“Frustration” or ...

by Quentin Pongratz

“Frustration”

or

“Since I was lacking a full actual essay, I just pieced together other things I wrote and then scrapped and decided to call it an essay.”

I love to write. Don’t get me wrong about that. If you take anything away from this reading, let it be that I love to write. Other things I love? Being unique. Being smart. Being funny. Being beautiful. Not in the sense of my looks, but I do love to craft my words in a fashion that is fashionable. I love to imbue my writing with all these things. But, I’m going to tell you right now that in this assignment I cannot really accomplish these things. There’s something holding me back with this assignment. I’m not sure what it is, but I can’t do it. Or at least, I can’t do it how I want to. I can’t do it in a unique, smart, funny, beautiful way. I’ve tried, but I can’t.

I started this assignment twice before writing the words of this sentence and the words of the paragraph before this sentence. It’s something about this that I can’t quite grasp. Reflection? That seems too abstract. I go into the writing knowing what I want, but then I lose sight of it. I get lost in my thoughts, and I can’t quite figure out where I was going. I can’t seem to figure out where I should be.

I don’t know where to put the paragraph divisions.

Fiction is easier. Not even that. Narrative is easier. I did just fine with the memoir piece, and I’m sure I won’t struggle as much with the Literary Journalism piece. Telling a story. That’s easy. Telling what’s in my mind... Well, it’s hard to grasp. Like I said, I want to be unique. I want you to go through a journey of my thoughts, but I still don’t want to tell you exactly what I’m thinking. Like we discussed in class, there are some empty words we should avoid in writing. I think if you are not in my mode of thought, if I can’t put you in my situation, if I can’t make you feel something, then all my words are empty. I could just put: This assignment gave me frustration. But that doesn’t mean anything. Well, it means something, but not a great impact.
My first swing at this failed:

“Recent mornings I have awoken to the words of Kanye West flowing from my computer speakers through the air and into my ears--my very tired ears. I use his song “Power” as a secondary alarm clock. It tells me if I’m not awake yet, I need to be. That is the last possible 6 minutes in which I need to be up to get breakfast, or take a quick shower before class. The beginning of the song is a instrumental choir type music. It’s this part before the bass comes in. It’s before Kanye’s core-cutting words come across the speakers--or headphones depending on the time of day. This is the sample that is looped behind most of the song. The other morning I had only acquired two or three hours of sleep before Kanye woke me. This time the beginning didn’t feel as beautiful as it usually did. Usually, the lack of Kanye and bass line makes this opening seem so peaceful. The calm before the storm, if you will. That morning, however, the beginning was a form of fine torture. Half-dreaming the beginning seemed to go on forever. It repeated and repeated like some sort of alarm clock from hell. If there is a hell, that is. From the idea of hell that most people have. Better.

I have let this song invade the better part of my thoughts. I walk around to this song. I wake up to this song. I study to this song. I’m writing to this song. In the shower, I sing to this song. At all moments of the recent past I have, in some capacity, had this song on my mind. Is this a sign? I no longer believe in signs. I gave those up awhile back. Part of my journey from Hopeless Romantic to just plain Romantic. Why waste time looking for signs from the universe when in the end it’s all my decision anyway? I remember a time when I was driving to my home from dropping off a friend at his. I would take the different cars to mean different things. If a certain car would pass me, then that means it was all for naught, but if I passed the white Camaro, then it means she liked me. What kind of good did that thinking do except that it kept me from being bored on those twenty minute drives every day. Well, I guess I’ll let this assignment get to Kanye now.

I’m livin’ in the 21st century

Doin’ something mean to it

Do it better than anybody you ever seen do it

He really is tearing it up. One of the best tearer-uppers of the twenty-first century. If anyone else had ran up on stage during the VMA’s would it have been as big a news story as it was when Kanye did it? Probably. But no one else did do it. He’s the one. He got up there. He interrupted Taylor Swift. He acted like an asshole. He tore it up. He did somethin’ mean to it. And, he did it better than anybody I’ve ever seen do it.

Screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it

I think this is just great right here. You hate me? Well, I could probably make your hateful screams into a beat for which I could rap over. Boom. He is able to just take it all and shrug it all off. The ability to, in the middle of an argument, say “Fuck this noise,” and walk off. I envy this ability. I can’t do it. At least, I couldn’t do it and not be bothered. If you just walk off, there will be a line of reasoning on the other side. One that concludes you as the loser of the argument. “Well, he left. He must have been wrong, and he knew it.” That’s not how the thought would go exactly, but for sake of needing it, I abridged the thought. I made it less real, more stilted, in order to get my point across. It’s this little thing of not wanting to be seen as wrong that I can’t leave. Because, what if I’m right? Then I can’t let someone else in the world be wrong. I envy this ability to just be above an argument.

I guess every superhero need his theme music

No one man should have all that power

I don’t think I’ve yet said why I love this song so much. These lines right here are a good summary of the song. This is Kanye West’s superhero theme music. This is a summary of how he acts every week. It takes all of his powers and sets them to a song. Look at... Listen at the Batman: The Animated Series theme song. Quentin, this is just an instrumental. There aren’t any words here. Exactly. I believe that completely sums of the Batman of the show. He don’t fucking need words. He is the bad-ass instrumental. It’s like this for “Power.” It shows who he is. But I still haven’t said why I love this song so much. Hints of it are seen in these two lines. He doesn’t say “I’m a superhero.” He doesn’t say, “I, one man, should not have all this power.” But through the course of the song you get the feeling that it’s him. He’s the one that’s a superhero. He has all this power. I want to be famous. I don’t care about the riches, although that would be nice. I want the fame. I want to be known. That’s what I want. That’s why I love this song. I want this. “But Quentin,” you might say, “you’ll be an asshole. You’ll be corrupted by this power.” Maybe not, I say to that. I don’t have to be an asshole. But then again... If I do become that guy. What will I care? I’ll be famous.

The clock’s tickin’, I just count the hours

This line always gets me. I ain’t got time for second. I don’t have time for minutes. I just count the hours. Minutes ain’t nothing to me. You may think, shouldn’t the more famous you be, the more precious your time is? No. That’s wrong. You’re wrong. That idea was dumb. Look at money. You have the big bills and pennies don’t mean shit.

Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the power

(21st century schizoid man)

This is a humble line throughout a boastful song. An acknowledgement of the self. I have that to look forward to. If I get super-egotistical, I can always count on that one aspect of me. The “21st century schizoid man” is actually the song which he samples in this song. This shows that Kanye is acknowledging his sources and inspirations and such. I can always count on that. I can’t see a future in which I just don’t acknowledge those that help me out. Those that help me create who I am. Then there’s the line before it. “I’m trippin’ off the power.” This is an acknowledgement of his self-praise. He recognizes that he is under the influence of his power. It’s like a drug in the way he references. He’s tripping on it. I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink regularly. I could use with some sort of vice. I could do with something that influences my decisions. I choose power. I want to trip on power. I want to trip on fame. And like Kanye, I won’t be shy to admit the influence it has on me. Let it be known.

The system broken, the schools closed, the prisons open

Here is some social awareness. Kanye is just trying to get the word out. Spread awareness to the masses. It’s a sort of humanitarian side to him. He’s worried about how the schools are put behind the prison’s in our country. How sometimes it seems that prisoners get more rights than our youth. I feel like with my future fame, I too will try to raise awareness. I think the cause that I want to rally with is the whole energy thing. Ecological type stuff. I’m a big fan of conservation. Don’t use more than you need. Turn off the lights when you fucking leave the room, Travis and John. Turn off the television when you leave the house, Mom and Dad. Don’t litter. Pick up after yourself. All that kind of shit. I think above all, I just want to advocate self-awareness. Pay the fuck attention and don’t do things that would cause problems for the world. Gah.”

I went a third of the way through the song and just couldn’t write any more. It was unique. I felt it got some of my thoughts and stuff in there, but without doing it so overtly. It captured my want for power, but my hesitancy to totally embrace asshole-dom. At least, that’s what I wanted it to do. I can create narration that hints at the emotional side of things, but to show the emotional side of things while hinting at the narrative known as my life? I don’t think so. This assignment seems like I can’t be as subtle with it. It gives me frustration. It sits there on the other side of this computer monitor, it puts the frustrations in a box and then hands it to me. I take the little package of frustration and open it up. I hope every time that it’s not frustration, but alas, it is. I see the contents of the box. I sigh. I throw it down to the floor. I walk away from the computer. I go for a walk. I play a game. I read a book, although usually not for class, but for my own pleasure. I go check my mail. I have no mail. Eventually though I return to the computer. I look down at that package. The frustration has spilled on the floor. It might stain if I leave it, so I delete all on that which I had been working. All gone. Better now. Now we can start the process again.

I started again. I thought, “What do I do well?” Not this, was my immediate thought. How can I do this well? It doesn’t make sense. Am I being too subtle? Are my thoughts not clear? Am I being not subtle enough? Am I just hitting the reader on the head with my emotions. Oh wow, he’s frustrated. Real original.

After I scrapped the Lyrical in the most literal sense essay, I turned my attention to something else. Maybe I could bring the reader into my mind in a different way. I think about women a lot. Maybe that’s something worth capitalizing. There’s that girl at the bowling alley:

“She reminds me of my ex actually. Who? Well, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a bowling class. Let me contextualize that a little bit more. Here, at USAO, in my my final semester, Spring 2011, I am enrolled in a bowling class. With that, no matter when you read it, you’ll no when and where this takes place. Well, there’s this girl in my bowling class. She reminds me of my ex. Not my first one, or the most recent one, but the one in the middle. She invades my thoughts more than she should. And now, she invades my Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30 to about 1:10.

I think it’s her hair. She has this straight, long, dark hair. My ex’s wasn’t always dark, but her natural hair color was dark.

I think maybe also it’s her face. She has this expression that sometimes my ex would get. This sort of bored look. She doesn’t want to be here. Well, that’s what it was on my ex. Here it’s a sort of norm. This bored look is constant. There are slight smiles or hints of laughter every once in awhile, but then it returns to the normal slightly bored look.”

I gave up on that one even quicker than the Kanye one. What is it about this assignment that just presents me with a block? I already answered that. It’s the reflective-ness part. I didn’t even get to the part in the essay that inspired me to write it. There was a particular scene I wanted to convey. I guess since I scrapped it, I can just say it now. When she’s bowling there’s this sort of clumsy grace to her throw. She walks up the lane in a casual fashion. She brings the ball back like any other bowler. She swings the ball forward. She lets loose the ball slightly above the ground. This leaves a second or two where the ball has no contact with the ground. It lands with a thud a foot down the lane. The release looks to be skill-less. She looks like she’s just throwing the ball to get it over with. Yet, the ball does this beautiful slow spin. The lack of grace in the release is made up for when the spin effortlessly obtains a strike every one in three times. It’s no professional technique, but there’s something about this paradoxical throw that attracts me. Something that looks like a horrible wreck of a throw that ends up in success. Hold onto this image, I’ll need it later.

The other reason I wanted to write this second piece is something I wanted to be subtle, but I’m just going to say it. I want the works of this class to have some sort of unifying theme. Some sort of meta-narrative. A story throughout the stories. I think, if I had to give it a title, and yes I’ve thought about this quite a lot, it would be “Shades of Sarah.” It has a nice ring to it, I think. Simple. To the point. Yet has an air of mystery to it. She’s the entire subject of the fifty five word story. She’s in the third scene of the memoir. She’s in that story just above these paragraphs. She’ll be sitting on a bench in my Literary Journalism piece if I follow through with my idea. She’s a part of who I am at this point in my life. She supplies the pain and the love that I like to write. I’m sure I’ll get it out of my system after some time, but until then, I’ll embrace it.

This new piece. This new essay. This new venture into my mind. It hasn’t yet opened the box of frustration to me. I’m still waiting. Any sentence now it could strike. I could decide there’s something better to write about. There’s some way I can grasp this assignment where it will just come to me so easily. There’s some magical epiphany in which you may or may not believe. It’s sitting out there waiting to be epiphanilized. But with minimal time before class and such restrictions of the real world, it will have to sit out there. Unrealized. There’s some unique, funny, introspective, beautiful, just subtle enough, but not too subtle, essay sitting out there waiting to be realized. There’s some essay out there with my name on it that I haven’t written yet, because I didn’t find it.

This is it. The end of the essay. Did you get a good look into my mind, dear reader? You have many questions, I’m sure. Is this frustration a fictionalized thing? Did he actually struggle with this assignment or is this the essay he intended to write all along? Did I actually get a good and subtle glimpse into his mind when he told me before that he wasn’t good at that? Did he do this on purpose or did it all just end up this way on accident? Is he asking questions from my perspective just to get me to think about things that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought about? Why did he ask me to hold onto that image of the clumsily graceful bowling ball? Is this the end? Is he going to say the end or is it just going to stop after this question?