Encounterculture

You may have noticed that this blog already seems to be falling apart. This is not, in fact, the case. I started this blog for one reason and one reason only - to get all the poontang that naturally comes from writing a blog.

Okay, for real this time. I started this blog because I have problems writing, and I have problems writing because I have a very precise definition of what it means to be a writer. And it is this:

A WRITER WRITES.

Yes, I know; look at me and my impeccable reduction of stuff. It's really not an affectation; I genuinely do believe that if you're a writer, you'll write just like a normal person eats dinner. It's just something you do. What fucks up the works is content; nine out of every ten things that I read are so concerned with presenting some useful form of content that there's no urgency, nothing to kick your ass and make you go out and do stuff like that. And that's ultimately how I judge art: if it makes you go do something, then it's art.

I write shit for this site all the time, but either delete it before I get done with it or post and delete it, because inevitably, all of that stuff is done for a purpose, and purpose kills art (assuming you're not using writing as an instrument like Upton Sinclair, which is a totally different situation). The stuff that makes it through is the stuff that I stopped whatever I was doing in a fevered panic in order to get it down, not the stuff where I thought "Yeah, people might find that interesting" and then started plugging away. And inevitably, I'm more satisfied with it than with the other stuff; it was created in a void of expectations and judgment, and so it's self-sufficient enough that I don't have to worry about it.

Thus, this blog. I need a place where I can just start shooting off at the mouth whenever the moon turns blue, and more importantly I need to get in the habit of differentiating between those times and the times when I'm really just offering up veiled self-pity in the guise of content. If you think you're missing out on the other stuff, believe me, you're not; Nick Hornby does it better and did it first. And hey, who knows, maybe it'll all be on the DVD.