Don't think Jack would like the competition from such a bright young thing! I've been viewing the thread on my email and answering from there. Will try to get my head around it. In some ways, I'm a genius but in others I'm quite slow, you know :))
I have experienced a fair amount of success and even modest fame in my life. But for some reason, all the achievement and praise mean absolutely nothing compared with the failure in the one thing that mattered to me: singing. It's bloody painful and the pain won't go away. And my black heart envies every successful singer I see. Why should this be?
seriously? so the bejeweled newt is you! well, i can relate to that. i have never been really successful, but i have been praised for different things at different times in my life, and yet my failure as a writer (i stopped writing when i was around 20) outweighs everything. although i no longer have that sort of respect for writers, it still feels as if writing were the only medium or way or expression that matters. probably, because it all started with writing. tell me more about your singing?
The Buddhists would say our pain is to make us enlightened. Maybe I will be a singer in my next life and you will be a writer, although you are still young enough to have a chance in this life. So don't give up. As a writer myself, I can give you one tip: You should write as easily, freely and simply as you speak. And you should visualise clearly whom you are addressing. Writing is just speaking on paper. (Conversely, you should speak with all the richness of language and ideas that you would use in writing. Speaking is writing on air.) In fact, from the way you chat to me, I can see that you would write very well in a contemporary style (with no capitals!) I recommend you read anything you can get hold of by Nick Hornby (author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, How to be Good). He writes in exactly this speaking style. Russia needs good new writers. For God's sake, we can't go on reading Alexandra Marinina, Daria Donskaya and at a slightly better level, Boris Akunin for the rest of our lives! My friend Misha Butov, who was a poet, won the Russian Booker Prize for his book, Freedom. Why shouldn't Mr. V. Lee, who is clearly very sensitive to the world around him, become a writer? I believe you still could. As for my singing, I am 50 and for a professional career, that is simply too old, although I do still sing old ballads to the lute at small gatherings. I have a very rare alto voice but unfortunately never mastered the techniques to make it carry in big halls. You will read the bejewelled newt to the end and understand. It is a self-portrait of me and BBB. My comfort is that I have found my voice in words.
that reminds me of the advice someone gives in one of muriel spark's novels: 'when you write, don't think of the audience, that will put you off. instead, imagine that you're writing a letter to a very close friend.' something like that. you see, my taking writing very seriously is a hindrance, because being oversensitive makes practicing impossible. on the other hand, desacralizing writing feels wrong. when i write, i get frustrated almost immediately. i tried to lower the barrier, writing whatever comes to mind and posting it in this journal, but that doesn't work either, because it's just a longer road to frustration. but i do write sometimes, and i have a tag for that, heh-heh: http://vriad-lee.livejournal.com/tag/moi
i don't think i've read anything by бутов, but overall modern russian writers have been so disappointing that i just stopped reading them! and i don't mean донская or маринина, i haven't read such stigmatized women novelists at all, but сорокин, пелевин, толстая, лимонов, виктор ерофеев, проханов, and many many others have been all disappointing. although i like some early things by sorokin, and i was a great fan of limonov for some while, but. btw, tomka posted a link to her short stories recently, i really liked some of them.
as for your singing, i didn't realize it was a recent story. for some reason, i assumed that it all was a long time ago. judging by your drawings, you learn exceptionally fast. as long as you love singing, maybe it's okay that you don't have a professional career. a real career would make you sacrifice everything else. in contrast, singing for small audiences can coexist with many other things/activities.
I'll take a careful look at your writing later :)) I agree with you that Toma's short stories have a lot of promise and I am trying to encourage her to continue. (By the way, the one about the Guy Fawkes in London is set in the time when she visited me there.) When I go away to England next week (for three weeks), she will live at my flat, where it is nice and quiet, and try to complete a new story she is working on. I think you're probably right about my singing too. It is better to stay an amateur and go on loving music than to become a professional and start to hate it because of all the pressure.
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.
you're right! it's easier to write in english for me since it gives a better pretext, and i need a pretext to write. i don't know if that's shyness or squeamishness or impatience, perhaps a mix of all these plus laziness. i didn't know you wrote prose, i thought you were talking about journalism when you referred to your writing. it would be very interesting to read your book, especially in english, since russian translations of what you post in your journal are slightly disappointing in comparison. all of your work i've seen so far - painting and writing - is more or less in naive style, and i really wonder what your novel would be like? i understand very well what you say about a jig-saw puzzle, the inner work you do over years, never realizing you are doing it until all the pieces fall into place. i think the most striking examples of this are in childhood/adolescence, when your status/abilities/scope blow from tiny to gigantic over summer, just because you grow. yes, i also understand what you mean by 'channel' and 'gods' (for want of a better word!), although i try to avoid this subject, since if it's there, there's no reason to talk about it, and if it's not, it makes no sense. but i think anyone who's ever had an inspiration understands the concept of being unconnected from one's own art, as in artist being only a medium. i think that you present a good example of this concept, it's really difficult to believe that you'd never been painting before last summer. probably, you just reached a certain degree of freedom that makes you able to do that. it's so complex and so connected to 'karma', 'morality', 'fate', everything, that it's really impossible to force oneself (after you realize all that). if you don't do that, you are not ready.
I know what you mean about pretext, or perhaps you mean subject. In Yorkshire we say, "if you've got nowt (nothing) to say, don't say it." Until you are ripe, silence is better. But the subjects will come. You are right, "the readiness is all." If you would really like to read my novel and are not just being polite, I can send it to you by email attachment.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 09:32 am (UTC)I've been viewing the thread on my email and answering from there. Will try to get my head around it. In some ways, I'm a genius but in others I'm quite slow, you know :))
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 10:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 10:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 10:30 am (UTC)well, i can relate to that. i have never been really successful, but i have been praised for different things at different times in my life, and yet my failure as a writer (i stopped writing when i was around 20) outweighs everything. although i no longer have that sort of respect for writers, it still feels as if writing were the only medium or way or expression that matters. probably, because it all started with writing.
tell me more about your singing?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 10:53 am (UTC)As a writer myself, I can give you one tip: You should write as easily, freely and simply as you speak. And you should visualise clearly whom you are addressing. Writing is just speaking on paper. (Conversely, you should speak with all the richness of language and ideas that you would use in writing. Speaking is writing on air.)
In fact, from the way you chat to me, I can see that you would write very well in a contemporary style (with no capitals!) I recommend you read anything you can get hold of by Nick Hornby (author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, How to be Good). He writes in exactly this speaking style.
Russia needs good new writers. For God's sake, we can't go on reading Alexandra Marinina, Daria Donskaya and at a slightly better level, Boris Akunin for the rest of our lives! My friend Misha Butov, who was a poet, won the Russian Booker Prize for his book, Freedom. Why shouldn't Mr. V. Lee, who is clearly very sensitive to the world around him, become a writer? I believe you still could.
As for my singing, I am 50 and for a professional career, that is simply too old, although I do still sing old ballads to the lute at small gatherings. I have a very rare alto voice but unfortunately never mastered the techniques to make it carry in big halls. You will read the bejewelled newt to the end and understand. It is a self-portrait of me and BBB. My comfort is that I have found my voice in words.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 11:59 am (UTC)you see, my taking writing very seriously is a hindrance, because being oversensitive makes practicing impossible. on the other hand, desacralizing writing feels wrong. when i write, i get frustrated almost immediately. i tried to lower the barrier, writing whatever comes to mind and posting it in this journal, but that doesn't work either, because it's just a longer road to frustration. but i do write sometimes, and i have a tag for that, heh-heh: http://vriad-lee.livejournal.com/tag/moi
i don't think i've read anything by бутов, but overall modern russian writers have been so disappointing that i just stopped reading them! and i don't mean донская or маринина, i haven't read such stigmatized women novelists at all, but сорокин, пелевин, толстая, лимонов, виктор ерофеев, проханов, and many many others have been all disappointing. although i like some early things by sorokin, and i was a great fan of limonov for some while, but. btw, tomka posted a link to her short stories recently, i really liked some of them.
as for your singing, i didn't realize it was a recent story. for some reason, i assumed that it all was a long time ago. judging by your drawings, you learn exceptionally fast. as long as you love singing, maybe it's okay that you don't have a professional career. a real career would make you sacrifice everything else. in contrast, singing for small audiences can coexist with many other things/activities.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 12:23 pm (UTC)I agree with you that Toma's short stories have a lot of promise and I am trying to encourage her to continue. (By the way, the one about the Guy Fawkes in London is set in the time when she visited me there.) When I go away to England next week (for three weeks), she will live at my flat, where it is nice and quiet, and try to complete a new story she is working on.
I think you're probably right about my singing too. It is better to stay an amateur and go on loving music than to become a professional and start to hate it because of all the pressure.
(no subject)
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-22 07:39 pm (UTC)i understand very well what you say about a jig-saw puzzle, the inner work you do over years, never realizing you are doing it until all the pieces fall into place. i think the most striking examples of this are in childhood/adolescence, when your status/abilities/scope blow from tiny to gigantic over summer, just because you grow. yes, i also understand what you mean by 'channel' and 'gods' (for want of a better word!), although i try to avoid this subject, since if it's there, there's no reason to talk about it, and if it's not, it makes no sense. but i think anyone who's ever had an inspiration understands the concept of being unconnected from one's own art, as in artist being only a medium. i think that you present a good example of this concept, it's really difficult to believe that you'd never been painting before last summer. probably, you just reached a certain degree of freedom that makes you able to do that. it's so complex and so connected to 'karma', 'morality', 'fate', everything, that it's really impossible to force oneself (after you realize all that). if you don't do that, you are not ready.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 05:20 am (UTC)If you would really like to read my novel and are not just being polite, I can send it to you by email attachment.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 05:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 05:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-23 05:47 am (UTC)