I finished a new book last summer and, in an inexplicable fit of delusion, I decided to try to have it published traditionally and submitted it to several independent publishers.
Yeah, guess how that’s gone so far…
Anyway, in the interim since finishing that presently wayward and unwelcomed novel, I have been unable to home in on a new story to which I would be willing to commit a year or so of intellectual effort/struggle.
I don’t know how it goes for you, but for yours truly, writing does not come easy and it is one long angst-ridden struggle. Hence my saying, which occasionally serves here as a tag line but at present is on the bench:
Writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime.
Lately, to nourish the parched creative side of my brain, I have taken to music – no, I still cannot play any instrument beyond my ability to torture three unfortunate chords or so on an acoustic guitar.
I decided to would try to reimagine my novels, their themes, or perhaps even scenes within them, as songs. The first novel I choose to contemplate rhythmically was Rainy Season.
Love hurts, as they* say, and Rainy Season makes every effort to live up to the truth of this wellworn saying.
So I wrote a sad, desperate song to express how the sad, desperate novel strikes me.
To help further express this sad, depressing Expressionistic Rainy Season vision of mine, I decided to include a visual element to it.
So I turned to French director Jean Epstein’s haunting 1928 silent film “La chute de la maison Usher,” which itself is a filmic expression of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic masterpiece “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and which, conveniently for me, recently entered the public domain – the film, I mean, because surely all of Poe’s work has been in the public domain for many, many o’ moons.
For you nerds who like to know, to edit and adapt the film to the song, I used DaVinci Resolve, also for the iPad (the free version of course).
So, are there more music/videos to come?
Maybe, at least until I come up with an idea for a new novel (redundancy intended).
Lately, ever since the earthquake succeeding, apocalyptic-inducing solar eclipse in fact, it has been nothing but blustery low-pressure days of rain and wind and dark gloomy clouds in my secluded hilly hood down in Southern Pennsyltucky.
Well, we all know how those old saws go – In like a lion and out like a lamb, and April showers bring May mosquitos, or something to that effect, so it is all to be expected, climate change notwithstanding.
But today is beautiful and warm and full of promise and Vitamin D.
Just imagine, after traveling 93,000,000 miles (149,668,992 km for those of you not of the Imperial mindset) or so, those sun’s rays are still so warm and toasty and lovely to the touch.
Time to go out and touch a few of ’em all while shaking our money makers to Mr. Johnny Nash’s greatest hit…
It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day…
As a tribute to celebrate our worship of the sun, free books.
Usually that’s okay because he is such a great storyteller, one, I believe, who (whom?) deserves to be appreciated literarily well beyond the horror genre. Few can convey the human condition, its perils, its pleasures, as well as he.
But, to me, his overzealous output of words is always a fine line issue because, even though I usually finish any novel of his that I attempt to read/listen to, the ones that I don’t finish are always because I become overwhelmed by what to me seemsan abusive overwriting of character and plot asides, a la…
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Even four years after the sudden death of his wife, best selling novelist Mike Noonan can’t stop grieving, nor can he return to his writing. Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, he decides to return to Sara Laughs, the Noonans’ isolated summer home. In his beloved Yankee town, he finds himself falling in love with a widowed young mother, who struggles to keep custody of her 3-year-old daughter. He is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here – and what do they want of Mike Noonan?
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Bag of Bones is a perfect example of this. Weighing in at a hefty 752 pages it is immensely overwritten in my blurry view. However, the story is limber and sinewy enough that I was able to make it through to the final round.
I know, I know, enough of the boxing metaphor. I get it.
Another example of an overwrought novel of his, you ask?
Well, funny you should ask because I just finished fighting my way through one…
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A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:
“Edgar, does anything make you happy?” “I used to sketch.” “Take it up again. You need hedges…hedges against the night.”
Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.
The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural: Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
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Duma Key maintains the unbelievable fighting weight (sorry, I can’t seem to shake the blasted metaphor) of 783 pages! Strangely enough though, it doesn’t seem quite as flabby as BoB.
Now, as one would assume, these books are for all intents and purposes horror novels; ergo, I listened to them instead of reading them, for, to me, horror is served best via the ear versus the eyes. You know, ghost stories around the campfire vibe and all that.
One of the best attributes of BoB as an audiobook is that the King himself reads it. He’s a fantastic narrator, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all having to read all the extraneous words he wrote.
Duma Key is narrated exquisitely by none other than John Slattery. The only problem with him as narrator is I could never get Roger Sterling out of my head while listening.
And if you don’t know who Roger Sterling is, then take a lap!
The deceased author William Gay, that is, not the former professional football cornerback William Gay.
Well, William Gay the cornerback may also be a literary genius, I’m just not aware of it.
But I am aware that Nic Pizzolatto is too a genius, at least of the screenwriting variation, as is evidenced by his hugely popular HBO series True Detective.
I watched season one of True Detective as soon as it was released, what… nearly ten years ago now.
I liked it. Maybe not as much as many seemed to have at the time, and certainly not as much as I like season two (I know, I know… I’m woefully in the minority on this one – I have never been much of a fan of Woody Harrelson’s acting, and I thought Matthew McConaughey’s character was a bit over the top), but I liked it enough to dig into the particulars of its development.
Which is when I discovered Nic Pizzolatto.
And which is when shortly thereafter I discovered Thomas Ligotti…
As this highly misanthropic madman (both literally and literarily) genius author was a huge influence on NP and his creation and development of MM’s forlorn and highly misanthropic character Detective Rustin “Rust” Cohle.
Come to find out there is an actual philosophical movement, however slight (hopefully), that actual believes that, for the sake of humanity, I guess, humanity needs to be disappeared.
Apparently, NP was so influenced by Tl that some/many believed he plagiarized the immensely pessimistically nihilistic author for much of MM/Cohle’s dialogue.
I can understand why (while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, I do not condone plagiarism of any stripe), TL’s short stories are some of the most awesomely horrific stories I have ever read/listened to, and I truly appreciate NP for turning me on to the human depressant…
Although, to date, I have not yet been able to make it all the way through his anti-humanity book. It’s too depressing, simple as that.
Incidentally, during Joe Rogan’s last interview with Elon Musk recently, I was surprised to discover, seeing how well informed they both always seem to be, that neither of them seemed to be aware of TL or of his influence on NP or of the whole down with humanity philosophy as they first heard about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement in a less than recent New York Times article entitled Earth Now Has 8 Billion Humans. This Man Wishes There Were None.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OnqAHpLxkA
Rogan probably has heard of it before but as much dope as he smokes and as old as he’s getting to be, he probably burned out the brain cells responsible for recalling that information.
Anyway, long story short…
Or have I missed that bus already?
Anyway, for some reason I forget, a few weeks ago I mentioned to my son that I enjoy season two of TD much more than season one.
(Season three isn’t even in the discussion as it is immensely forgettable. And from what I’ve seen of the upcoming season four, it looks equally immensely forgettable.)
My son was shocked at my (poor) taste and went on to pan season two and praise season one, as do most.
So, I figured, since I’ve already watched season two three times, I might as well give season one another shot, seeing that it’s been nearly ten years since I last watched it.
And I recently finished rewatching it.
And I still enjoyed it, probably more because this time around I was familiar with TL and his work and the insight from it was appreciated.
And though I still prefer season two, I still liked season one enough once again to once again look up ol’ NP to see if he has been up to anything new.
Didn’t really discover anything new by NP that interested me, but I did discover this old Buzzfeed article that interested me greatly, as it lists all the literary influences of NP’s that went into the development of season one.
And it was from this article that I discovered William Gay.
The author, not the cornerback.
And I cannot believe I have never heard of this good ol’ boy literary genius before.
And by good ol’ boy, I mean that was one dude whose neck was severely reddened. Crispy, if you know what I mean*.
Never had I read/listened to a collection of short stories where ever single story is as completely fantastic as these are. Especially in a collection written by just one author.
Because my eyes are shot because of the side effects from my bone marrow transplant of so long ago, I listen to books now more than I read them.
Consequently, I have a pretty good ear for great narrators. Great as defined by me anyway.
Tom Stescschulte has been a longtime favorite of mine and this to me is the best work he has ever done.
So, yeah, once again I must thank NP for turning me on to yet another amazing author.
And I hope I’m wrong about season four. I’m a fan of Jodie Foster so I hope she pulls it off.
So, that’s the short story long of it.
Oh yeah!
Since I’ve already missed the short bus, let bring up one last thing…
I’ll make it fast – punctuation be damned.
If you are a fan of audiobooks like I am but are not a fan of Audible’s expensive subscription like I am – the only reason I started my subscription back up recently is because I was offered and I accepted a one-month free promo (which they are betting I will forget to cancel but which I marked my calendar so to hell with them I won’t fall into that expensive trap) – then you must be estatic like I am that Spotify is now offering audiobooks for those who are subscribed with a premium membership like I am and all the books I have on my audible wish list are available on spotify as are many many more and my TBLT (to be listened to) list is so long now I probably won’t finish it until I’m in my eighties, which, sadly, is almost as close as my forties are far away…
Yeah…
*Apologies for the stereotype but, dagburnit that dude is one countrified dude. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just, well, you know how the stereotype goes…
I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but there is some mysterious illness affecting dogs that is spreading fast throughout the U.S….
A mysterious and potentially fatal respiratory illness in dogs has been reported in several states across the country, as veterinarians continue to search for what may be causing the condition that has killed some dogs.
The illness starts out as a cough that can last for several weeks, but it may not respond to typical treatment, such as antibiotics, which can leave the dog struggling to breathe and with severe pneumonia.
But “Old Blue” was a favorite of my children’s, and mine, when they were growing up. There are many versions of it, The Byrds’, Joan Baez’, and Willie Nelson’s just to name a few, but Disney’s version is my favorite since it has so many happy memories attached to it.
Life is all it is – joyful, sad, comprehensive, confusing, peaceful, violent, and on and on and on…
Of course, regardless of what reality tries to tell one, it can only be what one – you, me, each unique individual making up the all of we – says it is.
And no matter how hard we/I try to understand it, to challenge it, to master it, chances are we/I never will; and chances are along the way we/I will alienate those who see reality 180 degrees differently than you/me.
So, understanding our understanding and execution of life will always be incomplete and often inaccurate, and way off kilter to many, accepting that some will love us for what we do and, sadly, some with hate us for the same, will hopefully make it all a bit less painful.
Doing a reread of Big Will’s Titus Andronicus so what better way to summon the happy dancing spirits today than by rocking out to a song by, you got it, Titus Andronicus…
If only ours was a union even a little more better…
