So You Want to be a Writer

by. C. Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

The Reconquest of Art

Comin' straight from the underground. The Cat Piano at chunnel.com. I like this site because it directly recognizes that the global artistic underground needs to be connected and provides a place to do it. Arty shorts, ads with actual artistic content for products with that aren't evil. It's only by taking back control of art from the big studios and ad agencies that we will liberate our culture from the corrosive authoritarian influences that currently dictate, or at least attempt to dictate, our output.

Which provides a convenient segue into The Society of the Spectacle. Written by Guy Debord back in 1968 and elucidated Situationism, the artistic heir of Surrealism, this particular text discusses the advent of the Spectacle. The Spectacle is the aesthetic means by which global capitalism effects it's cultural agenda. Being becomes having becomes appearing until that's all that even matters. Appearances. The content is drained from art and all that remains is it's meaningless shell. It's inevitable when the only goal is to turn it around for a profit. Take for example Pop Art and it's debased successors.

We are given art by mandate, and only given the option of which banality to prefer. But things have been changing little by little and the speed at which they change gets faster every day. The internet in it's early forms allowed us to communicate more rapidly and as speeds increase it we can share art more and more effectively. Films, photos, anything. We no longer must accept what's piped into our homes by News Corp. Anyone with the desire and the tools can create art and share it with anyone almost anywhere on Earth. The Spectacle won't be dismantled easily, it's tentacles extend everywhere and burrow subtly and deep. It will be a fight, but a fight we may well win.