In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I notice that the path upon which I’ve been traveling for the past twenty years or so just might be a loop. Maybe I’ll pay better attention this time around.
Stuff referenced in this podcast:
HTG Podcast #12: Next chapters
In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I ponder what it means to keep the creative fires burning throughout different stages of life, maybe even right up to the end. Or maybe not. Henry Miller chimes in from his death bed, and Jeff Mangum tells us about a sad little man who wrote atonal rock operas that no one understood.
Related media:
– Henry Miller, “Alive to the end”:
– Cover of “April 8th”:
– Neutral Milk Hotel album art:
HTG Podcast #11: The future of communication
In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I reflect on parallel universe toads, the battle between creative work and distracto-tainment, spirit magnification, and how Henry Miller recorded the first-ever podcast episode in 1949.
Related media:
Miller on the Future of Communication, via Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company (A Henry Miller Blog)
9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings: Reflections on the rewards of seeking out what magnifies your spirit (via Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings)
HTG Podcast #2: Waiting for the Miracle
In this episode of the Head The Gong Podcast, I ramble on about the concept of “Waiting for the miracle” and how it has inspired my creative process for years. Topics include:
- My discovery of Henry Miller
- Miller’s classic novel, Tropic of Cancer
- Neutral Milk Hotel’s, Two Headed Boy Part 2
- My song, “Waiting for the miracle”
Below are some of the media referenced in this episode:
Waiting for the miracle… (Blog post)
Wait and see
[A snippet from a writing project in gestation, which will probably make very little sense if you haven’t read these other snippets: Square one, No importa, New tables, Belly of the beast, No turning back, Memories, dreams, reflections, & El campo de pueblo.]
I’m sitting in a corner of the room, surrounded by all our belongings. Some guys are putting in the floor tile today, so my world has shrunk to a six by six foot pile of stuff while they work on the rest of the room. Presently, the workers are taking a little Pepsi break, chatting about this and that. The word chinga tends to come up a lot. Undoubtedly, they must be curious why I choose to remain in the room while they work. However misguided and ultimately self-defeating, I tend to view most others here as potential criminals, out to fuck me over as soon as the opportunity presents itself. People have families to feed, and here’s my stuff all laid out like a five-finger discount flea market. I remember a line from Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.” This couldn’t be more true for me right now. I am attached to my things with shackles.
At this point, I’m against putting in the tile, as a way to protest the cost being jacked up at the last moment and because the process promises to be a major inconvenience. They say “no hay problema, muy rapido,” half the tile in today and the other half tomorrow, but experience tells me to expect otherwise. The room is my safe haven, where I have established at least enough privacy, order, and control to maintain sanity. I can feel the shackles chafing.
Of course, when it’s all said and done, it will be nice to have tile, as the floor figures prominently in my plan to take over the world. How so? I’ll get to the specifics in a minute, but in general the plan is fairly simple and straightforward: To resurrect every stinking, rotting intention that lay buried in the dung-heap of apathy, excuses and half-assed efforts I spent a lifetime compiling in the U.S. Every last little desiccated seed will be resuscitated and nurtured to fruition. Among other things, this means a book will be written; a language learned; an instrument mastered; and a body and mind recalibrated, re-inhabited and renewed.
I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, from one twenty-something or another. Carpe diem and all that horse shit. If you’re a friend of mine you’ve heard it many times, straight from this horse’s mouth, especially when the beer is flowing. I’m fine with the so-called realists who like to roll their eyes and who prefer their resignation and cynicism to my pipe dreams. If I’m deluded in striving for the full realization of my potential—and I suspect that I’m naïve at the very least—what really is there to lose in persisting in my folly? I finally have the time—nine full months, all day, every day—to invest in myself, to break some long-standing patterns, to reset the game and start playing without my hands tied behind my back. If not now, when? If, in the end, the whole project provides nothing more than a few laughs for the older and wiser Future Bob, then so be it. Don’t laugh too hard though, Future Bob. It might make you shit your pants, or at least pee a little. A crack of a smile will do just fine, and makes for a suitable death mask as well.
Along with Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, I’m currently reading Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Jon’s the one keeping me on the floor, experimenting with various yoga and meditation practices. About the level of commitment necessary for self-realization, Kabat-Zinn quotes psychologist Carl Jung: “The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.”
I love this kind of balls-out sentiment. Miller strikes a similar chord, vis-á-vis art: “Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite”. My bandmates and I used an inside catch-phrase to capture this full-throttle vibe, demanding of ourselves and each other that we “head the gong.” Those of us who grew up worshipping the rock band Led Zeppelin know well that drummer John Bonham, who died young of a drug overdose, used a gong as part of his drum set-up. Anyway, the guys and I went out to see a Led Zep tribute band one night, and as the drummer wailed away during the famous ten-minute Moby Dick drum solo, we couldn’t help notice that he held back a little toward the end. “Dude,” I said to my friends, “if you’re going to do Moby Dick, you gotta go all the way, you gotta throw yourself head first into the gong. Yeah man, you gotta head the fucking gong!” Trust me, if you were there and full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, you would have been pumping your fists in the air.
I’ve often told myself I would one day put into print the “Head the Gong Manifesto,” making explicit to myself and to the world precisely how I intended to live, should I ever find the requisite strength and courage. My hesitation has been held in place by a couple of lines of thought, each representing a critical voice I’ve internalized over the years. The first essentially says, “You’re selfish.” This one comes straight from the bosom of my family. My lack of interest in creating and raising children is at the root of this accusation more than anything. I’ve mounted a stiff defense against this charge, pointing out the logical absurdity of choosing parenthood for the sake of not-yet-born children. I’ve trapped them with arguments that force them to admit their own inescapably selfish motives for becoming mommies and daddies. But it’s not really about any of that. They want me to do it for their sake, to affirm this most central of their values. In rejecting parenthood I’m rejecting them—it’s as simple as that. And so what I most value—this stuff about truth and awareness and developmental potential—this makes me even more of a self-centered little bastard. “The holy trinity of me, myself and I” is how my brother summed up my life. “Maybe they’re right” is a thought that comes up more than I’d like to admit. Navel gazing looks a lot like narcissism, and if it quacks like a duck it just might be a duck, right? It’s true that every minute I spend here nurturing my own seeds I could spend trying to better the lives of the people all around me, people too focused on survival to worry about drum solos or finding time to just be.
The case against me is strong—I can’t deny it. And there’s still the other line of attack, the one that says, “Even if it is worthwhile to go the full length, you just don’t have what it takes. Not. Good. Enough.” Just like that, my manifesto is transformed into yet another list of New Year’s resolutions destined to be forgotten by the time February rolls around.
Well, here’s the list, for what it’s worth: I’m going to meditate everyday; write the book I’ve been not writing for the last ten years; finish up and properly record every song idea in my cassette archives; learn Spanish, then Chinese; study a martial art; step up my exercise regimen with daily stretching and calisthenics; learn some cover tunes and refuse to shy away from opportunities to perform; rededicate myself to the study and practice of Somatic Education (a form of neuro-muscular/body work); find a way to teach for a living… I’m sure more will come to me. And I’m off to a good start, I must say – writing like a madman, Spanish improving by the day, soccer practice every night, a few days into formal meditation practice and a solid floor exercise routine.
We’ll see what it’s worth, in the end. Call it an experiment, a wait and see thing. Let’s see if by investing some quality time in me, myself and I, I might be of far greater service to others when it’s all said and done. Let’s see if I become more or less of an asshole. If it doesn’t pan out I can always just admit the error of my ways, settle down, have a few kids and let them redeem the situation.
DIY
I was reading Henry Miller last night, his essay “Artist and Public” to be precise, and was intrigued by his pipe dream to call upon the artists and art lovers of America to buy into a plan that would subsidize every artist for the duration of their lives–regardless of what they produce. What a plan! It seems nuts, to be sure, in that it seems about as likely to happen as the second coming of Christ. And while it may be true that nearly half of Americans believe Christ’s return is imminent, I’m pretty sure only a handful truly give a hoot about the plight of the artist. But it’s an interesting idea of Miller’s nonetheless, namely that it would eventually pay off, IN DOLLARS AND CENTS Miller stresses, if artists were to be supported with sufficient funds to cover all basic needs for the entire duration of their lives. The idea being that enough of these artists would produce enough great and valuable works of art to make the whole set-up generate a net profit. If Jesus does come back, maybe he can get in on the ground floor of this project. A sequel to the Bible, written by the man himself, would surely get a mention on Oprah or in the New York Times.
Also interesting was Miller’s discussion of whether or not making artists comfortable would soften them up to the point of creative impotence. Miller argues against the notion that artists need to be on the edge of starvation and desperation in order to produce great works. I’ve thought about this issue myself, as it seems that we see a classic pattern, in modern times at least, of creativity suffering once the artist “makes it,” or achieves whatever vision of success that he or she has set for him- or herself. It seems as if the creative drive winds down, or at least changes in form and intensity, as one gets older. This is something I’ve obsessed about in recent years. As a rock music fan, I’m always on the lookout for the band or artist who produces their best work after the age of forty. And I’m not finding much on that horizon. Is it getting older, or having a lot of money, or what, that causes rock stars to become karaoke acts by the time they reach their fifties? And then there’s the zeitgeist or the effect of “the times” one is living in. People often say things like “the 60s produced so much great music.” Perhaps that’s literally true, that artists are not rightly understood as individuals undertaking some lonely creative process, but rather they are inspired and compelled to do what they do by the environment they find themselves in. This “artist in context” theory might also explain why getting rich and moving into that huge mansion effectively makes the artist “soft.” Change the environment in a major way and you change the entire creative equation. Anyway, I harp on all this because I’m afraid of getting soft myself. Afraid I’ve already gotten soft. Okay, I KNOW I’ve already gotten soft. The question now is, Can I firm back up? Can I summon that creative boner when the mood is just right? Can I stoke the creative flame and produce with the sense of burning intensity and purpose I felt way back when?
A guy named John wrote the following in my high school yearbook: “Bob. Don’t think. Do.” At the time, I thought John was full of shit, and maybe he was. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve been plagued by a palpable lack of “do” my whole life.
So do something Bobby. Now that you think you may have found the key, go out and do something dude. But where’s the door? Who’s doing what now?
Just take the next step man. Trudge on. What I’d really like to do is meticulously devour each day, savor every bite, get my five dollars worth before the dream machine runs amok. Sure, I’ll take the next step forward, but then sure enough it’ll be one step backward, just so I can analyze the footprint, make sure it’s the proper shape, that the weight was distributed just right, that it’s headed in the right direction. Even though I KNOW it’s headed in the right direction.
Well then, never mind all that. Today. Forward! Trudge on, lad! No need to look down at your feet, unless you step on a snake, or a pile of bear scat. It’s too bad Henry Miller’s plan didn’t come to fruition. If it had, I might consider submitting my application, joining the program. I can’t help wonder what Henry would’ve thought about the internet, had he lived long enough to see it develop into its current form. I bet he would’ve been a blogger, like me, casting his words into the great cyber-sea. But would anyone have noticed? Would anyone have taken the time to post a comment?
Forward Bobby! Onward! Don’t think too much about such things, such terrible, horrible things! Focus on what you want. On what you need. On whether or not this keystroke, that thought, this sip of coffee, is getting you closer to or further away from the goal. Don’t wait for Jesus or Henry Miller to come back and set things right. Do it yourself. Take a step back if you want, but not until you get somewhere worth looking at.
No turning back
[A snippet from a writing project in gestation, which will probably make very little sense if you haven’t read these other snippets: Square one, No importa, New tables, & Belly of the beast.]
It’s a quiet, comfortable evening here on the pueblo. There’s a heavenly breeze blowing through the window and Molly and I have settled into our pre-bedtime “routine.” I had to use quotation marks because our routines change frequently with the ever-changing circumstances. We don’t have electricity in the room per se, just an extension cord coming from their living room. There’s a light bulb hanging from a nail on the wall across from our bed. It provides enough light for basic circumnavigation, but not enough to read by, so for the past few nights, after we take showers and brush our teeth and whatnot, we wind down by playing on the computers and/or listening to the iPods. Last night a neighbor lent us a DVD, in English, of Bring it on Again, a B-movie sequel to the dopey cheerleader flick Bring it on. Back home, I wouldn’t watch either one of these films under any imaginable circumstances, but I have to admit, last night I couldn’t have enjoyed the movie more had it been directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Bring on that English! How sweet it was to relax my comprehension muscles and simply let familiar words funnel into my ears.
The bed is a multipurpose piece of furniture, serving as a place to sleep as well as acting as the sofa and general “thing to throw shit on.” I pulled it about a foot away from the wall, as I’m still a little jumpy about creepy crawlies. I had another run-in with a big, furry spider, this time in the front pocket of my backpack. My reactions to such things border on the ridiculous, but I simply can’t keep them in check. Something buzzes or crawls by me and I jump up, dance around a little, then grab a flip-flop from my foot and assume the pummeling position. In many respects this is becoming my default response to life’s daily challenges.
Tomorrow, Molly will “present” herself to the local government officials and begin some legwork on her research project. The meeting is subject to the rules of “Mexican time,” which means there’s a good chance it won’t happen at all. Such things used to trouble me more, before we got our refrigerator. This morning we had cold milk with our Raisin Bran. If I can count on leche fria, I just might make it through this.
The widespread poverty presents us with daily ethical dilemmas. We have a limited supply of money for food and basic necessities—grant money from the research foundation. Our own meager savings is paying for storage back in the U.S. We simply can’t afford to support our host family. That was never part of the deal. We can’t do it, or we’ll run out of money, forcing us to return to the U.S. before Molly can complete her data collection, which is slated to take nine months. So we had to stop having dinner with them every night, because night after night we ended up paying for all the food (despite clear, repeated agreements to split the cost). Although I’m no longer going to bed hungry, the new arrangement has created an awkward dynamic. The fact is, some nights they don’t eat. Tonight, it turns out we had enough to offer them some leftovers, but this hasn’t always been and won’t always be the case. I hate to think of the kids eating cheese doodles for dinner, but we can’t feed them every day. We just can’t do it.
Molly says she will “work it out” – her standard reply to my incessant whining and worrying. I know she’s keeping them financially afloat somehow, under my radar, but at this point I’m just going to have to accept my powerlessness in this strange universe. Some things refuse to be pummeled into submission.
*
It’s early Saturday morning and I’m enjoying two of my favorite pastimes: reading Henry Miller and swatting insects. Molly bought me the fly swatter in town, after she met with the government officials about doing her research. I can feel the sense of powerlessness giving way to strength of will. I am now an active participant in my environment. Things buzz and creep and swoop and I, in response to each and all, swat. I’m ruthless, too, stalking my adversaries with the patience and alacrity of a Venus flytrap. “Alacrity” – such a word only comes to me when I’m reading Miller. It’s hard to believe it’s been over ten years since I first stumbled across Tropic of Capricorn in the laundry room of my apartment complex in San Francisco, an event that more than any other ushered me into the world of art and creativity.
The dryer cycle had only a few minutes to go and my jeans were still a little bit damp, so I popped in another quarter to buy some time. I rummaged through a pile of old paperbacks setting on the table beside the washer. Miller’s name jumped out at me because my brother was always raving about him. Other than what I was forced to swallow in high school (I literally would rather have eaten the pages of Beowulf than read them), I had read almost nothing in the way of literature. But as I flipped to a random passage in Capricorn, I found myself becoming intrigued by Miller’s unconventional use of language. It was all over the place, flung onto to page stream-of-consciousness style, with seemingly little concern for standard fare like plot or character development. I was fascinated. It was intoxicating, really, and despite feeling slightly disoriented by the style, there was an unmistakable sense of life flowing through his words. This was living, breathing, pulsating prose that inspired, made me feel more awake, more connected to the world both around and inside me. My jeans were burnt around the edges before I roused myself from my trance, enthralled by this strange and tantalizing experience. I couldn’t put the book down for days.
In retrospect, I can see now that I was on the threshold of the about-to-be-known, like when, at the age of twelve or so, I would stay up late to watch dirty movies on HBO. At that point, I didn’t quite “get” the world of sex, but I knew I was onto to something big, something compelling and all-consuming. There was that palpable yet inscrutable sense of “No turning back.” And so it was with Miller’s world of creative self-expression.
It’s amazing how quickly I transformed from a person possessing not a spark of creativity to one who would come to place an almost supreme value on the creative process. Seemingly overnight I began reading voraciously, writing on an almost daily basis. I grew my hair long, bought a 1971 VW Bus, learned to play guitar and started writing songs. Family and old friends seemed at turns amused and baffled by the sudden change of persona. Mysteriously yet unmistakably, those first few flourishes of Miller’s Capricorn set me on a course I had hitherto neither considered nor even imagined.
Eventually I broke through to a whole new perspective on life, or perhaps it was rather I who was broken down, made more receptive in some way. I only know this: I was moved. Movement! Life! Somehow that’s it, the heart of the matter, although I can’t explain it anymore than I could tell my high school teacher what Beowulf was about. Of course, had I been assigned Miller in high school I probably would have disregarded him along with the rest. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I was ready for Miller at twenty-six and not before. Now, a decade later, just as I was beginning to fear that there might not be any more big surprises, any more soul-shaking discoveries, a man named Jesús hands me a roll of toilet paper and a new course is set.
No turning back.
Good for all time
Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn is the book that opened me up to the world of art. What a treat it is, in Miller’s Letters to Emil, to find him discussing his thoughts about the writing of Capricorn—as he’s writing it!:
“What I am doing, if I can explain it, is to free myself for expression on a different, a higher (?) level. I am working out my own salvation, as writer, thinker, human being. I am working it off on the world […].”
“I’m writing for posterity, which is with us always in the shape of those who love us. […] I don’t give a fuck about being right, or artistic, or clear—I only care about what I’m saying for the moment. If I say that with passion and sincerity it’s good for all time.”
“And when you detect discrepancies in the narrative, lies, distortions, etc., don’t think it is bad memory—no it is quite deliberate, for where I go on to falsify I am in reality only extending the sphere of the real, carrying out the implicit truth in situations that life sometimes, and art most of the time, conceals. […] I am the most sincere liar that ever lived. You will see that. But to myself I lie almost negligibly. I am writing out of my system, wiping it out, as it were, all that kind of lying. That is the real purpose of art—among all its real purposes, which nobody understands anyway.”
Letter to all and sundry
[Reflections on writing]: I’ve been thinking about writing, about the different voices or modes I use to express myself depending on what prompts me to write. It’s relatively easy to respond to a prompt from another person, whether that prompt is a specific question or an email or whatever. I supposed it’s just easier to get started when one is prodded like that. Free writing without any clear intention is more difficult, at least in terms of getting started. I’m toying with the idea of writing specific prompts for myself, as a way of galvanizing the process and differentiating the cacophony of voices echoing throughout my dome. It seems my blogging voice is different from my journalling voice, the former coming across more as a “letter to all and sundry” type of thing, the latter a “getting things off my chest” gesture of catharsis.
[So now what (post-job, pre-grad school)?]: Well, looks like I’ll have some time on my hands for at least the month of June, assuming my daily job searches continue to yield nothing. As has been the case for years now—twenty years, at least—, I’m not at a loss for things to do. Boredom is not something I experience outside of a compulsory work or school situation. My “free” time is often haunted by other bugaboos though, like self-doubt, poor focus, fuzzy intentions, habits of distraction and avoidance, etc.
[So, what are you avoiding right now?]: Despite the fact that I’m writing at the moment, I’m certainly dodging the long-standing, ever throbbing intention to write in a more disciplined way. I’m also haunted by the many unfinished songs that I’ve set aside over the years. Every now again I try to take the perspective of my future self, myself as an octogenarian reflecting back on my life. From that point of view, I imagine that my biggest regrets will have to do with the extent to which I allowed my deepest, juiciest intentions to wither and shrivel in the face of ignorance and/or self-imposed paralysis. Many have expressed to me over the years that I have a talent for this thing or that. Writing, music, counseling—these things immediately come to mind. In fact, these three things are quite clearly the three things I’d like to focus on right now. I’ll start counseling classes in a matter of weeks, so the prompts and prods from the structure of the graduate program will more or less force me to engage on that front. Writing and music, however, demand more intrinsic motivation and discipline, and here is where I always seem to surrender to my demons. I’d like to declare, “Not this time!” or otherwise make a big show of how things are going to different this time around. But I’ve broken too many promises to take any of my “drunk talk” too seriously. The thing is to actually do that which is worth doing.
[Not-so-random thought]: I’ve been reading through Henry Miller’s published letters to his friend Emil Schnellock. In 1931, Miller was living hand-to-mouth in Paris, never sure from where his next meal would come or where he might spend the night. He was also struggling mightily to find his writing voice. He was finishing his first “proper” novel, which he had been working on for years, and he was also anxious to begin working on his “Paris book”—the book that would become Tropic of Cancer. On February 16 he wrote:
Here I am, still muddling along with the book. At the very end and can’t put Finis to it. And sick and sore about it…disgusted…hate it…think it the vilest crap that ever was. […] Somehow only a meager portion of what I feel and think gets expressed, and that nearly drives me crazy. Sometimes I believe it’s because of the form I have chosen. This book, for example, has been so carefully and painstakingly plotted out, the notes are so copious and exhaustive, that I feel cramped, walled in, suffocated. When I get thru I want to explode. I will explode in the Paris book. The hell with form, style, expression and all those pseudo-paramount things which beguile the critics. I want to get myself across this time—and direct as a knife thrust.
Later, on August 24:
I just finished the book and must wait now until payday for funds wherewith to mail it. […] I start tomorrow on the Paris book: first-person, uncensored, formless—fuck everything!
Incredibly, Miller was interviewed more or less on his deathbed, at the age of 89. He didn’t seem full of regret, but rather “alive to the end.” May we all be:
Henry Miller: “Alive to the end”
Amazing. An interview of my hero, Henry Miller, from his dying bed. “Alive to the end.”