Process
A couple weeks ago I traded a couple emails with Kelly and she said "If you ever get the time, someday I'd love to hear about your process." The request itself made me feel a lot more artistish than I usually feel. I mean. Someone wanted to know about my process. I imagined me and Kelly passing a joint back and forth behind some NYC gallery and talking about process, narrative construction. I don't even know if Kelly smokes pot. I don't.
But this is a sign of my process. Things just pop into my imagination and I let them roll. I would say things like "You have to trust yourself. Trust that you have stories to tell, even when you don't understand them, especially when you don't understand them. This is some strong weed. The past and the future are myths."
But it doesn't begin in my imagination. There's always some concrete event that wants to be more than just a concrete event. For instance, last week I had just finished scooping the litter box. Somewhere between tying off the bag and taking it to the trash, Jack asked me if you could make French Fries by smacking a potato with a tennis racket. I said I wasn't sure, that it sounded plausible, and then the bag of cat shit? It was gone.
I lost a bag of cat shit. Do you see?
That's what I mean. It was just something that happened, right? But it felt like more. Like it had depth. It felt like a locus of strange energy wherein dwelled a sparkling manifold of potential meanings. Losing the bag of cat shit wanted to sing.
I searched everywhere for the cat shit. It was nowhere to be found. I asked it, "What do you want from me? What is your story?". See, I'm not satisfied with posts that simply reproduce humorous nuggets of narrative realism. Of course you could easily argue that the mere fact of losing a bag of cat shit in and of itself is high comedy and would undoubtedly incite raucous laughter, but I want to plumb the depths of the concrete to a secret place where the literal bleeds metaphors.
Meaning is relational.
So I probe the particular event for its formal properties. What's really going on when a bag of cat shit vanishes into thin air? Then it hits me. The crux of the event is the fact of disappearance. Loss. It's in these more general elements that the situation branches out to form connections. Unbidden, a memory arises of being 7-years-old, lost in a grocery store. I reflect on my grandfather's death. I think about magicians making things disappear. Magic. What happened to magic? I've heard stories of Indian yogis levitating 3 feet off the ground when they meditate. We used to dance and make it rain. We used to get our health and medicine from raving witches, mad, hysterical, insane.
So now the event becomes informed by connections but you don't have to explain them all. Let the reader wonder a little. Wondering's the best part. Here's an abbreviated post:
"Today, after I scooped the litter box, I misplaced a bag of cat shit. I searched everywhere for the cat shit. It was nowhere to be found. Where did you go Grandpa? What is the meaning of gone? Shifty eyed magicians make me suspicious, for they are instruments of loss. But today even they wait, black caped, in the unemployment line, waiting for government checks. What magician made magic disappear? Science, that whore, the rage to know, has turned the world into one big grocery store in which we all wander, lost. Will we ever find our mothers... again?"
*
Kelly passes me the joint and I inhale the smoke deep in my lungs. I speak with ragged urgency, like I'm holding smoke deep in my lungs. "Don't think too much about process. Makes it too scientific. And forget what I said earlier about trusting yourself. No. Trust the story. Just let them come. I don't know how stories come, but they always do. Like magic."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Reader Comments (19)
I love it that two of my favorite online authors are passing notes on craft.
At the same time, it makes me feel wildly inadequate in a way I can't articulate fully.
One of the hallmarks of the disorder schizophrenia is something called loose associations. It is also one of the hallmarks of some of the best writing there is.
This morning I was driving to work and the sky was on fire above my head. I immediately thought that I wished a stranger would look at the back of my knees and be inspired to write a poem, something more beautiful than burning clouds. This, my friend, is almost as good.
My pants busted open this morning, right as I was going to be on time for work for the first time in...weeks.
You help me remember why I love words.
I learned a while ago to never ask writers where their stories come from. Because they don't know. And the writer I'm married to gets cranky sometimes when I ask. (Sometimes I still do, his stories are such amazing surprises.) Just like I don't know where the impulses I have on stage come from. But the important part of being an artist isn't locating the source. The art comes in making room for the impulses, the stories, it's in welcoming them and letting them play with you.
I hope someday I can be as good on stage as you are with words.
while this was quite interesting and informative, you had me on the edge of my seat hoping to all hell you found that bag of cat shit.
i'm not one to analyze & assess (maybe that's my problem) i was quite taken with this post & your description of thought. i think the same way, i just don't go meta. the thought is there & then gone.
When I'm full of stories, I wonder how I was ever without them. When I'm without, I wonder how I ever had any in the first place, and if I'll ever get another one. I wonder if I've told all the stories I've got. Then a wolf comes a'calling.
This still doesn't explain how the bag of cat shit got in my pantry. Now the dog thinks I'm cheating on him.
Why is it every single time I read your posts all I can think is utter fabulousness!
It's when the bag of cat shit ends up in the freezer and is mistaken at holiday time for Aunt Polly's pecan log cookies, THAT'S when the chickens come home to roost.
Process. I write to voice to things I would've said to people had they been listening, or even acting like they were listening. That way, if they are interested, they can get back to what I was saying at their leisure. Of course I will have already moved on by then.
Ha, Jack and Lucy have it easy in your house mate. Around here my kids have to pick up and lose their OWN bag of cat shit!!!
My skin usually crawls when I hear this asked of writers -- but I'm glad you've answered.
i smoke dried cat shit for inspiration.
Sorry, but all I can think after reading this truly precious prose is that you need to get over yourself.
Thanks, Jax. I was JUST NOW wondering what I needed. And then, AT THE SAME TIME, I wondered: What does Jax think I need?
And then you came and told me. Man, thanks again.
Actually, I'm sorry for leaving that earlier comment. I was just in a bad mood and I'm a huge butthole.
My head just blew up. I've never seen that before. Jax, you may be a butthole but I think you're a reformed butthole. An exquisitely self-aware butthole. A whole new generation of butthole. I'm impressed. I'm totally getting out my ukelele.
I liked this.
i love it when i get to chat process with artists. seeing what others usually hude behind their curtain. thier flow. flow. that's what i call it - that thing that comes alive. the beauty in it is that we can't know where it comes from. we can break it down and intellectualize the (lost cat) shit out of it, but that's not the point.
besides that holy mother! you knock my effing socks off, that way you write, you! i want a novel to read, call me selfish. come on. pitter patter, off you go... i hate to compare, I do, but when I read your posts you remind me so much of my favourite author, Eggers. and i mean that with all the love and friendliness a blogfangirl can.
oh, and for some strange reason, i could put myself in the Kelly role. for various reasons, mostly because my name is often confused with Kelly. ok, and i would totally have a fatty with me. and chat process. true story.