I don't climb up on buildings or towers any more to rant, rave, and yell, or even scream about the things that bother me. I don't go to bars and get into fist-fights, or brawls, over anything. I don't go to people's houses and get into arguments with them. I don't take drugs or drink, and go through suicidal overdoses. I just come to my blog and yell instead. But even though I consider this a remarkable achievement for me, taking all that acting-out and transforming it into mere words, for the purpose of blowing off steam, there are still way too many who cannot see what I do as anything other than negative and extreme. What you may consider negative or extreme, I consider art. It is the ability to capsulize my frustrations into poems, stories, and writings, and post them on this site. This is therapy for me. To write what I feel and think when I want, because I want to. This blog is my digital tower and building. Everyday I climb up here and scream and yell, so I don't have to live with all of it penned up inside me, and end up like I did before. Be that as it may, some of you can find nothing better to do than to complain about my life-saving process, as if it were something you have decided you must do, based upon your opinion of what I say here. You would stifle the creative process, if I let you, under the guise of good taste and rationality according to your moral compass. At times, I feel as though this is a lost cause for me, but this morning I woke up early, and realized the importance of what I am doing here for myself. If I were to abandon this blog, because of someone's disapproval of what I say, or may say, then I would cut myself off from the very outlet I created for the very purpose some find objectionable. Writing is a freedom. To write, unedited, is an art I understand and use. Editing myself, my feelings, and thoughts, for anyone else's comfort will not occur here. If you don't understand this, don't come here and read what I write. I am serious about this. Don't come here to see if I have violated some absurd moral position you hold, because I either have, or will. This is not an internet discussion forum for being for or against anything, it is my blog. I am angry, so what? Are you so incredibly fragile that you cannot bear my anger? Don't come here! I am intense, so what? So what if I'm intense, why are you so threatened by intensity and anger? What happens to you when you read me? What great threat to you am I that my words cause you such consternation? I know who I am, and I accept who I am. I am that pissed off guy, Bobby Jameson, who hates the music business and all it stands for, and all that it doesn't protect. I come here to say that, over and over again, because it needs to be said by someone. If you work for the music business, what I say probably bothers you. Good, you need some bothering. If I make you uncomfortable, good, you probably need to be knocked out of your chicken-shit comfort zone. But when you bring your zone of comfort here, expecting it to be appreciated, you are living in a state of unrealistic demands that I have no plans to abide by, ever. I could limit comments made here by some if I chose to, but I don't. You can say whatever you want, but when you come here anonymously and complain, I reserve the right to treat you like the chicken-shit you are. If you want to take up an issue with me, be my guest, but why don't you get the courage to complain and tell me who the hell you are? There are so many anonymous comments, I am continually forced to try and figure out who's commenting at any given time. Why is it so important to you to say something, while at the same time concealing who it is saying it? There are people who say things I don't agree with, but at least they have the consideration of telling me who they are. I do not take the position that I am right, or the position I am wrong, I just take a position and post it here on my blog. I may come back later and think I was completely full of shit, but I leave it, because that's what I thought at the moment. If I were concerned about being right, or moral, or justified, or any of those pathetic kinds of positions, I would not come here at all, for fear of making a mistake. I am a mistake. My whole life has been a series of mistakes, and I own that fact. After all I have told you about me, you cannot possibly think that I believe what I did was justified, nor do I. It's just what I did at the time. I post it for public consumption. I post my own foolishness, so I don't have to live my own foolishness. I paint it into words. I did not punch anybody today, I just wrote about it. I did not attempt suicide today, I wrote about it. Why would some of you seek to quash my right of self expression, particularly, since that right, answers the dilemma of human beings, "What do I do with all this shit?" I write on line, which means, in this case, you can read my thoughts, because I am not hiding them. I have invited you into my mind, to some degree, and allowed you to be part of the constant hurricane that I live in. But to have to endure complaints about my thinking, simply because I let you in on it, has started to become counter productive, to say the least. It might help if you came here thinking, "Well let's go see what that crazy bastard Jameson is thinking today." My mental health is based on my ability to take bad actions and transform them into words, thereby freeing myself from the necessity of taking the bad action. Everything I do here is to free myself from the need to suppress my thoughts and feelings. I come here for the exact reason some of you complain about, which is to "get crazy." You ought to try it sometime, because from where I sit, some of you would greatly benefit from the therapy of writing about your feelings instead of hiding from them. In years past, I would sit and think about the things that were driving me crazy, and after awhile I'd run out of space to keep all those thoughts and feelings inside. Then they'd get transformed into actions, tragic actions. Now I think about the same things as I did then, but I have a place to put them; here. I have the Bobby Jameson blog, where I get to be Bobby Jameson all the time, because I am Bobby Jameson all the time. I will not give up this place where I can be myself for your comfort, praise, or dissatisfaction. Some of you demand things from me, which I do not possess, such as peace and happiness, and a better outlook on life. I will be 33 years clean and sober on the 1st of April, so what I have is I am alive and growing. I've come a long way from where I started, and I didn't get much help from human beings or god, so I am stuck with me, the one thing on this earth that I can count on. Not AA or NA, or a church, or the state, or federal government, just me, my 90-year-old mother, and mentally-ill brother, that's it! Oh yeah, and this blog...
GO TO PART 1 OF BLOG
Bobby—
ReplyDeleteThis was written as a response to your poem, "Forever As A Feeling," but as I wrote it, I realized that it was also relevant to the last couple of posts on the blog, so I am putting it here as well:
I read this one late last night (or rather early this morning), but I waited until now to respond. This poem is a departure, which is part of what I like about your various writings—they continue to evolve, at least in my newly arrived perceptions of them. This piece, for example, abandons rhyme. Those of us who have a penchant for rhyme often find it hard to avoid—it just flows so naturally off the mind's tongue. Your natural inclination toward rhythm is also thwarted here. You have the natural rhythmic flow, but the syllables are sporadic with six predominant, but anything from four to nine syllable lines emerging. These changes, especially the abruptness in the short lines like, "Better than now" and "On a rainy day" help to establish the disorientation and dismay of the viewer who has returned to a distant, now distorted, memory, as well as a newly altered now.
E.A. Robinson used this technique in his "Miniver Cheevy"
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
The "he had reasons" pulls the reader up short, leaves him off kilter; it is rhythmically and intellectually alarming. Your poem has a similar fluid nuance to its flow.
As much as I like your rhymed stuff (and I love rhyme and dislike a great deal of free verse—I blame TS Eliot for fomenting the destruction of most of modern poetry—although I guess I have to lay a little of the blame on Whitman and Ginsberg, too), I think that the last two stanzas in this poem are perhaps the most naturally poetic things that I have seen you write.
Even in your most angry missives (I think a collection of some of your things should be compiled soon called "Pissed Off Poems—Diatribes and Tirades from the Avant Guard"—see the pun on "garde"?—titles have always been my forté) you always have a clever turn of phrase or a flash of insight. Even when your pieces seem morbidly self-pitying (for an instant) or when they lash out over-aggressively at some perceived slight or at a real insult, the poems and blogs always rise above the subject matter. The reason for this is clear. You take your role as an artist seriously, and you create art in each of your endeavors. Obviously, you have a knack for linguistic and metaphorical creation, but you don't settle for the glib or clever line. You work at finding that turn of phrase, that sensory detail, that insightful image that will propel the perceptive reader to a powerful revelation.
"Bitter sweet memories" (not bittersweet, but bitter sweet—if you didn't mean it, don't admit it—
"Bittersweet memories" are one thing, a mixed emotion, and a cliché, but "Bitter sweet memories" show an altering of attitude and a feeling of loss brought about by change and the passing of time)
"Bitter sweet memories
On a rainy day
Somewhere in the future
(a memory "in the future"—what a great image)
Somewhere from the past
(changing the preposition from "in" to "from" is
meaningful as well)
Lingering like the haze
On a window
Temporary as the rain
Forever as a feeling
(an explanation of "memories... somewhere in the future")
Man, those are some powerfully poetic sentiments.
thank you Tim
ReplyDeleteI agree with the previous commenter. Your unrhymed poetry takes wing and creates surpising images.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment mom... I love you and miss you...
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