Writing Mentors and The Art of Unlocking Immaculate Codes
And how reading is becoming my new addiction, erm super power.
Yeah I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. It was pretentious as fuck. For the common man. I was a common, angry, working man back then. A triple negative. A quad if you toss in the bitter shot of back then.
I gave it up three quarters in and it turned me off reading for a while. (A product of self hate and shame, growing up thinking everyone was smarter than me.)
I also read Slumberland by Paul Beatty and it was no less pretentious (as fuck) but insanely hilarious. I loved it. Couldn’t read it fast enough. That book, gifted to me by troubadour, humanitarian, and close friend, Justin Nuñez, was written for a tiny select group of humans in the world who were at a point in their life where they knew they had the mojo and could do a thing, but became a slave to the chase.
What’s the difference between the pretentious books? Zen taught me what not to do as a writer. As a common writer. Zen is a reminder, today, that some things in life repulse us as a signal; as an artist, we learn to yield to those signals to find our voice.
Slumberland taught me I could use any tone or voice I created to highlight the absurdity of our own neurotic behaviors and self-taught hyper-everything survival mechanisms. Paul Beatty is the author that spoke to me at the exact moment I needed a code to be unlocked, fumbling with my people-pleasing addiction, afraid to use my authentic voice in a publication. And I’m loyal to any human who can make their own absurdity into a wildly entertaining story for others, chasing their mojo across the New Mexico high desert of their own cosmos.
Paul Beatty is the author who said I could just be myself and write. I can be neurotic, flagrant, and bizarre, and unapologetically honest. I can be entertaining and take readers on bizarre journeys that were meant only for very few, in a magical moment; my writing is not for everyone and I find so much pleasure in that. Paul Beatty shot to the top of my mentor list and I’m thrilled to have a platform where I can write about my influences, while on my own artistic journey of healing and writing. Not all mentors are musicians.
Lastly, and the irony is not lost on me, I am currently in the middle of building my writing discipline, while also rebuilding an old Dodge truck, tearing it down, inspecting the pieces, and upgrading the entire driveline to a more reliable 90’s engine, transmission, and transfer case. I am now living the story of Zen and the Art of Our Own Absurdity. I made that up.
I laugh (at my previous judgy self) every time I crawl under the truck and find some strange, new, near-fatal anomaly.
There always seems to be one lurking under the years of neglect.
Stringer (rolling his eyes at his own bullshit)