and Rebecca&Jon
The First Amendment limits the government’s ability to regulate speech. It does not require news organizations to treat all speech as equal, or to provide an open forum for comments. Rather, the First Amendment ensures The Inquirer’s right to publish what The Inquirer chooses to publish.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
…nobody wants to hear blues on blues on blues.
—Townes Van Zandt
THE FOLLOWING POST WAS WRITTEN ON APRIL 5, 2021
This one’s to keep Going For the Throat alive. I thought I’d get a jump on this week’s post, allow for a wide runway between this afternoon and deadline Thursday. With time I can refine and I might even strike gold. In a way, posts like UNDER THE WEATHER and LIKE A SOLDIER are a victory for plain-spoken and what I call unmiraculous prose. The reporting reveals over time. The moments get stripped and contextualized and from the droll details and mundane the story appears. Or it doesn’t, no story Bubba, and that’s the story. Of course that’s the luxury of personal journalism ain’t it and blogging anyway that I, as your narrator, can wrap any missive by declaring there is nothing to report.
I’m happy when that happens, and much to my old college Prof Macaluso’s chagrin, it’s a stick in the ribs of cute-essay writing and happy endings. Happy endings never rang true for me. Begs the question, though—why aren’t happy endings true for your writer and anyway why should my experience be accepted as truth? Just because happy endings don’t happen for me doesn’t mean they don’t, in general, happen. I’m struck writing this however that with perspective almost anything will have seemed to turn out alright. I never wanted to trade in that happy horseshit. Guess you could say I wanted to revel in it, grovel some or commiserate and, tell you the truth, I’ve never really examined why I always had such a fucking problem with Heaven.
I knew depression, always lying in wait, was sure to take me down. So I tied it on myself and the blues was my message and albatross. I figured if happiness was only going to end then why not just be miserable and save myself the disappointment? When I was happy I was flying high, too, though not in a healthy or sustainable way. I removed all those quick-fixes, self-medications and chemical-love. I’m on an even keel now, mostly. I probably won’t crash. Better than that is this ease in my life now. Nothing wrong or terribly irritating. Well, my gut health is touch and go but I think it’s all connected. So…I’m happy with posts like the last couple weeks’ for the sake of their language and for the fact that they offer no solution, no aha, or feel good, tie-it-together moment as the credits roll. I like just ending a piece and seeing what the language will tell me later. I like it when language tells the story and especially dig it when details and moments from a day observed take on a resonance, and their writing is a talismanning or fetishizing of the normal and mundane into a deeper meaning and significance. None of this has anything to do with not feeling up to posting here anymore. I need input and I’m bored and I used to solve both these problems by digging my claws into the matter and anyway grinding an ax and burying my enemies forever.
It ain’t working, Reader and my efforts to save this blog so far today have failed. I don’t know how much longer I can write to perform. It used to work, swimmingly, and if I’m being honest my real fear in hanging this site up and quitting is how will I ever be inspired to write if I don’t have to? Now this is the real writer’s blues ain’t it and all my hubris and fast-talk about never having writer’s block has come home to roost. Strange it doesn’t hurt more than it does or maybe this is a higher plane of creation for me. This work isn’t so wrapped up in my identity. I don’t know what to write about and it’s not the end of the world. I’m not devastated but hardly inspired either. The thing about this block that’s kind of exciting is I know I’ve been here before. I know that something is waiting for me on the other side and like Mama Greenberg said I should be able to envision a way to create that’s peaceful, that I don’t have to destroy to create, me or them, and I can perhaps be driven by something other than compulsion and be free.
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10 Years At Going For The Throat
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Going for the Throat 