Monday, November 29, 2010

Cat Stevens(Yusuf Islam) Never Wanted to Be a Star



Reading Sherman Alexie's "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock.

I really like the stories such as this one out of his book THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST FIGHT IN HEAVEN. Reading Alexie makes we want to try writing fiction again, or at the least literary non-fiction. Blah, I'm all talk; it's time to begin writing.

The semester is over in two weeks. I'll be broke but freed up like there's no tomorrow.

I think I like the way Alexie's work makes these almost magical connections or associations. For example, "I figured she was the kind of woman who could make buffalo walk on up to her and give up their lives. She wouldn't have needed to hunt. Every time we went walking, birds would follow us around. Hell, tumbleweeds would follow us around."

Also this quote is something that I liked, "We didn't talk much. One, because my father didn't talk much when he was sober, and two because Indians don't need to talk to communicate."

These are both from "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock. What a title! It makes me want to write some really long titles as well; maybe some poems titled stuff like, "My Uncle Mike who once drank a bottle of tequila and ate the worm in El Paso, Texas."

I think people are jealous or envious of Alexie, seriously. Sorry, but the man wrote a good book, and his poems are good too. A long while back I read FANCY DANCING and thought it was wonderful. Ah, yeah, nasty ole narrative. I think too people dislike Billy Collins because he is so very popular, but THE ART OF DROWNING is a good book. That's not to say that I don't like John Ashbery!


Envy. Oh how we all fall prey to it. I hope to be freer about that. I think I should try to play video games a bit too as I've missed out on that aspect of life.

Cheers.

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