survey says . . .

i look at my writing and see a survey. this is a little sad. i wish i could do that Massumiprosething, that precise and supersmart-t0-the-point-of-obfuscation thing. seriously. often, it seems that the best academic writing is just slightly incomprehensible. i remember "discovering" Homi Bhabha , My First Baudrillard . . . Pynchon. i have this editor friend who is encouraging me to just "let words flow,"that he will publish it, but it seems impossible, and ever since he licensed me that freedom, i can do nothing but see that particular piece as a very ordinary essay (i'm sorry).

but, since i've begun writing these entries (i wish we could come up w/ something more lovely than "blog" . . . it's horrid), i enjoy writing more, even the lonely sense that i am sometimes writing to no one in particular or that i'm just sort of trotting out whatever's on my mind. and why should anyone care to read what's on my mind? i can't answer that. can't because few may, and can't because i can't. i am still confounded over a lovely introduction i received recently when i was asked to be a featured speaker (?!) at The 28th Annual Old Dominion University Conference on Writing; there was my host, reading passages from this thing called "my work," characterizing "my work" and talking about how Dr. Kyburz attempts to move things, to force things "open" . . . just reciting lines from something someone else surely wrote. it was such an incredible honor and just horribly, massively humbling and soul-shakingly fragile and precious . . . fabulous and bizarre.

but so now i'm writing this book, and i think i can do it, but i sort of hate that i have to do it. because it's forcing me -- or it seems to be moving me -- to do that survey thing, and i can't imagine it any other way because i am not (regret) Brian Massumi and i'm not as clever and enchanting as Miranda July. i do my (often imitative) thing and trust that something useful emerges . . . sometimes it does . . . what's emerging right now is that i can't take my eyes off "Miranda July,"and this is motivating me to be working on my screenplay (the most likely to be completed screenplay) and to go back to my acting class and stop eating and make that Beck video and go see that Werner Herzog film and Fauteuils d'orchestre (Avenue Montaigne) before it leaves because good films don't hang around Utah for long, Sundance and Slamdance notwithstanding. and i want to have a yard sale and just not write this book (i forced that. it's really not coming back to that, but i'll bet that 's what you have been trained to expect). actually, all of this motion, these images evolving, they motivate me to keep writing, to do that "subtractive" thing and capture it (i love that FCP refers to uploading images as "capturing" them . . . it's so nasty and just right). okay. moving on . . .

image by JiEun Rim