10.17.2010

Reappraisals

I have undertaken and am seeking to publish a series of memoirs which are interlaced with pure fiction and what can only be described as a peculiar adaptation of reality.

The question of course being what is reality, what constitutes unreality.  Fiction given the non-fictional bent, aligned with certain occult properties which carry a peculiar stigma in esoteric traditions but are rarely expressed in exoteric or mainstream spheres.

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I am looking for something concrete to interlace with the fluff and nonsense which permeates most of my appropriated cannon-fodder prose, avoiding airport novels and their focus on thrillers or sales-driven narratives, such as this digressive distraction of a web-based log, removed from my core occurrence and event of 'being' by at least one if not three intervals. This is my thrice-removed context for confession, my machination of externalizing the excess materials I am forced to deal with. This mind. These thoughts.
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As artists draw from live models to better hone their ability to draw, so too do I use my own life to draw from in order to better hone my ability to write. Real life as a model, the shifting chaos which writing imposes a particular order upon, is a matter of capturing and imprisoning moments into text, honing the methodology and practice to the point where flaws are at least less apparent, and eventually (after some revision) completely invisible, while nonetheless present. I'll always know they are there. Doesn't mean you have to.


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Analysis of structure is a method which many rely on for their revisions, however I feel my means to the end and ends themselves can best be served by sectioning my method into 'work-zones' clearly defined as utter chaos, controlled chaos, and chaotic order.
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You could say that utter chaos is as a mental diarrhea, sputtering chunks and liquid soft segments which spew violently from the bowels of my muse as if inundated with some e. coli laden chili dog of inspiration. In this mess we find a series of unintentional repetition and unidentifiable sources, a sort of soupy mixture which is unfettered by the second guesses of the conscious mind, a graphic broth containing, among other things, the many sources of my material, including but not limited to statements and events within the context of "everyday life", prose and poetry which I intake, television and radio which I see or listen to, and art which I digest through the eyes or ears.
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Controlled chaos comes when I am in the midst of the day, somewhere peaceful, with a real and honest idea which has been brewing in the back of my head, or sifted out of the utter chaos shitpile, and there are clips and phrases, usually lines of prose or statements directly taken from memory or manipulated from another context, and I jot them down somewhere like a yellow legal pad, or a notebook. The controlled chaos cannot be typed, for all too often when I attempt to enter controlled chaos into typed text it instead degenerates into utter chaos, and suddenly the few lines I intended have evolved into a messy convoluted series of paragraphs, for the most part illegible or obscene, or at the very least ill-conceived.
Chaotic order is the place which is arrived at shortly before revision, which is a stage that evolves the work into something worthwhile, after appropriate review and feedback from whatever source I am currently subscribing to as valid. Chaotic order may be shifted slightly, but remains itself at the core, as by the time I have arrived at this stage a theme has been established, characters have introduced themselves to me, and the plot has fought it's way out of the birth canal, mewling pitifully. These are all things which are arrived at in a less than intentional manner, sometimes fed by the roar of the utter chaos, and sometimes conceived in the heat of passion by the controlled chaos. Like a symphony with no liner notes, you might say. Clips and phrases from my hand-written word metastasize in the body of the text like a fast-acting small-cell cancer. They destroy the chaos an impose an order onto the work which kills some parts, yet heightens the experience for the reader, since that is ultimately my highest priority.
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See, though writing feeds a need within me, and without it I would in fact wither like a raisin in the sun or whatever, dream deferred and soforth, the audience is crucial, for without them, I would never make a living off of doing what I want with my life, which believe it or not is my goal, all lofty ideals concerning art and all that notwithstanding.
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Ideals without profit as a goal don't feed you or get you royalty checks. Ideals without profit as a goal get you hungry or poor or dead. Mind you, profit is not the only goal, it can't be unless you want to become a metahack or a flake, but it must be kept towards the front of the mind at all time to remind you of the audience you are feeding your shitstorms to, applied to whatever you in whatever manner is plausible as many times as possible.
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Here, in my utter chaos and squalor, this hobbled hovel, I am seated calmly in my confessional booth with the computer monitor as the privacy screen between me and that old priest who is an obvious metaphor for whoever just read those words I just wrote, who could say something in response but usually just listens quietly as I spew my list of sins in an infinitely digressive quality which comes out in great quantities, my overflowing poetic purse of verse and prose-prone mishaps scraping along the pathways of excess in these vast palaces of wisdom, where everything said is scooped up like horse manure and processed, then used to fertilize those gardens tended to by the well-intentioned angels of my higher functions, the flowers and trees blooming in the sunshine proliferating at an exponential rate of growth, sometimes getting pruned, sometimes getting pulled (if their root systems become a hazard to the prettier plants), and sometimes getting plucked and placed on my dinner table in a vase, to make this place look and smell pretty when I have polite company over.

That might be the longest sentence I have ever written. Hm.
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