Saturday, December 8, 2007

Zen and the Art of Donald Duck Maintanance: An Inquiry into Values

1. After a lifetime of reading, first for the sheer pleasure and amazement inherent in the process, then for discovery, then for technique, you still believe you will find on some shelf in some bookstore or, indeed, in your own living quarters, the single book that will transform you, much as pulling the sword out of the stone transformed Arthur. You know, Arthur.

2. Approaching a year of daily blogging, you still believe that in one day's notes to yourself, you will find embedded that transformative energy that will affect your subsequent work. This is your version of The Purloined Letter. This will turn out to be The Blog That Ate the Bronx, Moby-Blog, the credo, the codex. Hidden in plain sight is the answer.

3. Is it weakness of intellect, Oh, Birdie, I cried/
Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?

No, it is something beyond that, something beyond the profound naivete of Gilbert and Sullivan. Perhaps it is the profound optimism of Gilbert and Sullivan (who may have been splendid at collaboration but could not stand one another.)

4. Neither could Laurel and Hardy. And yet--

5. Can you imagine the movies featuring Toshiro Mifune Photo-shopped to substitute Donald Duck for Mifune? Seven Samurai with Donald Duck. Rashomon with Donald Duck. To Kill a Mockingbird with Donald Duck as Atticus Finch.

6. The Zen of Donald Duck.

7. The Song of Solomon
as translated by Donald Duck.

8. Donald Duck's Favorite Poems.

9. The Love Song of Donald Duck.

10. Wordsworth's Lucy Poems as seen by Donald Duck.

11. You really can't remain serious for long, can you?

12. Is that the underlying vector of your work, the inability to remain serious after having begun seriously? Is that or is that not taking aim at a target and shooting yourself in the foot?

13. Even though you know intellectually that blogging is to a writer as practice is to a musician, as rehearsal is to an actor, wouldn't it be funny if this were the blog in which you found satori and were transformed into a writer who had given up attachments to convention?

14. Yes, it would be funny.

15. Well?

16. Does this have anything to do with the final projects turned in by the students in both classes last week?

17. Yes, but I'm not sure what.

18. Keep looking.

4 comments:

lettuce said...

donald duck as prufrock?

did you ever see Topsy Turvy? excellent film about G&S's relationship

Lori Witzel said...

Ashberry was close when he wrote about Daffy Duck in Hollywood...but what would have happened had he written about Donald instead?

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16190

Of course, I must add that this post quacked me up.

x said...

Blogging as practice to musician and rehearsal to actor. That's an interesting way to see it. Donald Duck starring in Rashomon is very interesting. And thinking that one of these blog posts will magically turn out to be Moby-Blog or The Blog That Ate the Bronx, well, isn't that really going to happen?

R.L. Bourges said...

Wordsworth, please! Come on - I dare ya!