Writing Tips
Saturday, January 29, 2022
For the past five years, I have been working on a memoir and now re-reading it; who cares? I can't imagine a reader watching, and I don't even care. The fact that I just completed 54,000 words on the day I was born is... well, egotistical. To sit at my desk in front of a computer or two, for six hours a day, to focus on only me, and how "me' is so important to..." me," is too much. Not to sound egotistical I tried to write about people around me, that made "me" a better or exciting person. But after studying the facts, and looking at various photo albums, I concluded that "me" is not that interesting.
The opening sentence to the memoir, "The world changed when Tosh was born on August 25, 1954, " strikes me a bit strong. But it took me around five years, and I know this because I kept a detailed journal focusing on my feelings. Eventually, I got to the following sentence. Once I got there, I found myself that I couldn't stop writing. Page after page came by, in a manner of an Orson Welles montage. But alas, the writing and subject was and is shit.
I stopped writing and listened to a lot of Robert Wyatt records. His voice conveys a comfort zone that no other singer can bring to me. Often I like to watch silent Ernst Lubitsch films with Wyatt as its soundtrack. It shouldn't work, but it works for me. I concluded that this memoir doesn't work as a piece of literature. But maybe as an art object or art piece?
The manuscript, which again focuses on the day I was born, runs to 104 typed pages. I decided to print out the manuscript, put each page in a decorative picture frame (I can get it at the local drug store cheaply), and sign each paper. The work can only be sold separately, and I will charge $150 for each framed page. This will come to around $15,600, but I am not sure about the expenses of typing paper and the frames. Maybe it should be a tad more expensive?
The project is already a pain-in-the-neck because I have to go to various CVS outlets to purchase 104 picture frames. For a minute, should I get custom-made frames? But the work inside those frames is shit, so why buy something more expensive for shit?
I finally gathered all the cheap shitty frames and spent a day and a half putting each manuscript page within these frames. I decided the best thing to do was have an exhibition at my house, so I had to remove works by Marcel Broodthaers, Jackson Pollock, and Alice Neel off my walls to replace them with my crap.
To decorate the living room where the exhibition took place, I added flower arrangements by Hiroshi Teshigahara around the room. He is my local floweriest but often a pain-in-the-ass to deal with. It is all about the aesthetic with him, and sometimes it's a bit much for me.
I didn't want to waste time with the rabble, so I put a sign on my front door that admission is $150, and with that, you get a free piece of artwork from yours truly, which of course is a page of my manuscript, not that nicely framed. Nevertheless, business was terrible, and now I have this inventory on my wall that reminds me consistently of my failure.