I’ve finally decided to write about writing. Just like everyone else. There’s no need to wrap it up in any clever disguise. Disguises have been done to death. But the allure has finally drawn me. I have been raised up in a tradition that now requires me to conform. So I tried to not conform by not conforming to not conforming which was really conforming, so what the f**k is an artist supposed to do? Everyone wrote about the death of art sometime before I was even born for this very reason. Yet here I am. Here all of us are. I suppose none of it is important. None of it will ever be important. How cliché. How cliché to call anything cliché.
1.
Josiah Lemming focused so hard on the page in front of him.
No, wait.
Josiah Lemming thinks he knows everything, and the reality is he really does, but it is impossible for him to express any of it. Any time he does, it just comes out as screaming on a page. Sometimes rambling. He circles and circles the answers, the perfect and beautiful words which he knows are inside of him. He wishes he could inspire.
Josiah sighs and pushes his stringy, mouse hair out of his eyes so he can close them. He clenches his teeth and tenses his neck so that his whole head begins to shake. He keeps this going for a few minutes. When he physically can’t do it anymore, his head begins to beat with the rhythm of his heart.
Nothing.
Josiah Lemming pulls at his hair.
This is how I relate to my character, Josiah Lemming. In this way, we are the same person. But if Josiah Lemming is a writer whom I created, and I relate to him, then the two of us are just like Kilgore Trout and Kurt Vonnegut.
I don’t want to be like them. I would conjecture that Josiah wouldn’t want to either. Josiah Lemming is different. So am I.
2.
Josiah Lemming has a pure voice. He’s heart broken and dramatic.
He sings, “Why don’t you like me, why don’t you like me, why don’t you like me,” as he pounds on his keyboard.
He wants an answer.
He wrote the song to demand an answer.
Why don’t you like him?
Josiah jumps off the small stage at the Universal Bar and Grill. He is unplugging his keyboard and packing everything away in a small suitcase. His car sits out front. Everyone, the ten patrons, are sitting at the bar, drinking. Nothing new.
A lone, young woman sits at a booth in the back. Josiah didn’t notice her during his set. She gets up from her table and approaches. She taps Josiah on the shoulder as he is bent over the bag for his keyboard, trying to get everything put away.
“Maybe everyone assumes you want to be left alone,” she says to him.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said: Maybe everyone just assumes you want to be left alone. Maybe that’s why you think they don’t like you.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to be left alone?”
“I—No. Not really.”
“Can I buy you a drink? I like you.”
“I—Sure.”
The two of them wander to the end of the bar where no one is.
“I’ll have a Sapphire and tonic,” the young woman says to the bartender. Both turn to Josiah.
“I’ll have a water. With lemon—“
“No, no, no. That isn’t what a star drinks,” she says, putting her hand, fingers spread, on his chest. “That isn’t you. You said you wanted people to like you.” She turns to the bartender. “He’ll have a scotch on the rocks. Any scotch will do, as long as it's not a blend, of course. Single malt. Glenlivet, Glenfiddich perhaps. Maybe a Glengow—Any Glen.”
The bartender chuckles.
The young woman winks at Josiah.
“To be honest with you—“
“Shhhhhhhh. You don’t have to say it. Just pretend you like what he puts in front of you.”
Josiah nods his head.
3.
I am a poor man. I haven’t wealth or fame.
I have my two hands, and a car to my name—
And all the stars were crashing ‘round,
As I laid eyes on what I’d found—
1.
I think I’ll come back to the story of Josiah and the young woman when I figure out how it ends. If I figure it out. I like where I was going the first time.
Josiah Lemming decided that the only way he could write and get his answers out was in the form of science fiction. He knew that he’d be pushing us both further into a box by doing that, but he couldn’t help it. That was all he knew.
He wrote a story once about scientists who invented a device that would speak anyone’s thoughts. It was a sort of helmet someone would wear, and the speakers on the side of it would blurt out thoughts into speech. The scientists, however, could not find anyone willing to participate in a public demonstration. They had already been booked for The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and Oprah.
They found a boy named Curtis Koch. His parents claimed he was the sweetest young man in the world. After lengthy trial runs, the scientists agreed he was the one. When the curtain was pulled on The Tonight Show, revealing Curtis wearing the helmet, the first thing that came out of those speakers was Everyone is going to hate me. The audience laughed and laughed and the band played and the host slapped Curtis Koch on the back. Oh God, they’re laughing—Ouch! The scientists stood behind the cameras taking notes on clipboards. The thoughts, however, continued to pour out, even after the audience moved from laughter to murmuring to silence to murmuring again. Little Curtis Koch could not stop his brain from spewing bad thoughts about himself.
Everyone hates me they all hate me I’ve failed I’ve failed humanity stop staring at me stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stopitstopitstopitstopitstop itstopitohmyGod
Ican’tbreatheI’mgoingtodieI’mgoingtodie—It was at that moment the bandleader came running onto the stage and tore the helmet off Curtis Koch’s head. He smashed it on the floor. The scientists gasped. Everyone else was silent.
Many months later, the scientists came back with a new, smaller version to put on the heads of animals and babies. No one cared, and to no one’s surprise, every animal thought the same word over and over again.
Food.
Babies thought a variety of things, but none of it ever made any sense, so Josiah decided it wasn’t worth writing about. And that is where he ended the story.
2.
“What’s your name?” Josiah Lemming asks.
“Autumn Le.”
“Autumn Le.”
“It took you three weeks to ask me that question.”
“I know, but I was just—And technically, it was only three days. Three Mondays in a row.”
Autumn Le smiles and sips her drink. Josiah smiles back and suddenly notices her for the first time. She has short, thin hair. It looks red under the lights of the bar. He wonders what color it really is. Her skin is bright red as well. She looks warm. Her face is lovely. All of her features are fragile and small. Her nose is upturned slightly. When she smiles, little arrows form at the corners of her mouth. They point to her ears, also delicate, which lead Josiah’s eyes to her slender neck.
He doesn’t want to look beyond.
His eyes work back up Autumn’s neck, re-examining all the same features. He realizes she is looking at him. Looking at his eyes. Autumn Le kisses Josiah Lemming, innocently. Josiah closes his eyes.
“Why?” he manages to choke out once Autumn has pulled back.
“Would you like to see me in natural light?” she asks.
“Where?”
“I’ll show you where I live.”
“Okay.”
Josiah Lemming’s eyes are still closed.
Autumn Le grabs his wrist and leads him outside. Josiah can now see her for the first time. Her hair is dark, espresso. Her skin is pale under the streetlights. Josiah’s heart is making his whole body pulse. It’s in his throat, his stomach, and his feet.
“Are we walking?” Josiah calls out to Autumn who has run ahead.
“Of course we are.”
Universal City is glowing. The Studios, which sit atop the hills, can be seen from Lankershim Boulevard. Autumn Le turns the corner onto Valleyheart Drive and again onto Willow Crest Avenue. Her apartment overlooks South Weddington Park. Universal City is across the street.
Despite the glow of the Studios, Autumn Le’s apartment is completely black. The shades are drawn.
“Close your eyes,” she whispers in Josiah’s ear.
As soon as he does a flood of light tries to break through his lids.
“Okay, open them.”
3.
Oh well. You’ve got me under your spell,
And I don’t think that I’m kidding around.
I don’t think I can forget you now—
I will kick and beat my wrists together
And feel an ocean breathing waves,
Feel them licking at my face.
Ceilings don't exist, and there are no floors beneath me.
If I were king of this night, would you become my queen?
1.
Josiah Lemming tried to get his answers out in paint. He gave that up quickly. Most of the paintings ended in Josiah punching his fist through the canvas. He still liked them though. They were for him. His favorite was one where he had become so frustrated that he closed his eyes and threw everything he could at the canvas. Then he put his fist through it. As he removed his fist, the edges of the hole came back out with it. When he opened his eyes, it looked like a bomb had gone off inside the painting and somehow was strong enough to cross the line into reality.
2.
On every wall of Autumn Le’s apartment are paintings of the ocean. Some are hanging neatly in frames. Some are sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. Josiah doesn’t say anything. He is jealous at first. He’s never created anything as beautiful as the worst of these.
He begins at the wall on his left, carefully studying each one like he is in a museum exhibit. Some are of bright days on some unknown beach, waves crashing and foaming on the shore. Others are of lighthouses on rocky cliffs or jetties, their light pouring out and instantly getting lost in the complete darkness of a storm. Josiah Lemming looks at every single one. The final painting is still on the easel. The ocean is open and fills most of the frame. It is moving on the canvas. Giant swells of sea, blue-green, move across it. One hundred foot faces of God’s good ocean gone wrong.
The sky is split between light and dark. Black storm clouds are chasing down the sun, which is setting in the opposite corner along the horizon. Its radiance is cartoonish in comparison to the rest of the canvas. Golds and oranges sparkle and are swallowed immediately by the black clouds.
Something catches Josiah Lemming’s eye that hadn’t the first time he studied the water. It is as if the swells had blocked it from his view momentarily, but now it is visible again. A tiny boat floats amidst the rising water. Its sails are billowing in the wind. A figure sits at the front. Her espresso hair is also windblown. She looks toward the sky.
“Is that—?”
Autumn Le wraps her arms around him from behind. She puts her hands on top of his and guides them to the palette and brush still resting on a short table. The brush meets the palette and Autumn guides Josiah Lemming’s hand to the canvas. Josiah’s eyes are closed again. He feels the slight pressure of the brush on the canvas. It comes and goes between canvas and palette for just a few minutes.
“There,” Autumn Le whispers in his ear.
Josiah Lemming opens his eyes and sees a second figure now in the boat, his mouse hair blown by the wind into the first’s. They are both tangled and twisted, tied up together.
Josiah smiles and turns to Autumn.
“Where are they going?” he asks.
“To the horizon.”
“And when they get there?”
“Who knows?”
Josiah looks back at the two tiny seafarers. He sighs.
“Is something wrong?” Autumn asks.
“No,” Josiah says, eyes on the canvas.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I—I could hold my breath until I blow up. To make this all seem real.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she says
Autumn Le kisses Josiah Lemming again.
3.
Try and define the energy it takes to write these lines
That I find useless all the time—
Take your eyes out, you play the part so well:
Cut off, screened in, tracklessly dreaming—
Hey pretty, what's on your mind.
Nothing here, an endless night.
I'm fed up and sick, tired of me.
My thin boy voice ruins everything.
1.
Song writing is where Josiah Lemming thinks his talent really is. He has notebooks full of songs, parts of songs, choruses, versus, single lines. Whenever he thinks of something, he writes it down. He loves every one of them. He’s prepared to record a lifetime of albums if anyone will ever give him the chance. The incomplete ones are his favorite, though. If he comes across an incomplete song in his notebook, it means he can’t leave it alone. He’s allowed to change whatever he wants as many times as he wants if it’s incomplete. Once he’s finished, he doesn’t like to change anything. Once he’s put a melody to it, he just can’t. He knows it’ll never end otherwise. I’m the same way.
The problem with Josiah Lemming’s notebook is that it’s stolen. There is not one original thought inside his book. He doesn’t know it though. He writes what he does because it has some familiarity to it—that’s how he knows it’s good. He can hear the melody right away and the words just slide perfectly into place. Sad to say it has never crossed his mind that it’s familiar because he’s heard it before. Some a thousand times before. It’s okay. I’m no different.
2.
At eight in the morning, the sun is pouring through the street-side windows of Autumn Le’s apartment. Josiah has placed another canvas on the easel. His brush strokes are wide and clumsy, but they’re getting better. At his feet sit four or five other attempts. None have holes.
Further out from the easel lie sheets of paper covered in writing. They are stories and songs. The songs still aren’t different, but the lyrics just poured out of Josiah. He is filled with music.
Josiah Lemming is painting the ocean, trying to mimic the perfect beauty that Autumn Le has created. His favorite part is painting the horizon. He tries to imagine what is on the other side of it. That’s what he has to do. He has to paint what exists on the other side of the horizon.
He takes the canvas down, half completed, and puts another on the easel. Autumn Le, sleepy still, wanders into the room.
“How long have you been awake?” she asks.
“Almost all night.”
“Oh. What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to paint what is beyond the horizon.”
Autumn Le looks mournfully at Josiah. He is fixed on the blank canvas.
“Having trouble thinking of something?” she asks.
“It’s just really hard to picture.”
“That’s because it’s not possible,” Autumn Le says very seriously.
“Yes it is. I just have to envision—“
“No, Josiah. It isn’t.” She looks at him quietly. Josiah notices that this is unlike any other time she has looked at him. “Maybe you should go now. I’ll see you next Monday. At the Universal.”
“But—I don’t understand. I mean, look—my painting is getting so much better—I’ve—I mean—I’ve never painted like—and my song writing, my story writing, everything is getting so much better—because—Look around—All the songs I’ve written—All the stories—All because—“
“Last night felt like the only time that we made sense. Every moment after which, chalk it up to coincidence.”
“But—I—“
“Goodbye for now, Josiah. I’ll see you on Monday.”
3.
Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship.
Sends your words past your lips
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth.
But the wrong words will strand you,
Come off course while you sleep,
Sweep your boat out to sea,
Or dashed to bits on the reef.
Whatever you need to make you feel
Like you've been the one behind the wheel.
The sunrise is just over that hill,
The worst is over.
Whatever I said to make you think
That love is the religion of the weak.
This morning we love like weaklings,
The worst is over.
Always a combination of one or the other:
Girl keeps screaming.
Boy keeps feeling
far away.
It's easier to say it's over.
It's easier, but I might still be pretending.
Not a single one will believe,
And I can't say I wouldn't agree,
I don't know if I know myself anymore.
I gave up what I couldn't give in.
I'm waiting to give you whatever the world may bring
I'd give you my life,
Because I don't own anything.
It seemed like the bottom was all that I had until now.
I'd give you my life,
If you'd give me yours somehow.
Every attempt to ________ is filled with holes.
It reads like a polygraph I'm told.
I'm not bitter anyway.
Let it go.
I never sleep still, lest I forget.
Tied down by handicaps instead.
I'm not bitter anyway,
But I didn't want it to turn out this way.
Sing a long goodnight, forfeit any fight.
Refuse to rest assured.
It comes with no reply, hold on too tight.
Hang on every word.
The vessel groans,
The ocean pressures its frame.
To the port I see the lighthouse
Through the sleet and the rain.
And I wish for one more day to give
My love and repay debts.
But the morning finds our bodies
Washed up thirty miles West.
1.
Josiah Lemming wrote a story once that was not science fiction. It was something and nothing at the same time. A trace. He didn’t know what to call it. But it just poured out of him like projectile vomit. It wasn’t perfect. And it wasn’t brilliant. But it spoke. It lived and breathed. It deserved to live.
There can be no such thing as brilliance anymore. Josiah and I both agree that they won’t allow it. It died long ago. And God damn them for killing it.
2.
Josiah Lemming sits at the bar alone. He drinks water with lemon. He feels pretty good about his set tonight. He thinks it went as well as it could have.
The Universal is crowded. Josiah has no idea why he never played Friday nights before. Neither do I. He’s earned ten times more in tips than he ever had playing a Monday. Women sitting at the bar wink at him. But Josiah doesn’t blush. He doesn’t care.
“Another lemon, Hotshot?” the bartender asks. He calls Josiah’s regular drink a lemon.
“Sure.”
“By the way, someone left this for you on Monday.”
“How do you know?”
“Your name’s Josiah Lemming, isn’t it?”
The bartender hands Josiah a cream colored envelope. It is bright red under the lights, but I know that it’s really cream. Josiah’s name is written very neatly in block lettering on the front. He carefully and meticulously tears open the top, using his fingernail as a letter opener. He pulls out a piece of cardstock the same color as the envelope; another piece of paper comes out with it, unexpectedly, and falls on the floor. Josiah looks at the card first. It reads:
Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound.
Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist
See, I can do it too.
I'm sorry.
Josiah sets the note on the bar and reaches down to pick up the piece of paper on the floor. It is the size of a photograph, but isn’t one. The colors of the ocean are immediately reminiscent. He puts it face down on the bar. After a second, he looks again just to make sure. A speck of a sailboat with two microscopic figures carefully dotted in is lost in the vast ocean. Josiah is fixing his eyes on them, trying not to look directly at the horizon. But he can’t help it. As soon as he does, his hand automatically crumples the paper.
“Want me to toss that for you?” the bartender asks, bringing Josiah’s lemon.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Those damn, crazy fans,” the bartender chuckles.
“Something like that. I’ll see you next week.”
“Sure thing, Hotshot.”
Josiah Lemming walks out the door of the Universal to his car. He will never come back. I don’t want him to go back. I can’t stand to see either of us like this. It’s our own fault, but it’s just not fair somehow. Neither of us should have to change, and neither of us will. We are timeless now.
3.
This is the end.
This story is old, but it goes on and on
Until we disappear.
This is the calm.
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed
While you were underneath.
We are the risen.
I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains
Sunk below the sea.
After the storm,
I spoke the words but never gave a thought of
What they all could mean.
Rest in the sea.
I know that this is what you want,
A funeral keeps both of us apart.
You know that you are not alone,
I need you like water in my lungs.
This is the end.
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