What Every Artist Should Remember

There’s a story about a door to door salesman who over the years knew that he would make one $100 sale for every 20 houses he visited.

19 said no. 1 said yes.

But instead of thinking about it that way, he reframed the entire calculus.

Every time someone said ‘No’, he just earned 5 bucks. Then another 5 bucks. Then another. And it was the 20th person he visited that paid him for all those No’s.

Writer? Artist? Dreamer? We’re gonna hear a lot of no’s along the way. Inevitable. True. All requiring, perhaps, a new POV.

The more No’s, the better. Go out and get some.

Steinbeck Experiment #3

From a distance you might think she was ripped in half. But as you got closer, as you rushed up to care for her, to offer assistance to her, you’d realize it was a streak of blood right down the middle of her face that gave this illusion. And if you had been clairvoyant and could read her X-rays at that exact moment, maybe as they were displayed on the sidewalk next to her, you’d know that she had a broken arm and 3 broken ribs and that her jaw was cracked, her skull cracked too, with 3 missing teeth where her cheek had already begun to swell bluish green, a forehead wound so deep you could see deeper than you’d ever want to. And maybe if you were a world class surgeon, or an Army medic used to such things, you could set her arm and tape her ribs and maybe even sew up her scalp, maybe you could fashion a small pipette that once positively sterilized could be inserted through her swollen lips and pushed through her broken teeth as a feeding tube. Then, if you were extra well supplied, maybe you drip morphine through that single pipette, that single lifeline to the outside world to give her a bit of relief. You’d clean her up almost to the point of being whole again.

But no, you’re neither clairvoyant, a world-class surgeon, or an Army medic trained for such things. You’re merely a passer by, who happened to intersect this horrible moment mere seconds after it occurred.

So instead, she suffers, bleeds out onto the concrete. And you can do nothing but fumble as you call 911 and watch.

Riff on East of Eden Centennial Edition, Page 111.

Grade So Far

My grade so far in attempting to post every day is a solid B.

Some nice writing, fun writing, loose writing experimenting around the edges.

Consistency is adequate. But it’s amazing how a whole day can pass without me thinking about writing at all.

This shall change. One word at a time.

Into the Darkness

Cathy Ames was dropped into the darkness and held there, writhing, gasping, searching for air and truth but there was no air and truth, not in her heart, not in her life. No matter how hard she tried, the cloaks surrounded her, shrouded her in words that to other soothed at first then terrified. Calmed at first then electrified like pins sharpened by the sun.

Cathy Ames, could she be the most malevolent mistress of them all, leaving us in tears as she leaves us all unrequited? The best of us, the worst of us, it doesn’t matter. Could literature have produced another GOLLUM, but this time it’s us begging for the ring? My precious, disappearing in the darkness and writhing, with us begging for her return. Begging, her heel marks black against our soul.

POV

If you’ve looked at the LA River before, at least that part where the 101 crosses it somewhere near Eagle Rock, you’ll see deep islands of trees and brush growing out of the concrete right in the middle from the bones of the city. It’s there where we could set up camp and unroll our bedrolls and lay flat against the earth and maybe be forgotten by debt collectors and time for a bit. We could hand each other long exhales of whiskey over stories of grand fish catching and stardom, haikus about silver birds (our children) flying away.

We’d talk philosophy and argue about the true color of the sun. We’d measure how long we could hold our breath. We’d kick the fire to make it glow hot against an even hotter sky.

The audience wouldn’t know this of course. They’d see only the green long illusion of land stretching forever into promise. Then the camera, last shot you see, would pull back slowly to reveal that narrow strip holding us together in an expanse of city in either direction.

My Dinner with Andre, the Los Angeles version.

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Today I bought the closest notebook I could find and the exact pencils he used to write East of Eden.

This and this.

Then He Opened It

Jonathon didn’t know how he felt about the whole thing, the robbery, was it a robbery? Yes, they had taken the kid’s money. But a kid like that, he had a river of money behind him, a gravity where money hung everywhere, money that would not be missed. No, he didn’t feel bad about that. He felt bad because he taken the book, the kid holding onto it so tightly, as if it was the last thing he believed in. Yet, it was taken anyway, ripped from his hands and torn much more than paper tears, the look in the kid’s eyes like he wouldn’t live without that damn book.

And there it was, on the bed, bent where his hands once were, the title East of Eden and an author that didn’t mean a thing to Jonathon Simms. Why would it? Nobody read that he cared about anyway.

But as if by some force he couldn’t control, maybe shaped by the look in the kid’s eyes, he reached down to his bed and grabbed the book, weighed it in his own hands. Light. Meaningless. Just a book.

But then he opened it.

Searching for Steinbeck’s Notebook

Here’s a little process note on the writing of East of Eden that is fascinating:

From January 29 to November 1, 1951, Steinbeck wrote notes to himself and his editor, as well as ‘warm-up’ prose, on the left-hand pages of his notebook. He described it as "getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game". The text of the novel filled the facing right-hand pages.

An interesting approach I’m going to take a look at. Also:

10 months to write this masterpiece? I wonder how many cigarettes.

I will be going further down this rabbit hole, but here there will be light instead of darkness.

The Steinbeck Experiment

Time passing is a strange and contradictory thing. It would be reasonable to think that time that has hung upon it nothing, that has nothing between it’s poles but emptiness, might last forever. That moments devoid of anything stretch out into boredom or anxiety or worse yet loneliness, a whistle of a tumbleweed blowing slowly across the plain of mind, with nothing ever to shake itself loose. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

But really, it is the events of life, the drama, the tension, the birth and the death, that gives time it’s weightlessness and its gravity all at once, that pulls us into an amber that seems to last moments strung far too long, that gives us memory of things, that breaks us into tiny pieces of stringing it all together as something we should remember, that we have to remember. Those moments that shape us like a collection of pennies in a jar or a collection of buttons in the bottom of a drawer, our shape and our substance dictated not by who we are right now, but by who we were and who we weren’t (perhaps some of the buttons taken away) and how we came exactly to land right here in shape and sound and space, the needle of us dropped onto a record spinning forward.

It’s this sort of thought, inspired by Chapter 7 paragraph 2 of East of Eden. How it dropped from the heavens into my hands, only the gods understand.

Shaving Ideas

I’m working on carving better ideas, I think.

A little sharper and closer to the truth. Hanging better moments on the clothesline.

I’ll keep practicing.

Radical Optimism, defined

Optimism: Believing change can happen.

Radical Optimism: Believing we can be that change.

In light of that, starting my Steinbeck experiment tomorrow. Copying, stealing, mimicking, falling embarrassingly short of the master.

The Best Social Strategy of All Time...

Is still a handshake. Even better…

A kiss.

A moment unfrozen between two people.

That’s what it takes to build a thing.

Flying East Over Desert Skies

From above, far above I mean, the West looks broken and chapped and dry, the sun a bright spot as if God’s thumb had wiped away the dirt in that one circular space. The land stretched over hills that gave way to mountains and the occasional river lit from above, you could pretend for a moment you had escaped the sheer verticality of gravity and soared worry free above it all. Stuck in the canyons, we could all see a faint spot of green and people living down there (here) and we all wondered how does a person (people)fall into such a place? Such a space.

What do they do? How do they solve the difficult question of loneliness? Of Snicker Bars that haven’t dried and hardened. What songs do these people sing to themselves or what TV shows do they watch as the days finally let go, strange signals picked up from a long time ago if any of us had to guess. So far away from anything and from nothing.

The plane took a hit just then, almost spilling the only thing I ever drank while flying, a ginger ale that bubbled more alive now that the air beneath us had given away for a moment. I took a sip so it wouldn’t go anywhere. So much different than when we were kids. When we flew then, often for the first time, the clouds struck out in every direction and we built castles in them, or cloud people, or dragons of whiteness that fought each other, faded into each other, returned back to themselves and disappeared. The fantasies.

Now only the hardness of the west and the brownness. It was a wonder anyone ever made it across such a beast, Lewis and Clark, native Americans, beaten slaves, as if it was nothing.

That word again. Nothing.

1 Day Writing Streak

A Brief Complaint about Time

It’s easy to argue there isn’t enough time.

My oldest daughter Quinn has challenged me around this, saying: I spread myself to thin.

Maybe instead the axiom should be there isn’t enough focus.

Thinking about that. The wonderings around what it means to give things up. The balancing act that leaves space for serendipity to pull in, even if it is a tight parallel parking job. Fenders dinged perhaps, but parked nonetheless.

Streak Count: Day 2

The Streak is Broken

Long live the streak.

Genuinely having a hard time being a creator. Someone with discipline who makes things (even small, like periods at the end of a sentence) every day. The heaven and angel song.

So, like anyone who falls off the turntable, getting back on to start again. This streak.

With, a movie review:

Digger.

Which I was lucky enough to see last night with Lisa and Quinn at the Pickford. Pulling up the popcorn and settling in.

I’ll say this: absolutely sensational. Not easy, very challenging, I thought I hated it but then I loved it. At times, fingernails on a blackboard. Others, a punk metal serenade of truth. Tom Cruise for all the other news about him simply shined wildly with eyes the size of the heart of mayhem and rocket launchers. I think my face melted at the end. Indeed, I knew it did.

Enviable of the risks here. Privileged too for seeing so much boldness and audacity. (Some people will hate it exactly because of that.)

The last spoken words, a shot that most people miss. The last written words, something I wish not to believe but may indeed be true. (Send me your thoughts via nuclear pigeon.)

Streak Count: Day 1