i've been trying to finish the Obedience manuscript -- whatever that means -- but have been fighting severe distractedness every time i sit down to work on it. i find myself re-reading the same 5 lines over and over, and then suddenly i'm washing dishes. it has been bothering me because i think, how dull is this text that the author can't even bring himself to edit it, no way should some publisher devote their strapped resources to making it a book

then i realized this morning that it's not about the text at all but about me. i become immediately impatient with the text in the same way that i become immediately impatient with pretty much all other poetry for the last while. the poetry is in the way of the content. like i have made several efforts over the last month to read juliana spahr's this connection of everyone with lungs -- a lauded book, in that way that everyone kind of has to demonstrably love the book in order to smell like a poet -- but the tedium of it wears on me so quickly. i'm like, get this fucking poetry out of the way of the poem already. and then i'm washing dishes again

the same happened with jack spicer and others, i mention to not be mistaken as bashing spahr

the spahr and my text are both fine, even really very good and worthwhile things that one would very possibly/probably benefit from having around 5 10 50+ years from now to pick up and read and get new things out of it. but i am not willing to dance the dance it takes to get the things out of it

at the same time, i have been watching david lynch movies and really getting into them, watching them multiple times in order to understand them, think about them, speculate and test ideas about them. why am i willing to log all the time and effort on a lynch film and not a poem? i guess that attention is easier when i'm looking at a screen, that even though i'm watching analytically it's still a lot more passive than reading? certainly lynch makes you dance a dance in the same way spahr and i do, in fact more so, with perhaps less of a literal payoff

is the higher reading demand of poetry worthwhile? or even a good idea?

is it all butt-sniffing? like, i am showing you my level of craft, and my level of being able to recognize your craft, so that i am legitimized in this context that we are now wrapping around ourselves

the form is separating out for me from the content. or maybe i have read enough form that i am thinking, yeah, good for you that you can signify with form, let's see some content. even in my text, where the form is intentionally made to display the content and thus signify such an attitude toward writing and reading, the formalism is tedious

i really want to make things but writing poems does not feel like making a thing anymore. i am drawn more to making events that occur in time, which might explain why i'm willing to dance with lynch rather than myself and juliana spahr

i'm sick of my self-referential tricks, i just need to let the pronouns go and make plays happen at the space