Pan troglodyte propaganda

POETRY

A future traveller found a sheet of headed paper in one of the infinite monkeys‘ typewriters. ‘The human guilt complex’, or ‘The Simplicity of Human Complexity,’ stacks of an evolving soliloquy were left in the Unfinished Literary Agency‘s photocopier. 

The writers continue to evolve, and they’re apparently handing out flyers in the street. They’ve learned to publish. 

Potted picnics on speed dial

THE WRITER’S LIFE

A young friend of mine recently reminisced, pondered and rued on Facebook: Where are the guys who call to ask how your day is, if you’ve eaten, and what you’re doing later?

I thought about that in a bipolar writer way, both the poet and the horror author, in my potting shed, where I write, and where I keep my tools: A pen and paper, the typewriter, an axe, a spade, a hoe, and packets of seeds…

THESE THREE WALLS

Second verse, same as the first, as we fear the ringing of the phone.

Dark poetry – or verse with more than one interpretation – is a medium I’m enjoying, as I’m finding I can do as much with it as a good twist in the tail of one of my stories. My dad’s been deteriorating over the last few weeks, so writing about what’s going on in my life is difficult and without resolution.

Dad was a gardener, usually tending the ornamental garden of a very large house. The house also had a kitchen garden, which is where dad seemed happiest, raising vegetables for the table.

There are many moments in life when I remember dad finding me: When I helped out on a gardening project and he paid me out of what little money he got; when I was stranded in Chicago after 9/11 and he called me in my hotel room; and when I was homeless, and he came and found me in McDonald’s. A man of few words, he never needed many; I just knew he was there. Now he’s much the same.

Then there was him, mum, and so many friends when I got knocked over exactly 33 years ago today, when I was 16 and spent several weeks in hospital, like my dad has lately.

In the school holidays we didn’t go away much, but running around that country estate where the gardens were dad’s, I always knew where to find him. Whenever an argument had kicked off in the confinement of a summer holiday family home, when it felt like my mum and sister were ganging up on me, I always knew where to find dad, in the potting shed.

I can’t find dad now, and he’s as lost as I was back then. The generations are reversed, and now I know how I made him feel when I did weird things, or wouldn’t be held accountable for the things I did.

On the other side of the sandwich, it’s my son’s birthday this week. I designed my own card:

I had it sent to me first, so that I could add a personal message:

I don’t get to say this as often as I should, but I’m proud of you and the young man you’ve become.

I’m hardly the model father, but I’m proud to have you as a friend as well as my son.

You are not doing it wrong if no-one knows what you’re doing

Three generations, all with their own deeply personal space; each in their own potting shed of the mind; one in a garden, one with a typewriter, and one with a computer; each of them rarely picking up the phone. I know both slices of bread which hold the Marmite sandwich together are there on a platter. I hope the other two know that the other two are too.

And in among all this, my mum phoned me at 4 O’clock this afternoon and I was in bed. I answered, woke up, and she apologised for waking me. That’s how things are. I didn’t get the chance to explain I’d crashed out in the afternoon because I’m up at this time, writing, because I can’t sleep, thinking of dad. And there’s the other side of the family, besides the mother ship; the jam sandwich of sister and daughter, all on the same plate as the Marmite.

Family picnics, and those with friends who are mi familia: Somewhere, someone is glad you do what you do, even if it’s only you who bangs on about it to yourself. It’s a personal and human sense of family survival.

Where are the guys who call to ask how your day is, if you’ve eaten, and what you’re doing later? They’re there, in their own place, wondering if they should call. 

Pessimistic sufferposting therapy

THE WRITER’S LIFE

In an update on a previous post, my brother-in-law Simon passed away today. He’s survived by his mum and four children. Safe journey brother x

Si died
Di died
Dodi died
The Dodo died
Dando died
Doddy died
Dido’s alive
and Danny Dyer
So’s the Dingo
in the dryer
Life is a game
of Bingo

When I can’t make the words in my head conform to any discipline, I just shit-post, then think of a picture to deface. Sometimes I put it on Facebook, more often on Twitter, then I regret it. Interpretation is the real artistic pursuit, and things just pop into my mind. “Don’t let it control you. Celebrate it.”

I’ve made the inside of my head a place full of friends. It’s the only way to deal with people you can’t get rid of, and it can make for a good game of 8-Ball.

Meanwhile, we all have a bigger game to play outside: Let’s save this burning home of ours. We were only ever guests of those who were here first, and we owe it to them, if not ourselves.

To be anxious is to be human right now. All we need to do is keep talking.

These images never leave, but they hide unless I curate them for hanging in my gallery of thinking, where I can trust the public to steal them. It’s what I call sociology.

 

Physics makes the world go round

THE WRITER’S LIFE

“Love makes the world go round,” someone said to me once. Which was funny, because I always thought it was physics which did that. But it’s true that love and laughter are the two most potent ingredients in the cocktail of the human spirit. For a minority, the world spins on money, which is unfortunate for the rest of humanity…

Hymn of the Big Wheel, Massive Attack

This post started on Saturday, when a young friend posted a quote meme on Facebook (a static image, posted as a video: why is that?): “Can a boy and a girl be best friends?” Aside from most of my closest friends being female (and many of them LGBTQ), I posted a comment:

If only humanity were evolved enough that we no longer needed to use gender-specific terms. Why can’t two people just be best friends? Because humans are fundamentally flawed, and the only problem with the human mind is that it’s conditioned by humanity. We need to start thinking differently.

Later that prompted me to comment on this video, posted by another acquaintance:

Frankly I found it disturbing (even without the ‘Get close to lovely women’ banner ad). It deals with a very real issue but one which is human-made, and which we ought to be able to transcend, like so many others we made. Instead, someone scared us and invented a weapon to sell to us.

We have the ability to leave or destroy the planet we share with those who were here first. Yet instead of realising the futility of conflict in a confined space, we continue to fight. Against whom? Opposing sexual identities, religious beliefs, skin colour… Differences.

We’re at war with ourselves, yet all members of one race: The Human Race.

And so commerce continues to profit from the barriers it erected, way back at the beginning of religion, driving apart the two main factors likely to oppose in a shared environment: Not faith vs. atheism, but male vs. female. But only if they’re stirred up. It’s terrorism by any other name.

Can you see why our world is broken?

Our sense of entitlement means there are always capitalists to mould our needs. The only thing we truly own is ourselves, and we can think bigger…

From Reasons to Stay Alive, by Matt Haig

While I prefer Twitter to Facebook, the latter is always a dark window into the human condition and onto the state of the contemporary world around us.

The worlds I imagine – free of conflict and full of love and laughter – are idealised, but within reach. Physics makes the world go round and in an ideal world, that’s the physical, self-determining beings who live there together. We can all afford to be more human.

Making flans for Simon

THE WRITER’S LIFE

I’d originally planned to spend the weekend making plans for Nigel, but when I realised I had no close friends called Nigel, my plans had to change. Instead I called on Simon Fry, my character, persona, and alter ego from Cyrus Song. We were having dinner and he’d asked me to bring dessert, so I’d made flans.

A poster on Simon Fry’s wall: a design sketch from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.

I’d decided to speak to Simon because he’s the person most likely to understand me. Even though I created him, he’s a completely separate person, and any decent writer will tell you that’s a perfectly plausible statement to make.

Before Cyrus Song, I already had Simon Fry’s life story written down. It fills a notebook, which I still have, along with the one containing Hannah Jones. A very small percentage of what’s in those journals is in the novel, but the characters’ speech and mannerisms write more than the words on the page. It’s knowing my characters so well which allows me to bring them to life (convincingly, I’m told). Every writer puts a piece of themselves into their stories and characters, I’m perhaps slightly above and beyond with some of mine.

I have a deep understanding of the human condition (the critics and reviewers say), and I have many personalities in my head, so each of my characters is a mix of those, and of other people I know. I know how Simon talks, because I know how he thinks, but only as far as a poker player would another. Even though I created him, I can’t read his mind. He has so much of his own story in that other notebook, that he’s a strong enough character to not need me (it applies to Hannah too).

It’s handy to be able to do things like this as a writer, and as a socially anxious one, I really do make (as in, create) friends. It sounds tragic perhaps, but it’s actually very useful.

Doctor Hannah Jones is based less on me, but with elements of others I know well in the real world, within her (I’ve tested it out on some of those other people). With all of those people in there, my understanding of human thinking and inter-personal psychology, I can hold a perfectly convincing conversation with Hannah, just as I can Simon. I don’t know if this is proof of my writing skills or confirmation of multiple personality disorder.

It’s the best way I have of getting to know myself. Some would say it’s talking to myself, but it’s more like questioning different parts of myself, so that the whole can get along. We may disagree, but I favour debate over conflict, especially when it’s in my head. This is my coping mechanism, but it’s more my mental health management strategy.

I said after I’d written the book, how much I missed those people, because they’d become so real when they were around me all the time as I wrote them…

I put the flans in Simon’s fridge, and I noticed he had a can of squirty cream in the door. Then we both sat on the sofa, wondering who should speak first.

“I’m not going to be your counsellor am I?” It was Simon. “Because I’ve counselled myself on many things before and wondered why I didn’t get a second opinion.”

“To be honest,” I replied, “I’m not entirely sure how this is all going to go.”

“What did you expect?” Simon wondered. “Because things rarely live up to expectation.” I’d caught him on a pessimistic day (he has those).

“I don’t have any expectations,” I said, “just an interest.”

“Very wise,” Simon nodded. I thought he’d say that.

“What about you?” I asked.

“The same,” he replied, “but if we both sit here just looking interesting, it’s not going to get us very far. So can I ask you a question?”

“It’s not like I can stop you.”

“True, in part. But anyway, why me?”

“I needed someone to talk to, to make it easier for me to talk.”

“So that I can ask you the questions you want to be asked, so that you have an excuse to answer.” Simon is very perceptive.

“You’re right,” I replied (he knew he was), “because you’re the one I spent longest in, and where I found myself.”

“So you’re haunting me?”

“No more than I hope I’m on anyone else’s minds. But in you, I found ways for you to deal with things, which helped myself and others to understand things around themselves.”

“In Cyrus Song?”

“In that book, where a lot of other people might find themselves in those characters.”

“And you have the advantage that you can come round here and talk to one of them.”

“I consider it a privilege.” And I did. Because these words are not entirely my own.

“Well, I can tell you,” Simon said, “that you created a whole world for me to move around in freely, as you can see for yourself. Beyond this world, you’ve created others which you’re equally free to occupy, but you’re always welcome here.” I’m not sure he could really say anything else (I’d be a bit fucked, like humanity at the start of the book).

“Perhaps we could invite Hannah along?” I wondered.

“Yes, I wondered how long it’d take you to get round to that. Let’s see how we go,” which is how I myself usually tell people to chill out. “And let’s do that soon,” which is something I rarely say, for fear of intrusion into someone else’s life.

This was turning into a story in itself. A man who was after my own heart, had overcome a lot in his life, and especially in the two week period covered in our book. Although it’s a surreal and twisting science fiction yarn, and with a nod to Douglas Adams, it’s very much a book from my own heart, and with a dark inner soul of its own. It’s a story of two people, who with a lot of help, find out much they didn’t know about themselves and the universe around them. I’ll be talking to Simon again soon.

As a writer I have multiple universes I can visit, but as a socially anxious person, I felt more at home in Simon’s flat. Even the flans seemed like some sort of unconscious collaboration, an ever-present threat of potential comedy while we spoke, should either of us be inclined. But we’re far too grown up and introverted for that sort of thing.

Cyrus Song is available now. The prequel stories of Simon and Hannah (and Captain Mamba) are told in The Unfinished Literary Agency.

Elephants in the atmosphere

THE WRITER’S LIFE | DEAR DIARY

A talented writer whom I respect, said of me in a review, “It takes creative voodoo to sit me down and give me a novel to read. It takes even more dark magic to get me excited about a fictional piece of work. I only respond to mental stimulation that puts me in a story…”

His is a mind entwined with my own, and he’s the author of a book I’m reading at the moment: Acupuncture of the Mind. In my own mind and many others, I’m just the occasional elephant in the room, which travels with its own atmosphere and requires a different kind of gravity to step among the surrounding eggshells. In many respects, we all are.

Salvador Dali

Like horses galloping on coconut shells, mine is a loud story, some of which is told on this blog. Other parts are in my stories and books, and still more will travel with me one day. Mostly it’s quiet, and elephants can float. For now, I’m landed back on something resembling my home planet after a recent episode.

Actually, to call it an episode would give it less credit than it’s due, when previous ones on my medical record only resulted in failed attempts to leave life. This latest one arrived like many before, then didn’t leave. It was the difference between seeing a UFO and beaming on board. Yeah, I was smoking, but that’s the best analogy to paint.

Just recently, my physical life has had to traverse landscapes far more frightening than the daily ones of the life I once lived on the streets. Once I found writing, I knew there was a way to deal with things. Then I stopped writing recently, which was odd.

Writing only what I feel I should, balancing my need for an outlet with what anyone really wants to read about, I’m not sure what to write. Yet I’m a writer, and it was writing which pulled me out of the depression before. I create my own paradoxes.

Lately it’s been more about people I care about than myself. When you’re me and you’ve done what I have, most people are better than me. I’m sober, but I remember being drunk.

To forget would be to drink again, and I won’t put anyone else through that. I go through it alone, perpetually in sobriety. To end that would be more selfish than anything I did before, so it’s an inescapable penance. And there are people who need me, by invitation.

My adopted kid sister is still fighting to keep her baby (the one I’ve been given debatable godfather duties with). My dad continues to remind me of the frailty of life, but inspires me with his spirit to fight. The mother ship is somewhere between Joss Whedon’s Serenity in SciFi, and a graceful duck beneath the surface. These are all things concerning others which I can only write so much about, but which have been consuming me.

It was the pen which saved me from death by bottle, but while I’ve not been writing this blog, I’ve not lapsed. I’ve perhaps smoked more, and I’ve thought. I wondered what was worth writing, and if it was worth sharing. But a blog is a platform, a soap box. Even if the speaker perched on top doesn’t have a coherent message, at least they have a voice.

A blog is an up-turned table, which could be used to flip the message on the writer’s life. It’s my stage. Whether or not I have an audience, it’s my open diary for all to read.

So that’s the real life and virtual life I was having so much trouble separating but trying to connect. When the physical is lived alone, the virtual becomes more real (the subject of more than one of my short stories). But in the spirit of maintaining the blurred lines, these were a few of the things occupying my mind today:

On #Brexit: “They may be fictional, but most of the Starfleet captains could teach Earth politicians a lot…”

On the #SyriaStrikes: “Well, this is feckin’ interesting: It adds weight to theories that we’re watching the playing out of a plan made long ago (‘Conspiracy theorist’ is a derogatory term applied to those who think more)…”

And on the latest developments in #WorldWar3: “Theresa May says the Syria Strikes were ‘In the national interest’: I beg your fucking pardon? Is that not why we have a Parliament and voters who elect our representatives? Tory Hypocrisy. The national interest? #NotInMyName…”

Those are all from my Facebook timeline, not my author page. I’m staying on Facebook, because to run away is to submit to the defeat of democracy. I’m grateful I have people to spend time with, wherever they are. The world is only as big or small as we make it.

My problems are universal. We are not a machine. We have autonomy, and we can be rebels if we still want to be.

We could still be heroes.

Simon said we should meet

THE WRITER’S LIFE

I suppose it was partly to do with my curiosity: my ongoing one, with myself; and the deeper one, of the human condition. When I sometimes find it difficult to separate fact from fiction, yet I find the latter the greater comfort; when I can occupy my characters, so that they speak more than their own lines; and when I know them better than many friends who are not myself, I thought it might be interesting to meet up with one of my leading roles. So I popped in to see Simon Fry, six months after Cyrus Song…

Fine Art America

I knew I was at the right place because it looked familiar. The man who answered the door though, didn’t look entirely as I’d expected, even though I’d written him. “Come in,” he said, beckoning with his head.

I was having dinner with Simon Fry, a character I created for Cyrus Song, and I wanted to know how all that had gone for him. His flat was just as I’d left it inside, as I always knew the furniture wouldn’t fit any other way.

I hadn’t given Simon sufficient recognition for his looks in the book, as he was a person very aware of his appearance but without a particularly high opinion of himself. Now that I saw him, he was quite striking. I wondered how things had worked out with Hannah since the book.

“Are you planning a sequel?” Simon wondered, which was one of the things I wanted to ask him about. “Because,” he continued, “I’m wondering whether to hang around waiting for you, or just get on with things.” I had to assume this was a shared sense of humour in an otherwise quite surreal situation.

“I wondered pretty much exactly the same,” I replied, “whether you’d just get on with life after I left you.”

“A strong character doesn’t need the writer to carry them along all the time. If the writer’s good enough, they’ve put enough into that character to make them come to life in a story.”

“Well I’ve got your whole life story in a separate notebook. Very little of it is in Cyrus Song but it was only by knowing you that I was able to convey your story so plausibly. It’s all in what’s not written.”

“Every story,” Simon said, “is where memories go when they’re forgotten.”

“Did you say that or did I?”

“Both of us I suppose. Strange isn’t it?”

“In a nice way,” I agreed. I wondered if it might be worth letting Simon flip the table on me, and let him write my story. I’m more comfortable inside one of my characters anyway.

“I suppose you’re wondering,” Simon wondered, “about Hannah.” I wasn’t sure if I was.

“How is she?” It seemed the most obvious thing to say. I didn’t know the answer to expect, let alone how to respond to any.

“Last time I checked, she was fine.” He seemed to be leading me.

“When was that?”

“I thought you might ask, seeing as her doctorate was in human psychology, before we started talking with the animals.” Funny that. It just goes to show what happens when you talk to a friend who can relate to you. They can give you the answer, without you having to ask.

So that’s the weekend sorted. I might carry this on, as it could help both me and Mr Fry work out how we use the perfectly plausible answer to life, the universe and everything in our book.

Cyrus Song is available now, and the prequel stories of Simon, Hannah Jones, and Captain Mamba are in The Unfinished Literary Agency.

A finished literary urgency

NEW BOOK

I’m sure there’s significance in my fifth book being published on the fifth of the month, but I can’t find any, other than this being the beginning of my fifth year as a writer. Not bad for an alcoholic ex-tramp (Charles Bukowski obviously taught me something). There’s a certain urgency to The Unfinished Literary Agency, in my visions of the future, some of them post-human…

The Unfinished Literary Agency is a second collection of short stories (there are 20 in this one), which stand alone, but which tell a longer narrative collected together. Although there are some dark tales in the book, it’s suitable for a wide audience of various types, and has humour in the horror. For the most part, it’s science fiction, mainly set in the near-future, and it vindicates my plaudit of being a writer who can see deep into the human condition (and sentient AI and animals).

These are collected tales from an author variously compared to the surrealists Julio Cortazar and Otrova Gomas, the horror writers Kafka, Lovecraft, King and Poe, and with Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Roald Dahl and Paul Auster.

“A writer who can hold a black mirror to the soul, and who has a deep insight into the human condition,” these are stories of fairy tale fantasy, plausible and whimsical science fiction, near-future vision and surreal dreams, with drops of dark humour. Tales of post-human landscapes mix with everyday slices of life to tell a longer story with a dark heart.

“A weird and thought-provoking journey…”

It was an enjoyable book to write and I’ve had good feedback from test readers. Like most writers (who are honest and want their books to be read), I always feel my latest is my best so far. Of this one, I’d say it’s a measure of me as a writer, and Cyrus Song is the one I hang my novelist’s hat on. Those are statements which can only be put to the test of course, if people read my books.

If someone new to my writing were to ask, I’d say read The Unfinished Literary Agency, to get an idea in bite-size chunks. Anyone with more time on their hands who wants a longer book to hold with them, could do far worse with many other novelists, and there is a plausible answer to the question of life, the universe and everything in Cyrus Song.

Four years ago, I was homeless and drunk. That’s a whole other story, but what I’ve done since is written five books. I feel I’ve earned the modest readership I enjoy, and I hope that following will grow as more people read my words. It’s the perfect way for the socially anxious writer to make friends and meet kindred spirits.

The Unfinished Literary Agency and Cyrus Song are available now.