THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Howl
I watched HOWL yesterday - the Allen Ginsberg movie with Treat Williams and Jon Hamm. It's currently sitting on BBC iPlayer if you're in the UK and it's wonderful. A must see for dozens of reasons, not least because it flicked the switch that makes the cogs go around in my head.
Mostly, it drove home exactly how many of us are so busy telling the world about what we've done when that time should really be spent doing more of The Work... and listening to jazz, though in my opinion, it's totally acceptable to substitute this with rock.
Are there any writers working in the world today who we'll want to watch life-story movies about in ten or twenty years - no matter how much artistic licence is put into such a project? Is such a thing even encouraged by the publishing industry? A while back, I wrote here about Set Fire To The Stars, which I have exactly the same thought patterns about - and it's all seems to be because instant gratification is the word on the street. Not sure I understand why people are happy with such a thing but there you go. Doesn't anybody want to play The Long Game anymore?
There's no mystery, no discovery or sense of 'ownership' over the things we find and tell others about, thus nothing is special. It makes me sad - and it should make everybody who grew up with Prize Finds around them sad too.
It's the little things. It's that copy of Salem's Lot you found in a second-hand bookstore and read in two nights because you couldn't put it down. If you wanted to know more about Stephen King, you were either locked down to the few sentences that were written about him on the back cover or if you were lucky, happened to be around and paying attention when a rare interview was published. I could go on forever naming examples like this about books, music, art... hell, what are the odds on somebody falling in love with Frazetta's work because they stumbled upon a Conan book in a dirty box under a table in a store right now?
Slim is what the odds are.
The internet is fantastic for millions of reasons, but I really dislike what it's done to the world of things I held dear. Companies with apps and sites to share with the world will push 'community' as a great thing - a 'benefit' in which you can talk about all the things you love with others who share your thoughts.
Fuck community.
Sometimes, you want to keep a find to yourself and feel important for five minutes because the internet is much like sharing your chocolate bar with 15,000 people - and there's always some joker who spits on it so they can get a bigger chunk.
I miss making these odd discoveries for myself - they do still happen but I really have to work for it - and I'm disappointed that I haven't been working in such a way that people can find my work in the same way that I found that of others.
Disappointed may be the wrong word, but you get the drift.
The cogs keep on turning and these things must be fixed.
Bear Necessities - 2
I don't need words to describe this - simply beautiful and brilliant on as many levels as I can think of. From the hand of Lukas Glenicki. Don't steal it. That's not what we do.
The Millionaire Life Coach
Yesterday, it was collectively decided that 'we' would buy a lottery ticket (not something that normally happens around here) because in the big scheme of things, we were just as likely to win the almighty £42 million as anybody else.
I figured you could do a lot of damage with £42,000,000 so I sat down to figure out what I would actually do with it... which as a non-consuming kind of guy was quite revealing. Here's what my frivolous list shaped up like:
1. For the longest time now, top of my list if I ever came into a decent amount of cash, has been to buy an apartment that would double as an office on the top floor of The Grand in Folkestone - which is more or less where H.G. Wells dished out his best works. Cost of that is around £350,000 and to round it up with fixing up the insides so it looked like 221B Baker Street, brought it to £500,000. Half a million down, £41,500,000 to go...
2. A new car. Not that I need one - I like my car - but given that I 'have' £42,000,000 to play with, it would be dumb not to. I'm not even sure what I'd buy given that amount of disposable income. Maybe something in which Hector can't put his paws over my eyes from the back seat when he gets excited when we near the beach...
3. I'm struggling now, so I write that I would put £100,000 in my current account just to not have to think about anything in the short term...
4. Stumped as what to do next, I figure I would help out my family by paying off mortgages and things like that but even that doesn't dent it much. Maybe I would round up some friends and go see Kiss in New York and other similar 'bloody hell I've won £42,000,000' type things...
So far, at the absolute most, I think I have spent something like £1 million and I don't know what else to do with it, thus:
Item 5 looked like this: "Put £41,000,000 somewhere and live your life. Travel and make sure everybody you care about is taken care of financially...". I'm sure I'd feel good about this but it's hardly changing the world in the way I always wanted to.
Anyway, I didn't win £42 million (in fact nobody won the £42 million) and that's OK. I'd really like that apartment at The Grand and it's a good dream to dangle in front of myself but it's no big deal. The car? I need to put a couple of new tyres on the car I do have this week but it's still as great as it ever was... and the rest? Easy come, easy go.
I think what I'd most appreciate about that kind of money is the freedom to live my life in the physical world the way I do in my head. I'd still go and see Hateful 8 next week. I'd still want to finish the book I'm reading but getting around the world would definitely become 'a big thing' - but to what purpose? I would still want to write about the things I see in it and would have the same battles in my head over getting the work out there. Just because you're a multi-millionaire, doesn't mean people would want to listen - or not listen - to the things you have to say any more than if you were hoping you could make this months pay cheque last all the way to the next.
Business as usual then - more or less. As time went on, maybe I would figure out a way to deal in rare antiquarian occult books around the world and open a used books store called 'The Ninth Gate' in a forgotten corner of a cool European city or New York and be known as 'the book guy with the raven tattoos who publishes his own work' because you can't ignore the things in your heart no matter how much money you happen upon.
It's an interesting experiment - go find a pen and be honest with yourself and £42,000,000.
I've not finished with the exercise yet but what I have learned from it, is that most things you want - if you're not being a total dick about the money - are actually well within your grasp.
So cheer the fuck up out there. Screw taking a chance on a six numbered game of thrones you're unlikely to win and start living.
The world is waiting and the clock is ticking.
The clock is always ticking.
Where did 2015 go?
Umm. As you'll no doubt have noticed already, I've entered a period of not posting here quite so much lately. I don't plan on this being a permanent kind of affair, but words are flowing on Big Projects and I'm reluctant to build a dam in the middle of that particular river while the water is running clear - it doesn't happen like this very often believe me!
Is it close enough to the end of this particular year to thank everybody for their continued support in my writing? I think it is - so thanks.
Be cool to each other out there...
Sx
The Reading List
As is traditional on my birthday, I'm about to crack the spine on this puppy courtesy of The Small People. Good choice guys!
ANOTHER SAD DAY
Scott Weiland in (presumably) better days on Velvet Revolver's UK tour back in 2005... maybe 2004. Ten years sure slips by in the blink of an eye.
Pic by my lovely friend Chiaki Nozu - somewhere in London.
Sigh.
THE ART OF POETRY vs THE POETRY OF ART
Everybody likes a good mash-up now and again, right? Here's that very thing if you're in the mood. Words are mine, the image is by my friend Jukan Unter Strom who you can find here.
Who knows where this might lead. Somewhere cool perhaps because this was good fun.
TALES OF DESTRUCTION
I'll spare you the gore but last week, I had an argument with a machine at the gym in which the machine won. To cut the story very short, a weight of some substance descended from a fair height and crushed my middle finger (right hand) flat. Like putty.
I looked at it for a while until the nail exploded into blues and blacks as it peeled away from its host, marvelled at how the blood from the cut beneath the nail was mixing with it to make a pretty rainbow... which was when I noticed it shouldn't be that shape, or indeed, facing the way it was.
And then I felt sick. I figured I had best go to the hospital to get it checked out and spent the next fifteen minutes continually smacking it against the windscreen wiper stalk every time I needed to make a turn. The next time pain wants to hitch a ride in the car with me, it had better be wearing a seatbelt.
So, today is my first day of being able to navigate a keyboard 'properly' and who knew there were so many ways you could customise a trackpad to make it do what you want! Holding a pen is out of the question... in fact, pretty much anything involving that hand is out of the question.
This has been awkward as hell as it's been 'magazine to print' few days recently. Everything has taken three times as long as it should and it sucks to say the least.
Not looking for sympathy, there's none to be had is there - I just thought it might make a good story for five seconds... and now - back to work, albeit very, very slowly.
ALMOST HUMAN: NEW BOOK COMING DOWN THE LINE!
April 1st will see the release of my second collection of short stories. It goes by the title of Almost Human and will be available as a 300-ish page softback (6" x 9" - all of them with writing on) and also for whatever digital device you may possess.
I am officially stoked. Here's what it looks like:
There's some sharp edges to take off it at the moment, a running order to decide on (because things like that are important) along with a sackful of boring stuff you don't want to hear about but it's coming together just fine and I'm really happy with it.
Really freaking happy.
Most of it was written at home or in close vicinity, but some crept up on me in the U.S. and Italy which if nothing else, makes me feel like a writer who is doing exactly what he set out to do - which is to wander around the planet and make things up.
Or not make things up as the case may be.
For those of you who picked up The Day The Sky Fell Down, it's kind of similar but I'd be doing something wrong if I didn't think I was improving on what had gone before so you'll also find it, stylistically speaking, a little different. If you were too busy washing your hair to grab a copy of that, there will likely be a bundle available that contains both books but more details on all of that later.
THE SPIRIT of 1645
I am going to shamelessly lift the following from the annals of time. I'm guessing a piece of writing that's nearly 400 years old is out of copyright by now - if it was ever in it to begin with.
A good five years ago (ish), I came across a work by Minamoto Musashi called Dokkōdō - to give it some context, roughly translated that's something akin to 'The Way of Walking Alone' (and variants thereof). It's nothing more than 21 pieces of 'advice' but it also happens to be 21 lines I took on board at a time when I was really tired of fighting a battle I was never going to win and then forgot about. So yesterday when I found reference to it again online, I raised my eyebrows at exactly how much of this I had taken in - for good or ill.
A lot of this has helped me out more than I ever thought it would, so I'm dropping it in here for prosperity - if you can mine one valuable nugget out of it, it will have served its purpose. To get the most out of it, you'll need to be smart though.
If you're going to embrace Zen as a concept then you need to think about it less. There's more spirituality involved in driving the car to your favourite album than there is in buying a statue of a deity you have no business hanging around with. More spirituality to smoking a cigarette under the stars than there is in lighting a candle and wearing robes and telling everybody how much you love them. Anyway - here. Do what thou will with it...
Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Be detached from desire your whole life.
Do not regret what you have done.
Never be jealous.
Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
In all things, have no preferences.
Be indifferent to where you live.
Do not pursue the taste of good food.
Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
Do not act following customary beliefs.
Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
Do not fear death.
Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
Never stray from the way.
•••
Some may not make much sense almost 400 years later but the vast majority do. Like I said... do what thou will...
TIME: ALWAYS WAITING IN THE WINGS
Copyright: myjetpack
Sometimes, I think this may be the reality of things around here.
SET FIRE TO THE STARS
Set Fire To The Stars is the Celyn Jones and Elijah Wood portrayal of a week in the New York life of Dylan Thomas - and it is, to coin a phrase, fucking wonderful.
That's all I'm going to say about it but if you've an inkling to do something worthwhile with your life for an hour and a half aside from piss your final moments away flicking up and down the TV guide to dull the pain, do this.
I guess it's not for everybody but you know something? It should be:
Never has that movie tagline of "Never Meet Your Heroes" been more apt.
MORE LITERARY AND POP CULTURE ART
Following on from yesterday, I got caught in something of a wave and looking for a few items to fill a few holes - and I came across this company - Woodcut Emporium - currently trading on Etsy. Love it, love it, love it:
There's some great works over there including a rather nice Jon Snow and of course, a War of the Worlds piece... natch.
SOMETIMES A BOOK CAN BE MORE THAN A BOOK
Every house needs a copy of at least one Ian Fleming book. This is the law in so far as I understand it and Casino Royale is a fine place to start. I stumbled across this new edition of it this morning and while it looks innocuous enough on the outside...
...inside of its slipcase and internally, it's got it's own licence to kill. Take a look at what the Folio Society have done with it - courtesy of Fay Dalton:
That's a little bit special don't you think? This kind of publishing is what marks the difference between chewing something up as an e-book for the love of the story and going out of your way to spend £35 on a single edition for no other reason than it's worth owning. Whatever your opinion on publishing right now, this is the future: Books for the story plus books because they're worth owning.
They might look a touch on the 'stuffy' side over there at Folio but holy mother, they know what they're doing. Check out some of these illustrations that they've put into The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - which is one of the best books I ever read as a kid. These illustrations from the hand of Bill Bragg:
They also have a damn fine line in their Myths and Legends series that's worth a look and as I look there today, they've got some great pricing on more than a few items you might (should) want on your shelf. You can pilfer through it yourself from the links but before I go spend some money, here's some of the illustrations I fell in love with from their release of Frankenstein:
While you're in the vicinity, check out this linocut in Hound of the Baskervilles.
I'll stop now - but that looks like Christmas figured out for the next few years.
REIGN IN HELL
I stumbled upon this today and it summed my life up in a nutshell:
Things could be worse, right?