Problems With Paleo Art

When I started doing paleontological illustrations, I was unquestionably inspired by Gregory Paul. I'd track down a diagram or photograph of a skeleton, and draw or trace the individual bones in a new pose.

And then I'd flesh them out. At this point, what I was doing wasn't so much art as a grunting, primitive attempt at getting some kind of visceral contact with extinct life. But this technique was so restrictive -- the silhouettes do not deliver as much of a sense of a living animal as I'd like, and I always had a shabby feeling about relying on reference materials. It's not like any of this was commercial work.


In order to vary things, sometimes I'd take a photograph of a skeleton, manipulate it a bit, and use it as the basis for a piece. I'm not sure where the original photograph for this came from -- I just figured I'd changed it enough not to worry. Again, personal work, not commercial.
But it was frustrating. I wasn't able to render as well as I'd have liked, my draftsmanship was weak... I was struggling for a comic book look, and then being unsatisfied with the results.

And I knew I needed to get closer to the original material. So I tried contacting some working paleontologists. The experience was kind of a drag -- at first, I was received with open arms, and told that after the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists convention, I'd have a nice sit-down with a very prominent paleontologist, who would go through my portfolio and see if we might have some mutual interests. Sweet!

But then I got an email that suggested rather strongly that my man had been exposed to some bad, wrong people. He said something about too many paleo-groupies, and called off our meeting. Probably just as well, given the caliber of my work at the time.


Flash forward a couple of years. I was asked to produce work for an art show. Let's not go into the details, but after I put a good bit of work into it, things fell through. But I did make some advances. These aren't digital pieces. They were done using a mix of graphite pencils and sticks, ink, and black and white Prismacolor pencils. I found that the ink and Prismacolors were necessary to get deep grays and blacks without developing an unattractive sheen, and the white Prismacolor allowed me to add touches of light to inked areas, making them congruous with the pencil work.

In this piece, I worked from a reproduction of a Velociraptor skull I probably shouldn't have bought. Oh, well. It classes up the joint. But I think it proves my point about needing to be closer to the fossils to produce good work.



The frustrating thing about working from photographs is that you're never sure if they're really orthogonal, you don't get a sense of the actual shape of the bones -- they're reduced to graphics rather than representations of solid objects. I can feel myself losing valuable information as I work. It drives me nuts. And I never quite get the poses the way I want them. They seem too posed.


But when I get that feeling of life, it's worth it to me, even given the various awkwardnesses I generate in the process.


This image is probably the most popular thing I've done, at least among my friends. For this one, I didn't use an initial skeleton, but rather sketched it out freehand. Why I felt obliged to stick to a strict side-view I cannot say...


This was the heartbreaker of the project. It was a life-sized Ceratosaurus head. It took me over a month to draw the neck, shading every scale, and my back gave out twice. I had to give up in the end, having rendered the neck, unable to physically execute work at that scale. I have to be able to work from my recliner. Oh, well. Live and learn.

So let's see. So far, I've gotten some social disrespect, some physical pain, and some artistic dissatisfaction.

I did have a number of pieces published in Mike Fredrick's Prehistoric Times magazine, which was quite pleasant. It also gave me an excuse to ditch dinosaurs from time to time.


A pal of mine told me this Hyeanodon Horridus looked like Benji gone bad, which dated the man fairly savagely. Still, this has a not-quite-there feeling to it. Look at how disjointed that skeleton looks. Good hobbyist, eh illustrator, bad artist.

Science humor -- it's pretty much a blot on the earth, but sometimes I can't help myself. This was one that got me involved in the on-line pale0-art scene when Brian Switek posted it on his Laelaps site. This led to my eventual involvement with the Art Evolved website.

And this is pretty clearly a cartoon, not scientific illustration. I'd decided at that time that since I wasn't going to get access to fossils, then I may as well just fake it.


See, this does and does not work. Still hobbyist stuff. The sleeping Allosaur looks dead, the ground is simply lacking, the shadows are weak, etc. But it's got a bit of a thing, where if it was like this but only good... He sighed.


Japanese brocade prints are one of my most important influences, and I've tried to incorporate this into my paleo art. Part of this is due to the distance many of these artists had from their subjects, and how inaccurately they portrayed them.

When I saw photographs of famous waterfalls in Japan compared to their print renderings as drawn by Hiroshige, I realized that the stylization and inaccuracy of these representations made them perfect models for my paleo art.

And there are other graphic traditions to draw on. With these two pieces, I felt as if I'd gotten some real art in -- but this one was based on a print by Max Ernst, and the next was drawn from a photograph I took of a skeletal mount at UC Berkeley. If given access to fossils, I would dearly love to do a full series of prints in this style.

But why do I do them? It's purely out of nostalgia for the prehuman.


It's been a long time since I've done a paleo art piece. This was the last one I did, my first attempt at the kind of fully-rendered 'realistic' art that's standard in the field.


Honestly? I'm not sure where to go next. I want to know more about prehistoric plants, I wish I was a better draftsman in general, but in particular of landscapes, etc, etc, etc. Here's the thing. I'd love to work with paleontologists, but until I do? This is art, not science. I wish it were otherwise, I struggle as hard as I can for accuracy, but I am not a scientist.

So until then, I'm doing this for personal creative satisfaction -- and I'm honestly not sure which direction I should take next. Grrrr... all I know is that dissatisfaction means I need to work harder.

Catherine Schaff-Stump: The Final Viable Paradise XIII Interview

If you are unfamiliar with Catherine Schaff-Stump, that’s because you didn’t attend the thirteenth session of the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop. She’s a writer, teacher, and academic who’s released the novel Hulk Hercules, Professional Wrestler, and a number of short stories. After Viable Paradise XIII, she took it upon herself to interview every other student. You want to see a fascinating cross-section of fresh writers who are starting to make some waves? Check it out.

So I figured it was about time someone asked her some questions.

To begin with, please, tell us about your current projects and immediate plans and anything else you think we should know that might otherwise go unmentioned.

Right now there are three long term things that I’m working on.

Front and center at the moment is a book called Abigail Rath Versus Blood-Sucking Fiends. The Abby Rath books are YA books about monster hunting kids. Abby keeps trying to be a tough monster hunter, but she keeps running into supernatural critters at school, at the mall, at the roller skating rink, and some of them are nice, so her career path is taking an unexpected turn. The books use a lot of folklore and horror monster knowledge, and is sort of a homage to my husband’s love of cheesy Hammer horror.

Next is the Klarion series, which is about 4 generations of a family of demon binders. The story spans 90 years, from the 1830s to the 1920s. I’m reaching for a Gothic feel. I’ll be working on this for a long time.

Finally, I’m playing with a series that involves Norwegian folklore, mostly trolls. It’s contemporary YA and begins in Decorah, Iowa, which has a reputation of being the Norway of Iowa. There are also disillusioned frost elves, Old Nick, and ice giants, in no particular order.

I have other projects in various stages of writing or development, including a story about wild dogs in the Southern Iowa I grew up in, and a magical retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo.

What led you to attend Viable Paradise? How did you hear about it? How would you compare it to your other educational experiences?

In 2007 I decided I would make time for my writing. It didn’t take me long to realize I needed to ramp up my game, and as a PhD, I realize the intrinsic value of going to school. So, I went looking for a way to educate myself, and the Internet was full of valuable information! Clarion and Odyssey were there, but I have a pretty demanding career that would miss me for six weeks, so I decided against those. Then there was Viable Paradise.

One of my fellow Cats Curious Writers, Christopher Kastensmidt (VP XI), had great things to say about it. So I looked into it, asked the college for a little funding, and off I went. It was a fantastic, intensive experience. Like grad school, it was great to be around people who were as geeky about something, in this case, speculative fiction, as I was. Unlike grad school, the intensive nature of VP resulted in some close bonding. We all worked hard together and survived a week of sleepless critiquing. And we saw glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. Bonds like that stay forged.

I’m fascinated by the connections you’ve established between your vocation and your aspirations as a writer. Was this intentional on your part, or just a matter of following your interests? And are these two streams in your life as mutually supportive as they seem from the outside?

That’s a good question. I wish I’d asked that question when I’d interviewed all of you.

In many ways, although I don’t think I knew it all the time, my life has been one big attempt to get a job that’s flexible enough to allow me to accomplish many of my life goals. I love to travel, and I travel to really interesting places for work. I love to research folklore, so even though my area at Kirkwood Community College is English Language Acquisition, because I work at a community college, the administration encourages us to diversify. And yes, I do like teaching and administrating ELA too.

Kirkwood also supports my creative writing. I have received professional development grants to go to writing workshops, and they even gave me some release time to work on Hulk Hercules. I think that the college expects me to get rich and set up an endowed chair and a couple of scholarships when I retire, though, so I’d best get cracking and gain some wild success soon. Honestly, though, I’m very lucky to work in such a supportive environment, and I appreciate that I can bring all these things together in one spot. It really makes it easy to go to work in the morning, and then come home at night to write.

I’m both gratified and impressed by the job you’ve done on interviewing all of the other people in our session of Viable Paradise. What struck you about your own experience after you’d heard from everyone else? Is there anything you’d like to say Viable Paradise that you think may have been missed?

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to all of the VP attendees is because one week is such a short time to spend with so many interesting people. I could see that there was a lot of talent in that group, and I wanted to know more about its members. One of the things that I felt as I reflect upon the experience was that I felt validated as a writer. Many people dream of being a writer. While I have a long way to go, I felt like I’d leveled up. It was heady that others saw the potential in your work.

I guess the only thing that I want to say that I think has been missed is that not only are the VP faculty great, but Viable Paradise has a great support staff. All of the former VP members who cook, who give you Kleenex when you cry, who talk you down from an anxiety attack before your first pro meeting, these people are the unsung heroes of VP, and I hope they know how many of us appreciate their good work.

(This is true. Everybody wave.)

It seems as if everyone in our circle is comics-literate and familiar with role-playing games, and that this is standard in the fantasy/SF field. Do you think this has had any influence on what’s being written these days?

Yup. In some ways good and in some ways bad. While genre has certain beats and riffs that are essentials, it’s also easy for an author to go on autopilot and write something very similar to what has gone before. I think that the trick is to find that alchemical mix between genre and originality that makes your writing stand out. That’s what the best comics and the most original role playing games do. Come to think of it, that’s what the best film and fiction do too.

What’s your take on the idea that popular fiction is living mythology? To what degree should we regard what we do as representative of forces other than our own creativity and taste?

Wow. That’s a question that could really be answered in a thesis. But I’ll keep this brief.

Could I just talk for a minute about Superman? Because you know Superman was created in 1932. Back then he could leap. Flight didn’t come until later. Superman has been re-imagined by each subsequent decade he has existed. He has been all-American. He has been square. He has been an orphan. He has had hip mid-Western parents. His secret ID Clarke Kent has been a wimp. His secret ID Clark Kent has been a really interesting reporter. Regrettably, he’s now younger than me, which is a good trick for a guy who came on the scene in 1932.

Most people in the First World know who Superman is. They know where Krypton is (was?). They know that Superman came from Kansas. The other things come from our generational preferences and re-envisionment of a hero that we admire and wish to remake in our own image.

Another place to look as we consider this question? Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (many thanks to fellow VP XIIIer George Galuschak for this one). In this book, Booker lays out the stories we keep telling over and over and speculates why we do this. He suggests we tell stories because we want to understand our world and re-create it in our own image, and that stories are ways in which we interpret our life experiences. At a certain level, this ceases to be an individual pursuit, and becomes a cultural one.

Speaking of which, your book Hulk Hercules was a good-natured middle-school romp, and it seemed as if you put a lot of playful thought into publicity and marketing as well as the writing for that one. No need to go into the entire process – unless, of course, you want to – but can you say something about the feeling of seeing something through all the way from concept to product, and the difference in the way you regard a work before it’s finished and later on when you’re deciding on the design for a promotional medallion?

Cats Curious asked me to do a re-telling of the 12 Labors of Hercules. The requirement was that the book be in a modern setting, but otherwise I could do what I wanted with the story. My goal was to make the story accessible to young modern readers, and create a bit of a mystery around the original story. If readers became interested in tracking down the original myths, so much the better. At first, the story was more about Nona’s retelling of the labors, but of course Tony and Bianca took center stage as the book progressed, both as part of the framing device, and because of their own story. Tony, Bianca and Hannah reinforce the idea that knowing about mythology is cool, and their knowledge gives them power when they encounter mythology.

As to the coin, well, you have to know I am blessed with crafty, artistic friends. Sculptor Gerald Dagel designed the medallion, which is actually a replica Morty Moose token. (Morty Moose is the pizza place/arcade that Tony and his friends frequent.) When there were plans to have more than one book, each book was going to get a Morty Moose token. They’re made more meaningful when you’ve read the encounter with Chiron.

While I take my writing seriously, honestly, part of what I am doing is playing. It’s not hard for that to translate across. When we conceived of the medallion, we wanted to bring a piece of the book into the real world, which I think helps the reader hold onto the experience longer. Perhaps that’s one of the philosophies behind merchandising? By the way, Morty Moose tokens are free, especially for kids who buy the book.

And finally, would you care to say a few words about ambition? You’ve written extensively on your blog about your approach to the problem of advancing as a writer. If there were no one around to accuse you of hubris or attempt to hold you responsible for pipe-dreams, what sort of vaulting castles in the sky would you build, with which demi-deities would you rub elbows?

I am an ambitious writer, but in an intrinsic sense. Right now at work, I’m learning a new interview process for a criterion-referenced test to help our ELA students place in their courses. This interview judges the students in relation only to themselves. Their future interviews are examined in light of their past performance. This is me with my writing.

Alas, what I am learning is that the more you know, the more fault you find. I strive toward artistic perfection, but in reality, steps forward are made in a groping, intuitive type of way, which is how learning occurs. There are breakthroughs and setbacks. But the point is that I have a point I’d like to reach and I strive to reach it, in reference to where I have been and where I am going.

However, what would my pinnacle of achievement be? Honestly, what I would like the most is to write a character so memorable and convincing that the character is remembered. Not me so much. I would enjoy having my work read after I’m gone. There’s some hubris for you! And while I don’t expect to support myself with my writing, I guess the bottom line is that I write to the best of my ability and I strive to get better as I work toward my voice and my memorable characters.

So that raises the question: Would you rather write an immensely popular, mediocre book, or a critically acclaimed respected book? The latter, although if I could pull off a critically acclaimed respected best seller, that would be a bit of all right.

Five Books By Walter Jon Williams

Okay, I should say that when I first expressed interest in attending Taos Toolbox, the missus said, "Yes, that certainly sounds as if you'd be interested in attending." When I said, "Nancy Kress is teaching," she said, "You will attend."

I hesitate to list details, but I have it on good authority that this blog is going to be receiving a flood of traffic in the near future, and I've been advised to get it into some kind of active state. So I figured I'd try and share some of the love...

If you look in the blogroll to your right, you'll see a number of writers listed. Some of them are people who posted comments here and warmed my heart, some of them are people with whom I've worked or studied.

I had Walter Jon William's blog over there right from the start, long before I met him. It is a great pleasure to work with professional writers. It is a great pleasure to discover writers new to me by working with them. But of all the writers I've worked with, Williams is the only one who was, well, a bit of a hero to me. Taos Toolbox, the workshop he runs with Nancy Kress, is perfectly named -- you walk away from it with a full set of writer's tools. I went there with needs, and came back with those needs satisfied.

There was a long streak where Williams wrote exactly what I wanted to read, and it's hard to tell to what degree the changes in his writing influenced my own changing tastes in that time. He's one of my favorite authors, and to my mind one of the very best writers in SF. He's unquestionably the strongest long-form plotter I've read -- a master of narrative as character expressed in context, and a relentless craftsman. I think of crime fiction as the place to go for plot instruction, but Williams has got 'em all beat.

Look, I don't just read Williams. I loan Williams, and he is not returned. I've been through three copies of The Rift, and I do not currently own one. People don't give it back.

When I went to Taos Toolbox, my biggest fear was making an idiot out of myself for slavering all over one of my literary heroes. I think I got out of that mostly intact. Here's where I blow what little cool I displayed.

To my mind, Williams is an example of someone whose devotion to craftsmanship brings his work to the station of art. He can tell you exactly how and why he made any given creative choice; one of the signature tones of his work is complete authorial control. As the man said, trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle.

Here is my Walter Jon Williams reading list. You can find most of these titles here.

Hardwired

This is one of those novels whose old future resembles the recent past to an uncomfortable degree. This semi-romantic story of two semi-ethical criminals, one at the top of the pyramid and one at the bottom, features textbook-perfect action sequences decorated with wise-ass news flashes of a world in political, ecological, and economic collapse.

At the time of its appearance, the world was all het up on the subject of cyberpunk, but this had a different feel than much of what was being marketed under that rubrik. It was more solidly, professionally constructed, less adolescent. It was the work of a writer coming into his maturity rather than one stretching his wings for the first time, and as a result?

The son of a bitch still reads well.

The Voice of the Whirlwind

This is my favorite science-fiction action story. The plot? A cloned warrior solves the murder of his scion, himself. I love, love, love stories that start with the main character as a blank slate trying to discover himself, and this is a goodie, featuring cyberpunk filling in a space opera shell. And again, William's deft hand with characterization and politics makes it possible to eat what is essentially a candy bar without feeling guilty about it. Fun with fiber, as it were.

The real pleasure in this one is the plot. In terms of story mechanics, this is the best I know of. You can hear a distinct, satisfyingly solid click with every shift in events, the crisp snap of a card being turned over with every revelation of information. This is a great read, but writers should regard it as an object of study.

It is, it must be said, very much a boy book. That's okay by me.

Angel Station

This has, in some ways, a familiar feeling to it. Specifically, it has both the tone and some of the social/political vibe of a section of Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. But Citizen of the Galaxy was an enjoyable mess, and this is, again, a solid piece of craftsmanship.

In this one, Williams sets a brother-and-sister pair of subsistence interstellar spaceship owners against their peers and the politics that dominate all their lives. There's a certain socio-economic situation he plays on extensively here -- the slowly-decaying shabby-but-decent life that may be suddenly snatched from you by forces beyond your control, struggling to hold onto something that may not be worth the effort because the alternatives are prostitution or the void.

That is the American working-class experience as space opera, my droogs. Heed it well.

Days of Atonement

Calling this book science fiction is goofy. Yes, there is an interesting, well-handled speculative element in the plot. It's a police procedural with strong noir elements, and the examination of the setting and the lead character are very dark, very steely, fascinating and convincing.

(Okay. When I was at Taos Toolbox, there was one occasion when Walter and I were in a grocery store. The person in front of us in line took twenty minutes to buy a six-pack, and because I'd read Days of Atonement? It didn't bug me -- that was just how things work there.)

While it would be a mistake to call his earlier work immature, with this book, Williams pulled up a chair at the grownup table. This work is more suitable for the general reader than one used to the pudding-and-gumdrop diet of genre fiction. In this book, Williams writes powerfully of life as he sees it without any tinsel or neon obscuring the event, and the result is a very good, fully mature novel.

The Rift

I'll say it flat-out. This should have been a Big Deal. It's Huckleberry Finn as a disaster movie, it deals with a genuinely threatening real-live situation -- I had flashbacks from this book while watching Katrina reports. It is intelligent, humane, morally engaged, beautifully crafted. Like Days of Atonement, it's mainstream or literary fiction rather than science fiction.

This one is an ensemble piece in which families and individuals deal with the results of a major earthquake along the Mississippi. Would you believe that issues of race become significant in the aftermath? Would you believe that they're handled intelligently?

When I told my family that I was going to study at Taos Toolbox, they said, "Oh, that's nice." When I said, "It's with the guy who wrote The Rift," they got excited. Voice of the Whirlwind is my favorite, Days of Atonement is the one I'm most impressed by as an artist, but this one? Should have been a fucking blockbuster.

So there we go. My first push to get the blog Active! in the face of my upcoming moment in the spotlight, and all it cost me was the ability to look Walter Jon Williams in the eye ever again. I hope it was worth it.

Occupy Tintin

Tintin is copyright Herge! These images were taken from an underground publication, and used without permission. Their use here is in a non-commercial capacity.

Breaking Free is credited to J. Daniels. As if.

This blog has been a self-obsessed mopefest for quite some time. I've been trying to write something sensible on the subject of genre and literary fiction, and have been producing drivel. Let's try some other critical writing to get up to speed.

So here's my favorite volume of Tintin. I used to like the shooting star one because of the giant mushrooms and the spider and so on but in this one?

We can tell, Tintin. Everyone sees your boner.

Tintin is an unrepentantly vicious thug.

That's not all there is here, though. This is a genuinely fascinating volume. On one hand, you've got the crudely rendered ripoff of Herge. That's why this one is so hard to find -- this one move both made the volume immediately appealing and incredibly hard to distribute. On the other hand, the substance of the work is remarkably solid. This is not a case of shock for shock's sake. This is seriously intended literature. This is a practical guidebook for revolution.

Thatcher-era Britain. Tintin, a violent lowlife, gets caught up in a worker's revolution through his connection with Captain Haddock, a laborer and dedicated family man. Despite the crudity of the technical execution -- this is a classic example of cartooning as a practical rather than a creative art -- the story and characterization are well-done and effective, and skillfully interwoven with the story of the revolution. As a graphic novel, this is worth attention and study.

It's also a clear-eyed view of the politics of revolution, probably the best I've seen in fiction. While it blessedly eschews Marxist jargon, it follows the nuts-and-bolts of organizational work with real fidelity. The low-key, convincing dialog is a genuine pleasure, and the whole thing is grounded in a sense of community you don't find often in comics.

There are some union-related passages that startled me with their conviction and realism. And Tintin's growth as a person is convincingly lopsided and limited, and cleverly used as a means of demonstrating an ideology holding internal growth as being part of the revolutionary process.

The classism and violence are difficult to stomach at times. Let's be honest. My take on revolution? I don't want one, but if the possibility isn't on the horizon, we aren't going to see change. I'm one of those guys, figures Martin Luther King wouldn't have gotten nearly as far if if it hadn't been for Malcolm X.

So if my dad shows up one morning and says, "Get dressed. It's leg-breaking time," I'll be grumpy, but I'll go put on my leg-breaking pants. But I ain't starting anything because I don't have the stomach for it. Big, violent political movements always claim victims. You can't make an omelet without breaking legs.

Breaking Free makes it plain that revolution requires the willingness to force people to support your position. That change is going to be resisted by people who should embrace it, and that those people need to be goaded into the proper stance. And as I said, I don't have the stomach for that.

The ethics here are fascinating. Inside of one's social class, racism, sexism, and homophobia are to be opposed on principal, with the practical result of community solidarity. But anyone with too much income is not perceived as fully human. They are deserving receptacles for abuse and violence simply on the basis of their privilege. I have trouble demonizing the rich that way. I mean, I'm very practiced at it, I do it all the time, but I don't approve of it. Classism can resemble racism more closely than I feel comfortable with.

But despite my ideological differences, I found this an engaging and intelligent volume that succeeds both as a political work and as a story of character. I'm not a big fan of appropriated art, but in this case? Whoever did this was not an artist, or at least did not approach this job as art. This is commercial art used for revolutionary propaganda. What's not to love?

If You Must Know

Photograph and beverage courtesy of good pal Deborah Kuchar.

1. It's not like I haven't been trying to post. I've been making at least one abortive attempt a day, more often two or three. Sometimes more. Sometimes it just comes out drivel, and I do enough unintentional driveling without making a point of it. So actually, I've been blogging like crazy, and you should be glad I've kept the results from you. It's everything else in my life I haven't been doing.

2. It is February, my worst month. "Maybe you should give yourself a break," the missus says. "Have you thought about how much you did this fall? Maybe you need to rest," my counselor says.

I'd rather be working, or practicing. Instead? I wind up pacing, napping in the afternoon staying up all night. I stop, staring, for extended periods while something in me says, all virtue is gone from the world, and you had none to begin with. To which I respond, fuck you, you're full of horseshit. And then I go on-line and read about old Dungeons and Dragons crap, and look longingly at pictures of fretted instruments with four strings or less. (Courses of strings count as a single string -- an eight-string bass is a four-string instrument so far as playing it goes.)

Believe me, it's not wall-punching, sign-folding, stranger-frightening February this time around. It is a mellow, cushioned, gentle February.

But I fucking wish I was working.

3. I am in the finishing stages of a whole series of interconnected projects ranging from the next issue of Swill to the novel to an art show to a podcast and on and on and on in mad profusion. When I'm back in working form, I'll be knocking things out, boom-boom-boom.

And then I'll engage in a period of self-promotion, trying to find homes for my work, trying to further establish my public self.

Have I mentioned that I suffer from social anxiety? I am currently sabotaging myself in order to delay having to meet strangers, learn their names, and so on. I'm confident enough about my work. I just don't believe in good results. It's like a disposal -- I don't think there's any way it's going to spontaneously turn on when my hand's down there, but I believe in the possibility nonetheless.

Meeting strangers is like putting your hand in a disposal; it's a perfectly harmless act no sane person would commit under any circumstance. And if I finish any of my projects, I'm going to meet people. There's no way around it.

4. They said nice things about me in the local giveaway paper, and it made someone grumpy, and that made me sad. Then my friend Deborah (over the drink pictured above) pointed out that I was more concerned with the grumpy person's well-being than my own hurt feelings, and I was overcome with such a disgusting treacly wave of smirk-encrusted self-satisfaction at my own benevolence that it almost justified the whole ridiculous situation. I'm very sensitive, he said.

5. I have no idea what I want in life. I mean, I know what I want to achieve, but what do I want? Lately, I've been having people ask me that question. And if I give them an answer? I get what I ask for.

I am not going to talk about this shit because some of it's personal to other people, and some of it you would not fucking believe.

I don't know how to want things properly.

I'm scared to want something. The idea that if you ask for something, it will be forever banned to you has been an essential part of my mindset for as long as I remember. The best things in my life have come to me as surprises. There is no connection between effort, desire, and results in my world.

So I've learned not to want things, or ask for them. And now this fucking question keeps coming up.

What do you want?

What the hell does that have to do with anything? It's making me crazy! I am being faced with more and more possibilities in my life all the time and the only answer I've got is I'm just trying to be good.

I'm not phrasing this correctly, but the situation is creepy and depressing and makes me feel as if I'd been raised in a box and was just seeing sunlight. And now I can't feel good about either the light or the box. My life has been so limited I don't know if I'm fit for free-range.

I don't want things. I think I want them, but when the time comes, I turn away, I defer.

I'm scared to want things. I think these promises of plenty are lies.

So I will not want.

Driving me nuts, I'm telling you.

5. I don't know what I am.

What one word do I put on my business card? What one word nails me for my professional website?

How do I present myself to the world?

How do I bridge the gap between the intensely personal, intimate nature of my art, and the need to market it in a professional fashion?

How do I accommodate the passage of my visual art into the physical world? Simple prints are nice, but the don't feel like Real Things to me. I need to be able to produce real art objects of gallery/museum grade. This is an unexplored realm, and I have no idea where it might take me.

That's the thing. All these big projects seem like starting points rather than the finish line. This is arrogance on my part, no doubt, but I still don't feel as if I've made contact with the Big World, the place where I can really cut loose and do something.

And as soon as I've done these projects, I need to put together the card, the professional site, the portfolios and synopses and so on and so forth. I need to have a clearly legible identity in order to do that effectively. It is hard to do that when your work is as widely varied in form, media, subject matter, distribution, etc. as mine is. I keep going back to the Ur-business card -- Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. I briefly contemplated Supergenius as title, but soon decided Overweening Dildo would do the same job with greater honesty.

If it were up to me, I might go with Motherfucker, Negotiable Rates, but thankfully there are several layers of human judgment between me and a finished business card.

6. Fuck February, you know? Just fuck February.

Lipping Off

(Photograph courtesy of Kent Young,
who may well have been my first babysitter.)

A Brief Exchange Accurately, if Dishearteningly, Reflecting the Level of Discourse:

The Sister: What's with that balloon-headed dwarf on your shirt? Is that supposed to be some kind of retard?

The Oaf: It's a Miro, you cretin. You know, Miro? The painter? Idiot. I scored it at a gay couple estate sale. That's where everything I wear comes from these days.

So Friday went well. I was planning on doing a greatest-hits report on the reading, but Joe Clifford beat me to it, and said some very nice things about me. Frankly, I'm probably going to re-read that post every half-hour or so for the rest of my life. For the record? The show was strong from beginning to end, and it was a particular thrill to hear Mckay William's first reading, a genuine slice of history.

If you didn't read Joe's piece already (you should), he very generously praises the honesty of my execution. Well, I took some risks on Friday and I did so in order to achieve a greater degree of openness.

The last piece I did was the story of a physical assault, and my delivery was extremely aggressive. This time, Joe and I discussed the idea of pulling back. Joe mentioned David Gilmour's vocals in this connection, how he used flat expression to allow the listener emotional room for response, and that made me think of the old-school country and folk I love.

It also made me realize something. As we approached the reading on Friday, something was itching at the back of my head. In Joe's post, he mentions the significance of persona. Well, I realized that I was specifically looking forward to delivering a number of extremely confrontational lines, stuff along the lines of "Nothing kills a budding romance with a revivified suicide than her discovery that you've been stroking off to her debris."

And I realized that that particular type of provocation is defensive. That by putting physical necrophilia on the table I drew attention from emotional or spiritual necrophilia.

It also, let us be honest, makes me feel tough and dangerous to say crazy shit. I have some fairly serious social anxieties, and I have an actual fear of crowds. Despite this, standing up in front of an audience is one of the most natural, comfortable experiences I've ever had. I love it, but there is an edge to that enjoyment of the experience. To grip an audience firmly by the face, finger in the eye socket and thumb hooked under the jaw, to make them watch me draw the blade and force it in...

Have you ever had to fight a crowd? Physically? It is a moment of complete abandon. It is like taking flight. When you know the worst will occur, you are free.

And when you are free you can do amazing things. In fact, you cannot do amazing things unless you have both absolute restriction and absolute freedom.

The freedom to do nothing but fight.

That is the freedom performance offers me, but performance is not a fight. The initial creative act is mine, but after that I work for the audience. I come from a preaching people left and right, mother and father, and while my beliefs are not religious, my concern is with the state of the human soul, and this requires honesty first and foremost.

And I realized that in this piece, my confrontations were internal, and that if I were to deliver an honest experience, I needed to invite the audience into my world rather than assault them. That those nasty, brutal lines I had delivered over and over in my mind had to go.

When I was at Taos Toolbox, there was a sign on the wall. In big red letters it read, "Kill Your Darlings." Everyone who really writes is nodding in sympathy now.

I was fighting this in my head all day long. I did not make my decision until it was time to start reading.

I did my final line-edit while I read. I removed -- and I believe I did so seamlessly -- the most aggressive, confrontational passages in the manuscript, shifting the focus from shock value to introspection.

It was the perfect choice for me. A situation of maximum risk, where I felt a sense of absolute control. (This was an illusion -- I completely forgot about the existence of the mic, and just spoke as loudly as usual. It worked out, but next time, damnit...) Engaging the crowd, reading, performing, and line editing at the same time felt as though I was tap-dancing on a high-wire. Only perfectly normal, as though it was an embedded function.

I believe I need to find ways of doing this a little more often.

Last Year/This Year

Don't forget -- I'm reading this Friday at 7:30 at Pegasus Books in Berkeley at 2349 Shattuck!

At this time last year, I was beginning a course of psychiatric medication that would prove disastrous. Since I have mixed-state bipolar syndrome, when they gave me effective anti-depressants, even ones intended to have a strong sedative effect, they may as well have given me meth. I mean that quite specifically; the effects were very, very similar. Compulsive activity without focus or purpose, irritability, etc, etc. I'm not a meth fan, but at least you get a fucking rush with that stuff. With this? It was like being four hours into a bad high and four to go, all day, every day. It was the first time in my life that I've had to give serious thought to the possibility that I might be institutionalized.

This year? Once a week I go see a counselor, and our focus isn't on symptom management. We're working on figuring out how I'm going to fit into the world. Rather than feeling like a sack full of crazy or a potentially dangerous situation, I'm being taught to regard myself as an unusually gifted person who needs a little extra care.

Last year I was facing the realization that I was never going to be able to work a conventional job again. When I dropped out of my editorial training program after a stress reaction had me vomiting blood for days, when a whole series of psychiatrists told me I was unemployable in flat, absolute tones -- it was obvious that I wasn't going to fit into the straight world, no matter how hard I tried.

This year? Everyone in my life, my spouse, my family, my friends -- all agree that I am an artist and a writer, and that is what I should be doing. That my proper place in society is as a creator, and that they will support me in that end.

Last year? After workshopping my novel Ghost Rock at Taos Toolbox and Nick Mamatas' class on writing popular fiction? (Both crucial in my development as a writer, and both highly recommended.) After two additional drafts? Still sucked.

This year? It's nailed. I'm putting the fine buffing on it, but it is a working, functional piece of art. And I've started doing live readings to good effect, I've had another story published, I have my own Amazon page...

Last year? I was paralyzed. I lost the whole winter. Didn't get anything done, and felt nothing but misery.

This year? I am grumpy in patches, but I'm semi-functional. Not at the superhuman levels I'll display come spring, but I'm getting stuff done on a daily basis, and what work I'm doing is of an adequately high quality. And when I don't work? I don't give myself shit about it.

The best part is this feeling... it's hard to say how true it is, but I feel as if I've hit a certain momentum. I still have little or no idea where I'm headed in the long run, but it certainly seems as if I'm headed somewhere.

The real struggles I faced this last year had to do with accepting myself for what I was, recognizing that the traditional path that people take in our culture has never been an option for me, and allowing myself to have faith in both the value of what I do, and my value to the people around me.

There are less pleasant struggles, let me tell you. For a bad year, it's been pretty good.