Lawyers for Temperatures

Wow, it's really great to poke my head back into the owl-room and find all kinds of fascinating activities underway: Arizona on fire, Smithson on fire, Joanne Kyger reading while on fire. One thing that grabbed my attention was that comment toward the end of your last post, Lauren, where you mention (or at least hint) that your imagination works differently or less enthusiastically now than it used to. I was just thinking about something similar over the last few days, remembering a TrishCamp student named Ezra Furman (I think you might remember him, Cat) whose songs had totally blown me away, all playful and seeming-effortless -- "I Dreamed of Moses" and "The Faceless Boy," especially. It was hard not to compare the waterslide feeling I got from him with the sodden slogs I often seem to be on at this point with my own things... Last night I listened to Mellow Gold by Beck which I've never really listened to completely and I was surprised how much more I liked it than the stuff he'sdone since. It was all choppiness and weird, hot surrealism, and even if it was self-conscious it was the self-consciousness of a dirty young person walking down the street, not the self-consciousness of a world famous ironist pop-and-locking in a crowded stadium. But self-consciousness aside (or maybe not aside, come to think of it, because that might be a part of things, at least for me), it's weird to consider that my own brain is slowly pulling the rug out from under itself. I mean, fuck, the last thing I want is less imaginative energy. It's almost enough to make a guy eat THC-infused candy bars...

Even if there are compensatory payoffs, like analytical strength or whatever, I can't shake the feeling that the idea of imagination and its diminishing with age is going to sit prominently on my radar for the next little while.

(I remember reading an interview with Stanley Kunitz a few years back where he wistfully mentioned how when he was younger a new poem would appear every day on his doorstep, and now that he was older he had to wait a long time for one to show up. Hope I die before my serotonin levels match Alan Greenspan's and all that.)

(And I should add that Ezra is away at Tufts now and doing cool things, apparently, and if any of you are inclined to look him up and check out mp3s or buy CDs or whatever I do recommend it. He's really great.)