Sunday, September 27, 2009

Fragmented

There are some things I don't know how to do without talking about them.

There are some things I do that I don't know how to talk about.

And there are other things I do that I know neither how to do nor how to talk about.

* * * * *

Rolling Stone: You've talked about the E Street Band being so close now, but you quit the band back in the Eighties, and Bruce later broke the group up for 10 years. How do those two decisions look to you now?

Little Steven Van Zandt: There is no doubt that those two things were mistakes. I tell everybody, if you've got a band that works, it's a miracle. It's never going to be perfect, but if it works on some level, hold on to it with both hands and don't ever let it go. Bands should never break up. I had this conversation with Bruce. One of the reasons why we got back together is I really feel a moral obligation. You ask people to fall in love with you. To need you. To want you. To buy your records and come see you. You have an emotional contract with people. To break up is to violate that contract. That relationship has now been restored, and we are feeling it more than ever.

[from the October 1, 2009 issue]

* * * * *

Something about the trajectory of morning rain, a runner all in gray on the sidewalk.

* * * * *

Things get stuck inside your head sometimes in a way that makes you sad but not sorry.

* * * * *

In the end it all comes down to love & thunder
and the things you are willing to lose:
love & thunder, love & thunder, love & thunder.

4 comments:

Radish King said...

This makes me want to cry. It's how I feel about disbanding the workshops I taught. I'm ok but they aren't. I think they feel I broke a promise to them though the larger promise was the one I made to myself never to use not enough time to write as an excuse. I dunno. This should probably have been an e-mail.
love,
Rebecca

Anne Haines said...

R, to me it's different. I don't think you should be in the same workshop forever unless you are actually doing collaborative work. At some point I think writers have to let go of the workshop and learn to trust their own inner voice & not rely on the teacher.

Well, that's what I think anyway, but then I'm neither Bruce Springsteen nor Rebecca Loudon, obviously. :)

Radish King said...

That was actually another part of the issue. I had struggled to push the poets who were consistently writing quality work and publishing, out of the next. They didn't want to go. That artistic community is extremely important to some people. It just makes me cranky.

r

wv: examph

Anne Haines said...

You gotta stop feeding them so they have to go out and forage, sometimes. ;) You have to make an examph of them.

I guess that's one of the benefits of an academic program. Graduation happens.

I like the artistic community. I like it a lot. But if it got in the way of my writing, it'd be toast.