Friday 4/23/21
* Walked nine miles, ran ten hill sprints. Is that Zulu? No. It is okay.
* The other day at the Starbucks there was this bro with his girlfriend. I would say the bro was twenty-eight or so. He's waiting for his drink to be made, and this guy is stretching and groaning like he's eighty-six. Starts fiddling with his belly, then begins pulling his sweatpants down a little bit. You know how you can see that declivity? And it's like, "Hey, it's pubic time!" He's doing that in the Starbucks. Groaning and groaning. Like some mighty warrior just back from battle or as if he'd been up for the majority of a week finishing his masterpiece of a novel. And the bro isn't even fit. He has the double chin, big round face, sort of pregnant-y looking. I'm feeling pretty great about myself watching this guy, even as I also kind of wanted to clock him. "Ugggggghhhhh. Aaaaagggghhh. Oooooogggghhhhh."
* People ask me weird questions. Today I get a text from someone reading, "You know those dogging places? Can I just go and watch? There are some near where we live."
*I could write a good reboot of Different Strokes. For these times.
* Read some of Joyce's Finnegans Wake at the cafe to try and de-stress a little. The stress never goes down. It won't go down until I've won this war.
* Listened to Floyd at the Fillmore West in late April 1970. Of course, I am always giving more thought now to that Pink Floyd book idea I wrote about on here. Do Same Band, do the Joy Division book, the book about the influence of African American musicians on the Beatles, Stones, etc., and this Floyd book. Those are the four main music books right now for me. Writing this Floyd book will be an absolute piece of piss for me. Hopefully the Sam Cooke opens up a few things, and Dzanc will be amenable to Longer on the Inside and the Joy Division undertaking. I think both could be good for us. The Sam Cooke book should really show anyone what I can do with a music book. Like, what? I'm going to give you something that sucks? That's ridiculous. I can go to other places with a book like that that no one else can.
* This weekend is all about the film book. If I'm going to pull off this insane four books in a year thing--novel, story collection, music book, film book--I cannot delay any longer than I already have. I could easily do twelve different kinds of books in a year, while doing everything else, but I am, of course, in the aforementioned war right now. What will this look like when I have won that war?
* "Fetch and Ferry" is a major work. There's not going to be something better than this story. Completely unplanned. Yesterday I said, "okay, give me something." I create a blank document. I have no idea for a story. I have nothing. I decide to invent. Then there are people. I have not known them before. They have stories to tell. I listen to them. I come to know them. I write their stories. I wrote that story. It was 1700 words long. I arose this morning at 4. I sat at the desk. My intention was to go over the story again, and what happened was it became 700 words longer. The verb "ferry" has transcendent power in the story--I gave it more power yet. Parts that were not there yesterday--for scholars and biographers, and for my own records--include the bit about the trout, Christmas and the second, the funeral parlor, the uncle and the shoulders, the stem to stern part. There were instances of tweaks and additional changes. The first sentence changed, in what some would think is a minor way, but I would classify as a major way. These are stories you can read 100 times and each time they are new. One walks away with more. Everything must tell. What seems small--the use of a question mark instead of a period--is not. Not when you're doing this kind of writing that is always a new experience each time someone reads it. I'm not here to write disposal, MFA wankery. I'm here to give you a life experience unlike any other that perpetually renews itself and reaches you differently at different times in your own life. Even if that is from one day to the next. I'm not fucking around with what I have for humanity. I'm not other writers.