THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Not Dead...
Not dead - just working on Something Important which Needs To Be Done Soon.
Meanwhile, here's a neat minimalism poster for DareDevil to keep you amused.
The Purge - Prologue
I re-read what I had written in my first piece about minimalism on Saturday morning and decided to purge myself of around 100 books before the day was out. I know it will get harder as I get towards a sensible amount - but 100 were gathered and redistributed to a good home. I don't seem to have made much of a dent but it's a start.
They have gone somewhere other people can also read them and I guess some of them will become favourites, some will be passed further down the line and some will no doubt sit around doing not very much just like they did here but who knows what may happen when you let Paulo Coelho, Carlos Castaneda and Nick Kent out into the world together...
On the writing front, earlier this week I figured I should be submitting my work to literary magazines instead of - or as well as - stockpiling them here for publishing my own collections, I took to scouting around online for likely suspects and found this poster for the 2016 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest:
You can hit the poster image for more details on the comp. I post it here mostly because I love Raymond Carver and I need no other reason than that but it did lead me to think that maybe I should contribute a little more to the writing community by posting other such things here. It's tough out there. File under pending.
Meantime, on Thursday this week - April 7 if you're lost in space - the man I consider to be the greatest thriller writer on the face of this planet right now (and for some years), unleashes A Time Of Torment:
Which means I need to carve out a huge chunk of space to chew it up. I know it's not necessary to chew up a book like somebody might take it off you at any given moment but Mr Connolly is my exception to the rule.
Rather coincidentally, I find myself acting as a taxi driver for small person and friend on that very evening. It's Five Second Of Summer at the O2 - but you all knew that already right?
This is the first time I haven't bought myself a ticket to accompany her to such a thing - actually reads: "Do you have to come with us?" - so I figured I would find a corner somewhere that sells coffee and do some work, but now I have a much better idea. I'll share my corner and my coffee with Charlie Parker and hope that 5SOS over-run.
(Thank you J.C. - your timing this year is very much appreciated. If One Direction get back together next year, I'll mail you tour dates and maybe we could figure something similar out.)
Footnote:
If you're unfamiliar with Charlie Parker - and yep, I say this every year - go back and start at the beginning with Every Dead Thing. This is known as Time Not Wasted. If you're already with me on this, you can read the first chapter of A Time Of Torment right here.
Footnote 2:
Charlie Parker does not feature as part of The Purge. Some things need to stay where they are for obvious reasons.
Two Stones
(A slight interruption here if you were expecting more on minimalism - back soon with that)
In the garden, there's a big fir tree and in the big fir tree (sounds like a song from the Whicker Man) every morning without fail, a Magpie - sometimes two - will come and sit and shout down from their branch at Hector, who invariably seems to quite enjoy shouting up at them. It's become 'A Thing' but over the last two days, something odd has happened.
They've begun to leave me presents because I've been leaving stuff lying around for them to make a nest with - either that or they are enjoying the apples left lying on the ground for the rabbits.
I didn't think very much of it on the first day. On the first day, it was just a perfectly shaped stone dropped in a very obvious place. So perfect was the stone, I picked it up, took it inside and left it on the counter next to the radio.
Yesterday, I went outside to find another stone - pretty much exactly the same as the first one - left in the same place. Here:
There's plenty of stories about Crows and Ravens doing this, but none about Magpies - the only stories I can find are about how Magpies recognise your face, know where you live and will dive-bomb you for life if they are so inclined.
Maybe it is Crows. There's a lot of them around, I've just never seen them in the tree. That said, there is also a gang of five Jackdaws that hang around the shed.
The game continues.
The Art Of Minimalism (2)
Minimalism On The Road
One of the best aspects of having a minimalist mindset is how it can sometimes challenge you in ways you never imagined - and there's nothing quite like being away from home to force you to think about what you really need in your life.
Inside my head, I knew it was possible to go away for a few days and take only what would fit in my pockets - minimalism in the extreme if you will - but actually committing to it was a whole different ballgame.
The first thing to realise is, unless you're going to Borneo (or similar), most countries have these little buildings - sometimes big buildings - called shops. There's a whole wealth of goodies that can be found in there. Toothpaste, shampoo, toothbrushes - you name it, they probably stock it. It really is amazing.
Seriously, why pack a bag full of security nightmares when you could simply buy it when you get where you're going and ditch it before you come home? So far, this train of thought has not let me down - and believe me, I understand how hair can be a difficult beast more than most, but I've never fallen down a manhole by doing this. I'm not talking medicines and very specific personal items but people really are catered for in other countries as well as we are here. It might be stating the obvious, but you would be surprised at how the idea of this fills some people with disgust at being parted from what they're comfortable with.
It's a big thing out of the way when you don't have to think about that little bag of stuff though.
Clothes can be a pig of a thing to figure out but after a few trial runs, I finally mastered it. When I first went out into the world with nothing, I was in Milan for four days during November (just to give you an idea of what I was up against). One pair of jeans is enough. It really is. Unless you're one of those people who can't keep their food in their mouth or can't resist climbing over rusty fences into muddy cemetaries, it's enough.
One pair of shoes/boots is also enough. Maybe it depends what kind of a trip you're on. If it's business and changes of clothes are important to achieve said business, a bag may be totally necessary, but for wandering around pretending to be lost, no.
T-shirt, shirt, leather jacket. That's the top half. On arrival, t-shirt comes off, shirt back on. If it needs washing for aforementioned food crimes, wash it. Better still - ditch it. Those shops I mentioned, they also sell things like that too. The idea is not to be uncomfortable or dirty - the idea is freedom and if you get a new t-shirt into the bargain, great. So far as I can tell, one black t-shirt bought at home is pretty much the same as a black t-shirt bought away.
I thought the bottom half would be a little more problematic but it's not really. Socks and pants can also be found in our new favourite place. Buy new stuff - ditch the old - then you get to go home with windswept and interesting smalls.
I had built this up to be a big deal before I actually went for it, but going out to find toothpaste and socks is also a good chance to scout the area around wherever you're staying. You get good at it. It doesn't take longer than half an hour but it was only the half hour you would have spent standing around at the luggage carousel - and it's not the end of the world if you decide to do it later either.
It's called freedom.
It's worth pointing out here that the jacket is a key part of this kit. Leather is fantastic. It's warm when it needs to be and won't kill you to death when it's hot. The jacket I have has a whole bunch of pockets but you'd look a fool if you stuffed them with clothes, so keep it essential and flat. I also found a great pair of jeans from Crosshatch with pockets coming out of their ears. Not a ridiculous amount - I do have dignity - but enough to be helpful. You simply need to figure out a way to make what you do take with you work like a Shire Horse.
So my bare essentials list looked like this:
1. Passport - you can't get out of this one
2. iPhone, earbuds, charger cable and plug - sometimes, technology rocks
3. A book - that I left in the room when it was finished, but the habit of reading an ebook on your phone is likely a good skill to foster
4. Cash - another one you can't get out of unless you live by The Card
Pretty slimmed down if I say so myself.
For longer trips, it's still possible to travel light as a feather. Back when I had a week in the mountains of Colorado on the horizon, I figured I might have to take more. This is when I was inexperienced but I still got away with a couple of shirts and a change of underwear - but even in the wilderness of America, you can find both things at the airport on the other side and even locally.
Who knew people who live in the wilderness also need pants and shirts!
But take a bag I did. My trusted Overlander from Scaramanga - the only bag I own (and ever will):
I can't even recall what was in it now. I probably used the clothes I had packed and frivolously took a couple of books and a notebook too - all of which have since been ditched for reading and working digitally on the phone - unless I have a book I really want to finish. What's the point in having the equivalent of a small computer in your pocket if you're not going to push it to the max when you want to travel light?
Digitally speaking, there are worse things to do than take photos of your passport and stash them securely on the cloud... and I can't remember the last time I printed off a boarding pass or checked in at the airport. A smartphone can really be your best friend out in the world. If you lose it, you're screwed but then, if you lost your passport and cash, you'd be screwed too. With minimalism, it's not like you have to look after much while you're away, so look after this.
If you need something to keep money and cards in, I use this Bellroy Card Sleeve. Two cards, driving licence and a fistful of folded notes and it's still flatter than four Dairylea cheese slices stacked on top of each other. A genius piece of material engineering if ever I saw one:
(Maybe I should add this to my list of possessions from the previous post. Hmm.)
I don't think I left anything important out. Honestly, if you're going to take everything you have at home with you, what's the point in going anywhere? Get with the programme and see where it takes you.
Next: Minimalism In The Head
•••
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury
The Art Of Minimalism (1)
To make a change around here (and to focus myself), I thought I'd create a series of articles on minimalism and why it works for me... and maybe how it can work for some of you too. I'm not going to get all evangelistical on your ass but you know... if you can eek something out of it that's worth a damn, something positive has been achieved don't you think?
There's lots of information out in the online world about minimalism - it appears to be A Thing at the moment - then again, since the internet got switched on, everything is A Thing, right?
Minimalism isn't something you can pick up and put down - it's a way of life. A way of life that, if you do it thoughtfully, affords you so much freedom in the world, you'll wonder what hit you and why you didn't shrug off the junk earlier.
Minimalism started burrowing its way into my head about 13 years ago - before it had a 'name'. Life was so busy with kids, a job, money grief (you get the picture), I simply needed to turn the volume down. I read an article about some guy who was desperately trying to get his possessions down to 100 things, or maybe it was 50 - either way, it seemed an awful lot of stuff... I didn't even own that much at the time. So I came up with an arbitrary number (which was 12) and went for it - not by starting at the bottom with what I didn't need or want in my life, but at the top with what I did want. Some of those were practical, some were necessities and some really did make me happy. I don't even recall what was on that list anymore - that's how much 'the stuff' meant, but fast forward to today and my list of twelve items is still pretty solid.
Based on one of the most useful quotes of all time: "Don't have anything in your life that's not useful or you don't find beautiful", in no particular order, it currently looks like this:
1. Hector
2. 12 string guitar
3. MacBook/iPhone - does this count as one or two things? I could probably live without one of them if I had to
4. Car - because there's no point in freedom if you can't go anywhere
5. A pen - it matters more than you think
6. A suit - because sometimes you just have to
7. An internet/digital radio - a gift that I use more than I thought I would
8. Record player - plus some carefully curated vinyl
9. Bike - mountain variety
10. A big wooden chest - this is not full to the brim but currently holds things like: a box of photographs from when I was a kid that I can't decide what to do with and notebooks I use for writing. It's a work in progress.
11. A sword - recreational purposes
12. A bag - for travelling from Scaramanga (more on this in the next post)
and maybe: 13. A Japanese Maple - not sure if this counts. I like to think I'm just looking after it for the world
I also own some great art. Not much but listing it all down here, I see I obviously have more than 12 things, so let me go count...
•••
There are three great pieces of art now I count them and I think I can live with myself over that. My sins are not so great if I hit fifteen items of value in the world.
•••
Anyway, as you'll see, this list doesn't include one towel, one fork, one plate - that would be ridiculous. I have a family, a dog, a job... (notably things I want in my life) and they don't necessarily share my point of view. I simply wanted to be free from being trapped in a weird consumer culture that I never asked to be part of.
Time is precious - why spend it with people you don't want to or doing things you don't want to do? Best to spend it with the people you care about and on the stuff that's important... surely?
My downfall with minimalism is books. Despite a few purges over recent years, I still have far too many but I'm working on it. It's not something I wander around the house worrying about every day, but I know it needs doing - based mostly on the fact that I never read anything twice and therefore 99% of these books that surround me are thus rendered pointless.
Are they even books if they're not being read?
I'm going to figure this out by the end of the summer but my point here is to illustrate how easy it is to tie yourself to things. Maybe 'they show the world who I am' but that's an old version of me thinking. They don't really. Nobody comes round and nobody in the house ever marvels over my great collection of books, so who am I showing who I am to? The answer is probably myself, but like I said it's old thinking and it's hard to get out of.
I don't want to be defined by the things I bought. I want to be defined by what I do.
On the plus side, knowing I'm lying to myself is priceless.
But there's nothing in my list of possessions that doesn't contribute to either: doing what I want to do, participating in the things I love or taking care of the things I want to take care of. Basically, minimalism has allowed me to focus on the things that are important because I'm not distracted by the things that aren't.
The killing blow in all of this is that when you do it in the physical world, it echoes inside your head too. You get to be very good at habitually turning down the volume of the world when it gets too loud. I don't listen or watch the news (large scale events filter out regardless), I don't watch TV I don't want to watch just because it's on, I don't read a book to the end just because I started it if it's dull, I don't stay anywhere that doesn't inspire me... the list is long, but not endless - it's all achievable and the end result can be nothing less than a life lived on your own terms.
If you're game to throw in your all, give it a whirl. Make a list of the things you really want to keep around you and get the rest the hell out of your life. Then do it again... and again... and again until the exercise is painfully difficult on the grounds that there's not a lot left to make a list about.
Believe it or not, figuring out what to do with your possessions/junk is the easy part.
Questions welcome. Answers available. Maybe.
I'll leave you with this. I think it says just about all there is to say.
Next: Minimalism On The Road.
•••
"It's one thing not to live your own life
but another entirely not to die your own death"
Places I'd Like To Sit And Write One Day
This looks like a fine place to hide away for a couple of days and conjure up something about trees that go bump in the night or fish that creep in looking for snacks...
Thieves In The Temple
I've been in Warsaw for the last few days. A little part of me says it would be good to blog about my discoveries here but the larger part of me is much pleased that it's another big city under the belt for a chapter of Cities Of The Dead, so umm... too bad.
That makes six cities (I think): Milan, Paris, Brussels, Florence, New York, Copenhagen and Warsaw. That's seven... perhaps it's time to collate the work so far and throw out a pocket book sized volume. I'll look at that tomorrow I see how it shapes up. It's about time I put something new into the world.
Just before I headed out to Warsaw, I started taking the bookshelves apart looking for a travelling companion and found The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe. It's been on the shelf for a long time and I've never read it. I hate the title (it makes me think of horse racing - go figure) and for some reason it had lodged itself in there as a book that wasn't up my street at all. Which begged the question: why is the damn thing still here?
I read the inside flap again and it sounded OK. The copy I have is a nice edition too - it's part of the Penguin range whereby they got some cool tattoo artists to redesign book covers. I opened it up, read a couple of pages, read a couple more pages... and pretty soon, I had read a whole lot of pages because it's Really Quite Good. Go figure!
So now I'm just pissed at myself for not reading it sooner, but I am looking forward to sitting around in various plastic chairs in Europe and getting stuck in.
And now I must return to DareDevil on Netflix... because surely, surely, that's what you are all doing too. More later... aside from DD, things to do... books to build.
Nonstop To Nowhere
It's been a good day at the coal face. I had to get up early because it was small persons birthday. At 15, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep calling her that but I guess she'll always be a small person to me. Off she went to school as normal and I found myself with two hours I don't normally see before I had to be anywhere or do anything.
So I got to work. A book I thought might be dying at the back of my head was brought back to life because I decided to see what 'planning' did for it - whether it worked or not remains to be seen but working on a road map has certainly given it some direction that it didn't have before. I'm going to have to look harder and closer at this 'planning' thing - my brain treats the idea like somebody in the band just suggested we get a keyboard player in.
Shudder.
Then again, maybe the plan will turn out to be Jon Lord for the project. Filing under pending.
...and then I edited two more chapters of The Family of Noise. This book will see the light of day in April. Fact.
And if you happen to be looking for a great album to keep you company doing whatever it is you do, Us And The Night is the best album 3 Doors Down have released in years. A most welcome addition to the collection:
...more later.
The Comedy And The Tragedy
Sunday. A mega-ton of household jobs seem to have stacked up behind me. I wondered to myself whether Alice Cooper has household jobs stacking up behind him, but probably not because he never seems to be home. Being as he's on the road so relentlessly, maybe he has a housekeeper to take care of all the things that shouldn't really need taking care of because he's never there.
Anyway, I did them and figured I might just bomb out in the sofa before I go in for Round Two in front of The Typewriter Machine. I got to Channel 78,663 and there was nothing on - though I guess if I had gone back to the start, there would be different shows on to when I first begun. Instead, I decided to revisit something that used to make me happy beyond belief and I dropped on the Laurel and Hardy movie, Swiss Miss.
So far as I recall, they used to be a lot funnier than this. When the hell did Laurel and Hardy become unfunny? That's like asking when Aerosmith stopped being a giant killer of a band (except I know the answer to that: 1979). What can possibly have happened in the years since I used to roll around until my stomach hurt, that had me sit in front of the TV waiting for the movie to take over my nervous system?
Maybe they did get unfunny. Maybe it just wore off. Maybe comedy got sophisticated to a point that I can no longer go back to a more innocent time.
Or maybe I just got to be miserable - except I'm not. I was really game for it. Pensive, even.
Thats a real sad state of affairs. I'll try a few shorts from them across the week and so how they pan out, and if that doesn't work, I'll hunt down some Harold Lloyd movies and back them up with a couple from Will Hay just to be sure.
If none of those work either, I'm officially broken.
I don't tend to admire many writers these days but Karl Ove Knausgård is a huge exception for me. The world has dubbed him a literary sensation over the last few years but you know what... I suspect it could have equally gone the other way for him and he would still have carried on writing whatever he wanted. I not only like his books but I also like the way he puts himself across in interviews - which is just as honest as his novels.
This week there's a neat documentary on iPlayer in which Knausgård interviews/gets interviewed by neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh. If you're feeling cultural, it worth your time for a whole number of reasons.
But then you must go read at least the first ten pages of A Death In The Family. After that, you'll know if you're in the mood for thousands of pages of autobiographical revelation from the man. It's pretty addictive. There's also an extract here at The Vice.
Anyway, you have been warned.
Later this same day, this Great Dane came up for adoption. Sigh... what to do?
Not sure somebody else would be very impressed with a new house-mate though...
Finally today - this probably sums up more than any of us writers would care to admit and did make me laugh.
Check Grant Snider out on twitter @grantdraws
Books Attacked With A Knife
I want to learn the art of hacking up old books nobody loves anymore and making them into things of beauty... very much like this:
Or this...
And this...
A man could lose many hours of the day doing something like this - and aside from a little swordplay, almost everything else I do involves a screen. It looks complicated but it can't be insanely off-the-scale difficult because other people do it!
Consider it under investigation... but don't hold your breath over seeing any of my own paper carnage anytime soon. This might take some time.
Yesterday, I was digging around, taking a look at what cultural nourishment I could take in on a literary level in New York and discovered an event called The Franklin Park Reading Series out in Brooklyn.
So far as I can make out - and I believe my workings out to be pretty accurate - once a month, the event plays host to various up and coming writers (local and global) who then ummm... read. They've played host to writers like Kelly Link and John Wray and each event has a raffle in which people can walk away with books and literary merch.
I'm going to check it out while I'm out there - it falls at the right time - but then, I started thinking harder. Surely it's not a difficult thing to run? The concept is sound and while the South East of England may not be New York City, neither is it that far out of London to make it something feasible to get off the ground with a good chance of success.
Thus, this coming weekend, I shall begin scouting out some likely venues - I have two really good places in mind. There's no point sitting around and wishing there was a similar kind of platform. It looks very much to me like it's one of those things you need to get off your ass and actually do something about.
Sounds like a plan, right?
On a (slightly) similar note, one of the people who keeps track of things like this is Kate Gavin. She runs a tumblr called Last Night's Reading - go check it out - you'll know in about two minutes if it's something you'll get a kick out of in the long term.
Here's a clue simply because it's one of my favourites - and I agree with the statement itself one hundred percent.
That's about all I got today... be cool to each other.
Life: Reclaimed
As a part of my minimalist approach to life, this week I decided to add something instead of taking away. That thing is an alarm clock. It might not seem like a big deal, but 'installing' this little puppy at the side of the bed means I can leave those things otherwise delivered via wi-fi while I'm asleep downstairs and keep them the hell away from me first thing in the morning.
I'm quite liking the look of this. When it makes a noise, simply reach out and drop your hand on the button to silence it. I know it's a relatively simple thing not to see if you've had any messages while you were sleeping when you wake up... but I don't, so this is my solution.
The phone thing can stay downstairs in the fruit bowl with the bananas and the car keys and in my book, that's known as a good start.
I got wind of a new show this week that appears to be right up my street - though how it passed me by, I'll never know. Over on Sky Atlantic, Vinyl (from HBO) has recently started. I'm hoping it's got a touch of Californication about it but I'll take it at face value and funnel in news when I've tracked it down. I must know somebody with the damn station that can do magic.
If you happen to be wondering how the creation of words that will one day find their way into a book is going, it's going pretty good.
Slightly derailed by a magazine going to print across the next 24 hours, two birthdays within four days of each other, a dog haircut and a broken finger that seems to be getting worse instead of better, but it's going good.
I'm starting to think I should maybe take a trip to the doctor or hospital over this finger instead of my current method of home-surgery that makes use of those two well known traditional body fixers: fire and salt.
Maybe tomorrow.
Finally, gotta love a bear in the wild:
Feel free to share this page link around. Thanks.
How To Live A Life Worth Living
I broke a cardinal rule yesterday. I only went to the store to get milk and I came back with milk and a newspaper. I was standing in the queue for so long, I'd started to read the front page and figured I might as well pick it up for a closer look. Back home, I opened up the package of supplements, TV guides and fashion specials only to find nothing going on in the world that I hadn't already learned by osmosis and certainly nothing written with any style worth paying attention to.
So I guess I learned something yesterday.
Now and again, you might see something pretty neat happen in the world and think to yourself, ‘I’m going to take that on board.’
Such a thing looked me in the eye today when I read this news story about J.K. Rowling turning up (relatively) unannounced at a book reading at Orkney library. That’s called giving a damn right?
I forwarded the story to a friend who said “That’s easy to do when you’ve got £90 million sitting in the bank.” To be fair, at this point he was quick to follow it up with: “Then again, it’s pretty easy to do if you’ve got £900 sitting in the bank.”
And that dear readers, is the whole point. It’s also relatively easy to do with £90 in the bank (well maybe not all the way to Orkney), but the point is she could be bothered at all.
She could have sat at home watching the TV, gone out to dinner, hell… she could have spent the day having a wonderful time on a beach in Florida but she didn’t - she was engaged enough with people who were interested in her to be interested in return. That’s what I call a ‘class act’. That’s how you effortlessly paraglide yourself to being a legend without even trying. More people should be like this but they won’t be - I know people too well.
Shit, you could even be that person with £9 if you chose to be.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, this story has been Noted for all the right reasons - and I guess I learned something today as well.
Meanwhile, if you have a couple of hours spare in your life well lived and you like movies that are a little off the beaten track, Yosemite is a great watch.
James Franco is fantastic in it but the kids involved are even better. I'm liking Franco a lot lately, I even like his book - Palo Alto - a lot, that the critics seem to have panned into the ground since it was released:
There have been a lot of spiteful snowballs thrown over the fact that Palo Alto would never have got published if Franco didn't have a celebrity status, but hey... you can level that accusation at a lot of people - and you can also say that a lot of books by people with no celebrity status shouldn't have been published also. Regardless, I liked it and if you're here, I think you will too. The movie adaptation of Palo Alto is also kicking around on Netflix or Amazon... one of the two. I've not watched it yet, but I spotted it on there and I'll get around to it eventually.
Franco is a good role model if you're looking for somebody to admire who does his own thing regardless of what people say after the event.
And that's something else I learned today...
...which is quite enough education for one day don't you think.
Eight Grams And Other Tales of Darkness
There's a lot going on here this week. I found myself in a poetic place for one thing and filled a good portion of a new notebook with some quality work. It's all a little continuation of the poetry I've worked on before...which means work like this:
I'll be putting this out by myself through Bad Hare - and it shall be called Eight Grams, which according to popular science is the weight of the human soul. Now I've written that down, I get the feeling I may have mentioned it somewhere here before- apologies if I did. Then again, attention spans ain't what they used to be right?
I seem to have work backing up behind me like there's no tomorrow but something new will come out soon, I promise - and if it all happens to get finished around about the same time, so be it. I'm not looking anymore - I'm just 'doing it'.
Anyway, I was on a roll this afternoon and just when I had gotten to a part that was worth stopping over to make more coffee, I fumbled getting the pen back inside the cap, and dropped it on the floor: nib first.
It couldn't have landed any more vertically if I'd thrown it.
Hot damn, that was the best pen I had for writing. Super-fast flow and everything - my finger tips have even shaped themselves to its body.
Which is probably why a samurai always carries two swords... but when I picked up my second sword, I found that I haven't used it for so long, the ink had dried up inside of the nib. There are probably other crappy pens around the house I'm sure but it's not the same. It's like deciding to drive a few hundred miles in somebody else's car.
Some time later, I discovered that you can buy replacement nibs. Why didn't I know this before? If replacement nibs are available, I'm thinking that the smart thing to do is to get two fast flow nibs and then I'll have two sharp swords to head into battle.
That my friends, is a thing known as 'A Plan'.
Or as my mother would say: "If that's all you have to worry about, things are probably OK."
On the other work-table right now, I'm talking to Robert Borbas and somewhere amongst all of the talk, we should come up with a feature article of some worth. I love what this man does. If you made me point a finger at somebody I thought had the future of his world in the palm of his hand, he would be it. When you're putting out work like this, you don't have to answer to anybody:
Off skin, his work is just as fine:
If you're in the market, you can find him right here - though I guess you might have to wait a while.
OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF:
If you're in the mood for a movie that will raise your spirits and not crash it brutally onto the rocks towards the end, I've just watched The Dark Horse - and it's a wonderful and beautiful piece of work. You can find it for rent in the iTunes store but that was the extent of my lust to find it - if you're not an iTunes kind of person, it's likely around somewhere. More importantly, who knew a movie about chess could stop you from hitting the pause button, stop you from making coffee and hunting down snacks... or even blinking for that matter.
Away from the beaten track of the multiplex and the industry wheels that make you watch things you didn't really want to, there's magic happening if you choose to look.
In other news of things to buoy your spirits along the way to a watery grave, the new Sixx AM album - Prayers For The Damned - is coming down the line (though not fast enough for my liking) - it's available as a pre-order at your usual pre-order places with the track 'Rise' already out in the world for your delight and testimony. I love it. When it lands, it will look like this:
Meanwhile, over at the place in which you used to hide under the blankets with a torch into the early hours of the morning, John Connolly's new Charlie Parker novel - A Time Of Torment - is also coming and due to land April 7th. The cover looks like this... and for the record, the comment on the front from The Independent does not lie:
With the two things I really look forward to in any given year both out around the same time, the world had better get its act together or it could be a long, desolate summer leading into a long cold winter.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas."
George Orwell | Down And Out In Paris And London
Crouching Flu Virus, Hidden Music
Oh brother... taken down by some kind of flu for a couple of days. I don't normally do the 'sick' thing but this one got me good and proper. One minute, I was all prepared to cover the world with fire and ice, the next I was lying on the sofa like a soap opera tragedy wondering what I'd done that was so bad to have clay injected into muscles I didn't know I had.
I think two days is long enough to let any disease have its way with a kindly host though, so we're ignoring it now. It can hang around if it really wants to but let's see how it copes with a diet of nothing but caffeine and nicotine. Surely a more inhospitable environment in which to thrive cannot be found this side of Vesuvius?
Still, being taken down a peg or two in your own head can be quite handy. I didn't think about writing anything at all for those two days and happened to write quite a lot by accident. I also 'accidentally' watched some YouTube videos about how to make your own book completely from scratch - not sure I want to get into that but it's very cool seeing other people doing neat stuff. Maybe that should say, 'I'm not sure I have the talent for that' as all of them were great artists regardless of whether they made their own books or not. Thanks to Jonathan Carroll for that nugget - and if the name means nothing to you, you should go seek him out. Immediately.
Back in the land of something akin to normal, I saw today that netflix are about to launch an originally commissioned movie sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon called Sword of Destiny. It debuts on Friday and if it's anything even close to the original, all bets are off. TV as we know it will be officially dead. It even has a proper poster - they didn't have to commission one I guess, but they did:
OK, so there's not a whole lot of work gone into it, but it's little steps in the right direction that's for sure. Then again, I don't recall the original poster being something to write home about either. The movie itself though... that's a whole other story.
Consider the bar raised. In theory at least...
I got myself in the mood for some new/old vinyl too. Odds on it appearing within 24 hours: slim - but it will be something to behold when it does arrive. What is it? It's a reasonably pristine copy of Young Man's Blues by Rock City Angels. If you weren't in the loop back in 1987 (ish), you missed a treat. Popular rumour has it the band were signed up by Geffen in order to bury them from being in competition with Guns n Roses - and maybe that was smart thinking. If you believed the hype that GnR were the most destructive band in the world, it's a good thing that nobody ever gave Rock City Angels too much money to prove otherwise.
In my opinion, they were a far superior band - and not that it's hugely relevant but in their early days, Rock City Angels were once home to Johnny Depp too. If you need proof of life, here:
Anyway, this album was a tough find but there are copies out there. They appear to have released some other material along the way but nothing at the level of Young Man's Blues - and I'm very much looking forward to it being part of my life again.
I'm pretty sure there are bands this good out there today (there must be) but why do they insist on hiding from me?
Little By Little...
I spent a couple of hours yesterday watching a Twisted Sister documentary on Vimeo. It’s the best £4 I’ve handed over in a long time. Great band and a great documentary too. You know already if you want to watch it, so let’s move on… oh wait, let me drop the movie poster in here because it makes me smile and takes me back to a more innocent time:
Yesterday was majorly productive. I put the latest issue of The Mag to bed around lunchtime so I can forget about that for a day or so - though I guess I had best start work on the next one pretty soon - and turned back to a radio show idea I’ve been working on since the death of my 'if you blinked, you missed it' podcasting idea of a few months back. Over the last few weeks I've been gathering tracks and rearranging them over and over in iTunes until I was happy I had enough material for six shows.
And now I do. With the assistance of GarageBand, I built the first show, ironed out some creases and generally created an environment in which I could pull the other shows together reasonably quickly. If you’ve never done anything like this yourself, you’ll be amazed at exactly how much time it chews up, so this was an important step. It’s probably incorrect in every way imaginable and I would hate to parade my methods in front of a producer, but hey - that sort of thing never stopped me before. Hell, I even got it together enough to find a platform it could be broadcast and syndicated from - that was no mean feat either.
I’m hoping to have a cache of shows ready to roll and grow into by the end of the month, which is about the time they’ll hopefully start broadcasting too. I’ll post an update when I know some more. It’s worth me mentioning here too that this show probably won’t feature what you’re expecting from me. Kind of, but not quite. No spoilers.
What else happened? Oh yeah… I was starting to think the book I had planned for late (very late) this year - Cities of the Dead - had fallen into a crevice it couldn’t climb out of but then, as if by magic, I got a request to head out to Warsaw. I’ve never been and am very, very much looking forward to it - that’s in four weeks time, so that will be here before I know it too. There’s work to do while I’m there, of course there is, but there will be holes in which I can investigate life for the book.
If you missed that post, Cities of the Dead is a collection of travel writing - my style. Its completion has always been dependent on getting around the planet to make it happen, so this is a big step in the right direction. I think that tips me just over half way with it.
Backtracking a little here - while I was hunting down the Twisted Sister movie, I saw a trailer for a movie called Minimalism. It’s made by the two guys who have made blogging, writing, podcasting, internet celebrity careers out of the subject. I like what they do a lot even though I think - considering they're the two best known minimalists in the western world - they still own far too much stuff. What kind of minimalist takes a hairdryer on a ten month road trip? It wasn’t even the guy who has the most hair that packed it… it was the other one... the one with something like three inches of hair! I’m not passing judgement, honestly I’m not, but really? A hairdryer?
Anyway, Minimalism is about excluding the things in your life that are of no use to you. ‘Owning stuff’ is not ‘living your life’. That's a true and liberating fact. As I’ve pointed out before, when it comes to your precious belongings, when you die, some fucker will only come along and throw it all away now you're not looking.
I still find it a little odd that when people talk about minimalism, they bandy around figures like ‘150 things’ being a good goal to aim for. It’s not a good goal at all. It’s a lazy goal in every way imaginable. If you’re game for the actual commitment of minimalism, 50 things is a good first goal. If you can get down to 50 things you absolutely must have in your life, you can certainly get down to a fluctuating 20 over the next few months.
20 things that mean something to you. It can be done. We're not talking cutlery in the drawer, shampoo on a shelf or a toolbox under the sink. We all have lives to live and stuff to take care of - we're talking 50 items that add value to your life. Go. Go now and make room in your house, in your head and your life. It's incredibly liberating. When you've done 50, you can do 20 because you are not the accumulation of everything you have gathered around you.
You are a spirit and a soul - not a storage unit for the universe.
Everything else is just noise.
The movie looks great though. Here’s the poster for it:
Quote of the Day:
“Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the day. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of your life.”
<Yarrow Kraner>
The Blackout Project - Bruce Springsteen (1)
Holy cow. My head hurts this week. Last weekend I spent a grand total of thirteen hours in my own company in the car during which we had a good long talk about some things that had been bothering us and I don't think I've fully recovered. We ironed most of our issues out and got home itching to pull all of the irons out of the fire and shake them at the moon but as soon as I walked in the door, Hector demanded to go out (it was 2 a.m.) and after that, The Gods sucked all of the oxygen out of the room and I collapsed into something that looked like a man in sheep's clothing that had fallen from the sky and died on the floor.
Anyway, once the house had rebalanced itself, some of the things we spoke about made it onto the kitchen table. Yes, the kitchen table is looking busier than ever with unfinished projects - there's no chance of eating on it - but thats fine, fine, fine. It wouldn't be much fun looking at the kitchen table and finding nothing but bananas and a pepper grinder on there. That would make me very miserable indeed. I'll take this mess any day of the week because sooner or later, it will filter out into something worthwhile.
In the cracks of everything else on the table here, I've (apparently) been working on a book of poetry too. It's asking to be called Eight Grams, which suits me just fine. Do people still read poetry? There seems to be a healthy subculture of people calling themselves poets out there - and delivering on it too - so I guess there is indeed interest, though it is not my place to comment on its quality. I saw a quote the other day that went along the lines of 'The last thing the world needs is more bad poets'. While this is true, the thing the world needs even less of, is poetry 'belonging' to a secret elite club outside of which experimenting with words is frowned upon. For me, it's always been whatever strikes a chord and I have little doubt it's the same for everybody else who ever picked up a book (of any description) and gotten along with it.
I posted an extract from it called She Used To Listen To Police Radio At Night a while back. When it all starts coming together like a cake looking like you need to pull it out of the oven, I'll post some more. That wasn't what I was going to hit you with though... here:
During The Car Ride, I had an idea to rustle up some Blackout Poetry - which is a real thing - and what better place to begin a such a series, than with a book on how Bruce Springsteen acted as the soundtrack to your life (not mine). It doesn't need much explanation beyond the actual pictures and there's more to come now it's useless as an actual book - and no, I don't feel bad about the destruction. It was 99 pence in HMV - I even read it all the way to the end and it's very good. Anyway, here's the book cover:
...and here's the annihilation of the chapter titled 'Jesus Was An Only Son':
Share away wherever you wish - and yes, you're right. I do need a Sharpie if I'm going to do more. This was done with a 0.5 fine-liner and I won't be doing that again. A ruler might not go amiss either.
So, given there's big piles of paper everywhere, I had best get on with making it into something that somebody else (like you) might want to see one day, so I'll leave you with this picture of Hector at the beach:
Sometimes it really is like taking a circus pony out for a walk.
Quote of the Day:
“Poor is the mind that always uses the ideas of others and invents none of its own.”
<Hieronymus Bosch>
Footnote: I would like to point out that other writers are likely to have even more unfinished projects than I in their lives - I just like to talk about them... maybe I shouldn't. The notebook stacks are nothing but the fallout of working longhand with ancient instruments. Files on a machine do not take up space and are not what I class as 'work'.
Unless it's me posting here on my own blog, in which case it very much is.
End of footnote.
Footnote 2: The irony of the quote of the day and the stealing of a page from the Springsteen book is not lost on me, but I shall let it stand in the same post because 95% of the world don't get irony and it may be educational.
The Returned
Hello. I haven’t blogged for a little while and damn I’ve missed it. In that time, I have also come to the conclusion I don’t like any of the social media portals out there. Micro blogging is not for me, so if you want to keep up, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to come back here with me. I would dig up the trenches and tell you why I don’t like any of them, but honestly - I don’t want to waste any more time thinking about it. I’ll keep twitter rolling because it suits my needs to let people know when I’ve posted something here but other than this tiny concession, I’m pretty much dusted with it, so let’s move along the bus and forget anything ever happened anywhere else. A reminder that you can sign up to have posts delivered to your inbox is here and there’s a newsletter as infrequent as you like that you should sign up for here as that’s where you’ll find things of value whenever I publish something.
So that’s that wood in the hole. A quick word or two on what’s going on around here would probably be useful as well as I haven’t written anything of value on that for some time. There are books in the pipeline. I can’t physically write any faster than I am but they’re coming… and that is also the end of that - for now.
Also up front and centre in the house these days is my decision to go back to a paleo diet after having some decent success with it last year - or at least until Christmas came along bringing The Chocolate Monster in its wake. I’ll log the progress of it in posts here because I figure it might be interesting.
The backstory? I’m tired of eating shit, I’m tired of being a little overweight and I’m tired of being tired. I think I’m clocking in at close on 14 stone (which isn’t that bad) but before I tried it out last year, I was very close on 15 stone. When I committed to it, I lost a stone without thinking about it and seem to have kept it off, though Hector and his incessant need to go out helped with that, lending full weight to the theory that if you want to lose weight, get a dog… one that won’t let you get away without taking it out three times a day.
What I want to do now is simply build a lifestyle change - not adopt a ‘diet’ - and the basic paleo concept works for me. The goal is to get myself down to 13 stone, but that sounds too light for me. I am not a skeletal person underneath this skin and hair but 13 stone is a good goal to have in order to make sure I put the work in and I’ll be happy if I fluctuate between that and 13 and a half in the long term. For the record, the last time I weighed in at 12 and half stone was about twenty three years ago - when I was broke, didn’t have a car and ran on adrenalin and coffee. It’s easy to keep the weight off using those rules but who the hell would want to go back to that?
Anyway, if the term is new to you, a paleo diet is supposed to be based on eating the kinds of things pre-historic man would eat. The books don’t tell you that our ancestors probably also ate leaves, grass and sick relatives when food was scarce though, so really, it means nothing more than eating properly. If you can’t catch it, dig it up or pick it off a tree - don’t stick it in your mouth. I think the problem comes for people when they lie to themselves about what ‘properly’ entails.
There will not be pictures - not of me in my pants that’s for sure.
Currently Reading:
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Damn it’s good. Frightening but good - the contents of which only microscopically influenced the information in the first paragraph here. If you’re an addict to the social networks out there and the havoc they can rain down on people when they’re least expecting it, it’s fascinating. In all likelihood, it’s probably just as fascinating if you’re not. If you’re a stranger to Ronson, this is as good a place as any to begin and if you like what you see, flip back in time to check out The Men Who Stare At Goats… after that, you’re on your own.
The Witch
I came across a movie called The Witch that’s headed down the line (March 11th) - it’s got a great rumble behind it, with a lot of people saying nice things (which we’ll take with a pinch of salt) and a solid cast too. Grabbing my attention mostly, aside from the main movie poster that looks like this:
...are these two other poster variants backing it up - which I like a whole lot more than the main art but you can see why they’d use it over these:
I don't often look forward to a lot of movies but this one has me intrigued. Here's the official trailer - decide for yourself, but it looks markedly different to the usual fare.
Time will tell...
The official movie site is right here.
Mr Rollins On Discipline...
No idea what this book was called but that was the only good thing in it.