Sunday 11 October 1998

At The Hurst for breakfast—is this my Sunday Project? Not really—it's not really the right place—I can't go into it really—I probably have, actually, well, when it's right, I'll discuss it then.

What do you do to a threat? And what am I talking about? An example from the Seafood Kingdom—there's a lobster, big and black (they turn black after they reach a certain age) (it's like a hundred), and it's become so big and old, it's cannibalizing other lobsters (thus cannibalizing the lobster industry). It got so big it was overturning lobster boats, regularly. So, what did they do about it? They fed it. Whale blubber, and grouper, and beef. Everything. Eventually it became so fat that its exoskeleton collapsed. It washed up on the beach in millions of pieces and we could smell it for like three months.

The same technique is used on humans, but generally feeding their ego or power cravings until they are full of themselves like a bloated tick. The examples are many: Francis Coppola, Bill Clinton, James Brown, Kurt Cobain, Jack Kerouac, Jack Nicholson, Jack Kennedy, Jack & The Beanstalk. I don't know about him. I guess that beanstalk is nothing but a giant penis. That story is nothing but saltpeter for pre-adolescents. Certainly Pinocchio—also, with that penis thing—the story of fattening up someone to turn him into a slave. Hell, with Hansel and Gretel they're just eaten—or should be. (Or is that Little Red Riding Hood?) Anyway, in my case, it's a sad story about my countercultural, revolutionary magazine that threatened to blow the doors off of American culture—well, to make a long story short, I was heaped with praise, good reviews, and fat-dripping accolades to the point that I had a bigger head than Jeff Goldblum. Just at the point when I couldn't walk down the street without doing an interview—it just stopped. Now, there was no conspiracy—no one planned it—it's just the way the system is set up. The system that has been refined over ___ years of human civilization—and I suppose ___ years of life on Earth before that. Essentially the same thing happened to me as happened to the Roman Empire. In my case, I lived, but went into seclusion, started drinking—well, picked up the pace of my drinking—and didn't do any art for years. Well, I did, but I kept it to myself, put it in my drawer—filed it under “work on later.” You know that “Work On Later” file is the same as “File 17,” or whatever the other name for the trashcan is (the “Circular File”—whatever). I could have been somebody, the next Jann Wenner, certainly, but here I am in Portland, Maine, writing about lobstering. Fuckin' lobsters, man, interest me like not at all.

Tuesday 6 October 1998

I got to a certain point with that shit—and then I left wherever it was that I was at (The Hurst) and I don't remember where I was going with it—but it's just as well—because I don't want to get into it. I feel like I was on the verge of revealing too much. Who cares, anyway? Everything's made up, everything's true—it's for the geeks of the next generation to figure out—and that's only if they care, and they only care if you become a celebrity or a mass murderer or something along those lines. I'm at The Hurst again, this time for dinner—coffee, live music, and personal psychodrama. It's the broken heart Martian open mic and end of the century open mic death celebration.

Sunday 4 October 1998

Hey, why is the clock round, with the hands spinning around, and the calendar square, or rectangular, with seven days in a row, and then—next row, next row, next row? It's all just time. The days of the week could as well be placed in a circle, with Sunday on top, and that hand would just keep coming around to Sunday again and again and again. Like with, certain hours, certain days—it seems like they keep coming up, like a game of crooked roulette. I used to have a car with a broken clock—back when the clocks in cars had hands, not digital, but of course always broken, never saw it work. Anyway, since it was just an ornament, and always said the same time, I just set it at seven o'clock. Seven p.m., preferably, time to party! You know, I just thought of that, about the round week clock, but in this world there's not a stone untouched—I'm sure there are alternative time expression freaks somewhere, who have calendars in the shape of clocks, and clocks in the shape of God knows what. Fortunately, until we have internet stations implanted in all of our brains, we can disregard the existence of so many things. The world keeps getting smaller, by exponential leaps, but it's still possible to keep your world small, just for your own sanity.

Ahh, this week the smell of the salty ocean, unblemished by the heat of summer. No more rotting seafood, now it's all crisp and clean until spring. Except for Indian Summer, of course. Which I always welcome. I really should get back to one of my previous topics. Particularly that one about putting things into code, disguising things in order to tell the truth. The definition of fiction, after all—telling lies to be able to tell the truth. My friend Randy has, or used to have, I don't know—I haven't heard from him in awhile—a small (small) press publishing company called T.B.S. Publications. He won't tell anyone what the T.B.S. stands for (except that it doesn't stand for Turner Broadcasting System or Syndicate or whatever). But he told me the secret, which is that it stands for True Bull Shit, which, he says, is the definition of fiction.

Friday 2 October 1998

Well, it's October—a month that always looms big for me for some reason—just the name. It's like, different than all the other month names. The first letter, that big “O”—I always visualize as either a big orange pumpkin or the big orange full moon. It's a month I always remember has 31 days without doing any of those cute tricks.

Talk about cute tricks—Oh, I mean because Halloween is on the 31^st, of course. That was always our favorite holiday, where I grew up. Anyway, about cute tricks, I've been thinking—we celebrate our First Amendment and all, as we should, but it's definitely—our right to free speech—something that's constantly being defined. I think we're at a point now where about the only place you can get into trouble is with child pornography. But, the thing is, in the past, trouble and art have always gone really well together, hand in hand, even. Once it gets to the point where art is concentrating too much on “taboo breaking” it starts to be too contrived, and not born out of some kind of passion (except in some cases). What I'm saying is, there's just been a great history of putting things in code that is really fascinating, and adds a dimension to art that I think is lost when it's possible to be right up front with everything. Now, I'm not saying that is not a good thing that say a love story involving two men can be matter-of-factly what it—and then can get to further depth than when the whole thing has to be in code. But it's just that there's a certain elegance and mystery and exhilaration that comes from not being able to be forthright and upfront and honest. There's something exciting about trying to express something so dangerous that you can't be open about it, and have to veil the recognizable parts—because if you weren't you'd be held back by fear—but in the act of changing the names, changing the places, disguising one thing as another, you can feel more free to get to the depths of whatever it is that you are obsessed with.