The Desperate Harvest, or Writing like an Bank Robber

A final installment of the summer series.

Existential questions of process: to write as sculptor, painter, tourist, thief.

A cautionary celebrity tale from Sloane.

And when “women recognizing women” goes sideways.

It’s a treat.

Listen or read the transcript below.

JN: I got audio instincts! I tried to turn it on. It was bagpipes playing. I just went to McNaughtan books. It's rare books, two sides. The old books and then the zines, pretty amazing.

Anyway, the point is the Brunswick Bookclub is really cute. On Leith Walk. It's got books on the table, little cocktail menu inside, but it's not, you know, when you get these like things where they do something. Where they hollow at a book or, um, you know, and it's not to hide pills or money, which I respect, but something where it just becomes about the aesthetics of what a book looks like. But the book itself is completely destroyed, and what I really appreciate here, you'll note is 174, then the cocktail menu. Then page 175 is held in with a rubber band in a traveler's notebook style. Um. Which I can explain to you another time if you're not traveler's notebook aficionado. As you can see, my mood has improved vastly since this entirety of, um, posts or missives.

That's the sound of…so I've just taken to asking for a glass of ice and then espresso or whatever I want on the side. 'Cause when I, I say things like an obscene amount of ice, it doesn't come through, but they did a good job anyway.

I'm carrying over from last time now. Just wanna acknowledge I did get my printer. I'm very happy to have it. I cannot remember now if I told you that or not. This is really becoming insane with me telling you about the printer. and then, you know, you have to ask how many times have I printed things since getting it a few days ago? And the answer is twice. Um, but I know it's there.

Isn't that what it all comes down to?

I mean, living in Los Angeles, there being a swimming pool in my apartment complex, I can't tell you what it means to me to know. That any day I could go get in that pool.

It is the strangest thing. I don't actually know why performing is so tiring, even though it completely makes sense that it would be. But there's this other part of me that. just feels like, well, it's a part of the day, like any other…long pauses as usual, but I, I was just thinking…

I'm just thinking a lot, for obvious reasons about how in writing, I am so free. Uh, laughably. I so took in the lesson of the writing teacher telling us to free write without worry…so intensely that I almost, I'm never writing with the spirit of someone could read this. I'm always writing with this spirit of, kind of wildly scooping up insights or ideas. This kind of desperate harvest. The bank robber filling their sack with whatever they can see. I feel like I'm writing in that capacity, filling the page with whatever I can see, deciding I'll assess its worth later…

…and I've been thinking about how on stage, when I am flying, flying free and going where I wanna go. I am forced into a kind of temporary final form, in that the communication is happening live. It is not just a note to the self that I'm doing in front of people, which it could be, I guess, but the attempt to communicate something at all…hmm…live…there’s a distinct difference between writing in front of people out loud in the sense of speaking…versus writing alone with myself.

So what is this all to say? There have been times where I know that I have to sit down and knock something out that is tight and winning on its own terms. It means that I might bite off exactly what I can chew and there have been those times where I've sat down with that kind of spirit and written something without a promise of later I will rework this, or I'm just getting a bunch of things on my page, but instead, written with a kind of this needs to be the final version spirit and produce something that I'm quite proud of. Relatively speaking.

Um, and it always makes me wonder if my approach should look a bit more like that. Maybe I, I, I got too loose. Maybe I took in their lesson too intensely. Um.

Where in fact, writing as though communicating to another, in a more active way, in a more um, present way could…do a lot for me. So I just think I prioritize hunting for new or compelling ideas… although I also do enjoy crafting. Anyway, you know, I enjoy it all. I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm exploring live here.

I'm just so tired that it feels like it's almost little gently dissociative…I’m almost having these moments like whaaaa—?

Um, more shortly.

SC: A desperate harvest, baby. My whole life is a desperate harvest. I love this phrasing. Um, yeah, performing is really tiring. I get tired and I have several crutches in front of me. I have a book and a podium and it, it's, you know, a lot of things are like this. Like I never understand why it's so tiring going to a museum.

You're not doing anything. But that's sort of. Shifting that intake, the active, um, sort of analysis of what's in front of you, the actual appreciation of what's in front of you, compounded by the pressure to appreciate what's in front of you. Um, and this is to say nothing, of course, of the world's scourge, which is other people.

Um, so yeah, I'm sure you're exhausted actually. Um, but God, when you were talking, I started to get really depressed. Do you have this effect on people? No, I started to get depressed because I thought, I know exactly what you mean. You know, it's one sort of technique to write in the spirit of, I'm not writing for someone who will read this.

I'm not writing for a specific audience. And to have that sort of be the patina of one kind of writing, and then the other one feeling like it must come out in either a conversational or final. That it is almost frankly, rude to an audience, to work things out in front of them, to the extent to which you're taking advantage of their time as opposed to working on a project together.

I think I've, I've seen shows like that where certain comedians who will not be named, or performers, storytellers, who will not be named have…well, truly, I, I understand the concept of like developing a show but it hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. It's just like this kind of nascent zygote that needed to be cooked for just.

A couple days longer before unleashed upon an upon an audience. Um, it's a really sharp difference and the audience can tell it. I mean, then maybe they can't understand what they're seeing or can't kind of articulate it from a craft perspective 'cause they're not on stage. But, you know, when someone's, when you feel like you're seeing, you know, some raw material and then the difference between seeing something that's sort of half carved and half, you know, the Michelangelo.

I saw an angel in the stone and I carved it to set it free, and Michelangelo is not present and the angel is not present and it's just a hunk of stone. Um, anyway, but, but, so those are two different muscles that you get to use or that you have the ability, the skills, and just the class, just the overall class to use, whereas.

Almost everything I write is in the spirit of someone will read this a final form. How am I going to turn this into something that resembles, if not, um, great art, the functional art. Um, but that doesn't actually leave me as a human being. The space to just really like let her rip and just see what comes out.

I think that process, that filter happens in my brain before I use a keyboard, before I speak. And it doesn't necessarily mean that, oh, I'm so great. That I'm speaking in sentences and paragraphs like Norman Mailer did. Because Norman Mailer did a lot of other things that weren't so great, but it does mean that when I speak, it might be for this form, it might be for Great Artist Steel, it might be reserved for this format, and my therapist and my friends. Um, which again, I don't want to inadvertently imply that people who write and then fish through things to see what's good afterwards are, you know, somehow less skilled or less sophisticated. It's nothing like that.

But just technique wise, it made me depressed for myself, listening to your voice note thinking, oh gosh, do I not have a venue or…because I don't journal, I don't believe in it as an activity, as a verb and I don't particularly like a lot of them physically, plus my handwriting. I know the point is not to necessarily have it for posterity or to read your own handwriting, but usually, when I sign books, I apologize to people 'cause it looks like I'm threatening them. Like I'm saying, go sleep with the fishes. Thanks for coming to the reading. Bye.

Um, anyway. Okay. More soon…but I was both inspired and, uh, had a bit of a existential crisis thinking, is there something wrong with my thought process because I have somehow lived all this life without figuring out a way to have different ways to think or tell stories.

A very large and depressing idea! Also, this is about to be a majorly self-indulgent, non-sequitur, but since I think this exchange might be the last installment of our bi-weekly summer series, Great Artists Steel…I was thinking about storytelling and this just popped into my brain as one of the funnier stories I have that actually probably involves someone that, you know and again, there's no connective tissue to anything we've been talking about. But for sure entertainment value…

I was thinking about this story shortly before the pandemic. I went to dinner with my friend Sarah. Yeah, and we went to Morandi, which is uh, in terms of the, probably the most Olive Garden-y member of the Keith McNally empire of restaurants in the fact that it's just massive and serves Italian food and is a very cavernous, huge restaurant.

We go to dinner and we're sitting there and we're a little drunk. I think the sort of pandemic ness had started to seep into the culture. People were talking about a shortage of hand sanitizer, toilet paper, if we can remember that. Every night felt like, oh, is this the last night before they shut these things down?

So there's a vibe, um, of a frisson, if you will, in the air of fear and fun and paranoia. And we're sitting there and we're a little drunk. And across the restaurant we see Amy Poehler having dinner. And my friend used to work for InStyle. She's interviewed a lot of people who are celebrities.

We both live in New York. You know, it's a fact of life. You're not bothering these people like zoo animals. But somehow, you know, a bottle of wine in, my friend looks at me and she's like, oh my God, it's Amy Poehler. And you know, the brand of celebrity she is, women love her, especially. Everyone loves her.

But my friend looks at me and she goes, oh God, it's Amy Poehler. What do we do? And I stopped and looked at her and said, do, what do you mean do? Are we the sort of people who do anything? We don't do anything. And then, you know, another glass of something later, I was like, we should do something. We should say something.

You know what we're gonna do? I don't know what got into our brains, but we're like, we're gonna send her a dessert. We're like, how often are celebrities sent a dessert? That seems weird. And I'm like, we’ll send her a dessert. We pick out a dessert. We’re on the check. We'll be gone by the time she gets it, it'll just be like a funny, nice thing to, to say, oh, these two ladies across the restaurant, like your work and they recognize who you are. Who doesn't like that? Right? Our biggest concern at this juncture is what dessert to get her. Like what if she's lactose intolerant. Um, but we, we decide, we pick a tiramisu. We're like, we're gonna send her a tiramisu.

And the much-beleaguered waiter is like, what do you want me to tell her? And my friend Sarah starts saying all this stuff. And I was like, no, no, no, just, just tell her that we love her. Just say. “Those two people love you.” That's it. Again, this is very embarrassing. I don't think I have ever done anything like this before, but we're like, okay, we're gonna do it.

We're already on the check. We have the bill, and clearly the tiramisu, specifically, is pre-made. That thing comes flying out of the kitchen like a boomerang while we're still sitting there. And the waiter brings it over to Amy Poehler and her friend, this brunette woman who's sitting with her. Um.

And I see the waiter, you know, point at us and explain. I'm like, oh God, this is terrible. This is awful that this is happening. Amy Poehler gets up and waves us over, like, come on, come on over. That's so nice. Come on over. Come say hi. And instantly we’re both incredibly sobered up and realizing that neither of us actually has any desire for this interaction.

We're like, oh, okay, fine. We're gonna go. It's terrible, what we're doing, but we walk across the restaurant and as we’re approaching the table, we realize that both of us, both of us need our vision checked. Because it's not Amy Poehler. I don't know who it is, some petite blonde woman with kinda wavy hair who looks a little like Amy Poehler.

And I will remind you that this dessert came with an I love you. Uh, furthermore, I should have also mentioned they wrote it on the plate like it was her birthday at a suburban restaurant, like in script in chocolate. It says, I love you with tiramisu plopped in the middle of this plate. And so we walk over and are stunned and I start to explain what happened.

And then it turns out, because New York is such a small little world, that my friend Sarah knows the woman's companion. So there's Blondie, and then the brunette woman. The brunette woman and Sarah somehow know each other. So between the two of us, instead of just telling the truth, we spout out some sort of women supporting other women bullshit because that's how women support other women by sending them dairy products. We all know this.

We sit down and have to talk to these women for about an hour and like exchange information. And I wanna tell you that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but it was horrible the entire time. I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard in public, just doubled over crying, laughing on the sidewalk once we got out of the restaurant and had parted ways with them.

But we exchanged an information and the next day I get this email subject line of which reads Ladies of Morandi. And I'm like, oh no. First of all ladies. Second of all, oh no. And they're like, we should all get together now and have a second meal and, you know, every sort of Larry David muscle in my body is kicking and thinking, no, no, this cannot be.

And the sort of kicker to the story is that I wound up saying that well, with the impending pandemic, I wasn't comfortable eating inside in large groups. And that's where it ends.

And I don't know why I'm telling you this. It is completely untethered from anything we're talking about. But I think that maybe I just am using it as almost a personal palate cleanser about comedy and storytelling.

Uh, and just giving an example of something that I think is very funny and, and a story that might be, might operate in, in isolation and, and look nice on your substack and mine. That's it. Bye.

JN: Hysterical. That's so interesting. You know, it's precisely that thing where I too well internalized the ethos of free writing, um, to a point that is like, you know, can you even call it writing you, you, you know, like, uh, because it's.

I'm not saying I never do this, but I'm not even talking about sort of free writing, like just going for it and after fishing out good stuff. It's even further, further back in terms of… it’s like…uh, , the writing truly is a process as a process of discovery live in the moment.

So it's like the writing itself is me moving my mind through a question. It's like the writing is literally the vehicle of the thought. And so I might just ride around in there and in no way, um, well, what I was gonna say is, you know, that's completely different than if I were to sit down and say, you know, to compose something. Right? And, and there have been times where, and I think I was saying this before. I've had to sort of, all right, there's no time to fuck around. We need this a thousand word thing, whatever.

And I just sit down and I compose. And what it means is I use the best of my ability on that day, kind of like something you had said. And I don’t know if this is even what you meant, but…. And I don't know if this is even what you meant, but make something as good as it can be, you know, almost on that day to your ability. And you know, it's like, it’s this kind of pencils-down approach for that day and, and what happens? When I do that is I often surprise myself and go, shit, wait, I should just do this every day. If I just had the deadline, oh my god, I just whipped up something that was self-contained and, and ended with a flourish and, and all this kinda stuff.

It would almost be like if I was the sculptor, it's like, oh, most of my writing days are spent kind of exploring the clay. I don't, you know, it's, um, But what, what's interesting, I think, is that, you know, let's just say ultimately my, okay, let's say I decided at some point along the way that exploring via writing, exploring ideas via writing was how I found my way towards ideas that I might think are worthy of writing about.

I developed that habit, but then. Because that becomes the habit. It ultimately becomes the writing because there's kind of no time to do both. Or, or after a certain point you go, I guess this just is my writing because I never seem to get around to the other, the other version of, of this.

I mean, I'm finding my way back to the same kind of problem from the beginning with writing, which is that, it, it just, it can go in every direction. It's so multi, uh, dimensional. And um, but yeah. And so in that way I almost don't have the writing in my own blood version of…sorry, my, my brain's starting to, to go. Um, anyway, more on this.

There's so much more to say. Okay. More soon.

SC: There's always so much more to say. this is so funny because, you know, I think, you know, you meet somebody across a crowded room at a party, such as the union that you and I have developed and as wonderful it is, as it is to fill in the blanks with someone else, the more I like someone, the more I'm like, well, they're probably just like me. But we do have a different approach to writing. So much so that when you say free writing, I actually don't know what that is. Like, what, what is that? Um, you know, one likes to think that freedom and writing are connected. Uh, not if this administration has anything to do with it —ha ha ha. Bracket: cries. End bracket. But yeah, I don't feel like there is that sense of discovery when I'm writing, but I feel like the funny thing about it that is both the thrill and the horror probably for both of us that we do share in common and is sort of what you were talking about is that…you mentioned something about, okay, well I've done something to the best of my ability that day. You know, I think the lion's share of other vocations don't share that. They share neither the thrill nor the pitfalls of waking up the next day and wondering if you're gonna be as good at it as you were the day before.

I think that is something that is very special, really specific to writers. Normally, I like to drag all artists into things so I don't sound, like a woe is me, an egomaniac. You know, I'll be like the arts, this weird umbrella term, but I don't know…if you can paint, you can kind of do it the next day. Maybe you don't have the same inspiration as you did the day before. But you kind of know how to execute it.

Obviously, for all the painters listening, I'm sure there are objections within that. Fine, whatever, we can nitpick. But in general, the sort of wide dramatic swings from am I the greatest to am I the worst are really sharp. I think in writing in a very unique way. Maybe because it is the common instrument that we all have.

I don’t own paints or a camera or a pair of ballet shoes. Uh, not in this apartment. And everybody sort of uses it the same way. And so I think people are critical of it in a different way too, because you have the sort of, you know, you're sort of coming on to all of society…all of society’s or the universe’s turf when you make anything artistic this way. And so everybody has a right to an opinion. Everyone's a critic.

Sometimes I think when it comes to, if I can take it sort of one layer deeper, I don't know if I can, since I literally don't know what free writing is…I mean, I do, I know what you're talking about. I'm just saying that it's not part of my personal lexicon when I'm thinking about it…

There's that balance between sort of looseness and I guess a kind of stringency when I'm writing. And I think this is the same thing where I'm like, I have to remember if things are going poorly, that the beauty of the shift in how I feel about the writing or, or what is objective success within it, is gonna change quite quickly. But of course that’s the nightmare of it too. And I always have difficulty when it's not going well, remembering that there will be a time possibly in 24 hours, possibly in a month, when I will think it's going very well. I guess no one is a masochist enough to look at the times it's going well and remind themselves, hey, this is temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts, kid, you know? But I guess the trick is to, I suppose, keep a sense of humor about it for the times, late at night, when you've written something and you're like, as you put it, a flourish or a turn of phrase where you're like, I've really hit it. I've really stuck the landing.

And then you wake up the next morning to find out that what you have built essentially looks like the shed that Russell Crowe builds in A Beautiful Mind. It’s the workings of a mad woman.

—

End.