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Showing posts with label author. Show all posts
Showing posts with label author. Show all posts
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Thursday, September 17, 2015
A New Project: Can A Writer Devolve Through Their Choices of Subject?
Cher Compatriot!
I am, myself, beginning a new writing project, my third novel. It is a wonder how I have over the past two years decided upon a character to explore for this very ambitious attempt to investigate the meaning of Capitalism to human lives. It is a greater wonder how a character so foreign to my stead identity as male, sexually ambiguous, and performatively rather masculine, inspires fear that writing he, who is transgender, is a threat to my own happily closed-case self-questioning which lasted all but the three seconds to finish the question: could I be transgender? But I am reopening the case somewhat. Or no?
For several years I have claimed in jest that I am a "method author". That I am prone to engender the manner and even attempt the attire of my main characters has been a joy which I have taken in my lazy days as an author obscure, as an eccentric artist in my bible belt California town where others tolerate my antics as foppery or possible lunacy, to my total disregard. Yet now, this character presents a challenge. Will the topic of gender identity confusion and examination plummet me into a period of self-questioning? Awkward days of mistaken gestures as a slip of my character's voice finds expression by my roiling passion to return to my word-processor to compose the effluence before all is lost to the wind maybe.
Am I scared? Not hardly. Am I ready? Not at all.
The project begins September 20th, 2015 and I will surely update you, my dear readers. It is titled "The Economic Prisoner", go figure.
Martin Beth Younan
Thursday, July 25, 2013
What To Write
In my previous blog entry, I touched upon the crisis of humanity at its evolution to adopt science as investigator and not the poet (author, dramatist, etc...). This evolution of specialization as the best option which so many have taken as a good as they want to be good at something too. This commodification of knowledge has led to so much disarray. God is dead! Sure. Might makes right. At first, yes. But better living through chemistry. Or, the world is your oyster. Damn it! All these expressions have no wisdom. What happened to the bud of the flower? What comes of society at inspection of these notions? Science is a divorce from intuition as it fails to achieve analogs from human experience of the transcendent to explain the chaos. I have yet to read a scientific theory which supports the wisdom traditions. Evolution is based in competition. Abel would have never forgiven Cain. Commercialism and the market is so snakey and we bite that apple everyday, with every dollar we spend. Do you see? Buddha would never permit such indulgence in ego or social standing as we each have. I am sad. A tear for the wise men.
What is this war and the failure of each at it. We are slain soldiers. In every hospital in the world is a victim of consumerism. Yet the author's only vault is to sell his product. The desire to disseminate the good message is grand and noble, yet how many successful authors are spreading a message which brings the reader to a greater or safer or more aware level? Not many. I am sad again.
When we can share in the sense of justice as children of the world, we can regain the fear of punishment. Children have an apt sense of just consequence. Their tears are the work of the unjust. They cry for you to tell them a story which will recreate an image of justice so they may feel like that place they came from is not a lie, a delusion, an abyss, but the origin of all things. Call it will, life force, anything. But don't call it reality. Reality has never been consentual. Maybe that is where the poet failed? Maybe the poets task is to heighten, interpret and elevate. Like an escalator to the great luxury in the sky, the poet ought to seek beauty's heights. Why not write about the rich and their fabulosity? Is that a word? No. It is though. :-)
What is this war and the failure of each at it. We are slain soldiers. In every hospital in the world is a victim of consumerism. Yet the author's only vault is to sell his product. The desire to disseminate the good message is grand and noble, yet how many successful authors are spreading a message which brings the reader to a greater or safer or more aware level? Not many. I am sad again.
When we can share in the sense of justice as children of the world, we can regain the fear of punishment. Children have an apt sense of just consequence. Their tears are the work of the unjust. They cry for you to tell them a story which will recreate an image of justice so they may feel like that place they came from is not a lie, a delusion, an abyss, but the origin of all things. Call it will, life force, anything. But don't call it reality. Reality has never been consentual. Maybe that is where the poet failed? Maybe the poets task is to heighten, interpret and elevate. Like an escalator to the great luxury in the sky, the poet ought to seek beauty's heights. Why not write about the rich and their fabulosity? Is that a word? No. It is though. :-)
Monday, July 22, 2013
License, Community, and Self
I am not a good writer. I cannot be.
This is what I want to say. I write because it is cathartic. I am pained when I do not compose. My artistic event is ecstatic and I produce good content, yet my grammar and mechanics can be off. What do I do? Do I seek the community of other authors? Sure I do. Do I take classes and read books? Of course I must. However I do none of this currently. I am too preoccupied by the concerns of a human. I have heard so many people say "I want to write... but...". This terrifies me.
My first novel was my baby. Ugly babies are still beautiful to their parents. "The Poet of Future Myth" is not an ugly baby. It is very premature.
When I wrote as a younger man, I discovered the pleasure of composing something unique. An expression of my own understanding. I started with poetry. All of my early writings were experimental and I fancied innovative form over the classic or standard. As I obtained my undergraduate degree in English, I learned the value of classical forms and I obtained a taste for the standards of formal, effective, and powerful expression of what were universal ideals. What Freud could say for the psychic had been said centuries before in the form of drama, poetry, and rhetoric.
So I have written a novel which I feel is premature. The final edit is forthcoming. The paperback is pennies away from print. Yet because I do not have community with other authors, I sense that my work is somehow disconnected from the only people who can actually appreciate the process. And the passion within that process. And more than this, the distinct style and voice which only those who have the imagination of the creative event could recognize upon reading my work. This is tragic. This is the demise of great minds who otherwise could be representative of the progress of the discourse on aesthetics, canon, and pedagogical concerns such as SRTOL, First-Year Composition, and discourse communities in fact. I am not writing to express a grievance, but a grief.
Authors of ideas have a like sensibility of a need to be heard, an excitement at the prospect of expounding upon their ideas once read. What comes of an author, or worse yet, a poet who in the act of composing attains levels of ecstasy at this prospect, and no one ever knows? That is the main thrust of my first novel "The Poet of Future Myth".
What I attempt to accomplish is the humiliation of such persons who cannot accept the fate of being mediocre. Poets have lost favor in our day. We seek the points of the scientist. But Pointillism (Chromoluminarism) could never capture the endurance of a beautiful string of words which illuminate. Humanity will never achieve the peace which was once spoken and then sung by the lips of parent to child, lover to beloved, and teacher to student.
This is what I want to say. I write because it is cathartic. I am pained when I do not compose. My artistic event is ecstatic and I produce good content, yet my grammar and mechanics can be off. What do I do? Do I seek the community of other authors? Sure I do. Do I take classes and read books? Of course I must. However I do none of this currently. I am too preoccupied by the concerns of a human. I have heard so many people say "I want to write... but...". This terrifies me.
My first novel was my baby. Ugly babies are still beautiful to their parents. "The Poet of Future Myth" is not an ugly baby. It is very premature.
When I wrote as a younger man, I discovered the pleasure of composing something unique. An expression of my own understanding. I started with poetry. All of my early writings were experimental and I fancied innovative form over the classic or standard. As I obtained my undergraduate degree in English, I learned the value of classical forms and I obtained a taste for the standards of formal, effective, and powerful expression of what were universal ideals. What Freud could say for the psychic had been said centuries before in the form of drama, poetry, and rhetoric.
So I have written a novel which I feel is premature. The final edit is forthcoming. The paperback is pennies away from print. Yet because I do not have community with other authors, I sense that my work is somehow disconnected from the only people who can actually appreciate the process. And the passion within that process. And more than this, the distinct style and voice which only those who have the imagination of the creative event could recognize upon reading my work. This is tragic. This is the demise of great minds who otherwise could be representative of the progress of the discourse on aesthetics, canon, and pedagogical concerns such as SRTOL, First-Year Composition, and discourse communities in fact. I am not writing to express a grievance, but a grief.
Authors of ideas have a like sensibility of a need to be heard, an excitement at the prospect of expounding upon their ideas once read. What comes of an author, or worse yet, a poet who in the act of composing attains levels of ecstasy at this prospect, and no one ever knows? That is the main thrust of my first novel "The Poet of Future Myth".
What I attempt to accomplish is the humiliation of such persons who cannot accept the fate of being mediocre. Poets have lost favor in our day. We seek the points of the scientist. But Pointillism (Chromoluminarism) could never capture the endurance of a beautiful string of words which illuminate. Humanity will never achieve the peace which was once spoken and then sung by the lips of parent to child, lover to beloved, and teacher to student.
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