12/29/20: Listen Up, Philip #poetry
The protagonist writes because he doesn’t talk
I talk and write because I always have more to say
Rushdie advertises his master class on writing and says the main thing is just to sit down your ass and write a lot
Save your money
The Rick Blog says you aren’t ready to write until you stop taking classes
and put your ass in the chair
And stop reading too
Rushdie says taking the voyage to the other side of the page
I took a lot of classes and I read a lot of books
Now it’s my turn
This Philip character is an asshole
In my book, he is more a businessman than a writer
One big reason that I do art is that I don’t want to be that type of asshole
or be around them
Art is about truth and love, sweetheart
Philip has a mentor
I’ve had mentors
You can’t write until you don’t have mentors
I’m not anti-social, or a-social
I’m post-social
This guy Philip writes to get laid
He writes to go on book tours
His mentor tells him to get money
I’m hungry for images of writers today
I found some here
These writers in this movie pose as being clear voices independent of the world
I don’t pose
I’m not competitive
I just really suspect I am better than most of these other people
When I encounter someone better or just as good, I get excited
I love excellence
Well … I’ve only come across just as good
I’ve never seen better
I’m smart, I’m soulful and I have a good facility of expression
What else do you need?
This guy Philip is such an asshole that I don’t see why his girlfriend is with him
Oh in this scene she’s pissed off
The mentor says: “You are selfish and un-sentimental. These are admirable qualities.”
Philip: “I know. I come from an unsupportive background”
Mentor worries.
“Don’t overdo it — you’ll become lazy and angry and your work will suffer.”
Me: Selfish is not good. Prioritizing your writing over unimportant demands of others is essential. But a writer should always be there for what is truly important for the people you love —- and you should love the people who love you if you can’t initiate love on your own …
Un-sentimental is great … sentimentality isn’t love, it is just cheap sensation — nothing real
Anger does make work suffer, but getting to the other side of anger is a writing pre-requisite like having mentors and reading and taking classes … you have to matriculate through your connection to what other people think if you want to write …
I was accused of being lazy but I wasn’t. I was angry about the accusation. I expected recognition form a world incapable of giving it —- when I told them to go fuck themselves the words poured out … but all the non-writing frustration and being “blocked” is part of writing … becoming a writer involves gestation and labor pains
and this mentor doesn’t know what he is talking about
The mentor gets Philip a teaching job
You don’t start writing until you stop teaching
If you are a writer, it’s all you do
It’s all that you have ever done
When I wrote when I was a teacher my teaching sometimes suffered
When I taught while I was writing my writing sometimes suffered
Compromise punctuated by moments of fulfillment
This movie is about a young guy dealing with success
Philip says he is notable but not a success
I never understood success when I was young
I wasn’t thinking about money fame and/or power
I was thinking of being true to my voice
That’s it really
I didn’t think about other people having other preoccupations
the money fame and power
I was really good in those years but I didn’t know it
I wasn’t conscious that I was a perfect writer
I did my writing on the stages of comedy clubs
and got admiration and insults
Money fame power would sneak into my bed at night and beat me up
Look …
a writer has to live
and feel it
and then get free
and then make his writing come first
and then believe that his words are important
and know that he is the equal to the world
and assess himself and the world on his own
and not worry about what other people think of his words
and be insulted by others temerity to think that they could assess him or his work or could tell him what to do
The mentor wants adoration and attention and misses it
He smokes cigars
I miss cigars
I wonder about adoration and attention
No I don’t — check that
I wonder about reaching a bigger audience
When was this movie made?
2014?
The men — the writers — keep telling the women what to do
they give orders and the women comply
Old fashioned
Adoration and attention?
That’s from a time when publishers and producers and critics defined culture and told people what was good
and audiences dictated what they would tolerate en masse
individual audience members never got precisely what they wanted and needed
they could only enjoy a broad category and never a specific poem written just for them
but now the world is connected
and all writing is a message in a bottle that reaches the person or persons for which it is intended
not by the writer
but rather by the creative intelligence of creation
and I think there are more people who would find resonance in my words
other people similar to the ones who have found me already
and I wonder if there is something that I should be doing to reach them
in the meantime I just keep writing and putting it out there
I wonder if there is any money in writing — real writing not the commercial bullshit
I never get an idea of how to make this money
but money magically comes to me in other ways
just appears and arrives
money no strings attached
as if God’s creation subsidizes my work
without jobs, assignments or pledge drives
If I ever teach again, I’ll just read my writing to the class
or assign my writing
and assign the class papers responding to my writing
and then not read the students’ papers
and give everyone an “A”
I like seeing these characters in a movie
These ghosts from the now defunct New York publishing scene
and MFA candidates are better for me at arms length
I appreciate the screenwriter, director and actors as middlemen and women
These characters are too cool, too distant, too hip, too averse to showing emotion, too afraid of not knowing
but mainly too ambitious in some way
they aren’t concerned about writing
but more concerned about making it as writers
getting over
to compensate for some self-loathing
and if I wasn’t using this movie as stimulus for an inventory of my own feelings of about being a writer
I’d really be bored by these characters
check that — not bored — I’d find them toxic
Which isn’t to say this is a bad movie
on the contrary
it’s a pretty good exploration of something …
These people all have a hard time connecting
and the movie is about that
Love has never been an issue for me
My family loved me and I loved them
I love my brother
my wife
(chronological order)
It’s pretty simple
you love somebody and stick with them
and love deepens
I struggled with work and recognition
I’m past all of that now
Art is not a struggle
I love it and stick with it
and that love deepens
Friends are welcome to come and go
for the duration and degree that they choose
Everything that makes people unhappy is a misunderstanding
How confidently I write my words
Philip winds up successful, alienated, isolated alone
a great and celebrated novelist
who is a mystery to himself
Thankfully that’s not my genre
I just live my life
and keep a journal
and make it something more
taking the specifics and enlarging them to universals
My life doesn’t have to be sad or lonely to do what I do
My life and my writing are two separate and related projects
I’m not limited to the sole influence of a somber cool jazz soundtrack
I take what comes and go where I please
This movie gets four stars out of four
it values what Philip doesn’t achieve.
Copyright 2020 Richard Thomas
