Here I am something of a self-sycophant. I’ve been reading “Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymous Bosch” by Henry Miller — a servant to the muse, so often too big bitted to mumble anything comprehensible, but always in love. Or at least always in love with being in love. I’ve given in to thinking of my muse as something untrustworthy — in the mythology of the scheme of my motivation as a writer, this is an utterly destructive notion. Faith is something like trusting to hope - but both trust and hope are heaped in a fog at present. My world is all smoke and rumblings, a void. I’ve found some comfort in the notion that I am wound into a broader system this time: at the very least, the muse is dragging me through some dark places. I say “dark places” and I smile to myself a little — I realize I’m overly given to beauty and that even in darkness I’m bound to gravitate towards symmetry and diversity. To the basic laws of physics. To form and conscience. I’m a self-sycophant insomuch as I pretend that I’m motivated by some dignified secret, and I’m childish insofar as I allow myself to believe it.
My home is three-fold: a palace, a prison, and a keep. I mark my days with little flourishes of pencil on archers paper I have tacked to several of my walls. The little flourishes have combined to form something like a hybrid of topographic maps and heaps of baleen hairs. I might be in the belly of a whale. My walls are of thick stone. The apartment used to be part of a meat processing complex called “Swillburg” — mine is all fitted out with antique doorknobs and furnishings from a demolished church. No ghosts, as far as I know. Lots of light. A sort of liquid light that pours in and sloshes around the vaulted ceilings throughout the morning. From a roof deck I can see the backs of buildings, but neither the sunrise nor the sunset are in clear view. I keep my blinds pulled down so that no one knows I have a roomful of microphones and guitars. I have a little dog with sad eyes who burrows in my bed at night.
Even though my muse seems to enjoy showing me the loveless corners of things, there’s still something of generosity in the gesture. And humor. Maybe more than anything right now I need humor.
Dinner Party (Taken with instagram)
I’m part of a benefit concert happening in Rochester NY at my favorite-of-all-time restaurant, Good Luck. Dinner and a show. Best drinks in upstate NY. Be sqaure:
http://noncertsrochester.org/Artists
Fogchester (Taken with instagram)
Great pine (Taken with instagram)
Kodak tower of terror (Taken with instagram)
Repetition (Taken with instagram)
Shannon Stephens right now at Boulder coffee in South Wedge. (Taken with instagram)
“It might well have been entitled - The Unspeakable Horror of this Man-made Universe. There wasn’t a flaw in it, unless the work itself was a flaw.” — Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, by Henry Miller
(Source: abloodymess)