Today brings in a new morning, or we’ll see anyway. We’ll see if I’ll be able to maintain a daily log on the computer. It’s a bit more difficult for reasons I cannot understand. If I end up losing steam perhaps I’ll just stick with the paper journal. I love that little brown journal though. I’ll be writing in that little guy until the last page.
Reading Keith Richards’ memoir has proven to be a bit more exciting than Johnny Cash’s. To some degree, he writes with the same edge and grit that appears so prevalent in many of the Stones’ songs. I wouldn’t have referred to the journal as ‘little guy’ had I not been reading that this morning. So edgy, I know! HAHA.
I’m reading right now about the ‘hatching’ of the band, as Keith puts it, circa 1962-63 just as the band is coming together and finding their sound. I’m surprised to hear how disciplined they were around this time, as Keith writes about how all free time (not performing gigs) was dedicated to staying cooped up in their flat practicing. If one of them left to go out for drinks or look for women, Keith writes, that guy would have been viewed as a traitor.
Reading all these biographies lately has left me feeling really anxious to work on ‘Saints’, my own little memoir-of-sorts-that-may-be-partially-true-if-not-at-all-true. Still not sure exactly how exciting my real life has been to make the thing totally true. I need to get working on it more and stop occupying myself with daily log’s and reading other people’s biographies. One step at a time, I guess. Need to remember that the first step is merely establishing a disciplined routine of writing, regardless of what it is I am writing. It quickly becomes hard to remember that, however, and not kick yourself in the ass for not working on your work. Patience. Kerouac, so it seems, faced similar problems.
The blog may be inhibiting my writing somewhat, if you can believe that. I find my writing often being dictated by how worthy it is of being admitted into the Quinby Realm, and most horrifying of all, of being further published to that despicable facebook as a link for even the unwilling to notice. It is imperative that I totally disregard both mediums before I write (or, for basically the entire day) and only really consider them after I’ve completed something (essentially no more than ten minutes a day). The key, therefore, needs to be the writing and not its publishing. Strong discipline (needs to be a bit stronger) and patience.
Ren Michael 