Don't Try.

- There used to be a bench outside my house, about ten years old, a bit weatherbeaten but sound. It had a little engraving in the wood, in the middle, right at the nape of your neck, and it always caught me a little - 'good night, darling. god bless. see you in the morning - wait for me'. I always hope somebody will remember me like that.

- Charles Bukowski is my new favourite beat poet. I think I like him. I don't like Gainsbourg or Snyder, but he makes sense, in that he looks more tragic than hedonistic, which I admire. You get the impression, reading Kerouac, that a generation tore themselves apart for some cheap thrills. 


- His life story - the abuse, his eschewing of poetry for two decades, losing the love of his life.. it's so sad, you feel that he deserves to be a liquor-soaked ink-stained old deadbeat. But he wrote this beautiful poetry. I like the disjointed syntax. You hear the echoes of Neal Cassady - the lines jump about, like some crazy heartbeat.

- His grave is marked 'Don't Try'. My first thought was that it was simple hopelessness, the cynicism that seems to infect the intelligent who lived too long and saw too much. But it's not. It's saying, don't push for your inspiration. In a letter to John William Corrington he explains it: 

'Somebody at one of these places ... asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.'

- I like it, I love it. I push my inspiration to the limit, always thinking, can I write a song about this? Does anyone want a song about this? Do I care too little? Do I care too much? Who needs to know this? The best songs I wrote hit me when I wasn't looking.


- Im also glad I found this right now - I applied to creative writing courses on a whim, and have steadied myself against becoming too devoted to them, as I'm going to come across as far from a perfect student. I'm reassured that the masters struggle for their inspiration, but the struggle is organic and natural, and if I give up whenever it gets hard, it was never worth starting.

- I secretly worry that my half-arsed confidence won't hold out if I fail on this one. English lit is so competitive. But I love it. I think it's worth the fall. I could have taken an easier course, probably should have. But I can't explain the glow of a beautiful poem, or the smile of a witty passage. That's probably my main failing. Well. One of the top 5.