Antipriety moving to another location!

Blogspot is weak. Wordpress is what's up. For the time being (I'm putting AP under massive construction this year in hopes to eventually monetize), here's the new website:

antipriety.wordpress.com 

The Discipline of Writing (a poem)

Leaving Seattle tomorrow. Found this poem I wrote back in 2011 while packing. Enjoy. 

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The Discipline of Writing 

by Steven Lo

I woke up the other morning poised to write. (I heard it is in waking up every morning that one becomes a writer.) I didn't get to bed until pretty late, so when the alarm sounded, I was groggier than usual. 

But I am a writer, so I woke up anyway. I made a bagel with cream cheese, and honey, and since I was so tired, I made a double-shot latte--I knew I'd need the boost to extract the genius from my fingertips when I'd begin typing. 

I started writing the title to my new screenplay. R-E-A-C-H-O-U-T. But my eyes hurt from the glaring screen and I still had sleep in my eyes, so I took a shower. The water hitting my skin helped relieve the hurt from my eyes. "Now I feel refreshed," I said as I dried my face with the towel.

The screensaver was now flashing on my computer. It was a picture of my ex and me. I really miss her. I wish I hadn't seen the picture. Ooh! I thought to myself. Now I can include a relationship about loss and regret in my screenplay,

right after I read old cards and letters she wrote me. This will be gold for the story. So I re-read the letters. 

Then I checked the clock. Shit. Astronomy class in an hour and I haven't even studied for the test. So I pulled out my worksheets and browsed over some notes. 

Let me tell you. I am really confident in writing this when I say I did really well on the test. 

The Problem with Inspiration

If you know me well then you know I’m all about impulse and inspiration borne from outside catalysts. For example, I hear that it takes 10,000 hours of doing the same craft over and over again to reach mastery. All of a sudden I’m racing home to my computer and punching the keys like a boxer would a bag of dope, and I’m being productive as hell and everything is great and there's that fantastic feeling of unstoppability you only get once every couple years. The problem for me is that all this endures for a few hours only, a day max before the inspirational high depletes and I’m stuck again with the stark reality that the "down" begets, which is that I’m lazy and I don't want to do this anymore. So I pause the thing and either require a new fix to resume it, or I quit completely if the requisite inspiration can't imbue my famished veins.

For discussion's sake, let's say I’m able to acquire the former. That means maybe I stumble upon a moving YouTube video. For example, the "How Bad Do You Want Success" audio paired with various clips of professional athletes in training. Wow, that gets me going. I watch that after waking up in the morning and suddenly I’m this wrecking ball tasked to obliterate every blank page I see. But my eyes are bad and after an hour or so I lose sight of why I was inspired in the first place. Off to the YouTube search bar for my next fix.

But of course I’m busy after the morning passes so whatever it was that impulse propelled me to create gets the broom treatment, and two years fold over before one day I’m opening random files in my Dropbox as a way of procrastinating on my latest project, and that's when I chance upon seeing the from-yore, bastardized document that looks a little too much like Brenda's baby.

By then, I could give a shit less. I’m not gonna revisit this document. Why would I? The original inspiration's already made the obit page. My beliefs have altered so drastically since I first wrote the thing, I don't even believe in the subject matter's stance anymore. I’m juggling 15 other blog ideas and 20 satire pieces, a fiction short and two novels, along with life outside of writing, pondering meaning and purpose while getting upset by things like people using the wrong window wiper speed. With all that, I’m gonna pay mind to a shitty little 100-word document I created two years ago that I forgot about until just now? Fuhgeddaboudit.

And so the vicious cycle is born. I see or hear or discover a thing. I’m inspired. There's an impulse. I create something. I work at it.

Then the inspiration escapes.

The motivation to keep on goes limp.

I stop.

And then I see or hear or discover a new thing.

It's a sick disease, not being able to see a creation through to the finish line. I’m actually fearful right now, wondering if this post will be fated to the same dead end as all my other stillborn projects before it. Because this wasn't premeditated. This post, focusing on impulse and fleeting inspiration, is a product of that very same impulse and fleeting inspiration. At present I’m still inspired; I don't want to let any of the magic go, so I’m still up writing and keeping on, scared shitless that if I put it down for the night, come tomorrow, in some Kafkaesque way, this fucking pen will turn into an anvil harder to pick up than Candace Swanepoel at a billionaires' ball.

But goddamn, I'd like to do it. Get to bed at a reasonable hour, then pick up right where I left off. Right now it's Wednesday December 11, 2:30 a.m. The snow has abated, the ice is freezing over and Wayne, New Jersey is sleeping peacefully. I’m on my Ariel tip, wanting nothing more than to be a part of that world. Close my computer, lay in bed and read Tropic of Capricorn till I doze off for the next eight hours.

###

I ended up doing it. I put the pen down, read Tropic of Capricorn, and then slept… for 50 hours. Not all at once, of course. As I write this now it is Tuesday December 17, which means six days have passed since I touched this document, since inspiration dictated the page margins and I got honest with myself in forefronting a major character hump I can’t get over, that I’m self-debilitating in my ability to finish what I start.

And now it’s Monday, December 23.

Yet another six days have gone by since writing the last paragraph and at this point I’ve got negative gajillion inspiration to persevere with this post. It took all the mental fortitude I could muster just to open the document up and read what I’d so far written. A 100 new ideas are brewing, simmering inside my brain. Even if discipline precludes me from entering the proverbial kitchen so long as I’ve got food on my plate (this post), still I can’t help but get a whiff or 20 of the myriad smells gravitating my way.

That’s not to say they even smell good. They could smell horrible for all I know. These new ideas could all be suffering from that pungent odor you only get by crouching down toward the sidewalk and picking up dog shit. But still I’d be allured for the very simple reason that whatever this new idea, what’s important is that it’s not the one I’m working on now, the one time has gotten me to loathe and despise. Wine with time is still wine; but after just a few days these written words become something sinister: textual mirrors reflecting back a very perverse man who gets his kicks from surfeiting in the fatty, gluttonous swine of laziness and procrastination. 

Truth be told, a real man finishes what he starts.

I don’t finish what I start.

I am not a real man.

###

I don’t want to be inspired anymore. I’ve already been down that rabbit hole a million times. I know what’s down there.

No, I just want to be a hard worker. Someone that persists and perseveres and finishes what he starts, shitty little excuses be damned. Starting with this post. And then with every other future post, story, novel, email, Christmas and grocery list I write.

But first I have to clean up the mess I’ve amassed up until now. I have a folder in my Dropbox named “Current Projects” and another called “Limbo.” The former is self-explanatory; the latter is for projects I started but deemed too dumb, too corny, too unsalvageable to round off. What I’m vowing now is to go back and finish every single one of these projects, no matter how long it takes me. I will not start a new project during this time.

My goal is to build and fortify a threshold that will allow me persist in writing while enduring long bouts of being uninspired.

Ultimately this will foment a total personality change, one that begins with hard work and ends with an unyielding confidence to complete any task I start, by whim or by long-thought-out premeditation.

A real man finishes what he starts.

I’m 24 years old right now. It’s time I become a real man.

My birthday and oh, how I love feminism

I swear I’m not fishing for birthday wishes. Really. That’s not my intent in mentioning that today is, in fact, my birthday. My 24th birthday to be exact. And it’s today. November 25. I won’t even spell it out for you. Or maybe I should in case you don’t know how to spell 25. Twenty-five. That specific day, and it was in November 24 years ago that I changed all of your lives, just by virtue of my being born. Because now you’re all better off having known me personally, or through word-of-mouth, or virtually, through my blog or my weekly anal sex webcam chat. Seriously, I don’t want you to drop me a line that literally takes five seconds of your time that would otherwise be spent scratching your ball sack, or mindlessly taking your phone out of your pocket without external prompting, then hitting the power button on, then off, then immediately putting the phone back in your pocket.

But if you’re one of those people that just has to do it, well, some people are just that steadfast in their convictions and I really don’t know how to sway them otherwise. Because saying those two words—“happy birthday!”—exclamation point or points included, on the corresponding day, which happens just once every 365 day, arouses in me no positive feelings. But if it makes you feel all good and juicy inside, well, I certainly wouldn’t want to impinge on your doing what it takes to feel good and juicy inside. But don’t think for a second that I’m gonna beg you to drop me a line at any of the following:

-via facebook: facebook.com/stevenlo1125

-via email: stevelo1125@gmail.com

-via LINE: sdot25

-via text message or phone call: 0970-374-764

-via Antipriety in the comments section

-via handwritten letter: 一二三亞洲路， 台北，台灣 (123 Asian Street, Taipei, Taiwan)

-in person: ShiDa University, MTC building, room 907 from 12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. where I study Chinese everyday in the third seat from the far right

Now, to switch topics…

Life has changed quite a bit and now nothing makes me happier than reading religious and feminists comments on the internet. And not getting birthday wishes.

The person and the persona

spicy girl only

I'll start with a moment of honesty. Before this I was on Facebook stalking a few unspeakably spicy women I've never met, whom I'm glad I've never met for the simple reason that occupying the same time zone as these goddesses impels in me this irreversible shame and self-loathing; if ever I were to meet them eye-to-eye, then after the week-long anxious shaking and jerking ceased I'd probably climb atop Taipei 101 and dive off the needle's springboard to a chorus of disparaging honks from people in their cars and mopeds who've been momentarily inconvenienced by this very sudden, but profoundly immaterial, splat on the pavement.

In other words, these women are hot. And perusing the mirror for hours on end, I come to the same conclusion every time: I'm not. And that's how I know there's no God.

Anyway, for some odd reason, anytime I think about or see beautiful women, my immediate urge is to write. Not even about them. Just write some shit that will make people say, "This didn't come from a writer. This came from an artist." How lusting for these perfect tens and writing profundity connect, I'm not 100 percent sure, though I do have a theory. I know that based on my various inherited qualities--looks, personality, overall human worth--let's just say the grass is incontrovertibly greener. So writing being art, and a good writer being a good artist, and a good artist being tantalyzingly sexy and desirous in the eyes of beautiful women--that's the link. I mean, it makes sense, right? Supermodels across the world reading these very words right now, overlooking my countless physical deformities, tranced by my ability to write geniusly, getting hot below the waist and fantasizing about being ravaged by a religiously embittered blog writer.

Yeah, makes sense.

###

I concede that the above are not my genuine thoughts. Well, not all of them. It is true that when I chance upon spectacular women, my immediate want is to produce prose that, if comparable, would match the hotness of said provocateurs. The rest, though--my automatically jumping to the conclusion that I need to jump to my life's conclusion, the self-deprecation, etc. etc.--I wrote down because I thought it was funny. The whole thing is an act I stole from my favorite Jews in the whole world: Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David and Woody Allen.

What those three did for me I'll never be able to repay. They taught me about misanthropy, existentialism, nihilism, the absurdity of social decorum, that it's very rarely the "big" events that define life, but more so the itsy bitsy minutiaed jujyfruit added up and collaged, producing a grand and giant mural that, once complete, depicts absolutely nothing. The abovementioned self-deprecation is a part of that. Learning to laugh at and poke fun of yourself, understanding that life is futile and meaningless and don't take yourself so goddamn seriously all the time. 

Larry David, self-deprecation embodied

Unfortunately, there was one crucial nugget of information in all this that I failed to pick up until very recently:

Self-deprecation is an art.

Meaning, for years nobody had disabused me of the notion that one can extricate the man from his self-loathing. I thought the two were married, that one simply lived a life putting himself down hundreds of times a day because he was genuine in his belief that deprecating the self is a jolly good time. I thought Seinfeld's misanthropy was genuine life. That LD's self-awareness regarding his desperation with women translated into an actual pick-up attempt. That in his movies WA's signature neurosis was an autobiographical portrayal, that if he got stuck in an elevator in real life in real life his head would actually combust.

So, with all this misinformation, I did would any good student looking to emulate his heroes would do: I too wed the self with the loathing.

For one, I thought it was funny (which it is). But more importantly, I thought that art and life were the same; that, essentially, if you wanted to walk the walk, you had to talk to talk. And so in 2009 I transformed myself into a self-deprecating bastard, the proverbial bass in a cappella groups hitting all the low notes. I began aligning myself with failure because above all I wanted to be funny, and who's ever heard of laughter incited from success? "Be awkward, be incompetent, be ugly" became my mantra. I started purposely making situations uncomfortable for both parties; I embellished social interaction stories so that I came off worser (?) than was actually the case; and of course with women, I felt like I'd grand slammed every time I struck out.

In essence, I was reshaping my personality to match that of an incompetent, unconfident piece of shit.

"Why are you talking like that?" friends would say when hearing me knife myself with insults.

"You don't understand," I'd say back. "It's funny to self-deprecate, and it's funniest if you're aware. Don't worry, I'm okay."

And I was okay. But all this reshaping for the sake of talking the talk to one day produce fine art was gonna eventually catch up to me and do… something. What that something was, I neither knew nor even knew to contemplate. Of course, under the hood of pretense, invisible to the eye was my initial purposeful unconfidence begetting more unconfidence, this time accidental and unanticipated, all the while intractable and supremely lethal in its effects. The piece of shit I was playing for appearances had now submerged itself wholly into me, so that there was no more "playing for appearances." I now 100-percent identified with the moniker preceding it. I was simply Steven Lo, Piece of Shit.

Well, long story short, enduring life when constantly plagued by thoughts of insecurity and inferiority can get tiresome. And hard. And I heard women don't find it that attractive either.

And then one day I learned about this word called "persona." The antithesis to marriage, wedlock, eternal togetherness, all that shit. The ascertaining of which caused me to sink for a moment and berate myself for my immense gullibility and stupidity all these years. I immediately chucked my dated worldview right out the window. (Unfortunately it landed on a biker and he's dead now.)

Let me explain. When Louis CK, Bill Burr, Seinfeld, all those guys do their act on stage, it's just that. An act. They're not really that miserable and misanthropic and douchey in real life. Well… they might be. But not to the extent that their stage selves embellish. They discover what's funny and exploit the hell out of it anytime they're performing or expected to make people laugh.

Ohhh, now I get it. It's a fucking act! A persona! How did I miss that? Jesus Christ, all this time I thought this was just how they were in real life? "You fucking imbecile. Of course it's put on. God, you're such a cunt."

Yeah, I know…

When reading Jay-Z's Decoded earlier this year I learned he too was all about this same kind of persona. A quick cram lesson: rap is unfairly and ignorantly judged all over the world. It's the only genre in which the artist's words are taken at face value. If Nas talks about "sneakin' an uzi on the island in my army jacket linin,'" we more or less expect Nas's conjured image to reflect his real life. In contrast, nobody really pictures Taylor Swift to be shedding tears on her mahogany guitar on Monday, then prancing exaltingly through a field in Victorian attire that same Wednesday.

So with Jay-Z, when breaking down song lyrics in his book, he'd keep referring to the "I" in his songs as a third person. As "him," "that dude," "the narrator," "this nigga," etc. etc. (Akin to a novelist writing in first person.)

For example: in the footnote for the lyric I sold it all from crack to opium, Hov says this: "This is something I do in a lot of my songs--I introduce the narrator with a declaration that lets you know who he is: In this case, he's obviously a boss, someone who 'sold it all' and is speaking from that experience." 

The "I" who sold crack and opium is not Jay-Z. It's a fictional chracater, like Harry Potter or God. What Hov is doing is acting through song. He's taking on a persona that may or may not have anything to do with real life.

That's why earlier I said the ability to self-deprecate is an art. Because one simply doesn't take a thousand shots at himself and get his net worth up to half a billion dollars. He has to craft his self-deprecating persona scrupulously, tirelessly. It must be purposeful while at the same time convincing enough so that we, the public, take it for his real personality. It's an art because it has to be created. It has to be made up, because it is not the real thing.

I wish I had known that four years ago. That for one to produce fine art, one needn't put himself through the fire. One can give off the appearance of lacking all sorts of competence and adequacy because it's funny, but in real life still be totally competent and adequate.

Maybe this has given you nothing new to work with. Maybe it's just common sense. But then again, I'm a good-for-nothing, dumb cunt, so try to show a little empathy and bare with me, okay? 

Was that person or persona? Life or art?

-Either/and/or OUT!