Week 605: Never too Late, Hitler Found Love at 56

I will open with a stupid “duh” remark: Lots of things have changed in writing in the past fifty years. I’ve been at it that long, but the first ten I was a songwriter. That began with dreamy eyed teen minor chord ditties about things I knew nothing about and eventually devolved into writing drunken snatches of genius (i.e. drunk shite, as they say in Scotland) on anything that would take a pen (I hate pencils, they feel like dirt and their smell makes me sneeze). Then, later, when not too shitty they were matched to a number of beats and a chord pattern. I have probably written two hundred songs in my life and not one of them exists on one sheet of paper. Some were recorded on a demo that someone somewhere probably recorded over a long time ago.

Now, I’ve never quite given up songwriting; it stays with me, but now on my Chromebook there are zillions of mysterious little files like “Never too Late For Love–Hitler Got Married at 56”; “Here We Are at the End of Time and I Haven’t Done a Goddam Thing”; “Ballad of the Retail (Can only say the word if I’m Black, But it’s Fucking True)” and so on. I am a mix of Country, Punk, Glam and a touch of Lawrence Welk. I also think that the episode of Gilligan’s Island in which the castaways did a musical of Hamlet is brilliant.

Nowadays people tell me that they do it all on a board and laptop. I only say what I mean to inconsequential strangers, usually when I have a load on. When I do I tell them that music requires an instrument and if it has words, a voice to tell the tale. “What you have is shit and extra shame on your lineage for making the world smell like a fucking pencil.”

It took until I was in my early sixties to stop wanting to belong to the Successful World of Fame. There I was thinking It would be fucking cool to be beloved by strangers, even though many people known to me will tell a different tale. But when I looked at Fame I had to wonder why it can make a sensitive fella like Kurt Cobain eat a shotgun?

(I met Courtney Love once, she was making noise, even though this was before her marriage to Cobain–she was all fucked up yet amusing. I didn’t know who she was until someone told me later. Being from the Seattle area I have met plenty of goofs who became famous, some for a long time, others til the needle ate them (Layne Stayley)–trust me, anyone with a little talent can do it, it involves being in the right place at the right time. One of my closest friends was in a band with former members of Steppenwolf, the guys were old enough to be his father and yet they were cool, sixties surviviors. The same friend got into a heated argument with Dave Grohl prior to Nirvana at the old Eastside Tavern. Fortunately for Dave, people got between them. My friend is six-two, two-twenty and in shape. I could snap Grohl’s neck between my thumb and forefinger, like a Chicken.)

I got into story writing in the mid-eighties after too much exposure to rock and roll nearly killed me more than once; save for pot, which I dislike, there ain’t a happy pill or powder that I ain’t all in for like a groundling disciple–I really should be dead, and I can see that in the eyes of people I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s why I am in a methadone program at age sixty-seven. Some Dinos are just too stupid to die at a palatable age. The old gang, the ones still breathing, have all quit smoking and do shit like posting food pics on Facebook, and there I go destroying their sobriety myth lighting up a butt, and gazing at them through the blue smoke, pupils imploded to pinpricks.

Listen to me–so insolent, so immature. Fuck it. It’s all true and I am not one for hiding–though I used to be. Get this, I managed to work nearly fifty years, hardly ever missing a day yet if mandatory UA’s existed during those ages I would have been soooooo gone. Trust me, I do not recommend my lifestyle. Just an exception that does prove the rule and the Big Foot will give me a damn good stomping someday, regardless of my attitude, but really, as long as the Cats are looked after and my brother remembers that I left him a ten grand life insurance policy, it’s all good. Oh–helpful hint! If you want to get out of leaving a bill for your disposal, do what I did and leave your body to science. Anything left they can sprinkle in a tavern parking lot.

Unlike me, writing has really changed in the last forty years (minus the songwriting ones). Not the stuff you read, good is still unexplainible, shit is still easy to smell–but the prosaic act of getting it out has changed greatly. Back then it was a tremendous physical process as compared to now. In 1980-whatever, I would write it out by hand then if I wanted to have it rejected I had to type it up, make photocopies at the library (only idiots submit their only copy) then stick it and an SASE in a large manila envelope, bicker with the guy at the post office until he lets you send it as media (much cheaper), wish it well and usually never see any answer or find your shitty SASE in your mail about six months later with a shitty rejection slip in it. Along with postage, you also had to purchase reams of paper, ribbon or cartridges (the latter were a godsend when the home typewriter WP machines came out in the mid to late eighties). And there used to be The Writer’s Digest Books. They were a real money maker for the company that sold them (I imagine the fuckers are slumming it online now). They had annuals, mine cost damn near thirty dollars and the investment returned six published tales that paid in free copies (four of which I am still waiting for).

Today, anyone can create a lovely document on a machine that really doesn’t cost more than one of those old manuals (adjusted for inflation). I mean you can create real beauties, and submitting costs nothing (beware fee asker-forers). There it is. My work of genius, not strewn across blotted pages or cocktail napkins. And look at the artwork!

And yet most of it goes to hell on page one because it was too easy for a No Talent Fuck who knows nothing about the poetry in puke and speedballs and playing chicken with death, nor basic grammer, nor how to consult a rudimentary imagination. A No Talent Fuck who smells dollar signs by Parrotting the No Talent Fuck Shit they see on TV or on the Times’ Best Seller List. A person need not have dirt under their nails to be a good writer or the childhood of a twelve-year-old hooker, nor do they have to have a new Star Wars up their sleeves, but meaning it, a free thing, the desire to do it if it was a thousand times harder must be there for it to be anything worth reading. A strange little hitch in the mind, a weird little gear that moves inside.

Anyway, to those of you aiming at hitting the charts chanting slogans to a heavy four beat and I IV V minor VI logarithms, or seeking an agent to schlock your mindless pennydreadful, the best of luck to you. I hope everyone gets rich, you’re (obviously) not taking anything from me. But, please, for the love of anything you remotely hold holy do not tell me that product is art.

The Week That Was

I used to feel like a slob when I had lie for the sake of my job. But here, at LS, since it really is not a job, but a task that actually has a moral purpose (so I say) I find my talent for lying is not needed. When I say we had another fine Week That Was, it is true. It is always true. Now, some weeks are ginchier than others because that’s how the ginch bauble bounces, but every Week That Was we have presented (and will continue to present) has always contained high quality.

The good stuff opened when Stephen Silvester returned with a Sunday Whatever called No One But a Blockhead Would. It takes a fine mind and a degree of inventiveness to say anything new about the topic of writing. Stephen has both and he offers many fresh insights into this odd business/vocation/preoccupation/insanity we share.

Monday brought the second coming of Prin Sairungsri. They Say it is Wonderful is just that (it is best not to question God for giving you an easy title to bounce off) . Prin did something quite rare. He submitted two excellent stories at the same time, which doesn’t happen much (a one in, say, fifty, um, make that fifty-seven sort of thing). Prin is also seventeen, which gives us good news for the future. And, obviously he is not a One Hit Wonder, being two for two. Prin has a fresh look at things, which should be expected–but what is not expected is his ability to place complicated thoughts into ready to understand words. I foresee not only a tremendous future for Prin, but a pretty good “now “as well.

The Backwaters is the latest success by Christopher J Anaias. I like to call him CJA (effective shortenings are welcomed by arthritis curved fingers, plus it sounds cool). To write about the people, their hard lives and actions that CJA presents, requires close knowledge, a productive relationship with fear and pain, honesty and a willingness to keep going no matter how miserable the journey may be. In short, CJA earns every accolade sent his way. He has bled and he continues to survive.

Even though this tale is mystic it is real, I know someone with the same name of the MC who would so the same as the MC had planned, no problem.

Wednesday brought back another writer on a hot streak. The Attic Room by Cris Aboobaker. It Is a fine character examination that turns toward action and further development in the realm of spirituality. He got a lot done in under three-thousand words, yet not a single passage in this harrowing tale feels connived, it flows and does so evenly.

Insert Coin by Ari Derin was the penultimate story of The Week That Was. Another scene from another Hellword. But it is a damn good scene and one that sticks with you long after you can leave the booth. The mind in the booth was far more a person than the idiotic “help bots” that claim to think yet merely search key words written by people. Thieves, really. Someday, something like this will happen. No doubt; the seeds have long been sown, I only hope there’s enough humanity around at the time to understand it.

And we hit the wrap yesterday with Kicking It by James Blindell. I don’t know if there is a conflict in the world that has more emotion in it than sports involving kids being watched by their parents. The net is loaded with clips of parents embarrassing themselves, often leading to jail time for assaulting the refs and umpires. That angers me because I know what it is like to volunteer your time and get spit on like you are some sort of servant. Here, James takes it deeper with the conflict involving father and son. He did it very well and it makes me surprised that we do not see something similar among those YouTube clips because the fuel for the explosion is already there.

There we are! Another Week in which the Wheel of Justice turned the right way for six writers. I part with you this week with advice often extended by my mother to me on my way out the door. “Don’t do anything bad enough to involve me.”

Mom was a realist.

Odds and Ends

Word of the Bi-Week: Minacious (adj): Of a menacing nature.

A Real Word That Really Does Not Need to Exist: Dryasdust (n): it means (surprise) boring (personally speaking I feel boring, dull and the rest of the drag gang are still doing solid work and require no further aid.)

Word to Unmisspell of the Bi-Week: Occasion. Often I have produced “ocassion” and “occassion” but seldom the right “sion.”

Random Odd Thought of the Bi-Week: Only the extraordinarily well sighted or holy can tell between the shape of a regular period and an italicized one. How about you?: “.” and “.” Which is which?

Another word that needs to stop being used (it’s been around at least fifty years): “Yellow?” instead of “Hello?” when answering a phone. This, for me, started up in the 70’s. A friend of mine had a wonderful set of parents but whenever I called, Mr. McConnaughey would answer and say “Yell-ow?” He was an awesome human being, and an immense one, Ox-ish–six-ten and probably three-hundred and fifty pounds. I’m guessing Peter had to dig up extra strength Angel wings when Mr. Mac got there. A freaking Saint, but we all have faults.

Bonus Bi-Word That Needs to Go: “Freaking” and “Frigging” instead of Fucking, in real life talk. I understand that you can show someone getting the hell kicked out of him on the same channels in which you cannot say “fuck.” The same channels that replace “Fuck you!” with “Forget you!” One of the American cable stations has Joe Pesi saying that at least ten times in Casino (they left in the parts involving beat downs with hammers and baseball bats). It is a stupid thing, but I understand it. But in real life I see no purpose in saying “It’s freaking hot out there” as though you can use the phrase in front of Granny.

My List of the Bi-Week: Ten Favorite Country Songs From My Childhood

Like most children of my time, whatever our parents’ music was, it was our music too. Even though I turned toward rock, wave, punk and “alt” I have never forgotten these songs from my years of yore. There must be fifty fit for the list, but I still like the list anyway. Additions are always welcomed.

• Jackson-Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
• Rose Garden-Lynn Anderson
• D.I.V.O.R.C.E.-Tammy Wynette
• Folsom Prison Blues-Johnny Cash
• Mama Tried-Merle Haggard
• Harper Valley PTA-Jeanne C. Riley
• God Didn’t Make Honky Tonk Angels-Kitty Wells
• Kaw Liga! Hank Williams (sorry pee-cees–by the way, since I got you here–Get a fucking life!)
• Galveston-Glen Campbell
• The Circle Won’t Be Broken-Carter Family

Leila

This song came into my life just as I opened to Rock music. Gram Parsons was a genius, except he decided to drink liquid morphine one night. Geniuses do the dumbest shit. But we are lucky enough to have Emmylou Harris who gets prettier every year.

And I must add this one, which was inspired by Hugh. I am at war with my bathroom scale, and this one bothers me not, though I know people who hate it.