Keeps Going And Going And Going And Going.... (Just like this entry)

      Let's just say it now: Shakespeare has become the Keyser Soze of the literary world.   After all, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people that he didn't exist.   This antique debate seems less and less relevant by the minute.   (Although, to be fair, the Vickers work, of tracing collaborative possibilities and so forth is genuine literary research.   That Davies of Hereford may have had a hand in A Lover's Complaint is an interesting proposition, one I'll have to ruminate on for a while, and one which would certainly raise Davies' position in the Renaissance canon.)

      But this turns me to a complaint of my own. Click here to read it.

      Speaking of lovers, the Not-So-Good Doctor, while whiling away time in a few hours at a local haunt, was asked by one of his bartenders for "a good quote or something" for an engagement card for her son and his now-fiancée.   This turned into something of a fiasco, as, for the life of me, I couldn't find a decent quote in my head that wasn't either (a) too sappy; (b) too contextually problematic; (c) dark, ironic, or generally complicated.   The trick was to think of something for a couple that are going to be apart for a while-- you know, the star-crossed lovers' syndrome.   I jumped in my head through a number of possibilites-- through Shakespeare and Dickinson, Whitman and the Bible, even Cervantes and Keats (among far too many others)-- and came up with nothing.   Nothing.   Nothing seemed to fit the bill.   To which my bartender eventually said, in her inimitable Manchester accent, stressing all the key syllables in case I might miss them: "But Jeremy, you're a writer, just make up somethin'.   Be romantic!"   After some eye-rolling on my part and some prodding on hers, I eventually tried to jostle my brain to come up with something.  

      And, of course, the words just would not come.   Even expressing a simple, trite romantic sentiment, the sort for Hallmark cards and other poetic prostitutions, was dolorous.   And truth be told, it became apparent exactly how lapsed a Lapsed Romantic I've become.   Nothing would come, and even that nothing wasn't coming without a fight.   It took me the better part of an hour to come up with two utterly pedantic lines, pure kiss-off theory, pure platitude, pure "only-a-person-in-love-and-a-mother-of-a-person-in-love-could-possible-love-this" pap.   Don't ask me what the lines were.   I think I scoured them from my brain as quickly as I could so as not to develop some sort of bacterial infection.   And yes, I felt (still feel) dirty after writing them-- though my bartender liked them, but she's a proud, happy mother and therefore one of those susceptible to liking such stuff, at least for now.   But the experience reminded me of a basic principle of composition: that there's nothing more painful than writing two lines of bad love poetry, except writing two lines of good love poetry.   Blech.   Yuck.   I feel like I've left my own stool at the bar, a floater with corn in it.   How retrograde-- and how humiliating.

      So there's my little tale, from which I've resolved never to write anything "love-romantic" (as opposed to roman-Romantic or Coleridge-Romantic) ever again, however ichorous that resolution may seem.   (I'm even half-inclined to junk the stuff I've written in the past, all of it seeming so lamentable now.) I hereby license any of you to beat me to death with the nearest available deckchair should I even consider breaking this resolution.   (Yes, I'm licensing pre-emptive strikes. Welcome to Bushworld.)   I'm reminded of Chris Sarandon in that cult classic Fright Night, as he, a vampire, reaches for a cross brandished defensively by Rowdy Roddy McDowall, and seethes: "You have to have faith for that to work!"   Indeed.   Indeedy-deedy-do.   But, dammit, now I have a hankerin' to see Fright Night again.... Grrr, arrgh.