"In my dream, they beat me hard.
In my dream."
Juraj Cintula

It's time we bring animal wrangling back into the English departments of the world.  To earn an English degree, it should be necessary to run away with the circus and learn the finer points of making lions jump through rings of fire.  Because words are wild beasts at heart, there's no way to learn how to write effectively if you can't wrestle polar bears and tigers, and teach them to do tricks.  The postmodern plague of artistic relativism has stripped the world of craft, and replaced it with mindless stream-of-consciousness based in "instinct," which supposedly makes it more "honest," or "true."

Hogwash.  While it's true (and obvious) that stream-of-consciousness and instinct have their place, their place exists within the lofty, canvas-plated confines of the circus.  Kerouac wrote tens of thousands of words before he achieved the mastery and escape velocity necessary to write On The Road on a roll of paper towels in 2 weeks.  Pollock's famous "splatter paintings" were the end result of years of personal artistic exploration, and a dedication to the craft of painting that made his stylistic breakthrough not only revolutionary, but true.  Pollock gets a lot of heat, since lazy, artless idlers have adopted the surface elements of his style with none of the intent, thereby lowering the standards of art to sub-basement levels.  But personally, I like him.  Standing inches from an original Pollock in a museum and letting your perception melt into it is an experience worth pursuing.  I don't consider him in the same eyeroll-inducing garbage class as Duchamp, whose muse was clearly full of hate.  Instead of letting his circus animals escape, Duchamp decided to kill them out of spite.  He pisses me off.  Nude Descending The Staircase and The Large Glass, or whatever they're called, are groundbreaking and/or famous for good reason, but when he couldn't think of anything better to do but sign a urinal, he should have had the sense to quit.  I can't stand Duchamp.  He's a disgrace.

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is
destroying the quality of our suffering."
Tom Waits

Last month, the Slovakian prime minister was shot by a Duchamp impersonator named Juraj Cintula.  I can't find any of his writing online, but what I was able to find indicates a man who was no longer in command of the words,

But who was commanded by them.  While I do think that to be a good poet you have to "become a poem," it's also true that the act of "becoming a poem" is really just another linguistic circus act designed to bring the animals into submission.  Of course nobody can "become a poem," but the act of becoming a poem will teach you to write in ways that not becoming a poem never will. 

If you are a poem, you are in the ring alongside the words, with your writing implements and your whip.  Because they're jealous of your circus animals, Duchamp and your English professor will tell you that the act of taming poems is a joke.  Ignore them.  It's not a joke.  It's deadly hilarious, mortally-comical business.  Your circus animals want to tickle you to death.  If you forget that the words are trying to tickle you, or eat you, in all likelihood, they will eat you.  You are the master, not the subject.  You are not enslaved to the impetuous, murderous whims of the muse, or the desires of the ravenous linguistic beasts, roaming in your mind.  You are not cowering under the teeth of the passions of the moment.  You are the lion tamer.  The writer.  The poet, and the master.  It's a craft.  Navigating the wilderness in search of singing lions is a craft.  So, if you're going to wander the jungle without a map, make sure to bring a map.  Even if you don't know where it is.  Even if there isn't one.  Bring it anyway.

Your life depends on it.

Juraj Cintula forgot to bring a map.  But rather than writing his name on a urinal in a Slovakian truckstop gallery and saying it's art, like the lazy French chess player before him, Juraj Cintula shot a guy.  Same difference, artistically speaking.  Whether engaged in an act of attempted urination, or public murder, Juraj Cintula was no longer in control.  He became the growling beast.

"I spent seven years in prison.  And a life sentence.
In my dream.
They hanged me and beheaded me."
Juraj Cintula

I haven't written a song in years.  My last album was released over 7 years ago, and unless God has other plans, I never expect to make another one.  I have enough songs leftover for one, maybe 2 new albums (not counting anything new I'd surely write during recording), but my circus animals have abandoned me.  I believe it would do them a disservice to wake them up and force them to dance in an empty circus tent, where nobody is watching.  The songs are hibernating, and it is best to let them sleep.  They'll wake up if they wake up, and I'll join them soon enough if they don't, but the last thing I'll ever do (again?) is let them hang me and behead me in a dream.  They're not going to harm me or anybody else, as long as I'm in charge.  Songs are fearsome, wild beasts, capable of consuming the soul of an entire man for dinner in one decisive gulp, and if you don't put your lazy, postmodern stream-of-consciousness anti-training in the trash where it belongs,

Your songs may very well succeed in destroying you completely.

In lieu of doing it again for real, I have decided to open a songwriting school in the 19th century, when wild, untamed music still roamed the jungles of the mind, and the intrepid songwriter could venture into the wilderness with little more than a guitar, a pen, and a notebook, and return to civilization with an analog sideshow worthy of the admission price.

I would teach songs to write motorcycles,

Do handstands,

And ride around on rollerskates,

But I would never let them hang me, or behead me, or shoot someone I didn't like.  Notice that the real songs in the photos above are all muzzled.  Remember what W.B. Yeats said in his poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion."  He didn't say, "blow away a nationalist."  He didn't say, "hang yourself and cut your head off."  Yeats understood that, from time to time, his circus animals would desert him.  He took it in stride.

"Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
W.B. Yeats

The "foul rag and bone shop of the heart" he is referring to is, of course, the circus.  Which is to say, a writing school.  A writing school full of ladders, upon which wild beasts play until they're tamed, and can perform linguistic tricks for the amusement and aesthetic enrichment of the audience.  One thing the rag and bone shop is not, however, is a prison cell.

It's not a prison cell, or an excuse to engage in a homicidal work of linguistic deconstruction on the corporal integrity of your political opponents.  However foul it may be.  The foulness of the rag and bone shop keeps the murderers and dilettantes away.  At least, it used to.  From time to time, perhaps, the circus animals abandon us, so that we as writers might be trained.

In the art of letting go.  Of not becoming mired in the outcome.  Of balancing on tightropes. 

Of letting sleeping word bears lie.

Thanks for listening.