05-01-2013, 09:07 AM
Kill all those that came before,
kill all your influences,
all those bastards,
literal and figurative bastards,
that ever had a say, or took a course of action
that influenced you in any way.
Did they seem clever,
and moreover, right,
at the time you read them?
Did their distant, careful opinions and suggestions
seem valuable advice when preparing to write your first
book, poem; marry your first wife; or travel
to your first foreign country?
Were the people just as misunderstanding,
or understanding,
as they were for the dead writers
with their dead ideas from bygone eras?
Their ideas are dead.
Did you not hear them quoted in a sitcom
or one of the songs they wrote played in a commercial,
aired during a sitcom,
advertising something that you dread
and something that other people have now forced you to own?
Well, you think,
it's not their fault, if they're dead...
But it is their fault if their work is dead
enough
to fit into our age, and motivate others,
with all their former, alive power,
to rage and laugh and sing and dance
in the glory of all that makes and keeps
so many of us dead.
They are dead,
their work is dead.
And it's not your fault,
or their corpses',
and it's certainly not mine.
They are dead
and yet they live,
in your heart, in your mind, in your thoughts,
in your ideas,
in the ideas of your peers,
in the ideas of your teachers,
in your work.
It's not your work,
but theirs.
The dead that are alive,
the zombies, more alive than you.
That now being dead, are still more alive than you.
Kill all those that came before,
so you can be one of the few whose work is alive
while you're alive.
Don't wait till you're dead for them to have to deal
with you,
struggle with you, listen to you, understand you, and pay you,
and love you.
Kill your influences,
so that the words read at your funeral
have more a chance of being yours;
and not someone else's.
kill all your influences,
all those bastards,
literal and figurative bastards,
that ever had a say, or took a course of action
that influenced you in any way.
Did they seem clever,
and moreover, right,
at the time you read them?
Did their distant, careful opinions and suggestions
seem valuable advice when preparing to write your first
book, poem; marry your first wife; or travel
to your first foreign country?
Were the people just as misunderstanding,
or understanding,
as they were for the dead writers
with their dead ideas from bygone eras?
Their ideas are dead.
Did you not hear them quoted in a sitcom
or one of the songs they wrote played in a commercial,
aired during a sitcom,
advertising something that you dread
and something that other people have now forced you to own?
Well, you think,
it's not their fault, if they're dead...
But it is their fault if their work is dead
enough
to fit into our age, and motivate others,
with all their former, alive power,
to rage and laugh and sing and dance
in the glory of all that makes and keeps
so many of us dead.
They are dead,
their work is dead.
And it's not your fault,
or their corpses',
and it's certainly not mine.
They are dead
and yet they live,
in your heart, in your mind, in your thoughts,
in your ideas,
in the ideas of your peers,
in the ideas of your teachers,
in your work.
It's not your work,
but theirs.
The dead that are alive,
the zombies, more alive than you.
That now being dead, are still more alive than you.
Kill all those that came before,
so you can be one of the few whose work is alive
while you're alive.
Don't wait till you're dead for them to have to deal
with you,
struggle with you, listen to you, understand you, and pay you,
and love you.
Kill your influences,
so that the words read at your funeral
have more a chance of being yours;
and not someone else's.
