To Q. and V.: I know it’s not easy working on this, at the point of time where you are, at the moment. It’s been a little while since I wrote or talked about The Dive, published back in 2012. What I was saying was… what happens is that we keep going somehow.,. I was reading S. Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot the other day in Penang. Terribly depressing writer, if you want to know my opinion. I used to think this was ‘great art’ but now I just think it’s ‘sad art.’ I don’t think it’s a problem writing about sad things, but my gosh, it drones for hundreds of pages, this like academics’ roundups of SB’s so-called great stories, and it made me want to just go to sleep for a long time. I left it in Penang, even though it was beautifully typeset and I had wanted to study it so I could lay out some new texts of mine in a similar way. But no. Too sad. Where are the artful stories that celebrate the good stuff? We need more of those, given… well. [deleted]

Art and Sort-of Art

There is Art, or whatever, and there is of course Sometimes art-like, and I have a twenty-yearlong debate going with my best friend about this concept of ‘bad art has a place in the world, though’ and me yelling that it does NOT, but okay you have to make a lot of bad stuff to get to the good stuff, I see that but you don’t have to share it, do you? Or maybe you do. Maybe this blog is an example of that... *hiccup* Hm. Okay fine. That’s fine. Maybe, maybe. Learning and changing and growing and ‘putting yourself out there’ jazz. Fair enough. Sure it’s subjective but there are frames made by those who design the frames so let’s decide for ourselves what we want to read, can we, maybe? Thank you.  Okay, I know, all of the above is mostly random side information but the thing is, twelve years later I am finding that you, those of you I just met, I mean, and I have had a shared past experience. Sometimes that’s enough to help us work through and process where we are. In the moment, at the moment. It’s not easy. Books helped me cope and I wonder if mine might be something you would like to read.

Melancholy

We just have to go on. That’s what Godot’s about, in a way. ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’ Right? So let’s try that. Meantime, though, for comfort, it’s also nice to hear about how things went for other people who walked in the same tracks that we did. That got me through my hard time, and I hope that my words, recording my feelings here, might help you get through yours…  all this to say… Q. and V.: Thanks for the honesty, the sharing, and the conversations. Here’s more about the book I wrote for M., and where you can get it.