my notebook, open to the first draft of “selective omission,” which I wrote on the train ride out from new york to visit my parents, and that I posted on here in a revised format last week with two other pieces I wrote on the same trip.
I always think it’s important to work through the work that one does, particularly in the arts, otherwise you’re not learning so much as stagnating in your style. in my case, I particularly love this online repository as it gives me the opportunity both to write from scratch and practice revisions.
as you can kind of see from the picture of the draft, above, I’m salieri, not mozart - I cross out plenty in handwritten drafts and my own chicken-scratch writing is sometimes incomprehensible even to me. typing it up allows for inherent revisions that feel organic - it’s effortless re-writing rather than rote transcription of one draft and then a separate editing process.
as for the piece itself, its inspiration would’ve smiled on the coincidence (I hope): I was in a little bookstore earlier in the day reading a series of conversations “with and about” samuel beckett compiled by the new york times reporter who wrote his obituary. beckett had spoken many times with the writer, and they seemed to have a fairly cordial relationship, but in writing his obituary, he only noted beckett’s curious and happily-distant marital situation in passing. it made me wonder whether beckett’s subtractive reasoning played some role, however small, particularly given his later pieces’ consumptive obsession with inertia caused by past memories - what’s an obituary if not the ultimate triumph of the past over the present?
plus, I’m a big fan of trying to do more with less. people cleverer than I doing that these days include adam saponara over at his scrapblog in the music field (his experimental programming is also great to browse through), amongst others.
March 17, 2009, 2:32pm Comments
