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Dear James,
A few years ago (partly inspired by you), I started composing odes to my favorite drinks and dishes in Colorado. After more than a dozen years working on another project, in which I wrote long-form, navel-gazing essays about being a single father, this seemed like a fun and sustainable way to keep my writing chops in fighting trim while sharing my love for Denver’s gems. My goal was to publish one short, impactful, overwrought piece a week.
Although I started strong, I eventually dipped to one a month, and then to—at this point?—only when I think about it. I could blame the vagaries of daily life and a sense that my columns are getting repetitive. But the truth is, I just don’t feel the fire inside like I used to. I was sad when your odes went away, but now I’m wondering if you butted up against something similar: How do we keep rocking rapturous writing when the well starts to run dry?
Dear Reader,
Very important question.
When I was gathering my odes into a book—or rather, piling up my effusions in prose and verse and trying to work out which ones were odes and which weren’t—my friend Carlo gave me a magical concept. He called it “the odeness.” It’s the essential quality, quiddity, floating-in-the-luminous-void uniqueness of whatever you’re trying to write about. It’s what your ode is attempting to first identify and then celebrate. It’s the odeness of your ode.
And I became quite religious about the odeness. I sought it (and found it) everywhere. What is the odeness of a hair dryer, a brake pedal, a ray of winter light, a harsh word in the street? Soon I came to see that the odeness is also an inner state or process, a refinement or tuning up of the writer’s perceptual equipment, a condition of ode-preparedness that seems geared mysteriously toward joy.
And then my book came out, and I lost the odeness completely. “You’re done being happy?” my publisher’s PR chief asked, after I explained to her that I couldn’t possibly do another interview about getting under the skin of reality, the unrevealed glories of the everyday, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, indeed, I was done being happy. I was done being a half-assed evangelist for the odeness. I reread the introduction to my book, which is an enthusiastic primer in odeness theory. I was bemused. Who was this guy? Was he high?
That was a year ago. And today I’m here to tell you that the odeness—gradually, warily, with altered language—comes back. Or one’s ability to be in touch with it comes back. Which is good news, because there’s no question that the general imaginative environment has degraded significantly. Physical reality still works in America, as far as I can tell, but mental reality? Holy moly, we’re in trouble.
I think it’s a question of broadening your range. You ran out of juice exalting Denver’s drinks and dishes, so maybe go a little more abstract: odes to moods, sensations, ideas—weirder, less-immediately-graspable stuff.
Take this story, for example, which I’ve been thinking about lately. It was told to me by my brother. He was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show in a club in London in the late ’80s, and Flea, the Chili Peppers’ genius bassist, was mucking about between songs: making his glutinous, high-speed, punk-funk bass noises; effortlessly doing his runs, pops, twangs, squiggles, doodles, Flea formulae; pluming with pure, incidental invention as he paced the stage in his customary state of near nudity. Flea! “Fucking hell,” spluttered a man standing behind my brother—a man who was clearly a bass player himself, and who now, watching Flea, was caught between revelation and a kind of monstrous affront. “Right—that’s it. From now on, five hours of practice a day. Five hours! Starting tomorrow! Fuck!”
That’s the story. That’s the, uh, experiential nexus. Now, there’s an ode in there for sure—but what is it? What’s the odeness here? Is it an ode to excellence, to artistic transmission, to artistic jealousy, to the bass, to Flea himself? Is it a poem? I don’t know. I haven’t worked it out yet. But the odeness beckons.
Odes don’t need to be rapturous; that’s the other thing. They don’t need to be jolly or even hopeful. They just need to be odes.
Slowly improving,
James
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