What IS An Iceberg Skeleton Key?

One, sometimes, has to wait ages to find a sole purpose. When I was growing up, a poison was in the air, or at least a vapor that I myself could not properly discern--it was the idea that one should follow one's dreams and, if someone did that, everything would work out like a personal Shangri La . Ninety per cent of Hollywood told me this, and being born in the seventies, in a post love-child haze, in a small Alabama town which I idealized, and not having the Vietnam War personally touch my immediate family--well, chasing my dreams seemed to be quite practical, a way out of a mill town or a family situation with a stepfather I abhorred. I loved to draw, and was pretty good at it, I wanted to learn to play music, and I was writing what I barely was able to whisper to myself were poems, while listening to The Cure, Joy Division, The Clash, and Gang of Four. Now, I find myself a struggling professor, at age forty-five and, although I have chased my dreams for thirty odd years, that pursuit has turned into something quite painful, ecstatic, unexpected, and relentlessly challenging. I have written thousands of words of poetry, started a novel, drawn hundreds of sketches, learned to play the guitar, traveled, fathered a child, published two books of poems, published in dozens of journals, edited journals myself, hosted a radio show, earned an MFA in my craft, taught on the college level for 15 years, and still I am not sure if I am any closer to happiness or understanding that I was those thirty years ago when the beginnings of my obsession with language and aesthetics began.

So, I am not sure at the onset of this memoir blog how deeply I will delve into all of the mistakes, misdeeds, triumphs, and regrets of my personal life. I am writing this first entry to explain, a bit, the title of my blog, Iceberg Skeleton Key.

I became obsessed with a certain type of language "machine" in grad school--I was trying to create images which acted or reacted like fulcrums or possible fuel cells or trapped kinesis. So, I invented phrases, such as "hourglass in a sandstorm", "submarine lost deep down in your voice", "Bible in a landmine", "middle of a burning bridge", "birdcage rain forest canopy", etc. I was trying to create linguistic devices which demonstrated potential as they unwound in the reader's liminal and liquid cerebral space. I wanted to invent things that dissolved, unraveled, imploded, or pulsed with ironic potential and strong imagery, acting like Jean Tinguely machines [see video included below]...of course, I knew I didn't have his vision or scope, but the inspiration was there nonetheless.

Thus, this blog, yet another blog of writing about writing and about being a writer [a crime in and of itself to be undertaking], is waiting, for the almost half a century of my life, to melt the ominous obstacle so that I may finally grasp the key to what all of this has meant. Perhaps writing some words here everyday will provide more fire for the melt, and maybe the waters which disperse may provide more slake for my thirst. I don't really know yet. I hope that the iceberg melts enough for me to find the key before I leave this world...I am a bit afraid that it won't, and I can't currently afford the blowtorch or dynamite.

I will write this memoir a bit every day--not always about myself--but about things which I hope will interest or inspire those who love to write or otherwise. In doing so, maybe I can help the reader with his or her own machine, which needs to expel its awesome energy and greater potential--that's what many writers, alive and dead, have been able to do for me.