Last Hopes and Complaints of 2004

Happy New Year, everyone. Going through the year, every year, I usually find that I’ve accomplished something, even if it felt like a snail’s pace throughout the year. This blog is actually pretty meaningful to me, and I started it in 2004. Connecting with people, getting my mind down, it’s a form of hope. Thanks everyone for reading and writing. The election was depressing, but it also got me energized in a certain way. Despite the world, I had a productive final week of 2004, which feels shameful to admit. No work was coming in from my job, so I got to spend all of my time working on fiction. I hadn’t been able to do that in over a year. I realized how hard it is for me to split half my time and my mind writing ad copy. I found out I can still write, which was a good final thought heading into the new year. I am going to try to sell this story. Here comes my last bit of self-absorption for this year: I still don’t know where I fit in as a writer. I’m not a "New Yorker" writer where the writing itself reads like a book review. I’m not an academic writer because I can’t willfully quote Homer or Keats. I’m not a mainstream writer because I can’t write that way, but not that I don’t need to. I can’t be an underground cult hero like Burroughs because my life isn’t interesting enough, and I’m too solitary to belong to a generation. I’m not a genre writer. I’m currently writing a science fiction novel which is probably a mistake because I am not a science fiction writer. Stanley Kubrick directed a science fiction movie, a horror movie, an 18th century period movie, etc. Not equating myself with him, but that’s how I look at fiction, which amply screws me with publishers. The most important one: I am not a literary writer, which is a genre in itself. I am just not wordy enough. Small press writing can be as tame as mainstream presses, and they have less money so they don’t publish as often, so that isn’t much of an option either. I haven’t published a novel in too long. It would energize me to have a new book sitting alongside those writers I love. It’s not vanity to think a book and new readers would help me feel welcomed. My New Year’s Resolution is to live in the world, to not always hide behind words and a computer screen. Trying to do something with my songwriting is part of this. I really want to start a rock band. Philip K. Dick and Jack Kerouac took speed. I’d like an upper for 2005. No doubt I am full of myself. The whole world needs an upper. If I was a better person, I’d wish selflessly for other people’s safety, and of course I do, but my thoughts inevitably come back to the person I’m closest to, myself. This either makes me an incredible prick, or human. Maybe my anxiety is tied in directly to the world at large. Maybe I’m not a prick after all. Here’s to hoping. See you next year.

Jim Woodring

Back to weird. Jim Woodring is good God. This picture should cheer you up.



If you don’t know Jim Woodring, see him. If you do, there’s a lot to check out at his site. There’re flash games and wallpaper. This picture’s on my desktop.

I think I’ll start posting more pictures. It’s easy, it looks nice, and I don’t really have to write anything.

On Moving On

I looked at some pictures from the tsunami disaster and it depressed the shit out of me, as it should have. A bruised woman who’s missing her 13-year-old son…I guess it’s good to meditate on other people’s suffering, makes you human. Though I could never be empathetic because I don’t know what the hell it is like. The closest I could come is living through September 11 in New York City. Seeing the planes hit, the burnt, artificial smell in the air, the fear that something else could happen, running down from 23rd street thinking my dog was suffocating in the dust, which was ridiculous really because we lived far enough away. My daughter’s birth was the most emotionally intense experience of my life--filled with powerful fear and worry, but that ended happily, with powerful joy. Her birth was the most alive I’d ever felt, the most human.

So I’ve got nothing to possibly compare. People are suffering horribly right now, and I’m sitting warm at a desk, writing a BLOG. Hopefully it’s wrong to feel petty. There’s a wise quote somewhere about focusing on the good things. I can’t help it, but the tragedy does seem far away, until I see another picture. I care but I’m not crippled by it. Human beings have a terrible capacity to adapt to tragedy. It’s probably going to get worse, as the population grows, and we develop new, creative ways of killing each other off. In my paranoid moments, I feel like we’re being prepared for something. And then I go back to my job. I still want to finish the story I’m writing, I still want to sell it somewhere. I want to try to get it into a longshot like "The New Yorker" which I’ve spouted against but that’s only because I hate what I can’t have. I’d like to jumpstart my writing career. I still feel like I’m always suffering in some way, which really is crippling. Meanwhile, people are suffering in much worse ways, somewhere, maybe even down the block. Dumb, brutal world we live in. This tragedy seems different, like the Holocaust or September 11--even if it’s an act of nature, people are still powerless and hurt. I don’t know what to do about it exactly. A downer post, but I got it out.

Tsunami Aid

Darling Maggot, best blogger, has a link up about donating for tsunami relief. Here's another one.

ICRC

Someone on the Daily Kos made the point that the Iraq war costs (conservatively) 1 billion a week, which works out to 144 million a day, and a fraction of that is what the U.S. has offered for aid. This should be a new rallying cry: without this stupid war, we could afford a lot more humanitarian aid. As if Bush gives a shit about being humanitarian. More people have died in Iraq than from the tsunami, and that could have been prevented--IF these new weather patterns are not a result of environmental neglect. I bet Bush hasn’t even looked at a picture of what’s coming out of there. He doesn’t read the fucking newspaper.

Movie Reviews

Saw "I Heart Huckabees" and "The Life Aquatic." This is what happens when you try your hand at screenwriting after smoking too much pot or maybe taking ecstasy. Not that I didn’t like the movies, but there’s a kind of ultra-dry humor that can only be understood by someone who’s high, or someone who’s overly convinced of his own genius.

Both movies take all the most ridiculous parts of earlier movies and multiply them by a thousand. Wes Anderson’s "The Royal Tannenbaums" actually pissed me off quite a bit, up there with the new "Star Wars" movies. It’s unreality was an irritant, it seemed smug. How do you touch on any kind of truth when everything is more than slightly false? The soundtrack felt like Wes Anderson was showing off his music collection. It felt like a mix tape rather than adding anything meaningful. And I don’t think it’s all that funny for one of the characters to always be listening to The Clash.

I liked "The Life Aquatic" more once I realized that it was supposed to have no relation to reality whatsoever. It’s a little too obsessed with being unique and creative and original. It’s absurd but strangely rigid at the same time.

Interesting that "I Heart Huckabees" should come out at the same time because it has the same problems. I had always thought that David Russell might be an acid-head. The parents at the end of "Flirting with Disaster" turn out to be LSD dealers, and the freneticness of the movie seemed to be written under some kind of influence. I’ve known people who smoke pot and write screenplays and they tend not to make any sense. Huckabees makes enough sense. "I Heart Huckabees" takes all the extremes of "Flirting with Disaster" and multiplies them--a lot like "The Life Aquatic." I liked Huckabees more, mainly because it watched like an absurdist Celestine Prophecy.

Also saw "The Incredibles." Anyone who says this is neo-fascist and Ayn Rand-inspired needs to lighten up. I think that line of criticism might have been the last gasp of the election. People just wanted something to attack. It’s a superhero movie, a fantasy. I think Harry Potter might be more dangerous. In the first movie, he’s already famous for doing nothing. He’s also a superhero, but he’s worshipped in a different way than any Marvel Comics hero.

Even though all of these movies are highly talented and well made, there’s something sort of restrained about them, mechanical. I’ve always thought that music was getting less interesting because people were taking more ecstasy than LSD. Granted, I haven’t taken either in quite a while, but I’ve still got opinions. Ecstasy is a superficial drug, very uncerebral, unlike acid. It’s more about the skin than the mind. I look at a band like Radiohead which sees their version of "Sgt. Pepper" progress as becoming more machine-like, more computerized. I think Radiohead are amazing but for some reason I don’t listen to them very often. Something about his voice--like he’s cooler than his audience. I come back to "The Bends" and "Kid A." All these artists may be taking the wrong drugs, or using the right drugs wrong. To me, sixties psychedelia and the reality of seventies movies are more human and moving.

Dion McGregor

I recommend everyone listen to this beautiful lunatic. It’s my Christmas gift to the anonymous people who come by here. Click on Food Roulette.

Sleeptalker

That way lies madness.

Naked Pictures

When I check in to see who has come here, I have recently found someone has logged in from the Security and Exchange Commission. Whoever you are, show yourself. Am I under investigation? Are you just someone working a dull government job looking to kill time? I won’t tell your boss. I’d also like to hear from "xo. war." again. This person said they were going to comment on every post here. He/she stopped at ten, but I can understand. I like what you wrote. I feel stalked and privileged.

I get a fair amount of searches from people looking for information about the "Ash Tree." I’m sorry but I’m not your man. Here’s a picture though. Click on it for information.



It’s got a fairly intense feel, but then all trees do. If I was another sort of person, I would research it, but not now. The title Ash Tree actually comes from my name: H. Baum. H sounds something like "Ash" in French and Baum means "Tree" in German. That’s it. My grandfather’s German but I don’t have any French in me, so far as I know. I like the idea of a tree that’s made of what it is when it burns away. Sounds pretty zen, or something darker, probably both. Something that is dying and growing at once.

Literary Hell

I probably shouldn’t admit this. There’s a major reason that I shouldn’t be a science fiction writer. I don’t like most science fiction, even those books people find seminal. I started reading Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash this weekend. It hasn’t spoken to me yet. I just don’t find the Deliverator all that interesting. I may live to eat these words. I hope I do because I’d like to get into it.

Here comes sacrilege: I have started and stopped reading Gibson’s Neuromancer more than once. I don’t really like Bruce Sterling. Maybe I just don’t like cyberpunk. I don’t care about computers enough. This may sound entirely ignorant because the books are probably about more than computers. But people love these books so much that it seems I should be able to take something from them. I can read anything and everything by Philip K. Dick. I don’t what it is that separates him from those other writers. I trust what Philip K. Dick lays down, even when it’s poorly written. I trust his inspiration. He seems to write about the mind more, rather than just the machinations of culture. It seems more human. It’s authentically weird instead of trying to be weird. Maybe he just writes better sentences.

I feel like I should at least have read some of the important works of the genre if I’m going to try it myself--if only out of respect. Part of the reason that I wanted to write a science fiction novel is because I am not a science fiction writer. I can tackle it from a different angle--less confined, maybe, hopefully. Some of the masterpieces of science fiction were written by non-science fiction writers--Brave New World, 1984. Those novels I finished. On the whole, I put down a book if it doesn’t instantly feel like being on some kind of unique drug. This doesn’t happen very often. It’s frustrating and my own fault.

There are certain books I appreciate but can’t read. Gibson might fall into that category, though one of these days I may pick up a novel and it’ll floor me. I’ve started and stopped reading Naked Lunch and Tropic of Cancer over and over again. I like reading non-fiction about Burroughs and Henry Miller rather than reading their fiction--most of the time. I like their letters, I like Burroughs’ straight-forward early stuff. I like Miller in small doses as if reading prose poetry. I feel like I am going to literary hell for not unconditionally loving these writers.

Old Sun

I like these lyrics. It uses the sun idea that Kurt Cobain used ("in the sun I feel as one") but he didn’t invent it. It was probably the Beatles: "I’ll Follow the Sun," "Here Comes the Sun." They did everything first. Actually it was probably old blues. I can’t deny my influences though. Somebody please buy me the Nirvana box set.

Old Sun

I went outside last night
the moon wasn't above
Instead the sun looked down,
smiled, and said "Hello"
I said, "What's going on
with you two all this year?"
She said, "I need repose
from all your hopes and fears
"Just what is wrong with this,
from dawn to dusk is cold
"I wanted to be up
when you all rest yer skulls
"Because to watch you day in/day out
is too much
"For one Old Sun to handle
who is deep in Love."

Down the Rabbit Hole

I wrote this song when I came back from a book tour. A friend of mine stayed in my apartment while I was gone. When I got back he wasn’t there and all I found was a notebook with a suicide note. I spent the night not knowing if he was dead or alive and the song poured out. The song is filled with quotes from his suicide note. Morbid, maybe, but there it is. He signed off the note with "Down the rabbit hole…"

Next day I found out from his mom that he’d put himself into rehab. He healed up and he’s doing fine.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the hatch
Eggs don't last
I'll take you to paradise
but don't get attached
Woe to him
who thinks he's unhinged
then opens doors to places
but will not let you in.

On your shopping spree
did you buy the ceiling or the floor?
On your killing spree
did you kill someone you adore?

I believe
you are not bothered
when you cry "need"
above all others.

Please forgive my mind,
all I'm crack-ed up to be
I may be sinking high
but I'm not above living
as a number on a shelf/
a king without wealth
The critics panned my murder
said at least I could spell

I believe you
are not bothered
when you cry "need"
above all others.

Where there's a will
there's no way
to understand wasted promises never made
Down the rabbit hole
I'll lose my healthy glow
I hope you won't miss me
but here I go...