Thursday 8/26/21
The Mr. Coffee that I had to buy like three months ago has already stopped working. Poverty is awful. Poverty becomes worse when you are the best in the world at many things, the best there has ever been at those things, and people who are awful at those same things get awarded and extravagantly compensated. I went down to the diner at the end of the street to get a coffee and the guy sees me and said, "Whiskey?" To which I replied, "A double," and he handed me a large coffee with milk.
I pitched something on a live Coltrane set coming out--to two places, actually--and the Beatles as well as the docu-series on the 1986 Mets which I had pitched previously but it has a release date now. This week I have written three op-eds and a book review, a new short story, completed a short story from last week, and wrote a couple thousand words of another short story this morning.
Last night I proposed a book to this small place that does short books that seem to grow out of essays. It is an obvious fit at a place I should never be approaching were an entire industry not united against me, and I don't expect it to go well because there's only dysfunction and insanity at this point in my world. Everything is twisted and backwards.
Anyway, the idea for the book would be a volume about mobility--walking, the stair running. I shared the recent essay from Salmagundi as an idea of what I have in mind, and I would probably give the book the same title: You're Up, You're Down, You're Up. Think of how great a work that would be. It's a book worth doing at some point even if this press doesn't do it.
It's so tempting when I come along for someone to exert what they view as power. One of the biggest problems in my world right now is that I am almost always approaching people, at every level of publishing, who are in some ways "competing" with me. That is, the editors and publishers are also writers. And of course they are going to be insanely envious. I'll tell you what makes these people more hateful and envious than anything. It's not how much money you have. It's not how much fame. It's how legit you are. Because they all know what frauds they are, why they have gotten what they've gotten, which is usually piddling, and the work is less than piddling. And they know, even with an industry against me, I am still kicking their ass, and I'm especially kicking their ass when it comes to, gee, who is the one legit artist here?
And that person is just not going to publish whatever masterpiece--"Dot," "Head to Give," Cheer Pack, There Is No Doubt, "The Echo Blow," etc.--I have. It's me. They want what I have--or, should I say, they want to be what I am--and here's an opportunity to stop me or pull me down. And they're going to take it. I am such a threat to them. I'm a threat to their illusions and their sad little sense of self. Whereas, the people they wave through--come on. They're no threat to anything. They're completely inconsequential in what they create. "Create" is too good a word.
Seems like only a little while ago I was on Downtown talking about how this journal had reached 1000 entries. Well, this is #1200.
Someone wrote me on here about how they recently listened to eight straight hours of radio segments I did. They were on a trip in a car. And they told me it was the best radio they ever heard, and then they listened to some other guests, and I need not go into what they had to say about the comparisons. I know what's what, obviously. Anyone with ears who is trying to pay attention at all knows what's what. And I appreciate the compliment. But it does go right through me. Because those people have money. They have jobs on TV and in radio, and this individual was right. It's not some amazingly perceptive observation. The charitable way to put it is just to say that there is no comparison. But every single thing happens for other reasons that have nothing to do with ability or performance. Value.
Went to the barber and got the shortest haircut I've ever had. Well, I had this same cut once, when I screwed up the razor settings but this time I just told him to hack all of it off, just about. A few months ago I had the long locks and now it's skin with a little fuzz.
