I believe I will contribute to the conversation of Contemporary American Literature – for even if I’m just in the audience of the modern reading of “Howl” – I will play a part. We all do in some way or another to something we do, I believe.
I don’t need to be The Lead, because it’s not about the name – such as Hemingway, or Kerouac, or David Foster Wallace, all of which were brought to a bitter end – it is about the message I will carry. I am only the messenger…who happens to be an Aries and, by no fault of his own, finds himself the center of attention without asking for it – in fact, he renounces it oftentimes, and so do others.
I tend to be very candid. For the 10 years that this blog has been going on (BenBonPoetry.com), I’ve written into the void without knowing more than two avid readers in real life, keeping the whole affair to myself and anonymous strangers who occasionally liked to read my work.
However, in the past month or so, I’ve invited a few people from my life to read what I have to say. And for some reason, writing about personal things comes with a hint of shame and cinnamon lately.
My aim as a writer, and as a person, my personal literary movement, is to go beyond Post-Modernism, and would be closer to Sentimentalism, but like genuinesentimentalism, not just Sentimentalism in which people write about the day to day life and human morals which happened in mid 1700’s.
My first book was inspired by Kerouac no doubt, but I just want to write honestly, for people I care about.1 That’s the good part about my humility – it is human. In an age where that is getting lost and automated.
When I write about personal stuff, like masturbating, or renouncing God, or whatever the hell is going through my mind that week, it opens the door for a dialogue. And someone said that the whole point of reading and writing is a dialogue with the reader and writer.
My friend Oscar called me after reading one of my posts to “check up” on me, and by doing so, he checked in that he was struggling with alcohol – something I’ve experienced, written, and read very, very extensively about.
The next day we were out drinking together, but it opened the door for a safe space to talk (I also saw him in a dream not that long ago, so I might know a little bit more about what’s going on with his subconscious that he’d like to care to admit)2.
Or last night, I get a call from a kid in MA, a totally normal Scrow3, and he’s explaining how a demon has been outside his window, and how Recovery is the light that is keeping it away. I quoted MLK to him, and explained that I’m very aquatinted with the demons.
They can be quite rapacious (but I didn’t mention that part).
And my bff from across the country, texts me, while math students are constructing geometrical dioramas of their dream house, alluding that he is both Christ and The Devil. And he smokes a lot of weed, too. And to me, I know that old business, and story, and I talk about it rationally with him, or rather, bio-pysco-social-spiritually. Because all of those components play a part.
I don’t know if it’s just getting older, but that stuff is normal to me, and whether they admit to themselves, normal for them too. All this stuff is super common.
Now, Do I want to express I think I spiritually impregnated my ex-girlfriend a few weeks back and I’m worried that I’m going to live out Eraserhead and kill the dinosaur baby because it becomes an intrusion on my life? Or that I was beheaded and it was given as a gift to my future father-in-law by her sister? Oh, and that I also have a baby from my other mistress in my closet in the form of a hat?
Did Beckett really give a shit about making sense? Because life doesn’t always make sense.
The people who I trust to read about my wild ideas, along with tons of other people who just don’t have the courage, or ability to admit it, are struggling or dealing with totally illogical, irrational, inexplicable things, and it is only by the virtue of writing, and communication, that we do not live in fear of those minor demons; It brings it out into the light.
I’m not writing so I can replace all the people who love me in my life with new fancier ones. Of course I could get a younger therapist, or a more handsome mentor, or a smarter best friend, but what would I gain for what I would lose? I’m writing to people I love, and who love me, and although you shouldn’t share every single thing publicly, what do I really have to hide? And to whom? Nobody, if the people who I love, love me.
All I ask for is to receive the grace I’m trying to give by showing my scars. We give each other grace for these human conundrums, not use them as leverage over one another; not out of better-than pride, but out of a healing human virtue. These minor hiccups that alone, without someone to share them with, can become big clowns.
I’m not here to say I take everything as true. I’m here to say that I can share experiences with people, who would otherwise be told to be ashamed about the shame that is causing the problem.
And it’s just because I read. To end, Jung talked about how there are things that our psyche – or rather, our brain – can’t account for. We think of something, and then it happens, all sorts of things that happen outside of the brain that are yet connected to our thinking.
And Freud gave much more black and white, rational explanations for things – that sound just as irrational, and yet, make sense.
Do I want to have sex with my mother? I don’t know, maybe biologically, but no. I was entertaining fantasies about “The Mother” for a long while, but then you realize that it is just a desire or mirage you have until you understand, experience, or accept it.
The truth lies somewhere in between these two psychological frames. Jungian Symbols and Spirituality, and Freudian Biological impulses and explanations.
Some of it is speculation, and let it be speculation. Nobody has to be right, but we should be open to our questions because that is how we find out answers.
I’m not urging you to act out every fantasy you have or understand every component of your personal Oedipus complex, but I am saying that people perseverate on things, people for example, because they can’t reach a conclusion about them.
And I know I’d have some answers I probably wouldn’t want, about certain people, if I got the questions I’ve been asking for to be revealed. But who is to say what? Am I some unactualized person because I enjoy living in a fantasy that serves me and betters me, or would I be more whole if I let certain illusions die? Let me find out and then let me know why.
Listen, first and foremost, To quote Ol’ Jacky, “I have nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” “I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop.” But I enjoy writing the same reason Jack liked to drink, “As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.”
That’s a shitty trend in literature right now – everything just being reference to crap that has already been written, Demon Copperhead, James, White Noise. But anyway.
My trouble is that I view the world through a literary lens the same say someone might look at it through the Scientific Method, Philosophy, Math, or Political Science. It kinda warps you.
I chose literature as a kid, and I’ve stuck with it. I don’t know if it was the best choice in my life, but it wasn’t the worst one. Because I believe literature, like math and science, and philosophical thought, are all related and tie into the world and its politics. They progress together.
So If I can progress literature with my writing, by being dedicated to it for the next 40 years, even if it is in a completely irrelevant subject matter by that time, it might affect a more “important” one.
I listened when someone told me that a guy spent his whole life writing instead of chasing girls and ended up with the Nobel Prize. I truly believe that if you stick with something long enough, you will create a new form or sound such as Paul Simon’s Graceland.
And Finally, I will mention that I don’t write or make art to feed my ego. I do, but I do make art because I enjoy it, even love it, not because I need to make a name for myself. That’s pathetic.
If any of you see me in your dreams, please tell me what that son of a bitch was up to.
Scrow – Lacrosse bro from Evanston, usually heavy drinker and pot smoker.
Ben Bonkoske 