EG Friday 10th September 2021
MT,
This is serious!
You perhaps heard Nick's casual announcement at the end of Let Em Bum last night, oh I DO apologise, Let em BURN, that the next PunchRiot is likely to be the last!!!!
I love this magazine too much to let it go like that. I think you should suggest to the great man August that you & I take the organ into our own hands, until such time as his juices are replenished that is.
Between the two of us we pump out enough shite, I mean gold, to make the magazine WEEKLY - absolutely we could. And I know I could work on the people I really like on Twitter, like von Koczalski and Kimm @tillwhensday, and get them to finally start writing.
In my opinion people have lost faith in the magazine BECAUSE It became so infrequent. If it became weekly, every fucking Friday, it would regain its buzz.
Your servant, sir
MdV
MT Friday 10th September
Hey man,
I didn’t see Let Em Burn but it’s not surprising. When Barry Nishizawa and I did the livestream with Nick, he made a cryptic statement about no one reading anymore.
To be quite honest, one of the reasons I left PunchRiot is that I too am burned out of writing. I wrote about this at length in The Artists Fortitude (last chapter, “Discouragement; or the soul and indifference)…it’s just hard for me to write now because I feel I’m writing in to a void (feedback to all my work, which I put heart and soul in to, is close to zero). I’ve been trying to write my next novel but it’s difficult.
I’ll talk to Nick and see what’s going on.
Sincerely,
Matt
EG Friday 17th September
Damn Yahoo put your mail in my Spam folder! How dare they! Don't they know who you are!
Nick mentioned on Let Em Burn he only had 4 submissions for next issue and there's no point going on if there's basically just two people sending stuff in every time (he name checked me as one of them of course).
I keep banging on about it, but I think the reason people have lost interest in reading and/or writing for it is that it has become so infrequent. It is a doom loop. Because it comes out so rarely, people can't be bothered to write for it, so then it comes out even more infrequently. I feel the same way, I write my next instalment of A Pilgrim's Tale but then three long months go by without seeing it in print & I lose all interest in the story myself when I started off so enthusiastic about it!
Nick I think would do better to put an issue out every Friday even it if is four pages long and one of those pages is a full page piece of art by yourself or Garadje or whoever (definitely there should be full page art in his mag). Then if someone wants to write something they have the thrill of knowing they only have to wait a week or two to be able to read it themselves and for other people to read it. It really is a thrill to see a piece of your own in print in someone else's publication. But by publishing so rarely he takes that thrill away from people. I think he has killed his own buzz.
He politely declined my offer of taking over the Acting Editorship, but did say I would be his first choice if he decided to let someone else do it (!). I would love to have a go at it & like I say, ad nauseam, I would start by bringing it out every Friday. That would be the essential first step.
And yes Nick should write more for it as well. I love his podcasts on writing and crypto and think they should be in the magazine. For me there is absolutely nothing wrong with a 'vanity project' - both yourself & Nick have used that expression. My great hero Karl Kraus was soon writing his entire magazine himself (Die Fackel) & it was all the better for it. What was the Mona Lisa but a vanity project, Beethoven's symphonies, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling? What art is NOT a vanity project?!
I am sorry to hear you are discouraged by writing because of the answering void. For me this has never been a problem, I get some positive feedback on Twitter from a small devoted band. Troy Francis, Felix Blakeston, there's a small band of people who always give me encouragement and this small band is all I really need. As they say, if you just touch one person with your art then it is worth it. For me I am absolutely enthused by the thought of writing for posterity, leaving a record behind me. My great model is the Diary of Samuel Pepys, boring and of little interest to anyone at the time, but 300 years later time has given it incalculable richness. Time is what finishes your work and makes it rich. Like Coal, Oil, Gas, Diamonds. I am happy to put my work out there and then just let Time start to work its magic on it. NOTHING is without value, even if you get no feedback immediately. Fallen leaves & rotting vegetable matter was of no value at the time it fell, but as I say, it all turned into Coal Oil Gas etc.
For instance in my 1990s writing I wrote a lot about Soho porn cinemas but as I speak now they have ALL gone in London, not a single one left, so people reading my 90s writing will feel some fascination, what are these strange things called 'porn cinemas'? What were they like? What went on in them? So already my writing has acquired historical value. Strip clubs, porn cinemas. brothels, are dying out all around and soon there will be none left at all anywhere and then my accounts will be an invaluable record.
Your servant sir
MdV
MT Sunday 19th September
Thank you for your email.
This is a beautiful metaphor: “Like Coal, Oil, Gas, Diamonds. I am happy to put my work out there and then just let Time start to work its magic on it. NOTHING is without value, even if you get no feedback immediately. Fallen leaves & rotting vegetable matter was of no value at the time it fell, but as I say, it all turned into Coal Oil Gas etc.”
It reminds me of something I wrote towards the end of The Artists Fortitude: “Seeing the mountains up close, as couple’s took banal photographs, reminded me of something else as I contemplated this book: The only thing I remember from college geology (aside from a disastrous date with the professor’s assistant), was how mountains and formations were formed by huge glaciers etching their way in, slowly giving the rocks and mountains their shape as they eroded...maybe art and artists are like this?”
That being all said, as I said on Twitter DM, I feel like a masochist. I respect those like you and my friend who can write in solitary with internal motivation as their only guide. Maybe because I grew up poor, there’s certainly an aspirational tinge to my art but there’s also a need more evanescent. I read in Plotinus how things like the sun shine because they have something by which to shine upon. The return of reflection and glow are just as important as the rays themselves. I think this is why the muse is so important to the artist. But I’ve always felt I’ve been projecting my rays in to a void. I won’t burden you with personal details but about a year ago, I thought my situation had change and when it collapsed (for a variety of reasons), I’ve been struggling since to recover. Since then I think I’ve written my best work but the feedback has been close to zero and I just can’t get motivated to write anymore because it feels like I’m just masochistically supplicating to the impersonal force of necessity.
Your email gave me some motivation to write again, and researching the life and career of Britney Spears has been fun, though given the Twitter engagement (or lack thereof), no one seems to care. But I will finish it because I gave my word to Nick.
Sincerely,
Matt
EG Monday 20th September
One thing I'd say is any engagement you do get is probably just the small tip of a large iceberg i.e. for every one person who says something nice there may be another 20 secret admirers who never say anything. Most people don't want to raise their heads above the parapet on Twitter or anywhere else to preserve their anonymity but still may be enjoying your work in silence. That is not much consolation & does not provide much warmth, I know!
Secondly, in my case I think if you have to force yourself to write it is better not to bother, go out and have fun instead. Your well needs to fill up again before you can draw from it. If it is a chore, and hard work, better to give up as the time is not right. Then one day you're sitting on a train or in a pub and suddenly a great paragraph comes into your head fully formed, so then you should rush home and type it up and several hours later you're still going and hey presto! you've got the kernel of a great little book. I am lazy so I prefer this way of writing. Write only if I feel like it & it's coming out easy. Over the course of a year you will have enough material naturally accumulated by this method to form a small book. OK, then, that's my book!
Again, just let Time do the work.
That's why all my books have a year on the cover page, LOTTA (2002), CASANOVA (2006), THE STRIPPER (2007) etc. That means for all those years I just went through my diary and plucked out the best most purple passages & there you go, squash them together & that is my book for that year. I compile my books pretty retrospectively by going back through the previous 12 months of diary entries. So no work involved at all! I DISCOVER my story from what is already there.
That is why I jokingly always say my writing course would start with 1. Never start with a blank page. What I mean is I don't start with a blank page and try to fill it cos that is MURDER! I just open my diary on December 31st and pluck out the best bits from what I find within (most of which I will have forgotten & will be a delightful surprise).
It's like trying to talk to a girl who's obviously not interested. If you keep chipping away finally you MAY thaw her chill but I would rather not bother. Walk into another bar, feeling down, and the barmaid just comes up and starts flirting with YOU! And for me writing is like that. Wait for the muse to come to me, don't sweat it if she doesn't.
Let your well fill up & when it's ready, it will let you know.
Or just keep a notebook and then type up the best bits when you get to the end of the year.
Your servant sir.
MdV
P.S. we should publish a book at end of year comprising just our philosophical emails to each other! It would be of interest I think!
MT Tuesday 21st September
Regarding the lack of engagement…Nick told me someone surprised him praising my writing. Who this is, I’ve no idea. But someone not known for their reading! Forgive for quoting my book again but I did somewhat address this topic (I quoted a part on Twitter—hoping a certain woman would see it—but I’ll quote the entire passage here):
This is the real world we live in. We are participants in it, and therefore creators of it. It is an extension of us. The world is in us, and we are in the world, significant yet insignificant. I talk about the indifference and despair of the greater world, but yet I’ve participated in the same behavior. Duncan (an old friend of mine from Scotland) sent me many Christmas cards, writing kind, hand-written notes, but I never reciprocated for a variety of reasons, mainly laziness, and the cards and letters eventually stopped. I’ve tried to be kind to others, help them when they need help, whether it sending money for a movie production or life needs or just sending books I feel they might enjoy. Sometimes I’m met with gratitude, sometimes indifference…the latter from those I love…so I just stop sending presents altogether. In other cases, I receive emails with a subject line like, “You went from all-encompassing love to cold, brutal indifference. I suffer” and I just delete the email, feigning indifference though not being indifferent in my mind and soul. Maybe the world is the same way? Maybe it appreciates and loves our art, yet for whatever reason, feigns indifference because it is in a situation where it can’t reciprocate, or doesn’t know how to, but the love and appreciation is still there, but in a helpless, confused silence.
I’ve discussed this subject (to continue or not) with others. Branko Malic, a Croatian philosopher and friend even recorded a podcast inspired by our conversations. A lover of American literature, he wrote the following to me: “Well I guess prose in modern sense is not in anymore as all things modern. Figure of a great writer used to be a concrete ideal recognized by both populous and institutions. Now it's passé as well as many other modern forms of human expression.”
I think the above point we can both agree on. The question is how to move forward? I like your approach as mentioned in my last email. It feels like a nihilistic or absurdist solution—which I don’t mind. And as someone who majored in history, documenting the time is of importance I feel. One reason I wrote CONTENT is I felt most novelists, with maybe the exception of Houellebecq, were being cowards by not dealing with our post-modern epoch instead opting for bullshit genre work or writing nostalgic history or just moving completely to non-fiction (Bret Easton Ellis has done the latter two—but to hell with him. Motherfucker blocked me on Twitter).
I agree with you about being motivated to write. I hate the advice of “write everyday”. I’ve started several novels I haven’t finished. I’ve finished a few books I just don’t want to edit. Writing fiction is like a relationship: I write a few pages like they are dates and then decide if I’m going to commit or not. Maybe these relationships will be revisited in the future. My next novel has been planned for a while, I’ve taken extensive notes but I’m just not feeling it. Picture of my notecard pile below.
Sometimes I wonder if my first love is reading and researching, collecting information and the writing part just a formality (though I do love language). I don’t know. It’s almost become a self-esteem issue: I feel like I have something important to say but no one else seems to think so…which has me asking the existential question if I’m special at all (I am a narcissist so this is quite the mindfuck).
Part of me thinks others are jealous as Solzhenitsyn observed: “The pseudo-intellectuals cannot bear a major writer who is not from their ranks and does not have their mindset.” That quote gives me solace everytime I see a no-talent being promoted in places like Twitter where the followers want to be followed.
But I also love ideas. Another tragedy: no one cares about ideas. As playwright John Steppling said, “Ambition has replaced curiosity”. I tend to agree, even if I’m an ambitious Type A personality. Most don’t want to discuss but lecture. I have no need to hold authority over others. I like talking, discussing. So I appreciate the email exchanges with you. Printing them would be fun. Kind of like Houellebecq’s exchanges with Bernard Henri Levy (have not read).
EG Tuesday 21st September
"...So I appreciate the email exchanges with you. Printing them would be fun. Kind of like Houellebecq’s exchanges with Bernard Henri Levy (have not read)."
Obviously it should be offered to PunchRiot mag first for serialisation. Would raise the tone of that organ considerably
MT Tuesday 21st September
Hahaha absolutely it would!
No comments:
Post a Comment