I'm getting pumped about the book. It comes out in two months and I'm fucking dying for you to read it. This was the introduction I first wrote for it but decided not to use. I still have tremendous affection for it and wanted to share it with you.

"I hate introductions to books. Prefaces, prologues, acknowledgments, poems, whatever. Dedications I can live with. They're kind of sweet, but the rest annoy the shit out of me. Just get to it. I got the damn book because I like the author, or someone told me to buy it or the fucking cover was shiny, whatever... I want to open it up and see "Chapter 1," and start reading. I don't need a context to read the book. I don't need the author or the author's friend Madonna or Depak Chopra, (both of whom I dig by the way,) to "set up" the book for me. I'm big. I can figure it out. Even if it takes me a little bit, would that be so wrong? To have a moment or two of unknowing? Is that so untenable? Am I going to explode if three seconds of my life goes by that aren't "set up" in advance for me?

"Hello?"

"Hey Eric, its Joe."

"Hey Joe! I'm so glad you called, I've been meaning to call you..." I mean caller ID? Can anything be a mystery if only for the time it takes to pick up the phone, get it to your ear and have the person's first words make their way out of their mouth, through the phone line, through your ear and into your brain?! God and man have conspired to make that happen pretty fast. Can you just enjoy that?! You have to get a little gadget that cuts out the middle man? I mean at least just go old school and screen with the machine. The best of both worlds. You get the excitement and amazing mystery for three seconds of who's calling and then get to decide whether or not you want to take the call. Caller ID. Pathetic.... I mean I have it.

Anyway, so I can figure out what the books about without the pre-chapter telling me what to think and even more amazingly, I can decide what I think of the book after I've read it all by myself... Just let me read it already.

Alright look, to be honest, more than hating intros to books, I hate the books themselves. Well that's not really true. I like the idea of books. I mean they look cute in their little... bookness... and in their fun little bookstore homes all exciting and fresh and new... with all their perspective mommies and daddies eagerly and carefully doting over them like Christmas Eve in a pet store... but I hate reading. If there was just some way to experience the book without having to read it... hey wait a minute, I think something's coming to me... one of those idiot savantian thoughts I seem to be so infamous for is making its way into my self obsessed mind... yes, there it is! There is a way to experience books without reading... it's called... are you sitting down... living! If we think sixty thousand thoughts per second, imagine when our brain isn't imprisoned with the single anchor-like thought one author has incestuously sentenced us to, what stories a half an hour walk down Broadway might reveal. A funny little kid doing his funny little kid thing by H and H bagels. The smell of H and H bagels. That guy with two bionic steel things with sneakers on them sticking out of his torso for legs who just finished the marathon in eleven hours while it took me the same amount of time to binge on two bacon cheeseburgers, pancakes, eggs and bacon and a batch of brownies feeling sorry for myself because my TV show that paid me tons of money got cancelled last week and I spent all the money on my last movie and therefore don't have next months rent and I'm convinced no one will ever hire me again so I better get on a B-List celebrity weight loss realty show... write a book... anything. But the good news is, we're perfect for each other, you and me. I mean, look across the subway platform and BOOM! love at first sight perfect because even though I hate to read... you don't. You love to read. And guess what? I love to write. Go figure. So let's just lay down the fucking caller ID and dig each other.

In case that strange, nagging, uncomfortable feeling you're having in between really enjoying reading this is starting to blossom like the second day of an untreated cold sore, and you can't quite put your finger on its origin, let me be your Valtrex. What it is is your confusion about whether I've somehow just spent the first couple pages of the intro of my book judging you because you like to read, camouflaged as some kind of spiritually elitist, too cool for you, pretentious "I live in the moment and you don't" asshole. And the answer is no. As you will see, if you haven't figured it out already without the aid of a preface to the intro explaining what I'm about to say (and I in fact have infinite respect and admiration for your intelligence, emotional and otherwise, and am inspired and grateful beyond your fathomable imagination by the fact that you're reading this and am sure you have indeed figured it out but maybe will gracefully allow me, with all humility, to attempt to put it into words for you) I'm as fucked-up as you. And the only differences may be that I not only don't see my fucked-upness as a liability but as in fact the most holy conduit to grace and the chance of having a less fucked-up life that I know, and, that I talk about it publicly in my work. So you can let that bad, nagging feeling slide away to the cesspool of all self hating thoughts that try to separate us and know that I know I'm you... and know that I know you're me. And in this fractured, frightening world, knowing that is the nicest thing we can know...

The only thing I hate more in the whole book world than the intros to the books and the actual reading of the books is the pressure of writing the first line of the book. You know, can everyone just get way fucking over it! It's not nearly as important as people make it out to be. We all know life doesn't work like many ways we're told it does. Have the fucking energy and passion to decide for yourselves. I put so much pressure on myself about the first shot of my films and think I'm not really an artist if the first shot isn't AMAZING. I can't remember the first shot of ANY of my favorite films. Annie Hall? The Graduate? A star is Born (1954) I'm always trying to remember the first line of my favorite songs, I remember choruses... Which is both part of the problem and also completely human... We remember the splashy numbers of life because we're big babies and the shiny objects distract us, but we also love the mundane, the minutia the boring life of life in which the most sublime moments happen... if we're looking for them, watching... in our best moments, when the ego gives us a rest for a second. I've had to cultivate that space through a meditation practice I'll get into later but suffice to say, the moments happen a lot. The first line of Norwegian Wood I'll always remember, "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me..." I tried to get that for one of my movies... 250 grand, and that was just for the words, I was gonna have a character sing it, not even the boys themselves... that's why I love books. See I lied. I love books. But I'll never do it again, I swear to you. That's why I love books, you get to use Beatles music and in films and TV you can't... but you get my point about beginnings... I remember great scenes, feelings, moments, endings. Not the last shot of the movie but how it ended. What it meant to me. I think in feelings more than images... Real life is different. They first moments are indelibly imprinted on me. But that's because I have all 5 senses helping. I smell you. The look on your face. The sound of the bus that went bye when I first saw you. The feeling you gave me, the actual feeling that came off of your living breathing human animal body as you brushed past in the Starbucks... Man! Real life! Can't beat it. You can't get that from a book. At least from a movie you get a little closer to using all 5... Okay, I'm back to my original hatred of books, see I didn't lie after all. I do hate books"

Did I put an "intro" in the book? Cliffhanger baby. You know I like them. xo e

Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 9:06 PM

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