I don’t know how I get back to — [to] where exactly am I trying to get back? There is no “back” really, just now. Just get done what you want to get done, because at some point you can’t do it anymore. At some point–the fire goes out, at some point your body stops working. There are real deadlines. 

May 20 2020

The above is such a “type” of entry, the kind of end-of-academic-year sigh of exhaustion, reinvigorated New Year’s resolution kind of note that never resets me the way I think it will. Reading Hiding Man, Tracy Daugherty’s brilliant biography of Donald Barthelme, helps me think about why.

While he had a need, a total obsession with reading and craft and pushing the envelope of art and getting out of the shadow of Joyce and particularly of Beckett, I write for different reasons, for my own reasons, and when I fail to finish or fail to get work where I want it to be in the world, it has to do with fear. That’s why I’m trying to work on this summer, on not being afraid of sharing a thing that helped me get from point A to point B, of putting an idea out there when it’s formed but still raw enough to be pulsing a bit. Because that’s when the conversation happens. I stay quiet too much.

And I have things to say, good things, smart things, things that draw on my embodiment, on my reading, on my care work, things that other people don’t have access to in the same exact way. This is not a pep talk but a statement of fact, a description of mission, a reminder of why I’m going to so much trouble to make life stable–not just for other people but for the purpose of my own art-making.

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