Shorthand for Nothing

Another one from the archives.

You’d make a wonderful actress.
I can see you on the silver screen,
eyes bright, a room full of people,
a captive audience–
something you never had in me.
They would hang on your every word,
make a note of everything you say,
because, after all,
you’re the star.

Would you even enjoy it?
The attention, the praise,
the undue adulation,
everything I never gave you?
Or do you think you’re entitled,
that your magnificence is eminent?
Either way I can see you,
accepting an award, feigning modesty,
but in your eyes,
there’s always that look,
like you deserve all this.

This is one that struck me on the read through I was mentioning a few days ago, because I wasn’t sure if I’d written it about a real person. That is, I am pretty sure I know who this could be about, though I’m by no means certain, but it’s not a very good description of her. I like this one, though it’s not the most brilliant thing ever penned, and it sounds a little petulant.

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I should probably qualify this: these poems came from an aborted attempt to write a poem every day in the year 2008. I lasted for a month, so I ended up with about 30 or so poems. I may post all of them eventually, but some of them stood out as being worth writing about. They aren’t all very good, but I found them interesting for one reason or another.

This is a pair of poems that I seem to have unintentionally given nearly identical titles. The first one is called “I Promised” and it goes like this:

You probably don’t remember
everything I promised,
but I do. They were the kind
where every one of them is “never”
or “always”
or something like that.
Now I always wonder
whether that was a good idea.
See, it was meant to make you happy
(or maybe that was me)
but I don’t know if you cared,
and anyway you don’t now.
But a promise ought to mean something,
and I can’t help but wonder
if maybe you still think it did.
I think I meant it.

I wrote a lot of poems and stories on the variation of “words like everything.” I will probably keep doing so occasionally. This is a pretty straightforward treatment of the subject of promises and words like everything.

The second one was called “I Promise” (present tense!):

It seems like
any time I make
some sort of promise
I always forget
about the variables
that go into
decision making
and assume that
everyone
acts like I
want them to.
It’s never
like I imagined.
Sometimes I wonder
if my imagination
isn’t working
against me
so I don’t
have to fulfill
my promises.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in this one.

What’s interesting here is the thought that maybe these were meant to be related. I have definitely played games with titles before, linking concepts. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do with otherwise unrelated stories, because the title can give them a really strong thematic link. Since these were never intended for public consumption I’m not sure if that was the plan. Nevertheless…

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A quick one.

The worst thing you ever did
is something I can barely attain.
For each of my aspirations,
you surpass it flawlessly,
achieving great heights,
as though my effort was nothing.
Maybe it was,
but is that any reason
for you to go on like this:
better and more talented than me
and not even trying as hard?

No joke, I think this one is about how awesome I am.

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(I think I’m going to do more of these ‘post a thing that I wrote and then ramble about it’ things.) I once sent a friend of mine some of a batch of poems that I wrote in early 2008. As I read through them and sent them to her, I commented on some of them. On one I noted that its meaning was inscrutable even to me. It started with the lines “Left turn only / once defined your destination,” and I’m still not sure what that means. The full text is here:

“Left turn only” once defined
your destination.
And, after hours on a Tuesday,
the blur of traffic signals–
the prohibitive reds, flashing
but never changing–
became too much,
and you would stand for hours
at a single intersection.

By day you could follow the crowds,
but at night,
with only the occasional passing car,
the isolation was crushing.
None of the distant lights
cared for you,
if they even knew you existed.
The most reaction you could get
came from the crosswalk signals.
Even then,
it was only so long
before “don’t walk” would flash again.

Did I just like the line? Did it mean something? I have no idea. I wrote this poem about making an impact, about isolation, and about destinations, but I don’t know why I decided that left turn only would have any meaning. Was it merely suggesting that, at night, you don’t have to turn left in the left turn lanes in Seattle (which the poem, as much of my poetry, was definitely about)? Was it instead suggesting that the person described in the poem was once defined by restriction and was now paralyzed by freedom?

I don’t know these things, and this is weird, even to me. I could probably tell you what inspired most of my writing, even though I am probably too prolific for my own good at times. I know these stories. And yet, here’s this. Some of the others are the same way: I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. Not in a ‘wow, this is terrible’ sense, but in a ‘I don’t recognize these emotions’ sense. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

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I was searching for Joey Comeau’s Overqualified the other day on Amazon, and I saw something that caught my eye: a listing for his short story collection, It’s Too Late To Say I’m Sorry. I invite you to click through this link and see if you can spot anything wrong. The Loose Teeth Press link might help in this regard; it certainly enlightened me.

The problem? The Amazon link is selling the book for $115.24. Loose Teeth Press has it for $12.95.

I have seen items go for ridiculously high prices on ebay in the past. Harvey Danger’s original demo tape, for instance, sold for something like $300. But these collector’s items are usually rare. The price is inflated by this rarity, coupled with a demand for the product. This book, in contrast, is easily obtained for about $15, and even if it bears a signature (and this is speaking as a man who values his signatures), it’s certainly not $100 worth of rarity. I bet you could get a signature for the price of a SASE. Personalized, even.

It’s obviously just a cynical attempt to capitalize on the association, of course, and an even more cynical way to capitalize on the fact that sometimes people will buy something that is overpriced just because it is overpriced. Selling a book for ten dollars makes it sound like you can easily get it for ten dollars. Selling it for a hundred makes it sound like some rare volume that you’ll be pained to part with, and went through pains to acquire. That it’s probably used only sweetens the apparent deal: the dog-eared pages and the slightly tattered cover makes it look like you’ve just unearthed some arcane volume. If it has a signature it makes it seem like the ultimate of literary treasures.

Someone will probably snap it up eventually. They’ll might even leave the seller a positive review of how great the book is and how lucky they feel to have found it. The seller has thousands upon thousands of positive reviews, so apparently their racket is working out well for them.

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So, I was unpacking earlier and I found a little scrap of paper that I’d seen before but never paid attention to. It’s the first draft of the poem that I like enough to show people even now. Most of my poems, I start to dislike not long after writing them. This one is different. Here is the current/final draft:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne
when you returned the world to Atlas?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz
just a quiet effervescence that screamed
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, that is,
and with no help but the world.
And when you became what you pretended to be,
did you lift a glass to the horizon?

Did you smile like it’s a crime,
or maybe like a secret between you and me
though we haven’t shared secrets for years?
Did you smile, afraid to smile,
frightened to be unafraid?

Remember when I sang your fears to sleep?
I never expected them to leave.
Did you think of me when they fled?
Or did you drink my memory away?
I know the champagne
is stronger than you’re used to.

It was something in your eyes,
I think,
and I knew you weren’t who you were.
And neither am I–
who I was, I mean,
and so, like strangers,
we pass in the street with a smile and a “What if?”
but we’re not like strangers at all.

The first draft reads as follows:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz,
but a quiet effervescence that screams
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, I mean, and on your very own,
no help but the world.

Or did you sigh and smile, content,
as you returned the world to Atlas?
And you did grow weary
and made him take it back–
and he was willing to bear it all for you.
Yours was no Herculean task.

I was expecting something I didn’t know I knew:
It was your eyes
(and your smile and your posture and your body language).
They made strangers say you were
the loneliest girl they’d ever seen.
I never understood until I saw
your eyes sparkling like champagne
or maybe I saw your contended smile
as you saw someone else
carry the world.

The rest of the post is concealed behind the jump, in the event you don’t want to read me talking about the “technical” details here. (more…)

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I have been in Seattle since Tuesday. I came to watch the final shows of Harvey Danger, the band which has long been, without a doubt or question (unlike so many other things), my favorite. Both shows were excellent, and more than excellent, in a way that words can only express inadequately. Or my words, anyway. This is usually something I never do: express freely, truly, and without reservation that something is good, really, legitimately good. I am doing it now. It alone is more than worth the flight, the time, even the frustration and the fears.

I don’t have the time now to explain how much Harvey Danger has meant to me over the years. I know I tried once before, when the band announced the breakup. It was inadequate then and it would be now. Anyway, where would I begin? No, there are things which are better left underground.

The shows had many moments both happy and sad, funny and emotional. They lasted forever, or might as well have, until at the end there was nothing but that sense that it was really complete, it was really over, that there was nothing more that could or should be added. At the final show especially, there was that sense of finality.

There’s a lot I want to say: how glad I was that Evan Sult was there, and perhaps more specifically that Sleepy Kitty was opening; how fun it was to see him and John Roderick and Evan Mosher and other guests on stage, especially towards the end; how perfect the final song was, and indeed the final part of the set. I can’t say it right, so perhaps it’s best to leave it unsaid, at least mostly.

I was fortunate indeed to live so close to such a remarkable band for so long. Some of my best memories are of Harvey Danger shows, or of acquiring Harvey Danger albums. This truly is the end of an era, and the timing is appropriate: days before I move to college for real this time, in a city which is still new to me. Even now I find myself looking for symbols and meanings to hold on to.

To the band, I have little left to say except thank you. You will be dearly missed, and you can add me to the list of strangers who have been touched by your music. I hope you had as much fun with it as I did, but at any rate let me express honestly and without reservations that you have been nothing short of wonderful and I wish you all the very best.

And one final thought: there was nothing quite so appropriate as finally hearing Sean sing the word “love” in The Same As Being In Love. That made me smile. There was nothing left incomplete.

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For some reason I have been recently explaining themes and motifs to people a fair amount. I am not going to do so here, but I have been thinking about themes and motifs, and I realized it’s generally themes that my more ambitious projects are really lacking. It’s always story first, then later on, a theme would happen. They are fun to write, and they are usually not too bad to read, but their lack of a driving purpose tends to keep me from actually finishing them.

My short stories tend to start with a theme, which is why I spend so much time hunting for a title for them: I want it to encapsulate the theme in some way. And the short stories tend to be solid, and I complete them easily and usually think they are pretty decent. Sometimes it gets lost on the way. I’ve got a theme in mind for a new one, and I will probably work on it as soon as possible. It will be called ‘Stalker.’ Isn’t that fun?

(This is true of my best very short fiction, also, though I write so much of that it’s hard to say there is a rule for it.)

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So, here’s something that probably won’t surprise anyone:

I don’t care what new movies are coming out.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I think they all suck these days. I don’t even know what’s coming out half the time, unless I happen to see a commercial or an ad. Sometimes I will be excited about a new movie, but it’s only because it would interest me regardless. I’d rather it be already out and something I could watch at home with a few friends.

I don’t consume all the new TV shows coming out. I have a hard time keeping up with new episodes on the very few that I do watch on TV as opposed to on Hulu or whatever. I don’t comb bestseller lists for upcoming novels, nor do I really watch new bands in the hopes of finding something to add to my collection. I try, as well as I can, to consume things which are good, whenever they were released. If it’s a band that’s releasing new material, or a movie that might be coming out in theaters soon, that’s a great bonus. But I try to focus on finding things which are good.

The weird thing, to me, is this seems to be outside of mainstream consumption habits. Most people seem to find a way to watch all the new TV series and catch all the new movies and know about all the new music (I have never met someone who knows about all the new books out there, though, which may be why print is dying). It is never so striking, to me, as looking at a music collection several times larger than my own. It is not uncommon to find that they share a few bands with me, but it is uncommon for them to be more than passingly familiar with the work of those bands. They know a song or two, usually the obvious singles, and the rest is a vague, unexplored mystery to them.

I don’t think I could live in this world of constantly being fed what is new, digesting it, and then immediately hungering for more. Does it even last? When I listen to an album enough for it to become one of my favorites, it remains there. I still go back and listen to all of them fairly regularly. I sometimes get the feeling that after someone drops ten dollars on an album, they listen to it once and then never go back again. I couldn’t do that.

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I’ve been slowly working my way back through Tolkien’s works in the past few weeks. I re-read the Hobbit, which I don’t think I’d done since middle school, and am re-reading The Lord of the Rings, which I have done more recently, but it has still been a few years. This feels like the first time I have done so since I really knew the movies well, and while for the most part I view them as different works, it is interesting to note some of the changes. In many places, the movies have taken the books and improved upon them, in terms of dramatic content and dialog; in many others, the movies have taken the books and made them significantly less awesome.

After that it will be The Silmarillion, and then, I expect, The Children of Hurin, which I actually have not yet read. This summer I’ve been craving high fantasy for some reason, and Tolkien more or less defined the genre.

From there I will probably move on to the collection of Dostoevsky I picked up in Chicago, or some of the other books I have lying around that I’ve been meaning to get to. Tolkien is almost meant to be consumed in bulk, though I wouldn’t describe it as easy reading: it’s a legendarium. It is something intended to be a lengthy period of consumption, or not at all. Dostoevsky, I’m not convinced I could consume in such enormous qualities. But we shall see!

In any case, I’ve been trying to get back on top of reading things more. It may just be a summer thing, but maybe not. It’s been nice, and I have quite the list of things I’ve been meaning to get to, both new and old. Since a lot of these are now across the country, I may have to do some exploring.

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