I pounded on a typewriter all night in my parents' basement with a fury. I wrote it all, and at age 15, thought I knew it all. I had delusions of grandeur, thinking that if I kept them that they'd be worth something. I'm sure these days, they'd be good for a chuckle.
A few years later, I decided to throw away everything that I have written. Prose, poetry, ramblings, all of it.
Jack Kerouac stressed in my mind that you really can't write about anything real that hasn't been lived. Charles Bukowski the same, and he lived it hard. That's the reasoning behind chucking all that work. To do some research.
20 years later, and I'm still researching . . .
(The odd part is, I've adopted Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness style when I wrote my songs. The words are laid-out like one never-ending thought. I saw, years later, Blake Schwarzenbach from Jawbreaker had the same layout in his songs, and even referenced Kerouac a bunch of times in 24-Hour Revenge Therapy, one of my desert island records. I guess I'm not the only one that doesn't know Jack.)
1 comment:
I still have one of your short stories. About skipping school and Mr. Foster.
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