conveyance

its been a while. ive been on this exile from working at the paper of which the details are unspeakable for a little over two weeks. in this time, i moved out of my room in man-ville [the old smelly house i shared with two boys] and into a sweet little townhouse apartment with friend/coworker kelli. it was a desperately needed change.

there's been a lot of spare time with my thoughts. however since i arrived in ohio, i've had a hard time expressing myself verbally. so i'll allude to words spoken by people who are generally successful at the form.

i was listening to an old episode of the public radio international show to the best of our knowledge today and came across some interesting posturing about the mid-20s search for validation i seem to be perpetually signed up for during an interview with author jonathan lethem on his book you don't love me yet.

the novel is about an l.a. indie rock band and the interpersonal obstacles faced in their creative rise. i haven't read it, but i really related to some of the answers the author gives during the interview about his characters and how their slightly desperate feelings were inspired by the path he walked while starting as a writer.

none of us knew for sure who was serious and who wasn't. everyone staked a kind of claim in the world. we put on a costume of some kind or another: graduate student or aspiring writer or bass player in a band and yet it was all completely provisional and it all might turn out to be a bluff that someone could call the moment they laid down a better hand of cards on the table.

i was fascinated by those feelings that i associated with the time i was beginning to be a writer and discovering that in some sense, however falteringly and however slow the progress might be that i was going to persist at this thing and find a way to bring my amateurish yearning into the world and make other people pay attention.

it's this sort of paradox that to become a thing you have to pretend to be it first. theres something very beautiful and also ludicrous about the way artists, musicians, anyone has to sort of bluff their way into that identity.

they want to be famous because it seems to them that to tells a truth about who they are that only they know and they want other people to recognize it. they want to make music that will become both the evidence but also in a way its the conveyance, its as if you have to build the magic carpet that you're going to ride on yourself.