To the Heart of the Matter on the 4:10 to Cold Spring 10/24/11

They say that writing is a window into the soul.

I say it’s more like a door. Sometimes stuck. Sometimes too loose. Sometimes locked. Sometimes just slow and creaky.

But when it’s swinging just right it can be as fluid and fun as a musical instrument. Pen flowing over paper in a sweet rhythm that can have you tapping your foot to keep up with the beat. Impatient to finish, but not wanting it to end.

Truman Capote once said about Kerouac’s writing, “That’s not writing, it's typing.”

For all his talents and intellect Capote never got the beat generation. Too old school, I suppose. Even though he created a new genre of writing. (I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever used ‘genre’ in a sentence. Please don’t let me do it again.)

The narrative of In Cold Blood was brilliant. It read like a piece of fiction. Although it was a work of non-fiction about the Clutter murders. But the beats were off Capote’s map.

I’m stalled on the subject and must . . . move . . . on . . . oil . . . can . . . oil . . . can.

That was a poor tin man impression. So I’ll move on.

Two Christmas’s ago my son video taped me trying to record a song I wrote. It was a simple three chord progression piece that I had worked out. Three chords is my limit. I try to squeeze in a couple of more and I burn fuses in my brain.

I had run through it several times without a hitch. As soon as my son hit the record button on the camera I choked. I must have started and screwed up that song a good dozen times before crying uncle. It wasn’t happening.

It was highly entertaining for my wife and son, they couldn’t stop laughing, but it was pissing me off to no end. I never bothered with the song again.

My son has since played the thing to countless friends and coworkers. I imagine he’s even dragged strangers in from the street to join in the merriment. Making me a local You Tube sensation without actually being on You Tube.

I bring this up because my son has asked me, once again, if he can upload it for Christmas. This time I said fine. It’s taken me two years to get over this embarrassment. I can be one thick mick sometimes.

I guess that subjects over. I now sit staring at dull advertisement for a dreary investment firm. They could put this in the sleeping car if we had one. I wouldn't miss it.

I’ve given up reading the newspaper these past couple of weeks. It’s an exercise in sanity. I figure I’ve got enough to deal with in my own life at the moment. And I believe I’ll always be aware of what’s going on in the world without having to pick up a paper.

War, crime, poverty, crooked politicians, stock market up, stock market down. A decent amount of good people doing good things, but good doesn’t sell newspapers.

I don’t think you’d find much difference in news stories since the first one was chiseled at The Daily Caveman. (Sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more clever than that. But who’s to say there wasn’t a Daily Caveman?)

It’s the same old world
It’s always been
Same old people
Same old scenes
Same old opera
Same old schemes

Well, it rhymes anyway. Don’t know what kind of a song that would make. I was stalled there for a moment and almost broke out in an abc thing, but I decided to rhyme instead.

This is a quote I read while glancing through a magazine lately, “The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” This from Julia Cameron. Artist and writer.

I guess a lot of us can agree with that. If you’ve ever started writing and hit a wall because you were getting to close to your own nerves. Then you swerve around it and go right back to your comfort zone.

The best things I put on paper recently have been remembrances from past experiences. Put as soon as I got too close to the truth I backed off.

I wrote a tale recently about two friends. One of whom dies at the start of the story. I had him die in comic fashion on a toilet instead of getting to the core of the thing and tell what really happened.

That one night in September of 1978, at his home in Scarborough, New York, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Closed the door. Wrote the obligatory note and blew his brains out.

He was twenty one years old. His name was Tracy Mills. He was my friend of about two years.

He was dating my sister when I met him in 1976. In the summer of 1977 we started hitchhiking to Cape Cod and ended up in Martha’s Vineyard.

Every time I try writing about it I stall and avoid the painful stuff. Like now.

I’m getting close to home, in more ways than one, apparently. I’d like to finish that story one day. It’d be a great load off my mind.

I don’t know how these writes are going. Hope I’m not sounding to self serving. I’m just looking for a different approach to my writing and was hoping something in these writes would help reveal the real me. I'll keep chugging away and see what happens.

See you soon, I hope.