world cup ended sadly.
i’m sad about it.
*
i finished noah cicero‘s book, transmissions from noah x to tao x on bear parade. it’s been very popular over the past week. i am very pleased with it.
noah is nice.
the next book is today the sky is blue and white with bright blue spots and a small pale moon by tao lin.
tao helps me edit bear parade, and I consider him a friend.
a publisher dumped him for being “immature”, so we are going to do the most “immature” thing we could ever do with his book, and we are going to post it all on the internet, for free.
tao is an artist more than anything else. i think he is more artist than writer, which is why i like his work, and why i like working with him.
i am a designer, he is a writer. there is no editor in the middle.
editors ask writers to change the titles of their books, and change stories so people will ‘get it’. writers change these things, most of the time, so the people that dump thousands of dollars into printing these books can be happy with them, and so the book will sell.
this is why, if you go to barnes and noble, every story is somehow concrete, and the narratives rarely lose balance or shift into something uncomfortable or new. why language is stale and boring stupid.
this is why publishing is a piece of shit, and i why i don’t write.
i would rather build websites where people i respect give me whatever they want to give me, and i can print it, even if i don’t like every word they use.
liking everything about another person or thing is impossible. and to think that well executed art should be wholly likable, in every regard, is stupid.
why people want to butter up sweet corn when it shits the same is all a matter of personal taste, and not an absolute.
for most artists, the idea of changing the name of their work, of altering the work itself so that another person can ‘get it’, is probably the worst thing they could ever think of doing.
this is why i do not ask people to change things when i publish them on bear parade. it would make me feel like, and be, an asshole. i’m not even a real editor. i write a stupid blog and post things on the internet. i’m not special. neither is rick moody. or haruki murakami. they just write stuff until they die.
life is whatever. even the people that whore themselves out or watch television all day die the same.
*
i’ going to start writing more about video games, because they are all i like anymore. there’s no pretense in plot, or even ultimate goal in some of them.
i rarely even finish them, and i don’t care if i do. it feels good.
*
i zidane you.