7:36 pm - Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002
Song:
Response to book reading- Susanna Kaysen
Half an hour early for the reading, I picked up her newest book, The Camera My Mother Gave Me. Susanna Kaysen, I recognized the name, and from memory and the book cover I was able to place her as the author of Girl, Interrupted. I never could get into that book.
Then she came to the podium. Curly mushroom hair she pushed back when she was flustered and a long green scarf.
She�s a writer, a real writer. No, not writer, but author. An amazing thing, a goal, her name is on covers. She�s an untouchable entity, real fame. Forget actors and boy bands, she�s a fucking writer.
I related, she spoke my heart and soul to me, as everything I have is made real by the words it creates. �I don�t do a lot of rewriting, on the other hand, I don�t do a lot of writing.� She rights like me, the majority only in the mind. I wanted to ask if she felt there was life without writing, because to me there is not.
I nodded in agreement as she called the recovery movement, the �Taliban of Psychology.�
�I hate the idea of recovery. Why can�t you just learn to live with it better? No, forget it, that�s just me.�
While I was waiting for her arrival, I had read half her book. The perfect use of sexuality, the way I relate, it seemed just right. �Writing is more personal to me than sex.� Yeah it is. Tell me I�, bad in bed, I might shrug or pout. But tell me I�m a bad writer and I�ll shatter.
It�s the meaning and power of writing. It�s the passion I hold for it. It�s the fact I know I�m not bad in bed.