Wednesday, October 18, 2006

if you could meet anyone who would it be?

if you could meet anyone who would it be? a commonly asked question by scene magazine in their section where they take pictures of randoms in the valley and enforce the popular-culture spanish-inquisition upon them.

my answer, Henry Miller. I was sitting around at home thismorning after realizing i didnt have to be at uni till 2, then suddenly had the urge to come to uni, go to the library and borrow out Henry Miller books...there's certain moments when only he can get accross to me.




















Its lame talking about someone no-one else in my circle seems to know anything about...except mel, and i think he scares her! And i've thought many times how incredible it is that one person can have a favourite "aritst", someone that they consider to be some kind of God, and others can have no idea who they are. I remember when i was in Paris i spent a lot of time tracking down painters i loved, walking around their old neighbourhoods, finding their houses, finding things and places they painted, and particularly finding where they were buried. To my amazement, i stumbled accross Amedeo Modiglianis' grave when wandering around the largest cemetary in Paris and was astounded. It was tucked in with all these others, barely enough room to stand near it without standing upon some other poor soul. How is this possible, i asked myself. How is it that people defame the graves of all those surrounding Jim Morrison (im not saying hes not amazing) and yet there is not even a foot around Modiglianis' grave to stand, or a flower, or a note? I left nothing, i realized that all the names on the stones surrounding me at the time of that thought probably belonged to people equally incredible.

















The moral of the story and its relevance to Henry Miller is two fold. His books are incredible, he was incredible, yet he was human. The more i read, the more i realise his stories are just that, stories! He was not really anything special, anything that incredibly different to us. He worked at Western Union for years whilst trying to write and failing, he married and lived a mundane existence in Brooklyn N.Y., he obcessed over women who did not even care he was there, or that were so preoccupied with their own worlds that they did not realize what they were missing, he treated a lot of people like crap! Sure, at times he had the Milleresque "dont care too much" attitude, that eternal detatchment and embracing of being "alone", but at the same time (and this is one of the reasons i love him so much) he is plunged into fits of self-doubt, or lonliness, or a need for control. The story that i am currently reading concerns a time when, a woman that dominates his books, whom he left his first wife for and continually speaks of, leaves him for another woman. Not in the usual running off one night and leaving a note fashion, the other woman moves in to his apartment and slowly he feels his grip on June falling...

The second part of my realisation is that i am astounded that i have not yet run into someone else who has even read any of his books, let alone seems to appreciate them as i do. Then i realize, as i did in that Paris cemetry, that when i look about me i see floors and floors of books, hundreds and hundreds of names that i have never heard of that other people around me feel they could not live with out!

Isn't it exciting...so much to read, see, do....

So heres a taste of Miller for those that do not yet know him, it is in no way a representation for his books are as random, scattered and yet flowing and connected as a day in your own life.

"I thought when i came upon her, that i was seizing hold of life...Instead i lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and i found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as i was, i nevertheless found something i had not looked for - myself!" (Tropic of Capricorn)

"This infernal waiting had been going on now for several weeks, not every night it is true, but intermittently, and with frequency that rasped his nerves. Down below, where the harbour expanded in a broad inky splash, there was peace...As he lifted the curtain aside to stare into the darkness he was seized with an inexplicable feeling of terror..."We are all of us alone, "he mumbled to himself, but even as he said it he could not help but feel that he was more alone that anyone else..."
"Atleast, he told himself, there was nothing definite to worry about. Wasn't there though? The more he endeavored to reassure himself, the more convinced he became that there lurked a sinisted misfortune whose reality and imminence was expressing itself in these tenuous, shadowy forebodings...Little comfort was there in the thought that the ordeal might be of limited duration. The question was whether it did not constitute but a prelude to a final, uninterrupted isolation...But there were explainations...? Yes, of explainations there was no end...The very fact that there were explainations required explaining..."
"So absorbed was he in his reverie that when suddenly he turned his head, saw her standing there at the threshold, he almost collapsed."

2 Comments:

At 4:01 PM, Blogger Liamio said...

If i could meet anyone... I'd love to sit and have a good chat with socrates. or have a beer with hunter thompson... that would be crazy.

 
At 1:48 AM, Blogger Renee said...

hunter thompson, and beer? that would be tame! hahaa....me and meaty were talking about the weird parties Hunter and Jack Nicolson must have had whilst watching "one flew over the cuckoos nest" the other day...a nice point to contemplate, and then put yourself into! lol

 

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