Byron Alexander Campbell: Hey Patrick, I am going over your love letter submission and getting things ready, and have been talking with Janice Lee about it, and we were wondering if you might consider doing a revision to bring in some more focus on craft? Maybe either touch on the form of the love letter itself or more talk about writing? It can still be interspersed w/ other autobiographical stuff, but I think it might be a better fit for the site if there were a clearer critical focus to it (while still being in your signature style).
Also, is the title final? What’s the meaning? [ Editor’s Note: The original submitted title was “Big Ups W/Space.”]
Patrick Benjamin: The title’s not final. It was a phrase that came to mind when I realized I needed a title. It has no intended meaning. Which I thought fit the piece(s) because when I wrote them they had no intended purpose. Even as I was writing them I knew I’d never send them.
But I’ll draw up something in respect to craft. Have something for you soon.
Patrick Benjamin: This fucking guy stole my idea. It wasn’t one I was going to explain, but now that it’s been stolen I feel I should mention it. What that is I won’t say. Or who stole it. But it’s on this site. And it’s not a new idea.
[ Editor’s Note: It was this piece by Michael J. Seidlinger, which I sent to Patrick as an example of writing-about-craft-but-not-really-about-craft. The idea is writing only while drunk. As Patrick says, it’s not a new one.]
Folks say There Are No New Ideas and I’m inclined to agree until I stop agreeing. Meaning, I stop agreeing once I write something that feels new. Original.
So I don’t edit. Or when I do, I cut a sentence and add a page. I’ve talked to so many “writers” and writers (I’m not admitting to being either) about process and craft and output and I get exhausted of hearing about how hard it is to simply sit down and write something that now I just nod and say, “yeah, so hard” and then leave and write something.
It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s writing. It doesn’t matter.
But if writing’s your thing you know it. It’s one of the things you do.
I have all these love letters I’ve written people over the years. (I’m really old.)
I sent Byron a few of them and he’s agreed to put them up.
If you’re a reader, first, thanks. I am too. It’s great, right? I can’t do it that much because my vision is super-weird and it takes me, like, a week to read a 200 page book, but I love it. Nothing compares.
Apropos of nothing, I used to take Dexedrin with this girl in college and we’d (obviously) stay up all night writing about the occult. It was incredibly fun. She had a really nice boyfriend with Edward Gorey tattoos all over his arms and I had a really nice girlfriend with no tattoos. I just talked to her the other, the girl I dated. She’s still really cool, which is nice to know. Almost like I “know how to pick ‘em.” Something like that.
Oh, I should mention we were taking a class on the occult titled “The Occult.” The professor was so fucking weird. But he was great. He took us out on this huge lawn thing and did some sort of ritual with a sword that had some relation the The Order of The Golden Dawn. But don’t ask me about it. I don’t get it, even after reading all the books we were supposed to read, which I didn’t at the time.
It was a cool course and a few times that girl and I took Dexedrin before we went to his class. But he was fully Spaceballs crazy so it’s not like he noticed. And if he’d found out I doubt he would’ve cared. He was on another planet.
And there. See? It’s 5:54PM and I started writing what you’ve read at 5:50PM.
Craft.
Byron: Oh my god that is awesome. I am not sure I can put it on the site as is but it is awesome. I will let you know. I think it would work to append this to the love letters, you think?
Byron: Yeah I remember now what you had said about drunkenness before. No connection with what Michael wrote tho. I think if you are gonna call him out, you should call him out (even though I don’t think you’re actually calling him out).
Byron: Also there is no fucking reference to the playing times of the movie The Craft in here [ Editor’s Note: In reference to a phone conversation about the submission], which is what threw me. Maybe you should consider reworking it to include references to Kraft macaroni like a Barenaked Ladies concert.
Patrick: Taking time away from real work: Byron is insane. I don’t mean that hyperbolically, and he can cut it out if he’d like, but the dude is asking me to elucidate a point about the film The Craft , which I lied about before. I don’t need research. Well, we’ll see.
Whatserface loses her hair. We call to the watchdogs of all the cardinal directions. There’s a Balk in there. I think.
People get bonuses and people get cancer.
In fact, here’s a poem no one will publish.
fart .
It’s the period that really makes it work.
I have to see this insane psychiatrist tomorrow. He bleeds information about his patients.
I’ve heard all about other patients’ sexual dysfunctions, divorces, et. al. He’s so crazy. I feel like I’ve used the word “crazy” a lot already. It seems to fit a lot of people and situations.
I really like my poem.
Like, obviously it’s a dumb joke but I like the spacing. I like the way the dumb word stands apart from the punctuation.
Seriously, no joke, it took me twenty minutes to write that untitled poem.
I dunno.
No, looking at it again, four minutes later, I really like it. It doesn’t have the stupidity of the act nor egregious sentiment of, well, thinking too long about it.
I mean, I do that all the time. I’m not known for it, but like everyone else, it happens. Thinking too much.
But I really like the spacing. I think it takes something undeniably disgusting to a place at least less gross.
I dunno.
This is fun. Saying anything I want. Hoping I don’t get cancer. Wondering if there’s process. Okay, let’s do “process.”
A one, and a two, and a three…
I bridge the cornerstone
Above the detrentment.
Sometimes bereaving the
Bald.
So, that was cool. And bad. And whatever. I got the scotch I’m drinking from a blind man who maybe knows his beard’s white. And I’m listening to Teddy Pendergrass live, talking to, what sounds like a small room full of excited women.
I dunno.
Craft. Is this, Byron, what you meant? I don’t have any pills so I’m fairly bummed.
Byron: like
Patrick: you’re amusingly confusing as an editor.
Byron: I would like to publish all of this as a “conversation,” but I don’t think they’ll let me. I think the fart joke is probably out, though.
Patrick: do what you must.
Editor’s Note: I am publishing this because it makes me feel dangerous. Entropy isn’t really supposed to “do” memoir. Then again, the fundament of Entropy (as far as I understand it) is to push at the boundaries of the kind of critical writing that’s accepted elsewhere, so maybe this is okay, after all. Patrick is a friend and colleague and says he would like to write more for Entropy. I sure hope he does.