Friday, March 20, 2009

The Essentials According to Jack Kerouac

I took a leaf from Mayee's book and answered the "What Kind of Writer Are You" quiz in Facebook. The result says I'm the "Jack Kerouac kind". Not sure what that meant, I immediately googled his name. Voracious reader as I am, I honestly can't remember having spent sleepless nights devouring words from his books.

I found his list of thirty "essentials" interesting and for fun I checked out how close to being his kind can I ever get:
  1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy - check
  2. Submissive to everything, open, listening - check
  3. Try never get drunk outside your own house - work in progress
  4. Be in love with your life - check
  5. Something that you feel will find its own form - hmmmm, still thinking
  6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind - i think
  7. Blow as deep as you want to blow - work in progress
  8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind - work in progress
  9. The unspeakable visions of the individual - hmmmm not sure
  10. No time for poetry but exactly what is - check
  11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest - needs pondering
  12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you - check
  13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition - uh-oh...will work it
  14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time - hmmmm
  15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog - check
  16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye - check
  17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself - check
  18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea - check
  19. Accept loss forever - work in progress
  20. Believe in the holy contour of life - check
  21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind - check
  22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better - check
  23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning - work in progress
  24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge - work in progress
  25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it - not trying
  26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form - not sure
  27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness - check
  28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better - check
  29. You're a Genius all the time - the secret
  30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven - work in progress
Now, if only I could get a good serving of his talent I'd probably be writing to my heart's content somewhere in the boondocks.

2 comments:

Dennis said...

Ako naman, yung first encounter ko with Jack Kerouac came from a song from the 10,000 Maniacs ("Hey Jack Kerouac"), which quickly became one of my favorites.

Fascinated ako kay JK but I have to admit that I haven't read a single work from him. The closest that I got was when I read the first few pages of "On The Road" while I waited for a friend in Powerbooks. :p

daudacity2drm said...

Talaga? Alam mo ba I've been thinking about the 10,000 Maniacs album for a few days now :-)

A friend lent me a copy of On The Road. Di ko pa nababasa though heheheh.