hey guys don’t you think writing is hard?
it’s been a minute! i’ve been in hell!
okay, theoretically, i accomplished some things. i quit my horrible job and now i have a new one that will probably be equally horrible (but pays better?). i went to philadelphia fringe and performed in my friend’s original show, which was very cool and reminded me that oh yeah you can still call yourself a working artist even when you’re just doing diy shit all the time. luckily, i love doing diy shit. it’s my favorite.
what hasn’t been my favorite lately? WRITING. after going to fringe, another friend and i decided to collab. we’ll premiere our one act plays as a double feature and call it “meat cute”. haha, fun! then i went to look at said one act (the one that is mine) and realized it SUCKS. so i’ve been revising it. revising is hard. this is probably because i’m revising into the void of my own brain and not sharing it with other people, but to be honest, i don’t know who’d want to give up their free time to help me edit my one act play. because this was frustrating, i decided to revisit my passion project, the novel/screenplay/devised piece/abstract art project (???? i haven’t decided what it is yet and am doing all four at the same time) that i had put aside for a few months to go to fringe. alas, i am empty of ideas! i check it out and realize i am just aping all of my favorite artists! OH NO!!!!!!!!
it’s well-known that the first few pieces you ever write/choreograph/film/etc. are just imitations of all your influences. this is fine, but annoying when you also really need to start getting work published and produced and realize you haven’t quite moved out of that phase yet. L BOZO.
at the very least, i’m less lonely than in my prior blog posts. i’ve decided to stop being a hermit. that was good for awhile, but has been bad for, you know, actually producing art.
so, dear potential readers of this blog: what are YOUR remedies for, como se dice, being a bad writer/choreographer/filmmaker/artist in general? or maybe not bad, but even worse, DERIVATIVE????? some have told me before that i have to stop reading/watching things when you’re in an artistic process, but to me this sounds like hell. what would i do without my other side passion project of cataloging everything i deem to be DIMESCINEMA???? or attempting to watch untranslated obscure japanese horror films? and how am i supposed to survive if i can’t read any dennis cooper for months?
so, tips! send them in! (i think i’ve figured out how to add a comment section to this blog. lmk if it works.) and tell me what YOU’RE doing! are you making art? are you watching/reading anything cool? is your social life booming? are you spending 10+ hours a day on 4chan?
P.S.: here’s an excerpt from my passion project so you can get a sense of what i’m talking about when i say my writing is derivative.
The sinkhole had been slowly caving in for about a month now. It had been big news for the first week, and then there’d been a mass shooting in the center of the state, and that had been much more important. Natural disasters were unnerving, but expected. Strange and uncanny, but something primeval in the lizard brain always awaited them. The roof was constantly ready to cave in. This was just Freeman’s time. For Dylan, it was vaguely spooky, but nothing compared to daily life. Plenty had been gnawing at Freeman before the sinkhole.
In the school cafeteria, it wasn’t hard to remember that their town was literally being swallowed whole. Everyone sitting around the place looked functionally braindead, drooling over their school lunch slop, hitting Geek Bars and staring at their phones. Dylan was sitting at his usual table, scribbling in his notebook. He liked to imagine that if anybody looked at him, they’d think of him as artistic and troubled, somebody with a rich inner life. Inside was nothing but heavy black lines.
Across from him, Julie wouldn’t stop chewing. What was once a chip or a carrot was now nothing but pulp in her mouth. The sound of wet squelching pierced the lunchroom, incessant in its persistence. How she could keep on pulverizing whatever poor processed piece of junk had crossed her lips, Dylan wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because she was so barred out all the time. Around the pulp, she suddenly asked, “Have you ever heard of spaghettification?” Dylan didn’t lift his head to respond, “No, what the fuck is that?”
He could have sworn that he felt the electricity shudder through Julie over his response. Julie loved knowing something nobody else did. It was rare that this experience occurred, so she sought it out in more and more obscure ways. “It’s what happens to your body when you get swallowed by a black hole. The gravitational pull is, like, so fucking intense that it stretches you out into one long strand. Stretches you out for infinity. Like a skinny string of spaghetti.”
Julie stuck her index finger in her mouth and began to tug out a long string of spit. Her finger disconnected from her mouth with a sickening pop, but the spit string continued to grow, neon pink and filled with gunk. She stretched it as far as it could possibly go before it splattered on the table, covering the linoleum in a foamy haze. Dylan gagged and shook out his hair like a wet dog.
“Okay, how do they know that? If nobody’s ever been inside a black hole?” Julie hit her vape and answered, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Quantum physics or something. Because, you know, a black hole’s just spacetime collapsed in on itself or whatever.” Dylan rolled his eyes, asking, “Where the fuck did you learn that?” Julie just giggled, throwing a chip at him. “It was on TV.” She followed that up by leaning in close and whispering, “It’s what’s happening to all of us.”
Dylan reeled back like she had slapped him. He’d blame it on her sour breath - like pickled onions rotting in the desert for a month - but it was the circularity of the phrase that stunned him. It’s what’s happening to all of us. The same words he’d been seeing everywhere for weeks now. Graffitied in the tunnels down in the woods and on billboards. Written on the locker next to his. Said to him in a dream, reversed and cryptic, unbeknownst to him until he woke up. It’s what’s happening to all of us.
Julie’s manic grin widened at his reaction, but she just went on chewing. Slop, slop, slop.
P.P.S. here’s another version of the same scene in screenplay form
INT. DAY. SCHOOL CAFETERIA.
JULIE WON’T STOP CHEWING. WHAT WAS ONCE A CHIP OR A CARROT IS NOW NOTHING BUT PULP IN HER MOUTH. SHE DOESN’T SEEM TO NOTICE. SHE KEEPS CHEWING, CHEWING, CHEWING THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SCENE.
JULIE
Have you ever heard of spaghettification?
DYLAN
No, what the fuck is that?
JULIE
It’s what happens to your body when you get swallowed by a black hole. The gravitational pull is like, so fucking intense that it stretches you out into one long fucking strand. Stretches you out for infinity. Like a string of spaghetti.
DYLAN
How do they know that? If nobody’s ever been inside a black hole?
JULIE
Quantum physics or something. Because, y’know, a black hole’s just spacetime collapsed in on itself or whatever.
Julie pulls a long string of spit from her mouth, stretching it out as far as it can go before it splatters onto the table. Dylan wrinkles his nose.
DYLAN
Where the fuck did you learn that?
JULIE
It was on TV.
(in a whisper)
It’s what’s happening to all of us.
Dylan reels back like she’s slapped him.
