Identity Block

"It took me another ten years to realize... that my academic inability to write, this "writer's block" as I described it, was in fact a creative method in which my unconcious was desperately trying to tell me something. The message was simple: I do not like or recognize this R.A. Gekoski: he is not pursuing ends that are good for him, he is inauthentic and his efforts are those of an unhappy person manifesting his unhappiness. His tones are strangulated, pompous and unreal, a pretend voice and not a real one. I won't let him write like this, not without a fight. Every word he tries to write I will resist every letter of the way. And that is how it felt. I didn't have writers block, I had identity block."

Rick Gekoski Outside of a Dog p.259

Doc

"The fighters always have a shot at turning a corner, and if you holler loud enough, sometimes somebody hears you. And truth and love always separate the greats from the neverwases and the neverwillbes."

Doc Pomus, from his liner notes to RETURN TO MAGENTA by Mink DeVille (1978)