The incendiary rock’n’roll writer is a gatekeeper, disregards punctuation and never talks of the weather — Part I
So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I shall spit you out of my mouth.
Revelation. 3:16
The guns are in us
The thing is: the written word is never a choice. It was never an option. The poor old sod that sits at his desk, seraphically, with clammy hands from his cooling tea and the mild shoulder hunch of the common man, the poor old sod that pulls open a crisp notebook and his neat little fountain pen, the poor old sod that paints words on paper without knowing the meaning of whatever it is that he so nonchalantly aspires to do. I have great compassion for him. But I pity him in the same fashion that I pity the man who stands disarmed by the trenches.
This is what sets us apart, common man, writer of parsimonious bouts of inspiration, who reads the instructions notice before using your pen to jot down a lukewarm thought. You are disarmed.
No.
Benevolent writer of your inoffensive thoughts, I am going to tell you my truth: writing is not something you do to pass the time. Writing is fundamentally incompatible with the kind of mid-afternoon, post-nap boredom that draws you to your orchid essential oil desk and Moleskine way of life. Writing is fundamentally incompatible with your engraved leather-tagged woollen slippers oolong tea morning breathing meditation hail to the god of mellow thoughts and docile acceptance of the capital sin that is the deep-rooted need to tell every living thing within a seven thousand mile radius to fuck off.
No.
Methinks there is no such thing as the considerate, universally pleasant word. The word is a very sharp blade. Way too sharp for the sheath of consensus and public acceptance.
No.
Dostoevsky said it best. I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. When I first read Dostoevsky, I was too young to realise the kind of twisted treasure trove I had just opened, but I knew in the very depths of my diseased writer’s liver that I had uncovered something. Something grand. That was the first step toward realising that “writer” is a kind of congenital liver disease. A sort of bile that you are born with and that overflows, projectile vomits, spits, retches, covers everything in its majestically sick green slimey hue. They used to call it spleen, back in the day.
No.
Writing is not an art form, a romance novel poem manifesto op-ed love letter heartfelt dedication balmy golden hour whisper tumbling from plush young lips — no.
No.
Socrates stretches his legs to help the poison flow faster. John Wilkes Booth holds the gun in trembling hands, knowing full well that he will pull that trigger. Yakov Yurovsky. Sid Vicious. Nikolai Stavrogin. Ōba Yōzō. Nelson Mandela. Vladimir Ilitch Ulyanov. Lemmy Kilmister. Allen Ginsberg. Elvis Presley in his Comeback Special leather suit. The AZ-5 button at Chernobyl on the night of the meltdown. Such is the condition of being born a writer. It has nothing to do with the written word. It has nothing to do with being born in a human suit with a pen in hand.
No.
Those of us born writers are like a neatly oiled AK47 with a shitload of ammunition and all the reasons in the world to wreak as much havoc as much literary terror and metaphorical war, a knack for saying the thing for screaming the thing for painting the thing in blood on the wall of whoever least wants to read it.
No. It has nothing to do with the written word.
Writing is always an act of subversive dispute. Writing is always a response. Your response.
It has. Nothing. To do. With the written word.
Bloodshot eyes. Trembling hands. So very high on speed one night in Tokyo, pupils dilated like neon signs that scream bloody murder, we decide to take the last train to nowhere and my struggling aspiring trash metal growler friend says that it was never about the music, he cannot read a score sheet for the life of him, he just desperately needs someplace to scream primal screams and an audience to watch him gnaw at his own flesh and scratch his bare chest with overgrown nails.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
Coming down from it in Gunma — how did we get here? — we sit on a vacant lot and pile whatever is left of our soggy fags into a discount flyer, and I say -me neither, it was never about the written word. I cannot write a full chapter for the life of me I just desperately need someplace to scream primal words and an audience to watch me write in blood and gnaw at my own flesh and scratch my bare chest with overgrown pen tips. Because no local trash metal band is hiring — that’s the only reason why I write. I’m an unemployable screamer.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
We’re bored. The spirit of the vacant lot slowly seeps into us. We want to play shooting birds to keep us warm but we have no guns so we pretend to shoot everything that moves with outstretched fingers until morning until an old woman calls the Satsu and they take us to the Sakai Koban where they strip search my friend while he too, screams bloody murder, and they respectfully ask me to sit and wait while they get a female officer to ask me if he is the cause of this pandemonium and I say yes — we are the cause of this pandemonium both of us. All of us - you. And them all. And all forms of life existing dead or yet to be born. And they look bewildered but let us go because we had no guns — gladly — and no more drugs — sadly.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
Stumbling to Gunma Fujioka at dawn with our hair sticking to our necks and a pack of complimentary potato chips we sit on a train, eyes like pools of spilt milk and suddenly my friend says — the bloody Satsu took our guns but it’s okay because the guns are in us.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
The guns are in us. In us. His eyes are like a madman’s and as he alights in Okachimachi he turns to me and shapes his fingers in the form of a gun and points up as he pulls the imaginary trigger and steps out.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
The guns are in us, he mouths and I try my best to focus and lipread through a crowd of passing black suits white shirts lunch boxes short heels moving backward sinister shadows on a stationary platform. I am the trigger, I read and he disappears in the recoil.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
The Satsu the Interpol the Emperor the President of the United States the Queen of England the King of Big Data can’t take them from us. They are in us, in our hands, at the very tip of our right index and middle fingers lies a power they cannot find in any strip search. No bulky security guard schoolteacher irate father wooden spoon-bearing mother, none of them can ever find or take from you. Cut off the gun at the end of my fingertips, a new one will grow right out of the severed flesh.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
Cut off the gun at the end of my fingertips, if you could get rid of it I have no idea if it would be a good thing or not. Sometimes I think being born a writer is a curse like no other. Nobody’s hell even comes close.
It has nothing to do with the written word.
Sometimes I think, warmly, fondly and with all the tenderness in the world of you, my finger gun-waving, intoxicated friend from the land of the rising sun. And back here in the land where the sun sets, I repeat the words every time they try to take them from me,
The guns are in us,
they are in us,
in our hands,
at the very tip
of our right index
and middle fingers
and I,
am
the trigger.
