C.A. Hall's Blog, page 8
January 27, 2015
Decomposition Book Exhumed
About fourteen years ago, full of cheap scotch and inflated dreams, I decided I was gonna write a book.
At 22, the idea of black words on white a paper was about as boring as a Kenny G mix tape. So,I decided that my book wouldn't be boring. My book was gonna beas visually exciting as I thought the writing was. Influenced by punk rock zines, collages and album inserts, I set to creating my opus. And I got reasonably far—far enough to publish,but I never did publish it. I never did anything with...
January 26, 2015
How Proust Can Change Your Life — Part 5
Proust believed that books playedimportant roles in our lives. He believed, as Botton put it, that:
…what all books might do for their readers—namely bring back to life, from the darkness caused by habit and inattention, valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.
Proust also believed that books should not be read just to pass the time but that they should be read with purpose—mainly to discover our own thoughts and feelings.
There is no better way of coming to be aware...
January 23, 2015
Riding the Elevator To Hell With A Typewriter
I started a book over a year ago with ambition, ideas and a lot of goddamn momentum.Then, about six months ago, I lost hold of it—it wentripping off like a snapped guitar string or abusted fan belt, swinging at the flesh, hopingto break bone.
I don't know how it happens, but sometimes projects just give you the finger. They leave you hard. They leave you stiff. They turn right when you turn left. They speed when you stop and you end up feeling like a seventeen year-old who's been fucking a gi...
January 20, 2015
Content Magazine: DINE Issue 6.5
Check out the new issueof Content Magazine for my interview with poet, Mark Heinlein.
January 19, 2015
Discovering Louis Darling
I've had an unread Beverly Cleary book on my shelf for nearly thirty years.
Henry & the Clubhouse by Beverly Cleary
Exactly, what made me pick itup yesterdayI don't know, but, by luck or fate, it was the perfect time. Now I don't mean that I needed to read a book about boy building a clubhouse (though I did enjoy the hell out of it), what I mean is that I may not have appreciated it before. A year ago the illustrations in this book wouldn't have registered. I would have flipped passed them w...
January 17, 2015
How Proust Can Change Your Life — Part 4
Proust took a young friend to see the paintings of Jean-BaptisteChardin in order to teach him to appreciate the beauty around him.
Chardin painted still-lifes of fruit, meat and kitchen utensils.
His point being to prove that art can be made anywhere, because beauty is everywhere (even in the mundane). Thisreminds me of the plastic bag scene in the movie American Beauty.
Botton:
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeut...
January 11, 2015
The Dark Side of Being on Bottom: A Rant [Revisited]
This is, as the title suggests,a revisitof a rant that I sent out to my newsletter subscribers earlier today. The more that I've stewed on it, the more that I've decided that this should be shared because creating isn't always a positive thing. I'm not a famous writer. I'm not a famous artist either. I'm closer to the horse's ass than I am to the horns. Nobody is waiting for my new stuff. Nobody likes to see me playing around and wonders what I do on most nights. Magazines don't call my agent...
January 9, 2015
How Proust Can Change Your Life — Part 3
How Proust Can Change Your Lifeby Alain de Botton
How To Be A Good Friend
Proust was said to be a famously good listener. As his friendGeorges de Lauris explained it:
He took an interest in you, instead of trying to make you interested in himself.
I’m struck by what a beautiful, kind man Proust was. His friends say the most delicate & affectionate things.
He never put all his poetry into his books, he puts as much into his life.
— Walter Berry
Proust was a conversationalist who at times hate...
January 8, 2015
How Proust Can Change Your Life — Part 2
How Proust Can Change Your Lifeby Alain de Botton
How To Suffer Successfully
Even Proust had difficulty in getting his friends to read his work.Madame Gaston de Caillavet praisedhim for a passage regarding his first communion but there was in fact no such passage. As you can imagine his friend's indifference injured Proust greatly:
About a book published only a few months earlier, people never speak to me without mistakes proving either that they’ve forgotten it or that they haven’t read it.**...
January 7, 2015
How Proust Can Change Your Life — Part 1
How Proust Can Change Your Lifeby Alain de Botton
How To Love Life Today
Proust was no different than you. He didn't think he was a genius. Hedisliked his own writing—calling himself 'aflea' & calling his writing 'a piece of indigestible nougat'.
******Newspaper L’Intransigeant’s published an articleaskingthe public what they thought everyonewould do if they knew that the world was ending.Proust’s response was:
Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it—our life—hides...
