In my case, to me, it's the content that matters, but not in my self-perception as a "literary genius." [And maybe the same was true of Zappa. Maybe the lyrics to his songs were what was important to him and the music was just a way to get his message across. I don't know.] E.g., in oblation [the main story, a novella, in my most recently published book, life stories: a fragmentation], a lot of the situations and imagery are actually pretty absurd (continual/continuing orgasms, Saran Wrap, the blood, two lesbians and a dog, et cetera), but the way they relate to each other creates a thematic unity that makes it a very "literary" (I wish I had a better word for this concept) work. I'd like to ease into these outrageous images and stories so that they seem almost normal. I'd like to sneak up on readers and convince them to accept the apparent "ordinariness" of the absurd, in the same way, it seems to me, that Zappa would want to have done, using his music as a form to present the content that he was fond of. But it turns out, for both of us, to be the other way around. People fix on the content and tend to miss the form. This is probably appropriate since the content tends to be that which is first and foremost in artists' minds, and the form is almost an afterthought, that which they develop to present their "weirdness" to the public in a conventional, consensual way--or not. I don't like this method. I would rather do away with conventionality of form. But no one would publish me if I did. (But no one publishes me now any more anyway. So, what the hell.)
In the same way, while going over old notes after my recent experience encountering a piece of my past, I am reminded of Irv Boyd. Irv, an old (young, at the time) fireman friend of ours, told a story about waking in the middle of the night and feeling a hand beneath his face. His heart begins to race. Someone had crept into his room while he slept and crawled into bed with him. He cautiously forces himself fully awake, plans his moves, then suddenly jumps up and grabs the arm of the intruder, only to discover that he grabbed his own numbed arm that he had been sleeping on so that it itself had fallen asleep. This story is a great metaphor for not being fully conscious of your body. We seldom have an accurate perception of our physiques. Most often, we think we are bigger, or smaller, or more or less muscular, or take up far more or less space than we actually do. It's a matter of personal psychology.
Lack of familiarity with your internal organs, their placement, and their mechanics is a similar area of misperception. It's a mystery to most people exactly how their bodies work. And yet, this is the single object in this world with which you are most intimate. Makes you wonder about what you really know about the world, doesn't it? Some people may think, as I have thought (perceive may be a better word), that the space of our body is much larger and what's inside it is far more extensive than it really is, because it is so mysterious to us. The human body, despite modern medical knowledge, is a great unknown in psychological terms. (I'll bet at least some doctors, who should be trained to know better, have distorted images of their own bodies.) Therefore, by unconscious implication, we may feel that our insides must be huge. (It is really quite small and compact.) Also enabling this perception is the fact that we tend to equate our insides with our mental content, which can be quite large, seeming to defy the space in which it is contained, expanding, when we will take the time to think of it, to near infinity.
This perception is shattered as I watch the tv show "Operation" as they perform a hysterectomy. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I feel a bit of sexual attraction to the labia, the vagina, and even the cervix of the woman being operated on. (She's not bad-looking for an older woman.) This body area, most of all, is a mystery, especially to man. But the mystery, now, is being dispelled. As I watch the cervix and uterus, removed and being dissected for analysis, I am presented with a choice: continue to feel the sexual attraction that I felt before the removal of what is now nothing more than mere dissociated tissue and risk perversion (sexual attraction to removed body parts), or abandon the sexual attraction in favor of a higher form of "love."
What difference is there, really, between labia, vagina, uterus, and cervix? They're each nothing more than tissue. The mystery is the real attraction. (When the mystery is dispelled, but the attraction persists, perversion results.) What's in there, beyond what you see, that makes you want it so much? What makes you drive deeper and deeper to get at something you just know is there, somewhere? Where is it? Not in the tissue. So, it must be in the "mind," or in that nebulous area between the mind and body, in the hormones. But certainly not in the tissue. Well, maybe in the tissue, if it's in the hormones, because the hormones permeate the tissue. But more likely, it's in the mind. But whose mind?
Sexual attraction is a purely physical, or physiological, instinctual response that becomes conditioned to the stimulus of (the sight of) the labia, vagina (at best), or to a lot of other possible objects/ideas. The conditioning can go on and on, being transferred from object/idea after object/idea in the individual's search for...what? How far can I let this process go as I (hopefully) develop and advance, toward...what? Eventually, I have to leave the object world and settle for a realm of (purer) ideas.
If not, I am a blob of protoplasm gorging myself in satiability of a substance of soupy cells. Will I become as sexually attracted to an excised uterus with cervix as to a live labia and vagina pulsating with hot feminine lifeblood? No. I will not. There are lines I will not cross, although I can now better understand how some people come to cross them. I will not go the way of Jeffery Dahmer. So I shift my appetites away from tissue toward the ever-elusive mind, where truer mystery lies. And life seems suddenly appropriate. Another light comes on. This is what women have been accusing me for a long of fucking with.
