A is for Annoying

Not long ago, it came to my attention that i have some rather irritating trends in my work. Namely, the names. Titles, i mean. My first "slew" of books all begin with "A." Achilles Forjan, Armchair Detective, As You Were, Another Justice. . .I'm not sure if it's some deep-seated Alphabetical Addiction, or merely a subconscious belief that my writing is still at the beginning. . .perhaps i am working my way through the alphabet, like some popular mystery writers (A is for Annoying).

Now that would be sufficient to vex me, but i also noticed the the covers i designed for Achilles Forjan and Armchair Detective, both have vehicles on them. And As You Were has the image of a two lane highway....My best friend says she thinks it is my subconscious need to "go somewhere." Looks like i need a vehicle for a trip away from A's. In fairness, i do have other books that don't begin with "A." Operation: Utopia, The Curse of Madagascar, It's About Time, Brainmatter, Yin & Yang....but the A-list is the one that's closest to print or in print right now, so I'm ultra-aware of it. I considered changing the titles to some, but just didn't feel right about it. So I'm just going to let that go, and be mindful henceforth. A is now for AWARENESS.

A is for Annoying

Artistic Angst

Certain situations and combination of events and feelings coincide and then all existential hell breaks loose in me. I've gotten off on a track of thinking that has led me to this point of stress, angst, emotional upheaval. Partly, the stress stems from this Guitar Bar idea becoming more about me, and less about the venue. More pointedly, the stress of defining myself. Identity markers. Strip away those and we fall apart, evaporate, cease to exist or are merely taking up space.

How do we stay balanced in our understanding of success? Is success represented by money?
by acknowledgment of others?
by happiness?
by how many people love us?
by our contribution?
does it matter to someone?
does it matter to a great many someones?

Perhaps I should never make my artistic endeavors a source of income. Perhaps I should just be what I am: retired. . . someone who enjoys writing and recording music for friends or to give as gifts, creating art, writing books, and going to flea markets and buying and selling on eBay. . .I have a peaceful environment, plenty to keep me interested and busy; a few close friends, pets I adore, the ability to walk around outside in beautiful surroundings and take a deep breathe and just be in the moment.

The only thing that's missing for me, then, is the right "someone" to share it with. But my standards are so high, that my odds are low. I have to cling to the belief that the universe has a wisdom beyond my comprehension, and when it is time for my person to waltz into the room, she will, and i won't be OUTSIDE in my beautiful surroundings, taking deep breaths and being in the moment.

Artistic Angst

32 Hours Slaving Over a Hot Pinch Roller

In an effort to prove myself more than a relationship obsessive, i shall tell all readers that i have spent the last two days doing something other than thinking about sex, talking about sex, or having sex...

After 32 hours of intensive labor, creative juice-flowing, cursing, knob turning, crawling under my desk to attach and re-attach various cords, researching glitches, posting to homerecording.com and existing wholly on sunflower seeds, Hazelnut coffee with Vanilla Carmel creamer and various finger foods....i now have completed TWO whole songs for my EP. This is one of an endless catalogue of EP's i intend to offer up to the Muses as a legacy before my number comes up. It's been too long coming. I've threatened to put my nose to the old pinch roller and get this done since...well since i bought my very first multi-track recorder years ago. But life has a way of interrupting, even when you are one of the lucky ones who don't have to go to the usual day job. But i recognize the intrinsic value of putting my hands and mind and spirit toward creative endeavors; not doing so usually summons up the demons in my head, and the pitfalls in my life.

Later, I'm gonna work on another edit of my recently completed final (i-mean-it-this-time) draft of my latest novel, and maybe paint a picture.

I feel better already.

Now, back to those 32 hours, slaving over a hot Tascam 424 MKIII....

I am, by nature, a fiercely independent sort, and i prefer to be in charge of the entire process of birthing my creative children. My music is no exception. Along with this creative tyranny, i have to take the good and the bad. The bad always seems to be about some equipment malfunction or my lack of expertise in making it function, some doo-dad or gizmo that i have yet to shell out the money for, or simply that dealing with these variables tends to squish my creativity into something that looks like it should be on my windshield. I conquered all of these things, and now am feeling just a little pleased with myself. Although when i listened to the mixdowns today, i naturally found a few things that need tweaking. Something will always need tweaking. It's just good to know when to stop tweaking and wave bye-bye. Let it be let it be let it be.

I'm not at that point of acquiescence, yet.

32 Hours Slaving Over a Hot Pinch Roller

Put THAT in Your Pipe

What with all the new age channeling going on, (allowing non-physical entities to speak through them) I've had to decide how I feel about it. . .because, you know, there can be nothing in my experience left misunderstood. . .

Aside from the Channels who are obvious charlatans, I believe there are some who are authentic (a truth that crosses over many boundaries and into many situations). In my endeavors to understand this phenomenon, I've had to take the beliefs I had in place and add any new beliefs I've come to; and I've come to this:

I am a channel, too. But I don't channel Abraham or Ramtha, The Enlightened One. I channel my Muse. Each time I embark upon a creative endeavor, I channel. Each time I have an inspiration, I channel. Each time I understand something on a profound level, figure out one of life's great mysteries, or make a decision at the grocery about "paper or plastic," I channel. (okay, the last one was added for levity, I don't consider my choice of grocery bags an enlightened epiphany. . .)

But I channel. And you channel. And everyone CAN channel.

When I set about creating the things I create—whether in the area of music, art, or writing, or giving a massage, or helping a friend figure some conundrum out, I am tapping in to that channel that we all have as spiritual beings, having a human experience. When I get any inspiration, it comes from SOMEWHERE. Call it inspiration or Muse or non-physical energy or collective consciousness . . . it comes from higher self—from collective unconscious, from God.

Abraham or Ramtha or just smartness from a human brain or mind. . .are all pulled from the same Source. It is often referred to, as a matter of fact, as "Source." The only difference is its manifestation; how the information presents itself. If someone is seeking and meditating, and some other consciousness appears and introduces itself or names itself, that is Source. If someone is seeking and meditating, and has the experience of epiphany, that is also source. There really is no fundamental difference, other than how it manifests itself, and in what form.

For instance, I might take a lump of clay on a potter's wheel, and make a large vase or I might also make a plate; it really depends on what the inspiration is—it's still the same clay, taking different forms. It's still Source.

If this is so, then we don't need those "middle-men"—those 'tweeners who try to make us believe that we can have nothing of God or higher consciousness without them. In other words, a priest is not a conduit to God. WE are the conduit to God. We are, in a very real sense, GOD. We all come from the same Source, the same essence, and so we are all portions of that Source, manifested in physical form, in a particular time-space continuum.

Put THAT in your pipe, and smoke it.

Put THAT in Your Pipe

Kairos

I've been working on Baggage all day. Made some good progress with the language, the prose aspects. Spent time finding more specific ways to convey different aspects. And I've been integrating everything from random musings to dreams into the book, too. Snippets of conversations that play out in my head when I'm about to doze off....

I discovered this fabulous word today::: Kairos. (kay-ross). It's an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment" or "God's time." It's that undetermined time "in between" linear time in which something "special" happens....i used it in the manuscript today, even though i knew most people would have no idea what it meant.

Ironically, it resonated with me so much because i feel i am in Kairos lately.

Kairos

My Muse Still Breathes

All authors get to a point in their writing life, where they feel they have plumbed the depths of the well the Muse provides, and begin to doubt that they have anything else to offer. This is usually a case of stagnation within the mileu of new experience. Without new input, new contrasts in our day to day lives, we can only reiterate what we have already learned.

I had reached this point a few weeks ago. I feared that the 12 books I have in print and the 2 I'm almost finished with, were to be the last. I couldn't imagine having another fresh idea, even though I had just completed an entirely fresh novel from start to finish (Baggage). This book wasn't based on anyone I knew, and it had no personal experiences in it. I want to have an equal number of mainstream books as I do "gay" ones, to increase my chances of finding a mainstream publisher or agent. So I've been trying to break away from the need to write about only gay characters. I also needed to write without the temptation of including numerous sex scenes. It can sometimes be a cop-out to do that. So Baggage had no Gay characters, none of them inspired by anyone I knew, including myself, no scenes that were based on something that happened to me or anyone else in my life. It was entirely new. So I was pleased to have accomplished that goal.

But then, as I was about to complete the other few I had not finished, it occurred to me that I had no more tidbits after that, in my writing files, from whence to nurture and develop a new story. I spent so many years writing portions of books and then putting them away, that I had plenty to work with.

The day came when I was nearing completion of all those old projects, and was faced with the impending task of creating something entirely new.

As the days wore on, I still couldn't think of anything, still couldn't find inspiration that would give me the new book. So I let go of it. Not for long, just a few days, and asked my subconscious mind each night to provide something in my sleep. Dreams have always been a rich source of material for me. From the odd short story, The House of Escher, (included in the collection, "Brainmatter") to any number of springboard scenarios that became various novels, my dreaming mind could always serve up something new and interesting.

I knew I needed to focus on other things and other people, and try to break out of my routine for awhile. I created about 7 new paintings, (Shown on left) having been inspired by the work of Russian artist, Wassily Kandinski, and watched a lot of TV and movies, and read about 3 new Koontz novels, since he has been such a mentor to me. I have studied his writing for a long time, because I wanted to understand how he managed to provide so much reading pleasure. I have actually figured out how he accomplished this on many levels, and that has been helpful to my writing in many ways. I hoped that reading him again, and getting all this other input, would stir something up.

It did.


My best friend and I had been talking about the concept of Walk-ins, and I had read some material about it out of curiosity. Then, after having headaches everyday lately, and some blurred vision, I had a tragic fantasy that my eyesight might be in danger. That led me to consider that I hadn't ever written about a blind character.


After that, I had this image in one of my dreams, of a woman standing on a precipice. She is shot in the shoulder and falls into the void. That was not a dream that was much fun to wake up from, since the woman was myself. While I suspect it was some subconscious fear that my love life has been killed by the lack of hope, and I feel I am about to descend into some romantic void, I ignored this in favor of using it for fodder.

Then, I used a method that had worked for me before: taking previous seedlings of unrelated ideas and putting them together to see what happened. It's kind of like creative cooking. You know that certain things go together, but then you throw in a few things to see if it tastes different or better.

From this collection of disparate ideas, my muse baked me something new.

I now have the seedlings for a new book, and am working on it along with completing the two novellas in progress. (Those--Quintessence and Another Justice--should be available in November). The new book, is as yet untitled, but that always reveals itself in the writing, unless I have begun with the title itself.

The blurb I have so far, concerning what the book is to be about, is:

"A non-physical walk-in soul makes an agreement with another incarnated soul to take over her body. The Walk-in, perhaps too fearless, and too hungry for the pleasures of the flesh, discovers she has inherited the life of a Morman goody-two-shoes who is live-in caregiver for two men--one blind, the other wheelchair bound.

And someone is trying to kill her."

My Muse still breathes.

My Muse Still Breathes

No, the Other Baggage...

I sat down with my coffee and noticed no mail yet from the source of my current vexation. Within 5 minutes, (last night after our phone call, I sent the txt: Thank u for being u. I get a text from her- Got ur txt. : Training 2day, No email. grr. I text back: Rats! Guess I'll work on writing, music, sculpture & my self. Have a good day! . . .

So I'm spending the day trying to be productive. I have to stop obsessing on this woman. Baggage still needs another 20,000 words or more, unless I'm going to let it be a novella. It did occur to me yesterday that I might consider writing novellas. . .i have this idea that I have to write full-length novels because that's what "real writers" do and with the idea that potential publishers/agents won't take it seriously if you don't. . .well, it's not like they've been beating down my door. I've been doing it all myself. And then there's the argument I make frequently, that a book should only be long enough to tell the story. I don't believe in "padding" as I think it contradicts the act of creation. . .so. IF it becomes clear that Baggage is complete before it reaches standard length, I guess I'll have to let it be a novella. I'm also trying to get A Random Act of Blindness done. It needs to at least double in size to even be able to reach novella size in order to print it in paperback. It's around 50 pages, and needs to be at least 100.

No, the Other Baggage...

Crush

Sometimes I wonder if I'll get through it~
this solitude foisted upon me by fate.

I wonder why she doesn't call me?
Must I do everything?
and nothing

Even when everything feels like nothing,
and nothing, everything?

Crush

Already (poem)

I already love her mind.
I already love her words.
I already love the parts of herself she reveals to me in herds
of raw, broken, struggling, yet
completely filled vessels of hope and
understanding. I'm not demanding
totally sodden with angst,
yet pure, unfettered, passionate, real.
A bargain on hearts, today, mine's a steal.

I don't know where this thing will go
knowing, yet knowing, I cannot know
wishing and hoping, that floating hope
I'm holding the wrong end of the rope
relating the angst of the things we do
feeling connection, connection anew
reaching for content, my spirit breaks through
I could fall for someone a lot like you.

Already (poem)

Unsocked (poem)

T'was the night before day
folding laundry with care
I found bunches of socks
But no matching pair.

These stockings were hung in a bag on the door
a clever device where my socks could be stored.
But somewhere between being dirty & clean
the socks seperated and haven't been seen
when not long ago I had a full set
now I have stragglers and I'm so upset

I've searched behind the washer and dryer
I've searched down low then higher and higher
yet no matter where I look for these socks
I won't get to find them 'til one of them talks.

Then there's the mystery of changes in hue
one black one, one charcoal, one brown and one blue
They seem to match, except for the color
one keeps its brightness and another gets duller

When unloading them one always looks better
In spite of washing them all together.
Should I buy a new pack to solve all my troubles,
throw out the singles? or keep them for doubles?

How do I fathom the escaping attire?
where do socks go 'tween the washer & dryer?
And why only one of each pair disappears?
why don't they vanish along with their peers?

I suspect it's a plot by the sock industry-
If you keep losing one You'll buy new ones, you see.
I'm completely dumbfounded and left with no clue
as Unsocked mysteries Often will do

But They do go on feet (no riddle to unravel)
I suppose socks were just meant to travel.

Unsocked (poem)