I’m sure there are places inside me vibrating or recovering from the impact of everything I impressed upon them: being out and staying out, sleep-deprived, mostly drunk, bouncing non-stop, among the crowds. I am reminding myself this, because I now often sit still and just think. That’s it. And it’s okay, because I once was so overstimulated, I didn’t think it would stop. I think about how wild my past was and how horrifying some of it seems now that I can see it for what it was. I was unhinged for segments of years, off and on. My spirit and soul, down to the bone, is a wild one. She’s up for it, whatever it is. Now that I have recovered my mind, I am using it for everything it’s good at.
My writing project (fictional, based on some gnarly truths, b!) about hanging out with New York skaters is taking off. The doc is so large I had to make bookmark links at the top, so I can jump down to specific sections/scenes quicker. It’s 20 pages of a draft of something, including notes. I’m scared what the work is going to tell me about me, but I have to put that concept on hold, in order to continue writing it. Who knows who the audience will end up being? If there will be one? I know it feels very necessary to my existence to write this now. That is the main point of this exercise.
The world I’ve built, so far, I’m excited about. Everything feels true, the characters are starting to resemble the people I based them on, and the scenarios unfolding feel like moments I’ve lived over and again. On weekends, I’ll write all day sometimes. When I stop for dinner it’s like shaking myself out of a dream-state. Like I just left a world and awoke in my kitchen. This feeling is becoming more commonplace. I keep dipping into that same dream. How do filmmakers do this? How do novel writers do this? Two lives!
As writing has turned into my current obsession, it felt fitting I stumbled upon the Susan Sontag quote in the Substack Notes feed. Moments before I saw it, I was cursing myself for obsessing over men of my past. All of them. What a time suck. None of them worth it, by the way. Initially I think, that’s a bad obsessive. But it’s what I’m writing about. So!
The obsession, NYC skaters, has lent itself to what I hope to consider my major piece of artistic output. A fully fledged, fictional, standalone piece, a major accomplishment for me. It will make all of the drinks, tears, money, sex, arguing, and wildness worth it. Maybe there will be a certain kind of redemption of spirit.
Something funny from my notes (in note form, not prose) that demonstrates the height of the obsession: Talk about how common it was to hear skateboards in the LES, and how you’d whip your head around at the sound of them. Sometimes it was people rolling luggage down the block. One time it was a cab driving down the street with an orange cone stuck under it!
I could’ve sworn it was a skater, y’all! Ask anyone who’s ever had a thing for skaters; to this day they will have a hard time not looking when they hear the sound of a skateboard. Testosterone city, babe.
I'm obsessive. If I wasn't obsessive I wouldn't continue learning Korean, but because I'm determined I am making some progress in this endeavor. Stick to it, and do what you love. I'm headed to the Boston Museum of Fine Art to see the Korean exhibit. I am looking forward to it. Yeah, it was a skater in your heart and mind and memory.