notes to my virginian friend- on being a young writer

(this is about his agonizing over whether to stay with a girl he loves in DC, a city he doesnt love, or what to do).

i think that being in a couple for a man can be a disability, for a
woman an asset, thats a huge part of the reason why the whole gender
dynamic is the way that it is. here especially i'm very conscious of
it, men have more freedom of action, also i think for various reasons
some chemical some social are - more content as individuals, i think
being alone makes women feel a bit frantic, whereas being single (if
you are getting action, ya know) for a man is better in many ways.

i've thought a lot since forever about how to make myself and my
friends be - people that people like us obsess over in 50 years. all
those groups seem basically social, like bloomsbury, or paris in the
30s or 50s, or how merce cunningham and john cage and rauschenberg all
smoked weed together, or the punk scene, or basically anything
so the question is, how do we make our parties result in the
inspiration for our generation
first answer: to go to parties in a couple is crippling, basically, in
a couple you are representing more than yourself at all times, alone,
you only need to justify your own actions and not even that
and both of us are quite adept at being charismatic, at being in parties
thats how i have been here a month and know so many people already,
just fucking approaching random people ya know (which is very unusual
in china, so even more effective because surprising)
the second answer: not in williamsburg, is where those parties are.
you have to go to the big city. which one? to be honest- if you are as
firmly convinced of the whole base and superstructure thing (reference to the marxist idea that economic growth is the base of which culture is a superstructure, a response laid over it) as me, then i think, this one is a good candidate. think about it, all these
people are going from peasants to rich, they need some oscar wildes,
thats how i go from eccentric and impoverished dude in virginia or
chicago to like, filthy rich and dating gorgeous women and all this
tony stark stuff. because you and i (here i relate ourselves in the
sense that though we are in many ways very different i think we share
ambition and a sense of the importance of culture, and a great bank of
information about it, while a sort of casual, jokey relationship to
high culture- like making toasts to jean genet and jon benet, or
telling weird stories about james dean, that type of stuff- that makes
a kind of double vision of culture, on the one hand an unreachable
plateau and on the other hand the basic landscape of our inner lives,
is a terrain of familiar cultural issues; music, literature, film,
art, etc. that we can basically continue learning about indefinitely
yet already know more about than most people including adult
professionals in those fields).

i came here for a few reasons. i mean, i do find the chinese language,
for example, pretty interesting. and i liked it the first time i came,
and i felt that i didnt know what else to do. but the main one is my
conviction that the cultural skill set i have is very much a commodity
i can sell much more easily here than in say oversaturated nyc or paris.
to say nothing of places like dc where culture beyond taurins hat (our friend taurin has a dumb hipster hat we joked about, and is from northern virginia) is
basically irrelevant and almost offensive. here, this stuff that we've
joked around about for years, is so crucially useful in catapulting my
own, always pathetic seeming in my own mind, self, into like, this
weird life i'm living now. i mean, isnt it weird? it really is true,
i'm wearing pants and typing on a computer with this money, its not
fake, yet its incredible to me that a month ago i was frantic about
how to pay rent and now i am totally like, master of my domain. this
country would be hard for you to adjust to by yourself probably but i
know the ropes and i am probably gonna stay here for a while, with the
possible exception of a one year detour to london, but i'd just come
right back. i mean man there are so many people here with so much
money they are desperate to spend on the kind of court jester
knowledge we have. you want to write or work in arts? firstly, the
question is, i think, what to write about. i'm pretty set on writing
as well, kinda henry miller/kafka/malcolm lowry esque in the sense of
the plot is irrelevant and whats important is the writing as a
document of my perception of reality. so the question then becomes,
whats so special about my perception. and the answer is, i have spent
my whole life thoughtfully parsing what i think about things. and once
i have enough lived experience to comprehend a bit better, cause i
still feel shaky, capable of being surprised as i am right now at my
current situation, then i will write. and it will flow like this
letter will, i can't imagine anyone as verbose as me ever suffering
from writers block, you neither- if we find our subjects- because, my
writing will be an edited anthology of all the things i say to girls
at parties, basically. which again in order to perfect it, being
single is necessary for me.

and i know that thats gonna sound fucked up in your mind. even in a
much more clearly limited situation, i still feel twinges of guilt
about lisa, even though, we talk and we're good, no problems, no hurt
feelings. being in love, is overpowering and you never want to let go,
i always feel like i can build a cave of warmth inside of someone
else's love for me. but- the choice is yourself or (girl), man. and (girl)
might be the right choice. but you know, no offense, but doing google
searches about dolphins seems marginal to say the least as far as a
technique for learning to write. i dont know how much building a
writing resume is useful. cause how many people do that. (our friend A)'s been published, but who cares, ya know, cause what does he
know about anything (i say liking him). i feel that to get published,
you have to be at the right party and meet the right person and
they're like, sounds good, mostly because they're kinda drunk and you
are handsome and charming. at least if it is the kind of speculative
avant garde work i have in mind and i imagine that you do too. i mean,
think of your favorite writers, did they learn how to write, could
they learn how to do what they did, from the kind of work your doing (he works at national geographic researching travel books)?
my inclination is to say nah, the best thing, is to be in a weird and
stimulating place and let your thoughts course along, thats more
important than learning to write cause you already KNOW how to write,
you'll only polish your writing into the stupid way that most american
writers write; do you want to get in the habit of writing like
national geographic, so that you can't stop even when you want to?
cause that seems like a potential hazard to me about what your doing.
you are organizing your thoughts for others to understand, whereas it
seems that at least the kind of writing i have in mind for myself,
will necessarily summon others to try and understand, and not involve
me meeting them in the middle, if that makes sense.

now i'd love it if you were here and can get you a job and introduce
you to people and etc. but maybe some other place is right for you
than here. its just that dc is so obviously, terribly wrong and if you
choose it you're going to buy a convertible when you're 40. you've
written me a few times that my job doesnt sound fulfilling; on the
contrary, it is very good because i hear peoples stories all day long,
and think about what good writing is all day long, on my own standard,
without conforming to anyone else's idea of the english language.
teaching causes me to think about subjects i'd kind of unconsciously
understood without prying too much into them. so the job is
fulfilling; and moreover my life, is extremely fulfilling, i think
this is the exactly perfect way for me to succeed, both in the sense
that i can meet the people who will make me famous with their
patronage here, and in the sense that i am constantly stimulated by
the thrum of strangeness and modernness. in the way that new york, nor
paris, is now. because reality is malleable and changeable here, it
could become anything. there just arent so many rules for what can and
cant happen here. like, a girl i hit on at a party and whose perfume i
smell like next day, can get me a job paying more than the average
monthly salary for 5 hours of work. for example.

take this as what it is, a selfish missive analyzing you as if you
were me. because thats the only way i can understand other people, via
my own experience. but i think we're similar enough that it is a
potentially valid analysis. in my opinion beating yourself up because
you are who you are is stupid. dont do things that make you unhappy,
because its your life, and this is the most important time. if you
dont live for yourself now, when are you going to? when you're a
pathetic old man and its too late? nah bro. take my dad for example.
he spent approximately every weekend of his life age 15-45 getting
wasted. and everything worked out. he even published, did you know
that? 4 books. he [wrote about different topics than the ones i'd like to explore] and i dont aspire towrite as he does. but still, that lifestyle is totally feasible. i
think you'll just make both (girl) and yourself unhappy if you persist in
trying to make something that cant work work. if you realize that
already then you should act on it now, instead of prolonging the hurt
for both. (though thats totally hypocritical, i could never break it
off just like that myself. so i sympathize). anyway i strongly feel
that our similar ambitions dictate that a situation so perfect for me,
would probably be good for you too. and ya know it doesnt have to be
here. could be buenos aires. could be tokyo. could be moscow. but it
cant be DC. and you know that.