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Professor Biva:
Nobody cares. Nobody reads stories. Absolutely nobody reads poetry anymore. The world has become awful. Everywhere I go there’s shit in my face: signs and billboards, celebrities and fucking mini-malls.
Fuck it. I want to go wander around Europe or Asia. I’m so tired of working for shit money. I’m so tired of irritating bosses. I’m so tired of fucking meetings and co-workers who are perpetually lost. I’m so tired of politicians and corporations and advertisements.
I can’t even watch television anymore because of the advertisements. Every fifteen minutes they tell me I’m sick, I need medication, I might be dying, the Earth is a killer, and my dick needs a pump. Fuck off.
I turn the stupid thing off. The shows all suck anyway. The writers make predictable choices. If every episode of Friends ended with everyone finally making it home, and sitting around exhausted, getting stoned, and jerking off, I would have watched it. I would have bought the DVDs. Instead the writers misrepresent our world. They sacrifice their art for money. They write propaganda. Fuck the television. It’s evil.
Anyway. My self-doubt is crushing. No one is reading. I’m talking to myself. I hate that I want an audience. I mean, this work is my compulsion. I realized that a while ago. I can’t stop writing. It’s all I ever want to be doing. I’ve trained myself to write in my head while sitting quietly. All day long, I play with my voices. At night, I write them down. I write what I saw all day. I write how the world looked to me. I write what I thought about it. My images are powerful and ugly. I like to viscerally describe the suffering of all. I want to shock the world awake to its own misery. I know. I know. I know. I’m rough. I’m pushy. And my work is hard to swallow, just like my penis. If you didn’t laugh, you have problems.
Love,
TH
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Sylvia Plath once wrote that “everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.”
She also wrote that “the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
You hang in there, Tom. And please keep writing. Be true to your art.
Cheers,
Prof. Biva
Interesting, did you plan to continue this article?
Have a nice day
Dolly