The Zen of Boredom

                “The Pale King” David Foster Wallace’s last book came out right in time for tax day. I’ve never read any of his work before but I have started my ritual stalking of the author’s life details, focus, writing style, etc. Usually when I decide whether or not to read an author’s work, I do some preliminary research on whether or not I can relate to the work at hand. Thomas Pynchon went through this phase before I got “Gravity’s Rainbow” and James Joyce went through this before I got “Finnegans Wake” (though in hindsight probably should have started with “Ulysses”). For “The Pale King” I feel the subject matter may appeal to me.

                According to the little I’ve gleaned from reading about it, it focuses on the idea of boredom as a form of Zen. Characters have to figure out exactly how to handle the often tedious nature of their work. I first put my hands on this book in perhaps the best place for tedium, the Port Authority, a place completely devoted to transit and devoid of any meaningful kind of entertainment, interest, or much of a purpose besides housing countless bus lines going to places of dubious interest. New Paltz, I love you but you’re really quite small in the grand scheme of things. 

                I’ve been thinking about that one central idea, the ability to find enlightenment in the most boring places imaginable. Over five years have passed since I began my training under the best dull had to offer. Working in an office sort of prepares you for near-useless, archaic knowledge that may or may not be transferable anywhere else. But while some of that knowledge may not have value, it does teach you the importance of killing time and learning how to appreciate others. How do you manage your time to make sure you accomplish whatever has been set in front of you while still creating a small amount of time for human interaction. Any office job virtually guarantees you’ll learn this skill or go hopelessly insane. 

                Balance is the best word I’d have for this, but it is somewhat incomplete. Sometimes you need to do both work and focus on people at the same time. Zen might be the phrase for this, where you focus on your work peripherally while you are emotionally attached to what is going on around you. Concentration is needed for this skill and you do need a certain amount of knowledge in order to pull this off, but the rewards are amazing. Essentially you are able to do two things at once. While computer screens whiz by as you have the hot-keys memorized, you’re able to avoid being deadened by the sheer tedious nature of the data, of the information. You are aware it is there and what you need to do to interact with it, but you shouldn’t try engaging with it on a heavier level. 

Focusing too intensely on work can often lead to feelings of sourness, of questioning other people’s contributions. This is what I would call the ‘sour’ phase of work, one you really ought to avoid. Questioning what others do or how valuable they are isn’t something that you, as a mere peon (I doubt I have many managers reading this) should be doing in the first place. You’ll begin to put a value on everything everyone does, giving a monetary rather than a more human response. Eventually you may become more emotionally distant from your coworkers and you’ll notice a certain tension growing between you and them. Sure, there will always be egregious examples of the ‘useless’ coworker and that will happen. But try to limit the amount of these negative thoughts. Instead, try to focus on similarities or what you enjoy about the person, that way if criticism ever comes up you can offer ‘constructive’ criticism rather than something bitter.

Waiting forms another large chunk of time we have to spend. New York is a prime example. The city never sleeps since there are so many things to wait for, from buses, trains, lines, tickets, money, food and etc. That’s why I thrive in a city environment. I never understood why people say “in a New York minute”. Nothing I consider worth doing takes a minute or less. Connections mess up. You forget what line to take. Food preparation takes a long time. If anything, I feel by having a giant metropolis you have to accept the idea things will move slowly and ‘all representatives are currently assisting others. The next available representative will be on the line to assist you shortly.’ 

That’s why I can be a sloth in the city. I know how to wait. I know how to be bored. I know I may not always make everything, every train or meeting at a precise time that I want. Automatically I build this into everything I do. Occasionally I’m even given little electronic boards which tell me when the next train is coming, but I can’t really do anything to make things move faster. My expectation remains I may or may not get lucky or my own intuition may improve. Keeping this in mind I have a few different scenarios play out in my head as I’m on my way somewhere, each serving as a back for any given situation.  

David Foster Wallace brought me to think about this expectation we create. I’m not sure whether or not his deliberate goal was to make us think about how we use time or how we interact with others, but I’m glad he decided to focus on such a massive part of our lives. A part of our lives edited out of books, writing and so forth rather than celebrated in its own right. So much writing edits out the gritty little details leaving us with a glossy sheen which is why his posthumous novel excites me. Does a broken escalator force people to move faster since they have the idea it should be moving faster, or do people enjoy running up stairs to see if they can beat that languid machine? I see this all the time, of the little kid outrunning his parents by taking the stairs. Then he stands up on top, thinks, and waits for them to realize the folly of their ways. He’s not even thinking about the extra time he’ll be up there, waiting for them. For the child, he has focus and understands the importance of waiting, of boredom. 

Boredom can be a relieving factor. It can drive people crazy. For literally the least interesting thing in the world, it is a surprisingly divisive issue. Maybe I should get “The Pale King”. What do you think?

DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM: A review

                 Last time I reviewed something of Steve Roggenbuck’s, it was a smaller sampling. A chapbook called “i am like october when i am dead”. Honestly, I liked and disliked parts of it. This particular one shows off his love of typography, particularly in its exacting font size (80) and type of font (Helvetica, obviously). Being so absolute to its design reminds me a bit of John Barton Wolgamot’s precise standards. Compared to Steve’s previous stuff, there appears to be a great deal more personal detail. That works to his benefit.

                It’s the personal detail which warms me to each poem. Perhaps this was the crucial detail which made me a little cold towards his chapbook. According to his notes on in the book, these are poems from MSN messenger history from High School. Remembering what I was like in High School, I kind of wish I had kept more of those conversations. Going through these, I’m sort of reminded the same kind of feeling I had as a teenager, writing sweet sayings for people I cared about. Upon finishing these, I immediately went into my ‘notes’ section of my personal email to see if I had saved anything from that period in my life. 

                Perhaps it is this exploration of his past relationship which gives it soul. Even the more silly or random elements in the book are related. Together it feels unified a complete whole. Having common themes thread themselves around, like the affectionate phrases he shows towards the recipient of these messages, opens him up a little more to the outside world.

                His work appears to be obsessed with the consumption of vast amounts of TV, irony, and care for others. The first two are considered the death knolls of creative writing. David Foster Wallace claimed Television destroyed a great many writers, many them lazy or overly ironic. Real, genuine emotion couldn’t be properly expressed anymore; it was as if our brains were rewired, unable to cope with human interaction.

                Steve deftly avoids this problem and turns it on its head. Using common phrases and transforming them into poetry shows the actual power language still and can have. A simple bold statement of 

“HA HA AMAZING WHAT SOME PEOPLE ACCOMPLISH”

in and of itself wouldn’t be anything interesting. It sounds a bit cliche in all honesty. Dispersing this with tender pieces like 

“I HOPE THAT WE GET TO STAY TOGETHER AND BE IN LOVE FOR A VERY VERY LONG TIME”

gives the reader some idea of the actual relationship these two people had with one another. It reminds me of looking through old Facebook pages, old wall to wall posts. You’d read all this leftover debris from the internet, of a relationship which might not be around anymore. Rather than focusing on the detrimental aspects of online relationships, he focuses on the positive. People tend to remember the bad after the end of a relationship. But that which is left in computers, in person to person messages, is generally positive. Looking back, you see all the good moments you had. It becomes so easy to remember the bad, what lead to the end of a relationship, that you forget the good. The internet serves as an unbiased storage bin of these odds and ends. Steve celebrates that, even the most mundane and seemingly innocuous details. 

                I’d strongly suggest reading the whole thing in one sitting. It isn’t very long so it really shouldn’t be a challenge. The language is simple and easy to understand. Why I suggest reading it in one sitting is to get the full impact. Each piece feeds and adds to the other pieces. Everything is connected, nothing is alone. What appear to be tossed-off statements is actually part of the whole, part of the conversation. The face value boring statement:

“FINAL DESTINATION 3 IS OUT ON DVD” 

gets followed by:

“I WANT TO PICK YOU DAISES AND KISS YOU WHEN I HAND THEM TO YOU”

                Alone, either statement might not have the same impact. The first could be seen as just something ironic or plain pointless. Having it coupled with the next bit allows both to have a greater feeling, a greater emotion. Personally, I felt the sparseness of his chapbook focused more on the former and less on the latter. Each piece in the chapbook felt alone, isolated. Here we have the opposite occurring, and Steve’s language is carefully chosen and placed to have a maximum impact. I consider his approach towards poetry to not be far removed from the Dadaists, who used similar techniques regarding cut-ups. By taking the items out of context, he’s able to reassemble it into something much more interesting. I guess now it is called Flarf poetry with him as one of the better Flarfists. 

                In case you’d like to read this, he offers it completely for free on his minimally designed website. Please go here for further information on how to download and distribute. His obsession with the internet and its capabilities (Google Bombing, Flarfing) now has begun to bear fruit.

Should a “Blog Tour” be an actual thing?

I’ve been kind of pondering this idea for the entire week. As I work. As I went and saw “The Death of a Supermarket” which included phrases that would’ve made Orwell proud. My favorite had to be “The more you spend, the more you save.” That one sort of stuck itself in my mind, how little sense it made.

Bloggers need to make up those sorts of phrases, like a cute little tag they can use for themselves. How characters in your favorite TV shows have a certain line that make them not only lovable, but relatable. Bender uses “Bite my shiny metal ass”, Oprah uses “Everyone wins a free , etc.  I use “Rock On” because I want you to and because it is somewhat playful. 

Most people who write these things want to write, but don’t know how to go about it and blogging seems the easiest way of reaching a hyper specific audience. I feel like bloggers ought to tour this great land, the great US of A. Authors do it, so why not internet writers. Internet trolls could be some of their plants in the audience, deliberately placed to increase excitement amongst the otherwise tame audience. Besides, the more bloggers I meet, the more I realize that the dedicated ones should make some cash on the prospect. 

Plus, it might bring some much needed money to bookstores; maybe allow them to attract more buyers of coffee and stale pastry. Too often I see so many people writing these things and give up. Slowly the posts decrease and eventually go down to a trickle. I’m of course talking about myself; I’ve had some blogs for years. I remember putting literally several reviews of every album I heard in a day up on the internet. Since then, I’ve grown wiser. Music requires a great deal of time to fully appreciate it, what doesn’t click the first time may click the second or third. Or you could just be in the wrong mood for it.

How about a Podcast, you might ask. Podcasts are used by those with a microphone and I have my issues with them. When I hosted a radio show long ago I deliberately honed a “radio voice”. Later when I listened to my show I watched in the spectrometer how different it felt from my real voice. No matter how much I tried to speak in a normal voice, I kept on doing it. So a real, face to face meeting with people works much better with many. Without the filter of how they sound, they’d be more real.

I feel the other benefit would be the tone in which these words are said. Tone is a causality of the internet; it takes a particularly good writer to get the point across. Even great writers considered “masters” at their art gave live readings, like David Foster Wallace for example. What may have missed a reader becomes more apparent once you hear the writer’s intension. Kafka’s work suffered from a similar problem. When one of his friends was asked about the tone of his readings (yes, I know, life expectancy is a wonderful thing) he stated that the humor of the stories was more heavily emphasized than the hopelessness most associated with his work.

Did I mention bloggers work for dirt cheap? Because I’m assuming most would probably give readings for like a cheese Danish and stale coffee. In fact, they might feel they are “getting a bargain” for just being accepted in public forum. 

Part of me would be curious if this would or could even be a thing. Bloggers could help out each other, for each place they stop; they crash on another blogger’s couch/floor/collection of blankets. That way, they achieve an intellectual variation on “couch surfing”. 

Please let this be a thing.