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Wednesday, September 24, 2003 Hey. Someone did beg me to blog my book-in-progress, a very sweet girl named Miriam Proctor 29, I believe: no offense to the other Miram Proctors, but she has to be one of the most charming Miriam Proctors of all... But then someone else-- my old colleague from Book TV, Ian Daffern-- begged me not to-- or rather advised against it, as an overly cumbersome and unwieldy project. I'm inclined to agree. I took his advice. I take a lot of advice. I listen to people carefully and weigh the things they say very seriously. I've lived my whole life like that; I can't make any decisions; I don't know what's best and right, I usually ask at least 3 or 4 people, then try to arrive at the best thing to do. It's like how they used to fire mortars at targets in the first world war. The sarge would say: "How far do you think the enemy is, Johnson?" "150 yards, sir." "How far do you think, Smith?" "600 yards, sir." "What do you think, Harper?" "200 yards, sir." The sarge would add them up, divide by the number of opinions, and shoot the mortar that distance. Surprisngly they would often blow up the target. Anyway, that's how I operate... Ian gave me this advice as we biked to the Buck 65 concert last night at the Phoenix. Buck 65 is an interesting case of an artist just outside the mainstream consciousness, maybe about to break, maybe not. He first came across my radar a few years ago, he had some low-fi video, just him riding around in a taxi-- driving it, maybe-- lamenting something or other. Played a few times and disappeared, on one of those alternative/indie shows, The Cutting Edge, or something. But I thought he was cool, kind of bluesy, with a real way with words, a real feel for a phrase-- and there was a little turntable scratching in there, too, which is always welcome. He was kind of like Bukowski meets Beck, with a little Woody Guthrie thrown in. That's my kind of art. Gritty, urban, low-rent blues, with a laid-back but funky vibe/beat. He felt a little too slick to me, last night, though. He'd been on the road a year solid, he said, and maybe he'd become a bit of a schtick version of himself-- a schtick figure. The most unforgiveable insincerity of the night, I feel, was the false sincerity at the end when he talked about how painful it was to break up with his girlfriend-- but it was obviously pure patter, he'd said it 1,000 other times, to 1,000 other audiences, and then he went a little too smoothly off a song from his new album dissing his ex: "she was only good for one thing/it was over before it started...she came with heavy baggage and a stupid-ass beagle/man, I hated that dog, it would shit/in the kitchen and howl at the moon/always scratching and itching." Pretty good, actually. Maybe it was just the in-between patter that bothered me. He's from Halifax, but he let it drop that he's been living in France, then later he let it drop that he's opening for Public Enemy in Italy, and it seemed to me you were supposed to draw the conclusion: "Buck 65's life is better than mine." But I guess I tend to assume when I go to a concert that the guy onstage has a pretty cool life. Maybe Buck spent so much time scratching around on the bottom of the barrel that it's gone to his head a little bit---hmm? Saints preserve me from that. Humility is an art, and if I may reference C. Bukowski again, he was one who knew how to handle a bit of success: first of all, to bear in mind that all success is, in cosmic terms, very, very minor; everyone's story, no matter how successful, ends with catastrophic failure-- very, very soon. If you get a bit of success, the best way to deal with it is brag about it openly, I think, say, "Wow, I can't believe it, I'm having a great run of luck, thanks God," NOT pretending to be humble but subtly hinting your life is cooler than people think. Anyway, I'm sure Buck's life is cool, and you run across people like this all the time, don't you? People who pretend to be self-deprecating but spend the whole time trying to suggest they're doing better than you. I've written a short story about this, aboput a guy who runs into someone he knows in an unemployment office. In the story I called the guy Guy Laroche. (But he represents all the characters like this.) He runs into the narrator at an unemplyoment office, they're both holding unemployment cards in their hands, and Laroche says to the narrator: "How's it going?" "Laroche," he says, spreading his hands out in a gesture indicating their surroundings, "if it were going well, what would I be doing here?" Later, he asks the Laroche character, "How's it going with *you*? And it says, "mentally I kicked back, looking forward to a refreshing spritz of schadenfreude as Laroche recounted the horrible misadventures that led him here, to the bottom of the barrel." But the narrator is surprised when the Laroche character says "Very well, actually." He starts talking about how well it's going for him as a Teacher's Assistant, how he's going to Greece on a two-year work-study program, etc. As he leaves the unemployment office, the narrator berates himself: "See, that's how you've gotta be, Dave. You can't 'hide your light under a bushel.'" My mother's term. "Even when you bump into Laroche in the unemployment office, he makes it sound like his career's taking off with a bullet." I never did publish that short story. Maybe I should send it off. It strikes me now that it's making an important point: to me, I guess, to myself. You've gotta blow your own horn, no one else will, honey. Yeah, maybe...thqat's the world today...self-promotion and publicity are everything. But I don't know, sometimes. Like, right now, I'm listening to Buck 65 "Talking Honky Blues." It's seeming a little slick and self-satisfied. Overproduced. I think maybe I'll go back to the one I was listening to before, "Pigeon John is dating your sister." It's an album made with love, "in hot tiny bedroom studios across america." It begins: "I'm just another rapper/trying to make the hands clap, or/be in Teen Bop magazine, that's what I'm after/But lately things ain't too well/trying to excel, but still in my Tercel/...I've been shopping my little demo for three years/I'm tired of hanging out with the same dears...I want to sow and grow and fly with my rhymes...I'm speaking on the real/I'm tired of basing my whole life on a record deal..." It's called high school reunion and he says: "you got a pretty wife and two kids up in the crib/I'm eatin' canned chili with no shirt showin' my ribs...what am I gonna say when they ask what I been up to/I'll say I'm looking for a deal and a job, too" The refrain is "I shoulda known, I shoulda known/Shoulda got a real job and a digital phone/My high school reunion's is soon from now/And I only got two dollars in my checking account." Soon everyone will realize, he says, that "pigeon john's a joke/three times broke/he's dreamin'/and he can't be awoke." that's what I'm talking about. I don't know why, but...it just seems more human to me. Life is toil and trouble, we're put on this earth to console one another. Oh, that reminds me of something: Princess Di had a favorite poem that went something like "Life is mostly froth and bubble/Two tyhings stand like stone/Compassion in another's trouble/Courage in your own." Kingsley Amis's parody of it is hilarious: "Life is mostly grief and labour/Two things get you through/Chortling when it hits your neighbour/Whingeing when it's you." Anyway, peace. Remember to be humble and compassionate. xo d Monday, September 15, 2003 O.K. here we go. I've been reading a few of these-- well, just one: Jennifer Weiner's. I don't know why. A friend of mine, Rick Marin, of Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor fame, was telling me she sold 500,000 copies of Good in Bed so I thought, hmmm, better check it out. Her blog seems OK. Things are almost going too well for her, in a way. Charles Bukowski always used to say "the gods have protected me against success," and maybe I'm starting to understand it a bit. Her things have a bit of a commercial feel, like "oh, I'm so psyched, HBO just picked this up," etc but maybe she always wrote that way, in the first place. Lets the gods preserve me from that, though I admit: I'd kill for 1/10th of her sales figures. Yes, I would: kill. Not a human being, obviously, but, say, a small rodent. Yes, I would sacrifice it to the gods and with blood coursing down my cheeks say "now: can I have one-tenth jennifer weiner's sales figures?" ....weiner...I like saying that: jennifer weiner...she seems pretty nice, though, and her advice to writers is probably sensible. People who get successful always complain too many people are trying to contact them, bug them for help, etc. I like it. I don't know how you stumbled across this blog-- probably on the way to some porn site-- danni ashe danni ashe danni ashe-- but feel free to get in touch, my brothers and sisters. i might not have any fucking advice for you, but hey. I probably need your advice more than you need mine. I am a published author though. Seven countries! now I just have to conquer the other ones, then get my agent to sell the rights to the novy mir space station--they must need books up there-- and future rights to the moon and then I'll rest. enough procrastination. I'm thinking of writing my next fucking book on this thing. If I could get help, feedback, from YOU out there, it would be worth its weight in gold. Overexposure-- about a guy taking a terrible piece of advice when he feels tempted by an...extramarital temptation. I used to show all my stuff to my wife, but what with her full time job and our -- > 3 < -- kids she hardly has the time and/or energy. Besides it's all about her & our relationship (and, I should say, the importance of monogamy) and she'll be too worried about how she comes off. I'm 3 chapters in. If even one person outside my immediate family begs me to do this I'll do it. And then if people could tell me what works, what sucks, and I make a million, I will personally give each and every person who helped 1 percent of profits. (I've already promised a friend of mine, who is kind of story-editing it, 7 %-- and I'm serious about it, because I believe that the more input I'll get the more cash I'll make). Thjis is all dead serious, and my agent did sell a book for $1,000,000 (US) last year: Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes. So it can and does happen, despite the current anemic state of publishing-- though, it must be said, to women more often than men. (Plum Sykes is British, an It girl, famous-for-being-famous, and I am none of these things: that is why Overexposure must be a masterpiece). Thank you for your time.
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