I bought 10 books at a book fair a while ago days ago, one of them was Notes From Underground by Fydor Dostoyevsky, the Russian dude who wasn’t Tolstoy who wrote epic works. I bought it because it was a short, bite sized piece of work by an epic author. Like reading a naughty haiku by Shakespeare.
writers are humans not gods
I slightly resent the fact that writers like him- and Shakespeare, and David Foster Wallace- are made out to be these towering Atlas figures that are meant for hyper-intellectuals. That they’re put on pedestals. I wish we could appreciate and enjoy them as ‘regular’ writers- human beings who had something to say, rather than eccentric geniuses who had some sort of madness that the rest of us will likely never have. I don’t think that’s the case, and I think humanity is impoverished when we talk about humans like that.
A part of me has always wanted to read Crime and Punishment- I once read a passage from it cited elsewhere that I found riveting. But the book itself is just such an epic that I find myself thinking “I will read it when I am ready for such an epic quest.” But that’s bullshit, nobody is ever ready for an epic quest. Nobody ever was. You’re never ready to build a house, to climb a mountain, to eat an elephant. You start small and you start yesterday.
And so I read. And so I write. And so it goes.
Anyway, I’m really enjoying Notes From Underground. It’s barely 150 pages, a light and breezy read about this somewhat neurotic person writing to deal with the absurdity of existence. I find myself laughing out loud as I witness him describing silly things that I’ve done.
I wonder what I’d have thought of this book as a depressed existential teenager- it would probably have become my little anthem, psychological solidarity I had with this weird Russian author from the 1700s. I would’ve felt less lonely, but I might also have fallen into the trap of hero worship. Who knows.
When I’m reading it now though, I smile. I want to kiss him and give him a hug and tell him that I understand, and at the same time, be the friend that tells him that digging into the depths of the abyss is no different from scratching an itch until it bleeds. And this is what a lot of these psychoanalyzing authors seemed to have done- they dug deeper and deeper and then they became the dig. It is unsurprising that so many of them turned to drink, to drugs, to suicide.
Contemplation has to lead to action in real life, else the outer world that we live in becomes unbearable in comparison to the elaborate cathedrals and dungeons we construct in our minds.
mental health for creatives
Writers and artists etc really ought to take care of their mental health. They ought to exercise, especially. A herculean demand on the mind requires a resilient physical ecosystem to accomodate the pressure, or else the odds of implosion are simply too high. (Elizabeth Gilbert’s thoughts on this are great.) This is self-evident to me right now. I’m not sure if I’ll think differently about it.
Should artists suffer for their art? I think there’s enough suffering in the world to go around without us actively (or consciously-passively) creating our own. Our lives are our canvas, and we can and should seek to affirm and enrich the lives of others, if only so we get to see them flourish and create art of their own. It makes for a more interesting world. Life is brief, it should at least be fun and Interesting, and It doesn’t need to be damaging/toxic while we’re at it.
I can remember my old thoughts as a smoker- life itself is toxic, what does it matter if I choose to poison myself further? In fact, fuck existence for this cosmic joke. If we’re headed off the cliff anyway, then I want to be in the driver’s seat.
What has changed? I’m still aware that we’re headed off the cliff and that everything is pointless in the ultimate, absolute sense. So why bother building anything?
The idea is to have the most pleasurable time possible before we hurtle to our inevitable deaths.
And this pleasure should be as rich and glorious as possible. The thing about cigarettes and cynicism and self-flagellation of any kind is that it doesn’t actually increase your freedom over the duration of your Lifegame.
Cigarettes are a great case study. When you first start smoking when you’re still too young to buy your own cigarettes, cigarettes are naughty and exciting. They allow you to escape from crushing reality, to carve out your own little spaces on your own terms. All of this is a temporary illusion though. Eventually cigarettes become a crushing reality by itself. What started as pleasure becomes an obligation, a routine. It holds your mind hostage, and it abuses your health the whole time- you never quite notice it moment by moment, but your vision gets blurrier from the smoke and squinting, your skin and lips and mouth dry out, you just become this inorganic, deathly husk. All because you thought it was fun and exciting and not that big a deal.
Repeated re-evaluation
I guess it’s really important to reevaluate eveeything in your life every month. The first or last of every month ought to be reevaluate-your-life day. What are my assumptions? What can I change?
Heh, stopped writing at the above line, and am continuing now as a second write- and it occurs to me that I’ve said this whole “reevaluate your life” thing repeatedly. I suppose I repeat myself over and over when there’s something I really want to do that I haven’t gotten around to doing yet. The repetition is me keeping the idea top-of-mind, me knowing that if I don’t remind myself of something it’ll almost definitely fade out. So that’s interesting. I’m definitely going to do a re-read of my vomits and extract out the things that I said I should do, and follow my own advice.
There’s a good chance I’m going to say this again and again until I finally do it. Maybe there’s something important/valuable about the repetition. I think some songwriters have said- if you can’t remember the melody, it probably wasn’t very good. Maybe it’s the same with these things, and maybe that’s why oscillating between states is such a necessity. Just as how rebelliousness in the teenage years is good for people, so that they don’t get stuck in dogma (entirely), perhaps forgetfulness and a tendency to repeat oneself is healthy because it always you to focus on what’s important.
Maybe. We’ll see. All that matters to me right now is that I be proflic. Let’s go.