Both for what it did say & for what it didn't say, one of the most epiphanous passages I've ever read was this passage from Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place."

"What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanliness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada . Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee."

Just amazing. Beautiful. Powerful. And what else would you call it but a riff? Maybe he was drunk when it came to him, although he almost never wrote when he was drunk. You may not remember but at the time the story was ridiculed in some literary circles. I love riffs, flights of fancy, diverging from the beaten path into dark woods & finding the bright sun in an open clearing. Riffs rock when they roll. When I create, I like to go with the flow.

I'm a riff writer and I love writers who don't block the conduit of jazz-like energy that flows like magic whenever you're lucky enough to connect to it. My riffs may go off on tangents but they are never for decoration; they always serve a deeper purpose. Sometimes I don't know what that purpose is until later, when it reprises in my mind like a Thelonious Monk piano solo. And then I recognize that the purpose is to bring you in and out of your hypnotic state so you won't sleepwalk through the chorus.

I think one of the reasons I'm a riff writer is because I have a history of altering my consciousness with various and sundry drugs. Back in the hippie days, it was common wisdom that a "straight" could not get inside the head of a "head," (ha) someone who had sacrificed ego for the thrill of self-revelation and mind expansion. (Granted, some tuners-in sacrificed their tenuous hold on sanity as well). I've often wondered if making a connection with a reader requires a kind of psychic handshake. I couldn't stand to read Thomas Mann until I'd tried opium (ick). Just a thought.

The main reason I write is because a voice inside me (my muse? The Three Graces? The Wizard of Oz?) compels it. I know who's boss & it's whoever is behind that curtain. The most important person I care about sharing my thoughts with is him...or her...or it...or ID...or my other ME. Like Whitman wrote, we contain multitudes. The whole crowd, the madding, maddening, malestrom of we is me.

When I write I'm finding the eye in the center of a hurricane. When I write in that sublime state I enter a world that I control, where I am god and no one dares to fuck with me. That's how the wily "all-powerful" Wizard got his job in Oz. Writing is a make-believe place & good writing is about creating the most believable illusion. If you see Toto, grab the damn curtain!

Truth is, I would love for my work to serve humankind, change the world for the better, or to attain some absurd notion of immortality, but I would bow down before every imaginary god in the history of human creation if it would help me make money from my words, mainly because I'd like to make things more comfortable for the ones I live for. I'd hate it, but If I could produce some piece of garbage for a million bucks I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'll always write what the idealists in my multitude demand, but I would gladly set free some of the gamblers & sharpies to go out & multiply...my bank account. Unfortunately, I appear to be incapable of writing something that appeals to anyone less wacky than I am.