...The Right to Write - Exercise...

Initiation Tool - create "Morning Pages", writing 3 pages longhand every morning (90 days straight)

Sat. Aug. 28, 2010 - "Morning Pages" - Day #18 - Again, Cocoa Bar, Park Slope, Brooklyn, but let me explain...

Make sure I place my Moleskine in a viewable position so the other cafe customers know I'm serious about writing. "He's got his laptop, but it's not a Mac...he is drinking coffee, but isn't wearing Converse...he does have a novel, but he won't understand it, he's not wearing tight jeans, he's wearing Nike sandals for God's sake"..."Yeah, but look"..."Oh, he just pulled out...his Moleskine...he can join our club of those that seek free Wifi like it's fresher oxygen than what the Park Slope trees provide...breathe it in people, breathe it in"...

...I leave the cafe, discouraged...you'll find out later...

...

I don't want to write right now. I hadn't eaten all day, but just ate 2 slices of Bay Ridge pizza, the most generic pizza of all time, it's actually so generic that it's unique - "Try Our Pizza...It's So Generic, It's Unique!"...I've got the woman blues and my stomach's in knots. I'm trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, and don't you hate when writing is like this? Everything's a metaphor...and if you know me well, you know metaphors make me nauseous...Love and Basketball is on the TV and I assume Omar Epps knows what I'm talking about, we speak a similar language, we don't? I lost his cell number, had written it on that glow stick I lost, remember?...Otherwise I'd call him for advice on what to do with this relationship, I mean band, I'm in. We're Not John and Yoko are having difficulties again, and today, more than ever, it feels like the band could be ending. It's not what I want, it's not what either of us want.

I'm making another attempt at using our band as a metaphor for what's going on in a real relationship, I'm not? The band is real too, it's not? I think I'll go over to the studio (apartment) and see if we can jam it out, again.

We've started to play, a tune we've played a million times over, but something feels off - maybe because I didn't sleep much again last night - but then again that's an ever-more constant theme so feeling off is feeling normal, lately...whatever that means. This band metaphor is making me more nauseous - which fits the stereotype of writers torturing themselves, forget writers, humans do that, then they read and hear stories of other humans torturing themselves, and call it entertainment. I guess it's similar to relationships, I mean band practice. The band fights, it quarrels, bru-ha-has, etc. It seems to make life so much harder than it has to be. Why can't she just play my pace? She snaps back - why can't he put more time into practice, etc.? It shapes into a sports metaphor too, a sparring match that's got no harmony. She's punching too low, creating a jockstrap to spontaneity, and wants to plan everything. He's punching, but not...

...I just vomited on the legal pad, that's what I write on, and it should be illegal to write in all metaphors like this. Who invented metaphors? Just say what you damn mean, or feel, you know like a Mitch Albom novel, without the metaphors, or the Mitch Albom. And, there lies the problem. I don't know. I come up with one scenario, it makes complete sense on my way over to band practice, "Metaphoring Again", which is what I'd like to call our album...but no...

...We now plug in, something that erupts her moral high horse, she always wanted a pony and will have to settle for that...we plug in and what made sense on the way over just sounds like noise now...I want to create something that's got soul (insert "Soul on Ground" lyrics at later date)...and believe me, we do butt heads, but when we're in harmony, well, hence, We're Not John and Yoko, the metaphor's continuing - so is life - and that equals the overriding theme - confusion. And, we realize - might as be confuse together...maybe, who knows, who knows.

In a margin I jotted down: Because when it's good it's oh so good (Ben Harper lyric), and that's why it hurts so bad because it is that good, and the thought of it ending feels like a part of you is dying.

And here are those "Soul on the Ground" lyrics I promised to post, written, or should I say, created, by "Not Yoko":

Recorder on
Face to the corner
Hat on the floor
Guitar strapped 'round
Suit wrinkled
Cigarette lit
Just had that numbered course meal
But in my stomach I feel an empty pit
Yeah, that hat
It lays upon the ground
Coverin' my soul
They won't understand this sound
But Ima gonna rock-this-role
I guess as the story's told
The story's sold
There's a price for true freedom
And ain't a soul alive not paying its toll.