Discipline

I am indisciplined, aesthetically.

Not undisciplined–definitely indisciplined.

I wish I were Indiscipline, all rattling drums from Bruford and churning, churlish guitar noises from Fripp and Belew and Levin. But I’m not good enough to be that bad.

Undisciplined suggests bald absence; discipline for me is always a burning specter, a present absence, a tightening spiral pulling me in, in, in, in, in.

Turtles All the Way Down plumbs these shallow depths; I’m a little more than halfway in, and as always John Green takes me inside myself, reminds me of every longing I forgot I have.

DuVernay’s Wrinkle is due this spring, and books like that one and others from early-chapter-books did this at their best: Teach me what I always knew but could not think for myself.

But when you’re little, this learning is allowed; reading is discipline, imagination is new even when you are the one telling imagination your own secrets rather than the other way round.

It’s too late. Too late in life. Too late to call this discipline. I am become Indiscipline, wallowing in words written for a younger person, tightening in with every new Green novel to relearn myself, never knowing another literature.

Why are music and film different from books in this way for me? I avoid literature with centripetal force but yearn for music and films that slice me open. Discipline taught me how to listen to it in its two opening tracks, an album precisely sequenced to perform its own pedagogy, and I adore above all music that expands my listening by educating me about itself. I find films forever fascinating when they form and reform my favor. Or do I lie? Are music and film too sealed, not as open as literature, safely set apart as they flicker in my mind? Might they instead be too open, unconstrained by the particularity of character voices on the page, malleable enough for me to mutilate the sounds and images as I wrestle them inward?

I love talking about music and film with others, love love love it; these talks take me out of myself. This blog is one piece of that, one way I sell the dust that masks my aesthetic shame.

Why, then, do I not talk literature? Easy answer: I don’t read it, unless John Green writes it. Another, harder answer: I cannot play music, nor even sing well. Like nearly every person alive, I cannot make a film with any aesthetic rigor. These truths reflect my lack of discipline. But I can write. Poorly, intermittently, disappointingly, after avoiding and excusing and self-upbraiding and self-abrading for all eternity, eventually I write. And my writing also reflects my lack of discipline. What do I fear in others’ art when that art looms too close to my own? Anxiety of influence indeed; for me, it’s god-forsaken artistic influenza. It’s the Word Flu.

I am become Indiscipline.