Public Notebook
The notebook fetish has so far eluded me. Once, I tried to maintain one, but I found the whole thing rather uneasy: ?If nothing else, at least I've produced these notes. They are objets d'art in and of themselves!? (There is hope as long as the manuscript survives.)
But I couldn?t just get rid of the notebook (it cost me money, for God?s sake!). So now I use it as a dumpster. Instead of keeping the more awkward exercises lurking in my hard drive, I simply copy the irritating stuff into the notebook. So if my computer crashes and burns, I?m left only with the very worst.
By the by, my website is now online (CSS layout courtesy of Blue Robot). And boy, those writings sure contain some embarrassing stuff! That Beckett fellow was so right. The work always fails to achieve its full potential, so that each piece becomes a part of the artist?s public notebook. The good stuff floats, and the rest doesn?t matter.
For example, we can now all snicker at Joyce?s Chamber Music (if we bother to read the whole lot). To me, the most enjoyable thing about that collection of poetry is the (apocryphal?) anecdote that the title refers to the babysitter?s morning piss hitting the chamber pot! Joyce is, of course, widely renowned for his fine ear.
