Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Deep Thought

Three of the four original Ramones are dead.

All four of the original Sex Pistols are alive*.

Whenever I remember that, it always strikes me as weird.

*Sid Vicious replaced Glenn Matlock, who co-wrote the majority of the songs on Never Mind the Bollocks.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

27 years old

Yesterday I was talking to some friends about John Lennon and we came around to talking about how young the Beatles actually were, and I realized that Lennon was 27 years old when he wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus."  Now I am listening to "I Am the Walrus," and I am realizing that the man I am listening to singing on this recording, that I have been listening to for years and years and years, is my age

Sigh.  I've wasted my life.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Luminous Beings Are We, Not This Crude Matter

So, Irvin Kershner has just died

It's so odd.  Last night, I had just watched Empire again.  I had watched it too see what my normal DVD would look like on a  blue-ray player, since I had watched it earlier on my normal DVD player through my new LCD television, which I had bought after watching Star Wars and Empire on my old television and DVD player.  I had actually been pushed to buy the LCD TV and blue-ray player because of  the way Empire had looked, and watching it last night, on a forty-inch screen, in so much detail I felt like I was watching it for the first time, I spent the whole time analyzing all my favorite bits to it, like the now-famous "I love you"/"I know" exchange (due almost entirely to Kershner), reveling in the old school special effects, the performance of the actors, and I realized, after I had basically spent a thousand dollars so that I could watch this movie in higher quality, that it was probably my favorite movie.  So it's incredibly weird to read the next day that the man I saw at the time as most responsible for making it so had died literally within hours of that. 

Rest in Peace, Mr.  Kirshner.  And thank you. 

Friday, August 27, 2010

Fragment for later

"Greetings to the last soul to speak to my father while living."

Jack looked up.  Floating out from the forest was a bowl of thorny horns, a stag's crown, growing out from a head almost human.  The face was furry, and ancient in a way beyond age, bearded and chiseled, everything a dark nutmeg in the pale moonlight, crossed by shadowbranches.  The face was bound to a body, the bulk of a bull in the mold of a man, massive and mighty.  The apparition passed from the forest, walking with a cadence of one entranced, but the beastman's eyes were as lucid as lakeripples. 

"He has rejoined us now, and is once more beyond us all."  The voice was whistle of wind through wood, breath across jugs.  Deep and warm and rich and soft.

This makes no sense, thought Jack.  He stared at the creature before him, rising up above like an ocean wave headed to shore, and felt a creeping sense of the familiar, and of the unreal. 

"Do I know you, sir?" asked Jack of the creature.  

"We have not met, though we know of each other.  You have been told of me, by journeymen across the sea.  I am the Horned One.  The Second One.  The Good One."

"I see," said Jack.  Suddenly he wished he had a weapon.  The party was close, but now oh so far away.  "Well then—hail, sir.  Well met."

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Mnemopolis

I have no idea who, if anybody, still reads or has ever read this blog, but I figure it is a good move to point out that I have started a new blog.  It is called Mnemopolis, and it will be nothing but fiction, and one specific piece of fiction at that, told over a series of posts going up every Friday.  I will probably post here from time to time, too, if the mood moves me, but for the most part this is it.  I don't really have anything substantial to say on the internet that I don't say in the comments on Cogitamus, (whether it's on-topic or not) so why bother retyping anything over here?  The rest of the time I should just be writing fiction.

I like the idea of posting Mnemopolis on a blog too.  Of any of my various projects, it's the one that seems most suited.  Besides, the world needs more fiction.  There are plenty of essays, and memoirs out there, but fiction, I think we are starved for.  It's become so precious that we don't know that we aren't getting enough of it, because we get so much other writing—for free.  So, if people are going to give navel-gazing away on the internet, then by gum, someone needs to start giving away stories. 

I aim to start a movement.

Monday, April 26, 2010

The absence of art is the death of the soul

I have just gone through one of my longest fallow periods, both in terms of writing and in terms of this blog, and I have to say that I think not writing is legitimately dangerous for me.  Forget art, forget prestige, or notoriety, forget trying to ever make this my profession.  Going without writing actually makes me feel physically ill.  I think the accumulated anxiety that comes from feeling either that I am not moving forward with my life, or that I am not simply creating something is causing actual physiological harm.  So I need to get back in the swing of things, working on things, not because of some larger life-goal purpose, not because it will get me where I want to go, (such a destination has been seeming more and more distant lately, but that might in large part be the anxiety talking) but because I need to be doing it just to feel good about myself right now.  Otherwise, I start feeling bad, and then I don't want to write, and then I don't write, and then I feel worse, and then I go a month without posting or completing a story and I just feel awful, awful, awful, all the time.  And that needs to stop.

So, what have I done in the meantime? 

Well, I have been cleaning my apartment.  Deep cleaning.  Like, selecting a four foot square section or and just getting all the dust and junk out of there and organizing everything and putting things away.  I have done most of the apartment now, like that, basically everything except the bathroom (which is thus now a real mess) but of course there has been some decay in earlier parts that needs to be addressed, and I still have tons of papers and mail and manuscript pages just shoved in boxes and shoved up against my bed (which I didn't clean under, at least not all the way).  But in all the apartment it much cleaner and friendlier and spacious to reside in, and I am starting to learn some good habits in terms of picking up after myself.  It has been much more pleasant to live around here after starting that project (which I have been tending to on days when I can blast my music and leave my door open and let the spring air in). 

Also, I have made a resolution to start eating less meat.  Not for any political reasons, just health.  I always feel out of sorts in my own skin, and my youthful metabolism is bound to slow down.  Plus I have just been feeling sort of undone, in some way.  So, I have been eating more grains, more salads.  Hopefully, eventually, I can cut out other unhealthy types of food, but I am taking this in a gradual manner.  My weakness is strong.  (So much of my time out here in Iowa has felt like this very gradual, three steps forwards, two steps back kind of building myself back together into some kind of complete person that I have never been before but might have been in some better version of the world.  Moving more and more towards the vegetarian side of omnivorism seems like a part of that.  I have always, in my heart of hearts, admired vegetarianism, while disdaining it, since it has seemed like something that existed outside of the bound of my own willpower.  But it would be nice to move towards it, even if I am only able to decrease the distance by half each time.)  I have also been trying to eat more fish instead of mammal, but fish is expensive and so that hasn't been going so well. 

In terms of music listening, one neat thing is that I bought a new speaker system.  With a subwoofer.  My first subwoofer!  It's great.  I love bass.  That's what I was referring to when I was talking about blasting my music: just turning on my new stereo system after hooking it up to my computer, finding a comfortable volume and just luxuriating in the crystal clarity of the sound while doing something else.  Black Sabbath never sounded better. 

In terms of new stuff, I have been listening to a lot of Amanda Palmer, both solo and past and present projects.  The Dresden Dolls.  Evelyn Evelyn.  I have both the DD albums (still need to get the EP) and the EE disc, but Who Killed Amanda Palmer? is still (I hope) in the mail.  Often I just find a playlist on Youtube and put that on, since almost all her solo stuff has a video made for it, and a lot of her live performances have their own unique charm.  I am sad that she has replaced the Pogues as my music act of the moment, and I don't feel like I was quite done with them, but that's life.  I like her voice.  I like her piano playing.  In fact, I think she had become my personal favorite piano player.  She is not as esoteric as Tori Amos.  There is more of an interests in "riffs" or what the piano equivalent would be, but there is still a lot of improvisation.  She plays piano a lot like Hendrix plays guitar (although I wouldn't go so far as to say she is the greatest ever, like I insist Hendrix is, but their approach has certain similarities.  The products of committed lovers of their instrument who just love doing whatever they can with it.  It's not dissimilar from how I like to play drums).  Also, she's engaged to Neil Gaiman, who I have always felt an odd connection to, ever since he turned my name into my favorite Sandman character, so there's that.  There is a theatricality to her approach to things, and she certainly has a love of the dramatic, but, like the Decemberists, its the kind of theatricality that is adopted so as to seek a deeper emotional level.  Through the veil of drama, something more powerful than the immediate and raw can be viewed.  Though it is veiled, it is still present, and the exactitude of the dimmed meaning is often stronger than the truths that others try to arrive at through authenticity.  Whatever that is.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Healthcare

FUCK YEAH!

USA!  USA!

Friday, March 12, 2010

update

Man, been dark for a while now. 

Not feeling as depressed as during the last blog.  I have been under the weather for a while though.  Been coughing for a consistent week now; my throat has just been killing me.  And I just haven't felt like doing any kind of creative thinking, really, while feeling this down in the dumps.  Usually I do these types of post as a way to flex the writing muscles, get a little limbered up to get back in the swing of things.  I miss writing,  It feels weird to think/type/write that after, you know, not writing, since really if a person wants to write they should just write, right?  And yet, no!  For some reason there is this strange quixotic urge, or anti-urge, that holds me back from doing it in times of distress or stress or hardship or fatigue.  Some mix of fear and discomfort, as if the act of writing was just something I wasn't fit to engage in, and thus I had to abstain.

Friday, March 5, 2010

All Hope Is Gone

In the last week or so, I have basically lost all hope for this country.  It seems to me that Bush sent us on a path to absolute economic, environmental and political dissolution, and because of the psychosis of our country's right wing, the economic power of our corporate class (who are invested in turning us into a plutocracy), the media's either willing or ignorant complicity in the efforts of such people to derail us, and the various obstructionist hurdles in our (supposedly) democratic system of government, make it impossible for Obama to right our course.  And things will just get worse, and the right will regain power, because our people are too stupid to realize that it's the republicans that are still responsible for things not improving, and then we will get, I don't know, Speaker Boehner, and that way just lies the Apocalypse.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Summit

I think the best thing about this health care summit it that it forces the news media to start talking about the actual substance of the bill, and the wide-spread popularity of the of many of its provisions. Hopefully, once people realize how much they support it, it will be easier for the Democrats to finally pass it.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Running up that hill

So lately I have been trying to study up on Latin, as I have felt, in the midst of this my wilderness, starving artist years, that I needed to do something to keep up my image as a scholarly, didactic fellow.  To these ends, I have been reading aloud from Caesar's the Gallic War, in Latin, and revisiting my Wheelock.  I have found, however, that, after my time spent with Caesar, much of my knowledge of Latin is returning, albeit half-formed, and I don't have any great desire to slog through the lesson plans all over again.  Yes, I could learn the vocabulary, but learning the vocabulary is what I am least interested in at the moment, if only because the English translation of anything I will be reading for the foreseeable future will be in the opposing page.  No, I just want to relearn the grammar, and do it without having to read all the text of the sections I have already read.

So today, I read allowed each of the first three declensions, in each gender, over fourteen times each.  I figure, if I can slowly commit the entirety of the declensions to memory, that will make the going much easier.  Besides, as the writing has progressed further, I have found greater and greater enjoyment in acts of seemingly frivolous repetition, or trial and error, like whistling.  It thinks its just the opportunity to engage my brain in activities that have no greater meaning, of any sort.  It's relaxing, in a strange way. 

the Wake

I woke up this morning with the first sentence of Finnegans Wake running  over and over again through my head. 

It was part of some understanding I was having about the rhythm of sentences, and how important it is, and necessary for good writing.  It made me want to rewrite everything that I had ever written, but then I realized that wasn't really necessary.  My best writing already tends to have a sense of rhythm.

I think.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Book I

Well, not too much new writing, these last few days.  However, I did do a substantial edit on book I of SK, which took a fair amount of time tonight.  It was quite taxing, with lots of ping-ponging around to make sure I had all the continuity right and stuff.  But it's basically done, and, baring any missed continuity efforts, I think it is done.  It actually works quite well as a stand-alone story. It had motifs and an ending the references the beginning and everything.  Also, themes.  and an emotional arc.  I am quite proud of it.  It is probably, even on it's own, the best piece of writing I have completed yet.  There are parts that are poetic, and parts that are mostly dialogue, and parts that are just purely engrossing action sequences.  I still kind of find chapter one scary.

So yeah, feeling better about my abilities. 

I am not going to post this one on scribd at the moment, but if anyone wants to read it, (cough mom cough) send me an email or leave a comment.  At the least, if would be nice to have someone who can spot any of those continuity errors I missed.

Friday, February 19, 2010

dead weather

Not any writing lately.  I hit one of those bleak periods, where everything seems hard, the future is rearing up to scowl at me, and I am seriously doubting my abilities, or if I even have any, after reading or hearing something somewhere.  So basically, the emotional weather converged on a storm. 

But, not that bad a storm.  I feel like I am weathering it.  I think that, having gotten hit like this so many times before, I am starting to build up a defense to the feelings, and am able to just, ignore them, or rationalize them, or something.  Put them in context.  but I'm not there, all the way, yet.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Valentine's Day!

I don't have anything special to say about this day that I didn't say one year ago.  So I am just going to link to that post and say, "read this!"

Saturday, February 13, 2010

2974

That's how many words I wrote today, in one story, which basically means that book I of SK is done, except for the edits.  I have reached the end.  I was thinking that I was going to stop before I reached the dream sequence, and think it over, but then I just pressed on ahead and wrote it, off the top of my head, no planning, figuring the momentum would serve better.  And I think it did.  It had the quality I had wanted, where the images slowly over took and I didn't actually know which ones represented which event, but somehow the whole arc of the dream made it's own kind of musical sense.  I expect I will not need to be making very many changes to it. 

I felt good.  I just sat down and basically just started putting one word in front of the other, until it was done.  It had all been there, somehow, I had just had to actually write it.  Well, that and do some research on the folklore concerning trees, but mostly, just write the thing.  And now the first draft is done, and I can begin editing in earnest. 

Well, not right now.  I think I am going to rest on my triumph for a while. 

Arthur Gets Lost

Screw it.  Here's the story I was talking about in the last post, after the jump.  Remember, it's five years old.  If you read it, tell me what you think of it in comments.

Report: Nothing to report

No writing yesterday. Just didn't feel like it, for a web of reasons too tied up to really get into. Some vague dissatisfaction haunts me, I think.

I was planning on posting a short story I had written long ago, just to put some more of my work up on the internet. I was amazed to see that it had last been modified in 2005. God, have I really been chipping away at this for that long? I read through it though, to check for spelling mistakes and such, and found that I really didn't like the story anymore. It seemed cloy somehow, like it thought to much of itself, or was trying to hard to impress. I feel it didn't really represent something that I wanted to present in anyway, even as an artifact. I made me wonder how much of the rest of my stories I don't feel proud. How much crap is floating around on my hard drives?

On the other hand, it was nice to have some sign that I am improving. After all, if it was as good as I was when I was 22, they last five years would have been kind of a waste, right?

But it is kind of frustrating that I don't have anything recent to post, which I would really like to, but everything, and I mean everything, is still in a state of flux, and just not fit to print, so to speak. I'm still world-building the world the stories are all set in, and the stories keep shifting under my feet. Then there's the sections that need to be expanded, because it turns out the way I wrote it before isn't complete, or doesn't fit the beat.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

interupted

Closing shifts are the worst thing in the world in terms of writing. Usually, when I write, I write in burst of two to three hours, then either cool off and go back at it, or call it a day. I can write well into the night if I am on a roll. So theoretically, having two or three hours should be plenty of time to get in a writing shift.

But on closing shift days, I just can't do it. I have done it a couple of times in the past, and just when I am in the middle of something I have had to get ready to go. And when I get back to what I was working on, I can't remember where I was going. In fact, after that, it takes even longer to get back into the the swing of things, because, since I like what I was working on, I have to wait to "remember" what I wanted to come next in order to proceed. It's like how getting woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle actually leaves you feeling more tired than completing it, even if you actually get less sleep. So, I am so afraid to write, even though I want to write, that I basically just have to take a mulligan on the whole day. It sucks.

I kind of can't wait to go to work so I can get back and start writing.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

On language, sort of

One thing I have noticed, as I continue working at writing, and refining my writing, is that my mind is starting to use words not by what they mean in modern, idiomatic speech, but by what they mean in terms of the roots of the words themselves. Their actual meaning, in a sense.

I just realized this as I was organizing my bookmarks, placing similar links next to similar links, and I thought about how I wanted to cluster together the bloggers who are "journalists." But I wasn't meaning the bloggers who, say, work for a newspaper, like Ezra Klein, or who report of the news online, like TPM, or even those unaffiliated individuals who nevertheless take it upon themselves who to relay or comment upon the news of the day, like say, Donkeylicious (Hi, Neil!). I mean those who, somewhat like me, although with more of a sense of discipline and order, are engaged in maintaining a journal. For the "-ist" implies one who engages in a particular activity or in the pursuit of a specific object. Thus, a "journalist" is one who keeps a journal, or one who journals. And "journalism" is the act, or art, of journal-keeping, or of journal-writing. I was thinking of people like Lance Mannion or Aylssa Rosenberg. People who use blogs as a method of relating or recording their thoughts, and through the wonders of the internet, presenting those thoughts with a public.

Of course, I still never bother to edit these bloody dispatches, so it's still possible that these things are full of error and nonsense, and don't come across the the workings of some clear and rarified mind. In fact, most of the stuff here is just bullshit I feel like getting out of my system so I don't have to deal with it bouncing around my head anymore, with phenomenon of the public dispensation being an almost beside the point. More of a viking funeral than voyage, this place, so I don't really worry about the quality of the construction, or the finish on the wood. It's really more an attempt to shove off.

Yeah. That all held to together. Yeah.

Ah, the economy

They canceled my shift at work today. I got woke up by a phone call this morning, saw it was something-thirty, assumed that I had overslept and missed work, found the phone, was freaked out to find out it was work, but I had missed the called. I called back so that I could apologize profusely and ask them what they wanted me to do. As the phone rang, I double-checked the clock and noticed that it was actually seven-thirty, and I wasn't supposed to come until nine-thirty. Spent the next several rings in a kind of fugue state of panic and confusion. Remember, I had woken up literally seconds beforehand.

Then they told me my shift was canceled, and I was so relieved I wasn't in trouble I thanked them.

Then I slept for another five hours. I had actually gone to bed only like two hours before that. I had spent the last four days off, and didn't want to have to wake up and go to work. Today is five days in a row.

I close tomorrow, so I am pretty sure they won't be canceling on me again. But really, retail just slows to a crawl in winter, you know?

Fever breaking

Over three thousand words today. Over 1800 of them were me just writing out character backstory, but in a way that I may or may not use as part of the body of the text at some point in the future, and over 1300 was new words for the actual body of the text which, I think in subtle ways, changes the tone of the story, but in a necessary way. It makes it less ambiguous, and removes any sense of purposely withheld drama (which I always find is more cliched and irritating than page-turning). Also requires future edits to the rest of the text to accommodate the earlier dispensation of certain pieces of information, as well as the change in tone. One of the things I realized, after reviewing the text, that the story isn't really about withholding everything from the reader, it is about relating the world that Ermys sees in front of him, but with a bare minimum of commentary coming from him, since he is not a very commentative guy. Thus, lots of details can be left out, because the aren't how Emrys would experience the world, and many can be left back in, because they are. I kind of want to go on, because I feel like the world is very present in my mind right now, but I eyes hurt from staring at the screen, and I am exhausted, so I am cashing in my creative chips for the night. I've been writing for something like three, maybe four hours now.

Earlier in the night, I had not really written anything all day, and I was feeling restless, and unhappy, and I knew what the next thing I had to write was. So I just thought, well, then write it. Stop making yourself feel bad. And I did. Now I feel pretty good. I got through a really bad spell, and am back in the game. a whole bunch of edits and ideas are piling themselves up in me right now, and I can't wait.

Realize you want to do something, then do it, and feel better. Huh. Funny how that works.

Why haven't I thought of that before?

Monday, February 8, 2010

It's funny that Hollywood is so removed from the real world that they have no idea what makes a person sympathetic

This A.V. CluB list reminded me of this really amusing conversation I had with Anne once, as she was watching Sex in the City. I asked her what she enjoyed about the show, and what she thought about it, until eventually she stated that all four of the main characters are really terrible people.

Me: Do the writers know that?

Anne: I can't tell.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

This whole post is really just an excuse to make use of the digital camera I bought

I altered my drum set two days ago. Here's a closer look:


I moved the second snare drum over to the side of the high-hat, then placed my crash cymbal besides my thin crash cymbal. This allows for easier access for the to the crash, since before I had placed it above and between the second mounted tom and the ride cymbal. Now it is much easier to alternate between the two, so I can create a sense of color in the cymbal crashes. the second snare drum also allows such alternation between the color of the instruments, as well as making it easier to move between the high-hat and snare drums.

Oh, yeah, and I stuck my conga over by the floor tom. Still trying to find a way to work that thing more easily into the kit.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

And now for something much less depressing

Anyways, writing.

Not much on that front today either. Well, OK, not totally true. I resolved some issues of plot that needed to be resolved long ago, and also did some crucial editing. I am on track to return to the story, and make it itself. But then, my word count from probably like, less than 50. But a crucial set of fifty words! Lots of note-taking behind it, and reading and research. Oh, and pacing. Lots of pacing. I also went shopping and did the dishes, and that always feels like accomplishment.

One thing in general I feel is that the writing is slowly but surely becoming easier and more ingrained in my habits and desires. I really am, over a long period now, becoming more and more comfortable and effortless in the laying down of words and the organizing of ideas and the creation of plot. I consider my writing and am more cavalier in discarding or rearranging my ideas. I still have a ways to go, but it is coming. I even almost like editing now! That's a big thing for me!

Monday, February 1, 2010

I'm just counting down the minutes now.

Some years it hits harder than others. This year it's riding in on a wave of dread, or something like anticipation.

Nine years ago, some time right about now, as I type, my sister Anne and I were getting in the Zeiger's car to drive to some hospital around Chicago. Colleen and Dave and Laura were there. I remember that Laura apologized for coming along, but neither Anne nor I would have none of that. I remember sleeping along the way, then waking up when we were almost there. We walked through a long stream of hospital corridors, going from one section to another. I don't remember feeling anything. It was just like, we were doing what we were doing. Then we got in an elevator, and went up. It all seemed so labyrinthine.

And the elevator doors opened, and they were all right there. Mom and his brothers and their families, and she cried "Oh, kids, he's dead!"

And Anne screamed "No!" and started crying, and I sat down in the chair that was right next to the elevator, where I stared off into space. Someone tried to take me along to see the body, practically carrying me, and all I said was "No, no," and I don't know that there was anything specific thing I was rejecting to: that I was going to see the corpse, that he was gone, that this could actually be some kind of reality, because nothing about what was going on seemed real. And then, I got one brief look at the body and turned around screaming. It was dark in the room and the was a sheet over him and his face wasn't moving, nor his chest, and you could already tell that whatever had been there that was actually him was gone and what was there on that table or that bed was just what remained. There was no point in seeing it, because he wasn't there. And he would never be there again.

After that, It's all more feeling than event. I remember that I was sitting most of the time in a chair on the opposite side of the elevator room from the elevator. I remember that Laura was crying, and I remember, in some weird way, feeling grateful for that. I remember either Danny or Rick worrying about how "Stan," their father, would take it (this would be the third of his five children he would have to watch go into the ground). I remember that he used his given name, as if the moment had stripped away the importance of honorifics. I remember driving back, home, saying I would go to the model UN the next day. I couldn't tell why, really, then or now. Part of it was the weird fear of grades and odd belief that such things would not be considered when calculating grades. Another was that dad had said expressed remorse over dinner, on the night before he left for the procedure, that he would not get to go to it, it being one of those things parents attended, and I wanted there to be an actual thing for him to miss, like he thought there would be. Another, is that I didn't want to go back the next day and see the body, and I just needed something to get the fucking lance out of brain, just to try to get away with it, though I really couldn't. When I go home, I screamed and collapsed on my bookshelf and slid to the ground. Eventually I was so exhausted from the emotional tension, that I actually slept for about three hours.

Then I woke up and went to UN. I told everybody I knew that my father had died. John Rudolph hugged me, and that was the most anybody was ever able to do to comfort me.

After that, I hung out with my friends from Drama, and they were determined to cheer me up. We made plans to go out at night. I went home, and Greg P from Dad's work was cooking Spaghetti sauce, with meatballs, and as I entered he shook my hand. There were a lot more people there, from all over the place, and I was happy to see all of them. But I went straight upstairs and took off the red tie I had been wearing, which was one of Dad's, and tied it about the baseball-bat-shaped tied rack that dad had made me when I was a kid, and started crying again.

I went out with the guys that night. We went to a mall that had a used records store, and I bought my first Butthold Surfers album, Independent Worm Saloon. I got to ride with Alex in his Corvette on the way home, and we listened to it and laughed, it was so weird. And then I went home.

I sometimes wonder about who I would be if that hadn't happened. I am pretty sure I never would have picked drumming back up, because that was very definitely a some kind of unexplainable response. I think I would have eventually started writing though, since I already had the stories bouncing around inside me. I think I would have been more stable, settled, by this point, not still an entry level lifer trying to turn into a person, but somebody with some sense of stability. But maybe not. I've always been fucked up. Maybe I would have been fucked up with Dad too.

It's been nine years. I turn twenty seven in five months. My father has been gone for over a third of my life. Most of the people I know don't know him.

Tomorrow will also be Groundhog Day, and St. Brigit's Day, and James Joyces' and Sir Charles' birthdays. Its the halfway point between the Solstice and the Equinox. Hell of a Day to Die. Still doesn't make sense.

The Pogues

Holy living Fuck do I love the sound of the tin whistle. It's like a bag pipe, but pretty and mournful instead of blaring and mournful. I want one. If anyone is wondering what obscure gift to get me for a birthday or Christmas that would convince me you love me, well, there you go.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Maybe scratch some of that last post

You know, I just read an earlier version of the first page and a half of that story, and it actually reads allright. In a different voice, but actually a pretty successful voice. Loping, descriptive passages, use of free indirect discourse for the main character's internal thoughts, and sparsely annotated passages of dialogue. It's all the changes I started making that fucked it up.

It's always a good thing to keep previous drafts lying around.

Most of writing isn't actually writing

Man, nearly a week went by, huh? I can't believe how I squander time.

I haven't got much writing done in this time either. I started writing a new story completely unrelated to anything else, and just to have something to work on, to, you know, write, that isn't so tied down to some large complex world system. Sort of a palate cleanser, if you will.

By way of comparison, I spend most of today researching the area surrounding the story that I thought I had "finished." Turns out I didn't. I printed it out, and realized that I would have to go through it, sentence by sentence, the words feel so jarring to me now. I had also, during the week, done some editing one of the other three or so interrelated text files I have up all the time on my desktop, and had finally stumbled upon something closer to what I want to be the voice of the piece. I have toyed with the idea of leaving this story as is, in a different voice, so to speak, but I find that this voice is not just different, but also inferior, and based upon certain approached to syntax that are really just unclear and needlessly messy. I tried to be poetic, and all I got was unclear.

So, it needs a new draft, into which I can then start making the necessary insertions that are necessitated by plot.

But, in order to do that, I figured I needed to make sure all the thing are correct in terms of time and place and culture. Hence all the researching today. It had been so long since I had done such things, I couldn't remember what I had based certain aspects of the story on, or if there were changes I had to make to make sure the story was historically accurate, or if there certain details that could be added to make the story more vivid, or just to make the way I went about writing it feel more lived in.

And this meant spending much of the day freaked out that certain assumptions I had based the story on were erroneous, and wondering how much of the story would have to be changed, or if the entire internal arc would have to be dumped. It looks, at this point, that that is not the case. Basically, I needed to be sure that the place I set this story in was the farthest area to the west along a border, or at least the farthest area of it's own size. (This does seem to be the case.) As this area is in France, I spent most of the day bopping around the French version of Wikipedia, as run through Google Translate, checking on all the major towns in the surrounding area, marking them on Google Maps, and taking notes on which ones existed when, and for what reasons. This was useful for more than purposes paranoid, as it a lot of the information I accumulated can be added in in ways that are useful and colorful more than destructive. Still it was a rather unpleasant experience.


By the by, the patron Saint of the region is Martin of Tours, whose feast day is November 11.

Monday, January 25, 2010

No progress

No more writing tonight. Started drinking around seven or eight. I think a part was actually freaked out about the idea of making so much progress so quickly on a story. Given I am used to short bursts of creativity interspersed by long bouts of procrastination, but this latest round of writing is almost too much. Five thousand words in four days?! When was the last time that happened? It just not done!

one voice, two voice

One thing I found out today is that different mediums are useful for different types of storytelling. I find it easier to write dialogue/conversations, if I write freehand, and easier to write descriptive passages on a computer.

With dialogue, for some reason when writing out the words longhand, maybe it's the motor-act of writing out all the words, but it is almost like the characters are conjured up, speaking to one another and not paying attention to me, and I am just transcribing what they are saying. I add in very little description, usually just whether a response happens to be nonverbal or not, and whether or not any time passes. I got through two scenes of dialogue, totaling six handwritten pages, in a little under an hour. When I try to type dialogue, I spend so much time second guessing them that what comes out doesn't really sound like how I think they should sound. Right now I am debating going back and rewriting several dialogue passages, just because I didn't write them out freehand originally. But maybe they don't need it, and it's just me.

On the otherhand, with descriptions, what I am writing is so dependant on the exact word choice, and the arrangement of words and sentences, that I am editing, cut and pasting, and rewriting so much that if I tried to do it freehand, I would just have a large pile of crossed out lines that I could never go back and decipher, and if I just kept starting over to make clear what I wanted, I would just have pages and pages devoted to getting one simple paragraph on paper. It is much easier to just erase everything I don't need as I go.

Two thousand, two hundred, and fifty words today

So far, at least. I got to the end of the main story I have been working on, though I would not say that I have complete the first draft, there is still a scene or two that I need to add into the main text, some large revisions, and then I need to do a really comprehensive edit to make sure the the references to the past add up to a concrete idea of what has actually happened. But still, I have gotten straight through to the end, and completed the main, "present day" action of the story. And that feels really, really good. This definitely gets easier the more you do.

P.S. Remember to call your Democratic Representative and urge them to PASS THE DAMN BILL, and to call your Senator and tell them that you support using reconciliation to fix all the problems that the House has with it.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Over two thousand words today

It looks like having a laptop is helping my productivity.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The body of an American



This song has been helping get through this weeks doldrums. For some reason, it just soothes me.

In other news, I am finally learning how to whistle. At twenty-six, I know! So early of me! I just figured out how to do the Bogart on Bacall today. Two days ago I had gotten the "call the dog/children back in" down. Hopefully I'll be on melodies by some time next week.

Both whistling and the song are things I became interested in through the Wire, by the way. Funny that I haven't actually finished the last season yet, though I suppose that's in part because I don't want it to end.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Massachusetts

I hate this country.

Monday, January 18, 2010

...And I feel bad again.

So, it's back to drinking.

...And now I feel fine.

Well, I did start drinking. And stopped reading about politics. Still, I think I am having one of my bi-polar days.

No Dreams, No Future

It's Martin Luther King Day today. I have it off thanks to a schedule shift. I should be writing, or reading a book. Instead I stare the my laptop while sitting on my bed and click over and over through websites that aren't going to update so often on Martin Luther King Day because this fucking election on Massachusetts has me completely on edge.

The Democrats, man, the fucking Democrats. They fuck everything up.

Croakley was up by fifteen goddamn points. Fifteen points! And she pissed in all away in a stream of entitlement and lazy campaigning. And now some asshole Republican that no one can decide if he is a rightwing fruitcake or a "moderate republican" but who will definitely uphold a filibuster against, healthcare which, because the fucking Democrats wanted to be so nice to the Republicans who have given nothing but bad faith from the start, still hasn't fucking passed!

This should have been done by now! They should have been on to other things! But now, it looks like the healthcare might fall apart because the Democrats managed to fuck up and lose Ted Kennedy's seat!

I hate this. I hate Coakley, who can't run a fucking campaign. I hate the party apparatchiks who can't run a fucking party, and turn everything into a party machine putting these useless empty suit types up that nobody likes or is inspired by. I hate the fact this this band of cretins and losers is the only thing holding this country back from the Republican Death Cult that will surely destroy us. I hate the liberals out there, the influential ones and their followers, who don't see this, and in some act of holier than thou pique and display of false integrity and independence spend all their time shitting on the Obama Administration (about the only bastion of sane, responsible leadership and organization in the entire party), thus destroying his base of support, not just among themselves, but among independents as well, making situations like this special election fuckup possible. I hate independents, for not seeing how they are being manipulated by dishonest hacks into doing things that will hurt the country, thinking some kind of protest vote will somehow make things better instead of making it harder to get done the things that they want done and are angry are not getting done.

And of course most of all I hate the Republicans. Every last registered one of them. They have destroyed my country with their stupidity, hate, lies, and greed. They are all, every last motherfucking one of them, unAmerican, as unAmerican as they think I am, because everything they do, every action they take, every political cause they champion, hurts us. Hurts me, hurts them (unless they are rich, and those ones need to be fucking shot), hurts all the other Americans, and hurts everybody else in the world. I have nothing for them but contempt. Pure, leaden contempt, and I long for the day when they are gone and destroyed and their every value and ideal is has been crushed and cast aside by the wheels of history.

Today is not a Christian day for me. It is not a loving one. Some days, I am just so fucking tired of you people. You are just so goddamn stupid.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Old stuff

Well, the last few hours have been rather happy. Frustrated with the writing I have been working on, unsure of what content to include and unsure of the fineness of my sentences, I went back and read some old writings, just to remind myself of the continuity of the world I am working in, and found them to be...quite good! Not even "not bad," but quite good! In fact, one piece in particular that I was expecting to be clumsy and hamfisted, I found, minus a few easily corrected missteps and spelling errors, to actually be about as well-written as I could have hoped or wanted. It did everything I had been hoping for it to do, and that is something rare to say about your own writing, so don't think I am just trying to blow smoke up my own ass. I was legitimately surprised at how good it was.

Reading those old bits makes me feel quite positive about my abilities right now. It's always nice to get a bit of a pick me up.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Nag

I have been surfing the internet tonight, and at some point I read something that made me feel kind of down. But I can't remember what it was now. So I can't decide whether to feel kind of down right now or not. On the one hand, I had some reason to feel down, so that probably means I should be down. But what's the point of being miserable if you don't know why you are miserable?

It's confusing.

Friday, January 1, 2010

The Aughts are over

So what the fuck do people even do on New Year's Day, anyways?

I mean, besides get over nasty colds. I can't breath through my nose, you know.