For the past 3 months I have been suffering tremendous writer’s block. I’ve been contemplating a lecture delivered by Lou Kahn at Ball State University (Louis I. Kahn, “Architecture”, 1971-04-14 – YouTube), which sounds like a sermon in metaphysics, a standup comedy routine called the Bicentennial Prayer by Richard Pryor (The Sermon_Richard Pryor – YouTube) which sounds like a sermon in critical race theory, and some strange idiosyncrasies in Albrect Duhrer’s famous rhinoceros wood cuts (Dürer’s Rhinoceros – Wikipedia). If I were a PhD student, my thesis would be titled something like, “The metaphysics of lou kahn through Richard Pryor’s Parrhesian lens of critical race theory with a bonus explanation of anatomically misplaced rhinoceros horns in duhrer’s woodcuts.” It sounds complicated and obscure, but with covid raging, what else is there to do in my free time?
I don’t have a thesis advisor, so I’ve been kind of floating
around untethered in a sea of ideas. When I don’t understand something, I try
to read about it. To my knowledge and prodigious internet search skills, there
have been no academic attempts that discuss the above ideas in any real depth. No
transcripts exist for any of the above material. Some people jog or go to
museums as hobbies. In my spare time I transcribe things that have yet to be transcribed.
In the search to provide new insight to things that already exist, the
importance of the primary source material cannot be stressed.
So when someone asks me what I’ve been doing the past 3
months in my spare time, I respond, “I’ve been tirelessly transcribing Lou Kahn’s
lecture at Ball State University, dissecting Richard Pryor’s Bicentennial prayer
regarding racism in america, and looking at weird unexplained things going on
in duhrer’s famous rhinoceros woodcut.” Usually my friends say “uh cool. Sounds
interesting… then steer the conversation towards easier topics by saying something
more conventional like “so how are your wife and kids?” to which we end up commiserating
over our kids’ borderline psychopathic use of tik tok.
It’s been frustrating… when I have a couple good ideas and
I struggle to pull them together. I think It would be great to pull these Ideas
together like an expert juggler. I’m not one of those regular jugglers that
just takes a bunch of banal bowling pins and throws them up in the air. I’m the
more ambitious and dangerous type of juggler who you can’t stop watching. I
like to juggle different things together like flaming torches, heavy butcher knives
and used toilet brushes. At the heart of it, my superpower if I had any, is not
flight, nor is it charming good looks, nor is it turning invisible… it’s making
connections between things and coming up with theories and speculations nobody is pauses to think about.
crazy enough
When I try to write about about subjects, but can’t quite keep
them in the air simultaneously. It’s frustrating. I have juggler’s block. My mind
starts straying, I look at the long list of things I want to write about and just
end up procrastinating further and further thinking about more and more disparate
things to juggle. I start reading, drowning
in a sea of more and more craziness, wanting to throw up wilder and wilder combinations
of things like Japanese haiku poetry of Basho, 1960’s jazz piano of Bill Evans,
and the architecture of Carlo Scarpa.
Enter the unexpected lifeguard. It’s not everyday you get to
ask a Grammy nominee and NYTimes best selling author (Crying in H mart)
Japanese Breakfast questions about creative process, but that’s what I did
today in a serendipitous open zoom forum.
()
Me – “What’s your song writing and essay writing process like? What do you do
when you get writer’s block?” And she actually responded, “I give myself
assignments like write 1000 words a day (which translates to 2 pages of single
spaced text) or write 30 songs for the month of June. I hope for something
good.. sometimes I get 1 sentence, other times I get raw source material for
future albums.”
I came to an epiphany today. Fuck it. Make a disciplined series
of daily blog posts that show the struggle and process of writing. So here I’m
about to set a set of dangerous objects in motion. Gather round ladies and gentlemen,
I’m going to start juggling this flaming torch, butcher’s knife and toilet
brush in orbit, and see if I can keep it going. A Kahn lecture, Pryor prayer,
and duhrer misplaced rhinoceros horn. At best, I’m going to provide valuable
insights to humanity, at worst, if it’s an epic fail, I might cut off my toe, suffer
3rd degree burns and die of a terrible infection on my self-inflicted wounds,
and at the very least I publish transcribed texts so people after me can see the
primary sources in Microsoft word format and can study it for their own PhD
work. So in effect, my existence on earth either provides insight no-one really
asked for, a humorous spectacle of self- mutilation or a service to those who are
hearing impaired or don’t understand English but want to experience Richard pryor,
lou kahn or Albrecht duhrer in English. It’s a win win win situation.
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