Quote 5

"They are very close to abandoning themselves and thinking about themselves as men might speak of them when they are not present. That seems to be their progress."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

"No one says naked like Leonard Cohen." - Tom Robbins (4.5)

Leonard Cohen’s real voice didn’t appear until the 1990s. It descended from a stripped-down, tender baritone in 1967’s “Suzanne” to a deep, clear-ringing baritone-bass in 1984’s “Hallelujah” all the way down to a broken-down bass in 1992’s “Waiting for a Miracle”. In the late 60s Cohen’s voice was the fragile, earnest voice of a young poet singing his deeply personal love poems to the twanging chords of an acoustic guitar. In “Hallelujah” his voice is God’s voice; it resonates with clarity and simplicity. Each lyric is a sober pronouncement against the uplifting harmony of a church choir. Then, in the 1990s his real voice arrives, a voice that fills each line with deep, raw vibrations that give way to a suggestive rasp. Not even time could smooth down the rough edges of this voice. It is the voice of a man who has gone beyond God, beyond everything and emerged on the other side busted and broken-down and capable of pronouncing the truth but only because he doesn’t know anything else. It’s the kind of voice that could scrape out “It’s lonely here/ There’s no one left to torture” viciously, honestly, sexily. Leonard Cohen pulls out each battered word and pronounces it with a throat made of sand and gravel. His voice is a booming growl that threatens its listener with the awful truth.  Each syllable is imbued with the raw clarity that comes only from defeat, from hopelessness, from pessimism so deep the speaker mistakes it for reality. It’s my kind of voice.

FREE DAY 3

Quote 4

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and sacrifice for them, over and over, in a myriad petty little unsexy ways every day."
- David Foster Wallace, commencement speech at Kenyon College

Bullshit (4.3)

As a child, in the aftermath of her parents’ divorce, she had a recurring dream. Beams of filtered sunlight cut through the darkened window panes of the family’s grey Toyota. The road unrolls before them like a ribbon of tar slinking through an undulating seascape of sand. Outside the car, the sky is white with platinum sunlight. The white noise of indistinguishable conversation hums in her ear. She watches as a pinprick perched on the horizon grows into windowless skyscraper of brick. The peroxide heat has blanched its walls a dusty dying pink. Cement gutters run down its sides. On the roof a black bull, all brute strength and glistening hide, runs wildly from side to side. How she, being sealed off in the back seat of the Corolla, can see the bull is unclear. But she can see it. And she sees in excruciating detail what happens next. A sleek white dove, flutters across the cement rooftop. In one violent bound, the bull gores it with its yellowing horn. And there is blood. More blood than is possible. It floods the roof and comes screaming down the gutters, flying out into the soft sand dunes. Her mother, looking straight ahead, enunciates,  “That’s bullsh—”.She clips the remark mid-phrase. Each clean syllable of the half pronouncement rings out through the interior of the car. And they sit there, baking in the grey Toyota, each knowing what she had intended to say, none having the courage to finish it. And she, the girl, watches the blood burst out into the shifting slopes of the burning desert and wonders for whom the censorship was intended.

The Boss (4.2)

Daniela stop it.

But I don’t want it!

Look, we voted ok? We voted and we’re watching it.

It’s not fair!

She always does this!

No I don’t!

Yes you do! Yes you do!

Nick, Alex, stop. Just… let me handle this. Daniela, I’m sorry but we’re gonna watch it.

I hate 101 Dalmatians…. It’s my most hated movie ever…. And I just…just

Stop crying! She’s not even real crying!

She’s fake crying!

Ok. Let’s just start the movie and then everyone will feel better. Everyone just—

NO I WONT FEEL BETTER! I HATE IT!

SHUT UP! YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS; SHE IS!

Alex! Daniela! Just….stop…just, if anyone screams again we’re not watching anything.

No, that’s not fair, she started it.

Look we’re all gonna sit down and be quiet and eat our pizza and watch 101 Dalmatians.

I’m not watching it.

She said you have to!

Yeah, she said you have to! And she’s the boss.

No, mom’s the boss! She’s not even really the boss of me!

Ok… let’s just…

YES SHE IS!

NO SHE ISNT!

EVERYBODY BE QUIET! If I hear one more word from anyone, and I mean anyone, you are all going to bed like right now. Ok your mom’s not here right now and that makes me the boss. And I say that we’re all gonna watch this movie. That’s it. Done. We’re watching this movie. And if Daniela, if you want to go eat at the table instead, be my guest because we’re watching 101 Dalmations and that’s final. If I hear anymore anything from anyone then you’re all going to bed.

Yeah Daniela.

Review (4.1) of Nails (3.4)

KEY: My voice,  Not my voice

Fragments of light do acrobatics across the surface of her Revlon red acrylics.

Clack clack clackclackclackclack clack. 

The pale meat of her fingers reddens at her dry knuckles and the back of her hand is sprinkled with sun spots. A pale gold wedding band cinches the pink flesh of her right ring finger. She has what her mother used to refer to as potato-pickin’ hands. 

Clackclackclackclack Clackclackclack. 

She pounds against her keyboard. The click of acrylic against the plastic keys has always seemed professional to her. In the next room the ancient fax machine creaks out a letter. The dull whisper of shuffling papers rises from the adjacent cubicle. 

Clack clack clack.

She’s had the acrylics since she was 22 and read in a magazine that they visually lengthened fingers. Every other Tuesday evening at 7:00 she has a standing appointment at the salon with Tammy, who she doesn’t like but who is admittedly the best beautician in Reno. 

Clackclackclackclack clackclack clack.

The soft electronic chiming of the front desk phone floats across the room. Someone somewhere is using a stapler. The hard clicking of her typing keeps the beat of this interoffice symphony. 

Clackclackclack clackclack clackclackclack clackclack.

She pauses, rolls the sleeves of her brown turtleneck up, pushes the creaking roller chair away from her laminate desktop and stands up. She has to check something with Trudy at the front desk.

….

In the next cubicle over he silently thanks God for the relief, however small and temporary, from that hellish clacking.

The sentences and phrases that I identified as being in my voice are all descriptive. They examine the woman, the room and the different objects within it. The phrases that seemed alien to me were either colloquialisms or they outlined the thoughts and feelings of the characters. I wanted to incorporate some emotional and colloquial content into the theme because I felt as if the character called for it but the phrases don’t seem natural. I was attempting to imitate David Foster Wallace’s ability to mix disarmingly simple turns of phrase with beautiful and complex description. Informal aspects of speech or thought often feel awkward or self-aware in my writing. I’ve never been good a creating dialogue or adopting a plain tone. I’m more comfortable in the realm of description. I’m unsure of what my relationship to the reader is. I always imagine my readers as being intelligent and hope that I am treating them as equals. I don’t think there are too many obvious elements in theme but don’t know. Again, I don’t know what I would think of the writer if I didn’t know it was me. I can’t disentangle the knowledge that it’s my own piece of writing from whatever objective criticism I may have of it. I would be self-consciously focused on how my appraisal of my own work would seem to you, my reader. I would try to painstakingly balance serious criticism with modest praise in order to appear perfectly aware and yet refreshingly optimistic about what I had written. In short, I can’t even begin to imagine what I would think of my own writing if it wasn’t mine as it is mine and that fundamentally changes my relationship to it. I don’t know if any of this is helpful.