i got my computer back yesterday, and i've been holed up in my apartment trying to rebuild it back to the state it was in when it died. all of my music and most of my internet utilities are gone, so it's been a slow process with a lot of loading, installing, and waiting. one thing i realized while sitting in a room with my computer is how much i've been neglecting my writing. sure, i've been travelling the past week and i've been without a computer, but travelling usually inspires me to write more than ever. i think i had developed a sense of haughty accomplishment by writing for at least an hour every day while i was on the road. maybe i felt like i was entitled to a break or something, but that was just activity that was equivalent to practice. i've always believed that one needs to write every day if one is ever going to get anywhere — it's the same with the guitar or the piano or any skill that translates the thoughts into manual activity. you have to keep those channels clear.
i was reading a bomb magazine interview with john zorn when i came across this fantastic quote about his recent ten years in japan:
Learning another language helps you, really, with English. It helps you focus your communication in a very real way, and that was great. And being hit front on with a completely different culture helped me appreciate my own culture. I wouldn't have gotten into Jewishness as much as I did if I hadn't been in Japan.
the first thing that strikes me is the sense of appreciation you develop for your own home when you are half a world away from it. it takes seeing the beauty of a foreign environment to appreciate the beauty that's around you every day in your more comfortable surroundings. and i don't mean killer views or nice weather, i mean things like liquor stores and greasy spoons and punk rock clubs. i'm thankful that i have access to those things in my neighborhood. also, there's the idea of clarity of communication — i definitely found myself putting my thoughts into the most efficient little package i could manage before delivering them. everything about the way i spoke and wrote got tighter and more focused, even when i was talking to english-speakers. the only problem is that as soon as i got home, that focus faded. sustained effort is the key.
speaking of sustained effort, i attended a reading last week held by william vollmann, a journalist and author who has just completed a tome called rising up and rising down. it's a 3,300 page, seven volume beast that explores the different factors humans use to attach morality to violence. when is violence justified? can violence ever be used justly? those are the types of questions he asks. he's been everywhere: laos, colombia, cambodia, yugoslavia, somalia, iraq. during the reading he talked about his travels and showed slides to illustrate how violence is viewed in different parts of the world. it's very heavy stuff, but still i couldn't wrap my head around the weight of 3,300 pages. the amount of effort it takes to read such a book of heavy ideas (let alone write one) is staggering. is there something about 3,300 pages that's more focused and vital than 330 pages? when is a book that huge ever justified?
maybe it's a problem of concentration on our part. it's obvious to me that vollman doesn't spend a lot of time wathcing television or playing the guitar. the ideologists and scholars out there are more than happy to jump into a bottomless pit of 3,300 pages. that's what reading a book that huge feels like. well, sort of a combination of a bottomless pit and "are we there yet?" i'm sure that if i ever attempted to read it, i'd give up somewhere in the middle. then i'd place it carefully on my shelf next to infinite jest and gravity's rainbow. then i'd talk about it at cocktail parties and snotty lit events.
another quote of zorn's that really floored me was his take on the importance of doubt and dispair in the life of the creative individual. so i'll leave you with this beauty:
I'm constantly in doubt about what I'm doing, I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies. I'm not striving for happiness, I'm trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt.
Posted by snackfight at December 2, 2003 03:47 PM