Eight weeks without writing…
It had many good points, but it ain’t all beer and skittles.
Have you ever read the aphorism: you can tell you’re a writer when the pain of writing becomes smaller than the pain of NOT writing? I thought it was some hogwash, but no more. Now, the burden of not writing hangs over me like a teetering boulder on a rainy day, with warnings of earthquakes in the area.
I don’t know exactly WHAT I want to write, so a quick remedy for that is to post to Substack. Thank you for helping ease my burden. Sorry for this sloppy drivel. I promise to be more considerate in the future. Until I’m not. Again.
I have ideas. I have 4 distinct projects in various stages of completion right now, and need to start selling them. I have to maintain the ongoing baseball doggerel site BARDBALL, so I could check last night’s box scores and come up with something (oh, and this weekend witnessed the first MLB game umpired by a woman. How’s THAT for cool, especially in these days of cowardice and recidivism?) Limericks about groin injuries don’t just write themselves.
It hasn’t been that I’m incapacitated or stricken with grief or anything. This summer was made up of weeks of what people insist is important: recharging, rejuvenation, regrowth, things like that. It’s been a terrific two months: overseas trips, family gatherings, a trip to see my daughter in a hilarious play at the Minnesota Fringe Festival (sold most tickets, voted Audience Favorite). Ain’t bragging, but facts is facts.
And still, more than ever before, the writing has been nagging at me like a case of dysentery lingering (see reference to “overseas trip” above). One factor might be my birthday at the end of the month. I’ll be turning 65. Age is just a number, so my Snapple cap says, but that’s an age that starts lots of conversations about retirement and slowing down and mortality. And I just have many many many more ideas in me that have to materialize. I’ve gotta get cracking.
65 looks like a soft deadline to me, the date on which you have to hand your teacher your draft outline. But that means playtime is over. It’s time to knuckle down. How good am I at pulling all-nighters these days, if the last all-nighter might last 15-20 years, God willing? I guess we’ll see.
If you know me, you know I don’t like to get airy-fairy about writing. It’s my job. Some days I love it (only after the fact), some days I hate it. But if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. Characters, scenes, ideas and insults to good taste will not make it into the world if I don’t sit down and craft them.
I’m not talking about the Brothers Karamazov here. I’m talking about clown detectives and rebuilt undead teenagers fighting Nazis and Dracula. I don’t think I have to worry about the broad ethics of getting on the list for Oprah’s book club.
But to quote Otter from the cinematic classic “Animal House,” “This situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
And I’m on Team Bluto: “We’re just the guys to do it.”
On my overseas trip in June, I tried so hard to block out what is going on in America. Tried and tried, but failed. Yet all around me were messages that Life goes on. We were visiting a secular country led by a politician who was elected democratically a few years ago, and has spent his time wrenching the country to the right and trying to stay in power indefinitely. But the country continued on. The power games of insecure men played on, but the country endures. And has great food, BTW. Dysentery notwithstanding.
The plague and rot that the Orange Shitgibbon spreads has continued since my wife and I got back, but in my eyes has changed from horror to farce. Paving the Rose Garden so he can put up cheap lawn furniture. Stealing trophies from FIFA. Shouting from the roof at reporters. What a pathetic idiot.
Of course, what’s more pathetic are the people and institutions capitulating to him and his minions. Columbia University. The Columbia Broadcasting System (“Yes, sir, please give us a monitor to keep us from saying anything you don’t like. What else could a free press ask for?”). Feckless Mario Cuomo kissing his ass, trying to get elected mayor of a city that HATES HIS GUTS.
Don’t these toadies see how this is going to play out? They are going to cause terrible damage (they already have), but spinelessness doesn’t get you anywhere. By the end of the year, Shitgibbon is going to be gibbering to his gilded cherubs in the Oval Office, in a display that will make the midnight Nixon talking to paintings look Aristotelian. Couchfuck McGee (to use Jeff Tiedrich’s immortal nickname) is sizing up where to insert the dagger. And when the Lying-Racist-Pedophile-in-Chief is gone, there’s nobody to take his place. No one has the charisma to keep MAGA going, and all the flatworms in government will be playing Pig Pile when he oozes out of his mortal coil. It won’t be pretty, and not unentertaining, but it won’t be permanent (and there will be elections or there will be riots, guaranteed).
We citizens can’t do everything in this shit-blizzard, but we can all do something, and push and push until this regime of ignorance and racism and twisted religiosity tumbles. I’ve chosen my battles, fighting with my time, attention and money. You need to choose yours and stick with them. (I know, you probably are. Kudos. Do not comply.)
Also as part of the resistance, I’ve chosen to continue writing my silly stories and comics with the most gusto I can muster, because conformity is a danger to watch for in a fascist state. Conformity is a passive fear that will allow the retrograde efforts to disappear our gay and transgendered siblings to work. Conformity will allow White nationalism to further poison our communities and institutions. Conformity will allow Mike Johnson’s wet dream for America to take root.
But there are a LOT more of us than there are of them. Use every chance you have to remind them of that, and flip them a big, multicultural finger.
This is a vast, wonderful, maddening goddam country. Do you think a failed casino owner and TV pitchman is going to mold it to his demented will, no matter how many sycophants and greedheads in tailored suits try and help?
And I know I speak from a position of privilege, but I can’t change that. My heart is torn by the images of immigrants and citizens being kidnapped because of the color of their skin. Many people will lose their lives because billionaires have managed to buy themselves a government that will let them continue to pollute, exploit and evade responsibility. I can never be glib about that.
I also speak with a voice of optimism that this vast, stupid, ungovernable country will right itself and move forward.
There. Not much of a rant, but sometimes the fear of a rant that’s sloppy or incomplete will seize up the writing muscles. Thank you for reading this far, and please do your best to enjoy the rest of the summer. Finish that big meandering book. Call that friend who needs a beer with you, or who has moved far away. Be strong and resilient.
And get ready to stand for what the moment requires.