A World of One's Own: Sine Qua Non

"I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art." -Anaïs Nin.

Why do you create?
Where do you belong? 

For me it is also a matter of Sine Qua Non: Without which, not.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Philosophy Begins In Terror: Aphorisms for a Philosophy of Happiness in (our) Time

The Truth of Transience: A Philosophy of Happiness

I.

I have never believed in anything, not even and much less myself. I have always felt as though selfhood, identity, kept me, keeps us, in fetters, shackled to the lie of transcendence. I lied, just now. I believed in deliverance, escape, in the pleroma of the apocalypse of love.

II.

Reflecting upon the man I've become and the stark contrast in which I stand to my past, I can only find it insufferably presumptuous to speak of myself in the present tense. Even today I have not ceased to live ahead of myself. Whereas you, my friends, can see me as I am,  I can only see myself within images of the past, in the reflections of memory's mirror.

III.

When I write, I write as an author of quotations without context, excerpts drawn from non-existent books.

IV.

Happiness in love is elusive for the very same reason as its simplicity: one must affirm (to eternity) that nothing is necessary, and that the origin of love lies in absolute, radical contingency.

V.

The Analyst: You know, love is just a Romantic fantasy, a mask for our every retrogression into primal, neurotic behavior. These aggressive, self-destructive drives masquerade as expressions of a noble emotion, when in reality, they respond to the trauma of intimacy, the anticipatory grief of knowing that the beloved will one day disappear. On occasion we attain mastery, only by becoming agents of the feared dissolution.

The Analysand: Can't it be otherwise? Can't love inspire progress?

The Analyst: Why, then, is it you on the couch and not I? 

VI.

Why must we reproach ourselves for ephemeral happiness as it recedes into the past? Wouldn't this amount to sour grapes on the part of my present existence? 'I must have been mistaken. Had I been or had reason to be happy it would have lasted.' In so doing we forget that transience is indissociable from the very idea of happiness.

...to love to let go.

VII.

Hope is impossible. Despair is doubly impossible. To genuinely let go: impossibility raised to the power of infinity.

VIII.

At that moment when at last I felt at home in the cosmos, a multitude of previously unseen stars illuminated the sky.

IX.

Perhaps every turning point is in accompanied by a palpable uncanny aura. I can feel the coexistence of what was and what will be in the now.


How to be in the world, to unite my time into a now?


In (Our) Time:

I.                        

The non-identity of self and self is time itself – without which we could not exist. Existence is neither eternal, unchanging Being, nor bound, teleologically, to absolute annihilation, eternal non-being. It is rather their unending, non-dialectical synthesis: the stream of Becoming.

Experience does not admit of non-existence, only being-in-time: becoming. genesis and phthora, birth and death, the passage of time: none refute existence. Universal transience and impermanence refute only our fantasies of eternal self-identity – fantasies tantamount to suicidal ideation.

II.

Nostalgia is an addiction to the past, to that which is not - or is no longer. It is the apotheosis of neurosis.

III.

Ennui is a lack of faith in the reality of the future, which makes the present recur eternally without change: the prison of time.

IV.

The time of hell is not, as Walter Benjamin wrote, the time of Eternal Return; it is the timeless time of the endless end.

V.

Absolute zero: a juxtaposition that signifies the unity of being and nothingness and the final kenosis of Spirit in Time

VI.

Marx says that historical events are subject to repetition, they come first as tragedy, then as farce. What Marx left out is that, when events recur thrice, they then come in drag.

VII.

Does the rejection of anthropocentrism (and the Copernican revolution in general) necessarily entail relegating humanity to utter insignificance, that is to say: nihilism?

VIII.

Skepticism that is not skeptical of itself is called nihilism.

IX.

Unknown shores: almost in sight

The felt presence of the unforeseen

Unforeseeable yet already present

Optics of the unconscious

Blindsight.

What power has the "light of truth" over blind Tiresias?




[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

"It’s not a hobo beard. It’s a writer beard."

This was actually the typewriter of demon frog "fame."

(This is a rough draft that mashes up some of my contributions to The Nervous Breakdown and other thoughts into what I hope to be the only piece I ever write 'On Writing,' for the next issue of Scree Magazine.) 

By James Curcio

It’s not a hobo beard. It’s a writer beard.

Jamie Curcio

It's hard to remember when my addiction started. I remember hammering awkwardly on an old-style typewriter about a demonic underworld that existed in the basement of a house we lived in. We had to go down into the basement in the cold and the dark and shovel coal to keep the house warm, and the story had something to do with the frog demons that lived down there and the boy that had to brave them every night to keep his family warm. Really deep stuff, clearly. I actually don't know if that is relevant to anything, but you've got to admit it's kind of cool I remember a story I wrote when I was eight or so.

I think it was my first time, but I could be wrong. Freud call these "screen memories," which basically means they are picture-stories that we use as memories. They are like the seeds of the story that we construct about childhood, because, you see, memories are a form of story. Everything about us is based on stories.

Our sense of identity, all our beliefs even, are narratives, and this is why politics demands narratives that draw us in, whether they act on our intellect or our emotions. We think we can get some sort of real or fixed sense of the past. Of history. Of what really happened. But the fact is that all these narratives stand between us and that speck of dust that is some point in the past, long since vanished past the event horizon of clear recall. We conjure it back, perform some sort of neurological magic trick, and think we’ve painted something more real now that it’s been brought back to life.

I guess I’m saying we’re all story junkies. This is a confessional, but I’m certainly not alone in being unable to kick the habit. Don’t judge lest ye judge yourself.

Once I got past stories about frog demons, I started writing for a dual purpose. I wanted to gain a better sense of myself, and at the same time I wanted to communicate with others in a way that was deeper, than, well, the stuttery and awkward attempts at communication I try when speaking on the fly. In other words, there is an internal “me” that does not easily come out socially, in the moment. And I think that “me” has a lot more to say than the off-the-cuff, needs a tequila to be able to talk easily with a stranger... on a good day, "me." But maybe “he” doesn’t. Maybe he’s a psychopath. Guess you’ll have to read “his” stories.

My point is that my brain moves in twenty directions at once and it's almost impossible to cogently communicate with someone as clearly as I believe I can with text on a page. Yet after years of publishing books and blog posts, I've come to wonder if I have in the process proven myself to be the very source of the kind of alienation that set me on the path of writing in the first place. In other words, the better “he” gets at communicating, the worse stuttery-in-the-moment me gets. This is the literary equivalent of a K hole.

The Story of a Transmedia Revolution: (Part 4) The Bookstore Apocalypse

Rise of the Zombie Publishers

PressPausePlay Sneak Peek #1 - Seth Godin from House of Radon on Vimeo.

At first glance, things look rather grim for storytellers—or authors, as they are commonly referred to today.  Bookstores are going bankrupt; traditional publishers are at war with their online rivals; pirated e-books are sailing the digital seas in record numbers; and of course, there are the widespread rumors of an impending reading apocalypse…

"Paper or Plastic?"
(Which side of the publishing war are you on?)
-Photo by Peter Usagi

But even more disturbing than the current conflicts in the sale and distribution of published works, is a shift in how writing is viewed as a career.  According to author Seth Godin, if you're a writer, you have no right to make money anymore.  It's a little harsh, but he does have a very good point:

“Who said you have a right to cash money from writing? Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word — over.”

Blogs are dethroning journalists, reality TV and YouTube are turning the everyman into celebrities, and thanks to Amazon and Lulu, now anyone can publish a book.  With so much freedom, and so few gatekeepers, publishing is starting to look a lot like cable TV: thousands of choices, but nothing worth reading.

The Story of a Transmedia Revolution: (Part 2) The Story Wars

The Rise and Fall of a Story-Showing Empire

By Peter Usagi

The Transmedia Revolution has begun!
Which side will you join?
An empire of greedy corporate media cartels?
Or an ancient and mysterious order of storytellers...
Image via Panicposters

After years of study, I've come to realize that contemporary storytelling—books, film, television (and to a significant extent, even live theater)—are a completely passive medium.  They are narratives that lack interaction and any kind of participation from their audience.  These mass-produced mediums of entertainment are more appropriately labeled "story-showing,” then storytelling.

People often wonder why there isn’t anything "new" in Hollywood.  Why is it that every movie, TV show, and most popular literature, tastes like reheated "leftovers" disguised with some kind of mystery sauce?  It’s because after a century of industrialization, we've become indoctrinated as a species of “story consumers.”

We’ve been raised to passively swallow the shallow narratives presented to us in our extended childhoods; schizophrenic mythologies filled with stories that have no depth, meaning, or purpose--other than to entertain (or perhaps more sinisterly, distract).

All of our modern entertainment (all of our stories) are almost entirely mono-active.

Our “entertainment industry” is simply a convenient medium for a 24/7 multimedia stream of consumer subconsciousness—peppered every fifteen minutes with commercials, product placement, and other forms of materialist propaganda.  Even traditional literature has become a victim to this malaise.  

The Lost Art of Storytelling

Parents who "tell” stories to their children, usually aren't really “telling” them.  They’re reading them word for word from a book; an example of modern mono-active story-watching.  Unless the child occasionally takes control of the narrative, thus making it interactive (I.E. "No, Red Riding Hood had a cell phone, and she called the cops on that mean nasty wolf!") the true immersive, and transitive aspects of storytelling are neutered, or even entirely absent in our modern fictions.

Is modern media a "big bad wolf" that
devours creativity and imagination?
Image via Wikipedia

If you put your book down, and “tell” a story to your audience (instead of read it), something about your story will always change, each and every time you tell it.  Unless, of course (as you’ll find in live theater), you have your lines memorized.

This is because even when you tell the same story (with the identical characters and plot),  you’ll always be a different person each time you tell it, and so will your audience (even if they’re the same people):

If you told a story to a group of recent college grads (while they were partying around a campfire in the middle of the wilderness) the crazy things you did to get into your career field…would that story be identical to the one you told to a classroom of second graders, the day after you lost your job?

If this is the case, does "storytelling" in its interactive sense, still exist in today's society?  Perhaps...

Thanks to new combinations of divergent media platforms, a new kind of storytelling is on the rise.  One that recognizes the importance of engaging an increasingly distracted and impatient audience: transmedia.

Script Writing An Authors Lament

There, is that title melodramatic enough for you?

Seriously though, this is going to be one of those apologies for neglecting my blog as a platform for reaching my readers blah-blah...because quite frankly it can be difficult to write here and at the same time get something of any merit done elsewhere. The muses only seem to grant a certain amount of writing "juice" a day, and it can be easily squandered.

At the moment, I am working on two scripts. They are completely different projects, yet there are some definite crossovers of myth and concept, so it's been an interesting process- almost like exploring the light and dark side of the moon simultaneously.

To get back to the subject, though: there is a reason why I've been hesitant about diving into script writing in the past. How terrifying is it as a writer to possibly put years of work into a project which might never get produced? When you're working on a novel, certainly there are gatekeepers and bottlenecks in the process of reaching an audience. But, especially nowadays, it is possible to at least make it available. This reason alone kept me away from script writing for many years. Eventually, I came to realize that it was a format that I very much enjoy - I am a big fan of the potential of multi-media. It is often a collaborative process. It means you get to completely side-step prose descriptions, which always feel forced to me. And, most importantly, it'll totally get you laid.

OK, that last one doesn't seem to be entirely true. I don't have a "not getting laid" control group to test it out. And I'm not sure I want one, either. Bitchy bunch of people.

The real penultimate reason is that it keeps me in line. My self criticism of my past novels is that they meander -- often intentionally. Plotting out and writing a script for graphic novel or movie format production forces you to show rather than tell. It also forces you to get to the point if you don't want a Tarentino length product at the end of the day. These are good things.

So, there it is. I'm working on scripts. I have one or two others in the can waiting to be produced. Hopefully you get to experience the finished products someday.

And hopefully in the meantime I dredge up something to ramble about here on the blog in the meantime.

What's your preferred writing format?

Daily lit LOLZ

As most of you may imagine, writing a good book is hard. Editing it is hard, and no matter how many editors you go through, you will invariably find some sort of embarrassing typo the moment you've finalized things with the printers. That's expected, you learn to live with it or you wind up developing a drinking habit. (Or, sometimes, you learn to live with and you wind up developing a drinking habit.)

But once you've done all that, you have to go and try to convince the world you've written a book, that people should put a couple hours of their time into. That's the stage I'm at right now with Fallen Nation, and I've been somewhat amused today at some of the responses I've received from the first wave of submissions to literary magazines.

Here's one I found particularly ironic. Let's see if you share the sentiment:

"Thank you for your email. If you have asked a question, I will send you a personal response next time I check the Nocturnal Lyric emailbox. If you have sent a submission, please understand that we do not read or accept emailed submissions. If you are interested in the status of your mailed submission, or would like submission guidelines, you can read them on our website at: http://www.angelfire.com/ca/nocturnallyric"

(Sorry. If you run your magazine through an angelfire site, you seriously don't have the right to get high and mighty about submission guidelines in your automatic response letter. But it does help me out - I had my assistant compile the list of places to submit to, mostly through the Writers Market, and she obviously didn't recognize that "angelfire" = "do not want.")

No Write Way 6

(No Write Way 1-6.)

When you quietly complete your first edition, buy a handful of copies and get them off to people who's opinion you trust. Ideally these will be fellow writers or editors, but barring that, well-read friends will do just fine. The caveat of this gift, of course, is that they must actually read it and provide you with useful input.

The value of this kind of input cannot be overlooked, however it takes real skill and sensibility to provide genuine criticism. A good critic suggests solutions to the problems that they encounter, and they deal strictly with the work itself. Also take the time to listen to the people who purchase your first edition- some of them may be valuable critics as well. Just make sure to completely ignore those who go straight for the character assassination. Chances are they haven't even read your book.

If you make your first edition available for free as a PDF, you will also broaden the potential range of people who will be exposed to your work. "For free, you say?" Yes. Cory Doctorow covers the reasoning behind this quite well in this article, so there's no reason to re-state it.

(Alterati.com article.)

No Write Way 5

So, let’s suppose that you’ve written your novel. You’ve pulled your hair out on the editorial process (and probably received an inordinate amount of contradictory advice), and burned your eyes out on layout.

Now, after the headache from your “celebratory binge” wears off, it’s time to get your first edition out to the world. Note that at this point, the trajectory for self publishing differs from approaching an agent or publishing company, and it is the former case that we’re going to be dealing with.

There are quite a few self publishing options out there. A google search will avail you just fine, when it comes to hunting them out. But how to compare them side-by-side with that nagging, throbbing hangover? I’ll help a bit by comparing two of these services, Lulu and Booksurge. I’ve used them both, so I’ll be speaking from experience. I will also show you how they can actually be used in tandem to maximize their upsides.

(Alterati.com article.)