repeatedly, I decided repeatedly
not to call her, or I decided to
repeatedly not call her.
Anyway, she hasn't called me.
Now I have this leaky faucet brain,
and I can hear the not-calling all night,
not-calling, not-calling.
"You can always decide to call her later,"
I tell myself, not sure why I am not calling,
except, she doesn't call, and on certain nights
I can hear her not-calling so loudly.
I was proud of myself for throwing up
at 3:23AM and getting up for work anyway.
Is this not adult of me? Now I do things that
make my eyes water in the middle of the night
and then go about my business as usual.
I am very mature!
I don't know how to tell someone how proud I am
of vomiting and not calling
without getting
the null reaction,
the negative reaction.
Isn't that adult, too?
All these parts of days,
I can't tell anyone about them.
All those boring movies,
those black and white shots
of lamps and wallpapers without plot,
I now get them.
9 comments:
A thought-provoking and somewhat tragic poem! If "gloria!" was a poem about the desire to reach out, to find a sense of solidarity in the struggle of a lonely day-to-day life, then "leaky faucet" is about accepting that solitude. It seems that in this poem the urge to reach out and to escape the condition of loneliness is actively suppressed; and forced in its place is the almost more strenuous (and certainly more absurd, as illustrated by the poem itself) struggle to "grin and bear it" -- not merely to accept it, but to try to welcome it. "I am very mature!" the narrator exclaims. But who is she trying to convince if she knows not even "how to tell someone how proud" she is -- only herself, it seems. So do we really believe her? The poem begins with four lines, "I decided not to call my friend,/repeatedly, I decided repeatedly/not to call her, or I decided to/repeatedly not call her" -- the narrator stumbles over her words, unsure of how to phrase the sentence, trying every combination and not quite satisfied with any. This obsessing over minutia, what is later referred to as the "leaky faucet brain," is in some sense a "throwing up"or vomiting of thoughts, doubts, memories, guilts, obsessions, confusions etc. And like the 3:23AM sickness, such an activity is done completely alone, in darkness, until one is completely exhausted. The ending leaves little room for optimism as the narrator now understands (in an almost masochistic way) "those boring movies." But if there is a small glint of hope it is perhaps found in her ability to acknowledge these movies as "boring" and "without plot." She, at least, does not deny it. Rattling beneath the leaky faucet are the water pipes waiting to burst -- for better or worse.
Derick -- a thought-provoking and lovely comment. Thank you so much. I appreciate how deeply you analyze any given Yum Yum work. You've very clearly laid out the mindset that I wanted the poem to capture.
I wonder, about writing poems like this. When you write poems, do you have a specific idea in mind? I've noticed (maybe commented to you on the phone?) before that I only seem to find lonely feelings worthy of poetizing. I think that part of that is the feeling that if someone 'gets' the poem, later, the feeling of loneliness is redeemed, or paradoxically undone. Do you have a specific motivation for when you write? Is it a loneliness? When you write, how much is playfulness with language, and how much is trying to recombine actual senses (maybe scenes, maybe phrases, maybe feelings) from your life?
Sophia! I think we probably have a similar outlook on this. I remember telling you once that my favorite albums were sad ones, and I definitely share in your sentiment of feeling that the melancholic is somehow the most worthy of poetizing. I think you're right about the redemptive quality of tragic art (doesn't Nietzche talk about that in Birth of Tragedy?). But I also think somehow sadness is more meaningful than happiness. You know happiness can be deceptive. The happy victor requires there to be a miserable loser--that's a little messy. But sadness never really lies -- it always tells the truth, gives the whole picture as it is. And in a way, sadness tells us the things that we find most important in life -- even the most genuinely happy moments have a bit of melancholy in it (is this why we can cry tears of joy?). So i think it's natural, especially for people who don't mistake sadness as a bad thing, to prize it as the most worthy for art. So I guess to answer your question, I think art HAS to be meaningful beyond all else, and at the moment I think meaning is most potent in sadness. But see I'm not a poet (at least not right now) so what happens with my poetry is I get flustered and I'll revert to a play of language and sometimes just straight up spitting out of nonsense. But you have to be willing to produce bad stuff on the way to making the good stuff. But I'm curious, what would you say is your process? What is your motivation? And a more specific question pertinent to your recent poems -- would you say the poetry where you write about a specific dilemma makes it easier to swallow and passively accept it, or does it help you to understand it and hence overcome it?
RE Process: There'll be a feeling that I want to put down. Unfortunately, I'm not that good at taking something un-autobiographical and writing it (see my lady losing her fingers poem from way back when). And I don't know what the motivation is, but when I write something that I mean to write, it feels good afterward. It can be hard to re-read it, and though it's not quite cathartic, I find myself feeling better (usually not losing the feeling, usually not with an increased understanding) if I can put it down. Sometimes it eludes me for a long time. Sometimes it doesn't.
I think the things I tend to write about tend to be things that get 'stuck in my craw,' so to speak, and when I write about them in a successful way, it's a way of attending to it fully rather than being interrupted or dogged by some nuisance feeling. And when I am happy with my writing, I feel like I have re-aligned myself so that anyone else can see what was in my craw, too. And when they do that, they can see me. And sometimes what they see is ugly, and maybe I'd rather they didn't. That's usually when I try to put something very stylishly, or even sometimes stylistically, maybe as a form of seduction. In the former case it's a way of fluffing myself up as very individual; in the latter, it's redirecting attention to the formal properties rather than the ugly autobiographical content.
I have this book, 'The Artist's Way.' I've been reading it and a self-help eating management book, 'Fat & Furious.' Both advocate a much more continuous striving than my artistic process manages. The Artist's Way seems to be advocating a view where artistry is dictation above all else, and I can see why that would be tempting, and I worry that I am tempted by it. In some sense an idea isn't an idea if it's just 'yours.' It has to be share-able. But I worry about why it is seductive to write as if it is not your own voice. Even so, regarding the diligence, maybe if I wanted to be a poet, I would try to diligently do this work.
Do you feel like you overcome feelings? Do you think you are a musician, but not a poet? How do you manage to refresh yourself, when you have so many creative endeavors simultaneously?
I like what you said about turning to "style" as a way of hiding oneself when one gets too honest or as a way of "redirecting attention to the formal properties rather than the ugly autobiographical content." Very true!
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I think if art/poetry does help me overcome certain feelings (although I'm not quite sure, to be honest) then it's probably because those feelings are no longer in vain--you can say "Look, they led to something worthwhile" rather than just letting them wear you down. It gives the purposeless a sense of purpose.
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I'm more comfortable calling myself a musician, although if I could have it my way I wouldn't call myself anything for the time being and figure it out after I'm done doing what I'm doing.
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I think any given art-form speaks in a unique langauge-- but all art strives to say the same thing. So taking on many creative endeavors simultaneously will always be refreshing!
(Pick up a sketchbook and pencil, S.!)
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S., when you're working on art/poetry/writing, are you more the type that comes up with an idea, executes that idea, and then moves on? Or are you more the type that comes up with an idea, experiments with it, revises it, tries again, tries a few different approaches, then eventually moves on (sometimes without ever really finishing)?
It's tricky to say whether I've moved on from certain things, particularly given the reprise of certain themes, like loneliness, or adulthood, or what a good life would look like. I tend to walk away from poems, but I find myself coming back to the thought process again and again that inspired that work.
When I was thinking about leaving philosophy, I thought to myself that I have a particular virtue not present in all of my colleagues: I have a tick-tick-boom mentality towards decision making, such that at a certain point, I stop looking for additional information, and make the best decision I have with what I'm given. Some people end up in bad situations, having declined making a decision because they were forever hemming and hawing about what decision would be the RIGHT one. And there's a part of me, the same part of me that is angry and unforgiving but also the part of me that is most useful in my survival, which turns its back on the perfect. Not right away, but not after the window for a good decision has closed. I think of it as my greek Thumos part, the Spirit. It's the part that itches to do something.
Despite feeling the same sad feelings and writing the same sad poems, I think of that part of myself as the part left out of the writing yet instrumental to it. It's the part that makes me try again, and it's also the part that makes me give up. It's the part that got me to write about the feeling but it was also the part that made me stop fussing to get on to tomorrow, too.
What about you? I feel like you don't fit neatly into either type, because you do approach and finish projects and you've pursue music courageously as long as I've known you, yet you are extremely experimental. That strikes me as the right combo.
Can you think of something, or a project, you've given up on? Was it good to give up? Are there any artistic tendencies you've forsworn for conceptual reasons? Do you still sketch an apple everyday?
I think I have a trial-and-error approach to things. I don't see myself as the giving up type, but I always have this feeling that the work I do (whatever it may be) is a test-run rather than ever being a final product. In fact, I don't think I can think of any work I've done where I can say "Yes, this is finished and this is good." But what keeps me going is the thought that each trial teaches me something about what works and what doesn't. The more I do, the more I learn. And each trial hopefully gets me closer and closer to a day when I can say "yes, this is finished and this is good." So I am a series of rough drafts intending, as Whitman would say, to one day "contribute a verse."
How about you? Are you able to look back at work that you have done and feel that it was complete and good? Or do you try not to think in these terms?
There's a phrase that Edmund White used, 'the pederasty of autobiography,' that sometimes gets me. Meaning that I often look much more affectionately on previous work, so that I often find myself lamenting the distance between the better work of the past and the poorer work of the present. But nothing ever feels finished, and done. I buy into that phrase that creative works are only ever abandoned. With parts of philosophy, more so than with creative works, I have gotten a sense of 'washing my hands,' where I feel I've done as much as I want to do in a certain subject matter or area.
I wrote a poem thinking about this conversation, more for fun than anything else:
to write, put the rot without.
not that you can write without the rot,
you need a rotten mouth,
but the mouth has to be open,
and to write well,
the rot has to be bigger than you,
bigger than the rotten mouth.
no one can write knowing the size of the rot.
open up, hoping without knowing
that the rot can corrupt across a distance,
that there is enough of it to go around
and get around you
and your little mouth.
Ah, the rot! Great poem, S.!
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