ldemosthenes In reply to groovus [2005-01-15 22:18:42 +0000 UTC]

hallo, dear how are you?

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ldemosthenes In reply to fallingsilver [2004-12-04 07:47:08 +0000 UTC]

no worries.

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ldemosthenes In reply to drmanhattan [2004-12-02 05:15:25 +0000 UTC]

man, I got nothin. I literally have shut down, creatively. Another reason why I'm here. I also was pretty depressed for a while there, and I thought this place was making it worse, so I left. I'm not sure about now, but you certainly make me happy. Whenever I decide to scrap this place because I can't find any good poets who aren't total assholes, I remember you

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drmanhattan In reply to ldemosthenes [2004-12-02 06:46:16 +0000 UTC]

Aww, that's sad and sweet at the same time.

Depression is a total drag. Recently I had kind of a depressed period. I was kinda going nuts, but it turned out alright. I'd go through each day feeling like a machine, really caught up in my own internal reverie, then stay up all night writing pages and pages of absolute crap, once in a while turning out an accidental pearl, and watching pirated movies from the internet. In fact, that's kinda still going on, but I feel a little better. So I hope you're feeling good, too.

I got kinda sick of DeviantArt for a while as well. Got really fed up with trying to tell thirteen year olds how to be better poets and not write about suicide, fed up with people who post really intricate airbrushed pictures of the moon and lightning with a pretentious poem attatched in the "poetry" section and make DTF every time, and fed up with posting really detailed critiques on things only to get a "thanks for the comment" in return and no reciprocation whatever. So I decided not to bother with any of that anymore, 'cos worrying about comments and pageviews was really ruining it for me. But DA's a great receptacle for writing, helps keep it organizized. I'm working on making a book, 'cept I do so much editing it gets really hard to keep track of revisions & which one is most recent.

Sometimes periods of seemingly no inspiration are really more like creative hibernation, and at some point the writing just comes back in force. Poetry class definitely helps. Maybe try writing in different styles than usual, rhymes and syllable counts and stuff. Try just writing anything that comes into your head as fast as possible, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Usually these types of exercises don't produce anything good, but they're really just for warm-up, and sometimes it brings out a line or two that belongs in a completely different poem. Don't do drugs, drugs tend not to help at all. By drugs I mean pot. Sometimes it stimulates the imagination, but far too often I'll write pages of amazing stuff that somehow transforms into utter nonsense and crap by the next time I look it over. Or I'll be high and sit down to write and go totally blank for a few minutes, then decide to watch a movie. Or I'll think of a ton of really good ideas, forget about the notebook in my lap, remember the notebook, forget the ideas, then draw a picture of a cat fighting an octopus. Drugs don't help.

Aaaaaargh, I'm supposed to be writing an essay about Walt Whitman, it's two in the morning, aaaaaaaagh.

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ldemosthenes In reply to drmanhattan [2004-12-02 07:50:34 +0000 UTC]

thank you for the tips, I will keep those in mind. Actually me and my friend ~sirensin are both trying to get ourselves back into the writing groove. We did another writing exercise, an adjective + noun combo, to work into a short fiction piece. it's due Christmas, so I have time, and I keep on thinking about my phrase, because it's so damn impossible: viscous charity. The viscous was mine. Now what? I'm considering a creative writing class soon, not next semester, though, I'm taking two economics classes, and am booked up

I'm actually really feelling the rhythm meter stuff right now--I'm taking a class on the Romantics, damn if I don't love them upside down and inside out. I'm writing a paper on Keats right now, acutally. I'm so fucked, it's 2:45. I love Keats to pieces, but it's fucking 2:45.

Depression was bad. I kept on thinking I was over the worst of it and then it would get worse. And like some deranged junkie, I was on here all the time, dealing with the neverending shit of human nature, which for some reason is a lot worse when you have comments, pageviews, your own art on the line. I've sort of given up, too. I'm at a middling state of views and comments, and I'm looking about for the people I liked before. A few were banned, a few are gone like myself But yes, I'm glad depression's over for right now. My thing was movies, too, and living in malls. Literally going to malls every day. It's the most depressing thing on the planet. I guess I wrote some stuff on it, but it was shit, of course.

Your story about the cat fighting the octopus made me laugh I never got into pot, although I hang out with people who like it..a lot. And we play GTA a lot. And it tortures my soul a bit, because I have a crush on a potsmoking GTA player, and the question is, why?

Anyway once I write something you'll be the first to know, don't worry. Good luck on that paper.

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drmanhattan In reply to ldemosthenes [2004-12-02 08:46:41 +0000 UTC]

Sweets.

I thought that said "vicious charity", which would be awesome. Especially 'cos it calls to mind something Nietzsche wrote about generosity only being a front for indebting people to oneself. By giving someone a gift, you are making them owe you. Gratitude, he says, is a milder form of revenge.

I dislike meter and rhythm. Counting syllables is too much like math. Romantics are great, though. I love the 'carpe diem' poems.

Gah, it's 3:30 now and I'm.... eleven words short of the word count. Need a conclusion. I hate essays. Good thing I stay up until, like, 5.

The list of things to avoid while depressed includes the internet, malls, staying up late, and drugs. The thing to do is spend time with people that make you feel good, exercise, eat properly, and get lots of rest and sunshine. Or something like that. I really have no idea. Seems more like my mood dictates the things I do, moreso than the other way around. Malls make me really claustrophobic - er, agoraphobic, I guess - and I can't imagine spending time in them more than necessary. Being in a mall is like being underwater. Especially living in the city. They're goddamn zoos. I look at the swarms of people and imagine, every one is thinking separate thoughts, every one was born in a different place, every one woke up somewhere and is going somewhere when they leave and so on and so forth and I get overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the human race.

Pot's not really a good thing to get into unless your priorities are far too logical and you want something useless to pre-empt your budgeting of time and money. But it's a great way to waste time, and it tends to lead to hilarious conversations and an increased appreciation of art and music. People who smoke too much tend to become sort of slow, and dull. But that's not entirely a symptom of smoking pot, it's more a symptom of spending a whole lot of time sitting around, doing nothing but get high and do nothing interesting. Does your potsmoking GTA player do anything interesting?

....wish I could sleep at a reasonable hour. I don't want to finish this essay right now.

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ldemosthenes In reply to drmanhattan [2004-12-03 18:55:34 +0000 UTC]

I slept about three hours in the effort to finish mine. Oh, well.

I like that thing about Nietzche, he's an interesting guy. Charity is a very tricky subject, I always think it's necessary, but selfish. There's a stereotype for people who work in charity. Escaping ourselves. Or pretentiously thinking, I'm doing this to help people. Then agian, what isn't selfishly motivated? lol.

The Romantics really were fucking brilliant. It's almost discouraging--they were ridiculous. Keats especially, I can't get him out of my head. And for some reason I like the meter and rhyme, I guess it's like music to me That's actually what I'm trying to figure out right now, whether or not it's worth it for me to keep writing poetry, because there is some really amazing poetry out there! I was wandering about DA (visiting the pages of the "elite") and couldn't find more than two poems that really caught me. Compared to Keats, anyway. I'd like to try my hand at meter, rhyme, negative capability, all the good stuff, but I know I won't be as good as the rest of them, so I don't know. Also, the sheer complexity of these poems is insane. I mean, I know, I'm analyzing them in class. In one of Shelley's poems, if you say the words over again, the phonetic sounds translate to french. FRENCH. you see my predicament.

Malls are really, really bad if you're depressed. When I went, I sort of felt seduced by the fantasy they offer to you, you know, buy this and you'll be happy. That only works if you're sad, though. And it was too many other people who were happy, too many things that weren't part of the fantasy. I don't know, sometimes going to the mall really makes me happy, but for about four months there, it sucked. I like your list of things to do, but those things seem very, very far away when you're depressed, you know? And actually, rest made it worse, because then I was alone with myself. I had to be out and busy and doing things all the time. This is a sad topic of conversation isn't it

I really like talking to people who smoke pot! Like three of the guys across the hall from me do, and I hang out with them occassionally. They're hilarious. One of them was reading James Joyce while high, I assume it makes more sense there than it does nothing. My potsmoking GTA player does his girlfriend, who is by the way not me, when he's high. He actually is rendered mostly useless by pot, so I think he confines it to weekends. Don't tell me my life is pathetic, I know already.

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drmanhattan In reply to ldemosthenes [2004-12-03 21:07:56 +0000 UTC]

heh. hehehehehehahahaahaaahahaahahaaa

This conversation is runnin into, like e-mail lengths. I oughta get you on my MSN list or sumthin'.

What's negative capability? I've never even heard of it. And a bilingual poem, that is really insane. Wow. I wouldn't have thought it possible.

It does seem tempting to quit something just because you'll never be as good at it as the ancient masters of the art were. But that's not the point. The obvious response is that it's worthwhile to try. But that's not the point either. It's about not feeling that you must compete with everyone who has come before. Of course Shelley and Keats were insanely good writers. But it's not the role of writers today to dig up Shakespeare's grave and lie down in it, just like it's not the role of modern scientists to rediscover gravity. How many ways can there possibly be to write a poem in English, where the phonetics can be read as French? Not many, I bet. Must be only so many combinations of words that make sense in both languages. Maybe there's only one, and Shelley got to it first. Write the poems that at are yours to write, words from your own life that Spencer or Milton or Frost would never have come up with. 'Cos there's always new ground to cover. I wonder where poetry can possibly go, after e.e. cummings. There must always be things that haven't been done before, not just structurally but in the actual words, the feelings.

Everything's unique.

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juanche In reply to juanche [2004-12-01 04:28:14 +0000 UTC]

eyy!!!.....yo ando con mis ultimas asignaturas en la universidad , espero que todo te vaya muy muy bien, ahh!! y no permitiré que olvides el español !!! .... un beso fuerte

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ldemosthenes In reply to juanche [2004-12-01 00:55:31 +0000 UTC]

gracias mi amor como estas? estoy apriendo francais en clase ahora, tengo miedo que olvide espanol

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juanche In reply to ldemosthenes [2004-12-01 11:48:27 +0000 UTC]

yo te lo recordaré !!!....estoy terminando mis últimos examenes de la universidad...y luego quiero tambien mejorar un poco mi inglés!....espero que todo te vaya muy muy bien . Un beso fuerte!

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ldemosthenes In reply to juanche [2004-12-01 19:00:29 +0000 UTC]

si tu necesitas practicar tu ingles, preguntame, yo te ayudo

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juanche In reply to ldemosthenes [2004-12-02 01:11:14 +0000 UTC]

perfect!....this one would be one of my first comment in english !! ...
see you around sweety!

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