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{a post-nihilist's view on jumping the shark} daniel danielewski "Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?" —Henry David Thoreau The first real piece of work I ever wrote concerned the last minutes of a drunkard before he shot himself. I wrote it in a fervor, hungover and desperate for something to hand into my Senior Literature teacher. He gave me a B- and told me to try harder. There was something else there, though, that told me to push it. He noted potential and sparked a will in me to write, to produce. Sometimes now the words just scream and that's the necessity: snatch the feeling, the purity and shove it right into the readers' little faces. The same god-forsaken feeling that rocks out in your muscles after a hard-nosed run up a hill or when she says the same damn thing she's said every night for the last two months. It's sugar-coated cough drops that still taste like piss. That's the feeling that I want to make come to life, course through your veins and trickle from the corners of your eyes, cackle in the dark, make you wonder where the hell was I? It should raise the hairs on the back of your neck, transfer power, convey something of interest, evoke some unused synapse to life. It should evince some sort of spiraling thought-pattern and bring you closer to enlightenment; you should learn something. Art should be able to do all of this and still manage to be aesthetic. The feeling I get from everyone is that art is dead; it's a mantra among the pretentious writing crowd. I couldn't care, and even if that is the case, I can only respond with 'self-prophecy,' although I suspect that what they really mean is that they cannot make any money from their art. Only a minority ever have, and what the people who fork up the cash want is different from what is being offered. To most people, poetry from a Nobel-Laureate seems almost the same as that written by an angry teenager. An angry poem is no different than a toilet filled with blood; they can both be called art, but people will pay for the toilet. Stuck in the Ivory Tower, staring at mediocre paintings and reading only works found in literary journals; it's how I see myself in a dozen years. It's the only reasonable path in this world, at the moment, for a writer who wants to succeed. This business is like cross between piracy and prostitution; you have to be cut-throat but willing to do things, that would otherwise be against your sensibilities, for money. Of course, I want to make it to the point where going out like Hemingway won't be so bad and I can kick it with Neal Cassady and fucking Elvis and maybe some other fast, amazing people in Heaven. Sometimes I want some fantastic notoriety, have my signature be worth something to somebody. Sometimes though, I just want to feel better. Damn you, Serotonin. Sometimes I want that one magical line, and sometimes I just want to jerk-off. There is a dichotomy in the middle of this nest, having to do with purity and popularity. Getting the pulse into the story isn't as easy when one tries to nail down the perfect style for the work at hand. More problematic yet is trying to narrow down the subtle differences between fiction and reality. Hunter S. Thompson said, “In any other line of work except writing, people who try to deal with the world and life and reality off a split-focus base are called 'schizoid' and are taken off the streets, as it were, for their own and the greater good.” (Songs of the Doomed) This tends to get worse the more one applies the word to the page and wrestles smoke in the dead of night. Balancing grammar and logic and reality blurs the edges a bit. And, worse yet, it's all blown to shit if the idea isn't original. I was nervous the first time I ever sent a submission to a magazine, even more so than the first time I visited a whorehouse. At least with the whore, everything was upfront and agreed upon. She said wonderful things to me like, 'Entiende, mi guapo?' and 'Hay calore' and, 'Si, papi!' Editors have never told me anything more than 'Thank you, but your piece does not suit our needs at this time.' I keep going back though, because getting published would be like a new, exotic vagina and just as exciting as a new exotic vagina. I really love that phrase (new exotic vagina...). And I don't think I've ever kept a rejection slip, although one might be tucked into a book as a place-holder somewhere. What's the point? I don't save the used condom every time I have sex as proof. Sneakily nestled behind my frustration and anger is the warm little egg of idealism. It's wrapped in cynicism and anger, but it's safe. All cynics are just disenfranchised idealists anyway. So, in a way, this is completely meaningless. What isn't meaningless is my need to leave something behind, something to be remembered by. I have the need for people to roll my name over their tongues, and even if my name later falls from their memories remember my words. That would be the greatest accomplishment I could achieve. I hope that I never jump the shark, and if I do, it is on purpose. The only thing that could lead to that is that I have either become rich beyond measure and am playing a practical joke on everyone or that I just don't care anymore. I'm actually hoping for the former, although I really won't care by that point. The jump really shouldn't apply to writers, although I suppose it could. Few modern writers could pull it off. Palahniuk could, Welsh could, Bret Easton Ellis could, but most could not. They've already pushed the envelope to the point of tears. To go further, without a truly original angle, would be perversion. Let's make the next asshole jump a Sasquatch. Maybe that will keep people watching. I'm going to write a post-nihilistic statement of proportions the world has never seen, weaved into a story about D.B. Cooper, menstruation and finger-nail clippings. That could be the edge of reason, a perch to view the world from until I get bored and slink back to the bar for another round. Bug-juices dried and packed into little pills fight depression, but I don't take them. This works, and I'm going to take the plunge. Yet after all the discourse and rationale, the bickering and failed attempts, I put these words down and nothing has changed. |
