12/52 - A Novel So Graphic

Dear Internauts,

I really shouldn't look at the number of views. It probably does little to encourage me toward writing or writing better, but it definitely can make me a bit disappointed when it dips. Still, I've blogged to single digits and zero views and I've blogged to over two hundred. Never reached anything which could be considered more than the most minute speck on the macrocosm of the internet datascape, but then I've no more idea what you might like to read than I ever had what my peers might like me to be for popularity sake. All a chasing after the wind, as it were, even if the wind howls most mightily when my life feels so restlessly still.

This past week I did something I've never done before. (Wouldn't it be nice if we could say that every week? Probably could, but then we'd have to convince ourselves first.)

I finished a first draft.

I know right? But Odist, you've been writing most of your life. Surely you've finished a first draft before.

Well, of course in school most of my papers never got much further than the first draft. My many short stories, too, have been written in a single sitting, which is about how long Poe suggested a good short story should take to read. Good short story writing is like painting to me. I'm fascinated by it and I can appreciate it done well, but all my attempts serve more to show that I don't know what I'm doing than the opposite.

This is, however, a complete story. Beginning, middle, and end. Sure, the format is as choppy as a Maine shoreline in February, and I expect most of the plot points and characters will vastly change if not simply be erased from existence. Still, for a story I've been trying to write for what seems like my whole life, this metamorphosing layer cake of thought vomit is, as of a few days ago, technically a creature of its own.

The plot needed a bit of living from me before it could exist. Maybe if I'd stuck with the winding roads of past ideas more steadfastly I could have made something decent, but there is a necessity in this telling which didn't exist before. I needed to be traumatized. I needed to be shattered and battered and scrambled and all many other Waffle House-esque terms of hash brown toppings before I could write this tale. I do wonder now, though, if my resolution in fiction can be anywhere near convincing with me still feeling so very far from any personal resolution.

I guess I'll just have to stick with it. That is the only way I've gotten to this point. Just write and write and write. Even if no one ever reads it. Likely no one ever will. But I have to write it, for me. For the kid who has loved science fiction and fantasy and wonder and horror and the power of sequential art storytelling. And for the adult who is still becoming myself and in doing so realizes that the world is full of stories. Yet for all those stories, there are still so many that I want to be told. I want them to exist and I haven't found them yet. I guess I'll just have to make them then.

What I'm doing now is breaking the story down into a script of sorts by page and panel layout. Alongside that I'm drawing thumbnail sketches of the pages trying to figure out flow and size and perspective and all other artsy stuff. It feels like I'm learning a whole new language of art. All these balls gotta stay in their arcs while this juggler sculpts Michelangelo's David outta Legos but the Legos are secretly spiders and the spiders all have to sing an improvised fugue but their little spider voices are so high and their little spider lungs are so small and the balls I juggle are actually the abstract idea of community and independence and a connection between the self and the other...oh yeah and I'm being crushed by a million-tentacled space squid who has an opinion about EVERYTHING.

But yknow it's kinda fun. See ya next week.

Thanks for reading,
Odist

11/52 - Feel Free to Disregard at Your Leisure

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

Dear Internauts, 

Figured this week I should get this in before midnight since I was so late last week. I guess my mind's been a million places besides in the moment. I always think up something earth-shattering during the week and forget it by the time it comes around to posting. Even if I make a note, it's like thinking up some brilliant idea in a dream then when I wake up it's only nonsense. 

On Monday night, after going to this fairly empty open mic I went to see the film Moonlight. I'd first seen in back in Philly at this tiny, independent cinema in December. I remembered enjoying it, finding some attachment to its unique charm. One of those films that feels independent on the basis of it being nothing like what the big studios are dropping, even though it had Brad Pitt as one of the executive producers. I thought and still think it succeeds at revealing a lot about character and interaction while being exceedingly sparse when it comes to dialogue. Being as most of the films I end up digging tend to rely far too much on barrels of snappy snark toppling down a Niagara's worth of exposition, I certainly appreciate the art here as different from my normal viewing as well as brilliant in its feel of being grounded in a sometimes conversational realism. Still, it manages to fill much of the tiny space allotted to dialogue—and much of it slang-heavy—with a splash of the kind of poetry more often reserved for theatre or the novel. Makes sense, considering the source material. Still, seeing it for a second time made me appreciate these aspects even more, while also confirming some of what I don't like about it. I was gonna write about my issues with it, but then realized it was just a bunch of sophomoric film snobbery about how I feel different watching a film now that it's award-winning. I think we can both do without having to read that bit of self-indulgence. 

Not that this blog is anything but self-indulgent. After all, shouldn't I be working on my other writing? 

So anyway, after getting back for the night, I got out of my car and felt a strange lightness in my pocket. After a bit of desperate scrounging, I realized that I was missing my notebook filled with sketches. Yeah, I kinda freaked out. I drove about halfway back to the movie theatre before realizing they'd been closed for a half hour. I tried to call, but of course their listed number only got me a listing of showtimes. Next day, I made the point to call the mall it was attached to and through their directory found a line for the cinema manager. He didn't find anything in the office but told me to call or come back that afternoon. When I did show up later, there was nothing in the particular theatre at the time, so they let me go look with an employee. Unlike what I'd suspected, it did not drop out of my pocket upon standing up after the movie. At least that seems to be less likely now. With my notebook not in the cinema's lost and found or the mall's lost and found, I left them my number and went off to go be disappointed with myself somewhere else. 

Now, you may be thinking that there was absolutely no point in telling you this story because it's more an observation of life events with little change in character besides the monotony and sad resignation of the boring norm. Any conflict is mostly internal besides that which is outside the protagonist's control, and despite any effort to change to face this conflict, the real resolution is mostly just an acceptance of the way things are. While it would be great for me to somehow struggle and succeed here, the actual story is more about bouncing from interaction to interaction. Any real growth is like the passage of time, skipping between a few disparate points with the understanding that you as the audience don't require or desire anything more than the barest hint of internal motion or motivation. Maybe if it was better written I could win an Oscar for it. 

Okay, what I'm trying to say is that I liked Fences and Lion better. While I'm really glad that the story is told and that its makers and tellers are getting the recognition they deserve, mostly I'm just ticked off that I lost my notebook and feel like being bitter about pretty much anything. Since the two events of seeing and losing were tied together, well, there ya go. There's the blog. 

Honestly, the only person I can really write for is myself. More people read this than used to, but I don't much feel like I have anything to say. It's like the open mic I went to earlier that night. There wasn't exactly a list or anything, so I got to play five or six songs. They're just songs, not more than three to five minutes a pop. Still, I work harder than I do or have at anything else to make those songs worthwhile. I’m not just in this for fame or to get applause or even to make some political statement. I’m in it because I found something, this one thing, I can actually do that feels like a contribution. 

How much would I love to finally have some employer call me back so I could get a job and move out on my own again and be an “adult” or whatever, but the truth is I’ve done that before plenty. Every single “adult” thing is just such a pain. It’s what you have to do and should be glad to do, and that’s great, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that more often than not it feels less like giving of yourself than it is like having pieces ripped away. Sometimes, at least in my case, those pieces radically alter your brain chemistry upon their expulsion. Still, everyone does what they’ve got to to get by. I get that. I do. And I want to be a contributing member of society. I sure have been trying to be my whole life, and certainly my whole adult life. 

Still, I know that the best I can do at any job that’s not some kinda creative expression is be a cog  in a machine. That kills me. It’s almost literally killed me more than once. 

When I lost my notebook, I was reminded of the way my brain often responded to bad events as a kid. Growing up in my particular brand of Protestant Christianity, there were only two ways to look at any occurance. If it was good, then praise the Lord for being good. If it was bad, then something was wrong with me. Sure, we talked about how the rain falls on the good and the evil. But we also talked about mercy, and mercy can be a very fatal kind of poison. See, when you’re taught that the good in your life exists because God, the ultimate good, is refraining from giving you the punishment you rightly deserve, then any conversation about forgiveness becomes a sort of formality. 

When children are taught that we humans are inherently corrupt, evil, twisted, and wrong, it’s a lesson that sticks deep down to infect our thoughts. When we can do nothing good, but only be a passive tool used by God to do good despite how weak and rotten we really are, there is no room for loving ourselves. The love of God for us children is expressed by the grace of anything positive being better than we deserve. This may or may not be theologically in line with the official stance of what I was supposed to be taught, but I bet I’m not the only one who grew up with it anyway. The underlying current of saying grace before a meal or praising the Lord’s healing hand after a surgery is the same line of thinking that once told me that even a parent feeding their child is a sin, if it is a parent who has not accepted Jesus Christ. Oh that’s not what we actually believe, many have told me. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? What we preach and sing and read and write must always stack up against the way we really interact. 

Kids notice that stuff far more than we think. It sticks with us. It’s why even after all this time of being philosophically opposed to the idea that every single thing is a part of some cosmic battle behind the scenes, I still get hit with a dart of a thought that maybe I wouldn’t have lost my notebook if I still had the kinda faith I did way back when. Back then, all the songs were about how great and powerful our lord is, and all the stories all about how this lord killed or ordered the killing of everyone but the faithful few. After all, our God is higher than all those other gods, right? 

I guess I’m just wondering how the story of Samson’s death, y’know the one where he knocks down the pillars and kills all those Philistines in the name of the Lord...how is that any different than a suicide bomber? 

I don’t know. Maybe I’m still just bitter about losing my notebook. I’ve got others though, and it was just for practice sketching. What I don’t have is the culture of my youth or the feeling of belonging to a group of believers like I once did. I lost that, but it often feels more like it was ripped away from me. I sometimes wish I could believe again, in something as big and wonderful as I so passionately used to...but then again, sometimes I realize that I still do believe some of those things, and it drives me only to hate myself all the more. Faith and religion can be wiped away in time and reason, but the feelings of abusive inadequacy take a bit more scrubbing. 

Anyways, I’m gonna end on that high note since the cafe is about to close and I just got a message from Joe about some more rough track mixes. After all, it’s still a music blog, right? 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist

10/52 - Two Monsters

"You’ll be fine. You’re 25. Feeling unsure and lost is part of your path. Don’t avoid it. See what those feelings are showing you and use it. Take a breath. You’ll be okay. Even if you don’t feel okay all the time." - Louis C.K. 

Dear Internauts,

I think I may have slept through this entire past week. Honestly, I can remember seventy or eighty separate plots from different nightmares, but then again maybe at least a quarter of those were real things that actually happened. I was either so unable to sleep that I just floated exhausted from one failed attempt to the next or I woke up, looked at my phone, and suddenly it was two days later.

Thus the lateness with this posting. Don't think for a second I'd skip a week, but there is precedence for being late. There's always precedence for being late.

So let's see. What happened this past week?

According to the second or third hand bits of culture I somehow absorbed peripherally: 

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best video game ever.

Nicki Minaj got dissed and responded with mediocrity.

Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes in Mosul, Iraq.

The GOP's new health act will save billionaires lots of money and make everyone else poorer and deader.

Wikileaks dropped a truckload of new info from the CIA and nobody much cared.

International Women's Day led to even more people arguing about whether the working class have any right to exist in a state besides service robots, much less be visible, heard, or be recognized for their thankless contribution to the continued survival of our species. After all, if there's anyone whom those with lots of power hate more than an organized proletariat, it's women. On a more positive note, though, the day once again showed that women can be the best when it comes to organizing the proletariat. I recall seeing #daywithoutwomen but thankfully that was more symbolic than it could have been and society as a whole did not come to an immediate and apocalyptic crashing halt. 

Tonight, I'm gonna try once more to find an open mic in the area. I'd like to find one I can see myself going to more than once. Truth is, the hardest part of doing anything these days is getting out of bed. Thus why I can continue to write and draw, but going to the gym and playing out are both extra tough. I need to start seeing a therapist again, says the part of my brain that uses "need" like the bristles on a toothbrush.

I've yet to land a job that lasts more than a few days. Thankfully that's because it's temp work and not me being fired. Still, it's led me back into an all too familiar cycle of job applications. They blur together. My confidence wanes every time I have to fill in yet another box with information I already have on the resume I'd just uploaded.

I'm of the strong opinion that the phrase "beggars can't be choosers" works best as a sad observation and absolutely worst as a way for those with careers they love to admonish the unemployed. Yeah, there are more jobs now than when I was twenty-one, but filling out an application or going for an interview isn't the same as getting a job. Further, when I tell you that there are certain jobs I can't do, not simply because I'm less than qualified for pretty much everything but because of mental health problems, that's a real thing. Apparently, some folks think PTSD is just a fancy excuse for not picking certain career paths because they don't quite tickle my fancy. Triggers are real, after all, but no, let's pretend I won't work hotels because I'm too picky, lazy, and entitled.

I do remember one thing I read this past week, wherein a professional author dissed blogging as it tends to be a great excuse for not getting any novel writing done. Okay, so they were completely right. Still, for me, at the moment, I think it helps. When it comes to my "job", I actually do work pretty hard. Yeah, sometimes I suck at being on schedule, but the amount of song and novel writing I do get done, along with the drawing and arranging and practicing and playing and all that, well there are two careers right there: Singer-Songwriter and Graphic Novelists. Neither makes me much in the way of money, but then folks have been telling me that my whole life. (Honestly, growing up among the faithful in the church taught me that having faith always comes second to having "a back up plan" or being "practical".)

Waiting till I have a job that's steady enough or a place of my own that's just right or feel truly settled in within a community until I get going on my creative endeavors is all a great way to never get going at all. I did that. I got there down in Nashville, with the house and the job and the friends and connections. Real talk--Was I that much more productive than when I was living in my car? No. The opposite actually. While my more steady, secure life took some sweat from my neck, it also took so much energy that getting out there and making art became so much harder. Yeah, it feels nice writing a song in my own bedroom instead of on the curb by the parking lot, the desperation had disappeared from my life. Instead, all I had was misery. Then trauma came along, and before I knew it, steady was no longer so steady.

In the words of Dan Avidan of the comedy-music duo Ninja Sex Party, "You just have to be at peace with who you are and what you really want to be. Like, a lot of people will say like 'I'm an aspiring artist' or 'I'm an aspiring writer.' No, you're a writer. You're an artist. If you're doing that shit every day, that's what you are...just own it."

Anyway, here are two monster sketches I did this morning—

Thanks for reading,
Odist

9/52 - Only a Fool

"Great warrior? Wars not make one great." - Yoda.

Dear Internauts, 

My dad always told me that I gotta pick my battles. "Only a fool attends every fight to which he is invited," quoth he from some unknown author. It's one of those lessons that a parent tells their kid over and over again, because the trick is in the application from one situation to the next, not just in knowing a general rule. It's like adding sriracha to a dish. The quantity is key, of course—in this case the number of splurts, since the nozzle always gets partially blocked up. However, in many improvisational variants on recipes, the old line remains, "just because you can doesn't mean you should." 

Often, in arranging and recording music, one of the most important skills and talents of a producer is knowing how much is just enough. Often the sign of an over-produced track is one which ignores any cohesive groove in favor of breaking out as much contemporary pop flavor and gaudy stylization as fits within the budget and time frame allowed. Such a recording then tends to resemble what happened to the little tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas after they tried to trim the poor thing with too many decorations. 

Back to the point about attending fights, I think it prudent that I lay a bit of nonsense in the plain and simple for you lovely readers. I confess, I spent too much of my childhood fighting with my older sister. I confess, too, that I spent too much of my life online fighting with faceless usernames. Further, I confess to having changed my mind on several important points, argued for conflicting sides, and acted incredibly snobbish and self-righteous in my ignorance and bullheadedness more from an emotional drive than a logical one. 

Certainly, open-mindedness has never been the strong suit of my game, but I suppose we all play the hands we've been dealt, even if most of us aren't sure which game we're playing and are sure that everyone else is cheating. 

I have a notion that if I keep this blog apolitical, it won't hurt the view count quite so much as if delve even deeper into the mud. Part of me certainly wishes that I could share witty incites and anecdotes that make you smile and sigh before you start your week on a high note, but just like I don't have much confidence in my ability to make any more than twenty-ish percent of my songs about romantic love, I don't much like the odds of me being the maple-flavored corn syrup on your Eggos. 

That being typed, who'd like to talk about the US Defense Budget? I just know you're getting hype right now, but no, I'm not an economist or a general or even someone who wears a tie on a regular basis. Sad, I know, but true. 

Something else that's sad but true is the scale of absurdity that is this budget thing.

So, we've got China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, The United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan, each with their own military spending. That's seven big nations, two of whom have the largest populations in the world. All seven separate budgets, when added together, aren't even enough to equal the spending of the United States. 

Plus, that spending is hardly handled with the tact and restraint you'd think might be warranted by a country with over twenty-trillion dollars in debt. Here's a Forbes article about only a few of the ways that spending, and calls for its increase, are wasted in their allocation. 

My entire life, the United States military has been occupying foreign nations, slaughtering the people who live there, selling weapons and offering support to despots and war lords, and using racism, classism, xenophobia, and nationalism to promote the idea that our military action is always justified because of its ties to the state and hollow symbolism. The word "terrorist" has become the catchall term to allow politicians, intelligence agencies, and military officials to act without accountability in increasingly harmful ways. While our representatives and leaders continue to vote in favor of increased spending, torture, imprisonment without trial, spying on citizens, and drone bombing which leads to the deaths of countless families and children who are refused a defense, we are continually fed the assurance that war will end soon. 

In fact, there is no war. 

The only war is a war on terror. An idea need never end, only change. And still not much changes. 

Fear is the greatest tactic military and political leaders have to endlessly bolster their own power. Our assent, our consent, our acquiescence to the slavery, imprisonment, and genocide of anyone whom we are told to fear suspends us within a bubble of tyranny whose outer shell has become so clouded, we can neither see within or without. In the dark we turn on eachother. We fall into old habits of prejudice and greed. We crave a constant diet of pain and pleasure in cycle. Scare me then comfort me. Terrify me then tell me big brother will take care of the monsters. 

Don't you worry. 

Don't you cry. 

Daddy's gonna make all the bad dudes die. 

When "Make America Great Again" means we need to "start winning wars again" and build "more ships and planes", are we surprised? That this all boils down to appearance? Apparently, we need to look strong and intimidating in the same way that the alt-right says we need to look "like real Americans again". 

On another note, how come there are so many people who are anti-interventionist when it comes to foreign aid to the same countries they practically orgasm over the thought of bombing? 

Is it the same reason why so many people prefer buying guns and voting for looser gun control over helping fund community centers, anti-violence education, and criminal rehabilitation? 

Is it the same reason why personal moral responsibility is shoved aside when the person is in uniform? If the so-called sanctity of life can be suspended when its war time or when they "looked intimidating" or when its part of an understanding among officers, aren't we simply searching for an acceptable way to vent our hatred? 

Just like how you may not be racist or misogynist or homophobic, but the joke was still funny or it was "just guy talk" or its your freedom of religion to treat someone else like less of a person. When "Make America Great Again" means bring back the days when I could call my coworker a faggot or make jokes about how no means try harder and nobody made such a big deal about it. When "Make America Great Again" means wasn't everything so much better when I never had to think that maybe I've had some advantages in life that have nothing to do with how hard I've worked? Advantages other people don't have? What about when we weren't so sensitive to all this "mental illness" stuff? Y'know why do people need safe spaces or trigger warnings or health insurance, 'cause back when I was your age that was just your old drunk uncle who was never the same after the accident or that was just Billy who was always sad-looking and had no friends or that was just Marge's sister who slit her wrists but we don't talk about that or that's just that place upstate we sent your cousin because he was "too much" and they say the lithium and shock treatment is helping but he doesn't talk anymore?

Maybe we're all just looking for permission to say what we're really thinking. 

But maybe, what we're really thinking is not a good place to stop thinking. 

Maybe nobody cares what some college dropout who can't hold a steady job and has to take five different pills to stay kinda okay might have to say about complex socio-economic policy and foreign affairs. 

But maybe if the only thing I know how to do is write and even one person is reading this right now, then maybe instead of arguing about the latest movie or what some idiot just tweeted (not that those aren't somewhat important conversations in the right moment), I might at least say that I think we shouldn't cut the budget to foreign aid, nor should we spend more money on an already wasteful defense budget. Maybe if even one person hears one of my silly protest songs or reads part of this blog, then it might be good for me to spend at least a bit of time picking better battles. 

In life, I think some conflict is inevitable. History makes it pretty clear that trying to gain and maintain oppressive power over others by killing only leads to more oppression and more killing.

I think you really don't have to attend every fight to which you're invited. But you decide the how and the why you fight the fights you choose to fight. 

As for me, I fight and write for peace. 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist 

p.s. - Got to hear an early mix of the first track of the next EP. Sounds great. I know this may seem like a slow process, but it's tough working with a small budget and across a thousand miles. Still, Joe Casey's doing a fantastic job as producer and on bass, and Joe Tounge on drums is just incredible. So stay hype.