Good evening, all tumultuous inventions; all plum infidelity; all wide and ravaged greens. This, as you should know by now, is Words.

I should start by, first, apologizing. I have wasted such a good amount of your time – if you have been reading along with my posts – rambling about music and giving short and, possibly, curt acceptations: generalizations and shallow, perhaps even pretentious, asides of speech for the sake of it. No more, fellow person in faith and dignity. I have changed my mind on what this should all be about.

And what, you may ask yourself, is the reason for this apostasy of purpose? I’m not sure, really, where it began. Possibly in rereading this collection of prose and finding almost nothing thought-provoking, save, perhaps, one or two slight, comprehensible essays on life or peace, etc. Perhaps, in all honesty, it comes from my completion of the book The Sense Of An Ending.

If you haven’t read it, I really cannot recommend it highly enough. It is masterful wordplay and a categorical, philosophical, and life-defining work of fiction. It gathers everything I’ve ever loved about writing and purges it all onto 163 pages of pure, unadulterated genius, of which, even in all my reading, I have never come across. It is visceral. And I cannot wait to reread it.

And I will.

Probably again this year.

But aside from me raining praise upon a book which won its share of awards (Man Booker, I believe is the one which graces its cover, though I could be remembering that wrong), it instilled in me the very core belief that I have been trying to shuffle away from for perhaps a year: that pure honesty in thought-like writing can be, and perhaps is, the only thing worth working on; that even as I sit here and think of the two novels I’m currently working on, I almost want to scrap them both and start over with something fresh.

But, alas, I will not. As an artist, I have taken to doing what I do and releasing my every whim, whether that means twelve or thirteen albums worth of songs or manic, dribbling, relatively incoherent novellas, three of which I am set to release in March; or the poetry which kept me alive while on the streets of Portland, or that which I write off the top of my head while drunk one afternoon…it’s all there for the taking. But, as I come down from the incredible high The Sense Of An Ending gave me, I am left with an almost guttural swoon: a temptation to throw away my life’s work for the mere reason that most of it doesn’t quite live up to my expectations of art in general.

But, no matter. I do what I do. I write what I write. And maybe – MAYBE – one day I will even come close to making someone feel the way that book has made me feel…I’m not sure I can do it.

But goddamnit, I will not stop trying.

In fact, I cannot.

And so, as I continue Words From The Midwest, I will try and be more open and honest. I will treat this more like a diary, perhaps. Or, perhaps, I am too cowardly to do such. As I write this, I am truly not sure.

I suppose we’ll find out together.

Regards,

Michael