Martin Villanueva said, “Uh, how do I introduce you… (Fuck it)… Introduce yourself.”
(Laughing, How Do I Introduce Me, Let Me Count The Ways)
Hello Future-IT: I am really here yakking in your class as Eloisha’s best friend (false), I am in love with charming Young Jones here (possible), and I am secretly courting the Ipil spore (maybe) while four short stories play coy with me (true). So:
Let’s say you have command of the language--
THEN
What life can you tell?
OH
You’ve had your elementary/high school/college lives…
BUT
HOW
Can you write real life “interesting” or “questionable” enough to read?
AND
Can you write life the “mundane drudgery” as “extraordinary normal”?
IF NOT
THEN DO NOT
?
I’ll try this buzzing but it looks like you are all buzzing in your heads or you think you already got it all buzzed out. IF latter, lucky you because I had to write it all out in a wa-poise-future-tree-killer therefore yet-to-be-tree-killer-seller about it just to buzz it out.
IT:
minus all the academic yadyada
is
Ta-Done
AN ESSAY THAT SAYS WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU WANT TO SAY,
narrate (+ synonyms) and not report.
But you’re really telling a true-to-life-story. Anyone can report but not everyone can narrate (+synonyms) a nonfiction-story because that means you have to have the age-old-bard’s talent for storytelling. That talent takes study and practice of the writing craft--- knowing how best to tell your life-story that makes a point--- and not just tell how experiencing whatever began and ended.
IT: In addition to the standard beautiful language (which sometimes makes it unrealistic) nonfiction narratives in reading lists, try reading Jeffrey Ford short stories. Most of the stories are a delight to read because they’re written like an essay.
IT: In local writing, I know that on good days Luis Katigbak writes essays the Jeffrey-Ford-Way and somewhere along the essay-way there’s even Charles Tan with the Illuminati text. Then sometimes there’s Adamant David essays. And on the usual bad days I read essays and snore a shriek.
What makes IT in essay form different from expository essay is that IT combines and goes beyond the informing/persuading/entertaining purposes of all expository or journalistic essays. Masticate on that and this: usually, IT has poetic language or edgy articulation that is so-unique-you that is an experience itself of the reality or bullshit
IT: The word essay comes from the French word essaier that means “To begin” or “To attempt”. So, if you have the crafty balls to write about life that is mundane-maybe-interesting and stranger-than-fiction-what, begin with the essay before you attempt your formal experiments. If you can’t hack the essay form, you can’t journey into IT. You can’t play if you don’t know how to begin and that’s the essay.
Ta-Done-Done
A NONFICTION NARRATIVE THAT MAKES USE OF
SHORT STORY ELEMENTS/DEVICES/TECHNIQUES
So you can write your life-stories in essays and you feel that it’s not enough that way.
Then---
You consciously craft your nonfiction narrative like a short story and that takes (1) proficiency in writing short stories; a lot of (2) elephant-memory-vitamins; (3) remembering-ouch-ha-ha-exercises; and (4) imagination-to-make-it-real without being creative over the facts or the “nonfiction” part (according to you and some dead/blind/amnesiac witnesses) in IT.
IT: Don’t read nonfiction stuff. Read short stories and you will assimilate techniques via osmosis.
IT: Not so long ago, Twiggy said, “I have to LIVE FIRST because I don’t have life-stories to tell” so IT got shelved. Not so long ago, Twiggy popped doggerel. Not so long ago, Twiggypop said, “Tama ka. Ang pinakamahirap na sulatin is short story.”
IT: Triple-treats dare triple-treats.
IT: Submit IT written like a short story and IT will be labeled as “Short Fiction”. Hannibal Lecter’s Pet Student laughed, “Parang si Lord Byron as Lord Byron in Der Vampyr!” For laughter-reference, you are invited get a copy of January ’09 issue of PULP.
IT: Those who are writing of the attic/closet/baul/jar is reality more unbelievable than fiction that causes death to life (is so dramatic so let’s just say scandal or offense).
Ta-Done-Done
A NONFICTION NARRATIVE WRITTEN IN POETRY FORM
IT: You have the dead and living confessional poets. And you have Capili, Toledo, Ipil and the list goes forward and backward in history until you reach Gemino H. Abad “Care of Light” and Ricardo M. De Ungria “Amp” in Belonging (Stories of Relationships) Edited by Erlinda Enriques Panlilio.
IT: Written in poetry form also allows you those vague abstractions that hide what you are hesitant to plainly reveal as nonfiction. And your “I” taps into the condition of the “Filipino I” but mostly the “Universal I”. Or your “I” assumes the persona or tell the story of/for the “Other”.
Then
There’s
IT
from IT-Evasco
The Art of Auto/Biographic Forms of
Creative Nonfiction
Based on verifiable facts
like the Earth before was flat and now it’s an oblique spheroid
And are fundamentally concerned with “making what is true believable”
in the Kingdom of Thieves it is true that thieving is normal,
the Sheriff of Nottingham is not evil,
and Robin Hood is good,
believe it so
Writing of these forms springs from what Borges and Kunitz refer to as
the human need to sing
or howl or yodel or rap or yawp and if you don’t you choke or croak
and tell a good story
that wow-horror happens
that holy-fucking-shit happens
that aww-happy happens
in real life
whether it is one’s own or another’s
I is s/h/it and S/h/it is You
of “auto/biography transformed by the imagination”
Farmer Yoda says have courage and intellectual strength for that slash and so dash and dish
It
Is fluid and conscious-
It
Calls you and your life-stories to be written in the form that calls
your reality insight or bullshit
It
Is no longer just a stack of boring blocks
on the page
unless your first paragraph/page is what-is-this-bomb
that leads to
reads-like-a-story
sings-like-a-poem
It
Is a viral schizoid clock that
ticks-tocks you
to click-click/chop-chop
The present in The past in The future
Play ketchup
Be
Cause
You are
IT
!
And The Dorques say, “Huh? Girl, what are you on?”
I laugh, “IT.”
And the Dorques say, “Zhe neh pahrl pah frahnsay. Zhe swee desolay…So close the door, and fuck on the floor, so we can score, and do it some more!”
But I don’t dork.
So I quacked IT some more.
*Wink*Think*Blink*Think.
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