Steps

"I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you.  Perhaps one does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making people believe."

- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

I took a walk last night and wound up at Columbia University, the same brilliant school where Barack Obama graduated from college and Jack Kerouac dropped out to have adventures and write brilliant books.  I was on a long walk from the Upper West Side to Harlem when I was lured in by these beautifully adorned trees lining a promenade beyond elegant gates.  I had been to Columbia before.  In fact, the last time I went to Columbia was during one of my last weeks in New York the first time I lived here.  I saw Christopher O'Riley perform Radiohead songs on the piano.

I noticed these monumental steps leading up to the library.  I jogged up them just like Rocky, and was about to pump my fists when I noticed a sign on the door that said "Graduate Writing Program."  I also noticed a security guard opening the door for people and asking them questions, which seemed strange for a library.  I approached the door and the guard asked me, "Are you a writer or an agent?"

"Writer," I replied, without hesitation.  He let me in.  I realized then that this was a special event, and confirmed that truth when I saw a sign reading, "Columbia Graduate Writing Program: Agents & Writers Mixer."  I knew I wasn't supposed to be there, but I figured it couldn't hurt to walk around and explore a little.  Then again, I looked a little out of place.  I had on my large green winter jacket, blue army issue winter cap, a neck warmer, and of course, my trusty enormous Bose headphones, which seconds before had been blaring the punk societal bashing of the Offspring.

I walked up a few steps to see two tables with name tags stationed by people running the event.  Between these two tables were doors leading into the sort of fancy main room that tends to appear in most Ivy League libraries.  I peaked inside and saw many well-dressed people sipping champagne and wine and doing the sort of network schmoozing that is probably pretty harmless but generally confuses me.  I thought back to my classes in school, which, while beneficial, certainly had their limits.  The professors sometimes gave helpful guidance, but even then, they were writers themselves, expressing their own inner truths.  The best professor I had, Dan McCall, said on the first day that he couldn't teach people how to write.  He said that nobody could.  But we could always learn from other writers by reading them, and by living life, and talking about things we know.  He also loved Ernest Hemingway:

Hemingway: "No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure."

Pender: "Can I ask you the biggest favor in the world?  Would you read it?"

Hemingway:  "You're novel?"

Pender:  "Yeah, it's like 400 pages long, and I'm just looking for, just an opinion."

Hemingway:  "My opinion is I hate it."

Pender:  "I mean, you haven't even read it."

Hemingway:  "If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad writing.  If it's good I'll be envious and hate it all the more.  You don't want the opinion of another writer."

Pender:  "You know what it is, I'm just having a hard time trusting someone to evaluate it."

Hemingway (leans in): "Writers, are competitive!"

Pender:  "I'm not going to be competitive with you." (smiling)

Hemingway:  "You're too self-effacing.  It's not manly.  If you're a writer [pounds the table with his fist], declare yourself the best writer!  But you're not as long as I'm around.  Unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it."

-from the movie Midnight in Paris 

The people behind the first table asked me if I was an alumnus, and I simply stood back and motioned for the people behind me to go ahead while I checked out the other table.  None of the badges had my name on them, because I never asked anyone if I could join their writing program, and I definitely hadn't paid any institutions to teach me writing since college.  That is, not counting fines from the New York Public Library.  I had barely been there two minutes before I turned around and walked back outside, smiling at the security guard and event coordinator who must have been somewhat confused to see me enter and leave just as quickly.

An agent is necessary, yes, but I had not been invited to that party.  The debts from my previous Ivy experience have made inclusion in such an atmosphere pretty much financially impossible at this point.  Besides, all that matters it that the words work well with each other.  A poem e-mailed to me by a friend came to mind:

For the Young Who Want To

"Hide not your talents.  They for use were made.  What's a sundial in the shade?"

 -Benjamin Franklin

Then I continued my walk up to Harlem beneath the shining moon.

To write is to write is to write is to write
is to write is to write is to write is to write

is to write is to write is to write.
 - Gertrude Stein

Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln!

Writing--the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye, which is the great invention of the world.  Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it--great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space; and great, not only in its direct benefits, but of greatest help, to all other inventions... Its utility may be conceived, by the reflection, that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages.  Take it from us, all history, all science, all government, all commerce, and nearly all social intercourse go with it."