Two New Writings.
Anatomy of Sleeping in the Sun.
Writing history.

Beneath the Brook A swallows call led us into the reeds where old letters and sad songs stain the waters the night we buried our names beneath the brook we bled ourselves in promise sharpened each other’s teeth stole into barns and tore through lambs frenzied by their meat we stumbled down rabbit holes and laid in repose slowly stroking moral dilemmas with the tips of our fingers taking sips from each other until the salt and lime cut our lips and the rumble of far away storms shook the windows frightened and hungry to be swallowed you slipped pale and raw into my dark innocence our bodies poured down sweaty walls while cracked windows rattled in dry frames so we were (dry to the bone but wet to the touch) now in the silent decay of night the thin hiss of my charred body calls you with a small voice but you left with a twist of laughter and a handful of sharp angles i try to sleep through the confused flashes of panic between my sensible mind and aching body that never destroyed me for the better.

Sleeping in the Sun Your first word was my secret name smeared in margins of old books on hot june days i pour down shelves drip through floor boards and stain your thighs in frayed edges torn from sleep through silver waters you return scorched and sparkling pouring your fingers through my hair into my stomach filling me until you burn my lungs coughed up by morning licked raw by your light i thought i saw you while i slept but it was just the city glowing through the trees when i woke i thought i had a red haired wife but i was sleeping in the sun.

In addition to posting these two pieces. I’ve decided to archive the process I went through to write Sleeping in the Sun. My workflow has changed recently, and I thought it would be worth splaying out it’s anatomy to better understand where I am with my writing, and to serve as a landmark in my evolving process.

I must warn you; my artist workflow in whatever medium, are always obsessive, and gruelingly elaborate and tiresome. You are about to step into a world of neurotic obsession that at times approaches dementia, and is really better left behind thick soundproof walls. But if you aren’t prone to epileptic fits, and don’t have a history of heart disease, and aren’t nursing, then you may proceed:

www.artofali.com/sleepinginthesunanatomy


A thought while I was at it, I would briefly chronicle the history of my personal writing to this point:

I started to focus on writing when I was about nineteen. The inspiration for me to begin writing was the Super Nintendo Game ‘Tetris Attack’. As bizarre as that may sound. I had played the game off and on since I was about thirteen. Despite the name it has nothing to do with Tetris really. It stars characters from Yoshi’s Island, (another Super Nintendo game) and is a competitive puzzle game of sorts, tied together by an obligatory narrative. It was a game I invested a lot of time mastering, and remains one of my favorites. None of this is terribly relevant with respects to my writing as of yet; but as I was booting up the game one day, I noticed a little poem displayed against blue before the main start screen. I had skipped past it at least a thousand times as I rushed through the menus to get to the game, but for whatever reason this time I stopped and really read it:

Now,
let's play together...

Together under the
clearest of blue skies...


Now this could be a translation of a famous classical Japanese poem, or more likely just something an overworked programmer threw together during his lunch break to make the game more cute. It honestly wouldn’t have made a difference to me either way.

I found myself suddenly struck by the sweet, earnest simplicity of the piece. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later that night while at work (I worked at a parking lot kiosk at the time). I was counting up money in the register and filling out the register receipt and took notice of three narrow lines under "comments", which of course everyone including myself always ignored and left blank. But that night, inspired by the above poem, I wrote my own along the same lines:


Red Smoke


You’re a sweet smelling red smoke
curling and laughing playfully

a sneaky little thing
flashing your silly smile

but your play is wise
filling your life with meaning.



It was the first piece I wrote in earnest and set me down the writing path I’ve been on since. I still feel this piece is one of my most honest and precisely expressed sentiments.

During the first few years, my writing was mired in extremely cheesy, overbearingly whimsical and nostalgic pieces that relied on mostly trite and thread bare similes and flowery descriptions. I was reading nothing but Dostoyevsky at the time, and dare say thought myself as qualified as he, with my long winded descriptions. Arguably all the same criticisms can still be levied against my writing, and may always. But I do feel that my cheesy flowery descriptions have at the very least become more personally and engagingly worded since (Though I could just be kidding myself).

I do most of my writing disheveled and bleary eyed at three in morning when my neurotic introspective delirium has had enough time to marinate in the secluded stillness of night. I always start in a sensory landscape, that incites a palpable mood and feeling. Then I try to render the sights, sounds, textures, and smells and movement of that landscape. (I use the term landscape literally, as I see/feel a very specific place)

Then I convert that scene into words trying to capture the loose swishy dreamlike quality of the scene in what usually translates into semi abstract descriptions, that hopefully when read can be re-translated back to the core mood I started with. Sort of like an ink-blot-test with subliminal advertising.

I would often write a handful of pieces one at a time trying out different perspectives on the landscape until I hit upon one I felt captured it. I found all too often however, that this approach seemed to result in a final product that was a bit like a quick sketch, often just a frame of movement, shot from the hip. It was informed by a distillation in aesthetic from the other abandoned pieces but none the less didn’t really use the work done in those other pieces to the final works advantage.

Recently however, I increasingly found myself in these landscapes with an added sense of purpose and with more of an emotional and thematic direction. I find I’m no longer passively strolling through ambivalent landscapes, but actively taking part and sharing their purpose. As far as to experience them as an illustration to a story, all be it an abstract one.

The following is an example of one of my older floral freeze-frames:

Our Landscape


leaves shatter crisp beneath
our steps press
twig snaps dirt scrapes

the trees above
drizzle autumn blaze
swish dry hush shake

blushing warm sunset
through our landscape.




And here is a more recent, thematically imbued piece:


On Almond Street



First,
our nervous hand holds – shaking voices
then,
the warm smashing of our soft bodies
birthed from thin shells
left to drag our tender bellies across the sand

back when you scared me beautiful
like high cliffs or wild oceans

before the cold came
the frosted streets
your wet breath – twisting the air
thin legs, big jacket
biting your lip
left behind

did you fall behind the stove
and rot like an old grape?
or stick to the window
like a wet leaf?

you’re the black pain in my fingers
when i wade through old photos
or icy waters
to capture you in a pickle jar
and wonder why your light went out

now
i walk the moon and wonder
(the beasts eye me carefully)
would your dark eyes spill from our children?
would you keep your mysteries closer to god?

it’s morning now
red birds scatter like hot beads
and sizzle in the wet sky

Rosemary
i’m waiting for you on almond street.


This new layer has made my more recent pieces longer, and much more arduous to write. In the past I would write a few different perspectives on the same landscape, one at a time, until one hit the spot, then I would dump the others. Now with this shift in design, I find myself writing a handful of different pieces at the same time, all connected by a nebulous core of mood and atmosphere. I would write each piece to stand on its own, being very strict about my ‘word real estate’ (in other words how many syllables it takes to communicate what I want ie. Concept, imagery, description etc.) I have a intuitive understanding of how many syllables any given concept, line, imagery etc. can be expressed in. When I feel I’m exceeding that, that I’m making poor use of my word real estate, and force myself to find ways to concentrate the meaning into fewer syllables.

When I feel I’ve maxed out the potential of each piece on its own, I discover, (with a familiar sense of surprise each time) that elements of some pieces fit perfectly in wanting areas of others and vice versa. This happens so consistently that I don’t consider it a coincidence anymore; rather that subconsciously I’ve been drawing connections between the different pieces the whole time.

I then focus on combining the often clashing meter, textures , tense’s, etc. Then go through the cyclical process of churning through drafts, which often seems like an endless and obsessive spiral to nowhere. But that in the end leads me to where I’m trying to get with respects to cohesion, clarity, and precision.

The main challenge with this new approach is having the stomach to cut what are often my favorite sections of the individual pieces for the good of the combined final piece, and on not making the final piece seem overly fragmented and scattered. The plus side however, is the extra length and depth allows me to tackle more complex and narrative themes. Rather than a quick sketch of a fleeting moment, I can build and develop a complex conceit, with greater detail and immersion.

Lately I’ve been feeling the narrative elements of my pieces to have louder more commanding voices, and have allowed them free reign in a few short stories. I anticipate that will be the direction I will begin to move in the near future, and hopefully to have a strong enough reign over my expression and the lung capacity for the depth necessary for a novel in the coming years.