My Quartets

Initial outline and plan for successful and awe inducing poetry

- Scribble poetic verse as it appears in my head or as I recognize it in the conversations around me
- Collect verse in organized areas predetermined to maximize the emotional purpose of the poetry
- Sort verse into rhythmic patterns determined by the writing
- Sculpt work with defined religious and classical metaphors and insert relevant popular media references
- Edit ruthlessly

My purposeful predetermined organization of my four quartets is the following:

1. This section will focus upon the world we think we know. The discovery will be made that this is in fact not the world where we live. We live in something far different. The lie before our eyes is revealed as a lie.
   
2. Now that we know something we did not know, in an attempt to understand it, we are knocked off of our pedestal of safety and launched into a world in which we understand nothing. The lie now revealed shows the truth behind it which leads into the third quartet.
   
3. The unveiling, the apocalypse, the truth is revealed. This will be dark and horrible to a degree that I don't want everyone in the class able to read through this section. This is out of necessity for historical accuracy.
4. Ascent out of hell and into heaven. Balance is restored and then more than restored. In the ordinary, a level of beauty exists which would otherwise not be known were it not contrasted with hell from the previous quartet.

Religious and classical and popular metaphors to parallel these for separate sections.

1. Mountain (Mt. Olympus and where Moses goes for burning bush/commandments). A location and constant presence by which we find direction when we reach the given location. Inverting the mountain will be necessary because of the negative connotations in this section. The mountain is our culture of relaxed morals and general apathy towards our involvement in the welfare of others. Think of the open pit mine in Butte. If you get to the bottom of it, that's where it's most poisonous. That's where I'm headed with this.
2. Cave. (Plato's allegory of the cave) Once we've reached the bottom of our inverted mountain, we are now in a cave. We can't see the light or what it reaches. The shadows on the wall are only an indication. The light we think we see is actually false. There is no light, there is only...
3. Furnace. Hell. This is as bad as it gets and trust me when I tell you that YOU DO NOT KNOW JUST HOW BAD THIS IS! The worst things you've experienced in your life pales in comparison to this. That's not me being insensitive just realistic. Less classical metaphor in this section will create more room for a realistic approach to the writing. More dialectic and less rhetoric than the other sections.
4. Ladder to the Garden. Ascent out of hell and into paradise. This is the band aid placed upon the soul to heal the experience of the third quartet. Think of a happy ending to a disney movie. The contrast with the previous quartet should make the both of them more powerful.

Extremely smart advice from my dad for creating art.

First, take the puzzle pieces with which you'll work and put them on index cards. Use a very large amount of floor space to rearrange your index cards and find the correct flow with them. As a musician, he used the word rhythm and I think that's applicable to our writing also. While this editing process is possible in a word processor, index cards will be superior.

Second, when in the editing process, we need to know when we are done (hopefully not determined by a deadline). When we start changing details such as the word "of" to the word "the", then it's time to move on to something else.

Third, art is basically theft so steal quality from quality sources. An exceptional level of theft is necessary for an exceptional level of art. This is best summed up in a Jim Jarmusch quote from The golden rules of filming:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”