This is a charming interview of Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are. I am always a big fan of creative people talking about being creative and their process and struggles. Check this out. It is really great.
Posts published in “Writing”
Question:
I’ve been friendly with a woman for 13 years. I know her better than anyone, though there’s a 17-year age difference. I fell in love with her several years ago, but waited until last year to tell her. Unfortunately, we’re still just friends. I want to express my love again. Do I have a shot with her?
Define “friendly”. Are you two enjoying each other’s company and sitting in separate bathtubs in the woods fantasizing that once your erection medication kicks in that you will be able to engage in hideous physical congress? Are you walking along a tropical beach and gazing into the sunset as you make plans to have a family and spend the rest of your pathetic lives together? Or are you carving your names into each other’s flesh and sacrificing goats to the dark lord in moonlit rituals as snow falls in sizzling pops onto the roaring bonfire which shall consume the goat once its heart has been cut free from its chest?
If your answer is anything but the third choice, I do not care about you. Nothing you will ever do will make this woman “love” you. There are many things you did not tell me about your relationship—if she is a lesbian, if you are divorced, if she is much too attractive for you (highly likely), what your job is like, if you share interests, if she is fat, if you are fat, if she is resoundingly pathetic as you (definitely)—but none of that matters. The truth is there is no chance in the fires of Hell with this woman. The only shot you have with her is at the end of a double-barreled shotgun aimed directly at the roof of your mouth.
Because the snow is falling and the call of the raven is soothing my soul, I will let you in on a little secret. I have known the pleasure of companionship with someone much younger than myself. Her name was Helga and she was 13 years old (I was 27 at the time), approximately the same difference as you and your friend, who, by the way, in all likelihood hates your miserable guts. Helga and I had a relationship for about 8 months. I would pick her up from her primary school on my scooter and we would smoke meth in the basement of an abandoned building and she was fellate me while we listened to Burzum tapes. It was a good time. But then her parents found out about the disparity in our ages and sent her off to boarding school in Copenhagen. I have never seen her since. That was three weeks ago. But am I sad? Of course not. Sadness is weak. Only rage is real.
What am I trying to tell you with that little example? I do not know. But, the point is that you are to blame for your own misery and that this woman hates you and you should run screaming away from her and spend the remainder of your sad life alone.
Castrate yourself.
Soundtrack: Burzum’s Det som engang var
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Question:
One of my childhood friends makes a very good living. But I am a musician, who sleeps in a sleeping bag on my floor. His bachelor party was in Las Vegas. I couldn’t afford the trip, but he said, “I’ll cover you.” I asked, “Everything?” He said, “Everything.” All told, I spent about $1,400. Before receiving my total, my friend sent me a $500 check and told me not to argue, to take the whole amount. Now what do I do?
You are a musician?! Feeding the corporate pop charts, no doubt! You do no know the true meaning of musicianship until you’ve made a necklace from the skull of your recently-deceased bandmate. That is musicianship. Harmonies are for Christians, and therefore weak trash. Noise is all that matters. I bet you even distribute your music on “CDs” or on the “Internet”. Pathetic worm. The only true way to trade music is on vinyl or cassette tape. You make me sick. You might as well go out and join the legions who work their miserable pathetic lives away in cubicles all across your pathetic capitalist state. I assume you are American because only Americans would have such ridiculous problems.
I have commented on the futility of marriage before, so I will not repeat myself. But, I will ask you this, why would you deign to engage your friend’s pathetic pre-mating ritual when you could not support yourself? Only a fool lives outside his means and you, worm, are a fool. When your “childhood friend” asked you to go to his “bachelor party” (whatever that is), you should have never accepted if you could not manage it on your own. Would my Viking ancestors have sailed across the Atlantic and established colonies in Canada if they could not manage it on their own? Of course not. There was no one else but themselves to rely on. There was no “help”. I would ask the same of your Viking ancestors, but I assume that you are from some inferior stock, Catholic most likely. Disgusting.
I do not know who graces the face of your American blood money, but I am sure that you should be pleased that your friend even gave you the 500 “dollars” he did. Never expect or ask for charity. It is a sign of weakness. You are weak. Now, you have to swallow the 900 “dollar” difference and continue to sleep in your sleeping bag on the floor like some homeless scum in your American mansion while you wait for the ASCAP to send you residual checks for the fetid puke you foist on people as “music”. Oh your life is so hard. You have brought this on yourself.
Furthermore, what is it with you Americans always expecting charity? I recently wrote at a woman who thought she should have her dinner paid for when looking for places to host her foul union with some pathetic male and she felt that she should be given something for nothing. ABSUrd. You are the same as she. Spend a winter in a shed in the wastes of northern Norway and tell me about hardship sometime.
Choke on vomit.
Soundtrack: Arckanum’s Helvitismykr
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Question:
A friend fell in love with a cowboy through the Internet. They shared their hopes and dreams, and even discussed marriage and a baby — though my friend is in her 50s, and they’d never met. She planned to move to his state to live with him. She flew there, they connected for a few days, then he broke up with her. Now she is devastated, and telling her story to anyone who’ll listen. She sounds nuts, and I want to protect her. May I tell her to stop?
You must not just tell her to stop, you must force her to stop. Bind her, gag her, throw her into a lake, do anything you must to make her stop forcing her pathetic tales of broken-hearted misery on undeserving people. There is nothing more vile than someone unloading their heartbreak onto other people. How dare she inflict her misery upon someone else! Does she not understand that people do not care about her sadness!? Hopes!? Pfah! Dreams?! PFAH! These are the illusions of a weak mind. She allowed herself to be weak, to be seduced, and now she is paying for it. By all means, by fire and ice, by wolf and crow, shut her up or I will leave my shed in the woods and do it for you.
We do not have “cowboys” in Norway, but my understanding of their slack-jawed cattle wranglers is that they are not often indoors, much less on the internet. How did this feeble-minded friend of yours meet this “cowboy” on the internet if cowboys do not have or know how to use computers? She got what she deserved from following her “heart” straight into the arms of the deceiver. Actually, you know what? I like this liar cowboy. He has done Darkness’s work by breaking your foolish friend’s lovesick heart. He should be crowned champion and be allowed to break more hearts and more hearts and more hearts.
I have no experience with heartbrokenness. I was born into this world with a soul full of mist and have never felt anything but bleakness and the cold frost of Norwegian winters. I know only the call of the raven and the smell of smoke. Allowing yourself to feel for someone else is a sign of weakness. And for your “friend” to be so presumptuous that she thinks we will care when her weakness is revealed and exploited by the obviously more powerful “cowboy” only leads me to believe that she should be put out of her (and our) misery.
Kill your friend.
Soundtrack: Celeste’s “Misanthrope(s)”
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This morning I was inspired to write a poem after seeing a man sleeping face down on a subway bench. Here it is.
O! Dude sleeping face down on the subway bench
How do you stay asleep with passing trains?
They are so very very loud.
I wonder what sort of despair brought you to this place
Where face down on a subway bench is an ideal spot to sleep
Thank you, thank you. I think this is deserving of a new Writing subcategory.
Even though he comes off as a little bit of a dick, Gilliam’s comment on the nature of art is valuable and true. Effectively, that the best art leaves strings hanging for the viewer/reader/whateverer to figure out for themselves which, I believe, creates a more intimate experience. There’s nothing like having to work for comprehension to help make a thing feel like it is your own, to build a bond with a work, to internalize it, to have it affect you. When handed all the answers, things are boring as hell. It’s one of my major pet peeves with YA fiction and, really, a lot of SF/F. I get so bored when everything is explained. Just put things in there and let us work it out through context. That is one of the things I really enjoyed about Gene Wolfe’s work. Creativity is problem solving. Jeez, that’s like my new mantra.
And like women, the easy ones are boring. There’s nothing more boring than a woman who throws herself at you. It’s the difficult ones we all like and go after. Art. Women. Women. Art. They are the same.
The other day as I was clicking through Tumblr, a network I am finding increasingly strange, I happened upon an image with three points labeled “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”. After following the tumble trail to its absolute origin, I found this: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Man, I love shit like this.
Originally written in 1998 by designer Bruce Mau, the list outlines his design process. But, more importantly, I think the little snippets of advice and guidance can inform any creative process, from writing to design to filmmaking to music. Whatever it is you’re struggling with creatively can benefit from some alternative perspective. You may not always take the advice, but if it causes you to think differently about the problem you’re trying to solve, then it was helpful. As I said yesterday, creativity is problem solving, and anything that helps you solve a problem is good.
And this list is filled with all sorts of good lits bits. If I were forced to pick my favorite five, they would be these.
2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
I know, I know. That was six. I tried not to post the whole list. Get over it.
Check out the remainder of the 43 points here: Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
Number 15 on the list, Ask Stupid Questions, reminds me a lot of Leonardo’s to-do list from the post yesterday. “Ask Benedetto Portinari by what means they go on ice in Flanders”?? That is a stupid ass question. Maybe I’m not asking stupid enough questions.