A Tree in the Forest

You read books on writing, and they say different/contradicting things. Mostly it’s be direct and to the point. Show, don’t tell. And don’t use clichés. I agree with many of these things, but there are great writing in all spectrums. I’ve read 3 volumes of Proust (yeah, that’s snobby of me to point out) and Camus; or Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness, and enjoyed them all. There is minimalism and… I don’t know what Moby-Dick or Proust would be called, but it’s not minimalistic. It’s add everything and cut nothing, or very little. My point to this is that, a cliché sometimes rings true (another cliché) and is valid.

I’ll get back to this.

For money, I make copies, scan, do mail–40-hours of the weeks, so while copies are being made, or I label scans, I look at the internet. Here is some awesome things you should read:

First and foremost (you can disregard most after this if necessary) is an obituary of James Joyce that appeared in ‘Time’, I’m assuming, in the year following his death, called “Silence, Exile & Death” by Whittaker Chambers. It tells of the last month of Joyce’s life, as the Nazis invaded Europe. It is amazing, and you should read this. The link is above. The website This Recording that the obituary is on, uses amazing images between the paragraphs, and has links to songs that compliment their articles. Another article on the site, you may enjoy, is on Jack Nicholson. It regards him being a sensitive misogynist, or really a pleasure seeker. Written by a women, who claims she lusts for him and really gets to the heart of something very cool. It has amazing pictures also.

Second, thirdly, whatever, is an essay by Tao Lin on the Ryū Murakami (b. 1952) novel Almost Transparent Blue (1976) on this cool website, you should frequent, Thought Catalog. The book regards a Japanese art student and his friends who live near an American airforce base near Tokyo. They use drugs (opiates, psychedelics), have an orgy, and existentialist conversations. Tao Lin‘s essay is extensive, 9-internet pages, and is highly recommended. Highly recommend, when you have the time. It took 45-minutes to an hour to read.

And to the tree in the forest. I read an article by Ryan O’Connell a prolific contributor to Thought Catalog. The article was somewhat interesting (he has so many articles, per day sometimes, that I find some of his better than others, though I enjoy most of them; and find some damn amazing!) about a LA nightlife photographer called The Cobra Snake. If you ever look at LA Weekly online, he often has slideshows with party people; sometimes half-naked, or dressed really wild, often drunk or deranged on some drug. His photos show youths full of drugs/drink/themselves in some tragic, yet beautiful pose, as some homage to their young self that can afford the excess that will take their youth away, but any way. (I just quickly went to LA Weekly to find a link and found one about Cobrasnake: Brazilian Beach, and it’s not nightlife, but if you’re a man or lesbian, you may enjoy it!) The crux of Ryan O’Connell’s article was about, well, I’ll quote:

The success of The Cobra Snake not only spawned a new era of nightlife photography, but it was also largely responsible for the career of Internet wunderkind Cory Kennedy—a 16-year old hipster who was plucked from Santa Monica obscurity after pictures of her drunk and eating In-N-Out caused a virtual sensation. Within months, Kennedy was seen galavanting around Hollywood with celebrity pals, Lindsay Lohan and Sean Lennon, writing a column for Nylon magazine, and signing a modeling contract. In many ways, she was like Edie Sedgwick with internet access, which would make Mark Hunter [The Cobra Snake] her Andy Warhol.

I clicked on the link to Cory Kennedy‘s blog, and started poking around. She had pictures of herself with famous actors at bars and restaurants. Pictures of herself at fashion and music shows in New York and LA. A picture of her with Ralph Lauren, on the red carpet with a guy from “The Undead” on AMC, Macaulay Culkin, who she calls “Mac”, and even an intimate dinner with Jason Schwartzman. She writes of Thanksgiving in Connecticut, seeing Pyschedylic Furs in NY, her LA nightlife, implying a jet-set lifestyle between LA and NY, et cetera, and I kind of hated her, but kind of liked her too.

Looking at this blog, I considered how people put on a show, how if you look like you have a life, than you have a life. Cory Kennedy, by her blog, is promoting herself, also called internet presence, and she was fascinating in a weird way. She was pretty, but in no way that seemed more beautiful than any other model.

I enjoy solitude. I enjoy writing and reading books, yet this activity seems counter productive/intuitive to actually interacting with people. Mostly when I read a book, no one has read this book at all, or recently enough, to have a discussion regarding. And writing a story, or anything really, is fulfilling to me and makes me happy. But publishing, marketing, seems the antithesis of this. It involves selling yourself, your art. Most people would like something they made, either written, painted, filmed, et cetera, to be viewed, read, and have some sort of feedback or give someone some catharsis. Yet this seldom happens… brings me back to the tree in the forest. I know it’s not cliché, it’s a zen parable that was on The Simpsons. If creating art is the tree, than when it falls, the creator has the pleasure/satisfaction/transcendence of the moment of creation, yet it exists in a vacuum. Only to one person is there a noise.

This is a little all over the place.