Ask Me
5/14/96
ASK ME
Don't ask me to care I am unemployed and don't know where the rent is coming from. Don't ask me to care that mankind is overrunning the planet and extinguishing all the best species. Don't ask me to care that I'm not coming up with anything new. Don't ask me to care that I'm in the grip of despair. Don't ask me to care that I eat the air.
Don't ask me to care that I loathe many of the same people I love. Don't ask me to care that those closest to me and farthest from me have been fucking with me since the beginning. Don't ask me to care that I'm a conscript in the War of the Babies. Don't ask me to care that personalities like Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone and Mike Eisner and Don King and Jesse Helm and Elizabeth Dole and Richard Simmons and Sally Jesse Raphael and KoKo the Maneating Chimp thrive in this society.
Don't ask me to care that I am required to pay car insurance, but 20% of California drivers carry none. Don't ask me to care that I've got to take a pee. Don't ask me to care that I am in despair, despair, despair. Don't ask me to care that we are evaporating into thin air, thin air, thin air. Don't ask me to care that I wear a heavy leaden crown.
Don't don't don't. Ask ask ask. Me me me. To care. Don't ask. Care? I care about everything. And nothing. That's the way it's done, isn't it? Is it a good idea to care too much about any one thing? Is it a good idea not to care about anything? Is caring an idea at all,or is it an emotion, or it is a big ball of hokum, sold to gullible yokums?
Care? Don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to buy what you're peddling, and I promise not to sell you mine. Let's mutually agree to keep our own junk in our own garages. Next time I hold a garage sale, I'm just going to carry two items: ecstasy and despair. Don't ask me to care which, if either, you're foolish enough to buy. Feel free to bargain with me. I'll sell at any price....so long as I like the cut of your jib, and maybe even if I don't.
Don't don't don't, don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to care about your career. Don't ask me to care about the state of your hemorrhoids. Don't ask me to care about your relationship to your parents, and I won't ask you to care about mine. Don't ask me to care if you care. Don't ask me to care if I care. Don't don't don't, ask me to care.
OK. If you insist. Ask me to care. Ask me to care about any damn thing you want. Ask me to care if the crocuses are pushing through the snow. Ask me to care what happens to retarded children when they grow up and try to make their way in the world. Ask me to care about murdered Bosnians, fried Nagasakians, slaughtered Tutsis, poached Hutus, cindered Iraqis, clobbered Aztecs, butchered Seminoles, massacred Sioux, drowned Bengladeshis, bombed Lebanese, martyred Vietnamese, buried-alive Chinese, exploited Tahitians, and betrayed Poles. Ask me to care about pink armbands and Star of David armbands. Ask me to care about the States of Israel and Palestine. Ask me to wear a red ribbon on my lapel and tie a yellow ribbon round my old oak tree.
Ask me to care about the children I'll never father. Ask me to care about the children others have fathered and abandoned. Ask me to care about the words I never wrote and the words I did. Ask me to care about bicycles. Ask me to care about air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin. Ask me to care about the state of the South Bay storm drains. Ask me to care how it feels to bicycle, by coast, to Manhattan Beach and back. Ask me about promiscuity among the youth of South Bay communities.
Ask me how it makes me feel to see, as I whiz by on my bike, a young Amazon playing volleyball in a dayglo swimsuit. Ask me whether I worship the shape of her legs and ass. Ask me whether I would be indifferent to the prospect, however unlikely, of sexual congress with such a one.
Ask me how hard it is to be my mother's son. Ask me whether all my college classmates who are still alive, as well as some of those who aren't, have surpassed me in material well-being. Ask me if my life has value to anyone, anywhere. Ask me if I despair. Ask me if I care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I care if you despair. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.
Ask me if I care you still owe me for that bike I sold you on trust. Ask me if I feel betrayed. Ask me if I care whether I feel betrayed or not. Ask me if I feel deceived by you. Ask me if I care whether I feel deceived. Ask me if care whether a bunch of Yuppies in the grip of midlife crises died on Mt Everest yesterday.
Ask me if I care. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.
Ask me, if I don't care, why I read the newspaper. I read to find out what it is I don't care about, of course. Or, if you prefer, I will care about it. I will care about it all. I will care what Ann Landers advises "Horny in Houston" to do with her unrequited lust. I will care what my horoscope says. I will care what M. L. Rosenthal's point of view is. I will try to be more attentive to the words of William Safire. I will attend to Anthony Lewis and Art Buchwald and Maureen Dowd and William Buckley. Well, I don't know about William Buckley. Is it OK if I just read his son's tobacco satire, and leave it at that?
I will care about whatever you suggest I care about. Should I care about the state of health of your immediate family members? So be it. Should I care that you haven't been laid in 6 months, and that your spouse seems to be getting some strange? I'm caring, I'm caring.
Should I care that children in the Sub-Sahara region are suffering from malnutrition? Can you hear? That's my stomach, growling with sympathetic hunger pangs. Should I care that I appear to sound cynical? My profoundest apologies. I'll do my best to appear sweetly sentimental from here on out.
Should I care that Mother Theresa is a better person than I am? I prostrate and prostate myself before her public image. I abjectly apologize to the Goodness Police and beg them to please officer, please, let me off just this once. Should I care that Donald Trump has more debt than I do? I care, Donald, really I do. But don't look back, I'm gaining on you. And Donald? When you're done with Marla, if there's anything left, would you pass her to me?
Should I care that Donald has dandy digs in Trump Towers, while I rot in a rathole? I care, I swear I do. Should I care that my unfancy car and flat and clothes and income and social standing make me less than desirable in the eyes of some fabulous looking women? I care, I swear I do, I care.
Should I care that I'm not at the top of my form every waking moment? Should I care that the world's not beating a path to my door? Should I care that I don't stride the earth like a colossus? Should I care that my dad, whatever our misunderstandings, really loves me? Should I care that I have, at last, found a way to express myself? Should I care that I despair of ever publishing what I write or ever reaching others' hearts with same?
Should I care I'll never get to heaven, on this earth or in the afterlife? Should I care that little old ladies are lavishing big bucks on toy dogs while children in Haiti starve? I care, really I do. I care about every fucking thing if it makes you happier, if that's what it takes for you to love me. I care about reaching you. I care about being on your side and lending you a hand. Just as much as I care about butting heads with you and smacking you down.
I care about sunsets, and puppy dog tails, and sugar and spice. Sure I do. I promise I do. I care about the state of the union. I care about who's elected in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign. Actually, I just like saying gubernatorial. Mayoral has a ring to it, too. I care that you were born with an ugly raspberry birthmark across your cheek, and that you were led, by a late night infomercial, to purchase a cosmetic product which hides the birthmark, but which makes you look as if you've been bobbing for apples in plaster of Paris. I care whether or not to capitalize the Paris in plaster of Paris. I care about common nouns and proper nouns alike.
I care about body odor. I care about carbuncles. The bigger and juicier the better. I care if you've got polyps in your nose. I care that I can't seem to write a sentence that doesn't have I in it. I care that I rant and declaim, but am not creating a fully-imagined, fictional, world in which you can live. I care that these words don't free me and you from the burden of self-consciousness.
I care that there was no room at the inn that icy night in Nazereth, or rather, Bethlehem. I care that the Lord Whateverhisnamewas was crucified and rose again that I may live and care. I care about and believe in all the world's religions, especially yours. I just want to make you happy. What can I do to make you happy? Tell me what you believe in, and I'll believe in it, too.
I care that I am writing now. I care that I am being productive. I care that I cannot make money from what I am doing right now. I care that my bills are mounting. I care that my mother willfully and skillfully misconstrues everything I say and do. I care that this is the way of mothers, who give us life so that they can make us leap through hoops of fire.
I care that the mailman will soon bring the mail, which, in my case, will include plenty of bills but no checks. I care that my memory's going. I feel delivered from everything I am forgetting. I care that I'm dying on my feet. I care that this is the way of the world. I care that healthy young female humans are naturally attracted to healthy young male humans, not to unhealthy middleaged subhumans.
I care that the sun is shining like a mocking brass bell in the pitiless California sky. I care that this piece is going nowhere, that you can dive into it anywhere, that you can take a slice of it from anyplace you please and leave the rest for dead. I care. I really fucking care.
I care that for me the writing process is completely mysterious, like stumbling through underbrush in the dark. My mind is a machete which is losing its edge. I've lost my bearings and can't remember if I'm in the Amazon or New Guinea. Everyone I meet looks like the Wild Man of Borneo, so maybe that's where I am.
I care, I really care, that Japan is denuding the forests of Indonesia while back in Kyoto, zen nature worship proceeds apace. I care that the big cats of the world are being extinguished to make Chinese medical nostrums. Would I care any more or less if these ground up tiger bones actually cured anyone of anything? Do I care if the body parts of endangered species have a placebo effect? Do I care if powdered rhino horns really make Taiwanese more potent?
Do I care that something seems to be happening to the corners of my lips? That they don't provide the seal that they once did, that they are leaking, that I'm drooling all over my computer? Do I care that my family has excellent genes, that I may have inherited a strong, longlasting heart along with my low I.Q.?
Do I care that this piece seems to be going on forever? Do I care that I am not writing an epic novel which will be saluted by all the critics? Do I care that a big movie deal isn't in the offing? Do I care that I'm a marginal man? Do I care that many Americans are addicted to money, but that there is not yet a 12-step program for them, because it's OK to be a rich bitch and/or sonuvabitch? Do I care that I can't bring to mind the name of that cockney asshole who brings us the lives of the rich and famous?
Do I care that someone, somewhere, is eating better than I am, fucking better, sleeping better, digesting better, listening better, running better, singing better, loving better, writing better? I care, I swear I really care.
Do I care that I am a pitiless individual? Do I care what hypocrisies you entertain?
Do I care that Francois Truffaut was a cinematic genius who discovered, late in life, that his genetic father was a Jewish dentist who somehow survived the Holocaust? Do I care that I was hatched from a platypus egg, and that my parents scooped me from the billabongs of the outback and brought me to American disguised as the bastard kookaburra offspring of a wallaby?
Do I care that I can no longer remember my national origins, or that I was a son of the pioneers? Do I care what color my skin is? Do I care what color your skin is, or how straight my hair is, or how round your eyes are, or how broad my nose is?
Do I care what you believe in? If it'll make you any happier, I'll believe in it, too. If you feel you must kill me in order to convert me, take your best shot. But it really won't be necessary. I'll convert to whatever tickles your fancy.
Do I care that America lost the Vietnam War? Did America lose it? Did it only win it when it lost it? What was it the Vietnamese won? Vietnam? Is that something I want? Is Vietnam something you want? What would you do with it if you had it? Would it be a burden, or could you carry it lightly? If you promise to carry it lightly, I'll give it to you. There. Is everything okay now?
Do I care that Andrew Lloyd Webber, with his suspect musical virtuosity, makes scads of money, as do Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, but that the Captain and Tenille and Tony Orlando and Dawn have seen better days, and that Andy Gibb will see no more days at all? Do I care, really care, that Albert Einstein was way, way, smarter than I? Better he than I be burdened with all those brains.
I wouldn't have known how to wear them lightly.
Do I want to take the time and effort to try to find what's positive in rap? Do I miss H. Rap Brown, and can I remember what he said when what he said was being reported? Is he as eloquent now as he was then?
What does an 8-track sensibility do in a digital age? Retool or despair? Should it care?
When I watch "All Quiet on the Western Front," why does it make me weep? Do I really care what happened to a bunch of fictional Germans in World War One? Do I care that I am sodden, saturated, sopping with despair? I care. I really, really care.
Do I care that Bobby DeNiro gained 60 pounds to play Jake DeMotta? Do I care that Martin Scorsese is a living cinematic legend? Do I care that The Pawnbroker left me speechless the first time I saw it? Do I care that director Arvin Brown's 1972 staging of Long Day's Journey into Night left me sobbing?
What if I cried me a river. Would I care? Should I care? Should you care? Why should you care? You'd have to be crazy to care. I'd have to be crazy to care if you cried yourself a river, but if it'll make you any happier, I'll care.
What does it take for me to write? I have to make it my number one priority. I have to forget that I'm unemployed and in debt. I have to forget what sells. I have to be rested. I have to give it my very best self. I have to set down exactly what I hear in my head. I have to go beyond despair. I have to despair and not despair.
If I don't write exactly what is in my head, I'm not writing, I'm lying. And there's no pleasure in that, no matter how much money I'm paid to do it. It's too much work to try to keep the lies straight. Anyway, I won't be paid whether I whether I am true or false to my inner voice, so I may as well be true to it and obediently transcribe it.
I wish I could create a fully imagined fictional reality for you if that's what you would prefer to read. I just want to make you happy. But if speaking my mind does not make you happy, then you should find and read the words which do make you happy. Or maybe you should write them yourself.
The question is: Is my first priority making you happy, or is it setting down the words I hear in my head? Am I here to write what you think you want to hear? What if the words in my head are what you think you want to hear, but you don't realize that until after you hear them? What if I'm speaking for both of us when I say this?
Why do I feel so fresh and sharp today? Why do I feel I could bury you in words? Is it because the weather is cool, and the birds outside are singing their hearts out? Is it because I've made my peace with my shaky prospects for the future?
Right now a car alarm is blasting outside my window. Do you think it's bothering me? Do you think it's breaking my concentration? Do you think it's throwing me off my serve?
If this is what I am writing, how the hell am I going to make a living as a writer? What if writing this way makes me unsuited to do anything else for a living, but I can't make a living writing this way? Then what am I doing here? Making a dying? Are these words sealing my doom?
Why am I taking pleasure in them? Because they're slow suicide? Why are you reading them? In order to watch an author disintegrate, immolate himself in his own language?
Am I a Buddhist monk, protesting the war in Vietnam by burning himself in a Saigon street? Isn't it a little late for that? And are these words really so hot I can flambe myself with them?
Am I an informer in Soweto, dying with a burning tire wrapped around him? Am I a Spanish witch being subjected to auto da fe? Am I, am I, am I, going up in smoke?
Are these words a brand? Do they sear into my flesh and make a smell like burning eggs? If I am frying myself with my vocabulary, how long will it be before I'm an ash with nothing left to burn? When this piece is complete, will I be a pile of gray dust in the shape of a Doug which you can knock into nothingness with a puff of air? Will I , will I, will I care?
-FIN-
ASK ME
Don't ask me to care I am unemployed and don't know where the rent is coming from. Don't ask me to care that mankind is overrunning the planet and extinguishing all the best species. Don't ask me to care that I'm not coming up with anything new. Don't ask me to care that I'm in the grip of despair. Don't ask me to care that I eat the air.
Don't ask me to care that I loathe many of the same people I love. Don't ask me to care that those closest to me and farthest from me have been fucking with me since the beginning. Don't ask me to care that I'm a conscript in the War of the Babies. Don't ask me to care that personalities like Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone and Mike Eisner and Don King and Jesse Helm and Elizabeth Dole and Richard Simmons and Sally Jesse Raphael and KoKo the Maneating Chimp thrive in this society.
Don't ask me to care that I am required to pay car insurance, but 20% of California drivers carry none. Don't ask me to care that I've got to take a pee. Don't ask me to care that I am in despair, despair, despair. Don't ask me to care that we are evaporating into thin air, thin air, thin air. Don't ask me to care that I wear a heavy leaden crown.
Don't don't don't. Ask ask ask. Me me me. To care. Don't ask. Care? I care about everything. And nothing. That's the way it's done, isn't it? Is it a good idea to care too much about any one thing? Is it a good idea not to care about anything? Is caring an idea at all,or is it an emotion, or it is a big ball of hokum, sold to gullible yokums?
Care? Don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to buy what you're peddling, and I promise not to sell you mine. Let's mutually agree to keep our own junk in our own garages. Next time I hold a garage sale, I'm just going to carry two items: ecstasy and despair. Don't ask me to care which, if either, you're foolish enough to buy. Feel free to bargain with me. I'll sell at any price....so long as I like the cut of your jib, and maybe even if I don't.
Don't don't don't, don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to care about your career. Don't ask me to care about the state of your hemorrhoids. Don't ask me to care about your relationship to your parents, and I won't ask you to care about mine. Don't ask me to care if you care. Don't ask me to care if I care. Don't don't don't, ask me to care.
OK. If you insist. Ask me to care. Ask me to care about any damn thing you want. Ask me to care if the crocuses are pushing through the snow. Ask me to care what happens to retarded children when they grow up and try to make their way in the world. Ask me to care about murdered Bosnians, fried Nagasakians, slaughtered Tutsis, poached Hutus, cindered Iraqis, clobbered Aztecs, butchered Seminoles, massacred Sioux, drowned Bengladeshis, bombed Lebanese, martyred Vietnamese, buried-alive Chinese, exploited Tahitians, and betrayed Poles. Ask me to care about pink armbands and Star of David armbands. Ask me to care about the States of Israel and Palestine. Ask me to wear a red ribbon on my lapel and tie a yellow ribbon round my old oak tree.
Ask me to care about the children I'll never father. Ask me to care about the children others have fathered and abandoned. Ask me to care about the words I never wrote and the words I did. Ask me to care about bicycles. Ask me to care about air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin. Ask me to care about the state of the South Bay storm drains. Ask me to care how it feels to bicycle, by coast, to Manhattan Beach and back. Ask me about promiscuity among the youth of South Bay communities.
Ask me how it makes me feel to see, as I whiz by on my bike, a young Amazon playing volleyball in a dayglo swimsuit. Ask me whether I worship the shape of her legs and ass. Ask me whether I would be indifferent to the prospect, however unlikely, of sexual congress with such a one.
Ask me how hard it is to be my mother's son. Ask me whether all my college classmates who are still alive, as well as some of those who aren't, have surpassed me in material well-being. Ask me if my life has value to anyone, anywhere. Ask me if I despair. Ask me if I care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I care if you despair. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.
Ask me if I care you still owe me for that bike I sold you on trust. Ask me if I feel betrayed. Ask me if I care whether I feel betrayed or not. Ask me if I feel deceived by you. Ask me if I care whether I feel deceived. Ask me if care whether a bunch of Yuppies in the grip of midlife crises died on Mt Everest yesterday.
Ask me if I care. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.
Ask me, if I don't care, why I read the newspaper. I read to find out what it is I don't care about, of course. Or, if you prefer, I will care about it. I will care about it all. I will care what Ann Landers advises "Horny in Houston" to do with her unrequited lust. I will care what my horoscope says. I will care what M. L. Rosenthal's point of view is. I will try to be more attentive to the words of William Safire. I will attend to Anthony Lewis and Art Buchwald and Maureen Dowd and William Buckley. Well, I don't know about William Buckley. Is it OK if I just read his son's tobacco satire, and leave it at that?
I will care about whatever you suggest I care about. Should I care about the state of health of your immediate family members? So be it. Should I care that you haven't been laid in 6 months, and that your spouse seems to be getting some strange? I'm caring, I'm caring.
Should I care that children in the Sub-Sahara region are suffering from malnutrition? Can you hear? That's my stomach, growling with sympathetic hunger pangs. Should I care that I appear to sound cynical? My profoundest apologies. I'll do my best to appear sweetly sentimental from here on out.
Should I care that Mother Theresa is a better person than I am? I prostrate and prostate myself before her public image. I abjectly apologize to the Goodness Police and beg them to please officer, please, let me off just this once. Should I care that Donald Trump has more debt than I do? I care, Donald, really I do. But don't look back, I'm gaining on you. And Donald? When you're done with Marla, if there's anything left, would you pass her to me?
Should I care that Donald has dandy digs in Trump Towers, while I rot in a rathole? I care, I swear I do. Should I care that my unfancy car and flat and clothes and income and social standing make me less than desirable in the eyes of some fabulous looking women? I care, I swear I do, I care.
Should I care that I'm not at the top of my form every waking moment? Should I care that the world's not beating a path to my door? Should I care that I don't stride the earth like a colossus? Should I care that my dad, whatever our misunderstandings, really loves me? Should I care that I have, at last, found a way to express myself? Should I care that I despair of ever publishing what I write or ever reaching others' hearts with same?
Should I care I'll never get to heaven, on this earth or in the afterlife? Should I care that little old ladies are lavishing big bucks on toy dogs while children in Haiti starve? I care, really I do. I care about every fucking thing if it makes you happier, if that's what it takes for you to love me. I care about reaching you. I care about being on your side and lending you a hand. Just as much as I care about butting heads with you and smacking you down.
I care about sunsets, and puppy dog tails, and sugar and spice. Sure I do. I promise I do. I care about the state of the union. I care about who's elected in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign. Actually, I just like saying gubernatorial. Mayoral has a ring to it, too. I care that you were born with an ugly raspberry birthmark across your cheek, and that you were led, by a late night infomercial, to purchase a cosmetic product which hides the birthmark, but which makes you look as if you've been bobbing for apples in plaster of Paris. I care whether or not to capitalize the Paris in plaster of Paris. I care about common nouns and proper nouns alike.
I care about body odor. I care about carbuncles. The bigger and juicier the better. I care if you've got polyps in your nose. I care that I can't seem to write a sentence that doesn't have I in it. I care that I rant and declaim, but am not creating a fully-imagined, fictional, world in which you can live. I care that these words don't free me and you from the burden of self-consciousness.
I care that there was no room at the inn that icy night in Nazereth, or rather, Bethlehem. I care that the Lord Whateverhisnamewas was crucified and rose again that I may live and care. I care about and believe in all the world's religions, especially yours. I just want to make you happy. What can I do to make you happy? Tell me what you believe in, and I'll believe in it, too.
I care that I am writing now. I care that I am being productive. I care that I cannot make money from what I am doing right now. I care that my bills are mounting. I care that my mother willfully and skillfully misconstrues everything I say and do. I care that this is the way of mothers, who give us life so that they can make us leap through hoops of fire.
I care that the mailman will soon bring the mail, which, in my case, will include plenty of bills but no checks. I care that my memory's going. I feel delivered from everything I am forgetting. I care that I'm dying on my feet. I care that this is the way of the world. I care that healthy young female humans are naturally attracted to healthy young male humans, not to unhealthy middleaged subhumans.
I care that the sun is shining like a mocking brass bell in the pitiless California sky. I care that this piece is going nowhere, that you can dive into it anywhere, that you can take a slice of it from anyplace you please and leave the rest for dead. I care. I really fucking care.
I care that for me the writing process is completely mysterious, like stumbling through underbrush in the dark. My mind is a machete which is losing its edge. I've lost my bearings and can't remember if I'm in the Amazon or New Guinea. Everyone I meet looks like the Wild Man of Borneo, so maybe that's where I am.
I care, I really care, that Japan is denuding the forests of Indonesia while back in Kyoto, zen nature worship proceeds apace. I care that the big cats of the world are being extinguished to make Chinese medical nostrums. Would I care any more or less if these ground up tiger bones actually cured anyone of anything? Do I care if the body parts of endangered species have a placebo effect? Do I care if powdered rhino horns really make Taiwanese more potent?
Do I care that something seems to be happening to the corners of my lips? That they don't provide the seal that they once did, that they are leaking, that I'm drooling all over my computer? Do I care that my family has excellent genes, that I may have inherited a strong, longlasting heart along with my low I.Q.?
Do I care that this piece seems to be going on forever? Do I care that I am not writing an epic novel which will be saluted by all the critics? Do I care that a big movie deal isn't in the offing? Do I care that I'm a marginal man? Do I care that many Americans are addicted to money, but that there is not yet a 12-step program for them, because it's OK to be a rich bitch and/or sonuvabitch? Do I care that I can't bring to mind the name of that cockney asshole who brings us the lives of the rich and famous?
Do I care that someone, somewhere, is eating better than I am, fucking better, sleeping better, digesting better, listening better, running better, singing better, loving better, writing better? I care, I swear I really care.
Do I care that I am a pitiless individual? Do I care what hypocrisies you entertain?
Do I care that Francois Truffaut was a cinematic genius who discovered, late in life, that his genetic father was a Jewish dentist who somehow survived the Holocaust? Do I care that I was hatched from a platypus egg, and that my parents scooped me from the billabongs of the outback and brought me to American disguised as the bastard kookaburra offspring of a wallaby?
Do I care that I can no longer remember my national origins, or that I was a son of the pioneers? Do I care what color my skin is? Do I care what color your skin is, or how straight my hair is, or how round your eyes are, or how broad my nose is?
Do I care what you believe in? If it'll make you any happier, I'll believe in it, too. If you feel you must kill me in order to convert me, take your best shot. But it really won't be necessary. I'll convert to whatever tickles your fancy.
Do I care that America lost the Vietnam War? Did America lose it? Did it only win it when it lost it? What was it the Vietnamese won? Vietnam? Is that something I want? Is Vietnam something you want? What would you do with it if you had it? Would it be a burden, or could you carry it lightly? If you promise to carry it lightly, I'll give it to you. There. Is everything okay now?
Do I care that Andrew Lloyd Webber, with his suspect musical virtuosity, makes scads of money, as do Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, but that the Captain and Tenille and Tony Orlando and Dawn have seen better days, and that Andy Gibb will see no more days at all? Do I care, really care, that Albert Einstein was way, way, smarter than I? Better he than I be burdened with all those brains.
I wouldn't have known how to wear them lightly.
Do I want to take the time and effort to try to find what's positive in rap? Do I miss H. Rap Brown, and can I remember what he said when what he said was being reported? Is he as eloquent now as he was then?
What does an 8-track sensibility do in a digital age? Retool or despair? Should it care?
When I watch "All Quiet on the Western Front," why does it make me weep? Do I really care what happened to a bunch of fictional Germans in World War One? Do I care that I am sodden, saturated, sopping with despair? I care. I really, really care.
Do I care that Bobby DeNiro gained 60 pounds to play Jake DeMotta? Do I care that Martin Scorsese is a living cinematic legend? Do I care that The Pawnbroker left me speechless the first time I saw it? Do I care that director Arvin Brown's 1972 staging of Long Day's Journey into Night left me sobbing?
What if I cried me a river. Would I care? Should I care? Should you care? Why should you care? You'd have to be crazy to care. I'd have to be crazy to care if you cried yourself a river, but if it'll make you any happier, I'll care.
What does it take for me to write? I have to make it my number one priority. I have to forget that I'm unemployed and in debt. I have to forget what sells. I have to be rested. I have to give it my very best self. I have to set down exactly what I hear in my head. I have to go beyond despair. I have to despair and not despair.
If I don't write exactly what is in my head, I'm not writing, I'm lying. And there's no pleasure in that, no matter how much money I'm paid to do it. It's too much work to try to keep the lies straight. Anyway, I won't be paid whether I whether I am true or false to my inner voice, so I may as well be true to it and obediently transcribe it.
I wish I could create a fully imagined fictional reality for you if that's what you would prefer to read. I just want to make you happy. But if speaking my mind does not make you happy, then you should find and read the words which do make you happy. Or maybe you should write them yourself.
The question is: Is my first priority making you happy, or is it setting down the words I hear in my head? Am I here to write what you think you want to hear? What if the words in my head are what you think you want to hear, but you don't realize that until after you hear them? What if I'm speaking for both of us when I say this?
Why do I feel so fresh and sharp today? Why do I feel I could bury you in words? Is it because the weather is cool, and the birds outside are singing their hearts out? Is it because I've made my peace with my shaky prospects for the future?
Right now a car alarm is blasting outside my window. Do you think it's bothering me? Do you think it's breaking my concentration? Do you think it's throwing me off my serve?
If this is what I am writing, how the hell am I going to make a living as a writer? What if writing this way makes me unsuited to do anything else for a living, but I can't make a living writing this way? Then what am I doing here? Making a dying? Are these words sealing my doom?
Why am I taking pleasure in them? Because they're slow suicide? Why are you reading them? In order to watch an author disintegrate, immolate himself in his own language?
Am I a Buddhist monk, protesting the war in Vietnam by burning himself in a Saigon street? Isn't it a little late for that? And are these words really so hot I can flambe myself with them?
Am I an informer in Soweto, dying with a burning tire wrapped around him? Am I a Spanish witch being subjected to auto da fe? Am I, am I, am I, going up in smoke?
Are these words a brand? Do they sear into my flesh and make a smell like burning eggs? If I am frying myself with my vocabulary, how long will it be before I'm an ash with nothing left to burn? When this piece is complete, will I be a pile of gray dust in the shape of a Doug which you can knock into nothingness with a puff of air? Will I , will I, will I care?
-FIN-
posted by mobydoug at 12:21 AM
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