Gland Prix

Reading Habit

The Secret is Out

I never finish books.

If I’ve talked to you about a book I’ve “read” in about the last 10 years then it’s something of a fib.

I can’t finish a book. Sure, there are a few that I make it through 100%: Infinite Jest (perhaps somewhat ironically); A few mystery novels. Most books are read through very close to the end - a chapter out, 20-30 pages, give or take.

There certainly exists some psychological reason or an apt symbolism for the failure to reach the back cover. But I can’t figure out why I keep doing it. I never plan it. I just never finish a book no matter how much I enjoy the writing or story.

This is true of hundreds of books.

The blame I think belongs to The Corrections. I loved reading the first ⅔ of the novel. As the ending drew closer I felt the author losing it and going easy. I feared the disappointment to come and never let it reach me.

And I’ve never recovered. It’s a terrible habit – like smoking, or commenting on blogs.

I think the blame belongs to a very nice woman I met years ago. A friend of a friend of my sister. I was a teenager and impressionable. I had shown her a great piece of scorched metal that I intended to use in a piece of artwork. It had a curl that folded along a charred edge almost like a great tin page. The intention was to straighten the sheet and use the metal as a background or surface.

She saw me fiddling with that fold to straighten it and told me to leave it curled.

“That way you’ll always want to know what’s behind there. It will keep it’s mysteries.”

This habit keeps me from writing and talking about books with the energy and force that I once used. It’s not fair being this passive aggressive and dumping/praising an author whose work you’ve not finished to the last page. Instead I feel OK about discussing the writing of a novel but not the book in its entirety.

There’s a difference, right?

I can only blame myself. I’ll keep those phantom endings at bay and give the author the benefit of the doubt. I find the endings to novels (from what I remember) always unbearably overloaded with expectation and projected hopes. Better to leave them somewhere, in the country, where they can run.

I also never finish audio books.

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I want to make this!

Muse

Inspiration hits in two common ways:

We experience something that feels so attainable and similar to our own work – a challenge and a confirmation of our own meager talents. 

Or, we find ourselves before something truly awesome and resolve to grind harder and longer to make something so radiant, out-of-reach and masterful.

The trick of life is figuring out which one of these experiences we’ve really had.

Which muse has seduced us?

The Advisory Circle — Sundial (iTunes link) →

Listening to this I see Adam West and Burt Ward leaping in slow motion towards some terrible abstract fate. Wearing their costumes, smiling.

So, the Brothers Quay made a Rice Krispies commercial →

Hmmm… Thank you Krispies!

"…All these stupid men are always measuring their dicks. Mine does it for real. And with a knife. Also, it’s the knife he got from his first girlfriend, who was almost like a mother to him."

—

From: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

I hope you’ve already read Bolaño. If not, you should.

Internuts.

Look Back in Danger

Two sides to everything and shame is no different. Shame can be a guide and shame can claim that which it has no business owning. 

I’ve spent a lot of time suffering and fretting and generally feeling pretty shameful about the things that I have not accomplished in life. The truth is that no one cares. And no one cares in a good way. No one is disappointed that I have not revolutionized the art world with new conceptions or re-imagined artistic themes. No one spends their time wondering when my next, or first, great novel is coming out. The people I love and trust could care less about these unspoken goals that I’ve manufactured. Thank you for your inconsideration friends and loved ones! 

But maybe I care? And I do, to some degree. Feeling that it is important that I’ve created something and then feeling bad that lately I’ve not done a whole lot of creating could be positive. Such reflection could be stimulative. Instead I’ve spent more effort generating and then succumbing to my own supra-lofty goals than is remotely justifiable. The real problem (problem being that which inhibits accomplishment) is that I’ve sought the disaster of living in the past. The only part of me that has thrived is that part which feeds on the morose. This is some leftover remnants of depression - surely. What else but depression seeks to kill your vitality with your own emotions?

The truth that I can see about it now, now that I’ve tried to sort it out with writing, is that depression chose my most cherished part of me to kill. I say depression “chose”. Depression is like the trinity, an impossible orchestration of being. It is both within you and without you - but it is not your self. It is a distinct and individual enemy. Too often, though, this enemy is so close that you have no chance to see how it distorts your mind. It is phantom limbs and doom-colored glasses.

This lack of clarity is what has transformed my shame. Instead of impetus, shame has laid claim to the very faculties it should have emboldened. Writing this down has let me see this. Thank you, words; thank you, phrases; thank you, paragraphs.

Good grief! Poor little character palette - not getting the attention necessary so he decides to hitch himself to the coattails of Mr. OS X Keychain. You’re better than that CP. No matter how much you hurt inside - Keychain is way more needy and is probably jealous of you.