Experience or Knowledge?
by David Eide .

A writer is in the dilemma, "experience or knowledge." It should be both of course. An American writer is usually ashamed of his knowledge or acquires some only to find out that there are a thousand obscure scholars who know ten times what he can know. But experience is getting to the same worn out place. Everyone has done everything at least one time. Or so it seems.

There is a difference between a poor prostitute who smokes crack and a writer guy who does it once with her; smoke crack that is. The simplest experience should be enough to fill volumes. But then the market drives writers and common citizens to do nutty things.

The trick is to take every stick of experience one has, expel the repititive ones and use the others to produce a richness that any specific experience is going to lack.

"Experience" like "sex" utterly depends on the nature of the expanding economy. When surplus is great, sex and experience are great. The sex and experience are packaged and sold to the new tourists and everyone makes what they can. It is much more important to see how sex and experience operate when scarcity rules and so the risks are greater. The adventures in the past are far more impressive than today because so much of yesterday was ruled by scarcity. If a thousand people could have made the Marco Polo trek one would yawn. "Ah, another Marco Polo and his book of travels. Why don't these silly writers and adventurers come up with something new?"

The sex thing, too, has become an utter fraud as most things in the culture of advertising are. And one notices that there are far more sex ads and sex titillation and sex talk than earnest D.H. Lawrence's or Havelock Ellis's discoursing on the subject.

The age we live in is much more understandable in terms of what it exhausts then what it creates and makes itself. This is the sadness behind all the facades.

This is the brave vanity that steals and does not build.

Besides, in this vox populi era where the people define themselves as they wish, they want the sex and experience. It makes them look like fools but nonetheless.

Life that searches is an experience. Life that builds is experience.

It would be far more interesting if the writer contradicts the age and has no sex, sits and meditates rather than move actively around, and lives as though scarcity rules. We're usually caught in a generation cohort that marks its territory collectively. It's hard to escape and so much experience is shared with the cohort.

It is interesting to see the generational imperative start to wear off. What idiocy one concludes. What fraud, what destructive myths! What a tired generation this has become. What a boatload of shits. What great vibrations of scorn jet through the blue air! Such is a kind of disillusionment common to aging people. There is still that uniqueness that comes from contradicting the generation and the age.

Nothing lasts, one moment is overturned by the next, the carefully contrived morality of one generation is flicked away by the next generation. I assume it is meant to create energy and, for a time, it does. But then the energy gets soggy and dogmatic and the poor generational creatures must carry it on their backs until the next one comes along and laughingly points to them,

"Oh, look what they carry on their bent backs!"

The wise old men say, "don't take life seriously. It is a long tragedy and one must do what they can to ameliorate it. Laughter and lightness, then."

Free of what used to haunt us we are free to leap into the fire again.

That smoldering ash called fear is no longer of use to us.

The counter-culture was a positive experience, for me at any rate. I learned about computers, solar power, better eating habits, a greater naturalness in the counter culture. Some of it was screwy and I never liked the use of drugs as a life-style of some sort.

It devolved as most idealism does, not to violence, but to an empty headed apocalyptic vision that had, as the philosopher said, "no exit." It had no real growth to it, none of the gritty challenges that comes with hardship or raising kids and the like. It died as all idealistic movements are destined to die but it died well in those who lived in it for awhile, for a brief moment. And anyone who looks closely can see much of what it aspired to, much of its sensibility radiated out into the larger culture for decades. And sensibility was the thing, however undeveloped it was at the time.

The Writing Life As An Experience

The writing career has been a confusion to be certain. All through high school I was certain I was going to be a novelist and continued that through college and into my 20's. But the imperative of the time was not novel friendly. I felt shaken and plunged into all things not-novel. There was a break between my sense of writing novels and I only recovered in Berkeley where I decided I would start the novel career by writing short stories. Those I did do. But when I attempted a novel in the early 80's it wouldn't go, it wouldn't allow me passage. So, I shifted and let the talents go into journals and then wrote poetry for the most part. I had given up on the print publishing system but knew something like the internet would come into play. I had studied the impact of technology on the on-going life and knew a computer linked system would send a tremendous shock-wave into the publishing industry.

When I got online my time and energy was taken away into many other activiites. I did try and put as much of the writing life I had online, as well as try to make money. There were many learning curves and many obstacles. The effect of that was to put the mature works off to the margins. The break was a good one because I was able to get perspective on the earlier writing life and resolve it even if some of the projects have not been finished yet.

I was not certain about the internet. I did publish on it consistently. I did get some readers. I did get a subscriber list of 5,000 but it wasn't as efficient as print would be. It was an endless struggle to try and get something going online but ended up a putter and a stutter. Yet, my loyalty was with the internet because its adrenaline had scooped large numbers of files off the floor and into some production value.

I had scarcely any relation with the print publishing system except as one who brought its resources to subscribers or commented on it. I came to admire it much more than I had when I was younger.

I didn't really care about fame or fortune. My goal in writing was simple: master the art or attempt to, write with full consciousness or approximate it, write with some elegance and make language an ally to imagination and spirit. I knew it was a tough nut. I knew it required going a path that would be showered with rocks and poisoned darts. I knew that I would have to downsize the demand side of my desires

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2008


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