Hamburger Writing (yuck)

"Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land."
~ Helprin

I have not read Winter's Tale yet. Matthew quoted this at me, and I was pleased at the mimicry of my own sentiments, despite not knowing the context.

Always, on long drives I have significant time for thinking. Add into that the fact that I couldn't find my media player, I had some opportunity for *quiet* thought. I was contemplating mostly on the topic of intellectual humility. I think one of my greatest irritations are those who view their own works as intrinsically better than anyone else's, and beyond comparison or improvement. Maybe it is; maybe they've reached the pinnacle of human achievement in writing or artistic endeavor, but I tend to doubt it.
There is always room for improvement.
But even more than that is this internalization that once you immediately assume a new task, you will automatically be a maestro. I mean, c'mon! I've put a week into it! Maybe you are a prodigy, or a savant, but still (yes, still) there is room for improvement, for change, for adaption. One of my favorite quotes by Donald Hall: (it's a long'un)

The United States invented mass quick-consumption and we are very good at it. We are not famous for making Ferraris and Rolls Royces; we are famous for the people's car, the Model T, the Model A—"transportation," as we call it: the particular abstracted into the utilitarian generality—and two in every garage. Quality is all very well but it is not democratic; if we insist on hand-building Rolls Royces most of us will walk to work. Democracy demands the interchangeable part and the worker on the production line; Thomas Jefferson may have had other notions but de Tocqueville was our prophet. Or take American cuisine: it has never added a sauce to the world's palate, but our fast-food industry overruns the planet.

We get into a groove of production and never leave it, all too often. One of the reasons that I started this blog was to try out different forms of writing, and mimic different artists in their creativity. Sometimes, imitation can be incredibly helpful in learning to understand what makes something artistically relevant, or good.
But really, more than anything, I don't want to get caught into the McPoem, McStory groove. I don't want to be the Thomas Kinkade of writing, where I simply discover a beautiful scenery and mass produce it in workshops. I want novelty, innovation, and thoughtfulness. I really appreciate Elizabeth Bishop's argument that if it takes 40 years to write a good poem, then that is how long she'll work on it.
Unfortunately, with capitalistic motivation as the driving force behind art, it becomes more difficult to wait so long for a muse to strike us on the head with the creative mallet. For me, this isn't a problem, because money isn't a driving point at all for me (since I'm earning no money from my pieces at this juncture - nor are they worth any). But the problem for me, at my level, is still that tendency to get rutted into a line of faults.
Some of the statements Donald Hall makes in that essay are frightening, in light of entering the sphere of artistry to any degree. I understand what Keats was saying when he wrote the words: I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
This is the same driving force that sips at the edge of my sanity. Because I know where my tipping point is, the place where I withdraw from society and make a competitive run for greatest "something" in the world. And honestly at this point I don't even know what that something is. I know it could be almost anything that I put my mind to, within the constraints of my mechanical prowess (it's too late for me to become the greatest futbol player of all time).
One thing I know, at the end of the day, is that in order to improve I have to first understand that improvement is possible, and that I need it. If I don't believe that I can improve, I won't; if I don't believe I need improvement, I'll continue creating hamburgers of stories and poems.
Which sounds gross.

Or I can try outrageous, silly, obscure, unusual, messy, ugly attempts at artistic creation and pray something rises from the dust eventually.


You're the worm for the early bird
dressed in asps and newspaper wraps.
your hands read: violent murder/politician/
hundreds wounded in/going under
in smudges of running ink.
but through this window peering back into me
I see Alexander the Great playing violin,
lacrimoso, sharing his odyssey;
and Cleopatra feeding pigeons,
cooing at all the appropriate points
and her hair reads: hostility in/
concealed disaster/media sexist rem-/
how does she not weep with the music,
covered in such head-lines?
pulling back from the vantage, gradually, asking
who's the bleary-eyed captive in the mirror scene?
another snoozing worm, losing
to the carpe-vermis bird

Poetry and Ambition - Donald Hall

The United States invented mass quick-consumption and we are very good at it. We are not famous for making Ferraris and Rolls Royces; we are famous for the people's car, the Model T, the Model A - "transportation," as we call it: the particular abstracted into the utilitarian generality - and two in every garage. Quality is all very well but it is not democratic; if we insist on hand-building Rolls Royces most of us will walk to work. Democracy demands the interchangeable part and the worker on the production line; Thomas Jefferson may have had other notions but de Tocqueville was our prophet. Or take American cuisine: it has never added a sauce to the world's palate, but our fast food industry overruns the planet.

~Donald Hall in "Poetry and Ambition"

I've been contemplating poetry a lot recently, because I realize my works tends towards concise, dry, flavorless sentences without the Gusto! and panache of more enthusiastic artists. I can't describe a world with the brittle ice of a Morgenstern (Night Circus), or define a depth of character like a Dostoevsky, but I long for some of the beauty present in great poetry. 

And I know that I'm falling into that trap that Donald Hall presents here so exquisitely: the McDonald's of art. Granted, I'm not selling, and everything I write in journal, online, or in my practice doodles is just that: practice, and so I don't feel like a sellout. But this is the American way, isn't it? Find something that works, and mass produce it? The first movie did well; let's make six. 

One of the poets I've been enjoying this week was named Elizabeth Bishop. She told an interviewer that she was prepared to wait forty years for a finished poem, since no artist can afford to rush. Now, I've saved all of my poems (and creative works in general) so I may return and tinker with them often, tuning up the wince-worthy weaknesses and fleshing out the skeletons of unfinished works, breathing life into the dusty husks of old poetry and prose - but could I manage forty years of patience?

Actually, I believe I might be capable of just such a thing.

I understand that level of contemplating, that hunt for perfect tonality and melopoeia that rolls off the tongue like a song. Isn't that the original form of literary expression, passed from generation to generation? I think I want a return into the epics, where a minstrel prays the muse will strengthen his art, as he strums a story of heroic deeds.
It amazes me how terrible some of my work can be, but I continue knowing that if one gem appears from a field of folly and ugly stone, or if I can persevere through such a shameful valley, the other side will be the greener for it.

I abhor the concept of the McProse, the McPoem, and fear the slippery slope that concludes in such a thing. But practice calls, and I've still years of such to go, and so much still to learn. Until such time as I'm ready, I suppose I'll be flipping words like burgers, and frying lines, and I'll be doing so in a flurry.