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WritoholicMost of us write something on something. Even if it’s
raging graffiti or just angsty scribblings of expression or even
stick-figuring to let your feelings vent most of us write. Even to
stab at the ground with a twig is writing. Or even air writing to
trace the stars at night. We primates are fingery and holdy about
things in our fingers and our fingers are the routes out from the
triggers fired off in the brain, so… don’t let anyone
tell you he or she doesn’t write. We all do.
And even before “writing” was invented,
we wrote and talked and these noises and vocalizations somehow meandered
through eternity fueled by our emotions and found a way out through
those limbs down to the old fingers and the famous opposing thumb. Alphabets
aside, thinking in words and pictures are the same thing since words
stand in for both emotions and for pictures for places and events
and for imaginary worlds and airy inventions that haven’t found
creation yet.
Writing is cool, essentially.All animals do it but
maybe not as formally as we do.We’ve compartmentalized ourselves
into a neat little package of beliefs that are unsubstantiated where
we’re always the center of everything. The other animals sit
around and wonder at it, I’m sure.
Anyway, they all express themselves to. Throwing coconuts
down onto a meanie’s head is as much writing as is a headline
of the New York Times. Head-butting just as much writing as War and
Peace. And a crow squawking on a fence is as much writing as
is 50-cent giving out with diatribes as is the Guernica as is Woody
Guthrie twanging as is Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
Degrees are the only difference and I just mean – open
your mind and notice what a weird thing writing really is, and how
cool.
That a feeling can find it’s way to being into
the mind and clothe itself in a made-up picture and into a thought
and into a word and into a way to communicate that word.
Writing is the way out of a lot of things. The
pen is mightier than the sword and so many wars and revolutions have
been started with just a little written dynamite that the power of
the word really speaks for itself – and loudly.Or softly.
Even though people who never learn to read have way
better memories than those who learn to depend on written words,
reading still bestows a wealth of experience – a way of mind-reading
and time-traveling and understanding that few of the ones who still
don’t know how to read would not envy.
To wield the pencil is to hold power in one’s
hand, but to make abstract symbols on paper come alive is quite another
thing. The magi among us, the shamans and shamanesses like,
for instance, Toni Morrison, who’s captivating power of words
ensnared me when I first picked up one of her books somewhere and
read only a few lines. They literally climbed out of the page and
coalesced into a vine, a living thing, strung with colors and images
and wound themselves around my mind and my soul. She is a master.
There are only a few real masters in, of, any element,
and their charisma and skill is well beyond that of ordinary mortals.I
want to commend them here. To honor and applaud them and to turn
you onto them. Beware their wicked spells, because they really are
capable of awesome things.
Something is at work in our universe that grows out
of a certain type of fecundity of spirit. Great writers and other
artists have this and it’s far more than mere talent. And
works have their own lives to lead. They express themselves. Who
knows? Maybe they choose their own vehicles and not the other way
around. It certainly feels that way at times.
I like to write songs, but really, I compose music
and the words to them just sort of create themselves. And yet the
music, too, sort of creates itself and I merely give it expression.Writing
is fun on subjects I enjoy, and I don’t include myself in this
secret tribe of shamen, by the way, and I advocate it for everyone.
We can’t all be geniuses but thankfully we can all enjoy their
artistry. I’m going to have this page for links to writings
and info on some masters I really admire.
I’ve gone into other worlds and have been transformed
by the magic of many of these writers, so…I’d like to
share the secrets of their existence with you. Some are world-famous
still, others more obscure. I may not keep up with every writer on
the new horizons but whenever a book falls into my hand, or an articles,
and when it begins a life of its’ own, unbidden, I know I’ve
stumbled again upon a magician, so..
I have so many favorite authors – too many to
name, but I’ll spotlight a few here. Some are enormously known
and some need to be recognized more.Every life is an adventure, and
some of these heroes of mine led amazingly interesting lives.Without
that sense of adventure, who’d want to read their ideas anyway
?
The tedious lists of people writing even best-sellers
who know absolutely nothing about life don’t interest me any
more than do the makers of recipe films or music. In this day
of blogdom, everyone writes who can grab onto a laptop. It’s
no great feat to string words together in imitative ways or through
formulas learned at school.The geniuses still exist, though, who
can stir the blood of people seated in easy chairs.This gift is still
a marvel, and I’ll focus on the ones I think should be applauded
as I continue to find more heroes to exalt in this little Pantheon
of mine.
The very greatest of all music critics – no
critic at all, but a true lover of music and a true magician on writing
about it :
Robert Palmer To start, I’d like to point to Robert Palmer,
the eminent music critic. As a musician, I appreciate his work more
than that of any other pop music critic. He understood music. He
made music and had an egalitarian aspect and love of all styles of
music that made him ideal for his position.
His fresh point of view and willingness to open to new music
styles made him a positive force in the blues, r and b, psychedelic,
jazz, punk,new wave, no wave, post punk, alternative, grunge, and
metal eras, with expertise in every genre in between.He hung with
the musicians. He was of them, not against them.
Known for his work in Rolling Stone and Spin,
he’d also been the Pop Music Critic of the New York Times – not
a shabby position to have attained.He was a musician, first, and
a writer, second.
It is this – that he had a legitimate view of music – that
made his writings authentic and made his contributions to music history
as classic as they are. His talent and acumen, his unique perceptions
in a very real way shaped the paths that pop music has traveled along.since.
He was a multi-faceted genius and his restless intellect
and many talents had taken him not only to North Africa, where he
first introduced Brian Jones to the Joujouka Festival, but he was
every bit a scholar on the history of not only music but of cultural
traditions. He could get along anywhere and really needed only access
to real people of the world and to his own clarinet to be happy.
He was most often found either in clubs listening to music or making
it or spawled on the floor, listening to music among the boxes of
new CD’s mailed to him on a daily basis from would-be subjects
for his articles or by their record companies, drinking a Coke and
smoking a Marlborough, eyes closed, communing with the spirits of
the music and nodding his head.
The ultimate music fan was also a musician, never sought
to crush his subjects and was responsible single-handedly for bringing
various huge music movements to the forefront that we enjoy today.There
aren’t enough of his writings posted yet on the net, but do
get his pivotal and the defining history of blues, Delta Blues.
Robert (Bob) Palmer links
William Empson
Empson, one of the world’s greatest
poets, was also someone who had lived in China during the ,
who wrote outrageously and whose sometimes outlandish and ever irreverent
tones added greatly to the distinctive flavor of his work. His poetry
and his prose seemed to come from different people. He wrote with a
passion and with effortless eloquence, with bold indifference to pedantics
and ..
And his impulsivity…impudence pre-dated the slackers and
hackers of today’s literary worlds.
He pre-dated all of the smart-alecs and was so gifted and energetic
that it’s not really arrogance but impatience that made his easy
creations so vivid.
Another critic – I find them lovable despite their jobs – Empson
was foremost a poet, but his restless mind ever sought avenues of expression.
A genius, most obviously, I was told by someone who’d actually
known him that he was the most energetic person they’d ever met – even
in his elderly years.
It seems odd to think of Empson, a knighted and eminent scholar,
as an unruly punk, but his impatience with artifice and with cruelties
and class distinctions coupled with his disdain for authority made
him forever seem like a wild young man with a real attitude. I adore
that in him.
He lived in China for much of the thirties and forties, and
also in Tokyo.
William Empson links
Marija Gimbutas
I met her once, having stood in line after her brilliant
lecture, while still a child.
I’d skateboarded to her speaking gig and maybe looked
a little out of place among the other anthropology groupies and scholarly
types.
She surveyed me with a slight smile and I felt her
scan my little brain. Her eyes sparkled even though that word is
so trite I loathe to use it – but damn it, her eyes did sparkle
with a mischieviousness and with a worldly wisdom all at once.
We talked for aawhile and she was kind enough to speak
on the subjects I’d only just discovered and she’d dissected
for half a century already.
We sat at a table and she signed my copy of her book.
She was as cool and enchanting as was the subject
of her investigations – the Great Goddess.
Interview with Marija GimbutasBelili: Marija Gimbutas BioI'll be adding more of my writing heroes and heroines as
we go along!
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