What I wrote to the Terminator list
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I am sorry I been gone… I been scuffling with myself a lot. I have had very very dark days… deciding on the head in the oven or … just stupid shit… dramatic and probably just chemical… and then I do the next indicated thing as was advised to me to do and it gets better. It passes. I have to take action tho. OR just pray through it. Going to meetings, exercising hard, just getting out my fuckin head… my mind is a dangerous neighborhood for me to be in very often. And writing makes it better, but I can be partial to pain, so I avoid writing… but it gets too very excruciating and I don’t like to let deadlines go… to have folks mad at me, so I do the work.
I just have felt too empty, too lonely to sit within myself to say anything, let alone anything of worth. And I usually can’t stand to hear myself… I read the list and feel distant from what is goin on, like how do I hold the sweetness being offered, or connect… I get so trapped in myself… and it is repugnant to me. So I try be of service, volunteer work, etc… Do we ever out grow shit self esteem? The core feeling that who you are is just… a mistake. And should be put down as soon as possible. I mean it seems to be always there for me, no matter how much work I think I’ve done, it is a very firm underpinning that I can rely on being there for me… I mean I know it is possible to repair from it - I know many who have, and I do have relief from it.. the constant self hate. But it is not disappeared… it is like being an addict, you can get a daily reprieve… but you are rarely completely struck healed… Music has been a tool for me…I been listening a lot to “And You Shall Know Us By The Trial Of Dead”, and I am kinda getting like uh, obsessed. It is so epic, the way music kinda should be. Like when I listen to the White Stripes, it is very raw, stripped down but there is a distinct region of conjured world that is so effectively evoked. I’m into that opera kinda of thing… I mean I love concise expert tight little songs – those are worlds onto themselves. Like the Killers, fuckin swell songs. I try to write them kind. They are the short stories of songs. But lately I just been into the novel or novella type of songs… the epic. Like how what The Who did and Greenday. But like Billie Holliday just does with her voice and the force of her being. Or Django Rheinhardt. Anyways, Brennen Foster turned me on to Trail Of Dead. He was on our list early on, he made that fuckin very funny Sarah Potter sticker, we were driving around LA and he’s always got this eclectic music, now on his ipod. Some music ya need like a specific situation for it that music to work- like when I was with Asia, we’d drive in her little convertible all over Italy and listen to Sea and Cake. And I’ve tried to get into it the way I was there, falling in love…
but it is too evocative of that time, and I wanna keep it like that… I just wanna hear it now and then, and be able to recall instantly that time. It was so miraculous. I remember we were lost in Florence, we were driving in circles and we asked directions from these guys in a car, and they recognized Asia and they cheered. They gave us directions to get where we were going, but they followed us! Asia had to do some fancy stunt driving to lose them and they cheered as we pulled away and they couldn’t tail us. And Sea & Cake were playing, as they were in the hills in Tuscany. Anyways, I’ve been thinking about music a lot more lately, I just finished picking out these essays / stories / pieces for the Da Capo Best Music Writing 2005 book. (http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/dacapo/index.jsp) And writing the intro was very hard, coz I basically felt like, what right do I have to be doing this, though the writing I started out doing, “professionally” was music writing for NY Press. But I wouldn’t call that uh, journalism.
And I had to find my criteria for picking the pieces, narrowing it down. Kinda like being a judge at a Belgium chocolate pie contest… the starting point is pretty dang tasty… I like this new band new called Sleep Train on Maverick. Reminds of Nine Inch Nails, and their new song, “Why do you get all the love in the world?” is poignantly accurate at capturing that sentiment, examining the popular kid, or just someone we compare our insides to their outsides and just wailing that line… “Why do YOU get all the love in the world?”
And then there is always American Analog Club which I never never get bored with. So far.
So in NYC end of Oct they’re gonna do a shin-dig release for the Da Capo, which I am lookin forward to. Anyways, just thinking a lot about the transforming nature of music, how abrupt it can be – watching a film can be like that, but it fades, the effect, but music, I can put it on and be swept up instantaneously… and how much I crave that. How stuck I feel in my own head so often, and writing my way out is so very insufferably measured, so I put on a song and get a fast break – I use it more to elevate myself lately. The stuff I am writing is so concentrated…
So I finished LABOUR, the next in the series with Cherry Hood on Last Gasp.
This is what Cherry said,
Hi JT just finished reading 'Labour' My God its incredible!!!!!!!! Could not
put it down even though I had read your older draft. its really wonderful
you are amazin!!!!! I don't know how you do such magic!!!!
If you like I saw a few insignificant (unless you are pedantic) typos ( eg.
a few times - then instead of than ) -can I mark them in red for you- I
would not change another word of it -it is perfect.
or do you want to leave it all for Michael?
I am sooo proud to be making the pictures for this book it is going to be
GREAT GREAT GREAT!
love cherry
She is talking about the marvelous Michael Ray who is going to edit again.
I think I would like him to write a thing, I don’t know what ya call it, but at the end of the book. Like how he did in Harold’s End? What did y’all think of that? He could do one at the beginning, but not give it away, the story. The feeling was with Harold’s End is it’d been published before, but this version of H.E. had a continued story and other changes… I like how he sets the stage. Or clears the table after…
I wrote to Cherry: “I am so proud of myself for completing is Cherry, I gotta say. :) Coz I felt very scared about how slow I was moving on it... I felt baffled for awhiles feeling while reading it - what the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck had I done here...? It is funny how writing is such a present tense job - I mean so of the moment, for me, it is hard to climb back and remember what the fuck was I thinking. And it was painful coz so much of what I wrote, now I feel is very uh, crappy. It's like casting a net, some garbage is gonna get in their, but man... most fisherman don't take the boots and tires home and mount them on their fuckin walls along with their swordfish. Or serve the dregs up... and I did... YIKES! That is what scares me, took me a time to realize, oh oops, lemme take that off yer plate, ain’t mean to serve you that soggy wet diapers now did I?”
Here is feedback I just got from my friend Julianna Hatfield:
JT. I'm about two thirds of the way through Labour. God, your writing
is so transcendent.You are possessed of a magical genius that I cannot
comprehend possessing. I am so in awe.
I talked to Nancy and she made it possible for me to receive your book
through my computer.I will be calling her again soon.
xo
jh
Let me just adjust my bowtie here, clear my throat and say I meant to do that… actually this makes me feel swell, but I see so many flaws still… I will tighten it up. But the story really did have its own mind and Nancy read it and she told me all these things in it and I could only say, thanks for telling me, coz they were not conscious, but they were… writing is so fuckin weird… how’s that for poetry? Weird. I can’t wait for y’all to read “Labour” and see Cherry’s paintings for it.
I ain’t posting that stuff to puff my chest, more for me to read and try to let in… that it ain’t a turd ball… maybe… coz I write in the dark often… don’t know what it means or where it is goin… the stories in The Heart where not like that, I knew before each one what it was gonna be about… but Sarah and all… just … I dunno…
I am getting in trouble about the next book… like doing these other things, and that book is there, it is running… I feel it rumbling. I have half it done, like a car I didn’t turn off, just left it, ya know idling some… But I am gonna be doin some stuff first… I just am gonna say this… for them of y’all been followin’, y’all know… just I really truly recommend y’all watch DEADWOOD… just get ready for season three…
I went to DEADWOOD. I fell in love with DEADWOOD even more and it is beyond words… I just, I just… I will write about it more… I will do a whole DEADWOOD monolog. I think it saved my life. That sounds dramatic, but I know it did… I needed a miracle. Or just hope. Same thing.
Just get the first season, rent it, steal it, buy it… DVD… and then the second… and y’all will be ready for 3… it is my world… wanna share it with y’all… please do check it out. Then you’ll know what’s to come… That show is a living novel. It is a work of art in every measure… COCKSUCKER indeed…
So, Sophia Coppola is very into this poet Richard Brautigan and I gotta say, reminds me in some of Sharon Olds. Just the directness, and the way he approaches sexual subjects very unflinchingly. Olds is more…crafted, but Brautigan cuts to the quick in a very lucid manner. I aint one to chat on poetry, me of the “weird”… I am reading Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. David Milch gave it me. Fuckin amazing writing, though it moves fast, there is an appearance of an internal world but not really… I mean it feels perfunctory… or he lavishes it on some of the characters but not others and only just so far… maybe its just the way things move… events, between the pages… anyways, the writing is often breathtaking.
Some stuff, Zembla number 8. (http://www.zemblamagazine.com/) I am in there, page 45, Asia is on the cover, GREAT interview with her... I think one of the best I’ve ever read.
Also new Zoetrope, Asia and me chattin’ bout The Heart and then a story from The Heart. (http://www.all-story.com/index.cgi)
I am scared and excited and ultimately very proud for the film to come out in the US… it means a lot of work and that is daunting…but I am gonna have a lot of rules around it this time… I love The Heart film so very much and I am very excited most for y’all to see it, for us all to talk bout it. Shainberg is making the Diane Arbus film with Nicole Kidman and they are renewing the option on Sarah which I was told they would not do if they he aint wanna make Sarah, so that should be goin soon. Gonna see Gus here in SF when he comes in for press round Last Days. Got to hang out with John Robinson again at the party for Dog Town. He is so swell in The Heart. And he is really truly a very good person. I met his whole family, which was sweet. I’ve become close with so many of the folks in that film… Ben Foster came up here for a reading we did. Just is nice, usually film families break apart… we have but we do that metal flakes thing, and get drawn up pretty fast.
Thanks to Kai for keeping the flag afloat and wheels spinning and the engine oiled, well a hecka lot more then that! And the wondrous art of Luka, wow, such loving craft, spent on me? Dang! I value y’all… I read the group and let in what I can…and I speak to y’all, it reminds me of a fairy tale lookin in a well…watching a scene of folks you love, but not being able to shout to them, to say…help…
I am here, just tryin to stay afloat. Day at a time… and do the next indicated fuckin thing… ya’ll too, right?
Yours, jt
I am sorry I been gone… I been scuffling with myself a lot. I have had very very dark days… deciding on the head in the oven or … just stupid shit… dramatic and probably just chemical… and then I do the next indicated thing as was advised to me to do and it gets better. It passes. I have to take action tho. OR just pray through it. Going to meetings, exercising hard, just getting out my fuckin head… my mind is a dangerous neighborhood for me to be in very often. And writing makes it better, but I can be partial to pain, so I avoid writing… but it gets too very excruciating and I don’t like to let deadlines go… to have folks mad at me, so I do the work.
I just have felt too empty, too lonely to sit within myself to say anything, let alone anything of worth. And I usually can’t stand to hear myself… I read the list and feel distant from what is goin on, like how do I hold the sweetness being offered, or connect… I get so trapped in myself… and it is repugnant to me. So I try be of service, volunteer work, etc… Do we ever out grow shit self esteem? The core feeling that who you are is just… a mistake. And should be put down as soon as possible. I mean it seems to be always there for me, no matter how much work I think I’ve done, it is a very firm underpinning that I can rely on being there for me… I mean I know it is possible to repair from it - I know many who have, and I do have relief from it.. the constant self hate. But it is not disappeared… it is like being an addict, you can get a daily reprieve… but you are rarely completely struck healed… Music has been a tool for me…I been listening a lot to “And You Shall Know Us By The Trial Of Dead”, and I am kinda getting like uh, obsessed. It is so epic, the way music kinda should be. Like when I listen to the White Stripes, it is very raw, stripped down but there is a distinct region of conjured world that is so effectively evoked. I’m into that opera kinda of thing… I mean I love concise expert tight little songs – those are worlds onto themselves. Like the Killers, fuckin swell songs. I try to write them kind. They are the short stories of songs. But lately I just been into the novel or novella type of songs… the epic. Like how what The Who did and Greenday. But like Billie Holliday just does with her voice and the force of her being. Or Django Rheinhardt. Anyways, Brennen Foster turned me on to Trail Of Dead. He was on our list early on, he made that fuckin very funny Sarah Potter sticker, we were driving around LA and he’s always got this eclectic music, now on his ipod. Some music ya need like a specific situation for it that music to work- like when I was with Asia, we’d drive in her little convertible all over Italy and listen to Sea and Cake. And I’ve tried to get into it the way I was there, falling in love…
but it is too evocative of that time, and I wanna keep it like that… I just wanna hear it now and then, and be able to recall instantly that time. It was so miraculous. I remember we were lost in Florence, we were driving in circles and we asked directions from these guys in a car, and they recognized Asia and they cheered. They gave us directions to get where we were going, but they followed us! Asia had to do some fancy stunt driving to lose them and they cheered as we pulled away and they couldn’t tail us. And Sea & Cake were playing, as they were in the hills in Tuscany. Anyways, I’ve been thinking about music a lot more lately, I just finished picking out these essays / stories / pieces for the Da Capo Best Music Writing 2005 book. (http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/dacapo/index.jsp) And writing the intro was very hard, coz I basically felt like, what right do I have to be doing this, though the writing I started out doing, “professionally” was music writing for NY Press. But I wouldn’t call that uh, journalism.
And I had to find my criteria for picking the pieces, narrowing it down. Kinda like being a judge at a Belgium chocolate pie contest… the starting point is pretty dang tasty… I like this new band new called Sleep Train on Maverick. Reminds of Nine Inch Nails, and their new song, “Why do you get all the love in the world?” is poignantly accurate at capturing that sentiment, examining the popular kid, or just someone we compare our insides to their outsides and just wailing that line… “Why do YOU get all the love in the world?”
And then there is always American Analog Club which I never never get bored with. So far.
So in NYC end of Oct they’re gonna do a shin-dig release for the Da Capo, which I am lookin forward to. Anyways, just thinking a lot about the transforming nature of music, how abrupt it can be – watching a film can be like that, but it fades, the effect, but music, I can put it on and be swept up instantaneously… and how much I crave that. How stuck I feel in my own head so often, and writing my way out is so very insufferably measured, so I put on a song and get a fast break – I use it more to elevate myself lately. The stuff I am writing is so concentrated…
So I finished LABOUR, the next in the series with Cherry Hood on Last Gasp.
This is what Cherry said,
Hi JT just finished reading 'Labour' My God its incredible!!!!!!!! Could not
put it down even though I had read your older draft. its really wonderful
you are amazin!!!!! I don't know how you do such magic!!!!
If you like I saw a few insignificant (unless you are pedantic) typos ( eg.
a few times - then instead of than ) -can I mark them in red for you- I
would not change another word of it -it is perfect.
or do you want to leave it all for Michael?
I am sooo proud to be making the pictures for this book it is going to be
GREAT GREAT GREAT!
love cherry
She is talking about the marvelous Michael Ray who is going to edit again.
I think I would like him to write a thing, I don’t know what ya call it, but at the end of the book. Like how he did in Harold’s End? What did y’all think of that? He could do one at the beginning, but not give it away, the story. The feeling was with Harold’s End is it’d been published before, but this version of H.E. had a continued story and other changes… I like how he sets the stage. Or clears the table after…
I wrote to Cherry: “I am so proud of myself for completing is Cherry, I gotta say. :) Coz I felt very scared about how slow I was moving on it... I felt baffled for awhiles feeling while reading it - what the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck had I done here...? It is funny how writing is such a present tense job - I mean so of the moment, for me, it is hard to climb back and remember what the fuck was I thinking. And it was painful coz so much of what I wrote, now I feel is very uh, crappy. It's like casting a net, some garbage is gonna get in their, but man... most fisherman don't take the boots and tires home and mount them on their fuckin walls along with their swordfish. Or serve the dregs up... and I did... YIKES! That is what scares me, took me a time to realize, oh oops, lemme take that off yer plate, ain’t mean to serve you that soggy wet diapers now did I?”
Here is feedback I just got from my friend Julianna Hatfield:
JT. I'm about two thirds of the way through Labour. God, your writing
is so transcendent.You are possessed of a magical genius that I cannot
comprehend possessing. I am so in awe.
I talked to Nancy and she made it possible for me to receive your book
through my computer.I will be calling her again soon.
xo
jh
Let me just adjust my bowtie here, clear my throat and say I meant to do that… actually this makes me feel swell, but I see so many flaws still… I will tighten it up. But the story really did have its own mind and Nancy read it and she told me all these things in it and I could only say, thanks for telling me, coz they were not conscious, but they were… writing is so fuckin weird… how’s that for poetry? Weird. I can’t wait for y’all to read “Labour” and see Cherry’s paintings for it.
I ain’t posting that stuff to puff my chest, more for me to read and try to let in… that it ain’t a turd ball… maybe… coz I write in the dark often… don’t know what it means or where it is goin… the stories in The Heart where not like that, I knew before each one what it was gonna be about… but Sarah and all… just … I dunno…
I am getting in trouble about the next book… like doing these other things, and that book is there, it is running… I feel it rumbling. I have half it done, like a car I didn’t turn off, just left it, ya know idling some… But I am gonna be doin some stuff first… I just am gonna say this… for them of y’all been followin’, y’all know… just I really truly recommend y’all watch DEADWOOD… just get ready for season three…
I went to DEADWOOD. I fell in love with DEADWOOD even more and it is beyond words… I just, I just… I will write about it more… I will do a whole DEADWOOD monolog. I think it saved my life. That sounds dramatic, but I know it did… I needed a miracle. Or just hope. Same thing.
Just get the first season, rent it, steal it, buy it… DVD… and then the second… and y’all will be ready for 3… it is my world… wanna share it with y’all… please do check it out. Then you’ll know what’s to come… That show is a living novel. It is a work of art in every measure… COCKSUCKER indeed…
So, Sophia Coppola is very into this poet Richard Brautigan and I gotta say, reminds me in some of Sharon Olds. Just the directness, and the way he approaches sexual subjects very unflinchingly. Olds is more…crafted, but Brautigan cuts to the quick in a very lucid manner. I aint one to chat on poetry, me of the “weird”… I am reading Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. David Milch gave it me. Fuckin amazing writing, though it moves fast, there is an appearance of an internal world but not really… I mean it feels perfunctory… or he lavishes it on some of the characters but not others and only just so far… maybe its just the way things move… events, between the pages… anyways, the writing is often breathtaking.
Some stuff, Zembla number 8. (http://www.zemblamagazine.com/) I am in there, page 45, Asia is on the cover, GREAT interview with her... I think one of the best I’ve ever read.
Also new Zoetrope, Asia and me chattin’ bout The Heart and then a story from The Heart. (http://www.all-story.com/index.cgi)
I am scared and excited and ultimately very proud for the film to come out in the US… it means a lot of work and that is daunting…but I am gonna have a lot of rules around it this time… I love The Heart film so very much and I am very excited most for y’all to see it, for us all to talk bout it. Shainberg is making the Diane Arbus film with Nicole Kidman and they are renewing the option on Sarah which I was told they would not do if they he aint wanna make Sarah, so that should be goin soon. Gonna see Gus here in SF when he comes in for press round Last Days. Got to hang out with John Robinson again at the party for Dog Town. He is so swell in The Heart. And he is really truly a very good person. I met his whole family, which was sweet. I’ve become close with so many of the folks in that film… Ben Foster came up here for a reading we did. Just is nice, usually film families break apart… we have but we do that metal flakes thing, and get drawn up pretty fast.
Thanks to Kai for keeping the flag afloat and wheels spinning and the engine oiled, well a hecka lot more then that! And the wondrous art of Luka, wow, such loving craft, spent on me? Dang! I value y’all… I read the group and let in what I can…and I speak to y’all, it reminds me of a fairy tale lookin in a well…watching a scene of folks you love, but not being able to shout to them, to say…help…
I am here, just tryin to stay afloat. Day at a time… and do the next indicated fuckin thing… ya’ll too, right?
Yours, jt
posted by JT LeRoy at 11:31 AM
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