Tim Subiaco
will always be a legend to me. He was one of the rare members who wrote fiction everyday. Almost all the other people couldn't manage it. They either were like me and got stuck by the allure of writing the more easy nonfiction or they just stopped showing up altogether.
One day though he announced that he would be leaving. He shared his email address but I didn't write it down anywhere and wasn't able to find that comment on the site before it closed down. i think the comment was one of the many that got deleted during one of the site's migrations beforehand.
Alas I tried to find Tim through the internet. Found a
Twitter
account with his name, but it was a pseudonym. The whole time when he was on the site I had thought it was his actual identity, but once i saw his pen-name's barebones Twitter account I had the feeling that I would never get to talk to him again.
This is what makes someone a
legend
sometimes. Sometimes a legend isn't just a great person. It's a person who fades away and all you're left with is a memory of them.
Sometimes I fear that GabrielGreco will go the same way as this. Sometimes I wonder will he just give up? Because I actually think he has already given up. But giving up isn't about forever. People think that giving up is about quitting for good. But giving up IS THE STATUS QUO. All of us walk around burning days having given up on a whole array of things. It's climbing out of giving up that's the event to look for. Not the act of giving up.
I like the ending note of this write-up. I think it's humbling to give it up then getting back at it, then giving up again, and so on. we're all fighting out demons, be it of the mental or physical kind.
This is what I've been digesting over the past couple of months. Reading is what keeps me going though, that helps. It's like an elixir to a failed writer.
Your comment made me think of -- while cleaning my kitchen this morning -- of why I think
Karl Ove Knausgard
has resonated so well and also why his autobiographical series are so important to literature of writers.
I was struck by an aesthetic feeling in the kitchen. I suddenly wanted to read Karl Ove again, and it was because the work is such an honest portrayal of a literary writer.
It shows you the good. But more importantly it shows you the life surrounding that. It shows the lingering and endless desert of hope exceptionally well. It shows the pent up tension between having works accepted and the final publishing exceptionally well too.
When reading it it feels like you are there with Karl Ove.... not just there with him but also you feel like you are a writer going through these events.
I don't think there is anything as developed that goes into that perspective and so I think for decades people will refer to his
My Struggle
series for just that.
I confess I've never read him and it sounds like I should. Mein fuckin' Kampf. Or, as Family Guy Hitler aptly titled his late night show, Mein Comfy Couch.
After writing last night I had some very vivid dreams, they were almost like lucid dreams but I wasn't 'directing' as much as writing out their story.
The most interesting part is I dreamt with a song, but I was composing it too. The artist was a guy who looked like Barry White and the song was called "Million Dollar Hustler" - real banger. When I woke, I had to check if it already exists (it doesn't). There was also some type of Youtuber type character, "Ex Ni, The Philosophy Guy" which was supposed to be a play on Bill Nye except this guy was an ex nihilist who'd gotten over it and embraced philosophical knowledge as a way of life.
GabrielGreco
it's very important that what we give up is just as important as things we choose to return to.
I was struck by an aesthetic feeling in the kitchen. I suddenly wanted to read Karl Ove again, and it was because the work is such an honest portrayal of a literary writer.
It shows you the good. But more importantly it shows you the life surrounding that. It shows the lingering and endless desert of hope exceptionally well. It shows the pent up tension between having works accepted and the final publishing exceptionally well too.
When reading it it feels like you are there with Karl Ove.... not just there with him but also you feel like you are a writer going through these events.
I don't think there is anything as developed that goes into that perspective and so I think for decades people will refer to his
After writing last night I had some very vivid dreams, they were almost like lucid dreams but I wasn't 'directing' as much as writing out their story.
The most interesting part is I dreamt with a song, but I was composing it too. The artist was a guy who looked like Barry White and the song was called "Million Dollar Hustler" - real banger. When I woke, I had to check if it already exists (it doesn't).
There was also some type of Youtuber type character, "Ex Ni, The Philosophy Guy" which was supposed to be a play on Bill Nye except this guy was an ex nihilist who'd gotten over it and embraced philosophical knowledge as a way of life.
So at least I'm never low on inspiration.