Writing for a Living Sucks Part VI: Kalashnikov Blues

Consider the Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947, a beast made for sound and fury:


Anyone with a nominally decent grasp of the action movie genre would know it as the AK-47, or possibly as the Kalashnikov. Fully automatic, it spits out 7.62 millimeters of pure death at a rate of 600 rounds per minute and with a maximum effective range of about 400 meters. The M67 projectile that erupts from the its barrel was designed to blossom in human flesh at 13 centimeters from the point of entry, causing massive tissue trauma, substantial organ damage, and a particularly nasty exit wound. Due to its unsurpassed durability and reliability, it quickly became the standard infantry rifle of the Red Army and is still currently used by most of the member states of the former Warsaw Pact. It is the favored thunderstick of irascible mujahideen, genocidal warmongers, Third World hordes, European extremists, and communist firebrands. It was this implement of destruction, this potent totem of human wrath in the blood-encrusted fists of an angry and desperate peasant that turned a ragtag band of barefoot farm yokels into a formidable army that succeeded in driving the American war machine out of Vietnam. Truly, this primitive-looking union of wood and steel is one of the most terrifying instruments of warfare ever invented.

Nevertheless, awesome as the AK-47 may be, no one in his right mind would deign it fit to be used as a farming tool. Against flesh and bone it is undoubtedly the stuff of nightmares, but against the earth it is the dullest spade imaginable. Tools, like the men who make them, have their own natures. A thing that goes against its nature is liable to break. A plough taken into the battlefield will shatter beneath the hail of bullets. A rifle tied to a beast and dragged across rice paddies will rot in the mud.

A storysmith compelled to tell tales for which he cares little will lose his soul.

I’ll tell you this: one thing I’ve never witnessed is a writer asking another why he writes. One quiet night in a foxhole, a soldier might ask his mate what drove the man to enter the service. Over the steam of cappuccino, a teacher might prod his colleague why he wants to impart knowledge. Yet a writer never thinks about the other guy’s reasons for spinning tales. This is because it’s pretty much the same for wordslingers everywhere. Before money, before rockstardom, even before the need for self-expression, the greasy marrow of it is that a man starts telling stories because he believes there aren’t enough of the ones he enjoys. I think that’s also true for musicians, for painters, for fashion designers, and for every bloke in the business of making stuff up out of pure brain jizz. A dude must follow his nature.

That is, until he starts selling out.

Listen. Within snooty circles, an artist is considered a sellout when he starts doing his alchemy for money or to please his audience. Art, they say, must be a purely personal act of self-expression. For art to remain genuine it must come directly from a man’s heart and must neither be responsible for nor answerable to the universe within which it is born. I say balls to that. Under this principle of purity, the only true artist is the dude furiously jerking off in his room and the only pristine objet d’art is the shameless man-spunk he left on the rug.

So what constitutes the act of selling out? Even in the network I belong to-- which is as mainstream as a television network can get in this country-- I wouldn’t really say that every writer I meet or work with is a sellout because a lot of them like the tales they tell. They’re being paid to fornicate with their minds and because they enjoy it no one has the right to call it prostitution. The true sellout is the angry fuck who sits in the dark, who desperately wants to spin a different and frequently darker kind of story, who is smoldering with a deep and barely contained hatred for the gutless and bloodless and toothless stories that are the staple of Philippine television, who is sick of writing stories he wouldn’t watch if he hadn’t written it-- yet who is also too cowardly to stop making a living and start making goddam art.

I’m talking about myself, of course.

I’m a Kalashnikov, a beast made for sound and fury.

Fully automatic, I spit out 7.62 millimeters of pure death at a rate of 600 rounds per minute and with a maximum effective range of about 400 meters. The M67 projectile that erupts from the my barrel was designed to blossom in human flesh at 13 centimeters from the point of entry, causing massive tissue trauma, substantial organ damage, and a particularly nasty exit wound.

I am an implement of destruction, a potent totem of human wrath in the blood-encrusted fists of an angry and desperate peasant.

I am one of the most terrifying instruments of warfare ever invented.

I am also an apostate of my own nature. I’m telling you, something’s gonna give.

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Writing for a Living Sucks Parts I to V