There are two kinds of blogs that I will always dread&abhor. One of them is thee hated self-promotional blog.
-from Going For The Throat on Friday
The other kind is what Ms. Hipstercrite has coined a selfie. A completely self-referential blog utterly mired in ego, embarrassingly candid and terribly assuming. The truth about the Global Village is that we must insinuate ourselves and hip the world to our own tastes&political views and individuality and whatever-the-fuck. I’m guilty. I admit it. And worse. I’m trying to parlay it into a career.
In the meantime the morning comes early for a live-in caregiver. Shower day. I had the old man shit, showered and shaved before 9am. And now the golden hours, the 150 minutes or so when I can tap the black tar, screw it on and get it off.
I ran out of material on Friday. I guess these things happen when your mission is to publish 800 words every day. The well will run dry. In attempting to avoid shameless self-promotional blogs I can get into some real heart-on-sleeve horseshit. Bloviating personal history or the oft-repeated trope of a waterhead writer. Aho.
Friday’s blog was a real doozy. This highwire act I do on here everyday can either be the best game in town or something to tip the scales over to the suicide-option side.
That’s why I’m redacting it. Fuck it. I shudder when I give out my business card knowing that the home page on this blog is like the armoir in my grandmother’s bedroom growing up. She had wigs in there. And lingerie. And big fat Mom-Mom bras. And playboy magazines and cartons of camel straights and little bottles of liquor&hair grease for Pop-Pop. Right beneath the portrait of Jesus flying along beside the truck driver, protecting him. I found a lot of interesting (scarring) things in there and I will never be the same. I’ve seen things from in there while hiding as a pudgy Italian kid that could turn your hair white or make you pray to your Jesus to please, please make me clean again.
My point is, while the anti-hero of this blog might be me (or an idealized and vengeful version of me), he ain’t exactly who I want to be. But by some strange twist of fate I have found an inexhaustible source of material and it’s writing about writing. Blogging about blogging. The inspiration is the writer’s search for inspiration. Perfect. But it ain’t easy. It’s like burning the heart for fuel or tightrope walkin in two ton shoes.
The stockings&heels and perfumes and wads of 20s in my Mom-Mom’s armoir were real. What my sisters&I weathered in that house growing up was real even if it’s all over now. While I may always hate writing blogs of a purely self-promotional nature, I will always hate blogs that reveal too much even more. And on dry, sexless days when the world’s stupidity is greater than gravity and another deadline slowly grinds the enamel down, I will abstain from drawing on the enormous storehouse of my personal history. Try to steer clear of Planet Jim until I get my mojo back and we can just let the music play.
Will I be able to report the cold hards to you on the daily?
Can I give you 800 words every day, neat&fine, without meandering down memory lane and sharing stories about the whiskey&sex and Jesus I found in an old armoir in my Mom-Mom’s bedroom growing up Catholic in Upper Darby?
I’ll try.
You know, I tried, I tried to keep it short
I know, it took too fucking long.
-Minor Threat, Think Again
Going for the Throat 