saving ink

As creatures of flesh that crumbles and consciousness that fades, we only have two roads to immortality, and one is easier and thus chosen by most, and one is infinitely more difficult and even the ones who choose it, inadvertently or not, usually fail. Some may try both, but in the end one will always be sacrificed, whether through lack of attention or logistical failings. We have two choices: genetic or artistic immortality.

Genetic immortality is self-explanatory. You reproduce, have a kid or a dozen, pass on not only your genes (though, biologically, that’s really the only purpose of our existence) but your ideas, teachings, and the traditions of your family and your language and your nation, and hope your kids live on to do the same.

Artistic immortality is much trickier. You must give birth to an idea so potent, so pivotal it becomes part of the human story, and is passed on from generation to generation. Perhaps there’s a better name for it than “artistic” immortality, as I don’t mean just creating a visual or auditory masterpiece a la da Vinci or Beethoven (though that’s certainly one way); Einstein, Heisenberg, Darwin, Copernicus, Satre, Curie, Marx, Rand, Newton… all of them did this, for better or for worse, and that’s the level of ingenuity each and every one of us is competing with for immortality.

Perhaps that’s what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom: our belief that we are more than our genes, that ideas can live on just as organisms do. Ideas evolve, adapt, and sometimes die out, but once they’re out there they become separate entities with fates no longer bound to their originators.

Of course, the word “immortality” is misleading itself, as unless we make contact with intelligent beings from other worlds or the robot singularity occurs or a new, even more intelligent species evolves on Earth, both types of immortalities are tied to the mortality of the human race. But since we’re a part of that closed group labelled “human”, we can’t see past the event horizon anyway, so this simulated immortality will just have to do.

Thoughts?

One morning a couple of months ago when I still had a job (a painful 9:15 am to be exact, about five hours before my brain tends to wake up), a colleague and I interviewed one of the trumpeters of St. Mary’s Church (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest clicking the afore-mentioned link to read about an awesome legend that involves a Tatar warrior with rather unbelievable archery skills). While in general the interview was pretty fascinating (turns out, there are seven trumpeters, and they work in 24-hour shifts that allow, at most, 55-minute catnaps during the night), there was an anecdote he told us after the tape recorder was turned off that seems like an apt parable for today’s news media.

According to the trumpeter (and technically, fire fighter, as every trumpeter is a member of the Krakow Fire Brigade), in the early 1900s there was a watchmaker’s shop on the Market Square, right by St. Mary’s. Every morning, the trumpeter on shift would go to the watchmaker’s and check the time and calibrate his pocket watch, then proceed up to the tower to do his job, which means playing the Hejnał (St. Mary’s hymn) every hour, on the hour, sun or rain or hail or snow or holiday or weekend. One morning, the trumpeter awoke to find that his watch was broken, so he set out earlier than usual to make a longer stop at the watchmaker’s. As the watchmaker was fixing the pocket watch, the trumpeter asked, “Sir, how do you calibrate the clocks in your shop to keep the correct time?” “Well, that’s easy,” the watchmaker replied, “I listen for the Hejnał every hour!”

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this.

The world of the news media and journalism has become a closed circle of information, feedbacking onto itself much like a guitar pick-up placed too close to a speaker - after a while, all you get is noise. The news agencies have replaced interviewees as primary sources, and the rapid pace of updates has allowed for inexcusable mistakes. All of this has led to a downward spiral of journalistic quality, when one outlet keeps time by the other’s watch, which is simultaneously being wound according to the former’s. 

So what’s the solution? Better quality control at journalism schools? (Does anyone even go to those anymore?) A narrowing of the market? Or perhaps a change in motivation, from ad revenue to direct payment for content? I still don’t know the answer, but I know damn well that a change is necessary, before the rest of the world’s media is swallowed up by the self-referencing American model.

Maybe because I never went to journalism school (or took a single journalism class, for that matter), I have resisted to a fault using journo-slang such as “angle”, “lead”, “advertorial”, etc . But while those terms are simply annoying and usually unnecessary, there is one piece of journalese that I absolutely cannot stand: “copy”.

Copy |ˈkäpē| noun ( pl. copies):

1. the words of an article, news story, or book
2. any broadcast writing, including commercials
3. any written material intended for publication, including advertising

What’s wrong with “article” or “story”, or if you must speak more technically, then “text”? ”Copy” sounds cheap. It sounds like something produced in a factory, tailored to the specifications of the customer.

“I’ll have 1,200 pieces of copy, and two crates of by-lines, please. And throw in an advertorial on the side, will ya?”

Perhaps it’s just my lack of proper initiation into journalism. But perhaps this is a case of semantics dictating attitudes. I mean, have you ever heard Shakespeare or Joyce described as “great copy”? Did Hunter Thompson produce “killer copy” for the National Observer while tripping balls on LSD? No, he told amazing stories, submitted mind-blowing articles full of engaging sentences constructed from perfectly chosen words.

So it’s no wonder that other than occasional long-form gems found in a few select papers, the majority of mainstream journalism has become cheap, AP-style copy. Perhaps if journalists stopped thinking of themselves as cogs in a machine producing copy and began writing stories, the public might want to read them again.

But what do I know? I never went to journalism school…

There’s almost a childlike joy in going to bed after a long bath, squeaky clean in fresh pajamas. It’s easy forget when most days you rush to shower before work, and most nights you stumble into bed, drunk or exhausted or both, and inevitably dirty from the weight of the day.

About three years ago, I was going to have a column in an English-language Krakow-based magazine. The magazine ended up folding after a few issues due to lack of funds and the column never got published, and I completely forgot about the pieces I had written. I dug them up recently as I was backing up some files, and as I re-read them I realized they still made sense; so, I’ll post them up here.

Keep in mind, they were written with the intention of being part of a monthly column, kind of like Bukowski’s Notes From a Dirty Old Man.

Notes From Under a Bridge - Number 1

George Orwell (or perhaps his publisher) put out a very slim volume titled “Why I Write,” which had surprisingly little to do with the process of writing, and more about his criticism of the politics and character of Britain during World War Two. Though its contents are eerily relevant today (something about history, erm, re… hmm, re-something itself?), more important is its title in context: the reason he writes is because he has something to say on the state of the world, not because of an urge to create Art (with a capital A of course). And I suppose that’s more my reasoning than any other.

So this is supposed to be an introduction. Who I am. Why I write. But the two are so interconnected that any explanation of this sort would be redundant, as I feel that over the course of this column both will reveal themselves, eventually.

So instead maybe I’ll just write what I’m doing in this city. I’m finishing grad school, eating at bar mlecznys and spending far too many nights in the time-stealing black hole that is Łubu-Dubu. I already have a degree in English, meaning I’m qualified for absolutely nothing, but my grammar is superb. So I’m writing, finagling a way to stay in this city, and trying not to starve. If my column ever stops appearing, that means there’s a good chance you might see me under the bridge at Hala Targowa, so please toss me a grosz or two, or perhaps even a two zloty cheeseburger (I’d really appreciate it. I could possibly even rhyme for you or something).

Mostly though, I’m fighting boredom. Maybe I’m alone on this (but probably not), but life in America (or England or parts of “Western” Europe) had become quite boring. No great wars, no great famines; our biggest problems are our iPods breaking or our dry-cleaning coming out ruined. The everyday takes on epic importance when bullets aren’t falling on our heads. I do admit, sometimes I miss the convenience of living in an English-speaking country. It’s nice to have air conditioning, subway lines, satellite TV, sushi, (real) Mexican food, Orangina, Virgin Megastores; to be able to pay with credit cards everywhere. But the fact that I’ve lived a year without these things means that they’re not as indispensable to my existence as I once imagined. When you’re forced to pack twenty-two years of your life into two suitcases, you suddenly realize that you don’t need most of the possessions you’ve acquired and placed so much importance on through the years.

So I and my two suitcases have decided to stay in Krakow; part of me has to admit that the temptation of a return to “normality” of Britain or America is still strong. But another part fears the boredom and complacency that inevitably follow from this kind of life. That same part believes that great writers need great wars to write about (that part also reads too much Orwell and Polish literature). But in the end I must face reality: boredom is the burden of the middle class. It comes from being born into (or emigrating into at an early age, as in my case) a stable society, battling neither exorbitant luxuries nor risk of starvation; having the higher education and intelligence necessary to contemplate one’s boredom on a daily basis while at the same time to envy those without the same burden; possessing the insight to contemplate one’s society but lacking the influence to realistically change it; being born at a time of stagnation in almost all aspects of humanity, punctuated by feelings of mass impotence, both culturally and politically. I bet this is what growing up in the 1930s in the free world felt like, minus the economic setbacks of a Great Depression: watching the world turn for the worse, screaming in a sealed glass cage for the rest of the world to pay attention to you.

So, how does one reconcile one’s boredom with the unchangeable fact of being born/transplanted into a middle-class existence in a stagnant, comfortable society? Some people buy sports cars; some people go crazy; and some of us move to Kraków, where between the kamienicas older than our grandparents and the people on the streets at four in the morning, at least there’s a sense of something happening.

Number 2

Every week in Krakow I wake up with new bruises. Sometimes they’re discovered in bed, but most often in the shower, as I look down when shaving my legs or scrubbing my sides and notice an oval darkness, sometimes raised and yellowing, usually just a dark bronze face looking back at me, and I wonder why and how I manage to abuse my body so without even noticing. This morning, for instance, I was shaving and I noticed a new bump as my disposable razor wavered momentarily in the air. So I had this great idea for a story involving a man perpetually covered in bruises, until he’s unrecognizable as anything but. There may have been ninjas involved. But then I lost it.

Every writer should have a recorder in the shower and pen and paper in the toilet. Because you never know when a good word, a good sentence, good alliteration or good idea will come, and you have to put it on paper immediately. Or at least I do, with my consciously ever-worsening short-term memory.

It’s mental menstruation: you have to catch it as it’s starting, or you’ll end up with a bloody mess later.

So here I sit, one sock on and just bra and jeans (the day’s t-shirt still unselected), hair still shower-wet, screaming at my iBook to open Word faster (“For fuck’s sake, optimize my fonts later, I only need Times New Roman anyway!”) because if I don’t get it down, it will flow out immediately, the nuances lost, and like the difference between the first seconds of waking and five minutes later, the haze sets in, the significance is forgotten and the next Great Idea of Man is lost forever. Imagine if Hemingway had been a pothead instead of a drunk.

I don’t really know where my bad memory comes from. Sure, I’ve been known to drink excessively and occasionally partake in illicit drugs (or as I like to call them, ill-tastic!), but nothing to the extent of significant brain cell loss. Perhaps it’s compensated for in my smell memory. Seriously. I have photographic (photoolfactory?) smell memory. I can smell a scent and tell you when and where I smelt it last. The other day, I sniffed and got my aunt’s elevator in Munich. I’ve smelt my grandmother often, but only in Poland. I’ve even gotten my parents’ house in Houston here once. I’m perfect with ex-boyfriend colognes. I guess that’s my superpower, though the jury is still out on whether or not I’ll be granted a costume for this (oh, please let it have latex).

But this is why I write, because actual memories are so fleeting. Because I can’t even remember what I did last week, much less a year ago or ten, unless I have thoughts and events recorded somewhere. The details fade; old cities, old lovers, it’s hard to remember the architecture of either sometimes. They disappear because I failed to write them down, to record them in some place more permanent than my mind. And all around this city I’m constantly surrounded by couples, holding hands around the Rynek, making out far too often on the Planty benches, and I wonder, are any of them going to remember this moment in twenty years? Or is history, even our own personal histories, a sketchbook of ordered events, left uncolored and unfinished?

Gombrowicz wrote “writing is nothing more than a battle that the artist wages with others for his own prominence.” Yes, we’re all attention whores, but what if the greater battle is with your own mind, or memory in this case? But maybe it’s just my bad memory that necessitates this urge to take up pen and scribble every facet down. Hopefully everyone else finds some other ways to remember their time in this city, because the world is already overflowing with writers, one sock on and half-naked, trying to get their ideas out for their audience of one.