‘Chain Letter’
…write your heart out, baby – just don’t break the chain…
Tag: Writing
Angst
‘Angst’
” If you ask me what the most grotesque thing about alcoholism was I’d have said, indeed I did so over and over to anyone who asked – and plenty who didn’t – it wasn’t the physical stuff, it wasn’t the humiliating death stuff… it was the sadness. I called it my angst. A suitable august, Germanic word for a basement depression that was fathomless and occasionally erupted in gasping panic. And even when locked away it would seep out and sour every other emotion, like bitters in milk. Alcoholic despair is a thing apart, created by the drink that is a depressant, but also the architect of all the pratfall calamities that fuel it. Alcohol is the only medication the drunk knows and trusts, a perfectly hopeless circle of angst, and it is powered by a self-loathing that is obsessively stoked and fed. And it’s that – the personally awarded, vainly accepted disgust – that makes it so hard to sympathise with drunks. Nothing you can say or do comes close to the wreaths of guilt we lay at our own cenotaph.”
– A.A .Gill, from “Pour Me: A Life.” (highlights mine, as were the lowlights…)
The Truth And The Facts
“The truth and the facts aren’t necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.”
– A.A Gill
Never The Twain…
“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.”
– Mark Twain
Pictured recently, yours truly, seated with a bronze statue of the great man (real name: Samuel Clemens). As close as I will get to meeting him!
I have long admired Twain’s wry humour and sage veracity.
Like the quote above – you laugh first and then the wisdom drags you in and sits you right down, as you reflect on hard life lessons.
I sometimes feel his writing gets me, rather than the other way around.
When I was a young man I took a Greyhound bus from Chicago to New Orleans ( helluva long ride!), and the road more or less followed the Mississippi River south after St. Louis. My best companion on the journey was Twain’s ‘Life On the Mississippi’, published in 1883 . A great read – fantastic tales of diverse folk, working and up to all sorts otherwise, on the river back in the day (it’s well worth searching out).
It just made my trip feel damn boring by comparison though…
All You Need
The writing’s on the wall…all you need is love, love is all you need…
So Many Books…
“So many books, so little time.”
– Frank Zappa
I really find it hard to imagine Zappa actually sitting down with a book given his massive, sprawling musical career, but he must have – how else to explain the inspirations behind the often surreal songs? Or maybe he was lamenting the fact that his creative endeavours meant he couldn’t read everything he wanted to.
I know the feeling – my bedside table has a stack of half-read tomes and the shelves have many others I have been meaning to read or re-read. Frustrating!
Last night watched an episode of the new series “Catch-22” and realized that it was over thirty years ago that I read the amazing book by Joseph Heller (I bet Zappa read it too), and I had always meant to pick it up again. Time flying by…
Yet I know that the time and energy spent reading a book that miraculously seems meant for me, is a luxury that a time-poor person finds rewarded .Even if it takes a while for me to get to the end, the journey of exploration through others’ words and worlds on the way there is nothing short of amazing.
I could extend that to blogs as well. So inspiring to see other writers and bloggers frame things I may not even have heard or thought of and give of themselves in the process.
Find time…
Ebb Then Flood 