Sometimes i use a voice for writing. Sometimes a voice uses me for writing. At least it feels that way. Sometimes I have a notion that a certain way of writing is best. For instance, the voice that "uses me for writing." But when i try to deliberately use that voice, it fails. It puts me in a curious position as an enthusiastic audience to my own writing, one that seeks to emulate or copy the style i find inspiring, which i supposedly produced, yet cannot successfully reproduce. I have mostly resigned myself to not bothering to chase after it any longer. I think this particular style i'm mostly referring to is best suited to shorter pieces anyway, and my failures with it have occured when i attempted to sustain it over time in discrete bursts oriented to an extended narrative. Recently I tried to use it for a novel, but it fell apart. Although finally the proper voice for that novel has come. But i think i shall salvage the original inspiration that produced the text i tried to make into a novel and serve it as a short piece. No one would ever publish it, i don't think, so I'll post it here at some point.
In the meantime, here is the original piece that i wrote that inspired this contemplation to begin with. It is obviously not without its antecdents in other authors, stylistically, (kind of kerouac meets gertrude stein, oddly) but i myself revelled in how it allowed to me portray something i otherwise could not have done with simple conventional description. I wrote it around 2003, i think. It is very interested in the idea of "there" - particularly how any city, any place really, has a particularly character or personality that is present in its, or as its, "thereness." It is also entertained by the way that "you" can be used interchangeably with "one" (or for that matter "I"), but how by using it, the reader is implicated in the experience. Of course some readers may like this, and some may not - as is always the case with anything written.
New York Story
- We went to New York and there was nothing there specifically that you could say was just one thing about it that was there, but there was a lot of everything that we were always feeling there and feeling it as everything was like always feeling it as being in New York and the feeling of New York - it was all about the fact that you were there and feeling it as there, that everywhere was always New York there - like there was this awesome moment when we went into a small and casual eating place - the kind of place where you go up to the counter like a deli and all the food is there under the glass and you ask for it and they heat it up and you pay for it and you sit down with it at the tables after picking up your plastic cutlery, and there are different people all around, and when you're done you take your paper plates and cardboard cups and plastic cups and plastic forks and knives and the napkins that you had to look around for because they came out of a dispenser shaped like an upside down trapezoid that reminded you of something, but you're not sure what, except maybe it was like something not quite typical but for sure it's in some bathrooms, but it didn't look like something that would be the thing that you'd get napkins from, and the plastic cutlery was different too because it was so thick, and you felt bad a little like you were being wasteful because you went and got some more of them after you got a brownie because you weren't sure if she picked up a knife the first time when she got the cutlery for the pizza you were sharing and for stirring sugar into the coffee you were drinking, which she didn't need because she was having iced-coffee, and you shared the brownie, and she touched base with people you were meeting up with by calling on her cell phone, and you looked around at the different people who were sitting at the tables or waiting for the tables, and you saw that there was a specific table that people did prefer, because you saw that as soon as one group left, another group would take that spot - it was coveted, it seemed - and all of this was regular, this action was quite normal, but some things were quite special - like the kid who served you at the counter who said go pay the beautiful girl down there at the cash - and he kept saying that like he wanted her to hear that he was saying that, calling her the beautiful girl that we were supposed to pay, and all the while he was smiling and being playful and getting us to play along, and there were a couple of young girls down there by the cash and he was trying to point out the one he meant, and you didn't really know which one he meant but you were surprised and you were delighted too by the whole routine and he had an interesting face, a latino face, an open face, a friendly face, a playful face, and you felt special in some way like you did the whole time you were there in New York city this time when you were there, like you were somebody, like as if everybody thought that maybe you were somebody, like you never feel at home, quite the opposite in fact, unless you're with your friends, but that's different because they know you, so the whole thing was remarkable and a little bit perplexing and a little something else because you thought you were a nobody but you didn't want them to find out because you liked the feeling, like you thought that they thought that maybe you're a somebody (like when those people threw that party for the new book by Thomas Pynchon and nobody had ever really seen him but everyone decided to come to the party in a bar in New York city dressed or made up like they thought that maybe Pynchon dressed and therefore looked like, and there was one guy there that no one recognized, so they thought that maybe it was really him, especially because he had a bad fake sounding french accent and a big white hat and because when someone took his picture he got upset and ran away just like the way they figured Pychon would because he had never had his picture shown or given any interview and would likely run away and be upset the way that this guy was, but it turned out that it wasn't him, but everybody thought perhaps he was, they thought the person was a somebody, you see, and that's the feeling that you had like you were that guy who people thought was Pynchon, even though he wasn't, and maybe he caught on to that and didn't want to disappoint them and let them know that he was not, and because then also he would have to feel that he was really no one and maybe that was something like the way that you felt too) and because it made you feel like maybe you were someone after all, and you tried to set yourself, compose yourself, and hold yourself and carry yourself too in a way that was agreeable to you and fit in with the general feeling that you were having, that maybe you were someone, which was remarkable - and you even had a look once at yourself, at your reflection in the window of a subway car and thought that you looked pretty good, which was unusual for you and not a feeling that was a common one for you to have, and perhaps it was then all of these remarkable and wondrous things combined, that rushed together suddenly as you looked around at the people in the diner as you both were getting your coats on and throwing out your trash and looking at the people there again, perhaps it was the all of everything that gave you an epiphany and made you feel a rush of love and joy for all the people there in the diner and all the people there in New York being how they are, all different of course, but somehow in some way being part of something that was peculiar, distinct and singular and specific to that moment - it was glorious - and it's getting even better as i think about it now.
