"And I'm at the stage, where I want my words said and no one wants to listen though. No one wants to listen 'cause everybody's yelling, about you and yours and how I'd have the answer if only I'd open up up up and let you in. They must be out of their brilliant minds"-Furniture "Brilliant Mind"
Penningtron said...
You know, you can tear yourself up about obscurity, but the truth is that people like us love the Go-Betweens or Felt as much as the Smiths, or the Comsat Angels as much as Joy Division. Is that fervent love any less spectacular just because only a few feel it? Actually, I think it's moreso.
This deserved a response.
I think this "immaculate obscurity", is the very issue that I was struggling with after Andrea left, struggling with when I wrote that first diary entry. It's hard to keep one's perspective on the work, to remember that the quality of the work in is the specialness of the experience of its audience (how ever small) and not in the width of its audience (however small the experience.) I completely agree with this above comment, and hope the fans of My Favorite know that. I can't say its not hard when Interpol opens for you at CMJ 2001, and you open up for Haunte
d Pussy (www.hauntedpussy.com) in 2005. But for every surreal humilation, there was a triumph, and its bad manners to overlook them. The rough bits are part of being an artist, and many before have had it worse, and had a better stomach for the hardships. We never had the courage to quit going to University, to tour the nation sleeping on people's floors, the way our friends in The Bouncing Souls did in the early days. We also never had the trust funds to be full-time micro celebrities, with a staff of publicists and ad exects the way a few of our peers have. We had a choice of forks in the road and chose the chopsticks...and however few the blessed grains we managed to grasp, I assure you we savored them all. I am getting the feeling I may be letting my need for supper influence the quality of my metaphors.
On a only slightly related note...this news story from the New York Daily News has been on my mind a lot lately...
DIES FOR HIS ART: Man drowns in bid to save his poetry. TRAGIC LAST WORDS: 'I CAN'T LET THAT STUFF GO';
KERRY BURKE, AUSTIN FENNER and TONY SCLAFANI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS. New York Daily News. New York, N.Y.: Oct 7, 2005. pg. 30
Copyright Daily News, L.P. Oct 7, 2005
AN ASPIRING Brooklyn poet apparently drowned after jumping into the Hudson River to retrieve a book bag packed with his writings, cops and friends said yesterday. "I can't let that stuff go," Dennis Kim, 22, told a friend before leaping from the railing of the Christopher St. pier in the West Village Wednesday night.Kim, of Brooklyn, lost the green-and-black bag - with his spiral notebook and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" inside - when he leaned against the rail, and the bag fell into the drink, his friend told the Daily News.
So he emptied his pockets, ripped off his shoes and shirt, and dived into the 75-foot-deep water.
He swam out 30 feet and hooked the bag over his shoulder in minutes. But on his return, the current overpowered him, leaving him gasping."Help!" he shouted once before going under, said his pal Jennifer Hare, 17, who witnessed the tragic drowning. 
"He let it [the bag] go and tried to swim back," Hare, a Queens student, said hours later. "He floated on his back, but the current was just too strong."
Hare called 911 at 9:50 p.m. and pleaded with others to help, but no one did.
A team of NYPD divers searched until midnight, then resumed hours later, but there was no sign of Kim.
"It wasn't just some dumb kid pulling a stunt. His work was important to him," Hare said.
His mother, Olivia Choi, and sister, Stella, fought back tears as they watched cops scour the river for Kim yesterday.
"Nobody was working over here. There was no life tube. This is a public area. If it were safe, my son wouldn't have died," said Choi, 51.
Kim, of Bay Ridge, waited tables at the Murray Hill restaurant LaCarne and planned on returning to Loudonville College in Vermont after dropping out in his sophomore year.
"He's very intelligent," said his sister, Stella Kim, 19, a fashion student from Forest Hills, Queens. "He's a great role model . . . He wanted to write poetry."
tsclafani@nydailynews.com 
[Illustration]
Caption: Dennis Kim LINDA ROSIER DAILY NEWS Stella Kim mourns at Christopher St. pier where her brother Dennis Kim jumped into the Hudson River Wednesday night in an effort to retrieve his book bag.
Sigh...I'm always bumming people out. It's not my finest trait. But this kid is kind of my hero, my inspiration these days. God keep him.
I bid you all adieu for the weekend. Those in NYC come have a drink and dance at the halloween Mondo party....check the link section for details.
Floating,
Michael
3 comments:
You know, whoever thought of calling these webjournals obviously never imagined them as ad hoc discussions. Yeah I can see how you'd feel a little bitter after Interpol's near meteoric rise and your own slow climb. I was just imagining, what would you say to Lawrence from Felt if he were to bitch about Momus writing for Wired magazine, or McCarthy becoming Stereolab and successful, or Belle & Sebastian taking his records and becoming famous off of them. I'd tell him that A Preacher in New England was one of the most brilliant things ever written and he would be a fool if he thought he had not accomplished something altogether worthwhile.
Speaking of which, have you heard any of Lawrence's Denim records? I'm obsessed with one of the songs where he sings about le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Nothing on there about drowning for your own poetry, though I think that's pretty fertile territory for a song right there.
This is a very thought-provoking post in many ways. Thank you.
BTW, I really love that tshirt!
p.s. my finest hour was getting a photo I took of the go-betweens playing at Fez published in their biography. I love genius, obscure or not.
We know there are better things to drown your sorrows in than the Hudson River. Although I did cry for him, I wonder if he was motivated by the fear someone would read what he wrote. It is far scarier to be vulnerable, and try and make art, and stare success in the eye and fight it out than to stay comfortable and hide away with entertainments someone else made. Even if someone else's creation is inspiring, there is something important about moving past that feeling (as I should be Nanowrimo writing there not here as well)
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