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.

I'll Be Reading On The Thirteenth

Yes, Joe, I am jealous as fuck every time you blog about your fucking home gym. I used to be a monster, goddamnit! Now I'm a brain in a fucking bucket.

The time has come once again. Hey, everybody! At 7:30 on January 13, I'll be reading at Pegasus Books at 2349 Shattuck in Berkeley for Lip Service West, the series of edgy readings run by Joe Clifford.

Edgy. Heh-heh. Edgy is not the word for my piece. It is probably the single harshest, most emotionally brutal work I've ever done, and are you at all familiar with my range? It would be easy to point at subject matter like suicide, gore, and necrophilia as the reason this is such an ugly experience, but I like to think that those elements are finally subsumed in larger, more disturbing questions of morality, identity, and obsession. I'm proud of it, I will stand by it, I am not ashamed of what it portrays even if I am disturbed by myself.

But this one is a serious motherfucker. It hurt me to write it. I had to dig deep into things I'd really rather have left forgotten or unthought. There are laughs. There are even a couple of funny laughs.

But there are reasons people tend to describe my work as if it were violent crime rather than art. You want to know the truth? I think the main reason Joe Clifford is using this? I suspect a certain clinical interest. I think he wants to see what it does to an audience. For scientific purposes.

So come on down on the thirteenth, and be part of science!

Future Lovecraft Contest

I have two copies of Future Lovecraft to give away. It contains my story Deep Blue Dreams, which is my first Real Book publication. (Not to sneer at my Real Internet publication, which was quite lovely.)

So a contest! A contest!

Right now, I really should be promoting myself. But it's the winter, and I'm too fucking miserable to make a convincing case. I'm at a stage where I need to start establishing a presence on Amazon (I've decided not to fight gravity), and I need to get a professional website up, get cards printed, get a mailing list going -- in other words, begin actually establishing a professional persona in a conscious fashion.

So.

There will be two prizes, consisting of a signed copy of Future Lovecraft, inside of which will be tucked a small piece of signed original art. Possibly a pencil sketch, possibly a linoleum print or ink drawing, it will be a) old, b) shabby, and c) actually a decent piece of work suitable for framing. Which makes it a lottery ticket that pays off if I am successful in the arts. Whee!

One prize will be given to the person who provides me with the best bit of promotion on Amazon, whether it's a review, a posted link, or some other action beyond my primitive imagining. Either post a link in the comments or send me an email at craven dot sean at gmail dot com. Here is my Amazon page. And here is where you can read Tourists for free -- but that's not to discourage you from throwing me (and Macmillan and Amazon) money.

(And reviews of Future Lovecraft should be based on the Kindle edition or lie to me or ask me to send you my story or something. Here is a possible and legitimate 'or something.' It's the middle of the winter and I'm stupid. You figure it out.)

The other prize will be given to the person who gives me the best advice on building my public persona. This advice may take the form of a link to information, a book recommendation, etc. Anything actually useful is game. Again, leave your advice in the comments, or email me at craven dot sean at gmail dot com.

This contest will run through January 10, and I will announce the winners as soon afterward as possible, and maybe even before if I lose my damned mind.

Let me tell you a story, folks. (clutches hat to chest; his expression would be pathetic were it not for a touch of sly humor in his squinty little eyes)

When I was a kid, my favorite TV preacher was Doctor Scott, because we hadn't graduated to Robert Tilton yet. I loved the way Doctor Scott would refer to the idiots who sent him money as his 'King's Houses.' It was basically a term of abuse, I suppose, but it still thrilled me when he'd hear how the contributions were rolling in and he'd leap to his feet in rage and point his finger at the ceiling.

"What kind of lousy numbers is that? What kind of King's Houses have I got, anyway? If I don't get five thousand more dollars in the next five minutes, I'm putting the damned singers back on again and see how you like that."

Doctor Scott looms large in my consciousness, and right now he's rising up inside me, looking at you -- YOU! -- my friends, relatives, and readers, and he's asking a question. He is thinking of this contest, and of how my poor old Amazon items have no reviews and precious few sales and he knows you -- YOU! -- can do something about this and he wants to know.

What kind of King's Houses have I got, anyway?

Plus, the prizes! Cool prizes!

Stay tuned to find out what art will be shipped out!

Watch Me Destroy Good News! or Up The Amazon Without A Paddle

Well. Here it is, on sale at this very moment. My first hard-copy publication outside the underground.

It hasn't really gotten to me. I noticed a typo, and a bad word choice. What kind of crawling scum would write, 'bubbled furiously' instead of 'seethed?' That's six syllables to one! That's a terrible fucking score! What the hell was wrong with me? I will be made to suffer for this transgression against Our Lady Language...

Aside from that, though, it hasn't really gotten to me.

But it's led to a situation. I mean, it turns out.

Well, there's this fucking thing.

I mean, what the fuck? Was somebody drunk? Isn't there some kind of firewall in place to keep this shit from happening?

Let's be honest. I see Amazon as a fundamental bad. It concentrates wealth and power in ways I distrust, it adds to the environmental impact of consumer culture, it treats art as an economic commodity, thus training people to undervalue culture and be unwilling to give it legitimate economic support. Life for fiction writers has gotten shittier and shittier since Amazon came on the scene. When you tell me thus-and-such a percentage of writers get thus-and-such a percentage of their income from Amazon, I think of all the Macmillan writers who lost income when Amazon refused to sell their books for weeks after the dispute with Macmillan was settled. That was harm done to innocent parties for spite, and that is Amazon. Amazon also publicly defended their passive support of predatory child molestation with the good old, "We're not censors," bullshit.

So, yeah, I hate Amazon, I hate Bezos, and I hate what they stand for. My fucking story in Future Lovecraft is predicated on Amazon's collapse. And you pretty much have to buy it from Amazon. That is my situation, right there.

Unfortunately, for a writer in the twenty-first century to hate Amazon is like a farmer hating dirt. And I noticed on my way in to my author's page? Amazon made big deal out of how they have no connection with me, made me sign a statement that they provide me with no support, have no responsibility for their distribution of my information.

As grownups, we understand this is bullshit, right? You can't dispel an onus with that kind of protective phrase, no matter how well it might hold up in court. But hey. They're admitting up-front they don't like me any more than I like them. For some reason, that makes me feel more at ease.

So. Maybe it's time for me to set aside my need for ethical (by my twisted standards) purity, and make a compromise. The simple fact of the matter is that unless you exist at the top or outside the system, your work goes to benefit horrible, horrible entities of one kind or another. Otherwise, they wouldn't send you a check.

I don't know. I'm going to reflect on it. But it looks as if I'm going to be in bed with Amazon no matter what, and it would be shrewdest to cooperate.

I don't know, he said, looking at the paw and the trap, trying to figure out what is morality, what is self-denial, and what is pure finickiness. I just do not know.

This Winter Sucks Less

I'm having a much easier time this winter than I usually do, knock wood. While my symptoms of depression are fairly acute -- loss of appetite and weight (a bit of a mixed curse), insomnia, lack of ability to function, and so on and so forth, it's not actually bothering me that much.

Here's why.

I'm eschewing a great deal of typical self-destructive behavior now that I'm coming to value myself. And I'm coming to value myself because the world is validating me relentlessly.

It is difficult to walk around feeling like a loser when every few days a person beloved, admired, respected, makes a point of telling me how fucking brilliant I am. It will take a long time for me to get tired of that.

I've crossed a threshold, gathered a certain amount of critical mass -- even if I fall into a state of semi-collapse, folks want me to be with them and they want me to do art for and with them. The world has started to notice me, and it's saying, "Hey! I want to play!"

Almost better? If I ask myself, "What did you do today?" and answer, "Looked at musical instruments online, fucked up the vegetables for lunch and then spent six hours staring into a corner while feeling sad," I then congratulate myself on a job well-done, and go tell the missus how wonderful she's being with me.

See, I'm a registered, official crazy person now -- so when I display clear signs of mental illness, I'm not going to shit all over myself. I wouldn't do it to someone else. Doesn't make sense to do it to myself.

My counselor pointed out to me how much I'd actually done this fall. "Winter is a time to lie fallow. To rest. Maybe you're just hibernating."

And that's easy for me to accept -- I can look back at four years worth of blogs now, and see the shape of my year delineated as if it were outlined on graph paper. There is no reason for me to expect that discipline can overcome neurochemistry.

I get more done in the fall than a lot of people get done in a year, and then I do it again in the spring. I do what I do because I do it, and viciously accusing myself of lack of discipline and praiseworthy zeal strenuously exerted just uses up energy that I'd otherwise devote to my work. Wish I'd figured that one out earlier.

So I'm getting a lot more done than I usually do this time of year, with a lot less accompanying drama. I'm down to about six vertical inches of line-edits, from a high of nine. Things are coming along. When I look at the novel, see how excited the readers are? Again, it's hard to feel like a loser.

And when I remember, I've finally found a creative activity that I can engage in when emotionally distraught. Music, of course. I don't discuss it on the blog to any great degree, but I love playing music. A friend showed me some scales and made me practice them -- which I now know I did very, very poorly -- but aside from that, I'm pretty much self-taught. Bass, ukulele and baritone ukulele, now I'm starting to mess with open tunings on guitars. Drum programming, synthesizer music, singing... I'm not good, but I enjoy myself.

It's the ukulele and the baritone uke that are saving me. Unlike the bass, I can play them in bed, on the couch, in my recliner. And unlike the bass, when I play by myself it sounds like fucking music. I'm starting to be able to pick up chord progressions and hooks by ear, I'm getting some calluses.

And when I play music? It's like running a comb through my thoughts. Definitely soothing. A serious stress reliever. Playing music creates extremely complex patterns of neurological activity, requiring much of the brain to interact harmoniously. It's got serious and solidly-proven health benefits. And I play well enough to reap those benefits. To actually have a little fun and wring a little expression out of the fretboard.

Finally, the missus has been wonderfully supportive. We've had a few spats, but for the most part things have gone smoothly. She's going to visit her family in Ohio soon. I'll miss her, but I'll survive.

I don't have swine flu. I'm not vomiting blood.

This might be my best winter ever!