What is it about having your words splashed across the pages of a real book that excites you so? Is it immortality you seek? You'll soon enough be forgotten, just like any other two-bit god trying to make his own creation of the world. The only ones they remember are those who have a big box where they can stand and cut their wrists for the whole world to see. It's the blood they're after. It's only your blood.

There in the privacy of your room you can write whatever slips into your mind by way of inspiration or discipline. You can paint the whole page black with only a tiny whisper of hope. You can rant and rave about your own secret horrors. Nobody cares.

Where's art then? you say. What is art? That young supple dancer girl crawling through the rungs of a kitchen chair, naked? No one cares about art. They want fame. They want to stand behind you or to the side of you and feel the glow of your fame light up their faces. They want to be famous themselves and only allow you your art so that they can idolize themselves. They want to have read "The artist." They want to know "The artist," not you.

If you do, by some fluke of fate, reach that level of grandeur, others will make hay from the flax of your gold. They'll interpret your words to the point that people will think that perhaps they themselves wrote them, or at least know better than you do. They know what it means. What does it mean? It means what you meant. In that moment of writing. Nothing more, nothing less. But it changes with time, don't you think? When you go back later and read it through, it's somehow changed. And the thing you thought you said, isn't really there anymore. Or . . . is it? Maybe it's there, but it's bigger than you thought, or smaller than you thought. It should be redone, or forgotten. Maybe just put it in a drawer. And wait. Maybe something will come of it later. Maybe not. The question is, who gets to decide?