1/3, 1/3, 1/3

1/16/12 Café Arabica, Seattle, Washington, afternoon

Sitting here reading Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn for the second time, the first time this side of 20 years old (26), I realize from where I received the notion and love of collaborative literature, how this vague concept developed into a purpose ingrained in my self like a spice infused and inseparable from a dish. 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.  

Reader, writer, text. Past, present, future.  Idea, writing, revision. 

Brautigan's frankness, innocence, transparency—whatever you'd like to call it—beckons collaboration.  His epigraph to the Abortion —a novel I read at age 18 in several sittings upstairs at the Monterey Public Library, and again in Big Sur last August—reveals he finished it, left it for a friend, and would be back in a few hours to discuss it.  And the story itself reinforces this notion of a social reciprocation between author, reader and publisher: the narrator works full time (that is 24 hours) unpaid (he receives food, lodging) at a library that accepts and houses the works—what we are led to believe are the only copies—of everyday people.  In other words, the voice of Richard Brautigan asserts a responsibility to read unfamous work, to give it a dignified place in the world, and, in the case of the narrative, a literal place.  The more that is read, in general, the better, of course, the greater the mutual understanding, empathy, connection.  But what is argued here is not rushing to Barnes & Noble for the new John Updike, or any other traditional notion of reading more—it is receiving, understanding and editing the work of a neighbor, starting a literary scene on your block; it is valuing uniqueness, localness over "genius," "significance," the national literary fad.

BUT IT SOUNDS SO FUCKING NAIVE!

This is Richard Brautigan.  And "1/3, 1/3, 1/3" is quintessential RB—an innocent voice, indistinguishable from that of the author himself, narrates how he submits to a hair-brained scheme to do the typing in a 3-way partnership:

It was to be done in thirds.  I was to get 1/3 for doing the typing, and she was to get 1/3 for doing the editing, and he was to get 1/3 for writing the novel.

The editor is on welfare, in her late 30s and on her last ideas.  All we know of the narrator/typist is that he has been heard typing at night on his typewriter by the editor (also he is 17 and obviously RB).  "The novelist lived in a trailer a mile away beside a sawmill pond where he was a watchman for the mill."  He is also borderline illiterate.  So there they are.  1/3, 1/3, 1/3.  As we learn of the content of the novel we are transported via misspellings into the world of the novel—a "young logger" meets a pretty waitress in North Bend, Oregon—and suddenly the voice returns to RB and ends with a line that unsettled me in that it was once a—now forgotten—personal credo indistinguishable from who I considered myself to be.

While we were all sitting there in that rainy trailer pounding at the gates of American literature.

"...pounding at the gates of American literature."

In the process of forgetting that I internalized this short story as a part of myself, I have reworked its motif a half a dozen times. In chronological order (starting 3 years after first reading "1/3, 1/3, 1/3")

1. "Hooray!  We're gonna write a novel"

A short film starring me and my friends about our collective fictional decision to write a novel.
A. Epiphany B. The Submarine Thought Closet (stop motion metaphor for creativity in my closet) C. Journey for supplies (me on bike buying paper and beer) D. Coffee break E. revision 

2. Apples to Apples

An improvised version of Apples to Apples leads me to proclaim that our random pairings of home-scribbled words and phrases were avant-garde poetic compositions.  My friends' enthusiasm for the game quickly transferred to other things.  

3. Swimming Lessons/Radio Showlocke Holmes

1/3, 1/3, 1/3... Greg, Marina and I held meetings every Tuesday for three months ultimately creating The Swimming Lessons, the abstracted account of the creation of a non-existent television series.  We went on to do a weekly improvised mystery radio show for a year.

4. Tom and I

Exactly as RB was enlisted to type this older man's story, I agreed to transcribe and Ed-it the life story of a homeless man (Ed) to disastrous effects on my nerves. 

5. One time I went to Eugene, Oregon with a friend.

We went to her friends' house.  After getting settled and before going out we smoked pot and decided I would write down everything my new friend said. All I can remember now is all that is left of this spontaneous absurd project— "We're going to the honey comb of life—the sweet stuff." And  

Kill poetry with a rusty knife.
Kill it with a monster truck.
No!
I love poetry.

6. Bocce Balling on the West Coast

In January 2011 I journeyed with a friend to Seattle and back to Monterey for to collaborate with old friends, first, with a game of the ancient sport of bocce, and then with a collaborative narrative containing the perspectives and voices of all involved.  I ended up writing the thing mostly myself.

The house described in the Surrealist Manifesto certainly comes to mind—"Hooray! We're gonna write a novel" certainly captures this enthusiastic notion—but collaboration, community and feedback isn't all about bringing the subconscious and the unexpected into the process of composition.  There is something greater to the Surrealist processes and games—something that stems from how integral creativity is, and sharing a sense of play, linguistic, visual, philosophical, with those around you.  A writer doesn't have to be famous, or even good, for you to devote your time to the work created—that notion leads to the reading of vast amounts of mediocre writing passed off as "good" by a broken publishing system—and, to deconstruct and interact with a work, its author doesn't have to be bad, easy to pick apart, or a personal acquaintance who you can imagine making certain literary choices for reasons you understand.  All writing is the product of social processes.

Prelude to an Argument for Literary Authenticity via Natural Winemaking

It seems natural—to me at least—that I should start a piece of writing away from a computer in a setting that I would describe with basically meaningless words like "authentic" and (one I have already used) "natural."  This piece of writing (by which I mean this introduction) is already once removed from "authentic" experience (by which I mean the previous moment of writing in a notebook), so it seems natural—so to speak—that I should be composing it on a computer directly into a blog (by which I mean this blog).  And indeed I am writing it right now, as opposed to later when I actually would have more free time, because I have joined a facebook group that challenges me to write every day for 40 days.  This is the 3rd day and, for unrelated reasons (non-literary, nothing to do with technology, facebook, etc.), I did not have the time to sit down and write something else I have been meaning to write; but I have been meaning to type up things already written in the more authentic—if you like—setting of a notebook.

This piece of writing occurs at the end of the notebook. It is very aware that in concluding this notebook it is finishing what is decided to be a necessary stage in the writing of a book (the notebook began before and encompassed a period of time that was the basis for the book that this writing is to be).  It is the transition point between nothing and something.  And for something to be something—in this case writing—it must be groomed, it must be tailored to fit the mold of things that it is supposed to be like. And so the notebook phase was ending, in the notebook, and the computer phase begins, on the computer.

The previous piece in the notebook was an argument for a (post-post-)feminist, hyper-compassionate (David Foster Wall-esque?) critical study of pop culture, specifically Courtney Love and an ultimately dissatisfying Chuck Klosterman essay.

The title of the writing in question that followed was THOUGHT FROM WALK HOME ABOUT WHAT I WANT TO DO IN ANALOGY:

and it reads as follows:

I guess the thought began when I thought about wine-making—something I do not pretend to understand—and the notion of traditional natural methods that ideally take the vintner's (and technology's) hand out of the process, expressing the truth of the grape and where it comes from.

So—how do I express the terroir of experience with the grapes of words, and in what barrels of what material does the truth juice develop and ultimately please and intoxicate the conossieur?! (In the notebook it reads "develop and get the conosieur [sic] drunk," in the interest of transparency).

An illustration of this analogy follows:

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I believe something important is happening here—so important that I am going to change the now-silent record and empty my now-full bladder in order to commit full concentration to its transcription.

[I had let the record player fall silent and ignored my need to urinate for 15 odd minutes while enwrapped in my drawing]

Bocce Balling on the West Coast 2—Bocce for Blood has begun.

12/29/11 initiated a decision that I would keep a journal.  And so I did.  And therefore I had one—and I resolved to fill it—while en route to and in return from Seattle, thus making the trip all the more about re-visiting and writing, returning to something with words as a mediator.

Between January 6th and 21st—the time frame of Bocce Balling on the West Coast—there are three brief entries.  This was a week after I had resolved to—and days after I had managed to successfully—write every day.  There was no reason to write—I was doing, I was playing bocce, I was traveling, I was also playing frisbee golf and wall ball and Apples to Apples, I was walking in snow, I was prioritizing post cards, I was drinking, I was being driven, I was on an airplane, I was on trains, I was on buses, I was in zip cars, I was at a grocery store wine tasting, I was moving a dining room table shipped decades ago from Pennsylvania up three narrow flights of stairs with my brother, I was watching a hockey game, I was comparing pixillated penises on screens in a bar in Seattle, I was meeting a mother and son in Live Oak Park in Berkeley, the name of which I remembered because I deemed it one of the top five parks I had ever visited, and I was playing with them their first game of bocce (there are no bocce courts at the park, just to clarify), I was composing a spontaneous poetry cycle aboard and about the Coast Starlight train south from Seattle, I was watching kitsch cinema at a theater in Arcata, and then I was, awake first, making coffee when the doctor who has the same name as my friend who was hosting us, the doctor who was the landlord who lived in Alaska and was exercising the agreed upon term that he stay at the house for a week of fly-fishing, the doctor was declining to have any coffee before it was entirely brewed because coffee is about the balance between the rich flavors of the initial drip and the bitter hints that come at the end.  The doctor told me he was out in a foreign country medically intervening for humanitarian purposes.  He had been awake without more than two hours of sleep for two days.  He had a moment to make coffee and was seriously anticipating it.  Jamie came and hurriedly grabbed the pot and poured himself a cup before it had finished brewing.  The doctor declared the pot ruined, was pissed off about the whole thing for the reasons mentioned earlier, and dumped the pot, spilling coffee onto and ruining the pants he was wearing, pants of which he was quite fond.  The next day, he continued, Jamie was dead.  A motorcycle accident.  I never got to redo the last thing I said to him and I ruined my pants.  There's a double lesson here.  The doctor left the room and two others corroborated the truth of the account, that it had happened, they were on the floor, awaking to the value of patience.

What I mean to say is that the story has fermented into mythology in this notebook, and the self-conscious drive to fill it has bestowed its meaning;  now, as I did a year ago, I will begin to write about the two-week span of adventure in January that defined itself with the idea of rolling balls toward an ever-expanding cluster of other balls.  And then turning around and doing it in the other direction.

*  *  *

And with that the journal is over.  I began to write bocce stories on my computer, bypassing pens, notebooks and handwriting.  A few days ago I was desperately looking through all of my files, emails, blog posts for an account that I am sure that I had typed up about Doctor Bill and his story of coffee and patience.  I checked all the computers I had used, all email accounts, all blogging accounts.  Then I remembered I had yet to type it. It was written in the transition to technology, not yet able to be shared with millions with the click of the mouse.