It’s bullshit that DMB hasn’t rereleased Busted Stuff on vinyl

Pours two fingers of bourbon neat, swirls twice, then takes a long drink.

You know, it’s bullshit that DMB hasn’t rereleased Busted Stuff on vinyl. Oh shit, we’re live?

Takes a moment to light a cigarette, fully knowing they’re a terrible vice (one that we know full well he doesn’t have) but one that fits the je ne sais quoi.

So here’s the thing: deep down I think I’m a hack and a half. Actually no, it’s worse than that, I’m a pretentious hack who thinks that profundity is an adjective that would show up in big bold letters on his word cloud of imaginary obituaries. 

I’ve never read Dostoevsky besides Crime and Punishment in Junior year. Hells, even if you went through the who’s who of fantasy and sci-fi authors, whose legion in my deepest of hearts I hope to one day join, my knowledge of their works is woefully lacking. Do you ever get sad in airport book stores? I do. Something about the sheer number of transient volumes in a place specifically catering to quick reads and best sellers gets me. So many books, so little time. Such is life right? 

As I said, I’m feeling very hackish of late. Most of my writing time has been dedicated to draft number . . . six I think? . . . of my novel, and there’s this one spot that’s stuck in my craw. In reality, this spot amounts to no more than four pages of actual text, it’s in an innocuous spot in the narrative, and serves a very direct purpose, but it doesn’t feel right. 

And look, I know I can do things like “cut it” or “add conflict” or “increase interpersonal tension”, but nothing I’ve tried so far feels like the right solution. So what’s a man to do? Well, I read in vain hope that inspiration will strike (a surefire strategy to find inspiration for everything BUT the one thing you’re trying to find inspiration on), and then I realize I’m not reading all the stuff on good ole Vocal here and have 50 tabs open on my phone of TBR stories . . . 

At this, he takes a drag of the cigarette then stares at the camera so intently it’s as if he’s trying to see Glasgow from Chicago. 

Let me tell you, a long TBR makes me feel real hackish. Not sure why. Maybe because I feel as though I’m letting everyone down? Who’s to say. 

Sorry, eternally prone to digression–a terminal disease I inherited from my father. As I said, this section is really sticking in my craw. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll figure it out, but it’s suffocating the rest of my creative processes. 

Which gets me to my point . . . if I posted this issue on a different corner of the internet, the first response would be, “did you ask ChatGPT?” 

Another pour of bourbon. A hefty pour. 

Too many people would ask that, way too many, and that annoys me, not because it wouldn’t be helpful–it would probably produce a useful list of basic techniques, any one of which might work–but because the consensus belief is that all of those techniques are the only correct path that must be followed. 

The truth is–and I know I’m preaching to the choir–art is messy as fuck. I’ve found that describing this struggle within the craft of writing is the most difficult to convey, irony notwithstanding.

Drag of the cigarette, chased by more bourbon. 

The infinite monkey problem kinda fucked us writer types. Give infinite monkeys infinite time and yeah they’ll produce Shakespeare, but the thing is, it can only reproduce Shakespeare/Sartre/Pick your Author. It can only reproduce, and the art is by nature novelly iterative. To change metaphors midstream (objectively hackish writing) just because I can whip out three power chords does not make me one of the Ramones, yet take those same three chords, muck around with some reverb and some shitty basement lights and torn black jeans and it’s something truly spectacular. 

Can you imagine, just imagine, if someone told Tony Bourdain that a song made on Suno was better than the fucking Ramones? The beauty in music, in art, is sitting down at a pub and listening to someone do things to a fiddle that are borderline erotic after never once hearing a fiddle on spotify. Its discovery and culmination of colors, notes, words, coming together in ways you’d never even think to combine. 

Because the naked truth is art is built on so much ignorance. I will never read every book in the airport bookstore, and I’m glad that I never will, because you know what happens when you dump the paint palate over (mixing metaphors again, fuck off) . . . ? 

You get a fucking shade of grey deeper than the street DMB sings about in my favorite song of 2002’s masterpiece Busted Stuff. 

If you’ll permit me to plagiarize a profound parting statement: paint with colors beautifully bold and fucking bright. Beauty lies in that mixture of known and unknown, inspiration and ignorance. 

It lies, fundamentally, in the human. Be human, lest those damn machines nuke us all. 

Drains bourbon and crushes the cigarette in the glass. 

A/N:

For Sasha's lovely challenge that I certainly missed some of the instructions on. Oh well!

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