2/18/21: The Words — How to Succeed as a Bad Writer By Really, Really Trying (2012) #poetry
All you need to write is good enough health, good enough money, time, friends and people who love you
When I taught improvisational acting 1000 years ago I used to say, “Your audience will find you”
I had something different inside of me
Jeremy Irons plays a true artist of a writer in this airport novel of a multiplex romance marketed to women who find poetic types to be romantic
Bradley Cooper plays a sensitive young plagiarist
who is trapped by his desire to be a great writer and to be a huge commercial success
The movie seems to think that those two things co-exist
That what is great will always sell
Eventually
But one cheapens the other
Just like the occasional good acting and dialogue in this picture is pulled down by all of the shit
Marketing overwhelms art
Marketing is stronger than art
The way death overwhelms life
Life always ends
Death just keeps rolling along
Art is pure — it’s life
Business is dishonest — it’s corrupt intention
The plagiarist feels guilty
The artist struggles …
The life is the thing
The art is just the report
Of course the artist is obscure
even when everyone knows his name
The artist is obscure to himself
He writes what he doesn’t know
The mature writer is past so much bullshit
no longer a problem to himself
Come on,
To be famous
To be published
To be envied
To get rich
Mainly, mostly
to be recognized
to be seen as a successful person
in the eyes of others
To be what you desire to be
a great this or a great that
like him or like her …
Immortal in the public imagination
(until you are not, but hey it’s the sensation isn’t it … acclaim is a temporary thing … then its on to the next thing … people want to cheer and different teams play in the Super Bowl every year … old achievements go in history books and museums … in some instances fame becomes infamy … it’s all just perception, clear or cloudy …. Saviors become demons … heroes are exposed as frauds or even worse, merely human … mixed bags … we want myths … we want to believe in black and white … we want value to be an easy thing to grab onto … we want someone who went to the Promised Land ahead of us to show us the way, to show us its possible … we want to be saved … we want to be disappointed … we want to feel superior to that and who we have honored … we want the excitement of finding new people and things to admire, we call that progress … we want escape … we want an idyllic perfection … we want something more than food. clothing and shelter … we want the money, fame etc. but we want to tell ourselves that somehow it is more important and deeper than all that … we like to bullshit ourselves … we want soulfulness made material and in so doing we degrade the concept of “soul” … then the predictable happens, and we ignore it and keep churning along … on a hamster wheel of self -deception, ignoring reality and calling mass delusion “reality” …. over and over and over … old Best Picture winners turn into kitsch or trash … no one is exempt … not even the Founding Fathers … success is just a split second thing … wise or foolish respect for something worth a lot, a little or nothing — time and perspective will always tell if you go the other way … I decide the value of my life … no one else … I choose my words and deeds … no one else … the pursuit of success for its own sake seems to me to be a form of slavery … my point isn’t to be successful — it is to share who I am … to reach each and every person that I am meant to be with … )
Success had no value
that’s what I say
except …
that it brings resources to
connect the words to the people they are intended for
people that the writer can’t possibly know
as he writes on the outer edge of his existence
word by word inching into his unknown …
The real writer is too smart for any publisher or producer that he knows of when he is writing (writing is always a leap of faith … deeper, farther, farther, deeper … )
The real writer has no instinct for self-promotion
The real writer needs partners who handle the business aspects of his work
The real writer just writes
and has faith that his words will …
a writer talks seemingly to himself
with the faith that someone else is out there
who will appreciate them
who will need them
They always show up
in handfuls or by the thousands
I think the need for success for its own sake
automatically makes the work done to achieve that success
suck
and the person who is so driven to be a big deal
an asshole
That may seem simplistic, but in my experience
it’s always true
I think success
is an idea made up by salesmen
“The Art of the Deal”
blasphemes art
It calls manipulation creativity
It’s a big bullshit lie
I think a culture that worships success for its own sake
is no culture at all
Honesty, truth, knowledge
count with me
Power for its own sake
Not so much
But here is where it gets complicated
The world needs value to be recognized
the world doesn’t have to keep traveling in its sorry way
and some people who are really good
and their work which is really good
Get recognized
The question now is not
How do they do it?
The question is
How does it happen?
How does anything real happen?
You live your life in a true way
and you are open to what comes your way.
Success is a red herring
It’s pursuit deflects you from what you are meant to do
If you stick with who you are and what you do
it becomes something else and takes you places
Stick with who you are
Bradley Cooper’s character in this movie
is conflicted between success and art and personal ethics and integrity
It’s a phony conflict
It’s no contest
I don’t give a shit about making it
I just want to do it
all aspects of it
including sharing it.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
