21/52 - A Story Worth Telling is a Story Like You

"And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain, when you come out of the storm,you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." - Haruki Murakami

Dear Internauts,

Every time I start a project in a new medium, it feels like the first part takes at least five times longer than it should. Like the music video for Pigs on Patrol could've been made in a month and a half—and mostly was—except I spent the six months before that with indecision and false starts. Any time I've tried to write a novel, I'll go in for the first act or so draft after draft and never much finish anything. With this graphic novel, the first chapter, which will be at most eight pages, is proving to follow this pattern far closer than I'm following my script for it. It certainly won't be complete by the end of the month as I'd hoped. Still, the pressure I've inflicted upon myself has led to a more practical stance on story-telling which I can see being perhaps useful in the future.

For one thing, it helps that I continue to be excited about the story at large. When it takes a few hours to design, draw, and color a single panel with my limited artistic skill to anything nearing competence, I can only stay motivated if every captured moment is worthwhile. Not only does the story have to be worth telling, it has to be worth crafting. In that, I look forward to getting better as I gain experience in finally creating something in a medium I've loved for much of my life. Plus, when I'm actually drawing, it's an exercise in visual storytelling that reveals new and exciting lessons with each new angle.

One of many, many inspirations for my current work is the manga series BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei. Visual storytelling is at an all time efficiency in this minimally-worded sci-fi journey. Capturing both an epic and claustrophobic feel with mystery and discovery tirelessly dealt at speed, this great work exists within a city like the inner workings of a computerized MC Escher-scape. Its newly released cousin film by the same name is now on Netflix, and though it greatly expands some minor characters and inflates exposition vastly while somewhat undercutting the almost inhuman, ugly grit of the lonesome wanderer's role...I still loved it. I definitely recommend both the movie and the books.

Further, I've been reading through Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. I had started many times since high school, but always ended up getting distracted by something else partway through. Thankfully, the local library has the collected editions in paperback. Although arguments could be made for so much of his other work, what I find with Sandman is that Gaiman's story-telling is able to shine through the efficiency required as well as the freedom enabled by the medium. Along with reading through Alan Moore's Swamp Thing series for the first time, I'm rekindling a love for the weird in sequential art's narrative power that is a challenge and a boon for my own imagination.

Still not sure what I'll do with my comic as I begin to finish its parts, but at the moment, that is secondary to the creation. As compared to some other art forms, that's actually something of a hidden blessing. With this blog and certainly my song-writing, I'm all too easily caught in the glare of what YOU might think. Not that you haven't been anything but quite cordial about it. I will always remain, I should hope, my harshest and loudest critic. And yet...

Speaking of song-writing, I suppose the word "music" in this blog's title should stand as more than a metaphor for my rasping rants and rollicking rambles, right? Well, on that front, it has been decided between myself and the wonderful producer friend of mine, Joe Casey, that a new goal has been set for the music I recorded with him at the end of last year. As his life is full of the necessary business of being a father, husband, and human being—and I am as yet unable to pay him to work full time on my music alone—we will be proceeding via the release of one song at a time instead of a four song EP. I know this has been a long process, and it may seem like the kinda thing I keep talking about but never actually release. This is news, though, in that the hope is to actually bring you a new single much sooner than would otherwise be the case. We are making this happen.

In the mean-between-time, however, I've got plenty of sweet treats cooking up to bubble, don't you worry. This is why I never make plans. I adopt them, water them, and place them in a bright spot only to watch them shrivel and turn to dust. Instead, I continue to try new things. Like the delivery job that threw out my applications because they got a new manager and thus asked my to apply once again. This is not the the first of such times and won't be the last I can guess.

I'm a lonely soul who desperately misses old friends, but I think what I may miss the most is the feeling of warmth and light and hope and happiness I had when I was with them. Love lost is pain and thus is life, but in the words of A. A. Milne, "How lucky I am to have someone that makes saying goodbye so hard."

Thanks for reading,
Odist

20/52 - Makers, Takers, Shakers, and Breakers

"There is not a single good or great idea that cannot be defeated by a lie, rationalization, or excuse." - Dave Sim

Dear Internauts, 

Remember playing? 

Not even necessarily playing with anything, but simply the act of creating like the unleashing of a great well of wondrous imagination through the spillway of unbounded emotional energy...when momentum and motivation were in overabundance and guiltless fun floated on a golden cloud of possibilities. 

Reminiscing is generally a frustrating exercise, and often it seems to do more harm than good both for my own life and that of the political climate as well. Still, I'm caught again in this trap of wishing I could but taste the imaginative potential of my childhood. Sure, the multi-layered tempests of plot-lines I put my action figures and stuffed animals through were likely as childishly simple as they were convoluted, but wasn't it easy? 

Without the self-doubt or the immediacy of criticism, without the constant eye for an audience or the fingers poised in frantic anxiety to edit every whim...maybe I could unwind my neurotic delusions of perfectionism and reach a kind of rainbow ball pit for ideas. 

No, ideas aren't the problem. Ideas I have. It's the how, not the what. And it's more than a pretty package. Beneath the spangled wrapping, something of substance waits coiled and counting down. Or it should anyway. That's the hope, right? 

But speaking of hope—Star Wars is my favorite story franchise of all time. And maybe for any criticism that can easily be weighed against the dialogue or the simplicity of the OT or the many more which have been, can, and will be waged against the PT, it's ultimately the ideas which make much of the difference. We love it because...because...maybe I'm in too deep to analyze that with any clarity. 

What I mean is that it's not all about the shiniest or the most symmetrical or finding exactly the perfect word for every [insert perfect word here]. 

Sometimes an old car in a grocery store parking lot can be a better room than a big bed and roof in some place fancy, like the taste of food when you're hungry versus when it's just meal time. Sometimes there's only you and the guitar or the pencil or the brush or the controller or the radio dial or the hockey stick or the hobby glue or the puzzle piece or the crossword or the spice rack or the dart board or the tool box or the knitting needles or the keyboard or whatever it is FOR YOU that takes you away from this necessity to mean something to everybody else and back to simply being a person yourself. 

When you finally have time, or maybe you never will. Maybe you gotta make time. Maybe you gotta find a reserve of energy where none seems to exist because the necessities got the best of you. Maybe it hurts and it sucks and what's the point and I just wanna sleep or crash or hang out or consume, but then it's one more day where the line goes undrawn or the word goes unwritten. 

There's not much point in saying yet again that I may never be a great artist or writer or musician or whatever. Maybe I won't. But to be good at anything, you gotta actually do the thing. Whatever is standing in my way today from drawing or writing or playing is probably gonna continue to be there tomorrow. The possibility of this new creation, though, will only ever be a possibility until I make it a reality. 

So instead of promising myself I'll get to it when I have the time, why not do a little now? Why not right two hundred words? Why not sketch a panel? Why not spend half an hour on that lick I was workin on? Why not create something? 

I consume SOOOO MUCH media. I pac-man as many stories as I can. I'm addicted to the next post or the next page or the next episode. And then I can spend my days like so many other folks just sorta participating in the mechanisms of society. Last week it was folding and tearing and stamping and filing hundreds and hundreds of pages. Carry this. Mop that. Move this. Type that. Copy this. Trash that. 

I don't have the time, energy, or imagination of my eight year old self anymore. What I do have is life experience and the ever-growing threat of mortality. I may not have very much of either as compared to older folks, sure, but what do I have? If I could take a weird shaped rock and make it a space ship back then, maybe I can take the huge library of influences in my head and pick a little dent in universe. Mash a few neurons together like rubbing socks on the carpet and spark something new. 

And if it's life-changing or award-winning or someone's new favorite thing or even a little bit meaningful beyond the shattered blip of a single moment's existence? I don't care. 

Oh, I do care, of course, but I'm also willing to believe that honesty is always relevant and the accessibility provided by a networked world of info-addicts like me positively teems with niche audiences ready for something, anything new. 

Y'know why I keep making? 

It's not because I think I'm any good. (Why, if I finally made what I really intended or wished to I'd probably die on the spot from sheer existential BSOD.) 

It's a compulsion, duh. It's also the feeling of walking through shelves of books and knowing with all the literature in the world, what are the chances anyone would even look twice at something I could make. BUT THEN, I think well, with all the literature in the world, how come no one's made this one thing in this one way exactly how I picture it in my head. 

I wish that book were real. I wish that show were real. I wish that song were real. I long for the nebulous maybe to incarnate. Somebody's gotta make it, and nobody else is. And it doesn't diminish my love for other's creations either. It only enhances it. 

And if it's complete rubbish, then WOW it's actually a thing that can be rubbish. That's more than most ideas ever get. That's more than any play time plot. That's something. And we can learn from something. And we can grow from something. 

And you can't win a race you don't run. And you can't run a race you don't start. And you can't start a race you don't attend. And you can't attend a race that doesn't exist. 

Sure, that same path can lead you to lose, but think of all the things you accomplished on the way. 

We can be more than just producers and consumers, strapped to a merry-go-round in History's equivalent of fly-over states. We can take a weird turn. 

We can make up our own plot twists. We can be whoever we want to be. 

Because, once again, honesty is always relevant. 

And new isn't always better, but same gets old fast. 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist 

19/52 - The Templight Zone

Dear Internauts,

Well, I could either post the blog late or have been late for work.

Now that's no longer a problem, because I am once again—you guessed it—unemployed!

Such is the adventurous life of a temp.

While others tread paths into the dirt, forming stable paradigms of socio-economic legitimacy, we exist in a parallel realm of systemic flux.

Who are we?

What are we?

Where?

When?

Why?

AND HOW!?!!

When the hours of a shift can shift and a new skill is needed in a new place, we don the guise of competency and arrive like a fluid to a container or a set of mechanical parts all melted down then poured to fill up the outline of the default "employee" skin. We are numbers in a spreadsheet cell. We are the extra hands handed heavy crates marked by the busyness of the business—fill-in-the-blanks.

We are the capacity of expansion required by the seasonal sway in market projections under near ideal conditions given a margin of error + or - the fundamental realities of an ever-volatile capitalist conundrum.

We show up.

And when we show up and work the work, what do they say? Nothing or maybe something good, nice, affirming. Easy enough to allude to crude suggestion of a perfect world wherein they could hire us for longer. What a help we've been when they really needed it, but things are slowing now. After all, everything floats down. The oil and water are casually segregated. Maybe they'll see us when things heat up again. No promises, but they kinda hope we stay desperate and unattached enough to march back smiling and grateful.

We were needed once, but now we're not.

We were the only way, but now we're in the way.

Put us in our crates, and ship us back to the underground warehouse where we're cold-stored, kept fresh and primed for the picking.

Are we the Toy Story aliens in awe of the Claw?

Are we standing in the parking lot blowing on our hands, ready to do whatever needs doing?

Are we clutching our phones, twitching at phantom vibrations like frost-bitten amputees?

Are we what you need till it's not us it's you?

Are we flies that drop? (Good thing you got enough to compensate for expected losses.)

Are we "Yes, Sir" and "Yes, Ma'am" and loose parameters when there's no such thing as a job description 'cause you weren't sure exactly what you'd need that day?

Are we gonna stay up all night by your bedside or drop everything at a moment's notice or forgive any slight because the past is the past even though you hold the most minute infraction like murder 'round our necks?

Of course, we are.

Fair-weather? It's all fair game for us to face any storm in your wake. It's all the abuse we'll take so the pedestal won't break from under you.

Bad work for bad pay? But we'll come back anyway. Every time. Work-for-hire when you need a punching bag with a forgettable face.

We'll listen to your woes and sow seeds for fields you'll burn like bridges, and on our backs you'll hold the bootstraps we pulled up for you. Red, White, Black, and Blue.

Can you hear the practiced smile in our voice?

How may we be of service?

Thanks for reading,
Odist

18/52 - Season of Mist (Puttin' in the Work)

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n." -John Milton

Dear Internauts,

This week I surprised myself. Turns out I can handle a job far better than I thought. To go from a place where my job was killing me, and I literally would have killed myself had I stayed, to this place where I'm just as competent as anybody else (or near enough for the task), seems even now like an impossible journey. The way is winding, I've gotten turned around more than once, and the holes I can recall each looked darker than the last. Still, just as I came back to Massachusetts when I did because I knew there would never be a perfect time for a change, plunging right into this full time cycle after so long between day jobs is maybe the only way I could do it. There's no ladder. You're gon' hafta jump!

Okay, so the first two days doing back-breaking physical labor in the warehouse took all the strength I had both to lift hundreds of boxes and buckets but also not to snap at being called Big Guy the whole time by a superior who refused to learn our names. Thankfully, the manager noticed how much of an insurance risk it would be to continue allowing this weakling to keep carrying things and shifted me over to operations. (Being a temp is kinda like being a special worker, so I'm gonna say it's Special Ops.) Basically, filing orders for flowers and answering the phone.

Now, as you may know, my experience with customer service has historically been on the spectrum between bad times and end times level disastrous. Thankfully, most of the calls are from our delivery drivers just wanting to speak to someone in the office. Though I have gotten a few from disgruntled call center employees or customers who couldn't find their own front door.

Work is, of course, like the most boring, mind-numbing parts of school, but instead of getting graded, you're in constant threat of just getting kicked out. Whoever came up with, "if you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean" is a fascist, obviously, but let's be honest here: my manager hasn't yelled at me once and at the end of the day I help make people's days a little brighter. For those points alone, this job beats most if not all others I've had—at least the ones that pay money for my labor.

I'm trying to spend some time when I can to keep working on my novel and play guitar. I can put so much work into a drawing or a page or a song and it does feel like exertion, but it's fulfilling and almost satisfying when I know I'm doing well at it. In a weird sense of kaleidoscopic existentialism, I feel more real to myself when I'm creating. It can be a real challenge to find the mental and emotional energy after spending all day around other people in a stressful environment, but if I don't find it, I'll never make anything. And life is honestly not worth living without art. I know other people have their own ways of juggling through existence, but for me there is zero fulfillment in just laboring for money.

Grown up on lessons that "money isn't everything" or "money can't buy happiness," I only now begin to see what a place of privilege those well-intentioned themes sprang. See, I'm living so much off the generosity of family right now and have for so long, that it is a tumult of a thought to think that some day I won't be such a burden on others, despite their insistence they're happy to help. I've known some independence before, and that's what a more steady job and its wages mean, besides simply the aspects of survival such an independence would require.

I truly miss Nashville, and the person I was, and the people I knew. Like all the friends I used to have around Boston, though, it feels like a world and a life belonging to a complete stranger. I suppose we don't reinvent ourselves as often as we did when we were kids, but in other ways we never really stop, do we? The idea that people don't change is, to me, an utter sham. We must and do change all the time.

Of course, wherever you go, you gotta take yourself along. A change of scenery can't solve and hasn't solved my problems nor made me healthier or more "normal". However, it has forced me to just get up and deal with parts of life that would appear entirely foreign and impossible to the me who hid down in that basement several years ago. I don't think he was a coward, and I wouldn't call him weak.

Anyone who's face trauma and/or mental illness knows it can take a kind of miraculous strength simply to breathe steady or perform the most basic functions of living. It's not a matter of flipping a switch or taking a pill or picking up responsibilities to receive instant clarity. The demons in my head still roll and rumble, but I can at least say now that their snarling is not the only sound I hear.

I'm exhausted and about to start an even busier week with longer hours. However, as I tell myself every morning before I step out of my car—their stress does not have to be my own. All I have to do is what I choose to do. Just because someone else is freaking out, even if it's directed at me, doesn't mean that I have to freak out. It does no good to think I owe others some level of self-hate, whether they be long lost friends whom I miss so much or some a-hole with a power complex at work.

I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know much of anything, but I know this–

People change all the time. It's okay to be fluid. 

Thanks for reading,
Odist