Failed Visionary
The entire world will become one room
In one town. And nothing of interest lies beyond the city limits.
It’s all right, you didn’t want to go out anyway.
Other people and their breeding habits
No longer hold any fascination.
It was time to move beyond sensation, free
From the inconveniences of a world wide-open,
Into an idyllic dormancy,
Muddying temptation with connubiality.
– Antiepithalamia (Penny-Ante editions, 2012)
Beauty depresses me,
Knowing that it’s temporary.
Positivity requires too much energy.
And even if I were happy,
I wouldn’t admit it,
For that would be insulting
To those who are not ,
And those who pretend to be.
(Artillery, Sept 2012)
The Squat. 849 Haight street, San Francisco. Thursday, September 13, 2012, 7:30PM. Book Launch. In association with Penny-Ante editions.
Jarett Kobek and M Kitchell have written books: Come celebrate their release. Also, if you feel like it, bring money to buy their books. Also Elly Jonez, Lorian Long, and special guest, John Tottenham, who has also written a book.
On display at the Sancho Gallery. 1549 Sunset Blvd, LA CA 90026. Aug 23-26:
Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, consumed by this precious illusion of service to the pen: priceless time that might have been used to benefit others, from which I might even have derived pleasure. And what have I received in return for this self-serving – if that – satisfaction of having actualized myself? Poverty and solitude have been the chief rewards. And what, actually, am I actualizing? Do I have anything to say that is worth saying at all or that hasn’t been said better before, that might justify this massive investment of time and energy, this insistence on keeping going, this unflagging commitment to a lost cause, as if it were a sacred act and not a sickness born of vanity? What would happen if I didn’t do it? Nothing. Nobody would notice. It wouldn’t make any difference to anybody… other than myself. And I would probably be a lot better off without it. As a compensatory last resort there’s always the myth of posthumous glory. But to receive that one has to die first. How inconvenient. I must put that on my to-do list. It would completely validate the work, of course. The only problem is that I haven’t done the work. I must also put that on my to-do list.
The show is still up for another week, closes next Saturday: Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station B4, Santa Monica, CA.
The silence preceding the anticlimax. A pitiful bid for validation or a claim on eternity. One keeps going despite continual rejection and lack of reward, spurred on, presumably, by some measure of self-belief – doomed to ambition by a sense of superiority or insecurity. The fantasy that we have something going on – that somebody is listening, somebody is watching – facilitated by the insidious web of social media that all too easily creates the false impression that one’s life and one’s musings might be of interest to others. It doesn’t seem to occur to most people who write that nobody’s going to want to read their work. Then again, there are enough unread (and unreadable) books out there already. One more won’t hurt.
My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.
