Last semester, out of necessity, I started doing all my writing on postcards, during stolen moments throughout the day. The postcards turned into stories, and the Lord was pleased. Well, actually, the Lord declined to comment. But I was pleased. And my friends were pleased, and certain fellow writers were pleased, and various other fellow writers were displeased with the results, so it all added up to: Jon-dog, keep writing on postcards. Which I have. And it's changed my whole way of writing, conceptualizing language & narrative (reconciling the two, actually), and I've gotten a little bit grandiose at times here and there, but I'm okay with that, as these are the kind of overcorrections necessary for the emergence of something I can identify as real and true within my own subjective voice.
I lay awake some nights, though. Amiri Baraka comes to me in a night-vision and says, "Look. You should write so that the common man and woman can dig, dig? Then you might have a future." And I think "Yeah, yr probably right." And then I think, "Wait, nah, that's a bunch of Maoist crap," and resolve to write even less affected, more abstracted, voice-driven prose. (Joyce!) But then Baraka comes back with his b.s. about keeping it real, like, on the level, dig? "Don't be a bourgeois intellectual-writer. Nobody wants to hear that stuff, man." And even though he's right - yes, I admit it, I can't help wanting to write stories that .0001 percent of an already scant audience of readers will actually want to read - I'm really locating my non-praise-driven voice. And that's a good thing. I like having a voice. My hope is that, as I get better and better at channeling it, I'll get better and better at presenting its words in a way that remains accessible to others. That's sort of a long-range career goal...And the Workshop is, in a way, a good litmus test for accessibility. In other ways, not so much. So far, people from Spanish-speaking countries have comprised my best audience. They get the whole magical realism thing, the voice-driven form, the blending of forms and've hipped me to cool things, too, like the corillos of Mexico. (And why do I still not speak Spanish fluently? No reason. No excuse, except Laziness. I need to learn. I think it would help me become a better writer, and, therefore, person...)
I've almost finished a new story. I've been working on it for about two months now, entering its sphere completely. It's a weird story about how, in 1957, the Earth underwent the first of a series of catastrophic nuclear meltdowns. It happened partly because Rev. Jim Jones & Father Divine met face-to-face and set off a spiritual meltdown of Modern Religion, but also because of Oppenheimer and his whole bag. Anyway, the result is a whole lot of DNA confusion. Hence, the birth of (name omitted, for reasons of top secrecy), a half-girl, half-leopard who gets placed, at the age of fifteen, in a lockdown facility headed by a cruel mistreater. She - the leopard girl, the hero - has a lesbian love affair, then escapes the facility, and, hotwiring a Terraplane, heads to California, where she discovers Jim Jones and the Peoples' Temple in full effect. She joins them...and various calamities ensue. The story is narrated by a dude speaking a modernesque negritude patois, who also peppers his telling with numerous musical references - basically, it's who I'd sound like after listening to Sun Ra and gobbling ephedrine. Fragmented thought, clipped speech, various enjambments - a mensa-member, pop culture warrior who's survived a head injury and some red wine. Like that.
Anyway, I'm looking for somebody to illustrate it. If you know anyone interested, let me know. (Pictured above is Lady Luck In The Shape Of A Yellow Horse.)
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