I am seldom subject to self-delusion. It has been the bane of my existence, this longing for rationality. No, it is not the desire of my dear, sweet frontal lobe, that tattered handmaiden burdened to my subconscious’ longing for prime numbers in all things. The poor dear is merely slave to its master, doing the ill will of that leftist guerrilla that insists that “if it cannot be proved, then it cannot be known.” As such, for all my life, I and my frontal cortex march in enslavement to the structural norms of the multiverse. Indeed, I would insist that imagination was no thing directly up to and including the time I wrote two novels in three months based on dreaming, despite the fact that I hadn’t dreamt myself in the 30 years prior.
“No,” I’d say. “I’ll believe it after it happens, providing someone smarter than me can prove it actually happened.” Such a soul never appeared, and so, I spat on wishes and dreams and continued my forward, mechanized march.
But now, the MUSE, she screams in my left ear, and I cannot drown her out. I get the idea … no, the insistence, that I am about to write the veritable fuck out of this book … these books, these two or three. On impulse, and in an attempt to free my enslaved frontal lobe and thus cast off the self-identification that has constricted me for these long years, I followed the silly, delusional whisperings, those impulses that I’d long held back.
“Buy those books,” she said. “Your books will be those books, but twisted into a slow, jazz cookbook.” I thought it silly, but this time, did its bidding.
I only vaguely see the connection, and it isn’t in story or plot, because I never read, really, much less follow others’ ideas. Hell, I barely read fiction and most of what I do read, I write. On a whim, and via a pointer by a talented writer who stopped by, I added another to the list, Jazz, by Toni Morrison, which seemed a good choice given I’d already decided to commit these books as works of music, of long-form poetry that masquerades as prose.
Do I have the talent to do that? Almost certainly not. Can such a style exist in the 21st century without becoming tedious? I’ll let Ms. Morrison answer that for me, but the MUSE has already spoken. “Just you WATCH,” she says, in her shouty, pouty way.
Can one mix tragedy with comedy? Surely, and often. Can one write tragedy so that it makes you laugh in counterpoint to all the happy bits that make you cry? Perhaps. Can I do it, MUSE? Am I enough?
“NO!” she says. “But WE are enough.”
So, there, I suppose, it begins. My antagonist already talks to me, and often, in his Louisiana backwater drawl. I cain’t hardly shut the ol’ boy up, his fat, red-tinged face becoming vivid now. His cheeks are rouge and puffy with the exertion of making his case, but I don’t want to listen. His spiky strawberry blond hair is so loud that even my wife could see it. But then, she often sees or hears a thing if I remember to think it hard enough. I so seldom do remember to do that.
If you knew me in person, and be glad you don’t, you’d likely mistake me for a stand-up routine. So, I suppose that alone qualifies me to write a tragedy. Now to sort through all the literary quarks and bind them into atoms so that I can begin–just a small start–in hearing this lot. I still don’t know how many books this is or why MUSE wants me to write them all at once. She insists it’s all one story, but that makes no sense. And non sense is even worse than no thing to my frontal lobe. But I’ll sigh and move forward.
I suppose I’ve already been given a hint I’m on the right path, guided as I was to Josephine Tey. Long have I ranted about how formulaic books have become, writing has become. We no longer read books, but revisit characters. We are all in a Bizarro Marvel Universe, waiting for the next volume even though we already know what the hell the book will be like before it’s written. And then there’s the soft, straight prose of the book I’m reading, and it asks, “Did no one, any more, change their record now and then? Was everyone nowadays thirled to a formula?”
Yes, Ms. Tey, I change my record quite often. The first Jeanne Dark was Oscar Peterson, in fact. This one is all Coltrane fused with Robert Johnson as he fights off traces of Hank Williams, Sr. It’s old-school, with a touch of 1970s British Rock, thank you very much, and it’s quite the mélange if you get the formula right. Here’s to hoping someone passes me a recipe.
A bad mix is just a bunch of noise, and there’s too much of that already.
So, it’s Day 0, the day I start. I’m writing sequels to books I’ve never bothered to publish. I don’t need to. I like them, so who needs more validation than that? But Hank, my antithesis, he wants his own book, his own brooding darkness and I’m not sure my soul can bear the stain of it. Maybe I can bend him toward the light, just a bit, just enough to wring the Douglas-Adams-infused black humour from him.
That turn would be enough. You with me, dearest MUSE? More importantly, am I with you?
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