This one was an unplanned birth.  I didn’t even know I was pregnant.  I had been focusing on the gargantuan task of preparing my first six books for publication, and everything had continually gone wrong.  I had a list of people waiting for copies of the already written material and was frantically pushing for its release, but time after time the whole production was stopped dead in its tracks by some unforeseen mishap.

          In a severe bout of depression and utter frustration, I finally set out during a dry spell to begin transferring a file of old scraps and leftovers—ideas whose time had not yet come—into some legible form, on the off chance that they might be completed and edited by the time the earlier collection was into fruition.  What I found were bits and pieces of age-old material that had made no sense up until that point.  The files contained single, incomplete lines, titles without poems, smatterings of prose, essays left unfinished, song lyrics that hadn’t gone with the themes my first books dealt with, and fragments of letters and stories that had been set aside for that “someday…” to come.  What I had thought was going to be nearly effortless copying turned into intense weeks of reclaiming mindsets, completing partial works, arranging topics, reworking ideas, editing, splicing together, and an overall organizing of the incredibly amassed jumble of nonsequiturs before me.  It was like some penance for letting so many stray ideas accumulate; in the future I should know better, and avoid harboring so many tangents and whims in the first place.

          This final form, then, of the text you are about to read (as I presume you have resolved to do, or else you shouldn’t be reading this introduction), is the background illustration to all that I’ve written thus far, and all I shall likely write in the future.  It exonerates me from the crimes of omission I was nearly convicted of.  It is a final letter to my past life and a bridge to my current one, tying up nicely whatever loose ends I might have found myself tripping over.

          All you will find in this collection are images.  It is the broadest array of material, sprung from the meandering and pointless years during which I found out who I was.  There are unfortunately those who will never think me anything but an artist or a writer, but that is not my message.  It is my hope that whoever delves will walk away with an appreciation of basic humanity.

          My point in writing was never to belong to a group or trade, or to be identified by or associated with any body of work, but it was my method of expression while trying to become a normal, functioning human being.  I would encourage any of you to do the same… just focus on being alive and real and in the here and now.  Art is overrated.  Humanity isn’t.  I have grown rather fond of life.  This is what Banter is all about.

 

© 2003 by Ryan Christian Hedegard