Some Thoughts on Comfort Food Writing (or..Writing an Essay about Not Being Able to Write an Essay)

(A quick note: if you want to read some of these posts in an easier-to-navigate essay format, simply go to www.derekleif.com. It's that simple.)

I keep journals. Long ones. 

I hardly read them. 

Okay, better explain this...

There is a type of writing I do--a type of writing I've done for almost 25 years, in fact--that I playfully call "comfort food writing." 

This is a euphemism for "writing that accomplishes little, if anything, but fills a part of my day." 

I often do this writing in the morning, when I'm drinking my coffee and can't think of anything to write. Often, it will go something like this:

Can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write. Stuff on the counter includes the new issue of Wired, a microfiber cloth for cleaning fingerprints off of my iPad, a 3.5mm audio jack for said iPad, something from National Grid concerning meter readings in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and a Christmas card for the previous owners of the house, who clearly didn't tell everyone that they've moved.

And then I'll move on to the self-indulgent stuff. I love the self-indulgent stuff:

Still writing. Why do I just write this self-indulgent stuff that will never see the light of day? Why, for 25 years, have I gotten up and written what, at times, has been upwards of 2000 words that have no practical use whatsoever?

Then I'll probably start talking about my past. I so enjoy doing that:

Why, in college, did I not take up the ukulele? Now I know how to play an instrument in which I can actually write down ideas for chord progressions, which means that, had I known how to do this back then, I would have been able to collaborate with all those folks in the dorm who played instruments. True, I played drums, but that's not exactly an instrument that you can play on your own to get song ideas. 

And don't even get me started on karate. Boy, could I have used that in eighth grade. I would have beaten the people who bullied me to a bloody pulp. Those would have been good times. 

...then, of course, I come to the wallowing self pity. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. 

Why am I just sitting here, drinking coffee, doing nothing? I could be practicing karate. I could be composing songs. I could be writing novels. Why, in God's name, am I not doing this? I have friends who seem to do so much with their day, so much with their lives. 

And these people seem so capable of getting things done. They're posting to their blogs. They're working on their websites. They're composing songs. 

I could be doing this. If I actually had started doing things years ago, I would be...

Stop. That's enough. I think you get the idea. 

Self indulgent writing--my term for the writing in which you write it for no one but yourself--is, as I said before, the comfort food of writing. 

Yes, there's a place for it. For the first fifteen minutes of the morning, there's something to be said for just letting go in a free write. Peter Elbow recommends this in Writing With Power, another writing advice book in which I read the first 15 or so pages and then gave up. 

(There are many, many books in which I've read the first 15 pages and given up. You have no idea.)

Anyway, yes, there is a place for that kind of writing. Ray Bradbury also talks about a second cousin of this type of writing in the introduction to his massive story collection. In Bradbury's case, it's all about making stream of consciousness lists, such as:

The moment in time. This moment in time. A second. One fraction of a second. The Big Bang. The first instant of The Big Bang. Slicing that first instant into ever smaller pieces, paper thin, molecule thin, element-splitting thin, electron-spinning thin, quark-spinning thin. 

Thin enough to split a quark. I like that. I like that part. 

Janet Jackson saying "I like that part" from the song "Nasty Boys," which my friend Naomi played in her Toyota Supra endlessly during 1986, when Ashe battled zombies in "The Evil Dead," and asked who's laughing now as he cut off his arm with a chainsaw. Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics saying that theres's nothing more beautiful than a revved up chainsaw. 

And so on. 

And so it goes. 

Linda Ellerbie signing off at the end of NBC's evening show "Overnight," when she would say "and so it goes, and so we go." This before the age of infomercials, when you actually had to put something of substance on the air between 12 and 6 in the morning, although most stations signed off well before six with the national anthem. 

The national anthem, and then snow on the TV. Think about it: most people growing up in this day and age have never seen video snow; just a blue screen and a message on the set that says something like "signal not located." 

But we don't have a signal. No frequency. What's the Frequency, Kenneth? An assault on Dan Rather, and an REM song. 

Billy Bob Thornton on Real Time With Bill Maher talking about 60s music, and saying "alright, I'll give you U2 and REM...what else came out of the 80s?" 

Forgetting, apparently, The Pixies, The Replacements, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, Fishbone, They Might Be Giants, Husker Du, The Dead Milkmen, Miracle Legion, Black Flag, The Suicidal Tendencies, The Stray Cats, Fugazi, Minor Threat, The Silos, The Feelies, X, Billy Bragg (who yes, started performing in 1977, but who really didn't rise to prominence until the 80s), The Smithereens, The Raybeats (okay, formed in 1979, but their first record didn't come out till 1981), Jane's Addiction, Tracy Chapman, The Indigo Girls, The Cowboy Junkies, Throwing Muses, and a host of others I've forgotten about, but which someone far more knowledgable about music could add to. 

But enough about useful writing like that, the kind of writing that could actually inspire something of worth.

No, I'm talking about writing that really doesn't accomplish any purpose whatsoever except to justify sitting in the same place, drinking coffee, and doing nothing of any consequence. Yeah. That's the kind of writing that I'm talking about.

Writing such as:

Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. Today I'm actually going to write some fiction. I'm going to practice my uke and write a song, or at least get started on one. I'm going to practice karate. 

Above all, I'm going to get up and stop writing this self-indulgent crap and stop drinking so much damn coffee.

But here I go again, making plans on which I will never follow through. 

Friends of mine follow through on their plans. They do things. They make things. They are the correct weight. I hate these people. 

And, once again, I'm off.

Sometimes I think that I will simply spend the rest of my days writing things that will never see the light of day. 

I will be haunted by this till the end of my existence.

Yeah, Yeah...I know. Long Time Since I Wrote. I Included Some Cool Links to Make it Worth Your While.

(First off: this photo was just to get your attention. It's a picture of Prince Randian, "The Caterpillar Man." Born without arms or legs, he appeared in sideshows for years, and stars in the 1932 Todd Browning film Freaks. Here's a clip of him in that movie, lighting a cigarette with nothing but his lips and teeth.)

(And a bit of trivia: he rolled that cigarette, too. Think about that.)

So there are reasons that I haven’t written in ages. Honest.

…and that’s all I’m going to write about that.

Look, if you’re one of the three or four people (on a heavy web traffic day) who even reads this thing, here’s what I notice when I read other blogs:

I notice that I give up at about the seventh line. It just goes on and on, and it bores me until I can either click away from it, or chew aluminum foil.

What I’m saying is: do you honestly, really care about why I haven’t written in a while?

No.

I wouldn’t.

If I were reading my blog, it would be because I was first:

--done checking my email

--done checking to see if someone liked my Facebook post

--done using Stumbleupon for a while..

--done looking up the Wikipedia article on Robert Wadlow (The Alton Giant, the tallest man in history at 8 feet 11.1 inches).
(Here's an article about Wadlow, and here's a video of him.)

--done looking up Robert Earl Hughes (who Robert Wadlow reminded me of, being that Wadlow was the tallest man, and Robert Earl Hughes, at 1069 pounds, was, for a number of years, one of the heaviest, and you can read about him in this Life Magazine article; of course, since then, the mass production of hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup made made it necessary for me, before reading a blog, to also be…)

--done looking up Wikipedia’s list of the world’s heaviest people (the heaviest of whom was John Brower Minnoch, at 1400 pounds; you can read about him by clicking here)

--Done contemplating the fact that John Brower Minnoch married a 110 pound woman, and fathered two children with her.

--Done laughing as this in turn makes me cackle at my contemplation of the horror of the conception of Pebbles Flintstone, whose mother was thinner than one of her father’s fingers

--Done continuing to laugh as I contemplate the David Cronenberg filmlike image of Pebbles’s birth, considering that her head was wider than her mother’s body

--Done flipping through the notepad I carry with me, which includes quotes from the utterly wretched film Manos: The Hands of Fate, which I’m currently putting to a song for my electric ukulele.

--Done picking up my ukulele and writing down some chords to my song Manos: The Hands of Fate.

(here's a link to a wonderful Entertainment Weekly article about the film.)

--done looking up Harry Earles (the diminutive star of Freaks, who appeared as a member of The Lollypop Guild in The Wizard of Oz, who I looked up because all of this writing about unusual people).
(Earles, by the way, performed with his entire family of midgets under the stage name The Doll People. You can read about them by clicking here.)

--Done watching an amazing video of Jamy Ian Swiss doing some card tricks on Craig Ferguson (click here for that video)

--Done watching an amazing video of Ricky Jay doing a card trick (click here for that trick)

--Done watching Marco Tempest doing a remarkable magical presentation at a TED conference (click here for that video)

--Done watching carnival sideshow historian and all around cool guy Todd Robbins eat a light bulb (click here for that video)

--Done rereading the extremely cool email Todd Robbins wrote me, in which he included directions for walking on glass barefoot without cutting yourself

--Done reading a page of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which I plan to finish sometime in 2014

--Done with many, many other time wasting things that come to mind

Then, after all that, after I’ve exhausted all the stuff that I can do to avoid getting back to editing my book, I just might want to have my time wasted in such a way that I feel as if I did something besides waste my time.

Here’s what I’m saying: if I’m gonna take the time to check the local news of what’s going on in my friend Derek’s life, I want that news show to be awesome.

(Speaking of which, you might be getting bored at this point, so here’s a video of a massive explosion at a Danish fireworks factory.)

Admittedly, when I think of the friends who are unfortunate enough to actually read my blog (all two or three of them), I’m well aware that my life isn’t all that interesting.

But maybe that’s actually a plus. A blog that’s too interesting is depressing, because when I compare the interesting life that the person is leading to the depressing life of quiet desperation that I’m leading, I get depressed.

This is why I never, ever read Neil Gaiman’s blog.

No, when I’m reading blogs, I know that I have to punch my weight. I don’t want one of those blogs by someone who’s flying off to the Philippines to sign Tagalog editions of his books. I compare that to my sad, sorry existence and feel an enuui that is as weary as Clint Eastwood’s scrotum.

No. What I want is something I enjoy reading, something from someone who’s just living life the way I’m living life, and trying to make it readable.

And speaking of readable, if I’m reading the news of my life, here’s what I want:

First off, I want short paragraphs. I just can’t read the long paragraphs.

You know those paragraphs in Thomas Pynchon novels (and David Foster Wallace novels, for that matter) that go on for, like, seventeen pages? I get lost in those. I drown in black ink.

(Speaking of which: this is the reason that I’ve gotten hold of a version of Infinite Jest in Word format, where I actually chop up the paragraphs into shorter, more readable paragraphs. For the record, there’s something gleefully empowering about rewriting David Foster Wallace. I’m just waiting for some intellectual snob to shriek about how I’m defiling a master, just so that I can look at him or her and say “look…it’s not worth killing yourself over.”)

(and it's been far too long since I put in a link to something interesting. Here's a link to a video of Harry Kahne, "The Multiple Mental Marvel," who was able to write backward, read, and speak at the same time, among other things. Trust me this video is incredible.)

I admit it: when I’m reading online, I want those James Patterson paragraphs, the ones that are maybe three sentences, tops.

In fact, I really don’t mind one sentence paragraphs.

Come to think of it, I don’t even mind one-sentence paragraphs that come one after another in rapid succession.

They’re just easy to read.

And I like things that are easy to read.

Sorry.

I just do.

I guess what I’m saying is, even if there’s nothing going on, I want the nothingness to be amusing. Yeah. Amusing.

If I’m forced to read my own writing, I find myself saying “Derek…if your life is dull, you gotta put in other things.

Write about the joys of the greatest show of all time, World’s Scariest Police Chases. While you’re at it, write about World’s Wildest Police Videos.
(For kicks and giggles, click here for an awesome video in which a guy steals a tank and drives it on the freeway. The only thing that would make me happier than watching this video is finding out that Richard Rostholder, who terrorized me in eighth grade, is dying of terminal cancer).
(if you want to be technical, Richard Rostholder changed his last name to Perello for some reason, and went on to produce the film Beerfest. As is the case of all victims of bullies, I Google people who made my life miserable.)


Write about the challenges involved in taking a drink of water, and then, with the water still in your mouth, attempting to listen to former Life Goes On star Chris “Corky” Burke’s rendition of The Mamas and the Papas’ California Dreamin’ without spraying the water all over the place.

And yes, I know that for writing this, I must go to hell. Yet I offer this: if ever there was a great line that belongs in a summer action film just before the hero does what a hero’s gotta do, it would be “hey…somebody’s gotta go to hell.”

“Yeah,” the hero’s sidekick would reply “the same way that, if we listen to Chris “Corky” Burkes rendition of “California Dreamin’” with water in our mouth we spray it all over the place.”

“Life goes on,” the hero says.

And I tell you, at that point I cry. I cry as if Dino De Laurentis’s monkey just died.

I cry the way I cry harder that Jerry Lewis’s clown cried when those kids went to the gas chamber.

(I oughtta stop here and say that the previous sentence is a reference to the 1972 Jerry Lewis movie The Day the Clown Cried, in which Lewis played Helmut Doork, a supposedly-real-life clown who entertained concentration camp victims. Really. Here’s a link to a great article about this film from the gone-but-by-no-means-forgotten Spy magazine).

(Oh...here’s a video of Chris “Corky” Burke in concert.)

Anyway, back to things to write about:

(Oh, and…uh…if you’re getting bored, here’s a link to the video of Evel Knievel wiping out after his jump over the Caesar’s Palace fountain. It’s glorious.)

Write about Ed Gein, the inspiration for the films Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Here is a link to the December 2, 1957 article about him).

Write about Willard Wigan, who creates works of art that can fit inside the head of a pin (here’s a gallery of work from his website, by the way).

Write about The Museum of Jurassic Technology, perhaps the coolest museum on the planet (here’s their website).

Write about Phineas Gage, the guy who had a five-foot pole pass through his head…and lived. Oh, wait…I already wrote about that; here’s the link.

In short, be kind. Write words that people want to read.