for now myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 1 4/21/20 9:26 PM myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 2 4/21/20 9:26 PM for now EILEEN MYLES THE 2019 WINDHAM-CAMPBELL LECTURE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 3 4/21/20 9:26 PM The Why I Write series is published with assistance from the Windham- Campbell Literature Prizes, which are administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Copyright © 2020 by Eileen Myles. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934232 ISBN 978-0-300-24464-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 4 4/21/20 9:26 PM for Erin myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 5 4/21/20 9:26 PM myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 6 4/21/20 9:26 PM for now myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 7 4/21/20 9:26 PM myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 8 4/21/20 9:26 PM I think last year I got the beautiful bound versions Yale published of Patti Smith and Knausgaard giv- ing this talk and I sat in a chair in my apartment and I took a look at each of them and at least as far as the beginnings both of them sounded like themselves and I thought well I certainly can do that. When I received the invitation to give this talk, I think it was the summer before last or maybe that spring I was given a date and a fee and I kind of put it at the back of my mind as something nice that would happen the following September or October and then in August I got in touch with Michael because I hadn’t heard anything but it turns out that’s because I had the wrong year. And I figure I can start with that. And I’ll return to it now and again. 2018’s talk would have been different and 2019 has been a cha- otic and exceptionally beautiful year, right, crowded FOR NOW 1 myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 1 4/21/20 9:26 PM with incident (horrible) and time itself had a kind of optic quality (full of great and awful things to see and the year has been busy getting copied—that way being memorable) and these are the things I’m always feeding into my purpose which is to write and maybe to get this part over with right away— because I need an alibi. I have a very definite feeling that I am simply living and how would that be possible if you also had a kind of ambition and fewer and fewer concrete plans as you moved out of childhood wanting to discharge it. Alibi of course implies a kind of “elsewhere” and as you translate it into many languages it remains alibi, what’s the word for alibi in Czech. It’s alibi. I have been arming myself with philosophies for years that support the notion that the point is to be here, to be present which I think is the truly hard part, and yet I keep coming back to it, it’s undeni- ably true and writing it turns out is the easiest way to copy that feeling. I have been doing it for years. I would like to be here, I think I’m here, and the more I write, and the more you read it the more it’s simply a fact. So that’s pretty much done and now I’m living here. 2 EILEEN MYLES myles_For_Now_rev_pp.indd 2 4/21/20 9:26 PM