I feel like my head is full of straw. Somehow I have lost all my graceful words, and when I speak on the poetry circuit all that comes out is gilded verbiage. I can't eloquate the jolting brilliance of the real. I once could. What happened? Ginsberg happened—Keats happened—what is wrong with me?
"Looks like my back door's wide open," John Talman just said. "Do you think I'm suffering from fading mind syndrome?"
"That's not a real thing," I told him. "You made that up."
"Maybe," John replied, "but maybe it's a newly discovered syndrome."
My day has been half-cooked and partially expired, just like the tub of yogurt John ate this morning. All day we've been trying to work out the true, deep details of John's introduction to the poetry community just after he was born, because John Talman is a degenerate. An artist! The rest of us follow society's rules but wish we were artists in cool hats.
We took a little trip to Toronto yesterday. "[John,] how would you rate the trip?" "It was good. We did everything we wanted to do," he said.
John said, "You know what? I'm going to be a part of the elite now. I'm joining the elites." "We're on our way, home." I said, "What are you going to do when you get there? What are the elites all about?" He replied he would take part in "all the little events and the mischief. The fun, the fight, the politics, the life without religion. Dismissing religion as gibberish." He said it's all about "being in the moment."
When you ask the universe a question, the answer boomerangs back in that moment, or in the next. In some moment, anyway. And it's up to you what you do with the truth-surge.
John sat up in bed. "Have you got anything to drink?" he said.
I'm sitting at John Talman's warm wooden desk. I came here at eight this morning to read poetry. I'm sensitive to the need to read poetry every day—it's a must. This heathen modern life has more clang to it than I like. Every day I need a dose of truth salts. I read some Marianne Moore and now I'm reading some Wallace Stevens. All the eggs are in one basket, all the day is a poster I don't want. I wake up craving truth, the immediate acknowledgement and consumption of it.
The poets show me how life really looks. I am inclined to obfuscate the woodsy realities with thoughts and wishes. The poets vividly delineate reality and grant me one perfect dandelion seed per poem. Carpe dandelion.
It is night, I go to brush my teeth, and the white foam spills out down my chin, and all I can do is relish the wet bristle sensation. Reality is happening live. I must feel it. Event by event by event.
John called me at 7:45pm on the night of Tuesday the 25th. He said, "I know you're working—don't take this as a ploy, but whatever—it's becoming a issue. Did you take my Shaw decoder?"
I laughed and laughed until my lungs ran out of breath. "No, I didn't take your Shaw decoder," I said. "I think Lee took it when he had Shaw installed," I added. I didn't actually take the Shaw decoder. ("Decoder" is an anagram of "ecodred". A nonsense word. You can also form "recode" from the letters. Which is what we do every time we tell a story.)
John had phoned to invite me for Sunday dinner but I was at a performance. He seemed sad about it, and it just occurred to me to invite him to a performance. Why didn't I think of it before? Ah well. Next time: a poets' gathering in December!
Does the romantic notion of the tortured artist still exist? It isn't real, is it? I mean, mental disorders and addictions. They all sound so colourful, so dramatic. But in real life they're just disorders and addictions.
Certainly artists have had these afflictions, but I don't think it's something artists are born with. I don't think the afflictions have helped the afflicted in their arts, I think that despite their ailments the artists still manage to turn good work. They learn to wrangle their problems.
Many times in his life John Talman has been such a tortured artist. I press my lips to the graceful spine of circular struggle. John Talman, a human like I, with the hanging-on universe weighing on his shoulders. I am glad for all the good days John has lived. Sometimes I wonder if he's my dad, no lie. Do you ever feel that way about someone? Naked maternal connection without explanation? That's what I feel about JT, and Leigh-Anne, and so many artists.
All the children of the universe are responsible for one another. I love everyone. You can too. Do it.
John said he showered last night at two in the morning because he wanted to wash the "putrid stink" off. He said it was a bullshit, crime-investigating day. What else could he do? Showering was a way to turn over the moment.
The poetry community at the time of the Vancouver Poetry Conference was swarming with misogynists. "But there were some very good boys in Vancouver," John said. And that's the good news. Art needs boys and art needs girls. Art needs the writhing bodies of everybody.
"How do you just sit there and write out pages and pages?" John asked.
"I don't know," I replied. "It's mainly garbage anyway."
("Nobody reads that garbage," John affirmed.) But he's right, it's so hard to write. If you ever see a person sitting there writing, it's like a miracle. If you ever start writing something, good job! There are so many other things to do. Certainly some things must be written above all else. I guess when you know what they are you feel the need to write them, urgently, and then you do.
That's what writing is. It's this.
I asked John, "What do two people like us talk about?"
He said, "Just the things we know. The things we're trying to find out."
I said, "That's the entire universe, you realize."
"The truthful things," he added. "There are so many untruthful things we never talk about. We have a rollercoaster kind of talking. It's like school. Sometimes we get a D, sometimes we get a B-plus." Then he concluded: "You'd be amazed at the things I've found out. I'd be writing for this journal forever, of what I found out. I've had a magnificent life."
"These people," John said. "They're so entrenched in their own scene. They don't get out and look. They know nothing about anything."
I laughed, because John always says, "They know nothing about anything!" I think he's right, too. The artists are out there seeing for themselves. Artists plunge. Artists skydive.
We decided that we're going to learn how to talk. "You should get lots of practice learning to talk," John said, "because there's a certain point at which you should talk, and if you don't, you'll be sorry."
The thing John wants to do above all else is write. What about you? Do you have a Thing that takes priority over all the other Stuff? Send me an email at the address below, I'd love to hear about it.