"Even Less"

Even less than yesterday am I inspired. Indeed, I'm so uninspired that I've lapsed into Time-speak. No one really writes like that. Even the people who write for Time don't write like that; there's a staff of editors that massages the prose until it develops into the oddly flavored syntax characteristic of America's Favorite Newsmagazine (as opposed to the World's Greatest Comic Book, which is Fantastic Four). Ah, but what can one do but scratch oneself and proceed. If my purpose is to publish my freewriting--if I'm trying to get this uncensored flow to reveal something about myself or writing or how you read what you're reading right now--it's instrumental to that purpose to push (interestingly, I was trying to type "publish," but my fingers hit the "s" instead of the "b" so now I have to incorporate that somehow) the words out as hard as I can even though (or perhaps especially because) I have nothing to say.

John Cage said "I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it." Of course, John Cage was an inventor of the kind I try to be and fail consistently. Most of what I have to say about randomness and silence--most of the matter that this writing will most likely continue to dredge up--comes from ideas of Cage. I know a bunch about the Black Mountain School where he and Charles Olson did the weird mid-twentieth century things they did, but I'm not sure if that knowledge is the same as the inspiration I'm seeking by doing similar stuff like the stuff I'm pretending (intending?) to do here. Cage and Olson developed classics of their postmodern field; I'm developing a pile of words. It may be appropos here to know (again, I meant to type "note" so now I've got a new challenge for my sentence) that Ray Bradbury claims to have burnt his first million words. They're practice, he says, not fit for comsumption (I'm leaving the typo) by an audience that has come to expect the kind of excellent writing Bradbury's known for. Apparently, I'm not suffering from that kind of pressure: either I'm not expected to be as find a writer as Bradbury, or I just don't care. It's very possible that I just don't care.

I just don't care about plenty of things. It's a big world, I'm a small person (if not physically, then perhaps morally or in terms of industry [I'm calling myself lazy here]), and I just don't have the mental capacity to invest myself deeply in much. I've claimed on several occasions to care deeply about writing, and I'm inclined to believe myself. I'm doing this, for example, even though my wrist hurts and I'd rather by ("be") opposing this sea of troubles end it. Seymour Skinner advocates making a game of your tedious menial task so as not to go crazy while you're doing it. I don't know how much advice I want to take from a cartoon character.

Yet I seem to be making a game. Am I avoiding the tedious menial task of writing? When you consider that it's a task I've set for myself--and I game I'm making up the rules of as I go--it's hard to imagine that I'm trying to shirk it. After all, here I am doing it, complaining about it the way I seem to like to.

I've been thinking about the self-absorption here, and I've been excusing it by noting that me and my feelings and opinions and mental states constitute the only subject on which I'm an authority. I'm revealing myself to myself by doing this, then, and here you are watching me do it. I guess that means I'm revealing myself to you, and I wonder if I've shown you anything worth looking at. What I'm seeing is a neurotic English Master (it's true, I've got a certificate signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger [and my possession of it has forced me to learn how to spell Schwarzenegger]) with perhaps way too much free time and such an enormous vocabulary that he's rattling around in it the way a widow rattles around the mansion that's suddenly too big for her now that her husband and children have vacated it. Apparently my brain is developing empty nest syndrome, if that's what I'm analogizing to the widow. It might be that the widow is whatever point I'm trying to make and that Mr. .45 here is the shepherd protecting your weak ass. Extra points for the first to recognize the allusion that bubbled up there. Analogies lead to weird metaphors, and, in a brain like mine with its relentless associative habit, strange bedfellows. Am I inspired yet? Have I completed my task?

Will I know when or if I have?