Consensus reality seemed like a dull, dead-end street compared to the intense, mutable reality of visions or whatever they were - neurological misfires. I expected life to be full of sudden, inexplicable surprises. When these things didn't happen for a while, life seemed dull and painful.
The fiction I tend to like is nothing like my own work. I like the kind of writing that shows me things I don't know about, and what I don't know about is the everyday, normal world.
I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.
The books that I do, the stories I write - I'm glad I'm able to do them, but they will quickly be swallowed up by the sands of time. Sometimes it frustrates me that I'm not able to do bigger, more important, more significant things. I guess you have to be content to do whatever it is you can do.
I do sort of feel like I'm building my monument with what I do, but it's pretty small and inconsequential compared to real works of genius like this, which are giving vast inspiration to humanity. But I guess I shouldn't even say that. It's ridiculous to say that. You are what you are. My stature suits me.
Cartoons are perhaps a bigger part of art than is generally realized, and they influence people in ways that are not always recognized. But creating a monumental work of architecture, or writing a great symphony, is something else. It's a higher order of creation.
A mind in control is always better than a mind out of control. For one thing, a controlled mind can learn much better and go much further than a chaotic one. A person with a steady-state mind has the potential to exit this life with a much greater understanding than someone who is continually learning and forgetting, gaining and misplacing knowledge.
I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.
