mandalay

funneling

in poetry (or writing in general) there's a theory about the progression of writing. basically, you start with a blank slate, an idea, a title, a goal. you have a near-infinite number of possibilities. with the first word, then the first line, your possibilities narrow. by the time you're through 2 or 3 lines, there are only so many ways that the poem can go. and once it's written, in some semblence of its final form, what more can you really do with it? even if you scrap the whole thing, you can't erase the memory of what you created and get back that clean slate.

not to get philosophical, but yeah i'm going to: i sometimes feel that there is another life that exists parallel to this one. a life where i chose music as my college major or where i decided that even though my parents wouldn't pay for any school outside of texas, i'd go to reed in portland anyway. who would that person be that made those decisions? why was i so willing to give up singing, something which entirely defined me in high school? how did i let one crappy, unimpressive semester in the UT choir keep me from continuing with it? but this is not what i meant to say.

tomorrow i'm taking the gre. in a month and a half, the first of my applications are due. in six months, i have to decide if i want to get an mfa in creative writing, thereby putting myself on the track to professorship and possible publication. sure, everyone says that you can do other things in your spare time and you won't lose your other interests, but how many people really keep everything that's important to them? the last 9 months that i've been doing technical writing, i've effectively squelched my desire to write what i love through an excess of writing what i don't care about. my desire to photograph has become even stronger but i'm not photographing what i think is important. i don't think that pictures of music is important. music isn't visual.

the thing is, i'm not doing the things i love in the way i want to do them. the reason i didn't choose music is because i'd heard about the theory lessons, the diction, the piano, the language classes, the heaps of technical crap i would be required to do to get a degree in vocal performance. i knew people who went to school for music and got so burned out that they didn't want to sing anymore. so i chose journalism. later i added english, since i so desperately missed reading. and i don't regret that really, but i'm realizing now that the thing i feared would happen to me with music is now happening to me with my other passions: i'm not enjoying taking pictures to make money and for publication; i'm not enjoying writing real estate courses to pay my rent and food. i haven't finished a book of fiction since june.

when i was trying to write my personal statement for grad school applications, i read over the introduction i had written to my english honors thesis, hoping to find something that i could use. but i realized that what i said over a year ago was most important to me wasn't any longer. here are my exact words: "I write poetry because I love it. It's my addiction. Some people smoke or drink -- I inhale and exhale poetry. It is my thrill, my craving, but beyond that -- my sustenance." i tried to conjure something that i was that passionate about still. i thought about saying that nothing made me happier than writing poetry, but that isn't true. i don't like writing poetry. i love reading good poetry and i like to read something i've written and feel good about it, feel that i've hit on some kernel of truth, but the process doesn't move me. nor do i love taking pictures. i love finding out that pictures i've taken mean something to someone. i love showing an aspect of some person that not enough people see.

music is the only thing i enjoy while i'm doing it, but it's also fleeting in nature. i can't make it permanent, bind it, press it, the way i can poetry or photography. this is not to say that i regret the path i've taken. i found things i am good at, things that matter to me -- but i narrowed my options. when i see people flip through photographs without stopping to look at them, talk through a song they've never heard before, or read a poem without letting the words sink in, i wonder if there is any medium that will make people pay attention. i wonder if any medium is better than the others, if i ought to choose just one.

here's a prose piece that elizabeth reminded me of last week, written about the civil war in El Salvador. i warn you, it's somber:

THE COLONEL
by Carolyn Forche, May 1978

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD IS TRUE. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

posted by amanda @ 8:28 PM