records

Over the break, I had a chance to view one of the crazier movies from the past called "Straight to Hell." It's an Alex Cox flick (same guy who did repo man and sid & nancy) and it stars Dick Rude, Joe Strummer and the Poges (as a band of coffee addict renegade outlaws.) In what is basically a punk-rock spaghetti western. It's crazy good fun, with about a billion cameos of random rad people like Grace Jones, Elvis Costello, Jim Jarmusch, and Dennis Hopper.

Anyhoo - when I was a younger lad, these were people I not only liked, but respected. There was a certain ethos in some of the old punk rockers, that I really wanted to embody. So I'm in my bed last night, thinkin about stuff, as you're want to do, kickin back in bed before a slumber, and the thought stuck me that nothing about writing is punk-rock. I thought about how writing is a conservative action, requiring thoughts captured in text which deprives them of some or perhaps most, of their intended meaning.

Then I found a couple of examples that broke that thought, like Burroughs, or Thompson, who really didn't write to make a "classic" but wrote stuff that had crazy energy. Then I remembered Henry Rollins having a nice interview talking about being inspired by writing, and wanting to be a writer, but all he could do was sing punk-rock. Finally, I just figured, all the old punk-rockers were performers. The problem with comparing writing to performing punk-rock, is you can't. Writing has no stage, it's capturing something for the record, on a page or on some pixels. If it's funny or inventive or mind-boggling, there's no interpretation besides the act of reading it.

You might hear a song on an elevator, and think "I like that!" And hunt it down after a little bit and put it on yer itunes. You'll never hear a passage read from the same elevator speakers, and then go hunt down a book. Our culture thrives on immediacy, and that leaves text behind pretty fast. But the written word isn't made for immediacy, (even tho that'd be nice) it's there for later. So I changed my tune a bit, (laying there in bed-as I was) and figured writing is just like any medium, it's infused with whatever energy you can put into it, and have it come out the other side.

The problem is, with punk rock performers, they get crowds of people cheering back at them when they lay down a classic that everybody loves. They get interviews, and sometimes movie roles, because they are performers. As a writer, there's none of that. Sometimes someone says a kind word, which you can choose to believe or not, and that's about it. I've found, mostly, the only way to really know where you stand is to take an actual writing class. Not only does this get you writing something new, but in reading other people's work, you can literally see how you stack up against the other people who want to be (or are) writers. That's about the tops in the "Glory Dept." for being a writer.

Doesn't mean it's not worth doing.