Expiated, from July 30, 2014

Sometimes when I write about a subject here, no matter how fiercely it had been churning inside me, when I write it, it's like it's released. Whether it's the aggravations of some awful co-worker, an obsession with fruit syrups, or some bit of nonsense rampaging through my brain like a gaggle of frisky coyotes, I give voice, and there is silence. Maybe all art is like a more or less polite exorcism. We invite some demon to possess us. We're lucky if it's a terrible one. This terribleness is usually indicated by causing a spinning head and a lot of throwing up. Then we begin the pleasurable and laborious exorcism, the setting down of the right words, the sentence testing, the exasperated starting all over again, the ceremonial 14th rereading. And then it's over. The demon is safely locked away in a poem, or a painting, a cartoon or a blog post.

But it's a tricky process. Sometimes the exorcism doesn't take. Sometimes there are still things to be said.

Those are the ones I keep coming back to. Sometimes they are too mighty to get at; my anti-quest for fame, the complexity of book jacket covers, my feelings towards the automated check in machine. Some are fathomless, like cats or birds, and some are trivial and require a lighter touch than I can sometimes find, like the passive aggressiveness of bicyclists, or people returning books in stacks as the pleasant machine voice is asking them nicely to return their books one at a time. But whatever it is I keep trying. The exorcisms never end. And if I can't get these demons out I don't mind too much. After they've been in there awhile they're my demons. Irritating, yes, but like bits of sand in an oyster, they are layered and transformed in me. Whenever I get one of those pearls out you know it. You may even comment.

"I liked your post today." You say when this happens.

"Thank you." I say. "I miss it already."

No Secret to Me: from 7-20-15

Each individual piece of art that has ever been made is uninteresting to most people.

It's a strange way to look at it, but accurate. I can easily wander around my workplace and find people who couldn't care less about Bob Dylan. Indeed, it's just a handful who do care. Van Gogh? Mary Oliver? Caravaggio? Ursula K. LeGuin? Drawing from a pool of 40 or so culturally involved library workers I can rest assured that we would get nowhere near a majority interest in any of those lions, and would do no better with anyone else. And no doubt the fractional percentages of interest we do get in, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald, would drop significantly in the backroom of a library in Indonesia.

Nothing made by the hand of man has been loved by most people. When it feels like everyone around you is fervently talking about Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones or Gone Girl, take a breath. Look around. It's just four excited people, loud in the way of people in a group, feeling the numbers on their side. Twenty people scattered around those four have busied themselves, trying to make a little space to breathe. They don't care. They love something else.

There is always something else.

This morning I woke up with a line from a song in my head. It's one of my favorite songs ever. Getting up has been so hard for me lately. Something about this song today helped me get up, this line:

Just don't make me go through this again.

And then as my eyes clear the song comes to me:

But oh, it's one more tune,
I can't figure out.
Just don't make me go through this again.

And I can wake up.

Who knows this song? It is not famous. My friend Grape wrote it.

I love it like I love Nowhere Man or Karma Police or River. It is not due to my personal relationship, to my great affection for the artist, though I have those. I just love it. We are free to pretend that that is a normal thing, because it is. Grape wrote a masterpiece. Masterpieces are not so rare, but that doesn't make them any less wonderful. The famous ones are the tip of an iceberg. Almost no one will ever see most of the ones that have been made, the thrown away manuscripts, burnt paintings, songs that were never recorded, books that couldn't sell their paltry 1000 print run and faded away, scribbled poems, transcendent home movies. There are millions and millions of them. They may or may not find more than a single person to love them, but the beauty and wonder and feeling they evoke in a single person cannot be diminished.

What makes art a viable commodity anyway? If two percent of an audience loves it we can make it business, but if only half a percent loves it we can never send it around. That's just money talking. That's just the disease of culture, the weakness even in the heart of democracy.

Here is your Internet. Here is your Publishing industry. Here is your library. Dig deeper, but you cannot get there. Much is buried. Most is lost. Have friends. Listen carefully. See the graffiti under the bridge. Hear the song in the cafe. It's all around you. 

It's no secret to me,
That what I'm missing,
Is the very thing I wanted out of life.

It's all around you. And all the wonder and heart, it's all yours alone.

An introduction to the Best of Clerkmanifesto

Welcome. This is one of two new side projects, or maybe bonus features is a better way to put it, to my blog Clerkmanifesto, which is a blog about, I dunno... stuff. Trust me, it's super good! This is the more sedate of the bonus features; The Best of Clerkmanifesto. Now let's get to the FAQ because I like FAQs.


What is The Best of Clerkmanifesto?

It is periodic re-postings of my favorite blog posts from out of the history of clerkmanifesto. Clerkmanifesto currently has roughly 1,600 blog posts, with a new one coming out daily. I don't run repeats and I am saddened by the prospect of my funniest, brightest, wittiest, and most perceptive pieces breaking apart on the ash heap of history through sheer neglect. So I have decided that on occasions when I am roaming through old blog posts for fun and narcissism, and I find one I think is truly terrific, I will post it up here.

Who is it for?

I like to think it is for people who love clerkmanifesto and simply cannot get enough of it. But it might also be for people who like clerkmanifesto, but get too much.


So then, how should I read it?

I can't explain reading, it's too complicated. But I'd sign up to receive it, at least, by email. There is a place to do that on my sidebar to the right. While The Best of Clerkmanifesto will have no steady timetable of postings, I would describe the rate of emails you will receive as occasional, and more like a sporadic surprise that you will find delightful. For people subscribed to the standard clerkmanifesto, and find the emails of new posts to be a barrage that it is impossible to keep up with, this may be a relief. 


What was the other side project?

It's called the B blog and features an erratic mismatch of impolite, odd, and erratic bits that don't quite fit in clerkmanifesto proper. Also has a fair share of soccer commentary. You can find a link over on the sidebar.


Okay, I'm sold on this Best of Clerkmanifesto dealie! Can you please sign me up to receive it by email?

Alas, unfortunately I cannot, as you are merely a fictitious question asker. But thank you for your positive spirit and your belief in me!