I WAS HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH CHEKHOV. He was doing all the talking. The bubbles of my frothy companion, the cappuccino, played on my lips.
I shot through his short stories like a machine gun. The pages turned as fast as my eyes could pace. I wonder what it’s like in the mother tongue. I remember thinking the same thing about Italo Calvino. Nabokov.
Whatever happened to artists? One told me recently “artists are paid in money.” As much as I respected the guy I told him I’d never heard a stupider sentence. Business men are paid in money. Artists are paid in the ability to do the damn thing. William Blake never made one penny. He's one of the greatest that ever wrote poetry. Modigliani, I heard someone say, said that “a great artist will never have to be poor.” But believe you me Michaelangelo didn't want to do the sistine chapel and wouldn't have without a paycheck. You want good art. Start paying for it. I realized nowadays people want their art for free. They pay more for their cappuccino than their favorite song. But fuck this is a good cappuccino. Maybe I’m contradicting myself. Thoughts… thoughts… thoughts
I took a bath with Spinoza, he gave me thoughts I never had before. Original thoughts, or so they seemed. I did pay for Spinoza, but then again, he’s long dead, he didn’t get that money. I don’t think he cares either way. I found him instructional. Like a secular bible. I wonder how original the thoughts seemed to him? Is there such a thing as an original thought? I think so. I hope so. I could sure use one right now… Thoughts… Thoughts… Original thoughts…
I sat with Plato in the park. He mostly told ancient stories of Socrates. It was hard to tell if he was telling the truth or just making the stories up. “Fact is better left to fiction,” Edward Albee wrote that. Plato spoke of love and he spoke of politics. He spoke of ethics. He said something about how the man who is caught and goes to jail for his offenses is better off than the man who’s never caught. Because the soul of the man who never pays for his crime is necessarily blackened. Plato had a lot of thoughts… lots and lots of thoughts… thoughts…
I walked with Thucydides everywhere. In and out of coffee shops and bars. Even across state lines. He’s great. I kept asking him over and over to describe the funeral oration from Pericles. There was one line that licked me everytime. “Happiness comes from freedom, freedom from courage.” Something I could live by. Something I could believe in. Something… it was something… it was really something… a thought…it was a thought… a thought…
Who’s that in my mind? Is it Arthur Rimbaud? “I is someone else.” “I” is someone else. I… someone else. I… I… just thinking out loud. Thinking thoughts… thoughts… thoughts…
Keats, Shaw, Maugham, and the poets too. Kerouac, Guthrie, and the singers of yesteryear. I still wonder if a matchbox can hold my clothes. I’m still weary and worn out from that old black magic called love. I still get caught in a melancholy mood. I know, yes I know, the answer is blowing in the wind. I know a hard rain’s a gonna fall. I’m watching it happen as I watch the river flow. I know… I know… what do I know?… thoughts…just thoughts… thoughts!… thoughts!…
No matter how many of them I have. No matter how many I write. It’s thoughts… just thoughts… thoughts.
I think about the beats, and if they would think I was either a square or to nuts to be around them.. what would they have though twof me and my stories? Derivative probably...