h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Confession. I'm relieved you're finding it tough, because I've been counting on Dylan to teach you some lessons about over-analysing things.
But at the same time I've been fretting that just maybe you would dig deep and find meaning I'd overlooked.
No, not overlooked. Not bothered to search for, more like.
I look for personal justification in Thomas. More than any other writer I've ever read, he convinces me that you really can write like an angel without trying too hard, provided you're gifted enough.
So what meaning did you find in Fern Hill, or in Do Not Go Gently? None of it's about meaning; it's all about feeling. Nostalgic recollection of childhood in the first, simple death-dread in the latter.
Thomas wrote prose and poetry like he lived, for the sensation of it all. That's what I think anyway. And that's what I want to be like.

Part of the reason that the last days make a powerful theme is that they pose the only deep questions he ever asked. Was all of this immortality through a deathwish, or was it just the sad end of a burned-out might-have-been? Did he die tragically young, or just in time to avoid being found out? Is this a squalid story, or a noble one? Depressing, or uplifting? Cold, warm or burning hot?

So, OK. It's up to you. If you think this was another dirty trick to get you down someone else's road, we'll think of something else to do. If you really want to find out if you can write recklessly, though, I recommend that we keep going. And, like I said before, suspend your judgement about self-indulgence. In Thomas, there's little else, but this is hedonism as art, raised as high is it can go.

Oh, for f**ks' sake Pin, you dislike the stuff I write recklessly! Actually, most of my prose is pretty reckless. The poetry comes from a different part of the mind.

Dylan got drunk on the sounds of words, but he revised constantly. A lot of his earlier stuff was revised for years before being published. He got of more on being a poet than on poetry, and went for the sounds of the words.

I am curious though - what is your base-line reaction to what you see as my 'over-analysis'? Is it annoyance, the thought that it is un-necesary, does it irritate you? What?

Incidentally, analysis is not something that I do, I AM analyst. Literally. It is my job, as well as the warp and weft and structure of my thought. I cannot NOT analyse!

B
*still reading and contemplating writing about Thomas*

Unfair! I do NOT dislike what you write recklessly!
You are sometimes too ready to put words into people's mouths, Ben.

I don't "dislike" anything you've invited my comment on. Some of it appeals to me more than the rest, and I've said so. I comment because I assume that's what you want. That's certainly what you ask for, and I want to please you.

Perhaps you do produce your best work by iteration, and perhaps your best work is analytical. That doesn't mean that that's all you should do. On the contrary, everyone should try everything. Challenge and freshness is infinitely better than the perfection of repetition, in my world at least. We only have so long...

(Oh, all right, I can't remember what I might have said about specific works in the past, and you will probably catch me out. But that's you. You analyse, and you preen, and you fret. And I tend to splash it on quick and dirty, and think I'm clever, and go look for another way to attract attention.
Different kinds of vanity, Ben. The perfectionist seeking praise, and the exhibitionist seeking amazement. That's just us)

So... Do you really want to learn about recklessness? Because when you're truly reckless, you don't look back. You don't go checking to see how it went down, and you don't make retrospective adjustments.

Or, if you like, you can try teach me to improve things by revisiting them. Maybe my lead is as incongruous to you as that suggestion seems to me...

Sorry. I guess that your comments on 'Untitled' still rankle a bit.

There is an inconsistency here, you know, Pin. "everyone should try everything. Challenge and freshness is infinitely better than the perfection of repetition" - and then you slated the spam-jams. They were just experimentation. As were the Katauta. Playing to see whether I got anything useful out of it, or not. I did in both cases, but the useful thing was mainly the act of trying, rather than any specific poem.

>> The perfectionist seeking praise, and the exhibitionist seeking amazement.

Fair comment. I purr when praised. I seek to communicate with absolute clarity, with the sound of the language serving and supporting the meaning, and confirmation that I have done so usually comes couched as praise. Which makes me the opposite of Thomas. Which makes reading Thomas and about Thomas so challenging and so good.

Back to the quest for lucidity: Epping Forest is still a challenge to me, becuase I have had to decide whether to leave it an accurate representation of my thoughts, or whether to alter it into a communication which enables people to receive my meaning in a more even way.

>> Do you really want to learn about recklessness? Because when you're truly reckless, you don't look back. You don't go checking to see how it went down, and you don't make retrospective adjustments.

When you put it like that, no.

>> Or, if you like, you can try teach me to improve things by revisiting them.

I don't revisit that much. The poems are written verbatim in the time it takes to write or type them. I will revist once to tidy up words and line endings and so on which takes anything from 5 to 30 minutes. I will sometimes make a second revision to check the imagery, but that is it. The metrical ones are different, of course, and much more like a crossword puzzle, and they can take days. But I don't really know how to revise the free verse, so I tend not to.

Maybe the difference between us is that I am naked in the poems, (we *were* talking about recklessness here?) but, exhibitionist though you may be, you hide behind the pyrotechnics of the prose.

B

Hey. I'm really sorry about upsetting you over "Untitled" and the spam-stuff. You're right; it is inconsistent.

To even comment on this, I'm having to think. Thinking is not something I normally do for leisure. Some of my earlier crit of your poetry was very unnatural for me, but driven by a fascination to understand how your lovely mind works. You sort and express your thoughts in a way that's alien to me.

There are two things you do that I don't like. One makes me uncomfortable - that's the laying open of your life in your work. Self-dissection has no place in my world, hence my being (wrongly) dismissive of "Untitled". The Katauta (or some of them, anyway) make me feel voyeuristic, and I recoil from that.

The second is the residual analytical tendency still attached to the spontaneous stuff, which is why the spam-stuff doesn't appeal. It's neither casual nor calculated, but the worst of both.

Do you see? But you're right; I'm being hypocritical.

Because of this difference in outlook, you expect an exhibitionist to be comfortable with nakedness. Not necessarily. I like illusion. I enjoy trying on different disguises.

It's not hiding. The pyrotechnics are more entertaining than I am, that's all.

You knew all along that you were the opposite of Thomas.
You knew all along, therefore, that that was why I suggested writing about him.

Epping Forest? The strangest thing of all is that you believe that you captured it in experience, and that the gap in expression is in your ability to convey it.

I can't imagine what it's like to believe you can assimilate a forest. I can't understand an urge to describe what it meant to you. I can only understand an urge to discover though writing what you felt there.

You know things, Ben. You're sure about things. Up to a point, I envy that.

Laying open of my life in my work - sure. It makes me wince too.

The work started off as therapy, and to a large extent it still is. And yes, I wallow in the flattery of finding that other people like my therapeutic farts.

Incidentally, Dialogues I makes me squirm with embarrasment. I mentioned to a colleage that I wrote poetry, (can't remember why, but it was a direct answer to a specific question), and he asked if it was online. Oddly we had been talking about the 'most embarrasing moment' thread here earlier. I said that having colleagues reading one's erotica came into that category. He was enough of a gent not to pursue it.



>> The second is the residual analytical tendency still attached to the spontaneous stuff,

Like I said. I am an analyst. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? It's an analyst!



>> which is why the spam-stuff doesn't appeal. It's neither casual nor calculated, but the worst of both.

Interesting. Incidentally I am thinking of taking some spam, punctuating it, and putting it into some of the poetry competitions. I would so love it if it won something.



>> you expect an exhibitionist to be comfortable with nakedness.

Not at all. Most performers do it in order to hide themselves from other people, which was my point with that comment, really. But I like the point about illusion and disguise.



>> I can't imagine what it's like to believe you can assimilate a forest.

I wasnt trying to assimilate a forest - though, yes, I do believe I captured my *reaction to the forest*. I didn't convey it, but I did capture it.



>> You know things, Ben. You're sure about things.

Yep. And you want to know the best thing about that? It is always so exciting when I discover that I was wrong!



B

...Just give me a minute to shift this rather whiffy dead Welshman...

The 9th or 10th, well, Trout says he won't be coming now. Extended contract out in Bahrain, I think (only he's too cryptic ever to be sure). But the best interpretation is that he'll be back in the UK later in the year.

The Meet itself is not something I really fancy. It could be a bit overpowering.

A smaller group, you, boots, Trout, maybe others would be better. That weekend in July isn't ideal for me, though (last weekend before hols departure). I'd like to keep the Weddell pass-signing uncontentious if possible. I did ask, but she gave me one of those looks.

If we're split from the Meet, there's no real problem in making it later, is there?

Yeah, yeah. I'm a complete coward. Tell me news.

In fact, do tell me news. Is boots OK? She's really quiet.

I don't know about boots. I'll give her a ring. *worried*

Later may be no-go for me, or it may be fine. So long as you know its a maybe.

I guess this will have to remain a beautiful friendship...

In haste...

B

Ah, but maybes are the best of all...

O Ben...sometimes I wish we'd met back in those heady days before I had my colostomy.

S**t, as they say, happens!

Ah me, what might have been...

B

I got stuck with the DT biog, he is currently somewhere about the age of 32. I keep on meaning to get back to him, but after the last post, s**t did indeed happen. I have more time now, but less inclination.

How about you?

B

I went a bit collaboration mad.

Dylan's the last thing I need, I reckon. I suggested him (or I think I did, I can hardly remember any more) on the assumption that you'd need poetry in order to be interested. Your obvious dislike of his poetry kind of reggubed that up.

I started something on Dadd's "Fairy Feller" along with nadia. She writes with real fire; I love what she's done. But she needs her own pace and space, so that's in limbo.

I did something with Waz that's in her court now. I can't wait to see the outcome, but I'll have to. That's the way we agreed it; she'd do the final cut alone.

And I started one on Babbacombe Lee with Trout. Of all people, HIS r-l got complicated. I dunno. You just can't trust people to trudge along the rut in their anoraks any more.

I reckon Dylan's gone cold anyhow. I see Hoo's back around somewhat. Maybe something deeply rational and despicable is called for? I keep getting an urge to write the Antitheist Manifesto, ie the thesis that people who believe in a God are wreaking doom upon the planet. It's an easy case to make, really, and I think it's an irrefutable one. But it would cause a lot of offence...

Hoo would *love* that, though I think he may have withdrawn his services from Hootoo following the Gentleman's Guide debacle. I wanted him to write an entry on 'baiting believers for fun and prophet' for the belief project, but he wouldn't bite.

The entry you propose would be a great collaboration, two iconoclasts in one deal. I could even add a para or too. It isn't religion, you know, it is monotheism.

Glad to be let of the hook of Dylan. I am surprised you assumed that it had to be poetry to interest me. At the time you wanted me to take more risks, and I got the impression you were presenting Dylan as a role model.

I'll carry on reading the books though.

B

Not a role model in the sense of risk-taking. A role model in the sense of being a bit less rigorous.

I like Dylan for three reasons. One, I genuinely think the best of his work is very fine, so his peak is higher than almost anyone else's. Two, some of his stuff is very ordinary, which makes him human and gives the rest of us hope. Three, because he worked hardest at something else entirely. OK, so it was self-destruction, but he still goes to prove that genius can be effortless, can be abused, can be thrown away.

There's something in that that appeals to me hugely.
And there's something in it that, from my vantage-point at least, you'd do well to learn.

That's why I proposed it. Hedonism for me. Correction for you.

(Don't worry - it's a lad thing)

I am currently reading this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1857988361/qid=1091123455/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/026-3153077-9451635
and it occured to me that you might enjoy it for a whole bunch of reasons.

B

You betcha. I already did (and can prove it) : F19585?thread=228613&post=2683529#p2683457

This is the best, though there are other good Brunners too, eg The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up. I plagiarised the title of the last for an apocalyptic little musing of my own : A996375

Aha. You knew that that piece is in the Post, yeah?
I didn't!

re Fashion Industry :

Sorry, Ben.

You’re right, I should have objected sooner. The reason I didn’t (apart from lethargy) was that the protracted half-picked status seemed to say it better than ever I, or anyone, could. No comment on Nothing.

But what I'm apologising for is succumbing to the perverse pastime of poking your on-switch, just to see what happens. (Please note that I wouldn't do it if I didn't think that you enjoy it)

I'm convinced, Portia. You have it in your powwer to advocate literally anything. Ouch.

Pin (bet you like Rothko, too)

Well at least you didn't do it two weeks ago.

Ben

Sorry, that wasn't particularly helpful. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't try to press my buttons to see if I spew green slime.

You persist in rejecting the ideas that I am at times (a) fragile and (b) going through s**t. If you had done that two weeks ago or four weeks ago, even, I would simply have pulled off the site. I was precious close to it earlier in August - hence the two blank user pages. A couple of things keep me here, and they are pretty thin threads. It wouldn't take much for me to delete everything that I can delete and f**k off entirely.

Also I was absolutely genuine in my defence of the Fashion Industry. Pretentious possibly, but genuine. I do think all those things.

Pin - do me a favour and let up, will you. It was sweet of you to start the NSS, but I had pulled off for very good reasons, which are as explicit as I can make them in the NSS. Wraith or No Title or whatever I called it was a clear statement of fact at the time. You persist in assuming that I am posturing and posing to be interesting or clever. I am not. I tell the truth as I see it, and if you read the timeline from the middle of last year and through this year you will see quite clearly that the last 12 months have taken every ounce of nervous energy to get through at all.

I am not a call girl to be summoned to perform antics for your amusement.

Please. Cut me some slack.

Ben