Today was the first day since I started working on Happy, my novel-in-progress based on my experiences in Porn Valley, blah-fucking-blah, where I was stumped, stucked, whatevered. I did a lot of writhing and procrastinating, surfing the interneting and eating of potato salading, self-hating and then finally lying on my bed with my head stuck in my pillow, imagining myself into the head of my main character until I finally had some idea of where I could start with it. Time is not something I have a lot of due to other obligations, so I wanted to, you know, get with the fucking program and also not have to spend the night tossing and turning and wondering what the hell is wrong with me for the 45th time. I was trying to make a point here, but I have practically forgotten it. I wrote anyway, and it was OK, and then I got something good at the end that I wasn't expecting. Wow, that was my point? How anticlimactic. I think it seemed more interesting when I read this afterwards via Boing Boing. It's COOP writing about what happens when the art gets away from you and becomes something else altogether, something better. ("I felt like a safe cracker, listening through a stethoscope as the tumblers fell behind the steel door, locks clanking open to reveal...") By way of another example, you can see the creative process at play on the page in the image above, as well, which is from Graham Rawle's collagist Woman's World. ("I decided on Mr. Hands for my antagonist because the word hands is easy to come by in adverts for nail polish, soap powders, and the like. The name also describes his licentious, groping nature.") And here's Rutger Hauer talking about improvising tears in the rain. ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.") Art will make you believe in God, dammit, because how else can you fucking explain it? Chance? Fate? Destiny? At the end of my scene, I wrote something unexpected. As I wrote, the words written on the man I was writing about began to shift, to writhe, to move. Maybe this pornographer is the story itself, and the story I'm writing is one in which pornography comes to life.
