Surplus

After having planned the next five days of writing, I took one glance at a paused shot of a desperately lonely Hedwig. I started writing. That was about 30 minutes ago.

After about a good-sized paragraph, which I thought was good enough and figured I could end there, I realized this was to appear -- after being edited, of course -- in chapter 3. This last phase of the film, the last four songs, resonate quite deeply within me, as I associate with the sadness and angst Hedwig depicts during "Hedwig's Lament" and "Exquisite Corpse," respectively. I control-Xed this paragraph, and saved it in a new document so as to be able to keep track of it.

Thirty minutes later, I emerged from my keys, having spit out just over four pages. Four pages in 30 minutes. And I wasn't thinking. Maybe this is what Jim was talking about. "Just write."

In devising my plan, this chapter was going to happen in California. It's nowhere near done or refined, and I probably won't hand it in to my class next Wednesday. But I hit some ideas that I'm not sure were anywhere in my planning up to this point. Expanding them will happen in California. I hope.

Of course this is important: getting it out. Reliving the scenes onto the screen as if I were watching the film. Recalling the look in Hedwig's eyes. But what felt just as good was the speed with which my thoughts were coming out. The rapid manner in which my fingers were hitting the keys. Being able to describe satisfactorily, as satisfactorily as I could have after four cups of coffee and having it be 5:30, the details about key points in this portion of the film that have for a long time been floating around in my head.I'm not saying it's good. I may go back to it and hide my face in shame at what had emerged. But I broke through something. And I want to keep going.  Before this surge, I visited Craigslist.

I wanted to see what was out there for writers. I came to the realization that I can't work as a writer from nine to five. I have to write creatively on my own terms. I don't want to put quotation marks after quoted passages I got in response to stupid questions for an article.

I don't want to write copy for stupid products that I wouldn't be able to afford. The writing I do must come from a place not motivated by money. It has to be natural and without the fear of scrutiny. This is what I am stumped by now and what I am working on getting through. Whether it will come in the form of a poem I rattle off in my little blue book in 10 minutes or in the words a character I have developed says in response to having been dumped yet again, they have to come or I will die.

Dire? Yes. True? Yes. The stories in my head come from my life. The pain in my "poems" come from my heart. And if they never see the light of day, then that is the way it is supposed to be. Having been rejected by Rutgers has freed me from the trap of academic writing.

It has allowed me to unlock the prison wall that confined my thoughts to obsessive uses of terms like "hegemony," "post-structuralist account," and, yes, even "identity." I'm not sure yet in what form this freedom will take. But it will be all me. And I won't have to substantiate any of it in a fucking footnote. I'll still long for knowledge. I'll still crave participation in a community of intellectuals thinking and writing to achieve a better understanding of this treachery in which we live. But I'll be able to do it on my own time and by my own rules. Perhaps this is just a way of making myself feel better at having been flipped off by a New Jersey public university. I don't care. I just wrote over four pages in 30 minutes. It's 6:06 a.m. and I can feel however I want.

As the birds begin their morning songs to welcome the rainy daylight of Tuesday morning, I will slip into my black sweats and pull my down comforter over my head to revel in the isolated bliss of loneliness that will carry me to my dreams. Good day.