends and the crabbiness and living off her. She should kick me out. But the kids like me. And the dog. They don't like her so much. She's kind of a New Age harpie. Yes, there are a lot of them now. Sad. But what am I? Some kind of bad Kerouac. At least he produced something even if he did end up living like a bum with mom in Florida.
But when I do art. Do art. Funny expression, like "do me, fucker!" When I do art I feel ok for a little while. It doesn't even bother me that no one likes my art and it'll probably end up in a dumpster when I'm dead. Ha. That's funny. Like drowning in quicksand in an old black-and-white made for TV jungle film is funny. Ha ha, what is that stuff. Oatmeal?

Fat Man Complains

My wife is fat. My kid is fat. My wife cries that the kid takes after her. That takes the pressure off me. Ha. They were both crying this morning, the first "weigh in" after their (eating?) trip to the West Coast. I didn't know what to say. It's like that scene in Terminator I when Schwarzie's character sees his inner video monitor as it goes through possible responses. "What the fuck do I care?" No. "Shut up, you fat baby!" No. (Silence). Yes, silence is best. I retreat to the garage, the dog follows, she knows how to escape human temper tantrums almost as much as I do. Ha. "What's so bad about being fat?" Maybe. I could say that. There's a lot of good things about being fat. For one, you don't have to wonder what people think of you. You know. They think you're a fat, ugly slob and many of them think you should die. Some of them think you should be tortured (ala Abu Ghraib, only with food-based humiliations, I'm sure you can picture it). Thin and mean, the world is, I want to tell him, reversing my nouns and verbs like a fat Yoda.

Gary says...

There is the issue of things falling apart. There is drinking (and sex) but, hey, let's face it, there are consequences to that. Thank god for distraction. Maybe "god" is distraction. Trivial. Anyone ever think of that? Probably not. They want god to be "great" and grand with angels flying around. Ha. I say, if there were really angels (and devils and extraterrestrials) what would be god's motivation for keeping them hidden from us? Some kind of controlled experiment, I imagine. Let's see, let's make a world where the inhabitants have these insanely (and I mean insanely) active imaginations and let's make the rules of that world sort of, um, mundane (?) like say... give them a pretty hard life then they die (between 40 and 80, give or take an era). And let's see how they imagine us god(s) up here?
That's as likely a scenario as any.

Love
"Gary"

Dates and figs in heaven

Can a man be infinitely disappointed, yet cheerful? T. S. Elliot asks the question, then dares to eat his peach. People blow themsevles up. Their mothers cheer and get a new Maytag. Is this true? How are they so different than soldiers? Maybe they aren't. Maybe this planet is ruled by Allah and maybe he is not the "same" as Jesus. A big Allah experiment, put in place by aliens no doubt. When do they come down and tell us? Do we tell our rats? Actually, we're getting close to that, honoring them as citizens, letting them vote, at least chimpanzees. Maybe then the game's up; the aliens come down and said we were hoping you'd give the animals a vote. They pat us on the back and let us to to Valhalla, I mean where do Muslims go? In any case, it is filled with sex and flowing rivers of intoxicants and, oddly, lots of dates. Dates, dates, dates. And figs. Dates and figs.

Dear James,

M: OK, here we are, where are we?
J: I know where I am, where are you? (looks out toward the gardens, disdainful)
M: I'm trying to put my notes together (shuffles paper like a disorganized grad student who partied last night).
J: You have memory problems? I'm the one who should have memory problems, not you!
M: Bear with me, I'm gonna go through this.
J: Oh, christ. (exhales loudly)
M: I'm gonna review the "exercises" you and I did at the retreat.
J: (stares). O-kay?
M: Well here's what I remember. There was the one HOW DID YOU GET CAUGHT UP WITH THESE BUDDIES?
J: And... any gleanings of wisdom?
M: (fumbling) Let me see. (Reads). Nothing really new. Only more of the same, except maybe unlike the protagonist in THE SEA, THE SEA
J: Oh, that old toff!
M: he's more of a serious hermit who gets invaded by old friends. you're more a guy who likes to think of himself as a loner but actually
J: Needs followers. Me and Jim Jones. Whiskey flavored coolaid. (smiles to his own joke).
M: WHY IS IT GOOD THAT YOU'RE THE MAIN CHARACTER? this one yielded the answer that there's a connection to "the author's" passion and curiosity.
J: a great goopy dollop of fuck-you as they say. I think you downplayed the fuck-you part. did you, oh i mean "he" (the author) find it unpleasant? embarrassing?
M: (thinks). Probably. it's hard to admit that anger is a motivation.
J: Revenge is...
M: the best revenge.
J: Gerald Murphy.
M: Yeah, can you believe it. Now they're explaining him as a closet gay.
J: The damn gays. they claim every eccentric, every hermit, every artist. Now they even want the cowboys.
M: They're an oppressed minority
J: Then blow me. Let's get on with it.
M: WHY JAMES TURNED INTO THE MAIN CHARACTER. I see wanting a complex voice that was easy to write. Oh, that's unfashionable. Easy.
J: For once, you anticipate me. (laughs). I'm curious. Rumors are you want to convert to Catholicism, again. That's not convert, is it?
M: If you don't mind, I'd like to keep...
J: Yah, yah, rightfully so. The focus on moi.
M: There as the one HOW TO GET BACK TO THE VOICE WHEN IT'S DIFFICULT.
J: We're all waiting. Me and all the fairies. Garden dwarf type, that is.
M: Let's see: cocktail party, you said I could interrupt you as long as I treat you with respect.
J: Like the cub reporter for TIKKUN who comes across a bleary-eyed Timothy Leary.
M: Cub, I like that. Jimmy Olsen. (laughs).
J: (doesn't laugh with him).
M: Let's go over the others quickly, shall we.
J: Shall, fer-shure.
M: there's TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES WITH WOMEN, there's WHAT'S THE MOST YOU WOULD DO TO HAVE YOUR PRINCELY ACT...
J: That's a mouthful. We might want to come back to that monstrosity.
M: THE THING YOU DESIRE MOST. YOUR TRAGIC HISTORY, WHAT IS THE STORY YOU WANT TO TELL THE MOST (two versions). one being, WHAT PART OF THE STORY DO I WANT TO TELL THE MOST. Oh, and KAMALA'S DESIRE TO KEEP THE JEWEL.
J: You tell me where you want to go.