Everyday Journeys In the Magic Land of Psychotropia

Of Dreams, and Magic; and, On How to Move the Heart of a Stranger

2011-12-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

Bob Dylan said, in his book, "A song is a dream, you try to make it come true."

Bob knows what it is like to dwell in the magical realm of Song, he has managed to live there most of his life.

*

Magus, imagos, imagine, magic; he who does the dreaming is in control...it helps to stay reality-based. We all of us dream the worlds we inhabit, it is a characteristic of the human condition. Authors write about it, singers sing about it, artists paint out their visions...

*

I have recently discovered my voice - it happened on December 14, 20111, at approximately 1330. I'm not gonna talk about it here, now, but suffice it to say I am 100% confident of my...vocation (from the Latin, 'voce', for 'voice').
I'm just now these last few days experimenting with how to use it.

*

Hooligans across the road, in my gentrified neighbourhood, where the evening songbirds trill in the hedgerows, fire off the fireworks and small cannon, making the dogs to bark...should I call the police?
As a human, I want them to burn and glow and flare all night long; but, as a 'citizen', I am bound to call the police. One lady has already lost her dawg to the night, prompted by the bark of gunpowder explosive...she calles to it , plaintively, in vain...the lads grow ever more drunk, and their bottles are caused by them to clink, a jarring sound in my starry starry night.

Fuck off, Yahoos! Fall into the Stupor that is yr natural province, and leave me to my reveries. You are being 'policed', even as I write, I have called to them, I can see the blue and red flashing light atop their steely vehicles, hear the tramp of leasher boots on yr gravel driveway, see the shadow of the Man tromp yr home...fuck you.
Dig Infinity...

*

Who, in these early daze of the 21st Century, is involved in the art of conversation'? excactly, no one I know, except the dog park denizens, and my co-workers. Evryone is busy texting and such, which does not involve immediate involvement, lacks the information of body-language...86% of human communication is non-verbal, studies have shown, so of what value IS the written word? perhaps more so as real actors' talent and spirits are given over to the acting-out of the writer's truths; hence, William Shakespeare.
To move the heart of a stranger, that is my life-goal; that, coupled with the quest for artistic integrity, is considered by me to be a life well-lived.
I am studying intensely the essay, 'On the Art of Conversation', by the divine Montaigne. I read the version as translated by Charles Coton, the 17th Century English poet, in a volume of readings chosen and illustrated by - Salvador Dali. The 1947 version.
A 16the century French text, derived from Latin sources, translated by a 17th century English poet, and illustrated by a 20th century Spanish painter, surrealist...and read by me, 21st century IZ aspiring artiste.
What a wonderful world, how little I need, in order to live out my life.
Is there some better way to live? show it to me now, or remain forever silent.
I coould watch more teevee...

Scraps, quotes

2011-12-19T22:04:00.000-08:00

Couple of quotes that are very important to me...

"Be wrong! Be wrong!!"

And, something like, "Tropez la racine", a very translation, v bad French, which means, "Cut off the root".

I can't recall at this time who uttered these words; some French artiste, I believe. I knwo that I have these written down somewhere, in the 'long files'.

I look for inspiration anywhere, in my quest to move from Dreamer to Doer, from dreamer lost in revery to man of action. There is in me a drive to write down so that I can prove my ideas are 'right'. That is an artistic fraudulence, for Art demands of the artist that he have the courage to 'be wrong'.
See, Like Jack Kerouac sayed, "All of the things I wrote were true, because I believed in what I saw'. Now, as far as others are concerned, what he saw was wrong, he didn't get the facts right, he didn't know what he was talking about...but they are too concerned with 'real', and not looking for evidence of imagination at play in the mind of the writer.
As for, 'cut off the root', what that means is cut off the terrible weight of the past, and find the courage to re-imagine everything, with the vision of Today. Forget who you were, what you did, ignore who you think you are, today, and take courage and move forward! that is called, by me, Life.
Else lose all currency. Dead, emotionless, spiritless examination of past events has a name, and it is called, 'History'; it strives to objectivity, concreteness...
There is my trap, as a trained historian, that is the temptation, to merely assemble and record undisputed facts.

And here is Jack London: "It is always easy to tell a man how to play his hand at cards. Take that hand and play it yourself. Get up; wake up; kick in; do something. A man who does not do anything is usually a critic. Deliver the goods; come across; arise, or be forever damned."

"On s'engage et puis on voit." Napoleon ("You have only to engage.")

'Do' anything, but do something.

Acquisition of Technology, or, Mad Skillz

2011-12-17T00:51:00.000-08:00

Andre Dupuis is a Gemini award-winning cinematographer. His passion and talents have evolved with the latest techniques and technologies. If the scope of his artistic vision requires a new skill set, Andre does not sleep until he has mastered what he needs to execute a project with style.

This guy is the cinematographer who recorded all of the tv series, 'Departures'.

I love and admire so much that statement of his, esp, "...does not sleep until he has mastered what he needs to execute a project with style."
That's astonishing, to me, such a lot of work! couldn't it be easier?
Still, that's the purpose of mastery, to facilitate expression, I have to remember that.
I hate technology, it's so hard to stay w the left brain, I'd rather just jabber...but, I love technology, too, because it empowers me to create. If there is no form, the content is incomprehensible.
I do retian a sneaky suspicion that only in the spoken word is the true power of the Word most essentially expressed. I'l have to see. Until then, I will continue to use digital voice recorder and vFlip video camera, and blog.

Hail Freedonia! - Report from InterZone, Video #5

2011-12-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

Video #4

2011-12-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Video #3

2011-12-06T21:47:00.000-08:00

Video #2

2011-12-06T00:25:00.000-08:00

Video #1

2011-12-06T00:07:00.000-08:00

QUIXOSIS

2011-11-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

It is impossible for a human being to experience the Earth as a globe; for man, life on earh is a flat experience.
One can only apprehend the globular nature of our planet through the aid of a map; once experience (discovery) has been transcribed as an idea, a pictogram that purports to depict reality, that all of the known earth is now accounted for, one realises that the earth is indeed round, and not flat.
But for the map, dependent on our own five senses, and of our minds to interpret experince, we will believe the earth to be flat...and ever search for its edges.
Because, in the absence of a map, it is very difficult to reasonably posit a round earth...
Maybe, in some way I have not thought of, it's better to think of it as flat!

*

I am at work on a monograph, detailing and explaining works of art, literature, etc, mentioned in Poe's, 'Usher'.
Will do this audiofile...tomorrow.
Because, regardless of my obsession w doing nothing until I am, sure it is 'perfect', I have also to undertsand that I must do it NOW
In the best way I can, now...and not wait for website designer, new camera, DragonSpeak, mastery of DAW all that...let's go, let's get it on, now, hiphop!
ALWAYS, to keep it real, let it be what it is, and move forward, always...or backward, but at least TO MOVE!
And to bump myself from revery into action, out, from being 'in a brown study' to a new being 'in the street' (a la Emerson, 'On Eloquence')
So, fumbling, stumbling, awkward, ignorant, self-indulgent meanderings w only the slightest of relevances...ut thy exist. Maybe someone will be....entertained.
So - a half hour 'show' each week, w this technology, this studio, this mind, as it is, now...'I', as I am today, directs, acts, wrires, set designs, records and eperforms and edits...and hopefully creates, all with the ideas in mind of evolution (anythng to preserve me from the present!)

The Work Continues...

2011-11-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

It's lazy work, it's self indulgent, and boring, but it is also a step forward. There have been many steps before, but this one is good to have under my belt.

I have produced and recorded 4 short video clips, monologues that last no more than 4 minutes each; next time, I will take courage and run the camera for at least 30 minutes.

Now I need to store the files on the hard drive, access the files and post them on to a new blog, one I will create using 'WordPress'. There will be just a single link there to this blog...maybe.

So: to repeat, a story will be told, in video and audio. The audio will be translated (using 'DragonSpeak') into text, which will then be edited and played with, perhaps forever.
A story told simultaneously in three media, immediate, real, spontaneous, authentic as fuck...and stored and archived and made available to others.

That is The Method, that is the modus operandi.

So the viewer will see the postings and beable to track evolution - because if these efforts are the best I can do, I will have to shoot myself.
I am certain I can do so much better, and that I will.

But, for now, 'Personal Monologues 1 - 4, Nov 16/2011.

This is where my challenge lies, in creating new blog on WordPress, in storing files and posting them, in utilising the new DragonSpeak software, which I cannot bear to make myself even to look at, though I like the thought of it.

Mastery of technology...no worries, ther essence will shine through, hopefully somebody will 'get me'.

*

The only way is to post the imperfect, the wretched, the unschooled, striaght from 'the street', my street; I have compelled myself to do that, there will be no editing, no discards, no death of experience...there will be no more suffocation of the essential voice, that is over.
Now is the time of expression. I know that I gain momentum w each step, and it is rather exciting.
So much more fun than watching television.

*

I have no idea where this will go, or really even why I do it - I only know this business of self-expression is absolutely vital; without it, life really is unliveable.
So, I will have to accept the imperfections of my creations, most especially because I refuse to submit my work to editors, etc; I have always hated that aspect of writing.
I am essentially a writer who refuses to 'submit', the ultimately self-reliant artist.
What would sweeten the pot is the acquisition of 'patrons'. Then, I could eat, as well as breathe.

Towards 100 Riffs, or Raps, or Inspired Immediate Walking Dog Monologues

2011-11-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

!00 riffs....

Like Henry Miller's 'grand obsessional walks', as described in his 'Walking Up and Down in China'

Like, thoughts more immediately captured via 'digital voice recorder', and rendered into text through, 'DragonSpeak'...and posted and edited buy me, more or less continously.

1. Napoleon

2. 21st century: huge # of Americans w diagnosable mental illnesses (26%)

3. Use of substances to achieve cognitive states (tobacco, alcohol, canabis)

4. Lung-gom-pa

5. Seeing in the dark

...etc...each of these subjects upon which I can 'wax' eloquent, hopefully, but at least I can wax...

And mutliply by Jack's # of Rules Of Spontaneous Prose' (26), and you have a 2600 section/module/act Work of Art

6. 'Magic Radio', a la idea described by Hesse in 'Steppenwolf'

7. Dawgs

8. InterZone, and 21st century aesthetic, and 21st epic

9. 'Freedonia'

10. Right eye/left eye

11. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'

I possess the technology to make all of this happen...just have to put my head down and plow on ahead, one step at a time, forward! or die.

12. 'In a Brown Study'

13. 'Rap' in Poe's, 'Fall of the House of Usher'

14. Henry Miller

15. Jerzy Kosinski

16. On what it means to 'dig a hole in the night.

17, Tieck's, 'Moonlit, nocturnal magic...'

18. Breasts.

19.....................................foreveah!

On the Art of the Essay in InterZone

2011-10-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

Essays...in my attempts at essay writing, I seek to emulate Montaigne.
Considered by many to be the best essayist of all time, his great innovation (unpopular in his day) was the interjection of the subjective, stories and events from M's own time...

CUT TO:

Night, a basement 'rec room' somehwere in Anglo N America. A man dressed in camoflauge sits at a key board, typing w two fingers in the dim light

ZOOM

Computer screen, text revealed - "So this is what I do, in IZ, here are the steps involved, sequentially, in writing essays in IZ: first, I do the Walking Dog Monolgue, one hour of audio derived from my utterances while waking the dog. Second, that audio is stored as a file on the komputer, and posted on the website/blog. Third, the audio is transcribed via DragonSpeak into text, which is posted below the audio file on the website. Fourth, I engage is a more or less constant edit of the text. Fifth, I record myself visually reading an 'annotated' version of the more polished text; I include anecdotes, observations, refrences - even segues!"

CUT TO:

'Romeo and Juliet' balcony, ext. view Camo man sits and smokes a cigar, whose smoke trails wraith-like up into the full moon.

Notes toward 'Walking Dog Monologues'

2011-09-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

OK, it might work best like this: 1 hour audio file (up to 1 hr) produced during the dog walk.
Then, save as audio file on computer.
Then, Dragon speak (speech recognition software) renders it into text.
I then post the audio file ('The Raw') and below it the text file, all edited and pored over.
I market the audio files to CBC as a free lance project, in mind a weekly show (30 mins)...
And I keep the audio and text on the website. A series...

I will have to buy 'DragonSpeak', at a cost of $180.00 Cdn, but I have everything else.

So there is the flow...Day, dog, audio; night, dragon, and text.Spoken word into written word.

Spend six days working and editing the audio, then do a new one. Do several of these, pick the best, submit to CBC.

I think that will work. It's what I want to do.

Hmmm...Dragonspeak...$180 bucks, eh? have to be pretty serious...I think it is the last bit of technology I need to acquire - then, I will have to learn it :(( O woe is me.

Eradicate Self Pity, y 'Playa del Mago'

2011-09-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Eradicate self-pity...cultivate ruthlessness, a ruthlessness towards oneself, a refusal to entertain self-indulgence. An eradication of self-pity..
I have made a career of caring for others, of being obedient and caring and conscientious and dutiful; also, a career of being lazy and self-indulgent and overly-Romantic. (The Romantic state of mind never was geared towards action)
Other qualities are required now, in order to become an independent agent, one who lives by the 'free lance'; as Kosinski would like it defined, this profession of mine, I will be an 'investor', who invests in himself, first.

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Here is an exchange of letters between me and Il Mago del Mallorca:

John Percival Gibson - I gotta ask you: in 1967 they made a movie on Mallorca. It was called 'The Magus', w Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, and Anthony Quinn. The beach at the villa of the main charcater, the view from there, in the film, shows cliffs like these ones. I'm studying that film right now. Any idea where on Mallorca that was filmed? love the villa.

September 11 at 9:59pm Bob Roberto Gourlay - This is a lovely area just outside of SOLLER on the way to DEYA...its called SA FORADADA...I used to do Prirate Excursions there with tourists where we made a great big PAELLA and good drinks, including a COGNAC that NASA used to send Astronauts to the moon!!
September 13 at 9:50am Badwater Mallorca - The film "the magus" was filmed in the beach called now "Playa del mago"(named after the movie), that is located next to portals vells on the road to "El Toro". Franco allowed, and, if I am not wrong, paid for the big house to be build on the rocks of that beach only for that movie, that then was abandoned.
7 hours ago ....John Percival Gibson Wow! Thanks so much, Badwater, that's great information. There is a story within a story there, the story of how the film was made. Franco, I don't hear that name much anymore. I hope to be in spain in 2013, so Playa del Mago is a place I must go to.
31 minutes ago · LikeUnlike.John Percival Gibson I wonder: is that house still there?

"...bent to it again, gone!", last para of 'On the Road

2011-09-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

I have the feeling that if I keep my head down, bent to the plow, and push as hard as I know how, I will get to where I want to go.
That's a good feeling.
For now, I am still 'cultivating my mind'; I crave action, but can't seem to do it enough to satisfy myself, these days...have to do more, work harder, pay more attention, become serious and make it real. I do a little each day, but the efforts seem pale and frail, shaky steps down the unknown path. Still, that's where the light is...
Cultivating the mind is such a necessary piece in this quest - vision is the pre-eminent faculty needed; without vision, one flounders, is led, remains ultimately confused.
And so, each night I dream myself into enhanced visions of reality, and each day I struggle toward them.

Walking Dog? or, Running Dog?

2011-08-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

WD, or RD?
Because, I will be doing a lot of running with the dog, probably most of the time...
So maybe at least start out as RD? and, as I age, become Walking Dog?

^

The aspiration will be, poetry, a poetic experience...in search of flow. In the moment, free form spoken word...

On Owls, and the Genesis of 'Walking Dog'

2011-08-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

Just a few minutes ago, as I was sitting at midnight on the little balcony that looks to the east, dreaming of Quixote - an owl flew down from a bearby tree and swooped straight at my head.
It turned away at the last second and swept up its silent wings, flashed its white belly at me, and flew away into the night.
I juxtapose this experience with my habit of 'nailing the owl to the door' when I try to write or research. The 'owl' symbolises curiosity, intellectual curiosity, which is a compulsion I struggle with a lot. I don't recall where I read the expression, now...I'm gonna Google it. BRB 5 minutes

*

Of the length of each recording of Walking Dog Monologues: the length will be determined by the duration of the walk. There will be no adding to the thing after I am home, and no prepatory recording, it is what it is.
The title, Walking Dog Monologues, works on 2 levels: one, referring to the act of walking a dog, but also referring to me as'Walking Dog'. That conjures up a nice image for me, due to my identity within a certain very small society, as 'The Great Dog of the North'. So, I am 'the Dog', who happens to be walking...with a dog.
SO: there is the genesis of the character of the narrator of these WDM episodes, he is Walking Dog. I like the association with Native American personal nomenclature, there
For the purposes of this audio file effor, this radio thing, I will particpate as narrator in the character of Walking Dog.
This narrator...it may be that I will base him partly on Joseph Konrad's Marlowe, and partly on the protagonist in Cronenberg's film, 'Naked Lunch'.

Walking Dog Monologue

2011-08-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

That is the working title of the free-lance radio submission.

2011-08-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

There is in front of me an arduous ordeal: mastery of the different skill sets required to gain sufficient technical proficieincy, to realise my dreams and tell my stories.
I have to learn digital voice recorder, Fruity Loops sound studio, Move Magic Screenwriter software, on and on.
I am terrible at this. It's all left brain stuff, and I hate that, loathe it. I have a terrifically strong aversion to technical stuff...I hated studying the guitar, and music...I wanted the song! itself.
Now, I see that there must be mastery of technique before there can be expression of artistic voice.
There is so much to learn. My aim is to educate myself to give expression in chosen media; have to master the skill set, there is no other way, for me.
Cannabis will not help, nor alcohol; nicotine would be useful, but is forbidden during the day. Caffeine is ok.
There is a huge shift required now, from Night to Day. I have to study, and prepare myself, and learn how to run these programs, to edit and engineer and save and store and back-up....sigh.
I've spent over a thousand dollars in sofware and technology to accomplish this aim, and it only works for me when I learn to use it.
Left brain, wake up! Wake up!

*

I have in front of me, before me, a fifty yr career and a self-assigned full time job; a full artistic meaning for my life that could easily prove be very lucrative, can at least be expected to provide me with a livelihood - but I have to master the technology.
I must be able to at least operate and navigate my own web site, and record and edit and engineer my own freelance audio files, teach myself to write screenplays and produce one by March 1, 2012, create my own songs and soundtracks...I am involved in doing it, but what a shift is called for!
Well...let's get on with it.

On Overcoming of Inertia, and the Gaining and Maintaining of Momentum

2011-08-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

I whine about being stuck in the family, about having adult ADD, about being highly distractable and a compulsive task switcher....
And I think of Dostevskii, writing 'Crime and Punishment' in a four room apartment (bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, parlor) while his five small children were raised around him...
I have to be willing and able to do it in the midst of family, society. Solitude is a luxu
ry, which has to be sought out, and carries a likely unnecessary cost...
No, I will do it in the midst of family life...headphones will help.
And in the midst of life, whether I am 'laid off', fired, whatever; if I am the victim of a blizzard, or cougar, or cancer, it will be done.
There is no 'stopping'.
The hip hop ethos, aesthetic, will be adhered to by me as I write; it's something that infuses everything, when I do it right. It's the vehicle of expression of the 21st century hyper-media...and that is where I practise my Arts.
The hiphop stance, as I understand it, is to be found in immediacy. It's all about what's for real, what is happening now, with what you have in the moment, to which you as an Artist have to find full and adequate expression. A connection to the dynamic of the time, of one's own time...not to wait until you get to Greece to search for Aphrodite, but to look for her in the eyes of the girl who serves you coffee at McDonald's
Local gods, dig!?
So, when I do my thing, it is here and now and who I am and what I really see; not what I could say if I ever got to Paris, no, about what I say NOW! HERE! in the momnet.
It's what InterZone demands, if you can't do that, get outta here...we in InterZone don't need the errand boys sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill; we don't need anyone whose death is on the instalment plan...
HipHop, yo...
Real, immediate, local - what is my for-real 'everyday', what Camus and Sartre would refer to as 'authenticity'.
Quixote-like, one risks in self-expression and revelation, being known to others.

*

I really have nothing to complain about: I have 3800 sq ft to share w my wife, the 13 yr old step daughter, 4 kats and 1 dawg. I have a huge room available to me, beautiful and white and sunny - that room is being transformed by me into a 'studio', The Studio, where all sorts of things will take place, all recorded by me, J.P. Godot, freelance agent giving a full report from InterZone.

*

I have spent 22 yrs as a front-line psychiatric worker; it has been lousy for me in an ambitious, vocational sense, but as a human being? a vital and necessary experince. That's what I have given myself, in my pursuit of this career: not pension plan, or social status, or influence over the lives of everyday men;, no, I have learned to open my heart.

^

And to think that all of this will be Apollonian in nature; none of the sacraments of the night present in the system, only what is crisp and fresh and unadulterated, unmodified by substances...solar vs lunar, diurnal vs nocturnal, lit vs dark...
BUT: "all that has dark sounds has duende"

MONOLOGUES OF THE DOG

2011-08-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

A GREAT DAY! an actionable idea.
I will tomorrow purchase a clip-on microphone, to connect to my digital voice recorder; I will record monolgues, mine own spontaneous utterances, and post them as 'auidio files' on my blog.
I will also make them available as pod casts -and! - pitch the idea to CBC, when and if I decide its any good.

Great, great to have discovered this form; let's see how it works.

So: for CBC purposes, I am a free-lance radio journalist, submitting an idea for a radio show. I will intially prduce three, half hpour shows, performances, and encourage editing on their behalf - while at the same stime studying the art of audio engineeering and editing, myself.
They may find a way to distill the performances into a weekly, half hour show, based on mine two hour weekly submissions. Eventually, I can produce all myself, and only pitch podcsats and blog performances.

*

This is great, because I already spend some fifteen hrs weekly w the dog, on lonely trails up hills and through forests, on quiet contry roads and splendid Pacific beaches.
What I have to do is produce some hrs on audio, condense it to two hours, and pitch it to the CBC.

I like the inspiration, it seems very doable. Now, I have to do it, record 20 hours of audio, edit it, and submit it, along with a written proposal, to CBC.

Real, immediate, creative, modern, done by, with, and for modern technology.

Ya...this is def good enough to accomplish the inital goal: 20 hours of audio. Once I've produced that, I'll know, learn, a lot more.

*

I have recently begun to realise that, as I walk the dog, mostly in silence, I am also cultivating my mind. I can get on extended soliloquies, indulge every form of mentation, without significant interruption. Silence...great for an ADD-type thinker, like me.
So, only to utter the thoughts - how will that work out?
Eventually one day carry with me 'waiver forms', the better to enlist passers-by; good to include 'found people'.
And, of course, the dawgs

A Winter's Project, or, Towards an Entry Point to Cinema

2011-08-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

I am forming tonight with zesty inspirations, the formation of a winter projekt: the writing of a screenplay that is an adaptation of Fowles', 'The Magus'.
It will be set in Marbella, 1980-81.

Why a screenplay? because it just popped into my head and I thought why not? all the aborted novel/short story/website ideas are not working at present, maybe I can find flow w a different form.

And there are three elements present in that artistic dynamic: the resource of film, the inspiration of the Magus, and moine own true knowledge of Spain.

That is going to be fun, to set my imagination at play there, in that way, in the fields of Spain and The Magus and cinema.

Tonight, I ordered up some resources, a manual of writing for the screen, a dvd copy of the most abysmal film, 'The Magus' (more of that later), and a book of the Quixote engravings of Gustave Dore. These three will aid me greatly, they embody it all...plus my 'imagined history' of Spanish days.

The dvd is interesting on a different level: it is regularly proclaimed by critics to be one of the worst movies ever made, and it happens to be based on one of my all-time favourite books (and, Clive Broadland says it's a bunch of horseshit about a nasty old pederast, isn't it?). I want this challenge, to do jusrtice to the Magus, and to film, with a screenplay infused with my own history+imagination. If I could remake The Magus, in such a way as to make John Fowles smile, I would die happy...er.

So, until I have funds and technical mastery to run a website, the screenplay is the thing!

*

Artistically, I have to own up to the fact that I want to be better than Shgakespeare, better than Homer, Dostevskii, all of them! That is what isnpres me...and where Don Quixote comes in.

*

This project will be extremely imprtant to me, for the rest of my life. I am sick of not having finished other attempted works. I just want to pick something and do it, see it through to a satisfactory conclusion. I will produce a marketable screenplay by Dec 31, 2011.
I am so certain I can do this, but I loathe having to do it. I hate the limtations, is all, of the form...but that's the way of all Art. It must have a form, and so is inherently limited in nature.
My chosen form, beginning to end, cinematic adaptation of The Magus, set in 1980 Marbella, Spain. A marketable screenplay by Dec 31, 2011.

*

This is beauty of a screenplay: it is a work in progress, up to the editing of a shot film. My stuff only initiates a process, the film-makers buy an inherently unfinished product. I don't have to sweat the editimng process,

*

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this project is, if what I produce is accepted, if I can sell it: then it will have been my entry point into the world of cinema. It could be that, if I figure out how to make a livelihood of it, I could one day direct, and act, and write even more...it may even be that I could write a score.
I would be proud of myself for accomplishing that.
I like this idea.
It's gonna be hell sometimes, but I believe there is huge benefit to be found, when I produce!
Me, a moviemaker.

More Towards The Aesthetic - Toward the Place Where History Meets Imagination

2011-08-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

I have never kept a journal when I travelled, for the same reason I never took a camera or captured a single photograph: the better to avoid abstarction. To expereince as long as possible, as deeply as possible, before being so overwhelmed by the expereince that one cannot narratize it...Trauma!
No, better to make it all up afterwards...that has to be my approach.

Better the Artist, than the journalist.

Not to record, but to imagine.

Back from Spain; or, A Planting of Seeds: A Report from InterZone

2011-08-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

Interesting; so far, the immediate legacy of our Spanish spojourn has been, for me, second-hand: for it is my wife's response most interests me.
She has expereinced, found inspiration, formed ambition and moves forward with great enthusiasm...she is learning Spanish, making plans to buy property there, setting up savings accounts, phoning and inviting friends to the 2013 'Goyesqua' in Ronda...she's on fire!
....Me, my reactions is more mpore delayed, but hopefully just as enduring. My own strongest experience was not there, but here; after the event, not in the moment, abstracted, remembered, reflected-upon. That is who I am.
I kick myself for not having kept a journal, while there; but, I realise ayt the same time that I could do a better one, fictively, with the rtemembered past to feed upon.
So be it! An imagined Spanish journal, 2011, centered upon July 17 - Aug 2; sometimes, it is not the flowers that are picked, it is the planting of seeds that matter.
Let's see what I make of this.

*

My friend, Il Doge, who lives in Spain, and whose 'Celebration of Life' I attended, perfectly expresses the 'duende'.
He stressed to me several times while I was there, that he 'lived on the edge'.
Now that I am home, I recall that Lorca defined the spirit of duende as being like the imp/demon/devil who dances on the rim of the abyss of madness...as close as you can get without being overhwlmed.

So, there en Andalicia, my friend, mi amigo viejo, is perfectly expressing the 'duende'.

Fantastic

Beau Geste

2011-06-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

I am biding my time, until everything becomes clear - then, I will act accordingly.
It is when we push at the wrong time, that we make a mistake.
Part of 'The Lesson of Napoleon'
I push myself too hard, internally. The pressure is so great, that my ability to act intetionally is impaired. Gotta free myself
The thing is to acquire the knack of apprehending what is happening in the moment, and taking the appropriate action; one has to know who one is, as well as the nature of the world, and Fate.
It is the marriage of Destiny (personal and individual volition) with Fate (worldly events over which one has no control, the external) that the true artistic work may be found, 'le beau geste'.

Of France, and England

2011-05-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

Was thinking tonight of Napoleon and Edmund Dantes, how each represents an aspect of French-ness for me, each a separate and disctinct way-of-being...
See, I grew up in Canada, where there are two choices as to basic social identity offered to one, culturally and societally: the English, and the French.
Without now going into great detail, suffice it to say that I identified w the French. Waterloo was a tragedy for me, to learn of it, and of all the war-games I played at as a child, enactments of this tragedy that were played out w toy soldiers and board games...Waterloo was the great engagement.
I was the only person in the whole city of Kelowna, I think, refused to go and see the Queen when she came in 1965. I hated the Queen, hated the English way of being; there were aspects of Englishness I embodied and revered, buit what fired me was France - vive le France!
And so...Napoleon.
And Le Comte de Monte-Cristo

*

All of this against the backdrop of Quebec separatist movements, FLQ, et cetera...
What is France, if not the glorification of the individual? how greatly do 'liberty, equality, and fraternity' permit the unfolding of the myriad undreamt-of destinies of the Individual?
And Paris is the transcendental home of the Artist, the womb...and, a 'moveable feast'.

2011-05-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a CBC Radio interview w Dean Karnazes, a mad American ultramarathoner...he once ran 350 miles in 3 days!

Anyway - turns out he writes as he runs, he uses a digital voice recorder and talks into the mic and transcribes it at home into books.

What an idea, what a liberating thought.

And tonight I am listening to, 'This American Life' by Ira Glass, the NPR radio series...brilliant, both in concept and execution. The production values are so good, excellent, in fact, yet the content is vibrant. Just the right balance.
Me, my start will be w very basic skills, low production values...but hopefully effective enough to get listeners to give me money, so that I can improve the production valuyes.

An Exchange of Letters, re: Torpor and Lassitude in InterZone or, A Paralysis in Freedonia

2011-05-22T22:37:00.001-07:00

> I have done so much work that I have merely to open the
> door. Content is
> not an issue, inspiration is there in spades. I have
> to get on with the
> technological concerns, and connect, and things will
> flow.
> I don't have to do
> much work,
> actually.
>
> See, I have to taken your
> advice to heart and seen
> that what I write about is not-writing.

I'm not sure I was advising, was I?

In fact, to be candid, when I spoke of your propensity to write about not writing, I was raising a point of contention, not giving you encouragement to make it your life's prime endeavour.

Forgive me for saying so, but to be forthright, the whole writing about not writing shtick wears on me egregiously because all it does is drone on and on and on in perpetual darkness like Beckett's Unnamable.

If only it would generate some impetus, display some semblance of purpose, break free of its quagmire of inaction, go somewhere!

Again, forgive my cynicism, but I suspect all you're actually doing is writing about your **desire** to create this mythical freedonia content.

If that's truly the case, I confess I'll seriously have to wash my hands of it because my patience is drained.

Although I'd admire to see your original audio and video creations up and running on the freedonia site, I regret to say, I believe that'll never happen.

**Hope I'm wrong, however.

> (When I asked him, what is the
> future of writing, where
> should a writer of today sek to emerge? he responded,
> "On the interent. No
> one's done it yet,

EH?

The problem with the Internet is that TOO MANY writers have emerged there. Rotten ones. If the Internet had a wazoo, well, you know

********************************

> I realise I am raher good at
> evoking...a kind of
> psycholgical/emotional portarit of a stuck artist, a kind
> of lengthy and
> articulated still-birth.

You certainly are! Trouble is, it's a one note symphony!

> Misery, frustration, pathos,
> comedy. The
> protagonist, fictional narrator, imaginary character shares
> the feelings you
> describe. What will happen to him? Can the
> reader even bear the
> anxiety long enough to see a resolution? will it be
> positive, or will things get
> even worse?

Listen, you've hit on an extremely important point.

This writing about not writing angle needs DRAMA.

How do I mean?

Chew on this. Allow the narrator some latitude. Let him rise! Let him grasp his goal. Or at least damn near. Give the poor bastard a taste of glory. And _then_ yank the fucking rug out from under him!

That'll make his journey all the more powerful, the question then being, Will He Ever Rise Again...?

Think of the plot as a graphical representation of the DOW stock ticker. It spikes. It dips. It spikes. It dips....

Torgue it up...ratchet it down.

Drama...suspense...make it flex.

**Monotony** is the enemy (or perhaps the enema).

**************************

*Hey I forgot to thank you for this idea...in fact, I didn't even read this until tonight! You are very right, DRAMA is an essential aspect of the art form (novel or movie), and to just drone on and on forever is to exceed the limits of the forms. I guess InterZone lends itself to that. that is a pitfall along the way, in InterZone...

Self-indulgent meandering, with no respect at all for the Reader.

Must give us pause.

How are you, anyhow? I was thinking tonight of the Okanagan, esp of my daze at Wardlaw Manor. Did I ever tell you that I lived on Wardlaw Avenue in K-Town for some years? and that the Wardlaws had bought their home in Penticton, at 800 Creekside, from a man named...wait for it! 'John Gibson'.

True dat.

Listen, I am so bogged down creatively, because I am staggered by how difficult it is to master the skill sets around video, audio files, podcasts, monteised blogs, websites...blah blah...man, not my strong point at all...(but how liberating, to have those skillz)

Gets in the way...I am thinking, what I could use is an internet 'editor' someone who polishes and sees potential and helps the IZ Artist with effective presentation..huh

Write soon, hope you have a great summer...my nephew marries in Sept, at Camp Oaissi, on Lake Okanagan - wanna go?

Sick with Art

2011-05-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

2011-05-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

I am noticing that there seems to b a 'perfect storm' developing in my life. I am sitting and looking to see the pattern; I will bide my time, until everything becomes clear, then act accordingly.
Any one of these events current in my life, have the power to devour me and my energies completely; but, I have the sense that somehow, it's all working out just the way it should - and far better than I could have hoped for.
I will get what I deserve; as Joseph Campbell says, "You get the adventure you're ready for."
There may be a lot of change ahead, but isn't that part of going forward?

*

of Neal Cassady ('Dean Moriarty'): " Additionally, he is commonly credited with helping Kerouac break with his Thomas Wolfe-influenced sentimental style (as seen in The Town and the City) and Kerouac's discovery of a unique style of his own he called "spontaneous prose", a stream of consciousness prose form, first used in On the Road

2011-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

It is so obvious to say it, now that I have thought of it, but I need time right now, I need to manage my energy better; eventually, I hope to be able to buy time, but, for now, I'll use what I've got more intelligently.

A goal: to buy time, like three months at least, to get into the website idea, to inhabit Freedonia...what a change that would be.

It can be done, I feel it. I see examples of it being done all around me, and i see that as I continue to move forward, it is happening in

my life, too.

Part of it is being what they call, and what my grandfather was, a 'self-starter'.

OK, I believe in my own vision and start(le) myself to action; unvalidated by any others, at this point. Therein lies the beauty, the validity...self-validation, born of necessity, artistic, existential, necessity.

For how else to live, knowing what I do?

*

However, balanced against this manifesto are the words of one much closer to the human condition than I, my own personal wife: "Nobody cares, John, nobody cares."
I love it.
Write as though nobody cares, live as though nobody cares: but you. Is that not the essential existential position, attitude?

2011-04-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

OK.

Key step, the creation of a YouTube 'channel', wherein I locate video 'performances' for the perusal of the public. Embedded in each post is a reference to 'Freedonia' website, whcih is in need of 'patronage'. The viewer, reader, will only be able to access the monetised, and hopefully patronised, 'blog, as it exists now. It will be easy to create a 'channel', and so necessary, in order to facilitate 'flow'...it's free, and easy. I already have an account there, just didn't know what to do with it.

The goal is to raise enough money to be able to afford a true dedicated website, narrated by one, 'Jean-Perceval Godot'.

It's like this: YouTube is part of 'taking it worldwide' in Freedonia; the patron-supported website is more of a salon, which is by invitation only. It can be seen as a kind of foundry, where ideas are hammered through fire and sent out into the world in the imaginations of the salonistes.

WorldWide vs Salon

So, what appears on the Freedonia site may disappear, if I decdie to use it in some other way that involves copyright. So it can be seen as a kind of living and dynamic magasine, responsive the changes within the psyche of its creator, narrator...
And most of the content will be vailable for free, what is there; it would depend on the use the patron wants to make of it. If it is a money making venture, I may want a piece of the pie. So, the website is copyrighted, but probably all you have to do to use it, is ask.

And this J-P Godot thing; well, it's a rap in itse;lf, this idea, all about growingh up in Kanada, aware very early on of the French/English rift in the national consciousness.
I knew almost as early as I discovered myself to be thinking at all, that I thought of myself as, 'French'!
Hence, the Napoleon identification...watching the movie 'Waterloo' twice in a row of a Thursday night in the Paramount Theatre in Kelowna, w one 'Mark McKibbin'; buying thousands of toy soldiers, and re-creating the Battle of Waterloo over and over again; acquisition of 'Waterloo' boardgame; visit to England in the summer of 1972, and acquiring the album of Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture', and Beethoven's, 'Wellington's Victory' (about Waterloo)
Tiny warriors of the mind

Hence, J-P Godot as my alter ego, my fictional narrator....J-P as frenchified version of my own first two names, and Godot in honour of Beckkett, and to indicate that I too have 'waited'.

PODCAST/RADIO SHOW - THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

2011-04-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Academics are..."proposing a four-part definition of a podcast: A podcast is a digital audio or video file that is episodic; downloadable; program-driven, mainly with a host and/or theme; and convenient, usually via an automated feed with computer software.[3] Couple of things I like about the podcast: episodic, audio, w host and /or theme. I cab get into that.

*

OK, I like the idea: I produce at home podcasts. These will consist at the least me reading aloud from my blog. I read, not being wholly faithful to the text, but in hiphop style, jumping around from improv to freestyle to stream of conscioousness, always in search of flow. This
reading is recorded in MP3 format, made available as a podcast.

In the case of the CBC proposal, the file is sent to a CBC engineer, producer, who turns it into a show/podcast.

A series such as thing could work. It has the advantage of being real, immediate; the listener believes the show is being recorded by the creator, not in a sterile sound booth at CBC dungeon, but on my back porch, at the beach, in my car...in Paris, Sooke, or wherever. So there is a sense of adventure for the listener, differing real envirobnments that I find myself in, choose.

Of course, interviews with actual people with whom I have real relationships...

Of course, answering on podcasts to e-mail comments and such from listeners of previous podcats. Telephone stuff, too...

GOOD ENOUGH TO SEND CBC RADIO A PROPOSAL NOW.

Freedonia Focus, or, Enough to Start

2011-04-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

I will not here write a novel, or a short story, or a poem; to hell with the movies, I have prepared myself not for those forms, but for the experience of InterZone.
My work on this website is what it is, this is an attempt to realise something in an art form that is wholly separate and distinct from what has gone on before it.
IZ gives rise to possibilities far beyond the reach of the others, so great is the need of man fro works that spring from the imagination! of the artist, who speaks in a currency that thrills through them.
They get him, they dig him, they know that he can be gone, way gone, and want him to go as far as he can. The Patrons are with the Artist, believe that he is intrepid enough and knows what he is doing...enough to Start.,

IZ Focus

2011-04-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking tonight of how much I need to start now; stick with the essentials, bare bones technologies and formats...audio recordings posted as files on my 'blog, for example, there to be used as podcasts.
Monetise the blog.

These two enhancements are free. I could do the same with video files.

A thought tonight: I do audio and/or video recordings of me doing verbal annotations of works of literature; for example, I read out loud from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', or 'Tropic of Cancer', and improvise my immediate reactions, such as my own laughter, or sense of wonder, or stories of my own triggered by the writer's words...
Why not? Scholars do annotations of great works alla time. Mine would be from the POV of an informed Everyman, who claims idiosyncratic inspirations, derived from these works.
HEY! I could read from anything I felt like. I could even read from my own works.
Maybe, I could do a verbal improv novel. Never written down, never memorised, all in the moment, in search of flow.
A record of something immerdiate, spontaneous, and real.

Say, 'podcasts' of 10 minutes or so, at first.

Goal for first twelve months: 1,000 Patrons.
Second Year Goal: 5,000 Patrons.
Third Year: 10,000 new Patrons.

During this time there will take place refinements and evolutions I cannot now imagine. I know only that this a is an entry point for me, into the new media.

InterZone entry point.

Yes, I cannot wait until I have more money, enough money.

I have enough now to start, the rest will follow.

*

A key word: genuine. It will all be off-the-cuff, immediate records of what impressions words have made upon me. Yeah, I like that.
If 80% of communiocation is non-verbal, the man of words is necessarily handicapped from the start.

*

An essential techniocal consideration: that the audio track and the video track of a piece be out of phase, disconnected...becaue that's how I feel in this new media...BECAUSE I can create and post viseo, and I can do the same for audio, but I lack the skills to co-ordinate them. So, I will do my best, and have to embrace technical failings as artistic inspiration...always the struggle gainst the l;imitation of form, the necessary struggle
SO: words are heard which do not match the behaviour of the narrator, the sound heard is out of synch with the motions of his mouth.
But, one fine day...

On Baden Powell, and Napoleon, and IZ Art

2011-04-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

Baden-Powell, he gave the Scouting movement it's great dictum: 'Be prepared.'
What a great corollary to Napoleon's, 'You have only to engage.'
And I have linked this 'co-incidence' to my own IZ project,and seen that I have been preparing a long time for this 'engagement', the last 7 yrs within IZ itself.
Napoleon, what came through for me in my learning about his career was his absolute genius, unmatched in his day, for preparation. He himself very often commented that it was his only talent, and that all of his victories depended on it. Preparation; be prepared...'you have only to engage'.

After 'Seven Years in InterZone', I am prepared for this: I am prepared for Freedonia.

I am reminded also that Kerouac wrote 'On the Road' seven years before it was published. It went through several edits, and penultimate was 'the scroll', but it did lay about a long while.
Who knows what unearthly forms lurk within my 'blog?
I mean, Jack, he wrote so many of his books, the first six or seven, with the aid of amphetamines: benzedrine inhalers, dexedrine, bennies; later, his sacraments were red wine and marijuana. I wonder what I could do with a head full of speed and seven years worth of 'blog to work at?
For now, I'll try a whole pot of coffee, and maybe a little Ritalin. Never tried that, but I know it is a form of amphetamine that helps one to enhances concentration.

*

Always the search for suitable web-designer. Interesting quest.

Freedonia Notes: Towards a 'Mission Statement'

2011-04-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

Simply put, I am a person who has decided to become more than a consumer in InterZone; I aim to create product, for others to consume.

I feel I can create there, in InterZone, I can work there. Paper, film, tape, these don't work for me. I crave the intangible, the ethereal, there's more freedom to be found. I can be Jacques Tati, without having to ask permission.

Its an artistic imperative, to do what you can, not to dream of doing everything. I can work here, I can live here, in IZ.

One always has to resign oneself to the fact that you have to do what you can, here and now, and dream of a better tomorrow.

*

Open letter to the Cheese Deity:

" tell you what, the people I aim to reach, and recruit, can be considered only as investors if one thinks of them as being invested in my artistic evolution, in the unfolding of my creativity, however fumbling and pathetic and wrong-headed that may be.

Because they are Patrons! first, and investors second. They will patronise my efforts, in a good way...

I haven't shared this idea with many others, only in a clandestine way. I have talked about it, and found many people will gladly pay $10 for a access to my website. I present it to them thusly: what if, for the price of a movie, a magasine, a cd, a book, you could instead supprt a kind of IZ magasine with a one-time contribution, and gain life time access to that site? would you do it?

Most would. IZ is absolutley giant in its ability to store entertainment, and the appetite of the 21st century consumer of IZ product is immense...those people are voracious!

And I am certain of my ability to provide content. That works for me, the idea of providing content in IZ through my pursuit of artistic goals.

There: you have the idea I have shared with only a very few others, that of the search for Patrons. The idea of a website faciltated through patronage, patrons of the arts.

Take the idea and run with it, I know you can! You have content enough!"

Self confidence is born of conviction, and I am convicted thoroughly by what I have expereinced.

Clarity of purpose

2011-04-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

My goal is to write a kind of illuminated epic novel, akin to what Keroauc called 'the great American book-movie'...

Illuminated in the sense of early manuscripts and bibles, and with all the potentials of IZ realised in a unified work of art.

That is the goal.

To tell a story, through video, audi, and text (meta- and hyper-, a la Garden of the Forking Paths), to an audience of Patrons...narrated 'in character', acted by me, written by me, spoken by me, sung by me, acted by me...to my own scripts, compositions...directed, produced, and realised by me.

Patrons! that is my pledge, to deliver...to Rise! Come across! deliver the goods! or be forever damned, as Jack London wrote it.

(Actual quote from Jack: "It is always easy to tell another man how to play his hand at cards. Take that hand and play it yourself. Get up; wake up; kick in; do something. A man who does not do anything is usually a critic. Deliver the goods, come across; arise or be forever damned."

A 21st century epic, in the land of InterZone

*

And the purpose of the (newly-enhanced) blog will be threefold: 1, to show my Patrons that I work!; 2, to provide a means by which to give me money; 3, that I can continue my creative work and keep it real, every day.

And, when the blog has generated enough revenue, plow it back into a professionally-designed, purpose specific, website, domain: Freedonia.

How the skillz will grow! how the content will improve! and all of that lengthy, convoluted, wrong-headed Fool's Progress will be amatter of record.
Thank God it will all of it be channeled through a character! so, not me...a la Marlowe, Miller's protagonist, Jack's 'Sal Paradise': "all of the things I wrote were true, because I believed in what I saw,"

'You have only to engage.'

2011-04-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

Michael Caine, he said it very well, what I am proposing, what it is I actually do: "The hard work is in the preparation, in the rehearsal; you relax when you perform.'
That's also what I learned in my competitive running career, and in basketball, tennis, et alia; relaxation is an experience best prepared for.
Performance is relaxation, into the potentialites one has afforded oneself through...preparation, and hard work.
Napoleon, among others, knew this! Napoleon knew, because he said it, that, once one has prepared, "All that is left is to engage", 'On s'engage et puis on voit."

- Napoleon

(You have only to engage.)

I have only to engage, now, for all my preparation has been done...creatively; as for the mechanics of the thing, the acquisition of facility within the means of production - why, it is an on-gojng process.
I have prepared enough now that I can start.

I can make a start.

I can start, and continue...without stopping, for the 'hour is getting late'.

*

See, what I find kind of fascinating about these web site people, these designers is, they are all female. They are also business-oriented, and it's cool to see them sometimes coming around to an artistic vision for InterZone. I mean, these people, they use their creative talents in the service of Moloch, so I come around w my notions of 'Freedonia' and they change gears. I feel a support! One lady, she has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and is a published poet. I think my artistic vision of IZ appeals to her.

*

And every web designer, they say the same thing, it's all about self-promotion; okay, self-promotion, but in the most creative way I can imagine.
Actaully, I am very capable of thinking my way through these things. I will get what I want, I know it; 90% of preparation is already done, the work is almost over..

On the Virtue of Monetising This Blog

2011-04-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

I am spending most of the energy I used to put toward creative projects on l;earning new technologies, new forms of expression.
I am learning the digital voice recorder, the Flip video camera, and the Fruity Loops 9 sound engineering software program.
Soon, I will be capable of producing my own movies, documentaries, radio shows, podcasts, short stories, songs, music.
I find the process very frustrating, though; I well recogbnise the value of having someone else produce these things...still, the virtue is the lack of editing.
I mean, I could apply for a job at the CBC Radio Canada, submit a novel for publication, send a screenplay to an agent; then they could do all the work. But I would lose control; 21st century art is about 100% artist controlled, no edit, "first word, best word" as Jackie-boy Kerouac said it...my creative work lives and dies by that.
I have to continue the creative proces, too; it can't wait, else the mastery of technology become a giant sidetrack, wild goose chase...
Right now, I feel like 98% unformed inspiration and creativity, against 2% technological ability to express.
I gotta switch that around...I got 7 years of blogging behind me to feed off of...that's how it works, you know, you can make forays into the future using the digested energy of the past.

*

Reality: I am negotiating w 2 website designers, I have a local 18-yr old female DJ tutroing my family in sound engineering and recording on the computer. That's a start. I gotta risk more money now, but that's the way it is, risk and reward. She costs $40 bucks an hour!
I need to master the voice recorder and the Flip, get started now, not wait for website but to create as the process unfolds...I'll just post to this blog for now...

Maybe I can 'monetise' this 'blog (as they say can be very easily done...out on Highway 61).

EUREKA!

MONETISE THE BLOG TO FINANCE FURTHER WEB ADVENTURES! Sally forth NOW and acquire new dominions, enhance my domain, dare to connect.

Ok, monetise blog and pay for web design (2 grand for #1 job! 1200 for less polished and powerful...and 5 or 6 hundred to coach me through doing my own).

OK, blog as financial platform. That idea contains within the concept of 'now', the imperative of that realisation is, do it!

*

KEY ELEMENTS:

Keep it real, raw, PRIMITIVE - just as primitive as is the ability of the Artist to manipulate his media. So, pathetic, amateurish, self-indulgent, fumbling attempts at self-expression in the 21st century media.
A fumbler in InterZone
As the evolution of the Artist progresses (hopefully), his works gain a sophistication at least equal to the 'means of production' (there's a nice tie in to the value of Work, the arbeit mach frei) available to him. It's at this pimnt all about the means of production, for me; I have enhanced mine now, at least in recognising their possibilites, if not in proficiency, still, a start is necessary!
Have to keep it real

Real, raw, primitive, now, connected, immediate, in pursuit of 'eloquence'... (a la Emerson's wonderful essay). I can't explain it now, but I am also reminded now of Dead Prez, 'HipHop'; there's a great artistic expression of hiphop aesthetic.
And, naive, primitive, and pathetic in the essential sense, that of nakedly offering one's sufferings up for the apprehension of the Other's attention; by the mechanism of arousing in the Other's heart the emotion of 'pity'.
It is by that avenue I must needs approach my audience; I got no time for tomorrow, I'm 54 yrs old, and enough time has been wasted.
Working evry day in a conscious way to weave the Dream into Reality; not to invoke a contaminatiuon, after Borges, of Reality with the Dream...whatever, I jabber.

Yes, okay, we monetise blog and finance future endeavours...clear and cosncious goal: to raise $2500.00 and pay for truly professional amd empowering web design, and to purchase equipment for music studio...including acquisition of 'The Manual', by the Timelords, and Fruity Loops Studio Bible...and Blue Snowball microphone, and such...

$2,500.00 Cdn, to faciltate vision within 21 st century aesthetic, 'InterZone', 'Freedonia'

Website thoughts, 6 Current, Cognitive Influences

2011-04-08T23:53:00.000-07:00

1. 'Kopyright Liberation Front'

That's how The KLF have allowed their band'sd name to be defined. I love the idea...

2. 'guerilla PR'

That's how an American newscaster described what Charlie Sheen was doing, in some of his monologues. I knw he meant that as a joke, 'cos he laughed when he said it, but it is a great idea! Guerilla PR, do it yourself, self-promotion

3. The Internet Archive

This 21st century online institution is participating in a revolutionary, soon-to-be legendary, liberation of truth from the possession of other people. They have 1.5 billion files of audio, text, movies, video, music, song, poetry - all for free, 'in the public domain'. A gold mine, for an IZ artist like me. Check it out (mission statement): http://www.archive.org/about/about.php

4. Hakim Bey's, 'Immediatism'

Also the author of, 'T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism', his work in these two books translates very well to IZ, 21st century media. 'Immediatism', anarchist ontology!

5. The Manual, a book written by The Timelords (KLF).

This ironic work purports to tell how to write a successful pop song; it actually works. Full of very practical and sensible advice....1, get a studio, 2, find a groove, 3, lay down some vocals, 4, find a backbeat - and you are away! They also wrote that, with advancing technology, anyone could do this, in their own home, without having to asl anyone e;se's permission

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Three possible visual themes for the site....

Ancient Greek, all light and columns and whitewashed villages perched on cliffs above Med...the better to emphasize the site's attempts to become clear, rational, orderly, Apollonian...it will emphasize the conflict bewteen the Dionysian, which will come through content, and the Apollonian, which will come across as orderly, logical, strategic practical...existing only in the light.

Or, a French salon of the eighteenth century...w Voltaire, Napoleon...all interior, w recamiers and such like...wit, and repartee, and the formatuion of thought which will prevail in society, because are the movers and shakers...

Or, Spain of 1980, mashed up with Caligari aesthetic

I lkie the Greek a lot, for the great disparity between solar/lunar, Night/Day, light/darkness...

I'd like to incorporate in the Greek images from my edition of Picasso's, 'Antipolis', which comes from 1949 Verve magasine, with 100's of lithos...combine this w images of dream of TK and I in Greece.

6. Unified Field Theory

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IZ is voracious, and can consume, and regurgitate, all of human artistic media, communication, art forms, memories, et alia...
Unless we understand and accept that capacity, we can never work with IZ...it's like dragon, control it or it will consume you; dance with it, or it will overwhelm you.
Cut off from its power, and the artist will quickly wither; too close, one's artistic works will be obscured, lost in self-indulgence and disparity.

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection

2011-04-05T22:32:00.001-07:00

I'm not saying I'm 'good' at writing, I'm not saying I'm a 'great' writer...what I can say is, I can make writing work for me, to suit my own artistic purposes.
I aim now to make video work for me, and audio; I got my Flip video camera, my Sony Digital Stereo Voice Recorder. I need to develop proficiency and ease with these media, too, in order to accomplish my purpose. I need to learn how to edit, need to learn about lighting and acostics, how to engineer the sound (have FL9 Sound Studio); and to learn by doing, and making mistakes, and trying. And being convinced that it is worth the efforts I make to make real my vision.

Props to Il Doge for his incessant urgencies to 'make it real'. He is so right, that is the great test. Otherwise, it's just dreaming, 'painting yr mind/And playing joker

Obstacles can only be overcome by determination, and that is only found through conviction; which is born of inspiration.
To be convicted is to pursue a discipline, a word which means 'to cut off from'. One cuts off from self-indulgence, social approval, whatever...there is some cost involved when disciplining oneself, and for me the cost is the vision's inherent limitation in reality.
Whatever...
It's a worthy price to pay, if it results in a better life for me. This bourgeois idiocy sucks, this living today in order to better 'retire' tomorrow. Not for for me, retirement, ever, except for the retirement of Sleep, a daily resignation.

And this new cult of Safety that Canadians are consumed by, it is also opposed to individulaity, and risk.

There is a new development in psychiatry here, this early 'screening' for mental illnesses....by God, if there was screening and enforced medication back in the day, we would never have had Dali, Kafka, Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller...
All would have been sedated, numbed, distracted - and muted.

From, 'Howl':

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz..."

Okay, read that and try to tell me that the average psychiatrist wouldn't have had that man on Riseperidone after two sentences!
Talk about yr chemical straitjackets!

Like Frances Farmer

Towards a Mission Statement

2011-04-02T02:30:00.000-07:00

Here it is simply put: Fredonia is a place where one can find the stories I have to tell, for the price of ten Kanadian dollars; in return for their support, Patrons are free to use the stories in whatever way they want.
My stories are my gift to the Patrons in return for their support.
All I ask in the way of compensation is recognition. I want people to know my name, my works, my (in)vocation.
I will never seek to own what I promise to freely give up to the world. That's what it's all about.
The sensible, practical side of me says, don't do that! you'll be sorry!
But if I listened to the practical side, I would never write at all.
Never write at all. Think about it.
Inspiration is necessary; without it I'd be watching television right now.
HailFreedonia!

Writing about Not Writing

2011-04-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

Me, I hate to read on-line...but others like it, so...I will be in the odd position of writing what I never would read, because of the form; and writing all of it in the form of 'not-writing'.

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Also, as Beckett says it, "I can't write about anything."

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Here's a portion of my blog entry for December 27, 2004: "Here's a writerly, technical concern which is on my mind currently...I aim to channel a narrator, such as Conrad did for Marlowe, to spin these tales I want to write....one of the strongest voices to come out as candidate is a sort of demented 19th century fellow...kind of a Marlowe on hashish, soaked in Poe and Monty Python at the same time...he works well as a narrator, but...
What sort of plausible voice is this, for the reader? I mean, in reality, who is he meant to be? Is the novel set, then, in 19th century England? Or a mental patient of 1950's america, perhaps, who is eighty years old and taught at a provincial boy's private school his whole life...and now talks to himself incessantly? or an audience who is quite mad, too?
You see the difficulty...
Still, now that I talk about it, I begin to 'flesh him out'...have to think of his name...
brb..."

Huh. Very prescient, actually, now that I consider my current work In the Magic Realm of Fredonia
So allow that character to generate and express and connect on the website, in Fredonia.
Lol, sounds crazier all the time! but fun

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Where history meets imagination, where the dream meets reality (after Borges), where text becomes hypertext and the 'real' becomes the 'true.
Burroughs' Tangiers was where he entered InterZone, and that is what I have named the 'internet' 'Interzone'.
Because that is where I have managed to find it, at my komputer, my screen! These last seven yrs of blogging (must check precise start date, post astrology map) have allowed me create continually into the thousandss of pages of 'text'.
But here's the thing: what is it? what is the art form? or, how to form the artist's creative expressions? Because every dream seeks a form, and every dreamer needs to create form, and what is an artist but a professional dreamer?
I mean, Jack Kerouac, when he sat down to write, he knew with prescision what it was going to look like: he would be an Author, who had written a Book, that was Submitted to an Editor in hopes of gaining the favour of a Publisher, et cetera...Jack knew precisely the steps of a twentieth century artists quest, at least from the pint of view of writing.
(This reminds me of part of the content of my very first 'blog post, re Joseph Campbell's distinction between the Greek Quest and the Celtic, between the known tasks and the unknown, between the beaten path and the Dark Forest.
Me, I dunno what the hell. I promised myslef back in the day that I would write without stopping! and I think I have done so. But what have I been busy creating?
All along, I have been working in a brand new art form, found in InterZone. There has never before been anything like it, and that's so great because everyone can feel empowered to take their shot, their shot at creating the first 21st century epic.
I have credentials! been at this for seven years, and been absorbing all kinds of info on acting, music, screenplays, wrting, videos...all found for free in Interzone; hence, 'HailFreedonia'!
I am inspired by what I see others doing and understand that the time is now, for me (always has been), and I see how others are racing ahead into this media with their story, recording their quests and adventures and dreams in very very creative ways...what Charlie Sheen would call, 'radical success'!
Gotta have the tiger's blood flowing in yr veins, warlock, or be forever a troll (I so gotta Twitter that)

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Spent seven years at it, pathetic but earnest attempts to carve out a kingdom, and to inhabit the domain and make it mine. Just a crack, just a glimmer of light to follow, and things become brighter.
Subtitle, 'The Shot in the Dark: The Quest for Form in InterZone'.
Validation, and the knowing of the thing-as-itself for the first time.
This trajectory has an integrity, and the arrow may yet find its target. In the moment, it often seeems to

Charlie Sheen is taking what is avalable to him, his celebrity, and taking control of it. He is creating his own events, and that is the mark of the Warrior/Poet. He does indeed have the blood of the Tiger.

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I Twitter, by the way, under, 'ScaramoucheX'

On Mercy

2011-03-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

IF I COULD BUT EXTEND TO MYSELF THE SAME MERCY I EXTEND TO OTHERS.

What is it in me that thinks their lives are more worthy of my attention than my own? how did the ultimately selfish boy become the selfless man?

2011-03-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

To be for others as I am for myself, that is why I seek an Audience, an audience...

I exist as something else, as someone esle, for family, friends, co-workers and bosses, clients, even...

Outside of all of those, I wish to exist as I am for others, and so seek an audience.

I consider almost all of my works to be performaance, that is, I am 'acting'. The writing is performance, the audio, def and most obviously, the video...it is real and in the moment, immediate in the purest sense, of striving to exist woithout media

A Fool Moves Forward

2011-03-23T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well well.

I have an appointment with an apparently very sympatico webdesigner, someone who is familiar with at least the idea of marrying literature to the internet...at last! it moves ahead.

And I just now realised that I have that app't on April 1 -April Fool's Day! before noon!

How appropriate, there is synchronicity...for the essence of my website is the Quixote...'A Fool's Progress'.

My goal is to explore the idea of having a WordPress-facilitated website that has a 'gateway' account, so that I can get paid for what I write.

Leonard Cohen: "I do not write to get paid - but I like to get paid for what I write."

I can do that, I am sure, I can get paid for what I write. At least, that is part of the idea that inspires me.

Website Notes, or, HailFreedonia!

2011-03-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

I am relaxed at last now; I feel I have found the right web design person, and she has already shown me, 'WordPress' a place where I can create - for free! - the website I want.
I am so certain this is the form, there is nothing left for me to do but get on with it. All the thinking is over.

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At the most basic level, the site will present text, audio, and video, unadorned w graphics, etc...at the far end, my fictional character will present as an avatar.
He will greet the audience of patrons on his stage in his outdoor theatre, a miniature Greek amphitheatre in a garden, a 'night garden'.
There will be a house to enter, w rooms dedicated to screening, listening to music or spoken word, etc. There will be within that house a Library, which books and sound archives and video too
Perhaps he will be modelled on Conchis and his island and his home; perhaps the home of John Robey, in 'To Catch a Thief', in Antibes...anyway, it is a domicile within which guests can be entertained, and within which they will feel transported.
A psychotropic experience will be offered, though unacknowledged

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I have discovered tonight that the name 'Fredonia' has a lengthy and interesting history, much more than merely being the setting for the Marx Borthoers, 'Duck Soup'
A fitting name for my website.
Fredonia...HailFreedonia

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The benfits of making this internet business a way of life are immense: unlimited potential, and an almost complete freedom of movement...I can post from Lima Peru, from Berlin, from the Chilcotin...I can post video, audio, or text...interviews w real people, or fictional...anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. If there be patrons enough, there be art, too...
Me, I hate to read on-line...but others like it, so...I will be in the odd position of writing what I never would read, because of the form...but have the consolation that others read this way.

On Destiny

2011-03-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's all about finding freedom by making it real, and understanding that Work is part of that.
There must also be a resignation involved, an understanding that one must resign oneself to the fate one has chosen, by following the path of personal destiny...not something that has been chosen for one by others, but what one decides to do for oneself.
There is great comfort to be found in that resignation, a liberation, in fact.

Me, I will create with the intention of entertaining, at the very least...let's see what comes of it. There is no other way. I have looked long enough to know there is no other way.

There is no other way.

And so, to walk past fears and insecurities, and climb again with the Others towards the visible peaking, to rise!

Risk

Confessions of a Monkey Dilettante

2011-03-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Still looking for the way out, still punching...how to get the message out, how to make contact, communicate.

Always this sensation of fraudulence, when stepping out, a kind of automatic invalidation, a sense that I have gone too far and nobody cares.

But! when that step is taken, what world-chnaging events begin to occur. One finds people who do care, are interested, are moved

Still pursuing musical expression, still searching for that web designer, still writing and producing...the failure to connect is lamentable, but there is a way, I am sure of it, because I see it before me.

Just to walk the walk, like this, to record inner experience and offer to whoever cares.

Always the quest for Form, always

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I do because I believe I can, and know I must - to live any other way is fraudulence. To hear the call and not heed it, is the essence of fraudulence, and has everything to do with cowardice, taking the counsel of one's fears.
Fear must be contended with...and one must respond to urge to transcend. Once conscious, there is no other way to live.

(Aspects of 'the Duel', Conrad's short story, and which Ridley Scott's, 'The Duellists', is based on)
For to live as I do is to be engaged in a constant duel, between who I am and who I will to be...it's a way of life, the life of the Warrior, no?

The 'cubic centimeter of chance', and the way out, the way to...with the vision of the hawk, in a predatory way (ref, 1999 dream)

On Destiny

2011-03-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Imposition of the will requires, pre-supposes, self confidence.

To fail to impose the will, in action, is to doubt oneself.

There has to be conviction, resignation, before the will is engaged. The path must be cleared.

Doubt undercuts, sabotages, enterprise, initiative; certainty facilitates success. There can be no true success without self confidence, a fidelity to self and one's own visions.

Anything else is mere lottery work. Can the purchase of a single lottery ticket each Sat at 3:15 really be considered ambition? How random is personal ambition? NOT AT ALL!
Now, as to the results of that ambition: yes, Fate does certainly play a role.

The arrow is loosed from the drawn bow, and falls where it will...

To work in the earnest pursuit of one's own aspirations, that is the goal.
Not to work for money, to buy social freedom, and 'retire'.

My aim is to work in the world for as long as I breathe, to mine own profit as well as for the benefits of family, friends, and the world, in that order.
And so must marshall the energies, unfamiliar but not unknown, to drive me to my clear destination.
Not for me the mere 'filling a post'; no, I am creating my own job description, that does not hold 'age' to be a professional requirement.
I have a vivid conviction that I can do this.

Lights! Camera! ACTION!, or, My Everyday + 'Disclaimer Notes'

2011-03-09T22:48:00.000-08:00

I share my IZ art with strangers only, with one or two exceptions...because strangers know me as the Artist, whereas the Others have different relationships with me, I operate as a a social identity for them.

SO: A video, audio, text, still photo performance, wherein History meets Imagination in the Present. Real and as immediate as possible, unfiltered and unedited, only searching for the xquisite cubic centimeter of chance.
Theoretically, I would improve, keeping in mind always the 26:

Jack Kerouac's Rules of Spontaneous Prose
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

For example, an experiential, multi-media record of my expedition to Spain the wedding of my firend; w digital voice recorder, digital camera, Flip video recorder, and keyboard, I keep a record of my experiences while in Spain, complete w interviews and travelogues
A kind of trip inspired by 'A Romantic in Spain', Theophile Gautier; my effort at a kind of reproduction.
That would be easy for me to do, in a way...the best would be daily postings to my website, HailFreedonia; but, if there is no website, at least to record and maybe post as 'blog...NOT NOT NOT NOTNOTNOTNOT FACEFUCKINGBOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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So, I still crave that flexible website. There is the practical, right in my face. There has to be a certain mastery on my part of the technology, how to use recorder and cameras and how to 'post' and manipulate these media to TELL THE STORY. As far as the website goes, I would need help, at this pont. ONe day! I will be skille denough to design my own site, for now I need help.

Where is that web designer? How will I find her?

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The vision: numinous adventures in the world, recorded by me, and made vailable to paying Patrons. They have perpetual access to the site, for a fee of $10. They can even use the material, so long as J-P Godot is credited.

Specific vision: record of my journey to Spain. Very rich, very doable...have to learn about 'disclaimers', so as to cover legalities - not everyone wants to be recorded....have to learn technologies, media, but really, it's what I do everyday anyway.
Record of Spain, taking the form of Jack's 26 Rules; one each day, for 26 days, covering period leading up to Spanish Adventure, and after, and during too...
Posted as a unified work of art, spontaneoius, 'real', immediate and enduring and available...all for $10.

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Disclaimer Notes:

"I do hereby agree to, and understand, that my image and/or tterances may be used by the Artist in such as a way as to create a character that in fact bears no likeness to my actual life whatsoever; I do accept that, by signing this agreement, I am agreeing to partcipate as an Actor in the recorded experience the Artist makes of his day, his time, and of our acquaintance.
I do understand and agree to be being an Actor, and accept that my 'performance' will be accepted and portrayed as such by the Artist.
I do undertand that I will never be beholden to any other human being for what I say or do on this website, in Freedonia."

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I am an expeditionary, I will take what I need to get where I am going. (After Bob Dylan, self-described 'musical expeditionary')

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El otros pueden soñar, mientras que encuentro el centímetro cúbico de la ocasión

Inspired by my seriousness of purpose, I WORK. Arbeit mach frei, y'all.

Thoughts on 'The Therapeutic Ratio', the madness of Americans,

2011-03-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing:

An early American psychologist, Harry Stack Sullivan, stumbled upon something he called, 'The Therapeutic Ratio'. This came from his observation that, among psychiatric patients in care, with any therapeutic model, one third get better, one third stays the same, and one third get worse.
1/1/1.

In the case of my website! I reckon one third of viewers will love it, one third couldn't care less, and one third will absolutely hate it.
It's the first third I aim my work at: those who are willing to become, 'Patrons'...in return for ten dollars CDn they give to me, I grant them access to my domain! they can come into my website and browse, and take what they need, want. It's all free, forever, for a one time fee.
A bargain, the price of a magasine, half the price of a cd, half the price of a novel...endless entertainment, on tap, forever, to do with what they want.
As long as they mention my name, credit me, that is all I ask: notoriety, fame, recognition. That way, I can live as I want, as an artist among men.

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As far as I can tell, having just learned it tonight, Bordeaux, the good dark red wine, will ever be my unexcelled and exquisite companion on nightly sojourns such as thse; something to keep me warm while I 'dig a hole into the night'. It is also a fine ally of cannabis sativa, a varietal hard to find thse days. Of course, nicotine is present too, but only in the shabby form of a Canadian 'cigarette' thoiugh I do have on my shelf a box of Cuban cigars, and several pipes and pipe tobacco...

Yes! Bourdeaux, nothing finer...too bad the cheapest of it is 12 dollars a bottle - I should make my own.

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Listening tonight to, 'I Concurso de Cante Jondo, de Coleccion Manuel de Fall, Granada, Corpus de 1922...y 'Coleccion Federico Garcia Lorca'

And dreaming to myself a flamenco-infused, enthused, aesthetic, something vigorous to believe in, and experience...something that will carry me meaningfully through my next fifty years - would that I live that long! the time is now, to live forever...

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OK, for my next post, I aim to have purchased beforehand a bottle of the wine of Cahors, what Shakespeare called, 'the dark wine of Cahors'...thast should create an interesting ambience.

Ambience, and revery, and works that spring therefrom...the world of Jean-Paul Godot

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I tell you, when I reflect upon the reality of this new artistic vision which so inspires me, I feel as though I had found a new god. I feel reborn, into a new reality I had only barely limned before...unsuspected, though looked at thousands and thousands of times, from the outside...but to be in there, in the hot creative moment, and aim to say there, and live to report it...that is the essence of Life itself.
It involves a refusal to invalidate, for any consideration whatsoever, one's own visions...it involves weaving of imagination with history, into a meaningful and rich experience. That is the gold I seek
There is no possibility of fraudulence, no consideration anymore of what is 'real', only consideration of what is 'true', what was revealed to be true in the moment of experience, and the recording of that act, today, here and now.
Therein lies the potential of the creative act, to work in the World the stuff of dreams.
To validate one's own visions above and beyond the visions others have for one...to refuse to allow one's destiny to be shaped by the wishes, drives of others...no, it is in the creation of wishes, and their special fulfilment, is magik worked...

"Arbeit mach Frei" - Work does indeed make us free.

That's why I bother to write; otherwise, I'd just watch teevee.

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Nowadays, always, always, always have to fight the urge to explain, and apologise, and offer myself up to criticism...it always ends in compliance for the sake of keeping the peace. Better to 'disturb my neighbour, 'cos I'm feeling so right', as Bob Marley said it, better to be myself without apology, in the moment, do whatever it takes to remain passionate.

To live any other way is to court Death; and he's gonna come cut you down on his own time, anyway, so do what you can, today, even if it involves drastic reconfiguration of yr past...be a genius of yr own life, as Jack K would say it...to make of yr life a free work of art, including wordly considerations (such as 'money')

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Here's another thing: that word 'duende' in Mexico it means, 'dwarf' and nothing more; I dunno about Sapin, today, but Lorca, he made it to mean 'demon', specifically the kind of demon who's possession is courted by 'flamencos' in performance, and this demon lives and dances at the edge, where the world ends and the fall inot Hell, or the subconscious, or whatever...

2011-03-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have determined tonight that I will stop acting as though actors, musicians, writers are gods, whose beings are unattainable for Everyman. I will begin to become one, of the gods, if you will.
Or, rather, I see that is what I have been becoming all thse last six years

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Vision of Heaven: driving a 1970 Porsche 911 turbo in the south of France, from Nice to Antibes, say, in August 2012...listening to the soundtrack of 'Casino Royale'! there because my artistic destiny brought me to that place.
Lovely thought. Have to see what I can do.

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Yes, just to dive into the creative process, irredeemably, like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Once one takes the plunge, one realise that they are not gods, that that path is there for any to follow, that have the heart., the will, the vision, the inspiration.

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TTo become ruthless, with regard to myself. No self pity, only a counting of the blessings and a moving forward. To feel sorry for oneslef is to disrespect oneself, to disrespect one's ability to take courage and innovate, adapt, conquer and move on. Self pity if a burden it increases inertia and inhibits momentum.
A vigourous ruthlessness is necessary to survival.
I have spent many years cultivating a symapthy, an empathy, toward the sufferings of others, and have taken it too far with regard for myself.
Less self-indulgence, and greater resignation to what is required to get on with it.

(Use of Sergeant LeJeune character in 'Beau Geste' with his deadly utterance, "I promise you!" that rings yet in my ear.
I will use that voice

Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-02-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Gonna have to fall down the rabbit hole, like the old Don, Quixote; he knew well how to lose himself in pursuit of his visions.

Thsi website idea, I am encountering too many obstacles...financial, finding a good designer, mastering the technology...

I have to now resign myself to creating within the media available to me, now, and do it with the view in mind of one day posting in HailFreedonia.org...though that somewhat defeats the purpose, as the site is meant to be real, spontaneous, immediate and in the moment...
Archives! is the answer.

Yes, time to fall down the rabbit hole, to take the plunge and be irredeemably GONE, lost to my task. Greater focus, greater preparation, greater execution. more energy placed where it belongs, on the Quest.

The website will come. In the meantime, ol blogworthy text, and now video and audio, too...I have the Flip Video recorder (up to an hour of high-def), and the Sony Digital Voice Recorder, and the digital camera.
The time is now, I can't wait for the web designer.

Yes, down the rabbit hole, like Alice...no one can save me, I can't turn back, I acn't impede my fall, just have to depend on gravity to pull me through.

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I love those words, 'conviction' and 'execution'; why, that's what happens to prisoners! And yet, they are worthy activities, when self-chosen; because only through absolute conviction will true art come, and only in my ability as an artist to execute my vision will anyone ever know.
Circulation! Conviction! Execution! Discipline!
Who is it can give me these things?

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The first web designer, hasn't got back to me after the last two e-mails...how simple can it be, buddy? Just answer the question! obviously, he's not interested.
Gotta be ruthless, gotta just move on, find another way to crack the nut

*

See, these Patrons I seek, they cannot be friends, or family, or acquaintances, or co-workers or anyone who knows me; I aim at the support of strangers, the better to be recognised as an Artist of merit, rather than as friend, or brother, or co-worker, or some guy someone who knows somebody from the dog park. No, no-one I know will be allowed to supprt my artistic eneavours, until I am well along the Path.
It is imperative that I sway the World, that I per-sway them to my cause, in that is reality known, created.
So, get 'it' out to the world, at least the appeal for patronage.

*

I once heard Robert Altman, the great American cinema director, discuss his reasons for using unkown actors in his films, in major roles...he said, essentially, that if someone has 'the crack', they can act, he can work with them...and he can tell in a very few moments whether or not they have that 'crack. I thoight right away of Leonard Cohen's line, "there's a crack/In everything/That's how the light gets in."
And I thoight of Joseph Chilton Pearce's great work, 'The CRack in the Cosmic Egg', and I knew in an instant that I had that crack.

And now, to commit to its expolitation! Like the chick in the egg, I pick and pull and tear at the crack, the better to let the light in.
That's what I do. And that is known about me by others, and I need to hear that, and work with it. Perhaps that is what is called, 'charisma', charm, and it means I have something to say that others will listen to.
Now: I want them to pay me for it. So, what do I have to do? What is necessary, vital, immediate, practical?

In search of form, as ever...

On the Creation of a Character - 'Not for Everyone'

2011-02-18T23:28:00.000-08:00

Some notes tonight toward the creation of my character, the narrator of the IZ, website, domain happenings...

He is ScaramoucheX, or Jean-Paul Godot, or John Robey the Cat...or David Niven's character in, 'The Pink Panther'.
He is informed, educated, sophisticated, elegant, ironic, passionate, in touch with the human condition yet understanding that his educations have rendered his life experience abstract...

He is partly the character 'John Robey' as played by Cary Grant in Hitchcock's, 'To Catch a Thief'.

He is articluate and his persona is studied but relaxed, as if he had already done all the preparation and decided how he would would live out his days...a confidence born partly of resignation, that he must needs resign himself to his artistic life notions, imagining (Quixotically) that there is so much more to be found in every moment than the simple presentations of everyday consciousness...

And he is a host, the host, of the 'salon', a la Madame Recamier...therefore, he is automatically male and female, masculine and feminine, for he creates a 'womb' for the creative expressions of men, at the same time as particpating as vigourously as any he invites to his soirees...
But, the website also records his manic flights in solitude...one who dares to fly...

I'm outta here, I'm taking off, I'm falling down the rabbit hole. In vino veritas, and I have a nice Bordeaux to thank for tonight's insights, as well as a bit of the puffy sativa...and our old friend, nicotine.

Upcoming essay: In Praise of Nicotine

*

It is entirely possible that what is recorded on his website are his attempts to give expression, in performance, of his very favourite works of art; for example, he can act out chapters of 'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the BiCameral Mind'...he can act out, perhaps with an associate, scenes from 'Notes from Underground', or 'On the Road'...accompanied by a soundtrack of his own creation, and videos he has himself recorded of his own personal 'life', in-the-world, as-it-is...

*

I...he, John Robey, J.P. Godot, NimbleRobespierre, whoever...aim at mastery of an art form expressed in a medeia never before dreamt of in human imagination. I am totally at a loss to contemplate what it is this venture will eventually look like; it is in flux, it evolves daily...

* I am listening tonight to Sting's, 'Mercury Rising'...Sting partly bores me, and yet I have all of his albums and rediscover them from time to time. I consider him a lesser artist than, say, The Beatles...yet, I revere him for his artistic inspirations. He seems to me to be an artist fully engaged in the practise of his craft...and that inspires me, listening to his music inspires me.
He so clearly is devoted, happily resigned, to seeking his salvation through music. Somewhat sadly , he has chosen a dead art form in which to express himeslf: Rock n'Roll is dead, yo! This business of a lead guitar, rhythm guitar, drum and bass making it, is over! It is mere reproduction, replication, without life expereince. The Beatles were true artists, they made it all up. U2 copies.
Like George Harrison said, "Do you really think anybody will listen to U2 in twenty years time?' He spoke to the fact that U2, as a rock band, can only re-create what has gone before.

The Beatles involved themselves in musical Revolution! They were willing to risk everything musically, in order to complete their self-expression; remember, these guys were a dance and love song band, and they ended up producing works of genius like The White Album.
They risked transformation, and rode well that wave, and ended when it was time. And forever is recorded there, evolution.
But U2? how the hell can they be said to have evolved? to have risked anything, or created anything? Man, just think of 'I Wanna Hold yer Hand', compared to 'Revolution #9'?! U2 ain't never gonna risk anything, artistically, and so remain what they are, artists who choose to ape what has gone before them. Ultimately, dull.

*

John Robey listens to Sting's, 'La Belle da sans Regret', and Edith Piaf's, 'Sou le Ciel de Paris', and Grace Jones, 'La Vie en Rose'; he listens to de Falla's, 'El Amor Bruja'...he watches their performance on 'YouTube', too...in this wise, through this creation of character, I can recreate, imaginativley, a great deal of my life experience...that is 'John Robey's merit, that he has the 'character' to carry my (inner) experience.

He (John Robey) exists as a carrier of mine own experience of my inner life...because I am fearful that I did not participate in those life experiences in my fullness...

*

Ah...full Moon tonight...

NOT FOR ME! the recreation of what has gone before me; by God, I am a 21st century artist, and I will live that way, or die trying.

I will live that way, or die trying.

These ideas that shape my life today, that burst unexpectedly upon me, have the potential to affect my next twenty, thirty years or more of my life; they may well provide me a living.
This is a good time. It's worth pouring every energy I can toward them, my tomorrow will come.

*

Presently, IZ is being used as a storehouse for other media...novels, essays, journalism, movies, songs, etc...I aim to compose only within the media offered by IZ, first and foremost, with no other expression in mind. And to record that creative experience, journey.
(Bukowski would be proud of me, tonight, in my choice of creative dynamic, specifically, use of alcohol to achieve creative solvency. It may be that Il Doge also undertstands, Il Duce, 2)
Probably, there will be themes, stories, narrative links that run through separate media, at first; one day, there will be unification, that is the ultimate goal. So, a story exists in text, audio, live performance, and song or music...maybe rap.
There will be a weaving together of each media, which process will be laid bare on the site, within the domain, that the Patron has paid for admittance to. That is the special genius of InterZone
($10 Cdn, cheap): organic, imaginative, spontaneous, with an historical flavour.
'Not for Everyone', is the caveat, a la Hesse's, 'Steppenwolf', over the door of, 'The Magic Theatre' (gotta re-read Steppenwolf)

*

In the voice of Travis Bickle, yo

*

All of this understanding coming to me tonight as I contemplate my concerns with 'circulation': of late, my right foot gets cold very easily, and stays that way for a long time; my systolic blood pressure is quite suddenly very high...this bespeaks a circulatory problem, with heart or arteries, or perhaps nerve impingemtnt.
Do I indeed lack, 'the nerve'? really, is my need for circulation (of ideas, imagination, experience) so great? it's in the blood. yo, or it isn't...I am all for the blood, tell me what it takes, I'll circulate.
Yet, as I lament my lack of 'circulation', so do I lament my lack of circulation of ideas, imagination, life experience...circulate, and connect, in authenticity.
What I seek is intelligent discourse with the World...that is my task, self-assigned

TO INCREASE CIRCULATION!!! that is my goal

2011-02-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

Like this: if anybody who reads, sees, hears something on the site they can use, they can reassemble or repackage as 'novel or 'essay' or 'movie' or 'screenplay' or 'poem' or radio show' or 'song' or whatever, they are welcome to do it. It is free to them in return for having ONCE decided to support me.

I am an internet artist, I create on the internet for the internet, in InterZone; it is my task to express the raw, in this form, in this media...others are free to make of it what they will, merely acknowledge me and I am taken care of.

That is the essence of my commitment, that my patrons are free to use the site as they wish. As they support me as an artist, so I reveal to them what it is I am up to. Freedonia is the playground of my imagination.

An exchange of gifts, 'artist as shaman', too

On Solitude

2011-02-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

How to create my solitude, in which there is no loneliness?

I am surrounded every day by family, pets, and clients. I often which that they were out of my life, all of them, so I could breathe...but I also know that I am no monk, alone would feel like dying, having to go through the loss of all of these relationships.
So, I need to create for myself times and places where I feel utterly alone.
I need to breathe.
I have diagnosed myself with ADD, bot has a child and as an adult. That is my style of learning, but I am so highly distractable that living with others is eating me up.
I am letting that happen by habit, mostly, as there are opportunities for solitude availaible; in fact, I find solitade every night, at this time. But there's a cost to it, this staying up late to work at secret scribbled nonotebooks...a loss of energy in the day, for one, but also Night engenders the Dreamtime, and too much time spent there is never realised.
Day is the time of action, and energy must be prserved for it.

So, a healthy and productive solitude, for an hour or so a day...I'll start with an hour, that should be doable. A silent hour, w no interruption, to prepare for what Poe called the Unity of Effect

On Patronage

2011-02-09T22:32:00.000-08:00

It is my fondest hope that enough of the the Patrons find me, and consider my intentions worthy, and believe in my ability to make come true what I dream; I need their support, not only so that I can produce creative works, but also so that I can continue to educate myself. I intend to enroll at Camosun College part-time, in the 'Applied Comunications' program, so that I can master radio, video, music studio skills, web site design...the artist must aspire to mad skillz within his chosen form.

So, as money comes in, I continue to do what I do, and aim to enhance and facilitate that creative process through education, the acquisition of skillz.

*

The Patron will have the opportunity to participate in my creative process, through commments, criticisms, even trial edits and remixes, mash-ups
Patrons can 'chat' w each other and the Artist, can use the works in whatever way they wish, and co-author whatever they wish.
Patrons will be those who are so passionate about the arts that they care enough to support an Artist of promise...which is what I am.
...

Leonard Cohen + Nietzsche: LC, "I don't write to get paid - but I like to get paid for what I write.", N, "My books are like fish-hooks: if nothing is caught, that is not my fault. There were no fish."

Heartful Palpitations or, 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

2011-02-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

My heart.

Last week, as part of a routine professional driver's medical exam, my Dr informed me that my blood pressure was 138/80, the first number being 'high normal', instead of my usual 110/70, which was 'optimal'. I reckoned he was wrong to worry, that it was just the entire pot of coffe that I'd drunk, was messing w my heart. I told him so, and he said he thought not, that I needed to monitor it.
I forgot all about it til I did a blood pressure test at a local pharmacy...it was 137/80. He was right.
See, as a fit trained athlete, I've always felt immune to this. Why, just a year ago a doctor had taken my bp and said to me that it was "a blood pressure to die for", said it was so good she'd pay for it, and that I should keep doing whatever it was that I was doing.
So how the fuck did it jump 27 points in a year???
This, combined with a few other symptoms: a vein once visible on the back of my left hand has disappeared, my right foot gets cold incredibly easily and will not warm, except w an electric heating pad, and when I sleep at night my heartbeat pulses loudly in my neck and left ear; these phenomena tell me that I do indeed have a problem.

All this coincides with my balking at moving forward w my envisioned creative work.

I have cold feet, my pulse pounds in my ear, and I question my own heart...all signs of fear. I am afraid, I panic, and I doubt my very self.

I have only to continue taking steps towards my goal and the door will open when I knock, I feel certain of it; but I feel as though I cannot take the next one, that of contacting the web designer. Is it a fear that I will be revealed to all as an absurd person, that I balk at it? that I will be neglected? ridiculed? Rejected?! ah, that last one...because the act of apparent self-revelation champions individuality, above all.
Hence my fear, because maybe the herd will cut me off and I will die when I can't buy their food.
Hence, Fear, Panic and Doubt.

It is now in my very flesh that I feel it, this quavering in the face of the will-to-be.

What is the correction?

It is simplicity itself - Forward! Keep pushing! That is where Life is lived

*

Visions of Death, as portrayed in 'The Seventh Seal', assail my mind's eye; it's his smile, and sense of world-weary resignation, that I see.
Because, unlike all of my other health concerns, there seems to me to be no sure remedy. Everything else I have pushed through, integrated, healed, et cetera...but this one. Almost thirty points in a year....loss of circulation in right leg...apparent blockage in left carotid artery, all point to one thing - months, maybe even years, of medical leave!!!

I swear it, if this heart thing is validated by a healt-care professional, aspecialist, I will make myself over, anew! thoroughly. I will revolutionise myself, my life, and surge forth regardless. I will do what it takes to get what I want, and to live.

2011-01-22T00:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I lament my misspent youth...then again, I can see it another way: I am a very, very, very well-grounded artist. I have lived my adult life as close to the human condition as I could possibly make myself, within my chosen society. 13 yrs as a single parent, 21 yrs front line psychiatric work...not for me the seclusion of the scholar, the insularity of the socially-empowered and wealthy.
Not for me influence...no, I have lived with sadness and grief and deprivation and boredom and facticity, almost all of my adult life.
Now, the manic flights of ideas, the secret scribbled noterbooks, shall be brought forth, given life...now, I live.
Imagination meets history

Buddy, do I have 'material'!

Towards a Hypertext Domain + Satori

2011-01-20T23:17:00.000-08:00

"Although Levy's books have been translated into the English language since La Barbarie à visage humain, his breakthrough in the English language was with the publication of a series of essays between May and November 2005 for The Atlantic Monthly. In the series, "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville", Levy imitated his compatriot and predecessor in American critique, Alexis de Tocqueville, criss-crossing the United States, interviewing Americans and recording his observations first for magazine and then book publication".

from Wikipedia entry for 'Bernard-Henri Levy

I cite this for several reasons, but I think primary among them is the notion I had previously developed to imitate this man, Levy, in video form...I saw him on 'The Colbert Report', and I was struck by something about him. It was perhaps his haircut, then his facial features, and his physicality - I felt inspired to imitate this man, for the sake of entertainment. It was a good moment, when I read of his essays written in imitation of, consciously and for philosophic purpose, de Tocqueville.
My a-ha was, 'so it can be done'! An artist can imitate with utter sincerity AND integrity. So I can imitate Levy.
Levy will be my video charcater, maybe the character behind the whole 'hailfreedonia.org' domain

Bit of creative irony there, as well as synchronicity

So: name, Jean-Perceval Godot...or, ScaramoucheX...or, Levy. 'Freedonia' (the nation ruled over by Rufus T. Firefly, played by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup) is his domain, he lives there - but doesn't necessarily rule.

cf, 'Garden of the Forking Paths', and 'hypertext'

Like this: Levy dances all about Amerika, acting as though he were de Tocqueville, and I dance around in Freedonia as though I were Levy.
It's hypertext, kids, it's about more than the content, it's about the media...towards an ultimate manipulation.

*

What I aim to do, in essence, is create my art on-line, in Interzone. It's the new media, the 21st century. It's as revolutionary as Gutenberg. It represents a return to the artist his own powers. No more buying and selling, no more submission, no more subversion....just direct, sender and receiver
Old media: print, radio, film, television; new media: the internet.
So, an actor prepares his character for a film, and I prepare mine for the internet.
That's my media, that's my character, that's the name of my domain, that's my artistic raison d'etre.
Why? because it works for me.
I don't give a shit right now about any other way, nothing else inspires me.

AND I AM WORKING AT IT EVEN NOW.

THIS IS WHAT IT IS...and I hope it will become a whole lot more.

*

Here's the satori: don't think, when you're publishing yr photos, your songs, your little videos, your lectures ON-LINE that you've actually produced a work of art. You haven't.
You've missed the point, which is that THE INTERNET IS THE MEDIA.
It's a very deceptive form because it incorporates so many others. You have to know it for what it is, then you can work with it. Otherwise, it is a sort of 'powaqaatsi' a sorcerer who draws the magic of others to use for his own ends.
No, I know it for what it is and I won't work any other way. Not to blog to one day edit and submit and hope for others to publish; no, make it work this way, on its own terms.

On Patronage

2011-01-18T22:06:00.001-08:00

From the ancient world onward, patronage of the arts was important in art history. It is known in greatest detail in reference to pre-modern medieval and Renaissance Europe, though patronage can also be traced in feudal Japan, the traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, and elsewhere—art patronage tended to arise wherever a royal or imperial system and an aristocracy dominated a society and controlled a significant share of resources. Samuel Johnson defined a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help".[1]

Rulers, nobles and very wealthy people used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambitions, social positions, and prestige. That is, patrons operated as sponsors. Some languages still use the term mecenate, derived from the name of Gaius Maecenas, generous friend and adviser to the Roman Emperor Augustus. Some patrons, such as the Medici of Florence, used artistic patronage to "cleanse" wealth that was perceived as ill-gotten through usury. Art patronage was especially important in the creation of religious art. The Roman Catholic Church and later Protestant groups sponsored art and architecture, as seen in churches, cathedrals, painting, sculpture and handicrafts.

While sponsorship of artists and the commissioning of artwork is the best-known aspect of the patronage system, other disciplines also benefited from patronage, including those who studied natural philosophy (pre-modern science), musicians, writers, philosophers, alchemists, astrologers, and other scholars. Artists as diverse and important as Chrétien de Troyes, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson all sought and enjoyed the support of noble or ecclesiastical patrons.[2][3] Figures as late as Mozart and Beethoven also participated in the system to some degree; it was only with the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century that European culture moved away from its patronage system to the more publicly-supported system of museums, theatres, mass audiences and mass consumption that is familiar in the contemporary world.

This kind of system continues across many fields of the arts. Though the nature of the sponsors has changed—from churches to charitable foundations, and from aristocrats to plutocrats—the term patronage has a more neutral connotation than in politics. It may simply refer to direct support (often financial) of an artist, for example by grants. In the later part of the 20th century, the academic sub-discipline of patronage studies began to evolve, in recognition of the important and often neglected role that the phenomenon of patronage had played in the cultural life of previous centuries.

IZR Notes

2010-07-21T23:49:00.001-07:00

A radio station inspired by Borges', 'Garden of the Forking Paths', broadcasting from Interzone.

INTERZONE RADIO 2010

2010-07-21T00:03:00.000-07:00

New idea for website: internet radio, RADIO INTERZONE, after Burroughs...

1. One live show per week

2. two hours duration

3. I am the producer, and everything else - engineer, actor, narrator, performer, interviewer, et alia

4. listeners must be subscribers, at a rate of a single dollar per month, or ten dollars per annum

5. there will be interviews

6. live, in 'studio' quests...lol, I meant to write, 'guests'

7. musical journeys

8. it will be similar to 'Wiretap' and 'Vinyl Tap', but I am 100% responsible for all content

9. archives

10. podcasts

11. woven into the fabric of the website, www.psychotropicsalon.com

12. reading out loud from influential works

13. radio plays, guaranteed original content

14. studio is my current library

15. freely acknowledged use of substances: cofffee, wine, ouzo, ritalin, lorazepam, hashish, marijuana, e, mushrooms; some of these I haven't done in many years, if ever, but still, I find the prospect intriguing.

16. NO COPYRIGHT!

17. equipment I already have: digital voice recorder, microphone, external sound card, computer, digital video camera

18. eventually, create a video record of every show and post it on YOuTube, for marketing purposes.

19..create a 'business plan', a 'mission statement'...do everything to make it real, keep it actionable

20. interviews w real people I know, and fictional characters I or my guests create

21. guests eventually will be paid for their work but not at first

22. an ultimately ecelctic audio experience... who needs NPR, ABC, CBC, NBC, BBC???!!!? not me...

The Gate

2010-06-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

To enter or not, that is the question. There is not even a door to knock on! the way is open, but dark. Mysteries lie beyond, ordeals and challenges and experiences unknown, all chosen to expand my consciousness of that particular path...
The way is dark, but there is a light does shine, a beacon for me to follow; important to notice, it occupies but 1% of the image before me...reminds me that 'rod' vision' is so sensitive that it can detect a single photon - that is to say, it can detect a single candle lit ten miles away!
There must exist the hope of eventuial illumination...the light must brighten, not dim, as one progresses...often times, it is when things grow darkest that one learns to walk toward the light.

When one door is closed, many more are opened, says Bob Marley in 'Coming in from the Cold', and here is an image of the open door before me...grand mysteries indeed, great risk for great reward...there ought to be written over it, 'Not for Everyone', as was written over to the entrance of the 'Magic Theatre' in Hesse's, 'Steppenwolf'...

*

And what is this an image of my gateway to? my actualised life! That way by which I activate myself in the world, TAKE ACTION!

The time of preparation is over, I now move forward with confidence into a future I have chosen.

The best runner is he who works hard in training so that he can relax in the race. As Napoleon said, "[Once you have prepared] you have only to engage ('On s'engage et puis on voit.')"
Napoleon placed a huge emphasis on preparation, in war; he reckoned that that was his advantage in any military engagement. It was his rigorous prepartion gave him his superiority in war, in battle, and he knew it well.

*

Also, tonight I meditate on the words of Cervantes, Borges, and the hypertext revealed in, 'The Garden of the Forking Paths', which some count as a kind of ideological precursor to the 'internet'.
Because that is all my literary experiment represents for me, along the way to writing the first 21st century epic...
For real.

The Block...or Not?

2010-06-27T22:56:00.001-07:00

I am having to acknowledge tonight that I am suffering from a massive case of 'writer's block'.

I am trying to figure out how to cope with this...learn the shape of the thing, learn how to work with it...all aikido-like, dig...
Should I break it down? step around it? dominate it, and use it's energy for my own?

Part of the solution is to visulaise a life without the block; writing in flow, smooth, confident...

*

Then again, it may not be a 'block' at all, bceause I do not actually feel blocked...
What I feel is confused! about direction, w regard to artistic form. Novel or short stroy or poem or epic or article or essay or letter to the editor...and I feel pressured, I am thinking every day that I must make a choice, now!

Sigh...nothing good comes from pressureed thoughts; relaxation is the goal, in the midst of strife and chaos. It is the relaxed man who prevails, who can "bide his time, until everything becomes clear: then act accordingly."

All the work is in the preparation; after that, one merely has to engage. As the runner relaxes in the race, because all the 'work' was done in the training, so I...

I must move forward, I must set for myself a destination. Things are confusing because i have stopped...I think the best direction for now is to pursue the web-site idea, actualise The Psychotropic Salon.

Because I am not blocked, I am merely confused...I write in my head all the time, it's groovy, so there is plenty to express; it is in the 'how to' that I am confused.

Ideas for Radio, or internet channel

2010-06-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Last: On the Saturday before Father's Day, 2011, do the Ridge Ride in video and audio, for 'the channel' and for CBC Radio's, 'Living Out Loud'

Project before that: Pacific Centre for the Family's 1997 graduating class from ASTAT Counselor Training....at my house, 852 Wain Road...do audio and video record, w waivers in place

WAIVERS! The first step, draft a waiver waiving confidentiality and copyright, stating that opinions have been freely given, and are now my property! for the purposes of The Channel, and submissions to CBC Radio, in 'Ideas' or 'Living Out Loud', or radio play, whatever...

Work on technology, John...learn to record and edit sound, and save it and archive it, too.
Acquire the necessary technology: spend that 100 dollars on a decent digital sound recorder, learn how to use it; consult regularly with a web-site designer (at 35 dollars an hour), and decide whether to design site myself, or pay to have in done, and maintained.

Work on funding! First, learn what you need to acquire a 'gateway' account, that will permit Readers to pay me w credit card....and get it!
I bet people would start paying me right now, I've enough of a product to START! right now, I know some people would send money my way...I know I have potential PATRONS who would be more than happy to pay me a dollar a month, or twelve a year, to subscribe to my service.
I must commit to this for at least one year; if it doesn't work, as least my Patrons would have been returned to them for their investment in my artistic destiny would feel that I had struggled my utmost to provide them with the greatest value for their money that I could work.

So...consult w pros, think, save and acquire funding, and move forward into this project - now!

Inetrnet Channel...Psychotropia....Psychotropic Salon.

*

ALL ORIGINAL, DIG? Copyright given over with the promise of the exposure I offer the artist as reward...I don't own their stuff, but I do show it...all for a dollar amonth.

Towards a feng-shui of the mind

2010-06-06T00:14:00.001-07:00

One of my hobbies is collecting ideas; I collect them as others might collect art, or antiques. The I arrange them any way I see fit, kind of like how an interior decorator might assemble a room, or a gardener plan a garden...in a way not pleasing to the eye, but to the imagination.
A kind of feng-shui (Chinese 'art of placement') of the mind is what I strive for...all in the interest of living a life ever more dynamic and vigourous, a life lived creatively, and well.
For there are always challenges to live through, that originate and act well beyond one's control. All we can do is play that hand that is dealt to us as well as we can, always with intention.

To contend, and engage...as Napoleon well knew, preparation is essential - for it is in the execution of preparation that success is to be found.

Stray Thoughts

2010-05-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

On Napoleon: I am finding that I am gaining courage to read the last volume of Gallo's series. Sure, it's downfall, and failure, but does it involve humiliation? I am very curious to hear who Napoleon blames for his downfall, himself? or others?

He is so wrongly estimated, if we count him a selfish man; the glory he sought was to fuel higher purposes.
Napoleon believe first in the sanctity of the liberty of the individual; he believed in the Revolution, and in France, and pursued what it was that he knew best to do, believed in the most: his own destiny.
He well understood human nature, and knew that the Rabble must not be allowed to rule; and knew the influence that the man who the mob raised above themselves by glorifying him could yield, if he but knew it was his to take.
Surely his life exemplifies Shakespeare's, "There is a tide in the affairs of men/ Which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune...And we must take the current when it serves/Or lose our ventures", sayed by Brutus, in 'Julius Caesar', Volume IV

By virtue of believing in causes greater than himself, he was true to the Grail Question, (which one must needs ask oneself, always) 'Whom does it serve?', Napoleone Buonoparte used the glory he achieved to serve the purposes he intended.

*

Also considering tonight the long-distnace running tradition of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, and the tradition of the Lung-gom-pa runners of Tibet.
At this time in my running career, I'm looking to add spirituality to my expereince, elevate my game, take it all to the next level...not to run for times, or distances, but for the pure experience. Looking for the Tao, times when I am in the zone, really with it...that's why I run, to feel in flow, to run like water flowing downhill...like fog rolling over the mountain...like a flying ghost, leaving no trail behind.

*

This book, 'Born to Run', should be read by every serious runner, who is looking to deepen his experience of the activity.

Freestyle

2010-04-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

To rap freestyle, to do it in flow, means first having the courage to speak...all the rest follows from that.

On Rap

2010-04-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

Rap...is a craft...that readly and adequately is capable of translating the day-to-day into Art.

For what is 'rap' but the spoken Word raised up? it is oratory, it is eloquence, spontaneous, in flow, often free-style ("first word, best word", JK); only the loquacious survive.

Rap...is today's form of the oldest art known to man, the spoken word; Chuck D may be the Homer of today...however, I do not think the definitive rap epic has been written, performed, experienced, by artist or listener.

Rap is the art form of the times, it can give the best exprerssion of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times...the art form of the twenty-fiorst century.

The form promises greatness! but it has yet to be written, this epic.

I will aim for it. I think that I can do it.

At the very least, that is my 'Usher's' belief, that is what drives him mad! to take it to the next level, to eleveate his gamne to the level of Boccacio, Dante, Homer, Shakespeare...

Imagine a rap that incorporates Shakespeare!

More thoughts toward website:

2010-04-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

Grateful tonight to hear that my friend N***n has taken some of my web ideas and passed them on to his son, and his son's band...

Because I am one who has been reconciled to the fact that he will never be able to bring his ideas to fruition; I am like Johnny Appleseed, who plants but does not garden. I am not a gardener, I am a sower. Leave it to others to bring the growing thing to fruition, maturity, ripeness...I just plant the seed.

Now - N***n owes me a dollar! cos if I get one of those for every person who visits my web site, and may have found a way to make a living in the world.
It can start with him.

My first dollar!

Gonna frame it.

Because this is a way to satisfy my need to act in a Christ-like way - I offer myself up to the world! and ask in return only enough to live, and live well, for that ius part of it, too. I sacrifice to the world my ambitions, my possibilites, and am rewarded...and, if others go on to succeed massively, due to my ideas, I would be wildly excited, and exultant - success! sweeet succes!

There is a huge difference between having ideas 'stolen', and freely giving them away.

A dollar a year per person, use my ideas in any way you want...suck me dry! the wellspring is eternal, for I have cared for it well. I know about connection, and flow, and how to tap into the energy ofd the universe.

I'll show you - for a dollar. That dollar buys you one year's access.

Now

2010-03-31T00:32:00.000-07:00

If you want to understand my web site, read 'Garden of the Forking Paths', and think, 'hypertext'.

Hypertext in Interzone

Think twenty-first century epic, and understand my pitiful attempts to create that...someone has to start!

Open Letter Regarding, 'The Psychotropic Salon'

2010-03-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I would best serve the interests of this project by securing 3,000 - 5,000 dollars to pay for website design.

By this means, I will escape floundering in technical gibberish as I strive to create...how to stay in 'flow' while having to puzzle out each and every step? Better to pay for expert to design and maintian, for one year, a website easy, easy, easy to create in...

And I have an idea how to raise this sum.

In the meantime, I will struggle along in the best way I know how to make this project real.

Because I think that I could do it while I work my 'day-job', at least long enough to discover the value of this endeavour.

There exist absloute shitloads! of content...my 'blog, my dozens of journals, my essays, stories, letters, attempts at novels. So, initially, while the true form of the enterprise is taking shape, there is much to work with.

So I will pursue this as initial objective, how to bankroll profesional website design for my 'psychotropic salon'. Nothing like a quickening to cause the true heart to leap; I gotta make the process as easy for myself as I can.

All I have to do is sell a few people in key positions on my idea. I have to create in them a confidence, a faith, that I just might have something here, in my idea; and maybe, with a little fuel, I can make it real. An artistic gamble....all I have to do is create in them a confidence that I will produce!

Essence of website idea: I would rather be paid by the Reader, than the Publisher.

The internet is the Gutenberg press of the twenty-first century, and I aim to be its first epic author. To explore every possible avenue of self expression in this electrically ethereal realm...

That is the aim.

See, there are like 2 billion + daily users of the internet; all I have to do is capture a market share of .000000000001% in order to make for myself an income of one hundred thousand dollars a year, through charging a single dollar per year for subscription to the website.

And I could earn that sum every year for the rest of my life, because I can be any age and do this; my target audience is Everyman. It is not an 'age-dependent' activity, if I hone it constantly, as long as there is an internet I will thrive there.

And if ever I earned more than that sum? I pledge here and now to turn all of the money again towards the work of others! work as a sort of distributer of 'patron' energy, a clearing house. Readers would benefit, artists, too; good all way around.

I can hardly wait to start....irony! of course, I have already started it, and come very far along, indeed; one day, they will pay me for it! Soon!

I'm using these letters to you two to make for myself a reasonable business plan...it's all on the fly...

Another key, essential ingredient in the aesthetic of my website is the intention to allow, to as great a degree as the medium will allow, full and intimate particpation of the Reader with the Writer, in the Creative Process...never before in human history has this occurred, with the writtten words.

That is what is special about our times, that is in the nature of things, today...and it is to that which we must adapt our artistic intentions. It just the aesthetic zeitgeist, and I will live there, creativley, for the rest of my life.

It is what it is.

The website is my 'domain, 'psychotropicsalon' is my 'domain name'. I am Emperor there, with no-one else's permission. I can do there what it is I want, whatever pops in to my head can pop out on the 'page' without having to ask!

That is huge, that is so much...in my domain, I rule - and I invite you in, those of you who care enough to give me a dollar.

And all of this infused with Kerouac's, '26 Rules of Spontaneous Prose', which I have written out in bold and stuck to my wall, here, beside the komputing machine, the portal...

I KNOW I can sell this idea, because it is REAL!

Remember, I am the son and the grandson both, of salesmen; well I learned not to believe 'the hype'. I can separate the game from the thing-itself.

This event is so real to me that I will fulfill it, whether I am paid or not for it (and I have already been, these last five years) - and therien lies its merit, its integrity, for the work must go on.

Lol - I could go on!

I will!

You shall hear of me, et ma gloire!

ScaramoucheX, Emperor of Interzone

Deje la regla de la razón

2010-03-24T00:18:00.001-07:00

Laissez la règle de raison

Stay connected to intuition, the body, the heart...but let reason rule, for it is the most controllable of all the functions of knowing

2010-03-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Quite fascinating to read of Napoleon's ideas regarding the usefulness of belief in God by the poulace in establishing a stable social order...that is why he encouraged the re-establishment of the Catholic church in France, because he understood its pragmatic social value, in encouraging citizens to beieve in an egalitarian heaven, where rich and poor were equal, so that they would accept the social orsder of today. This is why, as emperor, Napoleon took for himself the influence of God with the people he ruled. He understood authority, from whnce it derived, how to use it, etc...

To Serve France

2010-03-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

To serve France - Napoleon and I can share that much! and the...the individual...

I have decided tonight that I will live the rest of my life in pursuit of becoming a member of the Legion d'Honneur of France.

"According to some sources Napoleon declared: On appelle ça des hochets, je sais, on l'a dit déjà. Et bien, j'ai répondu que c'est avec des hochets que l'on mène les hommes. — "We call these children's toys, I know, it's been said already. Well, I replied that it's with such toys that one leads men." (The French word hochet means a child's rattle.) This has been often quoted as "It is with such baubles that men are led."

-Wikipedia, 'Legion d'Honneur'

I have chosen this because I feel the need for a great quixotic quest, something mad and rationally unobtainable, yet the pursuit of which will lead to a richer life.

Consider: no one would be more surprised than I, should I achieve that goal...because I understand that the journey is the thing, what happens along the way, to choose this as a destiny. To thoroughly imagine and prepare for this kind of success; to prepare so thoroughly, in fact, that one has only to engage.

*

This would demand great meditation on what France means to me, how do I apprehend 'Frenchness'? Because it has long seemed to me that France was my home, one in which I had never lived; that what my youthful self understood as 'French' was none other than my very chosen self, active in the world.
So...part of preparation is articulation...articulation, inspiration, committment, discipline, expression and production!

Produce!

Legion d'Honneur, here I come...

And to do it without ever living in France! who could pull that off - but me?!

*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9gion_d%27Honneur

On 'Napoleon'

2010-03-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

This painting is of N on the abdication of residence at Fontainebleau in 1814.
His story is of the tragedy inherent in a life lived in pusuit of individual destiny; ultimately, it is based on the responses of others. One is never so in control of the world that it does as one bids; one ultimately lives according to the law of Forune. N pushed it as far as he could, this business of playing best the hand Life has dealt one.
Considering tonight how intensely I came to love Napoleon, and all that he stood for, when I was about 15.
Now, I am reading Gallo's 4 volume series, fictional biography, and something in me has begun to ache. It's a very strange sensation, hard to articulate; it's like something that has been forever lost to me is suddenly visible again, but my fears tell me it may not be...attainable.
But I cannot look away. I am committed to 'seeing', and here is Napoleon, after all these years.
And I am on fire to read every word of this work, maybe twice in a row. There's something going on there, I find myself inspired in a serious way.

Napoleon, in his pursuit of individual liberty and glory, shone like the sun. He lived for himself, and for France, just as he had once lived for Corsica. Corsica prepared him for France, and though heleft against his own will, the lessons he learned there taught him how to conquer all of France, in his own name, and then all of Europe.

A selfish man? no, he was an ethical man, in his way...he believed he was the incarnation of the Revolution, as was every citizen of France; but he also came to believe in his own special responsibility to lead, and he would not shirk that which inspired him.
Therein lies part of his genius.
A very 'high-functioning individual', an inspiration to us all.

And to read of how vigourously, insidiously, viciously he was opposed and attacked. I am astonished that he coulkd eal with those pressures, that anxiety.

Notes on 'The Psycho-Flirt - Diagnosis and Intervention'

2010-03-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

My experiences with a certain type of woman, the almost-beautiful...

Y'know, the dysfunctional, bulimic, borderline personality, anorexic, ones, the ones who are six foot tall and have amazing hair and are...almost...stunning, and drop-dead gorgeous...almost.

Y'know, the ones who will do anything to draw you in, to attract you, and make you mad for them; just so others can see their power, so they can feel it themselves...but, as soon as you draw close, they shy away, twist and lash out...their fear intimacy, convinced as they are of their own fraudulence, and fear discovery.
So, in order to preserve their power, they reel you in and then tell other people that you are stalking them...

Huh

Karleen, Teresa, Kim, Katie (RO House), Aresh, Fay

Tragedy

More Notes Towards a Process

2010-02-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

See, the way I do this writing thing is, 'first word, best word'.

After one writing session - one! - I am done with the thing. I never want to see it again. Therefore, no editing and preparation for intentional 'submission' to publisher...

No...I tried the printing off of blog entries, towards a more rational and lucid, a more studied, form...but it didn't work for me. It just died in my hands. It went dead fast, as soon as it reached tangibilty.

And so: the reason for the 'BabelFish' step is, my original writing is magically, coldly, randomly wrought into a new form - which I can then edit!

Get it?

That's my process...it ends with the Babelfish edit. Of course, the option exists to process the edit back thru BF again!

Maintain ethereality; stay in flow, resist inertia...to stop is to die, to be beholden to what is writ upon a page from long ago, is a kind of slavery, methinks, and I won't have it.

Towards the 'Psychotropic Salon' - the start of a Very Great Adventure

2010-02-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

I have opened up my website tonight www.psychotropicsalon.com

Soon, it will cost every Reader $1.00 Cdn to visit in my domain. The 'domain name IS Psychotropic Salon...that's where the Reader is at.

As much as is humanly possible, by this Author, what happens here is Real, Immediate, Spontaneous, Interactive, Free and Rich. It is not humanly possible, at this point in my life, to be 100% free; therefore, I will take from each visiting Reader a single dollar. No one gets in until they cough up a buck...until they come across....deliver the goods. Once that is done, they got a free ticket to every amusement I can provide them - for I am nothing, if I am not know to be an Entertainer, first.
They can wander wherever in my domain they like, as my honoured and respected guests, welcomed! in my garden, my salon, my great room, etc...

A Garden, or...a Circus! A single dollar the price of admission, into a world of mental challenge, fun, and inspiration.

*

The beauty of this Interzone thing is that it is so quintessentially mercurial! It's form can change daily, hourly...easily. It need never be today, what it was yesterday. It is potentially Art in Flow, every time the Reader returns, something is different, something has been happening, IS happening.

The Psychotropic Salon, an expereince, but also just a room in a vast house...w Skype!

*

Because words like malleable, spontaneous, immediate, genuine, essential, root(s)...these words are descriptive of what the media of our times, the 21st century InterZone offers up to us, makes available to us...and who will grasp this? who can apprhend the potentiality, and work within it?

ME.

I'LL open my mind to the World...and maybe, jus maybe, they'll pay me for it.

And you can know this, check it out, for a mere dollar. Then I will know that you value my interaction, my offerings, my amusements...in the 'salon'.

*

C'mon in. You can smoke a cigar here, hashish, drink the 'black wine of Cahors', and brandy, too; converse in revery with others of your kind.
Otherwordly - 'Moonlit, nocturnal magic, holding the mind in captivity.'

This is the Psychotropic Salon, where you come to get your head turned around; if you're stuck, you stand a good chance of being inpsired here to , to gather momentum and MOVE!

*

In this salon, in my mind's eye. I am Alexandre Dumas holding court in his wine cellar at Chateau Monte-Cristo...there is hashish, champagne, Burgundy...there are cigars, and astonishing conversations by candlelight...but it takes place in the 21st century.

*

PURELY: an On-Line Artist, an ihabitant of InterZone - with a business plan.

My first-year goal: 50,000 visitors, at year end, each of whom have paid me a single dollar (but more if they like). And, a lot of writing that I think is damn good; and a lot of other shit, too, for on-line I can act, I can do stand up comedy, I can sing, I can do interviews...I can write, I can do chat-lines (for the essence of the salon lies in conversation)
One great benefit of this idea is the huge growth potential...what if I managed 50,000 a day? or a million a year? could it be? why not?

I think I should start taking courses on 'web-site' design

If I could pull this off, I could do my work in cafes, with laptop; in Mexico, on the beach, with 3GB Iphone...at home, with sleeping dawg at my feet... anywhere in the world, I could ply my trade...and so mnay potential spin offs! books, songs, poems...tooo, too good.

This is the start of a very great Adventure, methinks.

*

A cautionary note: I am reminded of the sign outside the 'Magic Theatre' in Hesse's, 'Steppenwolf': 'Not for everyone'.

Because that is the way, defintely! not 'everyone' will like my domain - but it is not built for, 'everyone'...just a tiny percentage of the whole, thank you, will do very nicely.

THAT IS MY GOAL.

Towards a Mission Statement

2010-02-24T00:09:00.000-08:00

Free. Real. Immediate. Interactive. Rich, complicated, varied...Current!

In search of Flow, using the technology of today...which is free, immediate, real, spontaneous, interactive...asking nothing, offering everything, and acceptimng....gifts, so that the Work might continue.

The Reader gives, so that the Work continues.

Everything else depends upon notoriety, fame, which is rooted in free and unquestioning accessibility

*

www.psychotropicsalon.com

My domain...it's functionality increases, behind the scenes...one day soon, very soon, it will operate.

26 Rules, and the Babelfish Translations

2010-02-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

1. Spontaneous Prose

Shall we say that Fate is that which acts upon you?

And that Destiny is that which one works in the owrld oneself?

And then we can say that Edmund Dantes is a elegant manipulator of Fate, a deft and potent agent of his own destiny?

And to think that this state of being is engendered by hatred? and its action in the world through vengeance? and the hubris of taking on for himself the role of agent of God's will in the world? a punisher? how narcissistic, actually, how selfish...poor old Caderousse!

And it is surely Hatred that fuels him, essentially; we need to recall here that Styx, the Greek goddess of Hatred, had four children: Bia, Zelos, Kratos, and -----, that is to say, Strength, Zeal, Force and -----.
See, hatred can release those forces, but we have to hate appropriately.

Dantes hates inappropriately, and seeks to cause suffering in the world - but, because he does it in the name of G-d, it is justified.

*

2. BabelFish translation to German:

Sollen wir sagen, dass Schicksal das ist, das nach Ihnen fungiert? Und dieses Schicksal ist dass, bearbeitet welches im owrld? Und dann können wir sagen, dass Edmund Dantes ein eleganter Handhaber des Schicksals, ein geschicktes und starkes Vertreter seines eigenen Schicksals ist? Und denken, dass dieser Zustand des Seins durch Hass erzeugt wird? und seine Tätigkeit in der Welt durch Rache? und die Hybris von für die Rolle des Mittels von God' annehmen; s wird in der Welt? ein Punisher? wie narzisstisch wirklich wie egoistisches… armes altes Caderousse! Und es ist sicher Hass, der ihn tankt, im Wesentlichen; wir müssen dieses Styx, die griechische Göttin hier zurückrufen des Hasses, hatten vier Kinder: Bia, Zelos, Kratos und -----das heißt, Stärke, Eifer, Kraft und -----. Sehen Sie, Hass kann jene Kräfte freigeben, aber wir müssen passend hassen. Dantes hasst unpassend und sucht, das Leiden in der Welt zu verursachen - aber, weil er sie im Namen G-d tut, wird es gerechtfertigt

*

3. Babelfish retarnslation back to English:

Are we to say that fate is that, which functions after you? And this fate is that, worked on which in owrld? And then we can say that Edmund Dantes is an elegant Handhaber of the fate, a skillful and strong representative of its own fate? And it think does that this condition of the Seins is produced by hate? and its activity in the world by revenge? and the Hybris of for the role of the means of God' assume; s becomes in the world? a Punisher? how narzisstisch really like egoistic… poor old Caderousse! And it is surely hate, which refuels it, essentially; we must this Styx, the Greek goddess recall here the hate, had four children: Bia, Zelos, Kratos and ----that is, strength, eagerness, Kraft and ----. See, hate can those forces release, but we must hate suitably. Dantes hates mismatching and seeks to cause a suffering in the world - however, because he does her in the name G-D, it is justified

*

4. Revised by Author:

Website Idea:

2010-02-23T00:26:00.000-08:00

The website contains the notebook of a man who is trying to write, 'ScaramoucheX: the Babelfish Translations, A Volume of Spontaneous Prose Poetry'

This idea is so fucking good it makes me cry...it is so fucking good that I will not even tell you how I am going to do it. Potentially, it could involve hundreds of millions of readers, in hundreds of languages, throughout the entire world....

All with the aid of Babelfish, and mine own ispirations...and, eventually, the inspirations of others...

This, truly, is a twentieth century work of Art...in progress, in flow, happening now.

*

1. Spontaneous prose, written according to Jacke Kerouac's '26 Rules of Spontaneous Poetry'

2. Babelfish translation into any one of dozens of languages.

3. Translation back to English

4. Revision

5. On-line invitation to rewrite and post, and be archived.

LOL! ROTFL! LMAO!

This idea is so fucking good - I swear to G*d, Reader: YOU SHALL HEAR OF ME!

*

Publish first myself, without asking permission...spend a few hundred, publish with Trafford, who stroes on disk and publishes on demand

Set up book thusly:

Page One, as #1 above

Page 2, as # 2 above

et cetra

Then, Page 5: blank - so that the Reader can contribute his own 'translation'...

and move with the interst generated by this 'book' the Reader to the website, www.psychotropicsalon.com

and profit thereby -at least in fame and glory - for it is always glory I seek...a ma gloire! aims my destiny.

*

SO

1. website.

2. book

3. Title: 'Jack Kerouac's 26 Rules of Spontaneous Prose: The Babelfish Translations', by ScaramoucheX

Man, I am died and gone to Heaven! an actionable idea, with potential - mostly because it excites me enough to do it!

My Man, Ashurbanipal

2010-02-17T00:52:00.000-08:00

Impassive, detached, enduring; this head expresses an incorrigible presence, no? Sometimes, necessarily, I feel this way.

Towards a consummate composure in-the-moment...

3 Books, and, The Arsenic Lobster

2010-02-11T00:18:00.000-08:00

I am reading each day from three books: 'Napoleon', by Max Gallo, el Quixote, and Carlos Castaneda's initial trilogy.

All of these books are about warriors. One struggles heroically in the world of men, and masters it; another valiantly hurls himself into aspect of the Absurd, and the third is a lonely ol Mexican peasant, apparently scratching out his days like a chicken in the sun, but really cultivating his own Magic.

I read from each one every day...what am I up to?

Becoming Frank Evans, dig some Frank Evans shit, do some things he would approve of.

*

"...Intelligence is often the enemy of poetry, because it limits too much, and it elevates the poet to a sharp-edged throne where he forgets that ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall suddenly on his head..."

Federico Garcia Lorca

Such a wonderful description of the encounter, the inevitable encounter, with the Absurd, in life

The absurd...Camus apprehends it, while the flamencos make of it Art.

The Irrational.

'Ambition and Aspiration'

2010-01-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

Ambition and aspirations...what are mine, today? which serve me, which do not?

Because the way must be cleared, I am beginning to move Forward

Like...one ambition has been to keep my current job; but that one is now in the way, has become an obstacle. Benefits, holidays, confidence I can do the work, convenience, these have provided enough inertia that the first emotion that comes up for me, when I consider getting a new one, is Fear.
But I am presently working through that, of necessity, due to unpleasant work conditions; now that it is time to move on, I find myself desperately searching for ambitions for the future, hopes and wishes for a better life, that will motivate me to achieve it...

It seems to be a process, this freeing, this disentanglement, this gaining of solvency...a process that spins out across Time. Not the work of an instant, it is as much about the inner as the outer...in fact, it must happen first inwardly, there must be an absence of resistance, ultimately...it's success depends upon self-knowledge, and the gaining of certainty, of total assurance.

Flow...

Open letter, to Il Duce y Il Doge

2010-01-16T23:27:00.000-08:00

Continuation of phone conversation...

This internet/website/on-line business...it's the future, it is present, it is current.

And I have recently acknowledged to myself that it is the reason I can write.

It's a manifestation of William Burroughs' concept of 'INTERZONE'...to refresh your memory, sit down with Daisy and watch Cronenberg's, 'Naked Lunch'.

It's here, in Interzone that I thrive; coincidentally, it is the art form of the times...in its ethereality, we find our zeitgeist

I used always to feel, these last five years that I have kept a 'blog, that my efforts were somehow fraudulent, that I ought to be honing for print, that it was all sloppy and self-indulgent and ill-formed. But...it is what it is, this komputer represents a fount, to me, a well, a source, that I can tap into and draw nourishment from...things work for me, here, and I can pay into it, too, with my own contributions.

I'm not sure yet all what I'll do with it, but I've a few ideas to start and I will go from there. I am working on the www.psychotropicsalon.com website, which is not yet functioning. I have, however, secured for myself the rights to that domain nmae.

Do you see how huge that is? I shall have mine own domain, in which to run rampant!

I am very firmly convinced that the future of the written word is to be found in Interzone, it is there that our new epic will be written.

But how to get the bastard Readers to pay for it???

We'll see...

And the true beauty of all of this is I shall make the website about my efforts to prepare for print publication some of my works; if the IZ thing fails to engage, pay off, I shall just follow through and submit to an editor for publication.

So: I am completely confident of the rightness of this effort, this work. I may rule a domain in name only, at the present, but one day soon I will begin to live there...invisible, intangible, ineffable and intractableAND - a great virtue is that I will have to 'fictionalise' much of the work on the website, because it is INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION - my own! but I still have to folow the rules, to avoid lawsuits, et cetera...

So - Saul Pierce may rise again!

So the essence of the website is FICTION, ficciones...my definition of that, of my prose aesthetic, is 'the place where history meets imagination'...Professor Shelton on magic mushrooms, dig?

For this venture to succeed, I will have to MAKE IT ALL UP! I find that a little daunting, but the vigour of the Psychotropic Salon depends upon it.

*

A fundamental: by opening this website, as I intend to, I will be asking the Reader to participate in the creation of a work of Art...close to immediacy, closer, which is what the Reader , the true enthusiast, wants...
Because the Writer dares come closer to the Source than the average man needs to, so he balks...but he wants to know that someone, somewhere, somehow, goes there; he wants to know what it is like, what you have learned, what you can share...
Creativity.
Creation.
Anima, animation

Make it open, available, free

A Warrior's Way

2010-01-13T00:39:00.000-08:00

I have long sought the fusion between the Artist's Path and that of the Householder; now, I have it: the way of the Warrior.
By Warrior, I mean it in the sense of Castaneda, ...., a man of power, someone who contends with the world as-it-is, and does not retreat finally. Not for him the retreat, the hermitage, the seclusion; no, he may bide his time until everything becomes clear., but he will act accordingly.
He will act.
That is the essence of the way of the warrior. Not for him the contemplative life...

The artist needs the warrior, and so does the householder...and the lover, and the parent, et alia.

The warrior undertands he is on a quest to discover and connect with the Spirit of things, and it may take forms unknown to him, myriad; nonetheless, he has to strike out and engage!

*

By the way, the photograph is one of my dawg, Zoe...does she not manifest, and articulate in her apparent being, the animation of the Warrior? the Hunter? the stalker after Power?

*

Here is the essence of the warrior's way: that one's fate be accepted without complaint, that every ordeal be accepted as a challenge, an opportunity to engage!
There is no 'should', there is only what is, the real...not the conditional.
Live, in the moment, now...every decision made in the space of seven breaths - knowing that even if one's head shpould be severed from one's body, there is still time for one final act. In that is the vigour of decisiveness, whole intuitive comittment to the now, and fidelity of self.

*

This picture of the Rhodesian Ridgeback...I love the intensity, the dialled-in nature of the dawg's 'affect'...it's entire being is fully engaged with the world, in immediacy! I want to live that way, wholly in the now...as Cesar Milan says, 'It's the people who live in the moment that get things done."

That Cesar Milan dude, the 'Dog Whisperer'...he shares a knowledge with Carlos Castaneda's, 'Don Juan'...maybe it's something about Mexico?

from Wikipedia entry on, 'William S. Burroughs'

2010-01-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

'These novels feature extensive use of the cut-up technique, which influenced all of Burroughs' subsequent fiction to a degree. During his friendship and artistic collaborations with Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville the technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Somerville's tape recorders. Burroughs was so dedicated to the cut-up method that he often defended his use of the technique before editors and publishers, most notably Dick Seaver at Grove Press in the 1960s[24] and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the 1980s. The cut-up method, because of its random or mechanical basis for text generation, combined with the possibilities of mixing in text written by other writers, deemphasizes the traditional role of the writer as creator or originator of a string of words, while simultaneously exalting the importance of the writer's sensibility as an editor. In this sense the cut-up method may be considered as analogous to the collage method in the visual arts.'

*

I find these thoughts inspirational, when I consider 21st century writing; for we have in the internet a wholly new medium. In the same way that the printing press created Dostevskii, and the motion picture camera created 'La Dolce Vita', so will the internet create...?
It's not been done yet, but is waiting to be done...the 21st century literary epic.

*

(Burroughs) "...described as a person devoid of anger, passion, indignation, hope, or any other recognizable human emotion. He is presented as a polar opposite of Allen Ginsberg, as Ginsberg believed in everything and Burroughs believed in nothing. "
I envy that kind of detachment, it's necessary, for some enterprises.

*

Usher's final rap: the beats are intense, the rhymes make no sense ('word salad')...law of sympathetic vibration

In the Theme of John, or, Notes from InterZone

2010-01-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

And so all of the writing on the website is there for others to use.
For example, there may be a place for them to post their re-writes on the site; Readers could vote on which they like the best, and say why...
Anything could be taken by the Reader and redone in any way they like, put to any purpose they want - then, the world will begin to resonate with the theme of John! what I say will take myriad forms, and exponentially increase my availible audience - vastly increasing my chances of living successfully as an Artist, who dwells in InterZone and tells everyone who wants to listen, what it's like...

Me 'n Jesus

2010-01-06T01:10:00.000-08:00

I am amzed to discover it, but I think I have tried to live my life as though I should be Jesus.

How many little white Christians feel the same way, have the same inner image-of-becoming?

More Notes on the Hamlet tautology; or, Who Needs Jesus?

2010-01-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

It says in the Haga Kure that a decision must be made within the space of seven breaths...
Then, one acts like a warrior and carries out the mission, with certainty. The warrior looks for the cubic centimeter of chance, that is to say, opportunity.
Opportunity can only be noticed by the aware, the present.
Fear conditions awareness, as does hope...but living in the moment is the goal, and having confidence within oneself permits forward movement.
It helps to know when you have made a decision; this consciousness relieves one of having to act on the myriad 'further considerations' that may arise - they are endless.
Don't think like a writer, who entertains with imagination every possibility; in order to act, to take action, you have to live in the moment, and deal with reality the way it really is, not as you might wish/fear/hope it will be.

Hamlet could not act because he could not decide, could not honour or be aware of what he had chosen

In my case, I have remembered that I have already decided how I will use my meeting tomorrow, what action I will take...after a couple of hours of conjuring up dread with my imaginations of what else I could do, what else could be done to me. I have already decided, and I have now to merely follow through...and look for opportunity, in the midst of now

Because, at this meeting tomorrow, everything follows from what I have promised - I won't change it now, because all that flowed from what I had decided: to accept responsibility.
And that acceptance sometimes means change, challenging change and risk.

*

"You know, I want like hell to fight this thing...but I won't. No, you want to call me on it, I'll man-up and take the hit, I'm not gonna whine and cry. I'm taking responsibility.'
'You know me, I could go on and on and argue and drag all kinds of stuff into it, but I'd rather just keep moving foward and looking to the future, and I'd rather do it like this. I'm not gonna blame anyone else."

*

Because I am all about moving forward into the future, now, and if it means that I have to change jobs, so be it, as long as I am moving, taking risks, rising to challenges, surviving ordeals...bring it on.
If fidelity to self means change, I will go with it, because to do anything less is to live less
No, I have decided to believe in myself and welcome the future, follow through with my decisions
I have heard it said that people who take risks tend not to regret them, even if their enterprises are complete failures.
I decided a while ago that I want to live that way, and so I get what I asked for, the universe answers me, and this is what it looks like; it's only a problem if I start to doubt it, balk, allow myslef to be daunted, and forget about the future.
Where is ambition, if it can't move through inertia? welcome change, the change it asks for
In this case, I tell myself I need a new job, I want a new job, then I whine as I move, or am moved, out of the old one! Only by taking responsibility is there a way out,

Some say the only way out is through...others, that the way out is the way you came in; whichever is true, I'll get out and through and into...forward!

The aware man always remembers that he is getting the adventure he asks for, the world answers him; and with that awareness he relaxes into the moment, in action.

*

It definitely is part of the process of getting my head out of my ass and remembering what it is I came here on this earth to do: live.
I need to open up my gaze and see how big the world really is, really can be for me...for example, on a very small level, I could easily move within my present company, away from what may have become a toxic relationship with management. I would accept travel as the price to pay for working in a healthy environment. I believ the owners of the company think well of me, their 13 yr employee, but see a problem with my relationship to my current mangement...which is accurate, though I temper my disapproval with optimism, a desire to submit my ego to the team and move forward. If I can't do that, then I have to leave.
Yes...I see from my wife's very very unwilling transfer, that in spite of her anger she has noticed how much happier she is away from the toxicity...she allowed her realtionship w Klayton management to poison everything...that doesn't happen anymore, the well is on its way to being cleansed...

That is what I aim for: to quote Henry Miller, 'the waters re-glitterised'

No, to act as a whistle-blower and profess to be vitally interested in, and protective of, the professional ethics of one's Company...and then to whine and complain when one is held to that same professional standard that one has espoused, is to express a lack of integrity. 'Never complain, never explain", as Benjamin Disraeli said it; 'Act, don't ask', says the zen proverb. No, in this matter, and at all times, I will endeavout to act as a man of honour, as a warrior....

How ridiculously strange it is, that I intend to read Carlos Castaneda tomorrow morning, before I go to the 'discipl;inary hearing', the tribunal; how strange, to think it is Don Juan who acts as my image-of-becoming. Castaneda well expresses thpose two key ideas, the warrior, and the cubic centimtere of chance.

Tomorrow, those considerations, realities, aspirations, will guide and inspire me.

Who needs Jesus?

*

NO EXTEMPORISATION! live only in the moment...the ones who live in the moment are the ones who get things done, the ones who burn brightest...
There will be no qualifications, no quibbling, no back-tracking, no extemporisation, no excuses.
I camn accomplish this with detachment, professional detachment, and acceptance that I am one who has sold his labour to the company; in return for fulfilling a job description, I will be paid a wage...that is all. No one loves me, makes allowances for me, needs to act without integrity in order to support me. I signed on the dotted line and know what it is I am doing, have promised. I will come through.

I will come through.

All because I don't know any other way to be...

Notes Toward Rugby Stories

2009-12-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

of rugby player for Ireland, no. 8, "They all stood there, as if they'd been transfixed. Not one of them on the field knew where he was going but him - until after he'd passed them. It was pure genius, and I had the feeling the man had been looking all the match for that one moment."

I knew what he was talking about: the 'cubic centimetre of chance'

*

Of Moose, the Coward

*

Bruck Smth and P Trelawny...genius from the full back, w magic mushrooms...
"Shrews! We bite their heads off before the game..."

Notes toward, 'In the House of Women'

2009-12-29T23:01:00.001-08:00

This is a good time to revisit my sketching out of the 'In the House of Women' work; I see very clearly that I am 'stuck' to this very day, because of my unconscious reactions to those events that brought me to where I am now.

And I want to MOVE before I get moved, beyond my control; if a change is gobnna come, I would like to be in charge of it...

However...it may even come to pass that I am once again 'fired', like a pot of clay, that is to say, fired from my 'job'; and that would be instructional, maybe I could even accept that...dammit, I will, if it happens. I'll just say to myself, 'Time for you to go', and I'll forget it and drive on.

But, in order to move with the times I have to un-stick myself, dissolve what's blocking me, have to see what's there. It is time to move, soon, and I know that a successful move is partly dependent on 'getting over it'.

'Cos I really haven't to this day gotten over that experience, of being done in by narcisstic, neurotic, cold crazy females A great, great life-lesson, but at what a cost! I want to be more conscious now and learn the lessons myself, in my own time, and then move...not sit and watch all the signs around me and do nothing and wait to be 'axed'.

*

In the Time of Women...I have moved inwardly from that...no more adulation of externalised visions of the anima, 'Venus-carriers'...unbidden tulkus...I recently woke from a forgotten dream with these words on my lips: "there is a woman sitting inside my chest listening to everything."
To me, that says I understand at last that the anima is within me, and does not lie with real-world females - they are only carriers of the true energy
The woman who sits in mychest, she will listen to everything; I don;t have to look for that in another person, although it's nice when it happens...no, this is ultimate artistic self-empowerment, this awareness of my anima...gotta enhance that, make it work...as in, who am I writing to? who is listening? oh yeah, it's her, my old friend...

3 Hours w El 'Quixote'

2009-12-27T01:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight, took 20mg of Ritalin, the better to concentrate...read the Quixote for three consecutive hours! the miracle of modern chenistry!

*

Later, upon recalling a song I once downloaded from, LimeWire ('Don Quixote's Marijuana', by some Spanish death-metal group), I decided to partake of a jazz cigarette...

Night Eyes, Night Vigil

2009-12-25T23:26:00.001-08:00

"Well, because you can't let the entire night pass, woithout praising G-d at least once during it...can you? could you? do you?"

Translation of Three Passages

2009-12-23T23:07:00.000-08:00

'Pero ya es muy tardeEl mal ya esta hechoYo he sido en tu vida solo tu deshechoQue despues que te divierte lo abandonasHoy sin remordimientos dices que te deje sola'

Babel Fish:

"But already it is very behind schedule. The evil already this fact. I have been in your life only your exhausted. That after amuses to you you leave it. Today without remorses you say that it leaves you single."

Mine:

"But already the hour is late! Evil has come!
As you exhaust your life, know that I have been with you; you have laughed, without remorse, and moved on.
Now, say that you are single."

Antipolitan Arsenic Lobster

2009-12-23T00:57:00.001-08:00