I've had a look at your poetry and prose-poetry. Sex and sexual frustration drive a lot of people before 20 to write verse but there's much more to your work than that. I think using English has helped you; it's as if a foreign language has given you permission to be freer than you could be in Russian. The poem about the Indian girl is beautiful. Also, there are almost echos of T.S. Eliot in the poem about the stuffy apartment. I think you must continue (that awful word "must"). But of course, we both know it's no good forcing the process. Your photo on today's post is a guide. You are very open in that picture, even though the world is harsh and as you say, battering you. If you can remain open, like a channel, the "gods" (for want of a better word) will create what they want through you. You think you write? You are mistaken. The gods write or paint or sing through you. You were right to say that taking your writing too seriously handicapped you. That was also the problem with my singing -- it was so sacred for me that I became paralysed. So you just have to do it more lightly. Just do it, like in the Nike advert, and let others, the gods themselves, be the judge of whether it's any good or not. My journalism has helped me enormously because every day, whether I felt like it or not, I had to churn out so many words in a given time. It became like shitting, honestly. My singing also in fact helped me to write. Before singing, I would always satisfy my editors but sometimes it was a bit of a strain. After singing, and learning to breathe and relax, whole pieces of work just popped into my head, as if I had downloaded them from the cosmos. And of course they were better than anything I had strained over. In your writing so far, I see fragments that are very fine. It is too early to say which fragments will remain and where they will ultimately fit. It's like doing a jig-saw puzzle. For years, I had strange fragments of this and that. Occasionally, I showed them to BBB and he said they were rubbish, because in isolation they meant nothing to him. But recently all the fragments fell into place. I was walking around VdnKH and crying out to the "gods" (before another of my terrible concerts): "Give me a voice!" And a little voice in my head said, "We have already given you a voice. Get on with it." I went home and assembled all the fragments and in a matter of a few weeks, completed a novel. It took years of inner work to gather the material but the final assembling of the fragments was fairly easy. The book is called in English "The Love Song of Udjerlah and Muthabadah". BBB has translated it into Russian under the title "Polomnitsa". I am telling you all this in order to encourage you, not to alarm you (I know you are quite shy). I don't want to push you (I can be quite pushy sometimes) but I would hate to see you give up your dreams and settle for less. You will find your own way, of that I am sure.
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Date: 2006-09-22 05:20 pm (UTC)Your photo on today's post is a guide. You are very open in that picture, even though the world is harsh and as you say, battering you. If you can remain open, like a channel, the "gods" (for want of a better word) will create what they want through you. You think you write? You are mistaken. The gods write or paint or sing through you.
You were right to say that taking your writing too seriously handicapped you. That was also the problem with my singing -- it was so sacred for me that I became paralysed. So you just have to do it more lightly. Just do it, like in the Nike advert, and let others, the gods themselves, be the judge of whether it's any good or not.
My journalism has helped me enormously because every day, whether I felt like it or not, I had to churn out so many words in a given time. It became like shitting, honestly.
My singing also in fact helped me to write. Before singing, I would always satisfy my editors but sometimes it was a bit of a strain. After singing, and learning to breathe and relax, whole pieces of work just popped into my head, as if I had downloaded them from the cosmos. And of course they were better than anything I had strained over.
In your writing so far, I see fragments that are very fine. It is too early to say which fragments will remain and where they will ultimately fit. It's like doing a jig-saw puzzle.
For years, I had strange fragments of this and that. Occasionally, I showed them to BBB and he said they were rubbish, because in isolation they meant nothing to him. But recently all the fragments fell into place.
I was walking around VdnKH and crying out to the "gods" (before another of my terrible concerts): "Give me a voice!" And a little voice in my head said, "We have already given you a voice. Get on with it."
I went home and assembled all the fragments and in a matter of a few weeks, completed a novel. It took years of inner work to gather the material but the final assembling of the fragments was fairly easy. The book is called in English "The Love Song of Udjerlah and Muthabadah". BBB has translated it into Russian under the title "Polomnitsa".
I am telling you all this in order to encourage you, not to alarm you (I know you are quite shy). I don't want to push you (I can be quite pushy sometimes) but I would hate to see you give up your dreams and settle for less. You will find your own way, of that I am sure.