The abstract art of living and writing

Look at that, if I don't like manually force people to read my blog, no one seems to find this one. It is a rather comforting release of discomfort. While the origination, or genesis, of my writing 'career' should anyone choose to define the proclivity of my ramblings as either a) writing and/or b) a career, was in the variation of a blog - an article that detailed many weeks of reading and citing other courses for a particular story, this blog has a different intent altogether.

Yet neither was intended as anything more than ramblings on the nature of a particular topic. Sure, I could post an article about leggings that women wear and how that affects my prurient thoughts, maybe see if some group could spread that and I would go 'viral.' But what really is the point of going viral? For your Warholian fifteen minutes? I had that and, well, frankly put, it was unsettling at best.

I was not that guy who got his brief moment and then regretted the moments. I enjoyed what happened, and never took it for granted, while also never letting myself think that this was some sort of permanent love affair that people had with me; it was a story of the moment and the moment passed.

Today, I was thinking, and writing, about abstractness. There are plenty of abstract artists in the visual arts world; it does not take significant effort to locate artists whose work is world-renowned. Their ability to capture emotion through abstractness is impressive.

It is not often, especially in this genre-specific era of writing, that we talk much about abstract writing. As I read through Infinite Jest, and am reminded of The Sound and The Fury (and really ANY work by Faulkner), it strikes me just how difficult a line it is to walk between abstract brilliance and abject failure. Knowing words, syntax, structure, and rules; all of those things we are supposed to know before we write; that has little effect on quality abstract writing.

First of all, abstract writing means that you break the rules. But you cannot break them just for the fuck of it. There has to be something, a brilliance that cannot be explained on paper or explored, to HOW you break those rules. Sometimes it is with word art, sometimes with sentence and paragraph structure, and then sometimes it is hidden within the book itself as to how the chapters, sections, or any other demarcations the writer chooses to insert. That is the difficult part of writing.

So, on my current project, one of the things I am doing is not calling ANYTHING a chapter... there are different headings for a section - each beginning with "The Days of" and then something descriptive follows. "The Days of the sundress" and tonight's entry began as "The days of governance"

I said the other day that the only chapter you were going to see was that singular disepic piece of writing (LOL) which I put right here on this blog. But that does not mean I will not give sections. I am going back and forth between multiple settings with detailed explanation of the switches; this is where the abstractness comes in and the structural organization of the entire work will be critical. Either it becomes a massive home run crushed beyond the confines of an entire stadium, or I corkscrew myself into the ground with the worst whiff in the history of writing. I either have the next timeless masterpeice, or I become the literary equivalent of "Gigli."

God, I gope it is not the last one, as far away from that Ben Affleck putridity as possible, please!

So, out of nowhere this section begins thusly (keeping in mind that the previous section was froma  different time and place, and was the tellings of life at a halfway house where the primary protagonist, a retrograde amnesiac, happens to have been placed with a schizophrenic and several other maladjusted residents of Columbus, Ohio):

The duplicitous nature of human kind being what it is, with the advent of every new safety measure designed for the protection and welfare of a society governed entirely of their free-will, there also comes the advent of those whose sincere sounding equivocation of their origin creates doubt and fear amongst the populace. This being duly considered by the courts of the United States of Carthania in landmark ruling after landmark ruling, we the Senate and House do jointly propose this formal solution.

The section I wrote tonight, about 750 words, comes from a legislative branch and goes on to detail the history of the reasoning behind the concept. It is abstract in nature and this book will be so challenging. Nearly 20,000 words in and this is nowhere near being decided plot-wise or even character wise; this challenge will be its own greatest reward and I look forward to being able to continue evolving this story on its many levels.