To create art is to prioritize art and the act of creation, not one’s relation or proximity to it.Ĭolors are extremely important because colors can influence the course of a person’s life by subtly altering their mood. Those who always respect the process until the moment they realize they play no part in it. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took a shit right there! Toe tap, stutter step, head nod, quarter turn, quarter turn, stutter step.Īnd in preparation for writing this, I sat right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision.Įnergy? What you call energy I call having a strong command of tone and an easy facility with syntax, the product of years of deep reading, learning, studying of the form(s). Thus, as is so often implied: lower me down/ pin me in/secure the grounds/for the later parade. We feel little compunction in mentioning that we respect both the necessity of tradition and the undeniable need for innovation. What to do when you spill your guts and empty your heart, and nothing comes out? They fall in love with a book and treat it like a soulmate, like someone with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives, but alas, they choose a new life-long soulmate every other week. The dirty secret of the industry is that most publishers are like teenagers. Name that contains allusion, euphemism, Bakhtinian chronotope, homophobia, elements of misogyny, and a Paul Thomas Anderson reference: “Bitch, I drink your milkshake.” Stendhalian name that’s bound to not be understood in the slightest: “AKA, son of a chubby Mephistopheles.” Name that’s Skip Bayless anointed and approved: “All he does is Art.” Korean-American name: Eugene Han.Ĭonfession: it’s not the writing that drives you to drink, it’s trying to fucking publish. Okay then, here’s the secret: I often recite a narrative when I dance, but it’s in a language you don’t understand. #IsItMachoNow?Īnd then there are those readers-if you want to be so generous as to call them that-who think that every problem can be solved, every life’s mystery revealed with something as insipid as a compelling plot. If comics taught me anything, it’s that real heroes tend to punch their problems away, because LOL, that always works. And by the way, if it’s wrong, even if I’m wrong, I don’t want to be write.

Look, all I’m trying to say is that books are better than most, and although I’d really like to believe that I’m wrong, Shirley Brice Heath knows exactly what I mean and why. I mean, books never say I drink too much, or start in with the sassy backtalk. Perhaps it’s wrong, but I love books more than I love people.

If anything, now I live in the moment and speak my life, my truth! My mind! With no filtereration and no ragrets! Recently, a friend suggested that my isolation due to the pandemic has diminished my ability to properly express myself.

Silverfish by Rone Shavers