Remember Where You are now so You can Get Back Here Later.

So I am currently shopping my second completed novel. Technically I've completed three, but that third one (or actually it's the first one, Thee Subtle War) I've 'completed' about three times. It was the first novel I attempted to write and as such it is the one I've had the most trouble reconciling with my 'voice' since I have honed it. Although there are many parts of Thee Subtle War I like from those earlier versions as a whole I could never quite stand the book. Perhaps this has a lot to do with the lack of follow-through on the plot, which was originally a fanboy's attempt at imitating Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. Over time my fixation on all things Morrison has waned enough for me to find my own voice (although that will hopefully evolve with time) – I still love The Invisibles and everything else the man writes, but I've gotten over my starstruck period of intense influence at the hands of his art. With this evolution Thee Subtle War has evolved as well, but through it all one main idea has remained consistent. The theme of the book shoots off of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, combining it with science in a way I do not believe anyone else has ever attempted. So these more recent versions now too are 'influenced' by another author's work, but with each new winnowing of Thee Subtle War I feel I pull Lovecraft's ideas more and more into my own world, instead of vice versa.

I have no problem with this, realizing now that ultimately Thee Subtle War will be something that I will publish down the road, after I have a name and fan base (which I Will have).

The book I'm currently shopping is 100% me and a direct result of many of the experiences I've had in my own life. I tend to write a lot about fucked up people, drugs, alcohol and a certain longing that I keep with me for lonely, intoxicated nights when I can almost smell the south suburban Chicago rain in the air and realize that the past is not a when but a where, and something I can easily invoke with the right combination of music, substances and lighting.

The Ghost of Violence Past is my attempt at an imaginary confrontation with a very real demon from my own past, a boy I once called friend who went on to murder several people I knew for no reason other than, I suppose, he felt he could.

What do you say to someone who has done those things? I don't know, and never will, as although my avatar in the story is both willing and able to confront the killer from his childhood, I most certainly never will.

I would never want that person to know that I even still remember him.

After finishing The Ghost of Violence Past I recently began a new story, tentatively titled '2 A.M. Corridors'. Corridors is built around my experiences as a drug-taking, alcohol-swilling bartender in the South Suburbs of Chicago. It is an exercise in merging the time travel I experience with drugs and music with the world where I lived and worked, fucked drank and snorted for five years until I met the love of my life and turned the page (and what a heavy page it was to turn, moving 3000 miles away). One of the main influences on the aforementioned period of my life (as with all periods of my life) was music,and it is to help set and maintain the mood that I have utilized very particular playlists for this particular project. Below is a widget containing the main throng of songs that compliment the atmosphere and motivation of 2 A.M. Corridor's characters and story. As the story evolves I will most likely assemble and post more of these, perhaps even with excerpts from the book. My hopes in sharing these is that so that when people eventually read the story they can let me know whether or not the story and music contain/convey one another.

Life is a series of stories, culled together in a pantomime of chapters arranged in, apparently, no particular order. As a writer I attempt to impose my Will, my 'Order' on it so that when I am gone, my life will remain.

Who Built The Road by Isobel Campbell

I was just listening to Mark Lanegan's Bubblegum a couple of days ago and it occurred to me that the man may have a new project coming up. Gutter Twins (new album soon, please) was something like two years ago now and I've found myself having a hankering for the gravel-throated journey man we all love so much. Well, without further delay:

Who Built The Road by Isobel Campbell

follow the link down the whiskey hole and listen with stretchy, intoxicated glee. So far Back Burner is my favorite and a prime example why I love this man. Isobel Campbell also appears to deserve special attention. I'm unfamiliar, but this is awesome and she's a Scot, so you know, I'm down.

Buy it and support independent music.

Huzzah!!!

Interrupting or coming up for air???

There's a suit I wear over another suit, which is really just dress for this tangle of knobs and ideas that makes up the complex series of Algorithms that happen to have all decided (for the moment at least) to vibrate at the particular frequency-set that manifests itself to your observer's senses as this slightly long-winded cunt named Shawn. The suit above the suit – the clothes on top of the clothes – has been a major undertaking; what we used to call a 'fiction suit' back at the end of the last Millennium (okay, truthfully I guess I didn't get 'turned on' to calling it that until early the next, but the more miles on time's highway you put behind you the more they all kind of collapse and congeal into life's perpetually gnawing horizon) is not so much a disguise as it is an apparatus for burrowing into a tunnel, an unknown lair home to all manner of beings that are of alien interest to me. The act, ritual, construct, whatever language I choose to dress it in is an attempt to transmogrify myself into what I have stated with my Will that I want to 'become' – the new set of frequencies I want to oscillate at in order to best facilitate further understanding of this enormous cavern we all find ourselves lost in; this labrynthine, multi-level scaffolding that holds our sway for the better part (hopefully) of one hundred years and eventually quaffs us down into a further perhaps more direct (perhaps not) existence of interest.

Reward? Punishment? These are children's ideas for those who cannot look themselves in the mirror and feel excited to go on just for the sake of having the opportunity to do so.

Huzzah!!!

Naw, you can jog, please work 2 have bst-r d m.

Is not what this blog is about even though they are a DAMN good band. I was just trolling and saw that I posted last week (or was that two weeks ago?) and decided that I would try to write a blog here at least twice a month from here on out, regardless of whether I have anything to talk about or not (not sure if this is a good thing).

Phases I've been drifting between:

Listening to:...................|||........................Reading:

X.....................................|||............Survivor
Talking Heads................|||............Less Than Zero
Tears For Fears...............|||............Imperial Bedrooms
Huey Lewis……............|||............American Psycho
__________________________________________________________________

Grinderman......................|||…….China Mieville’s Kraken
Danzig 9
Tones on Tail
Bauhaus

I was in the middle of a big lit kick that had me working on a new piece of writing, the loosely referred to 'Two A.M. Corridors' but now that I'm knee deep in Kraken I'm slightly paralyzed writing wise.

Watched Harmony Korine's Mister lonely and Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer. Been slow getting into movies lately, too much reading.

Thinking about the absolute ridiculous amount the Universe must like me to have me meet the woman of my dreams so young in life.

Hanging out on Whitechapel a bit more lately, finding some interesting web sites there. Weaponizer, polpus, zazzle, et al.

Kinda getting into the D&D thing.

confluence of events

My cat Lily yowling constantly on a cool Tuesday evening... I'm about to go nuts when my other cat Thompson starts yowling too, from downstairs. Outside the wind is mellow and pushing a lovely Ocean calm into my second story bedroom. I'm trying to work on this new writing project, high on Vicadin, Fat Tire and now I've switched to my trusty Sierra Nevada. Intermittently I'm chewing chunks of Bret Easton Ellis's brilliant new novel Imperial Bedrooms into the mess within me and ringing his paranoic style for all the inspiration it's worth (no small amount). There is a gaping hole in my mouth where blood has clotted over but occasionally surprises me with a stringy, iron-tasting dribble down the back of my throat.

Downstairs A Place To Bury Strangers is jamming at max volume. Fuck my neighbors (nothing personal).

I tip my beer but not before thinking that something urgent is transpiring somewhere in the forest of neural pathways etched into the meat between my ears.

The sun is down, it's 8:05 PM and although the chemicals and cool air are causing my fingers to lag a bit my mind is racing. I've got to get this down, got to get this down...

Two A.M. Corridor is the story of a bartender and the people he surrounds himself in an attempt to make the easy buck, get the girl who is already been explained to him is off limits and somehow avoid the frenzy of supernatural chaos that may or may not be the power behind one of the world's biggest hotel chains. Good luck Ray, you're gonna need it.

dreeee-min

Dreams
Funny...

A couple weeks ago I inexplicably had this old 80's pop song in my head.

For weeks.

Dreamin' ("I'll be dreee-min, dree-min"). I knew the artist was someone that had been a beauty queen or actress. I remembered sitting in the Little Theatre at Palos South ~7th grade and hearing this on a radio in a hallway - the memory was in fact similar to a dream in its ethereal opaqueness. I couldn't remember who sang it, and at the times throughout the day when it would surface in my consciousness,, I would vehemently swear I was going to go home and use that handy little iTunes store to figure out who it was. I would always forget because, honestly, it's a nostalgic indulgence. I mean, admittedly, I did, when it entered my realm of awareness, like the song. Not in a "I Like this fucking song kind of way," but it had a kind of haunting melody, even for a throw away pop song. Anyway, enough of me coming to terms with saying in public that I like trite drivel and onward to the phenomenon.

More recently it popped into my head at work somehow and my friend Manny, pop-master, knew it. "Vanessa Williams is stuck in your head?" or something similar was his question. We laughed about it.

Now I wake up this morning (no no no, this afternoon! I don't get to say that all that often anymore) and I am, for like the 10th straight day or something, bowled over by my dreams. I mean, I have always hungered for dreams and other's dream-related stories, but I have not really had many dreams to remember in waking life IN YEARS. And yet, I'm sitting here today and I can tell you what I dreamt yesterday in clear, vivid detail. And now this afternoon I woke with another one. So I ask, has the song "Dreamin" and figuring out who sang it somehow unlocked my dreams for me? If so, I would like to state here and now so that Ms. Williams might read it if, her career now long since over, she is googling herself and comes across my meager blog. Ms. Williams, I would like a dream where Penguins are elected into office in the United States. I would also like one where I punch Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the face. Thank You Ms. Williams.

Now, here is yesterdays dream to a "T".

10/02/07

I dreamt about leaving work to try and run down the street to the Albertsons (that Jewel to you Midwest folk) to buy Oreo cookies because in real day to day life they have become what I call work-crack (see below for definition) and I had failed to bring any. So instead of driving I hoof it and discover a little White Hen (that's a 7-11 type stand alone convenience store for you cali folk, a type that does not exist here as far as I've seen) and I duck in to buy oreos and wait in a line behind some bizarre, almost thuggish characters and when I finally get up to the front to pay the guy has short reddish-brown, greasy hair of medium length slicked back behind a backwards turned mesh-in-back ballcap and is smoking a cigarette. he rings me up and we somehow start talking about money or our mutual lack there of and then when I walk out onto the sidewalk and head back to work I find two, One hudnred dollar bills on the sidewalk, just sitting there, neatly placed. I look around and pick them up and start walking and then I hear the sound of an approaching skaeboarder behind me. I get this ominous impression like it is the skateboarders money that I have taken and I try to move faster because now there is this encroaching hostility over taking me, but as I move I move slow because my legs are stuck in this weird, cross-legged style sitting position, even though I'm standing, walking no less. Then the dream ends with me frantically looking over my shoulder at the encroaching, faceless skateboarder.

Hopefully this will mean I find $200 bucks in real life (Wink Wink Ms. Williams. Or, shit, maybe Ms. Williams controls dreams and, (mind racing to find a Ms. Williams counter-point) ahh, Paula Abdul governs reality? NOOOOOOO (throws his arms up in the arm) NOOOOO! NOOOOOO!

Glossary:

Work-crack: whatever food or substance you turn back to repeatedly during work days to comfort and propel you through. Some examples would be coffee, oreos, vodka, crack, whatever the individual in question prefers.

If anyone cares (and how could you after this long-winded nonsense. Geez, I should really take a tip from Dan Brown and make ever page a chapter, or is that every chapter a page?) I'll post today's dream later.
Currently listening:
20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection
By Marc Bolan
Release date: 20 August, 2002

atmos haunt

atmospheric hauntings and more talk of life without a toaster...
woke up today startled from a dream of an earthquake by what I thought was an earthquake. Just a thunderstorm. a 2 hr thunderstorm. I lOVED EVERY FUCKING MINUTE OF IT, except that we had put Tom (short for Thompson, as in HST), the outdoor cat we harbor at night, out just a little while b4 and I was terrified for him being trapped out in such a heavy storm. I couldn't get back to sleep so I sat up re-reading the INVISIBLES book 7. Smoked a little. Put on a pot of coffee (first of MANY) and had a wonderful experience. I literally trip when I read THE Invisibles. It changed my life back when the issues of this particular (the last) volume was monthly, and since then it has been one of the main sources of inspiration for EVERYTHING I do. I can't explain it, but it has this effect on my nervous system where its a time machine, a halucinogen, a road that mainlines you right into the supercontext. At one point I stopped reading, opened the back door that looks West toward the water and just stared at the cloud formations. Performed my Tarot pull for the day. 5 Cups: Disappointment, upside down. It was at this point that something strange happened. It was definitely fueled by the comic, because I still had so much effect from King Mob and Edith by the Ganges and Division X at the Wicker Man and blah blah blah but the image on the card expanded. It grew, and as we toggled our perception back and forth between the atmosphere of the planet in my vicinity and the image spilling from the small card out into the many levels of my brain I reached all kinds of new angles for reading and interpreting these things.*

At the same time I fell under the subtle impression that I was witnessing the exact same atmospheric conditions that I had the second morning in Dublin, '01 when I went with Grez and Tony. Like I was somehow standing in my doorway now in 1/07 and also on a street in Dublin looking at a storm that just may have passed from one when through what we think of as the limitations of time to another. Maybe I'm like pigpen from peanuts and instead of a dirt cloud following me through the air I breath this storm is following me through the ages of my life, weaving in and oout of tiem to rear its head and inspire me when I need it. Maybe its that same one from sooo long ago, sophmore year? when I laid awake at night with a teenage broken heart listening to it and Disintegration by The Cure for the first time. Maybe it will be there when I birth from this life into the next.

*Tarot is amazing because there really is a scientific reason WHY a divination system such as this works. based on the collective unconscious of humanity's archetypal pallete these things don't come true because you want to make them that way, their simply putting into language the future as it already unfolding via higher dimensional perceptions we do not understand how to use, interpret or acknowledge. this system puts those instincts into our language, a language based on symbols representing what we can all perceive with our Earth bound senses.

Anyway, I'm fucking rambling because I was off today and I've smoked quite a few times. Hence where 'disappointment' comes in, cuz the Magick of that first time at 9:30 in the morning was (I knew) never going to be re-created.
Currently reading:
The Invisible Kingdom (The Invisibles, Book 7)
By Grant Morrison
Release date: 01 December, 2002