purification rites

Chicago this weekend lying baldly to a man in a dress as he spoke of the devil and the glamours of sin and exorcisms. Next weekend Chicago. Two reading dates. Will you come. Will I see you there. I hope to see you there. And then Los Angeles the next weekend, CalArts and Skylight with Kate D. It has been suggested to me recently that I need to be more positive here, on this blog, I need to have more fun, in this whole process. As opposed to representing the struggle of the tour, or the ambivalence of having a book come out, I need to enjoy myself and people will gravitate towards my positive thinking.

Problem is, if I had a more positive attitude I wouldn't remotely write anything that I write now. Instead I would be a completely radically different person. I wouldn't recognize this person. I am the personality opposite of yoga. I am mostly not very calm. I am on the whole not terribly sunny. I do not often try to positively engage people. I do not and will not smile if you tell me to. Or play nice. I have never been very good at playing nice. Or when I do play nice I hate myself for playing nice. If this prohibits me from being a certain person or going certain places it has always, it will always, I am not changing now, if anything I want to get angrier, I want my writing especially to be more filled with rage, especially when i read Close to the Knives, I want to be more of an asshole, more critical, less nice. When the man on the street tells me to smile, instead I snarl. Instead I snarl. Or I smile and inside I snarl. That's kind of the novel that's out now. The girl always told to smile, to be nice, to be the equivalent of working in customer service. How this sickens her. How she longs to revolt from this.

Perhaps the goal here if there is any goal here is to represent the process of what's going on, in public, as well as inside. To be as brutally honest as possible. That's what I've always done, here, on the blog, or in my own private diary. I cannot sugarcoat or censor. I will not. Perhaps I'm done here. On this blog. This particular space. I don't know. It's becoming all impossible to negotiate, the self on the reading tour, with the writing self. Why do these need to be different selves?

Anyway, I used to write essays here. And then the Semiotext(e) book came and I have been working on that for two years and I was essaying there as opposed to here. And then this became like a journal of sorts. Maybe I am swimming sort of in my own stew here, maybe it's not a worthwhile space anymore. I will meditate on this and try not to act too impulsively. But perhaps I need to slowly make peace with this online space, realizing unlike a book it will never be technically finished, but perhaps it is finished, perhaps I have finished it. 

I apologize for this mini-exorcism. Or rather I don't. And that is the point.