to unbox, perchance to dream....
May. 18th, 2002 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkMy own Achilles heel is disorder. I wish I could say that I am congenitally incapable of keeping my desk well-organized, but blaming inadequacy on a birth defect seems a bit too easy to me. Soon I must head off for a brief walk, praying that the recent rains don't ruin the experience, and then to my office to finish unpacking the boxes newly moved into the new office. I have a reasonably good critical eye,
but the devil in the details of this sort of thing keeps taking my soul, and I don't even get Helen of Troy or incalculable riches in exchange; perhaps some more mundane trade was elaborated
on my credit card application.
I am eager to see the world in my little suburb and edge of the suburbs area. I need a strong dose of butterfly, bird, tree and flower.
I also need a diet Coke, but that sentiment deserves its own sentence, since "one of these things is not like the other".
In a downturn in my personal self-satire, my little poetry book failed to sell in 2 straight auctions. This is not surprising, since its time is really the xmas season, when people impulse buy things and are willing to check out a simple
bit of humor. Surprisingly,though, rather than do what I have done before--pull it from auction for a few months--I've put it up at a nickel auction minimum. My per-book cost is extremely paltry, but not quite a nickel. I guess the reason I like to auction the book, rather than give it away, is that a buyer, however insignificant the sum, has given a solid indicia of wanting something. Like most mediocre creators of art, my own greatest fear is burdening someone with an obligation to say thank you for something they don't want. Once I ran a Dutch (multi-item) ebay auction for my book, with an auction minimum of one penny, touting it as The Worst Chess Book You'll Ever Own, drafted in the style of a Ronco or QVC spot. The books all sold, at a penny each (don't scoff--that's SEVEN CENTS, and at 12 percent interest on the stock market, that would be worth 1.08 in only 48 years) and I loved that much of the feedback said "Book was EXACTLY as advertised".
Ah, capitalism...I felt good when my first print run became "profitable", even when the profit was roughly twenty dollars for the whole run.
Is art like the Mr. Micawber tag in David Copperfield...."income twenty pounds, outgo nineteen pounds seven shillings, result: domestic bliss, but income twenty pounds, outgo, twenty pounds seven shillings, domestic misery" Result: the difference between bliss and misery is about a pound.
When I spent a summer in London, the folks at the school cafeteria would give you a pound coupon
in lieu of a hot meal. A pound coupon would buy a samosa, a scotch egg, some little golf chocolates, and a world of other things.
That pound was bliss--continual self-judgment is the only real misery.
I am very attracted to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of "cheap grace". Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, that little self-assurance that our flaws are really okay, and that the odd paths we know we shouldn't be pursuing will somehow save us. We should all try to weed out the cheap grace in our gardens and try to plant useful things like marigolds or mint. But I think that Pastor B. missed a key point--hesitant as i am to take on xtian martyrs. There is also "cheap damnation". This is the inner voice which says "you're not a writer", or "if it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing" or even "what's the point of *this*". I think we all have far too much to do to spend so much time sentencing ourselves to petit hells. Then again, perhaps hell is 30 boxes in a cool new office, and no way to put the things in an ordered way.
In Heaven, they give you kool-aid and your desk is always neat and seraphic.
but the devil in the details of this sort of thing keeps taking my soul, and I don't even get Helen of Troy or incalculable riches in exchange; perhaps some more mundane trade was elaborated
on my credit card application.
I am eager to see the world in my little suburb and edge of the suburbs area. I need a strong dose of butterfly, bird, tree and flower.
I also need a diet Coke, but that sentiment deserves its own sentence, since "one of these things is not like the other".
In a downturn in my personal self-satire, my little poetry book failed to sell in 2 straight auctions. This is not surprising, since its time is really the xmas season, when people impulse buy things and are willing to check out a simple
bit of humor. Surprisingly,though, rather than do what I have done before--pull it from auction for a few months--I've put it up at a nickel auction minimum. My per-book cost is extremely paltry, but not quite a nickel. I guess the reason I like to auction the book, rather than give it away, is that a buyer, however insignificant the sum, has given a solid indicia of wanting something. Like most mediocre creators of art, my own greatest fear is burdening someone with an obligation to say thank you for something they don't want. Once I ran a Dutch (multi-item) ebay auction for my book, with an auction minimum of one penny, touting it as The Worst Chess Book You'll Ever Own, drafted in the style of a Ronco or QVC spot. The books all sold, at a penny each (don't scoff--that's SEVEN CENTS, and at 12 percent interest on the stock market, that would be worth 1.08 in only 48 years) and I loved that much of the feedback said "Book was EXACTLY as advertised".
Ah, capitalism...I felt good when my first print run became "profitable", even when the profit was roughly twenty dollars for the whole run.
Is art like the Mr. Micawber tag in David Copperfield...."income twenty pounds, outgo nineteen pounds seven shillings, result: domestic bliss, but income twenty pounds, outgo, twenty pounds seven shillings, domestic misery" Result: the difference between bliss and misery is about a pound.
When I spent a summer in London, the folks at the school cafeteria would give you a pound coupon
in lieu of a hot meal. A pound coupon would buy a samosa, a scotch egg, some little golf chocolates, and a world of other things.
That pound was bliss--continual self-judgment is the only real misery.
I am very attracted to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of "cheap grace". Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, that little self-assurance that our flaws are really okay, and that the odd paths we know we shouldn't be pursuing will somehow save us. We should all try to weed out the cheap grace in our gardens and try to plant useful things like marigolds or mint. But I think that Pastor B. missed a key point--hesitant as i am to take on xtian martyrs. There is also "cheap damnation". This is the inner voice which says "you're not a writer", or "if it doesn't make money, it's not worth doing" or even "what's the point of *this*". I think we all have far too much to do to spend so much time sentencing ourselves to petit hells. Then again, perhaps hell is 30 boxes in a cool new office, and no way to put the things in an ordered way.
In Heaven, they give you kool-aid and your desk is always neat and seraphic.
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no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 09:34 am (UTC)what a delight to read you in the morning!
no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 12:29 pm (UTC)you are more brave than me, i dread the critique and it takes me a while to shake it off. it is wonderful to have a sense of humour about it all
no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 12:34 pm (UTC)Years ago, I conceived the idea of only writing "bad" poetry..poetry freed from self-judgment and intent on having fun. It was not a new idea...Ogden Nash had great fun with it...
but it certainly makes criticism less an issue.
I am always amused when the "arbiters" of poetry taste themselves edit mags with a circ. of 8,000 or so...fewer people than eat a quarter pounder in an hour, I'd guess. Poetry is a silly pastime, and much too much about ego and less about enjoyment....I want people to enjoy what I write, and I don't worry much about how good it is....I'm not saying that I am unaware of
poetics or what I think is a "good poem"...I'm just saying that I try to avoid the paralysis which self-judgmental approaches can cause.
no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 01:20 pm (UTC)excellent suggestions. in my own way, i've learned to "unlearn" from artistic schools and political structures, remove critical thinking from my creative process and my "best" work emerges
i appreciate, too, what you have to say about commerce and art, brilliant! i need to keep that close to me.
i so enjoy your writing
gerbiliscious
no subject
Date: 2002-05-18 01:58 pm (UTC)Gerbil theology is something I wrote 5 years ago. It's one of the few things that I've written that has that "open mike silly slam" feel to it, but I've never taken it for a public reading to see....
Re:
Date: 2002-05-22 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-05-22 05:11 pm (UTC)