Lost Notes! In Memoriam...

The "process" of writing seems to be breaking down to a point where the documentation (where and how the writing is put down) IS the process. Yet the thoughts about the work always seem to exist separate from it. Alienating? Yes. Attempting to fully integrate the analog to digital is daunting, and perhaps not worth so much of the effort unless one started here in the first place.

I've always loved taking notes, but recently I've begun to realize something.. I'm a bit chained to them. I can't let the ideas go, and once they're on paper, they're like little links in a chain all wrapped around me Jacob Marley style. I recognize the kind of crazy that leads me to write a poem behind a restaurant overlooking a swatch of train track and a parking lot- the same place where a homeless woman has lately set up sleeping quarters. Or the wizened Confuscious in the Sulzer branch of the public library- always there at the same desk and chair, always compulsively writing and copying from one notebook to the next. I recently read "Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell. He quotes Ken Gould: "Education lays the foundation for a large number of the causes for metal disorder."

But the true nature of this kind of work dictates that I must keep doing whatever I'm doing in order to become literate in my own metaphor by conceptualizing (or re-conceptualizing, here, among the notes) my environment within the realms of all of my chosen activities. The redemptive cohesion of all of this being autodidactism: the world is my classroom and I am its best student.
The collected experience and memories coupled with my imagination allow me to construct an "alternate history", which is, which will be, in the greatest sense, my life's work.

But back to the practical applications: I'm typing up a lot of these notes, mostly from a scribbled-in notebook, which are ideas for stories and images and titles and research subjects and just about anything. I've typed them all up before, and with mixed feelings on the result. I ended up printing out the document, which then just became another piece of paper to carry around and scribble on. Used to carry a list of music and movies I wanted to find in my wallet in a similar manner. Gets pretty messy and you feel messy using it. Using my phone for notes and recordings is only slightly unwieldy, but moreso untrustworthy. There's really no way for me to back that information up other than to make an attempt to immediately transfer to the computer or to paper.
Does this dilemma continue ad infinitum? HA! Probably. But people ask a lot, so here's a rundown what I'm up to at the moment, and how things are going, writing-wise.

Considering the following projects:
-Reading work on video, posting to youTube.
-Typing up and editing my collected erotic fictions
-Pulling some pre-existing poems written independently of one another into a cycle.
-Reverse engineering some stories and short cell phone films I've taken by storyboarding them.

Engaging currently the following projects:
-"Artifact" series: learning vocab by writing a small poem on an envelope which includes said word, and placing the word in the envelope and placing the envelope in between book pages at the library, or taping the envelope up outside somewhere.
-"Youth in 23": one poem for each of the chapter titles of a DVD. In this case, there are 23 titles/chapters on the DVD for Francois Truffault's "400 Blows".
-Finishing up a response to Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons", started back in college and titled "OBJECTIVES".
- "Rock Star" Poetry/Short Fiction Series: This took off all the sudden. I wrote one about John Lennon in a hotel and Tom Verlaine on a rooftop and now I've got about 10 of these.. so they are taking on a life of their own at this point. Fun to write and good practice.
- And, of course, Editing!!- 5 short stories left of a cashe of typed work to complete.


AND HEY,
I turned 30 today. I swear I got cuter...