Miller Time

I haven't watched this yet, & may not.  It was brought to my attention by one of my favorite musicians, Momus, on his Tumblr blog.  It's a documentary about Henry Miller, a writer whose ability I admire, although I'm not sure I'm crazy about his subject matter.  (We get it, Henry, you've had sex.  Sheesh.)  Here it is:



Momus adds something that I've been thinking about a lot.  He says the documentary

contains pretty much everything you need to know about how to live well:
* Give up your job.
* Leave America.
* Pursue a life of untrammeled self-expression.
* Live in a cheap city full of shabby patina and colour.
* Embrace precarity.
* Befriend other artists.
* Explore the “demimonde”.
* Believe — but really believe — in sex.
* Don’t think too far ahead, either in your writing or your life.
* Live for companionship and experience rather than money.
* Swim often.
* Play ping pong while your Japanese girlfriend sings a song about the Tokyo to Osaka steam express.

I did at one time want to be a writer.  I did at one time fancy myself an artist.  I do right now, two weeks before I turn 47 years old, wish I had done even one of those things twenty-five years ago.

I wrote to a friend that my problem was that I had a big ego - I really believed I was great - coupled with big fear - what if I wasn't as great as I believed?  I never took creative writing classes because I knew I couldn't handle being told I was terrible.  & I knew, even then, that the process of getting better would have been such hard work.

It's only been recently that I've felt comfortable enough in my own skin to share my one real creative outlet, my radio show, with other people.  My friends who are my fake interview guests are funny, expressive, brilliant people with whom at another time in my life I would've felt too competitive to ask to be on my show.  What changed is that my ego was deflated by time, by defeats that I had to endure even though I tried to avoid them.  I have, I suppose, chosen to pay attention to the lessons of life's endless humblings rather than defy them.  I can remember a time when it would've been galling to me to not be the funniest person talking.  That changed when I realized I am almost never the funniest person talking.

Maybe there's some wisdom in the Miller doc up there.  Please enjoy.