I Wish My Brain Worked

See, the problem here is: I read slowly. There is nothing that can be done. This is a lifelong problem that remains unresolved no matter how much or how often I read.

There are those of you in my social media network who seem to finish a book in the time it takes me to find my reading light. I want to be you. I want to devour.

I cannot. I must labor. And I know, in a very real way, that this means I will finish fewer books in my lifetime. I am saddened by this. So many words denied. Because my brain doesn't work.

{insert obligatory "but my life is pretty awesome otherwise" caveat which I would've written except that -- damn it -- I want to finish more books.}

And Sometimes It's Just About Getting Ecstatic

The purpose of writing? The big story behind what we do? Yeah, I’ve been known to talk about that.

That’s why I was so entranced by M Kitchell’s HTMLGiant post that uses Dan Hoy’s THE PIN-UP STAKES to focus in on what we as writers (or at least what he, as an artist) should want to achieve/do/create. It’s one of those high-speed, wind-whipping-in-your-mouth kind of posts that concludes with the idea – to paraphrase – that we’re either blowing up the order of things or we’re falling into the trap of the already-is. And that already-is – the world as it stands – is a shitty place that we already understand all too well.

Kitchell doesn’t want to be told how the world IS. He wants to “end the world and change life.”

Diversion here (although this all matters to the end I envision for this post): Kitchell spends a chunk of his post chastising those who think the young can’t write about Important Things (he’s in his mid-twenties he says). He’s right, of course. Age and experience/wisdom/artistry do not have to correlate. But what’s cool is: he makes that argument while freely sounding his age. Which is to say: he has the enthusiasm and the fuck-you attitude of a guy in his mid-twenties.

I bring that up because, in his post, he quotes my post over at Hayden’s Ferry Review. And he quotes me as an example of what he DOESN’T want writing to do. Which is to say, he doesn’t want to read/write anything that: “ takes you into the unique life of an “other,” a life that in some way broadens your own understanding of the world, that brings illumination to places previously darkened.”

But the thing is, we’re making similar points. Or so I think we are. I mean, what I want out of fiction –as a reader – is to be shown something new. I want to have my brain reshaped. I’m not particularly interested in reading the kinds of quiet, realist fiction that makes up such a big chunk of American literature. That’s not to say I have anything against “realism” – I just have something against realism that I’ve already experienced, already seen, already spent God knows how much of my reading life rolling around inside the carcass of.

My HFR post was kind of about that – an argument in favor of making fiction new and necessary. And yet, when Kitchell read it, he found something staid in my words. What’s going on? Well, maybe I just think I agree with him but I really don’t (because I’m not getting his point). Or, maybe it is what I think it is: a difference in age and disposition.

Age how? Age as in: I don’t know too many people in their mid-thirties (as I am) who haven’t changed in their opinions and temperaments in the decade since their mid-twenties. Something happens in that decade that causes most people to disconnect from the ecstatic. We lose our excitability and find ourselves sunk into the pragmatic. So we write essays that are “admirable” (Kitchell’s words to describe my piece) rather than “wind-whipping-in-your-mouth.” This isn’t true for everyone, of course, and the degrees of change varies depending on the person. But for me, ten years ago, I’d have wanted to write a piece like Kitchell wrote. Now? Not happening. Or at least it’s not happening without me looking like the guy with the toupee in the dance club.

But I’m glad there’s someone out there writing shit like Kitchell wrote. We need the ecstatic. We need to be reminded that Big Things are possible and that, despite whatever has changed in our lives, we can still be turned on by ideas. Or at least I need that. I trend towards the square. But I still want a world in which people read something like Kitchell’s post and then everyone agrees they need to go out, get drunk, and discuss the damn thing until that place on the corner starts serving breakfast.

Because, really, it probably doesn’t matter HOW we want to approach this writing/art thing (realism, meta, nonsense, whatever). It just matters that we’re still enraptured by its possibilities.

Learning to Read

During my MFA coursework, we were often told that we need to learn how to read. Of course, they meant we need to learn how to take apart a plot, a scene, a sentence, a metaphor. But, for my son, learning to read literally means learning to read.

And, man, you don’t realize how messed-up the English language is until you start helping your kid learn to read.

They teach the concept of a “bossy e” which is a silent e at the end of the word that turns a vowel long. You know. Five. Drive. And, um, give. Explain that to a literal-minded six year-old.

But wait, there’s more. GH is an f in words like tough and rough but silent in though and bough (with the ou pronounced differently in each of those, of course). And, really, what the hell is that gh doing in light and fought and drought (and again, the ou isn’t pronounced the same for any reason other than it’s not pronounced the same).

There’s a bizarre b at the end of bomb and tomb and comb but it modifies that o in three different ways. And if tomb is “toom” why isn’t loom “lomb?” (And, for that matter, shouldn’t comb be come ... except, of course, come is already its own irregular).

And let’s not even get started on when c sounds like an s and a ph is an f and an x is a z. Anything more complicated than “See Spot Run” requires the explanation of rules that sometimes true and sometimes not. (oo makes the long u sound ... except when you look for a book in a nook).

My son will get it ... I suppose we all do. And what we don’t get is corrected by spell check. But I wonder what the sometimes lawless construction of our words does to our minds. Semiotics and all that. Does it promote neuroses? Creativity? Does it make our written word more inaccessible? Does it make our written word more beautiful in the way nature is beautiful in all its organic jumble?

In this world of binary code (and binary politics for that matter), there’s something wonderful about the fact that words like bough and cough exist. They’re messy; they speak to the archaic and the anarchic. They make learning to read a challenge. But I love the way those odd words taste.

Splinter Reading This Thursday

If you're in L.A. and want something fun to do this coming Thursday, June 24th, come on out for the Splinter Generation reading.