Om
I feel like I’m on drugs. Is it sugar? I had a big brownie from a vending machine about an hour and a half ago. I’ve been drinking lots of water. Something feels… off. I feel slightly weird, slightly manic.
I’d been out of the blogging mood for several days. I hadn’t felt like blogging and I hadn’t even thought about reading anyone’s blogs. And then this afternoon I try to catch up on my usuals, and everyone’s gone bonkers. Choire and Philo have turned into Sally Struthers. Jonno is writing impressionistically about New York. Sparky’s using bullet points. And not only has the Blogstalker returned, but he’s writing about John Blair cards in a semi-fictional way. Something feels slightly insane. The universe feels unreliable. If everything in the universe suddenly grew a thousand times as large, including ourselves, would anybody notice? But I feel like I’m measuring the universe with an unreliable ruler. How do I know an inch is really an inch? I don’t feel upset or worried. Things just sort of feel trippy, like they don’t add up. It’s not a bad thing. I just feel like I’m on drugs. I feel slightly manic. Slightly overstimulated mentally. Maybe I need to have sex. But sex doesn’t seem as exciting as the mental stimulation.
I want to read and read and read. Not necessarily all at once. But thanks to utmaninva‘s comment to my previous entry I want to read The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. And on Bill‘s suggestion I checked out the website for Oxford World’s Classics and I want to read, oh, everything. Well, seriously. But right now I guess I have a few books on my reading list. St. Augustine’s Confessions and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and stuff by Plato and stuff by basically everyone else who’s ever written anything that has withstood the passage of time.
There are too many good things in the world. Do you know that I just got caught up on Choire’s last few entries and for some reason they completely blew my mind? The writing crackled with energy. It was so fucking refreshing and new. I wanted to throw out my keyboard and never write anything ever again. At the same time I wanted to write and write and write and keep trying.
Blogs trouble me. They trouble me because there is so much amazingly good writing out there that so few people know about. And not just blogs. There are independent bands. There are incredibly wonderful Broadway songs from long-lost musicals that flopped. Nobody’s ever heard of them. Are they still good? If a tree falls in the forest?
Who decides what is good? There is a surplus of goodness out there. Well, not a surplus, because that would imply that some of it is dispensable. But none of it is. It’s just that there’s too much. How can I decide what to read, what music to listen to, what movies to see, when all of it is so good? And how do I decide what is good and what is not? I want to read the classics. But there’s still amazingly good stuff out there. Fuck — last night at a pizzeria the TV was tuned to VH-1 and I saw a Sears commercial that was really witty. A Sears commercial! And yet there are all these classic works out there. My brain wants to explode. Oh my god there’s too much.
I feel like I’m drugged. I feel like right now I’m addicted to good things. I want to absorb the universe. I want to absorb everything that ever was, everything that is right now, everything that will ever be.
I believe that if I absorb all this goodness it will rub off on me and make me able to write The Perfect Novel. I want to assimilate Everything That Has Ever Been and write the Novel to End All Novels. I want to write the ur-novel. The uber-novel. I want to write the novel that will make all subsequent attempts futile and make the universe pack up and go home. Okay, fellas, the human experiment has been completed, human destiny has been achieved, we can go home now. Close the books on this universe. Time for God to make the next one.
What if God wrote a novel?
He has. We’re living it.
So it’s already been done.
Dammit.
I’m getting a headache.
What kind of a brownie was that???
Where can I get the recipe??? 8)
Old Colony brand. Gourmet Fudge Brownie. Made with Chunks of Pure Chocolate. Net wt. 3.25 oz. (92g) No preservatives.
Possibly some DMZ though.
Child…you’re giving me a headache! Chill dude, chill! It’s called faith. You’ll be exposed to the things that you’re supposed to see. The rest is simply not meant for you! Now keep away from them brownies! Oh, and go have sex…just in case!
Cheers!
Brendan
I hate to dissappoint you, but the uber-novel has already been written. It is political, it is personal, it is universal, it is perfect. It is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
I read it pretty much continuously, hoping that it will rub off on me. It does, too, to a point. When I am reading it faithfully, my writing becomes far more beautiful than it has been lately.
Maybe it will work for you. Even if you don’t have time to read the whole thing right now, go to a library and read the chapter A Heart Beneath A stone.
“The reduction of the Universe to a single soul, the expansion of that soul into God, this is love.”
It has changed my life.
Hey, and don’t forget about all those catchy songs! That Jean Valjean guy is a total nut.
Maybe you’ve read this and mentioned it already, but for some insightful exercises and personal reflections on writing (and living), see Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Had to second Shadowy’s recommendation of Bird by Bird. It is amazing. My only complaint is that it’s spoiled me for other books on/about writing (and, I fear, for Anne Lamott’s other books as well). If you haven’t read it, do. If you have read it, tell us what you think? I’d certainly be curious.