Skinny Dipping

§82 [13.ix.24.a : vendredi] Yesterday’s writing session went really well. Every sentence hummed, opened up, revealing new pathways, possibilities. And last night! What joy to spend the evening reading and planning on the couch across from my wife. I had my feet up with a book and my notebook propped on my lap. We were drinking watermelon daiquiris and I felt genuine elation when thinking about waking up the next morning (this morning!) to see what I would write in Von Neumann’s Elephant. You see, writing is an emotional tilt-o-whirl.

One hundred years (and four days) ago, Virginia Woolf was on her “last lap” with Mrs. D … Mrs. Dalloway. In her diary, she wrote, “It is a disgrace that I write nothing, or if I write, write sloppily, using nothing but present participles.” It’s important to find an approach that works for you. Marcel Duchamp said, “The world is my art supply store! If you come up with a good recipe, add the right ingredients, and follow the directions — throwing in a dash of experience — you’re bound to come up with something good.” The implications for writing are profound: imagine writers adopting these ways of working so that they never have to worry about what to write on that blank page ever again!

Last night, I made a note to write this diary entry today about print+digital hybridization: write a diary entry to be published digitally (in/on Skinny Dipping) and which will be included in the printed (booklet) version of Von Neumann’s Elephant. Aside from the periodic addition of a new chapter for Skinny Dipping, I’ve not done much with the online component of my publication project. Effectively, I’ve been waiting for something to happen. What am I waiting for? Cloud Theory? But … !! I was floating, but now I’ve found a branch to grab on to.

A little more than a month ago, I thought I was so clever when I discovered Cloud Theory. No two books would be alike! Thousands of photographs of clouds, thousands of poems and prose fragments, all printed out on sheets which could be combined in any order to make a unique book. Of course, all I’d discovered was the freedom of the digital display of text and images on a screen and I wanted to replicate that for the New Age of Print. I should have known … I did know. If you think of something that you suppose is original, you can be sure that someone has already done it. And sure enough, I ran across the confirmation in the pages of Uncreative Writing: “Today, in places like Printed Matter and book arts exhibits, it’s not uncommon to find books comprised entirely of unbound sheets that purchasers may arrange according to their whims. The catalog to John Cage’s retrospective Rolywholyover was one such book, with nearly fifty pieces of printed ephemera laid in, with no hierarchical order. The book embodies Cage’s chance operations, a book without fixity or finality, a work in progress.” [p. 115]

Since I won’t be doing or writing anything original or innovative, I might as well get on with it, where it = making little books. The task that remains is how to translate or couple the process of making little books with the (now, seemingly) obligatory online presence. Perhaps (up until today : !!) I’ve been too precious about “my writing” when there is nothing to be precious about since none of this is really “my” writing. Of course, I’m the one responsible for putting these words here and in this order, but these aren’t my words. Other people (even writers!) have used these words before. My task for today is to take some words that belong to all of us, words in the commons and sprinkle them on the page and move them around until I hear a satisfying chime.