Workshops, Pride, and Humility

The shoreline begins to recede.

Well, I've sent out in the neighborhood of forty emails in the last two weeks, and had replies to only a couple. Is this the dog days of August? Are we on vacation, or taken up with going back to school? All these things and more, I am sure. Although not entirely sedentary this current life is solitary. In the 1970s, when I spent many hours of my life alone, with just my typewriter, I filled in the need for human contact by writing extensive letters and by running my household as a salon. A place where others could come and talk about music, rock music, poetry, fiction, politics and the Cubs. And I also threw quite a few parties in those days. Mostly for dancing and pot and speed, mixed with copious quantities of beer and hard liquor. I suppose the sort of party everyone has in their twenties.

Of course, I lived with a woman who was in her late thirties and early forties through that time. She worked for a living and I kept house and tried to write novels and generally ran things in what was the Scarritt Occasional Society. Years later, in the mid 1980s, John Knoepfle wrote a long exegesis on writers in Springfield in the 1970s and 1980s and he pretty much left me out entirely. He attributed the Scarritt group to Pat Smith. She had been instrumental in founding Brainchild, along with Sandra Martin and Peg Knoepfle (also Maurie Formigoni). His desire to write me out of the picture had to do with his guilt over having dumped me as a friend because of his wife's insane notions and my own guilt over having had an affair a decade before with a fourteen year old girl.

Well, that happened. But the fact of the matter is that there would never have been a Scarritt except for me. There may have been something else. Pat was a social person, but I did the work and I brought in the writers. It would have been nice to have some recognition of this along the way. My later writing group, The Writers BARBQ, for that I get some credit, though Becky Bradway gets a lot of the credit too. Yet, that group also would never have existed except that I was there to organize it, and to, as they say these days, facilitate it.

So I did those things. I made those phonecalls. I wrote those letters. People would come to my house for oh so many years, on Fridays generally, and I would ask who had material to read, and then we would read and speak to that material. Literally several hundred people over those thirty years. I developed early an ability to move things along. Also I figured out how to critique people without being negative. I believed then and still believe that it is better to encourage the good aspects of people's work and lives and not to dwell on their faults beyond merely mentioning what doesn't work from one's own perspective.

And I always believed in a democracy among artists. There was never one person who was better than the others, even though it is always true that some are indeed better than others. But for a reading group, for a workshop, everyone should be treated equally. Because we are all there to "improve" what we have brought to the table. Sure, there are always some people who come strictly for praise, for appreciation. And that's not of itself a bad thing. So much of this art takes place in a solitary world that getting some affirmation is very important. And since there will probably never be any real money, even for the published writer, it becomes even more important over the years.

But it is actually true that the person who desires to become a writer for the many, for the social aspect of writing (that is, to have an "audience") will inevitably be attracted to true criticism. Criticism that helps that person learn something about their work, their style, their content, and how it affects others. Those people are the people who learn the most, and who often make the most difference in a workshop.

And I think I gave pretty good workshop. Not strung out with the tricks of the trade. Knoepfle in his class had his string of things he told people. But he was always a lazy arbiter of the word. It shows in his own poetry which much of the time deserts its feelings for the sophisticated turn of the phrase. That's okay for him and he has made a career of it. But as someone who was in this world almost entirely for the sake of seeing good art created his workshop classes ultimately fell short.

As it was I ran many of those classes. Yes, John made the money, but I carried the buckets of water in the undergraduate world. Of course I had neither bachelor nor masters and certainly no phd. What did I have that he left me in charge of his class many many times? He knew I could do it. And I could do it. I could do it better than he could. But he always had a constant stream of people who took him under the delusion he could make them famous/get them published. In my entire 18 years hanging around Knoepfle I can tell you he was little help to anybody but himself. And as he aged he became ever more insufferable about his own work which became ever more trite and dependent entirely on an empty cleverness. So it goes in the land of academic poetry. He is not alone in this arc. Look at Kevin Stein.

So I spent my 20s/30s/40s running writing workshops, not for money, but for the love of the work itself. Did I get something out of it? Well, I still have many unpublished manuscripts in my boxes in my basement of people's novels and poems. Some of these stories and words I still pull out and enjoy and learn from. And while the groups continued I would get a certain amount of ego affirmation from them. After all, when someone listens to your critique and then applies it to their work, you can assume there was value there.

My last group lasted from 1986 through 1999. I am still in contact with most of the people in this group. And one of those humans, Martha Miller, published a new novel this year, which I was allowed to read in manuscript along the way. Very satisfying to me.

But now I live somewhere else. Somewhere other than that town, the city of my discontent, as Lindsay nicknamed it so many years ago. And I see few people where I am now, though I have been here ten years. I have few face to face friends. I don't remember the last time I threw a party. I am married to the best person I have ever known, Kimb, and we had our child, Piper, in 2003. The fact that Piper has turned out to be a special child, Aspergers Syndrome, has contributed to the increased isolation that I feel. The next ten years will be getting into the last years of this person's life. I might live twenty, but I would doubt much beyond that. My family history has the men leaving the scene around 80, and I am 61 this year. I will struggle to be there for this child, as she grows to adulthood.

Pretty much this takes up a lot of my existence, family time. And for this time I am very grateful. Those 70s 80s years my son did not get to have much from me I am afraid. Part of that was his mother moving to Oregon and then to California. But much of that came from my blowing off my twenties trying to be a writer and consequently having little in the way of money to help him or see him. Perhaps that is why these days I get little information from him and he and his wife and children have never come here, though we have been there several times.

Now we have the internet. Sometimes that seems like a good way to communicate. But often it feels to me as if I have left out something important. And I am essentially a confessional writer.You would think I have put down everything in one post or another.

Still, this day the end of August in the year 2011, I feel isolated from the whole of humanity. The desire in the body politic to destroy one group over another, mainly a republican conservative desire, is breaking down the essential idea of hope that must be at the heart of growth.

And I miss being with the writers. Often they were pretty silly. I have a box of audio tapes that Cheryl Frank made in the late 1970s. I keep thinking I should make them into cds before they are gone forever. But really, is it worth it? I wonder.

Meanwhile, there is that magician aspect of Tim Osburn. Divine Bear indeed. He lives on the precipice of his own humility. He can never quite bring himself to believe it was all worthwhile. And no one will actually read this. That is the demonstration of what I have become.

Neurological Damage Control

Here it is, mid March 2010. I keep looking up and realizing I've lived in this burg (Urbana) for going on nine years now. We had hoped to only spend a few years here, but then things happened. In any case, nine years along on this particular bend of the river. I have to admit, though, that the blog has turned out to be a very decent diary/journal, up until Randy Britton made me de-personalize it for the sake of his paranoia. Well, he's a paranoid person, very Navy. Good for him. As if anybody out there is interested in his life, much less mine.

When I do get people surfing through it is primarily either a subject that brings them, or it is a specific figure from my complex past. Thus, no one is likely to come looking for this particular post, unless I drop a significant subject or name into it.

Someone recently surfed through looking for Lucia Getsi, a person I know very little of but whom my ex-wife, Becky #2, positively hated when she lived in Bloomington-Normal. I guess Getsi must've been on staff at ISU there. I knew her primarily through her poetry. She had made a reputation, having written a book of poems about dealing with her daughter's disease. I forget what it was, but it was something profound and dramatic. As I recall, from hearing her read once, the poetry was pretty good. It is, of course, the politics that tell the real tale here. I believe Getsi was one of the people who panned the Writers BarBQ in the lit community.

So far as I know, though, everybody panned it in the writers community. It was just not too ultra cool for them. We published all over the map, sci fi, fantasy, realism, gay people's lives. Boy, you name it, we thought if it was a human experience it ought to be in the mag. But the Illinois Arts Council thought we sucked. We didn't publish enough Illinois writers. Then we published them but not the right ones. Then we published them but not their significant work. Get the drift? I always thought it was that guy who ran TriQuarterly in the old days, Gibbons?? He had a budget of a half a million dollars a year (Chicago University). We had a budget of a couple of thousand. Yet, we were considered the offensive group that he needed to keep out of the grant machinery.

That was another experiment of Tim's life that was flushed down the drain by those who think they are smarter and better than me. And I let them, too. Because after all is said and done, I just don't play well with the other children. I don't compete and I don't much like people who do compete. My brother Greg ruined competition for me before I was in my teens. And let's face it, when an art becomes a bureacracy, then the people who run it aren't the artists anymore, they are the people for whom power is the reason to be. And that is certainly true in the Illinois Arts Council. And for most of the socalled heavy heads I knew in Illinois letters over the years.

For every Jim McGowan, there was a Larry Lieberman. For every Dave Etter, there was a Dan Guillory. For every Gwendolyn Brooks there was a John Knoepfle. Eek. The good work was so often subsumed by the merely competent but well connected people. And you had to be nice to them and kiss their anuses and pretend like they had something going on or they wouldn't give you shit. And even then they wouldn't give me shit.

So I read my poems every day and I send a few out, here and there. No one seems to actually read them. I never get a comment. I can ask a couple of my friends to read things and comment, and they do. A line or two. But even my closest friends often choose to just ignore my work. The reason for my life.

I have tried to keep my integrity in this art, in these words. As far as I know I have. If this means I have consigned myself to the basement, that is too bad for the species as a whole. Because it means there are others like me, lost and never given the attention they deserve. Who knows what great art and science is out there, in boxes in the garage?

When I die I suppose all this will dissipate. What's the word? Attenuate. Indeed as all lives must eventually become thinner and thinner and then disappear into the ether. Who do we remember from five thousand years ago? Mainly kings and other killers, and the ideas of the gods. And in ten thousand more years will any of this have any kind of substance?

Thanks to the Lady Arianrhod, for this time and for this space.

Intrigues from the Sixties

Saturday night in Champaign-Urbana. I believe there was a football game today at the university. We avoided that part of town, but did end up going to Hessel Park in our old neighborhood. The place was completely surrounded by parked cars and people started walking across the park and driving away. It was about the end of game time so I figured out that everyone there had walked about eight blocks over to the stadium. We didn't last too long at the park. Poor Piper started coughing something fierce and we diverted her with a bookstore at the far end of town.

Strange things pass through this very public act. I noticed a comment on a poem yesterday that I hadn't seen before. A piece, published in August. It turned out to be a comment from a girl I dated in high school and who's story at that time I used as the basis of one of my unpublished novels. Marcia Froelke. Marcia took offense because I said in my notes that she was a "snobby girl." Also she wanted me to know that she was apparently much more successful than I seemed to paint her; rather than running an animal shelter, which I know she has something to do with, she tells me she is a senior editor, I guess at Chicago magazine where she has been a columnist and writer for many years.

Well, Gary is always saying someone from my past is going to show up and slam me a good one for their perception of my perception. I certainly didn't mean Marcia an ill, though to be honest she was always a strong willed person and even now I am a little in awe of her energy. As to whether she was snobby, I was primarily referring to the time in the late 80s when I was starting the Writers BARBQ and I knew Marcia was on staff at Chicago and probably knew many people in Chicago in general. So I sent her the magazine and asked her for some help in getting the word of this project out. She called me on the phone and proceeded to grill me, clearly trying to see who I knew in this world that was important enough for her to know, also. I never heard from her again. She never commented on the magazine, me, or the conversation. Gone. Like another leaf from the tree.

In thinking about it, though, I remembered quite a lot about seeing Marcia in the spring of 1968. We knew each other through the theatre and I ran into her at tryouts for My Fair Lady at Mount Carmel Academy. Marcia sang "Don't Rain On My Parade" from Funny Girl and did a good job, but lost the role of Eliza to this insipid blonde girl who had a great singing voice. Happens all the time in high school theatre. Directors are always mainly concerned with getting the songs sung. I didn't get Higgins part, either. I did end up doing Colonel Pickering and having rather a good time.

Marcia and I dated through that spring, though when we started she was also seeing my close friend, Tom Bezzi (this was before he really knew he was gay). Marcia also had a major boyfriend in Kansas City, Mike Dwyer who I considered a good friend. I just went out with Marcia and didn't try to make out with her because of Mike. That lasted only a few weeks. Marcia was a very hot girl in them days. Sort of Faye Dunaway-esque. Really beautiful with a lovely body and great hair. Hot, as I said.

I was to come to understand that Marcia also had a major thing for Barry Paris. Barry went through my high school in three years, knew several foreign languages, and was at Columbia in NYC that year. She liked juggling a lot of men, I knew that. I also knew that my role was considerably down the list. But, of course, I was in town.

We went to a lot of movies, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde. We went to Marat/Sade at the Wichita University. We even attended a production of the King and I at Madonna High School, in which the lead was acted and sung by my longtime girlfriend, Kitty Broderick. Most of these performances we left early, to drive around, park and talk. Well, and make out some. Oh, and before I forget it, we went to a Wichita Experimental Theatre production of Mark Twain Tonight, with Richard Geary, Barry's good friend, doing the humorist. I remember Marcia telling me that Richard was really just a "projection" of Barry.

We got involved in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign that spring. Barry was involved, also, and got back into Wichita, from Columbia, just after Bobby's assasination in California, June 4th. I remember going over to Barry's with Tom Bezzi, who wanted us to all commit suicide in solidarity with RFK. Tommy was a passionate guy given to crazy ideas. I miss him, these days. I re-read The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski's remarkable "novel" the last couple of days and realized I was reading Tom's copy. There was his name on the inside fly leaf, circa 1966. Marcia often talked about how great it would be to sleep with Bobby Kennedy. I am quite sure, given the opportunity, she would have done it. She also hung out with my young friend, Giff Booth, who knew this group through the theatre at Kapaun, where I high schooled. I exchanged emails with Giff last year. He's a consultant living in the city, out gay male, long time partner and adopted gay son. A good person in every way. He was surprised to hear that Barry Paris wasn't gay. But I knew that in the sixties. Of course, I knew Tom Bezzi was, but I didn't really realize Giff was gay. He was so young when I knew him.

I left Wichita for good that summer, and didn't see much of Marcia, though we exchanged letters (which of course I still have). In the fall I started at St. Louis University and Marcia went to Kansas U. in Lawrence. By Halloween Marcia had convinced me to take the bus to come see her, and she talked about consummating our relationship on this trip. Naturally, I went.

That weekend was one of those strange trips one takes in this life. When I got there I discovered I was being picked up by Mike Dwyer, Marcia's longtime boyfriend. Then we ended up hanging out most of the weekend with Marcia's current throb, who's name I forget, but I do know she called him "the kindred spirit," or TKS for short. He didn't like my being there at all, but of course Marcia handled him. That is to say she got rid of him at one point. Then she devoted an hour or so to holding my hand, then sent me back to the men's dorm she had wangled me a place to stay.

I left Lawrence the next day and knew there was no good reason to try and keep up with Marcia. She was out of my league, in the sense that I just couldn't really figure out what she wanted from me, or anybody. Still, it was an interesting ride.

She did have this long weird obsession with Barry Paris. And he did turn out to be a fairly successful guy; long time movie critic in Pittsburgh, author of several star biographies and other books. I assume she got over the obsession; she is credited in the Barry's Louise Brooks book in the thank yous.

The form that obsession took was the basis for my novel, Stones Out of Time. It was a concept piece, wherein a dead girl was trying to take over a living girl's physical body, for the purpose of revenge. This idea played out in a couple of my books. At the time, and it was the sixties, I just thought Marcia was playing a game with my head. But there was always the possibility that she really did think that. I never heard one way or the other. It certainly doesn't matter.

As for snobby, when we were dating in Wichita that spring, one of the things Marcia liked to do was to go over to Katy Wilson's house and try and shock Katy with the details of Marcia's life. She made fun of Katy when she was with me. Katy was, ultimately, the valedictorian of their class. As it turned out I ended up dating Katy in St. Louis, where she attended Washington University while I was at St. Louis U. In retrospect I always felt a little bad about how Marcia treated Katy. But, just as likely, I didn't understand the politic that was going on there. Katy seemed to really care about Marcia; we talked about her in St. Louis. Later, when we had started to date, Katy asked me not to tell her about Marcia and myself, meaning of course she didn't want to know if we'd been having sex. But, we hadn't been. Lots of making out. No actual sex. That was the sixties for us catholic kids.

So, having offended someone from my past who is inherently a stranger, all I can say is that these poems and stories are simply my version of my life. I know there is a great range to our being, and I accept that we are all judged. I can say this to Marcia, though, in the forty years that have passed, I have read many of her columns and other pieces and I have told her how much I respect her writing on a couple of distant occasions. She has never commented to my writing, much like she never responded to my magazine. Well, I suppose it must have sucked to her. She was probably just protecting me from the truth. Who knows? And, frankly, who cares?

I like my work and I keep doing it. Perhaps I will pass in the next twenty-thirty years and it will all turn to smoke in the human wind. I suppose that is the most likely possibility. Too bad. I think I am good and have important things to say, but we are all capable of self-deception, so maybe I have succeeded in deceiving myself about this.

For those of you that struggled through this particular post, thanks for your patience. I actually cut some of it out. I tend to remember entirely too many things. Plus I go back and dig out Marcia's letters and my notebooks and try and review those days and there you go, watching the blonde girl drive away in her corvair, one more time. It was powder blue, I remember. She gave me Simon and Garfunkels' album Bookends that spring. She wrote the lyrics to "Hazy Shade of Winter" on a card:

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of your (my) life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Wont you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime

I hope she is well and has had the life she hoped for. I respect the animal shelter thing, even it she doesn't think it important enough to characterize her. I ask the Lady for Her mercy for Marcia, and for all of us who cross paths in the days and nights of this ride on the silver wheel. May we all know Her love.