I loathe him utterly, like a sickening phlegm heavy on my chest that I would spit out, but I love with an exquisite, fondling obsession the violin that is his instrument.
I'm probably paraphrasing.
When Dazai's work was beginning to gain popularity, Mishima went to visit him where he was holding court (in some bar?) with his camp followers, carousing, singing and so on. Mishima sat at the table silently, and then, waiting his opportunity, said to Dazai, "I don't like you, and I don't like your writing."
At which - allegedly - Dazai laughed.
"What do you think, boys?" he said, "Would he have come all this way if he didn't like me? The boy loves me."
I'm actually pretty busy at the moment. I'm sure people won't believe me when I say that, if for no other reasons than 1) I still post entries here and 2) I don't mention in those entries much of what is happening in my actual life, so that people may form the impression that nothing is happening at all.
Well, things are happening. Or, at least, things are keeping me busy. Some people see that as a good thing. "Keeping busy? Good. Good." And so, often, misunderstandings occur if people ask how I've been, and I say, "Busy." I seem to be someone who, perhaps for physiological reasons, needs an extraordinary amount of time for private reflection, and what some might call 'wool-gathering'. I am a kind of cetaceous marine mammal to whom such reflection is air.
I'm getting off the track a bit. This post is meant as another kind of 'busy-back-soon' note on the door. Which is not to say I won't be in here from time to time, just that, well, I might not respond as soon or as expansively as I would like to communications and comments. I mean, you take all this for granted, anyway, don't you? I'm the only one who actually thinks I have to tell you this, aren't I?
Anyway, although I'm quite far from being a workaholic, I think my being busy at the current time is symptomatic of good things rather than soul-crushing things. I shall not say what those things are now. If, by any remote chance, anyone should be curious, then I'm sure those things will come out in the course of time, barring disasters, such as a sudden and unexpected attack of death, or something.
But to get down to business, as the title of this blog entry suggests, there are various things I wanted to post here by way of news and diversion and general bloggishness to give readers a reasonably pleasant 'watch this space' kind of feeling.
First of all, news, or should I say, vague rumour: All indications are that Shrike is progressing towards its release. I do not know the exact release date, but will let the details be known when I can.
Secondly, Mr Wu kindly made me aware that Mishima Yukio's short film, Yuukoku, or, Rite of Love and Death, has now been released on DVD, and may even be viewed online. I have taken the latter option, and it is, indeed, a jean-creaming piece of heavy, full-on art. Bowie tried doing the whole Renaissance man bit, but has mainly failed to convince outside the arena of music (though I'm very fond of The Man Who Fell to Earth), and I can't think of many other modern artists (popular or otherwise) who have even made much of an attempt, let alone succeeded. Mishima was bona fide.
Thirdly, oh, I seem to have forgotten. I felt sure there was something else. Oh yeah, I'm going to see Leonard Cohen on Saturday. That's at least one more thing I wanted to say, and if my busyness will at all permit it, I might report back here.
There might have been something else, too, but I've forgotten.
The Next Day...
I knew I'd forgotten something. I posted a link to it before in the comments section, but thought I should post a 'main page' link, too. A while back on Chomu I put up an essay I wrote called 'Useful Parasites'. I wrote it with a particular magazine in mind, but, perhaps appropriately, it was rejected. I'm really very (figuratively) footsore from peddling my wares to publishers who keep one waiting - sometimes for years - only to say 'no', so I put it up on Chomu immediately it was rejected. Since then, on Chomu, there has also been a piece by Brent Peterson, and it's good to see our little stable of writers gradually widening, though it's a shame that so far it is full of stallions, with no mares, except nightmares.
I realise Chomu is a bit irregular, in more ways than one, but would like to encourage people to keep checking back, as we are putting up new things in fits and starts, and don't always makes announcements. There are at least four 'serial' pieces that will be continued (I sincerely hope) at some point, too, namely, 33 Ways of Winning at Life, Who Would Have Thought that a Girl Like Me Would Double as a Superstar?, Scramble City and The Dream Cycle, and if that doesn't keep you occupied until I can fully retutn my attention to this blog, I don't know what will. Incidentally, I am also hoping to serialise my temporarily shelved novel of invertebrate ambition and excess, The Sex Life of Worms, on Chomu at some point. I've honestly got quite a lot on.
In his poem 'Deceptions', from what is generally held to be his first mature collection, The Less Deceived, Larkin writes arrestingly of someone whose "mind lay open like a drawer of knives".
I believe it's fairly well-known that Philip Larkin was sexually attracted to Margaret Thatcher. From his correspondence we have the following:
Your anecdote reminds me of a brief exchange I once had with Mrs. T., who told me she liked my wonderful poem about a girl. My face must have expressed incomprehension. “You know,” she said. “Her mind is full of knives.” I took that as a great compliment – I thought if it weren’t spontaneous she’d have got it right – but I’m a child in these things. I also thought that she might think a mind full of knives rather along her own lines, not that I don’t kiss the ground on which she walks.
But I rather think that her mind - and her drawer, or drawers - full of knives must have been part of the attraction for Larkin.
In his song, You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side, Morrissey sings similarly arresting lines: "Someone kindly told me that you'd wasted/Eight of nine lives." Famous for his Freudian slip-like live lyric changes, during performances of this song he has been known to change the lyric to the seemingly nonsensical (so we are told): "Someone kindly told me that you collected very sharp bread knives". I remember it from performances I have heard as "very sharp kitchen knives". (I know people who collect very sharp kitchen knives.) (Incidentally, Moz also seems to have changed this lyric along the lines of, "Someone kindly told me that you'd thrown away, every day of your precious teenaged life.")
The website It May All End Tomorrow suggests that such lyric changes by Morrissey are flippant and without particular meaning. I would suggest that, like Freudian slips, they have more meaning than is at first apparent.
To indicate the direction in which I am thinking, imagine the line, "Someone kindly told me that you collected very sharp bread knives", as being sung by Philip Larkin. To Margaret Thatcher.
Which brings us to Mishima Yukio, and we've almost come full circle.
WIDGETIZE