My acclamation back to New York is taking longer than I thought. I thought I would be able to slip right back into my old life, but the tiring (but wonderful) weeklong trip to the Shore stood in the way of that.
This weekend, even though I had a lot of work to do, I had to get out and do something intellectual or I would’ve felt closed in during the work week. Last night I went out with Matt for burritos, and then we went over to Union Hall briefly to see some bands that ended up being awful.
Matt also got me a limited edition single of the new !!! track, “AM/FM,” from Strange Weather. It is clear vinyl, which looks awesome.
We got ice coffees and hung out in Prospect Park for a few hours today, drinking in the wonderful weather from a shady bench under a stand of trees. We walked back to his house and watched awful/hilarious videos on YouTube.
In the late afternoon, I went to meet Yevgeny at Shake Shack (which I’d never been to). The weather was fabulous, and we didn’t have to wait too long in line for our burgers. I got this vegetarian burger made out of mushrooms and cheese, which was delicious. We were to see a documentary on the unfinished Henri-Georges Clouzot film Inferno (the above photo is a still from the film).
I want to write more, but my voice-recognition sucks and my wrists hurt. The documentary was interesting, but raised more questions than it answered. I loved all of the experimental footage, but the plot of the supposedly 300-page script was a poorly concealed Proust ripoff. The main characters were Marcel and Odette. Good writers steal, I guess. I should go to sleep. I hate literally not being able to write.
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No, the quote is “Well-stolen is half-written.” This is not carte blanche to steal, and stealing doesn’t make you a good writer. Remember that the emphasis is on WELL stolen, meaning that what you take — from your own real life, from others’ writing, from history, etc. — is taken in such a way that it enhances and magnifies the story or poem, rather than props it up.
BTW, sometimes I have witnessed that burgeoning writers have to do some autobiography thinly disguised as fiction in order to clear the way for what is more authentically fiction.