Well, well. If it isn't my old pal, internet. Internet, adressing you directly in this way makes me wish I were a heroic sort of Bond villain, and that I had you strapped to a table with a giant laser pointed at you. I say this because you have been replaced by an alien parasite that is wearing the cold, jelly-filled skin of its former host like a bad joke. Because the notion is kind of funny to me, but also in the knowledge that in the same situation, roles reversed, you would simply waterboard me and stick a live wire in my asshole. You behave hideously and without imagination; it is the sad circling of the drain that attends the fall of many great houses.
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Though still without a new computer, the "e" key--along with plenty else--got fixed on my current workhorse, so I've decided that's good enough to shoot the shit with. Hiatus over, reboot engaged.
The rules and disclaimers, helpfully laid out in the last post, are good enough to stand, but probably not alone. This hiatus, while not precisely curative, has clarified many positions and illuminated much that was obscured. Not enough to place anything in focus, mind--I am as fucked up, jobless, and drifting as I was last time I entered text into this wretched field.
No matter. I desire work, which is to say, typing. Let them, as the self-help people say these days. Steal without consequence, that is.
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When I first started writing seriously in the fifth grade, I was prone to delusions of grandeur, and set myself publishing goals. I was in some ways a better writer when I was eleven--more straightforward, within the clear confines of genre, and trying my hand at every idea that crossed my mind within a variety of said genres. Age ruins us all, and increased sophistication is nothing more than pancaked concealer over rotting flesh.
Mostly I sucked, the way anyone sucks when they start out. Largely because when one starts that young, with the temerity to consider oneself worthy of joining the ranks of the so-called immortals, one has not read enough of the immortals to know what that might entail (though to my credit, only one other person in my cohort ever read nearly as many books as I had, and the margin of difference was fairly wide in my favor). One has also not read enough garbage (essential) or delved enough into the obscure, or modern, or hidden.
Still, I was obviously a writer. I may not have improved, but I have at least continued to demonstrate that simple fact. And I sucked honestly, with verve. People responded to that kid's work in a way they never have to his future self.
Those times, agents and publishers were not part of the computer revolution, at least in terms of submissions. I did not compose in longhand after the sixth grade; my dad's old IBM ThinkPad was my first writing machine and I was extremely pleased with it. A typewriter would have been better for publishing (I now think it would have improved my writing faster, also) because most avenues still demanded hard copy for their submissions.
That was stupid of them. Fucking retarded, I said many times. Those days were less politic, and I was much more ferocious. Am I made of printer paper and ink cartridges? Set up to pay the U.S. Post over and over again as my rejections pile up? When postage was a fucking penny or whatever the fuck, sure. The few places that accepted electronic submissions never bothered to reject me, the classic No of Silence. So I resigned myself to waiting till the industry caught up.
In the interim I read a lot more books, and played a lot more games. I realized what many realize--there is nothing new under the sun. Everything is sixty-four situations repeated in infinite permutations. Blessedly, we all have a right to our own improvisations on the fractal curve.
Continued to write, but my thirst for fame and career trajectory withered on the vine. I became glad indeed that I had never been published, believing that later would be better, when I was more developed, and the print dinosaurs would just let me email them my manuscripts. I was all of fifteen then, around when I read Ulysses and started getting into Vonnegut and the Beats. Stopped sending to publishers and looked for other ways to get my work into people's hands and minds. Tried a lot of stuff, all basically a waste of time and commitment and effort. Open mics, contests, poetry slams, whatever. Only teaching was worth anything.
Writers are the most worthless cohort on the planet, selfish arrogant jealous assholes, but not when they are just starting out. I think I mentioned this.
Now I would like to have a career, if only because I don't want to work. This is a kind of surrender, of course, but I am closer to forty than thirty, and wage slavery has completely fried my nerves, along with every other aspect of modern life.
Now I have a typewriter--a good one--and refuse to compose new work on this laptop I am typing on, because I understand it is a machine designed to rob me of everything I possess and even the intangibles I hold more dear than any possession. It robs me as I type in this field, and would even more shamelessly if I were to use the writing programs on it. It robs my emails. It robs my face.
Now all these cocksucking motherfucking agents and publishers won't take hard copy and demand electronic submissions; everything is text files or pdfs and don't they fucking get it? Don't they see what has happened with computers? Stupid fucking dickhead idiots. Some say "No AI!" and still you have to use a computer to get them their allegedly human-generated scrawl, rendering it as stillborn and scraped out as any aborted fetus. They seem to think any part of these machines belong to them, that it is possible to use them without their true and wicked masters reaching out long fingers to grasp the output. No part does. Computers belong to the producer, and the consumer signs up to be a product of the computer.
So I waited too long, but it doesn't matter. When I die, my papers can be sold at auction. If the new owner wants to feed the whole pile directly into the mouth of a furnace or language model, more fucking power to them. Won't be my problem.
Maybe, maybe, someday some publisher will open their doors to paper manuscripts again, and I can ask an agent if they would take on this shambling corpse. Won't hold my breath. Civilization is much more likely to collapse first.
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Until then, guess I'll carry on with this nonsense blog. It's gotta run at least 470,000 words that already belong to whatever bot wants it. Might as well be the gift that keeps on giving.
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Art is the same way. Even taking a picture of one of my paintings on my phone is unacceptable. I would rather leave my pieces in public buildings and strewn on sidewalks than try to sell them over the computer.
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See you after Christmas. Peace on earth and general goodwill, why not. We love to say that bullshit once a year and keep on fucking the world raw.
Nevertheless, Pax. Hew to your loved ones and hold them close and warm. What else is there, anymore, or ever? Keep that reckless, pointless hope alive.
--JL
