Stephen charm

'When you're paying attention you know and when you stop paying attention you don't know anything. Even life is like that. Bob Lefsetz, in his recent newsletter, talked about the mess made by ambition. He said we should stop waiting to be chosen. That's not how it works. Someone was telling me about her successful friends and how she felt like a failure because everyone she knew was publishing. I said I look in front of me and I'm the only one that's never gotten a decent book advance. But, if I look behind me I see a lot of people who can't finish books, or get them published. Or they publish but their book doesn't get read. The point is simply that it's about where you focus. You can focus on people who have more than you, and be bitter, or those who have less and realize how lucky you are.'

Daily Mail - Stephen Elliot

'Have you ever heard a tree fall in the forest? When you make something and no one responds it’s the silence that mimics the scream. In a perfect world you can separate the art from the audience. In a certain relationship you have an audience of one and that’s more than enough. But in truth...

Well, it’s true when I say I write to find out how I feel about things. I write to explore. I create from play, or to untangle a series of knots that have formed a rope that is choking me to death. In other words, it’s possible to know and not know something at the same time. To know someone loves you and to not believe they love you. And it’s also true that art needs audience the way the ocean needs waves.'

"let your skin down around your ankles like a banana's peel"

'Last night I was in the car with Z. following the shoot and we were talking about love. I said, You can't be picky about your definition of love. She said she got bored after three times and I said that wasn't an uncommon malady. I said, Until a person gets over their thing you will not be an exception to that thing. I said, Falling out of love is a defense mechanism. I said, The problem is you're the red flag...
 

...you have to be doing something creative that is not about money at all, even if it happens to make you money later. Otherwise you'll always be angry.

It's just that when you're not doing something for free you're in trouble. Not to be confused with doing everything for free, which is when you're also in trouble. I never did internships but I did bartend for a long time, and wait tables, and answered the phones for Kaplan test prep services when I wasn't teaching their tests. And I've never been paid by the vast majority of publications I've written for. And I was a furniture mover for a year or two. You get what I mean. Though I've also never been a hard worker. My laziness is as wide and deep as the Silver Lake Reservoir. In other words, I don't know anything about my laziness, it's unmapped terrain, for me. I was a poet mostly, and then a short story writer, and eventually a novelist, but it never occurred to me that someone should be paying me to do these things. I thought that everybody should have a job, or a hustle, at least while they were writing their first book.

I basically make a living writing the things I want to write (though, I keep my expenses low, I don't make enough to have a child, unless the child came with a wife and that wife had a good, stable income). I'm running out of time. I'm dying, though not necessarily faster than anyone else. I don't want to tell people to wait, to have patience, their time will come. Though, that is the way I feel about some people.

But how about this? It's true that if you keep writing you'll write something good. If that's not enough for you I'll tell you a secret, it's not enough for me either. I don't know what is enough. Money will absolutely not do it (though my father used to say "money can't buy happiness, but it can sure make misery easier to take," and when I worked in the red light district in Amsterdam the boss, who carried a machine gun in his briefcase, used to say, "Money's headache" and all the salesmen would say, "I like headache").

Sometimes I get jealous, other times jealousy seems like the strangest thing in the world. Someone sent me an email about Lena Dunham getting a big advance on a book of essays. I don't understand why I'm supposed to be upset about that. I like Lena Dunham. I don't know her, but Girls is a good show. I'm not mad at her for being born into what seems like a good situation. She's not like the Romney Rich, the rich people who were born rich telling you if you worked harder you would have what they have. People that went to fancy schools and didn't have to take out loans telling you they worked for everything they have. Not every rich person lacks perspective. I don't hate rich people indiscriminately, though I suppose it is a small mark against them. If I was rich, I think, I would vote for politicians who wanted to raise taxes on me, but I wouldn't pay taxes if I didn't have to…

I do think, if you're getting by now, money will not make you feel better about yourself. It will, however, relieve a lot of stress. There was a study, in the New York Times a few years ago, an essay in the magazine that was then published in Best American Non-Required Reading, quantifying happiness. I'll summarize that the research showed there was a big jump in happiness between poverty and middle class (there is no "upper-middle class", upper middle class is a term used by rich people who are embarrassed by their wealth). There was virtually no relation between money and happiness after that initial jump. Once you weren't worried about food and rent that was about as good as it got, emotionally…

 

One thing that is always true, if you let it be, is that writing a book, or making a movie, or being a writer, is a series of small humiliations. It's basically in how you take things. There will always be a club you can't get into. You never get to stop paying your dues. Even when you get in the club, the door changes, the new person guarding the rope doesn't recognize you. The new person is an editor at a magazine you've written at for years. That's part of why I love actors. It's such a pure art form, to put oneself out there for ridicule, to be made fun of, to be shredded as if mauled by a tiger. The endless auditions where you are asked to cry, or take your shirt off, in front of strangers. And then they don't call you back. Sometimes they say they'll call you back, but they still don't. Emotionally, acting has to be the most difficult thing. To maintain ego in the face of constant rejection. Acting is a metaphor for life multiplied. Acting is filled with rejection, at every level. But you have to always go all the way, otherwise there's no point, and you won't do well if you don't. That's true of all of the arts, depending on your definition of art. And then you have to feel safe, and raw, let your skin down around your ankles like a banana's peel, stand naked and bleeding, and then go again.'

 

Thank you Stephen Elliot.

 

I like the part when he says 'you have to go all the way, otherwise there's no point.' It reminds me of a time when I saw a comedian live and he forced members of the audience to join his act. Their impressions were timid interpretations of his instruction. They looked silly thrusting their stuff against strangers where as the comedian in full pelt did not.

 

I think of times myself when I didn't go all the way. There have been so many times when I've held back and most of them have been to protect my feelings. There's something I want to do and have done for a long time, typically I've held back in fear that revealing too much may lead to a position I had not desired. I'm in constant self negotiation over who will suffer the most. Since this has been going on for some time I am left in self doubt - I've suffered the most over all.

 

I want the tone of 'That cake had consequence' to change for some time. I'm gonna have to be bold.

 

 

"White people problems"

"I was hanging out last night with a friend who is a psychologist who explained that desire is like a muscle. When people don't masturbate for a while they lose the urge to masturbate, like losing the urge for water as you dehydrate. I didn't know people lost the urge for water when they were dehydrated. We were at a spontaneous dinner party, five of us just dropping by two friend's place. How often does this happen anymore? Never. Even the children, someone said, text, and call, and make Facebook dates, and don't even show up. Just stopping by is a beautiful thing. 

Our friends had made some pasta with pesto and salad and they put on some more pasta. We talked about writing. Five of us were primarily writers, two of us were involved in careers more interesting. Someone talked about getting in the habit of being alone with her thoughts to unpack her experiences. That was how she lived her life. She mentioned a family member who spent all of his time with other people, organizing. It was only from their interaction that she realized how strange her life was. Of course talking about the practice of writing there was an obvious comparison to the practice of masturbation.

 

Then someone said that many problems were born of priveledge. If you're in a war zone, for example, you don't think about how your weird mother fucked you up. You're concerned with the bombs falling. Which made me think of the term, "White people problems." I hate that term. It's a term that was interesting for a moment, a statement on socio-economics. Then it became a term of indifference, a reason not to care about other people. Kurt Cobain, for example, was killed by white people problems. 

Then a writer said she worried she didn't read enough books. What was she really talking about? I think she meant she wasn't living up to her ideal self. She felt guilty. She felt unhealthy. We were talking about the internet. About click click click. The psychologist explained healthy interactions with bad habits. Something about creating parameters for yourself and then forgiving yourself when you didn't follow them. And I wondered where the line was. I thought maybe the internet had nothing to do with it. Let's say, for example, you bite your nails, and you have a routine that it's harder and harder to break out of, and you're worried that you spend too much time online. Well, the problem isn't that you spend too much time online. You might have an unhealthy relationship with the internet, but the internet isn't the problem. You're the problem.

Love,

stephen"

I've been hiding away for too long. I should be making that 'mess on a page'. Stephen Elliot brings me back to life. I read blogs with envy. I skim twitter wearing a frown. This girl makes my breath. The sun is finally shining and drying the pavement like a cracked face.

I should probably go running. I'd rather use the time to write instead of fear the unhealthy. As a consequence, I'm still at work glued to the screen in case any words of glory appear. Just in case one of those smile to yourself moments occur.

Check out Stephen Elliot, he's delightful. His emails make my day.