Editing 'Ever' & Punk

I am working with Derek now from Nairobi making edits on my 'Ever' manuscript.

It is funny, making final words. With proofs from magazines I mostly always feel some kind of thing running in nodules on my back. Something final with them, but final only for a second. These edits here are 'final' final.

In the early stages now I feel very good, though, about the way things are going. Derek is making images and developing page layouts for the text that make me feel excited and ready to nail this thing into what it exactly wants to be.

The structure of the text is strange, slightly less usual than most other books. I'd used a numbering system on the lines while I was making them so I could keep the thoughts in strands, kind of layered, but as it is being put to the page the numbers are less vital, and there are other ways to guide the text. Reading the book I think in the end will be more an experience than a read, at least that is what I am hoping, and from what Derek has done so far, it feels true to think that.

People are funny about letting others edit their work. I think I like it, the interchange at least, especially when the editor is someone I trust a lot. It is like switching another tint in pane of glass at a window to see what the yard looks like that way. Something.

There are lots of little things wedged hidden in the lines that I am remembering only as I read them, I don't really remember writing most of this thing I'm finding, it's almost like editing someone else's work, which is nice.

In my room at night now there is no way to get out all the light.

Someone has been letting themselves into our apartment supposedly for upkeep reasons such as changing the blinds. When we got home from NYC there were mud prints all over the floor. They had not removed the trash outside and the trash bag was covered in huge maggots looking for a way in.

Yesterday I spent many hours line editing and moving through Derek's notes then came home and we cleaned up the house trying to make it ours again.

I tried to find a youtube clip of my favorite scene in Lost Highway, it's not even a scene really, just the parts where Bill Pullman's character is walking through the house in the dark, looking for his wife, and there are parts of the house that seem to stretch forever into darkness and he just walks into them and is gone, then reappears somewhere else.

I just now remembered that I'd said before how I felt like the 10 day novel I wrote was set in that house in Lost Highway, which is actually David Lynch's house, and I also feel this novella is set in that house, if another part of it entirely.

My friend just called to let me know he got in trouble for having printed out a mail in his Gmail browser to hand in to a professor at his school, which happened to have his Gmail chat buddy list on the page with it, including my current away message 'MY PUSSY IS COLLAPSING.' The teacher was not amused.

If someone gave me $10,000 I feel like I could change my life and possibly several other people's lives, $10,000 is not a lot of money to a lot of people, it could probably even be a lot less than that, maybe just like $6 or $7 thousand, I would not use it on my self but on making things, I read somewhere today that the average CEO makes in 3 hours what an average blue collar low pay worker makes in a year. Those people should be required to give one half-hour of their pay each month to an artist to make art. Or probably to hungry people first, but I think more importantly to make art. Is that more important than eating? Let's not have anyone complain about me saying that, or how it would be bullshit if those rich people were required to give $$ away and no one else was, who gives a fuck.

I am tired of hearing about the election. The same thing is going to happen no matter what. Nothing is going to change except for what would change by the year anyway, I think, it's like flushing the toilet. The 2nd time I saw Don Caballero right before they broke up and Damon Che was pissed about the drum sound, about the way the drums had been mic'd, he got on a mic and asked if anyone in the audience had a paper chef's hat, he said 'We desperately need a paper chef's hat to come up and mic the drums.' It was funny. It's sort of like that.

Poets and Writers talked about Calamari Press kindly, I agree with the word 'punk' Peter Markus used in relation to their ethic, 'punk' has become a misplaced word, maligned, when people say 'punk' now they are often referring to shit like NOFX or Warped Tour or some other bullshit that is basically a commodification of indie beer sold to you by men whose Vans are suits, I think Calamari is more indicative of the real meaning of the word 'punk,' the meaning exhibited in the creation of work like The Clash's SANDINISTA! or the Eno records by Talking Heads, and less in the beat-yourself-in-the-head-while-puking-PBR idea that it's been torn into.

Noy Holland is punk.

New York Tyrant is punk.

Ellipsis Press is punk.

Gaspar Noe is punk.

Chris Higgs is punk.

Tao Lin is punk.

Sam Pink is punk.

Brian Evenson is punk.

Gordon Lish is punk.

DIAGRAM is punk.

Gene Morgan is very punk.

I would try to name a recent band now that's punk, real punk, but that's not really possible anymore, try to argue with me.

My friend said he'd buy my book if it has the word 'titties' in it, I am going to go find a way to get 'titties' in it, if it's not there already, it might be.

Titties are punk, sometimes, though if often not at all.