stain poetry

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Stain Poetry

I lack the patience to view the world like Salvador Dali. But who doesn’t?

“Pay attention to the humidity stains on the walls! Search for the forms within them!”

Sounds like something Dali might say, right? Wrong. Leonardo Da Vinci said it, giving advice to young artists. But Salvador Dali actually did it.

Dali would study humidity and other stains for hours on end, and all other soft forms and some hard — like the rock formations around his coastal home, discovering endless forms and faces within them, which he would then transform into paintings. Along the way he would apply his self developed paranoiac-critical method, adding psychological and emotional tension to the images to reflect his ever-shifting mind and the crises in the world around him. The power of the blotch!

I decided to give it a try. Not in a painting or a drawing, but in a poem.

I conducted the experiment by dropping drips and dripping drops of food colouring on a white paper napkin on a blue plate on a red chair, and stopping to write a verse after each application of staining. I found that by the third application I was suddenly seeing vivid faces appear — quite striking. But on the whole, I had to admit I wasn’t feeling psychoanalytical enough to get into the whole paranoiac-critical thing, so I don’t think there’s any particular depth to the poem I came up with. It was more of a technical exercise than a psychological-emotional one, as I don’t have the patience to stare at a blotch long enough to imbue it with any great meaning.

Still, the whole procedure was fun. And here’s the results. Anyone wanna try painting it?

an angry ghost wanders with the walrus

Russian ghost rider spreading blood on the dimpled snow

                  a simple plea for honest government

         there is no justice, one form fades into another

                  neither legal as the shadows darken

                           a chiaroscuro dreaming

Yellow eyes smother beneath the crimson polluted frost

         articulating lips reaching for a single point of contact

                           round blonde faces kissing

         lost to crying men hanging

The third is never intentional but always primary

                  seeking form beyond the balancing cord

         I begin to see the visions

         the face of a villainous leering ape

                       with a taste for scarlet prickling

                                     a bewailing hyena

                            still the quiet faces kiss

                       resistant to staining impulse

          The green line cuts the hyena’s throat

               masks the yellow caring

                    cannot hold the ape building in strength

                         dribbling leaves and baboons

                              wide-eyed fish escaping lizard

The ape opens its maw impossibly wide the hyena rats itself in fear

                    the snow losing quickly

                         its kissing drops of blood

                               oddly twins the loving yellow face

                               baboon in purple frenzy lashing out

                        and the odd embarrassed man

                        with the bad toupee and hitler mustache

                        in the bottom quarter

               quietly taps out.

          in final disgust

                    the snow must fade to black

                    terminally embarrassed

               by the brown colours loving in the right light.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This one’s a natural. What could be more Reality Fictive than Alice In Wonderland? “Madelyn in Wonderland” posts Monday and this Friday, February 27th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continuing at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

March Bunnies, the Vampire Bucket Man, and some vaguely familiar favourites. What was in that cup of tea anyway? Carroll’s been redone by so many, you have to reference the references now to do it right.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in order of their appearance.

not precisely what they said

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

The Truth in False Advertising

This is not a book review. I don’t think I can honestly review the book in question. Expectations were set so very differently from what was actually read.

So what’s a poor kid to do? My son wants to buy his mother a book for Christmas, but knows she is a discerning reader, so he hunts through Chapters for a couple of hours finally happening on a book that from the fly-leaf blurb sounds like it should be perfect! A beautiful tale of two children finding the true meaning of home and family in one of my wife’s favourite cities, from the naif drawing on the cover.

To top it off, when he gets it home his father — that would be me — tells him, oh good choice, I’ve been meaning to read that one myself. Got a good impression of it — from the fly-leaf and the cover.

Needless to say, both cover and fly-leaf were lying.

This isn’t unusual, but I like to think I usually have better instincts for catching the unreasonable. I remember picking up a video copy of Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki with the blurb on the back loudly proclaiming in giant letters LIKE A JAPANESE STAR WARS! Let’s face it, promotional material and entertainment covers are usually provided on the basis of WE REALLY REALLY WANT YOU TO BUY THIS!

In the case of Princess Mononoke I knew I wasn’t going to be disappointed by what was there, and I never for a moment thought it would really be like Star Wars. However, in the case of this book, both my son and I legitimately thought we were getting at least something along the lines of what was advertised.

Childlike book cover and fly-leaf emphasizing a beautiful tale of two children finding the true meaning of home and family. Actual message of the book?

Those of us with the strongest spirits are doomed literally to drown in a river of excrement. And by the end of the book, the remaining family in the story is so shattered none of them can speak to each other and they are in a boat in the middle of the ocean, exiled from their original home, with no sense of where they’re headed next.

I don’t think I’m the only one seeing a disparity between the advertised message and the actuality here?

Moral of the story: adjust the old adage. Never judge a book by its cover or its fly-leaf. In fact, never go into any story with expectations. That way at least you can judge the piece for what it really is. And you’ll also avoid those disappointing situations where what might be a good read by different terms ends up in the hands of entirely the wrong audience at the wrong time.

That being said, when my book of Jason Midnight short stories was published I was asked to write my own blurb. Going back I find this is what I wrote:

People with lives suddenly twisted to the unbelievable can always call on one man: feisty Winnipeg North End Private Investigator, Jason Midnight. “No Case Or Solution Too Ridiculous To Be Considered.” Whether it’s dealing with a strange Norse God cult in Manitoba’s Interlake, trying to run down the ghostly reincarnation of Jack the Ripper in Winnipeg’s Old Market Square, or dueling with the Devil himself over questionable results in the Provincial Lottery, Jason Midnight is always on the case.

First off, I don’t believe I wrote this. “Feisty”? Not an adjective I’d ever willingly choose for the Midnight Man. Plus I know “dueling” has two l’s in Canada. I might have written that bit about “questionable results in the Provincial Lottery”, but I don’t think it punches the point trying to be made at all adequately. And the people in the Interlake weren’t a “Norse God cult”. They actually believed they were Norse Gods. So that’s not entirely honest.

On the whole, I’d say it’s not particularly grabbing or well-written but it’s more or less honest. But I think it would have been better to stop at “No Case or Solution Too Ridiculous To Be Considered.” That’s the line that best captures the spirit of the book. Plus, I can’t imagine disappointing anyone going in on the basis of that description —it leaves things wide open for me to do whatever I want. Rather than what you might expect from a “feisty Private Investigator who’s always on the case”.

So I accept it’s difficult to sell a book based on one paragraph or so. People do want some sense of what the story’s about. How much do you tell them without giving things away? Another good reason never to read the fly-leaf blurbs on mysteries. At the very least they always tell you who got killed. Something the author might actually want to keep you in suspense about for awhile.

But how’s a casual reader or person trying to find a book he might not read himself for another person entirely supposed to judge whether a particular volume’s worth buying or not? He’s got to make a snap decision based on something, you can’t stop and read every possible book in contention first, especially if your tastes are different.

I try to go Zen on it. I do read the blurb, I do look at the cover, I check the author’s name, I skim through the book. I check the font-size, the quality of the paper, the heft of the book in my hands, how easy it’s going to be to hold it while reading, everything. Only I don’t concentrate on any one aspect as I take it in. I mash all the impressions together at once, attempting to penetrate the book’s comprehensive being without actually reading the story itself. I reach out and assess the book with a holistic, no desire-no expectations attitude that I have faith will guide me right.

Then I look at the price, and decide if I want to spend that much money on the person it’s for or not.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The results for Doyle-Ish come stumbling in on Monday, and The Electric Detective fries again on Friday, February 20th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Danger from the skies, and incomprehensible rule changes. Reality at its finest!

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in order of their appearance.

finnegans wake

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Boompsey-Daisy, Jim!

It has been quite plausibly stated that the only thing more pretentiously literary than James Joyce writing Finnegans Wake (1939) is someone saying they’ve read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

I’ve read it.

Twice.

The first time was sheer pretension. I indeed only wanted to say that I had read it, so I plowed through fifty pages a day until it was over. I did little more than look at the words. Afterwards, I felt embarrassed. What was I thinking? Like I knew anyone who cared, for one thing …

But the strange thing was, after flipping through the pages so fruitlessly once, I kept on being drawn back to the book … Even considered reading it again. One page a day. Paying attention this time.

Which I finally did, the year I turned forty. I set myself a quest that year. Read 40 great books the same calendar year. With the climax being Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. By this point I had renamed the event The Year of Reading Impossible Books. So to make it easier to get through Proust, I decided to reread Finnegans Wake at the same time. 25 pages of Proust a day, 15 of Joyce.

The two played off each other surprisingly well. And as much as I was enjoying the Proust, I found it was the Joyce I woke up in the morning looking forward to.

Now, Joyce was famously quoted as saying, “It took me 17 years to write the book. It should take you 17 years to read it.” I always questioned whether we should take that statement — or the book — seriously.

A person can read the book trying to make sense of it. Trying to work out all the different languages thrown into any single sentence — including imaginary words — and all the literary and cultural references the text is rumoured to be full of. Let’s open it at random and give an example:

(from pg. 317:)

    — Nohow did he kersse or hoot alike the suit and soldier skins, minded first breachesmaker with considerable way on and

    — Humpsea dumpsea, the munchantman, secondsnipped cutter the curter.

    — A ninth for a ninth. Take my worth from it. And no misteank, they thricetold the taler and they knew the whyed for too.

Just for the record, the book is 628 pages of that sort of thing. And the last sentence runs  back into the first, so it’s really one gigantic loop that never actually does begin or end.

When exploring the question of whether or not the best way to approach the book is to try to make sense of each sentence as you go along, laboriously chipping away at the outlandish concept that there might actually be a plot, I am naturally reminded of a certain lady wrestler I used to enjoy watching. She was asked once if she could do the fancy acrobatics other wrestlers did, leaping off the top rope and such. She answered: “Sure. But why?”

Has Joyce developed a language that deliberately demands interpretation or one that only sows confusion? You could waste an awful lot of time working that out. It’s better just to pick up the damn book and see what you find.

So what is the first impression reading any section of Finnegans Wake produces? Not being engrossed in a tension-filled unfolding plot created through the portrayal of distinct characters with defined personalities and clear action in the story, certainly. No, your first impression, as long as you’re hearing the words written clearly in your mind, is — hey. This sounds neat. This is fun.

So that’s my answer to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Don’t read it for the plot. Don’t read it for the story. If you were meant to, Joyce wouldn’t have made those two aspects of the book so damn difficult to figure out. Read Finnegans Wake for the fun of it. Go back to the sheer base experience of the book, the ebb and flow of whatever words you might find there and their physical effect upon you. For the sheer rhythm of it, if nothing else. There are few works that roll off the tongue so delightfully. If you don’t have the inclination for 628 pages of that sort of thing, open it at random and apply as necessary. In fact, let’s try that again.

(From page 102:)

    Wery weeny wight, plead for Morandmor! Notre Dame de la Ville, mercy of thy balmheartzyheat! Ogrowdnyk’s beyond herbata tay, wort of the drogist. Bulk him no bulkis. And let him rest, thou wayfarre, and take no gravespoil from him! Neither mar his mound! The bane of Tut is on it. Ware! But there’s a little lady waiting and her name is A.L.P. And you’ll agree. She must be she.

I would now revise my opening statement to say the only pretentious thing about reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is pretending you understand it. Just letting it put a smile on your face is something else entirely.

Take my worth from it. I know the whyed for too.

And if all else fails, and you really want to get through it but find you can’t, try reading Remembrance of Things Past at the same time. Then everything makes sense everywhere!

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The fish is afoot! The Reality Fiction Contestants take on Sherlock Holmes in Episode Four’s “Mak the Kipper”! The first half of the story posted Monday, with the finale revealing who or whutdunnit on Friday, February 13th! An appropriate date for a revelation of conniving evil. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

When you eliminate the yadda yadda all you’ve got left is the improbable. And there’s nothing more improbable than this group trying to apply clear deductive reasoning.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in the order of their appearance.

alan moore

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Who Watches …

I'm not a millionaire but I'm very comfortable doing what I do, and I'm more productive now than I was in my mid-20s. It's all down to functionality eventually. If you're functional it doesn't matter if you're mad.

As quoted in "Moore's Murderer", in The Guardian (2 February 2002)

From Hell. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. V For Vendetta. Watchmen.

Four very well known movies. All based on comic books. All based on comic books written by Alan Moore. Not that they made him any millions.

Originally I was content to just simply accept the money, that was offered when people had adapted my comic books into films. Eventually I decided to refuse to accept any of the money for the films, and to ask if my name could be taken off of them, so that I no longer had to endure the embarrassment of seeing my work travestied in this manner. The first film that they made of my work was From Hell. Which was an adaptation of my Jack the Ripper narrative … In which they replaced my gruff Dorset police constable with Johnny Depp's absinthe-swigging dandy. The next film to be made from one of my books was the regrettable League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … Where the only resemblance it had to my book was a similar title. The most recent film that they have made of mine is apparently this new V for Vendetta movie which was probably the final straw between me and Hollywood. They were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema, and so why not leave them simply as a comic in the way that they were intended to be. And if you are going to make them into films, please try to make them into better ones, than the ones I have been cursed with thus far.

From the BBC2's The Culture Show (9 March 2006) (separate quotes shown; edited together for the segment of the show)

Alan Moore is an irascible sort of sixty-plus, heavily bearded occultist, ceremonial magician, anarchist and comic book writer. Despite League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, many people would disagree with him and say they’ve made at least two really good movies from his writings: V For Vendetta and Watchmen. But really, who’s going to argue with someone who looks like this?

Alan recently completed writing a million word plus novel titled Jerusalem which is apparently less comprehensible even than James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. (See next week.) “I have doubted that people will even be able to pick it up. I’m not averse to some kind of ebook, eventually – as long as I get my huge, cripplingly heavy book to put on my shelf and gloat over, I’ll be happy.” (Guardian)

Just for the record, War and Peace is only around half that length.

Some people cut their own paths through life. The usual rules don’t apply. Moore proved that for himself with his seminal work in comic books during the 1980s and early 1990s, turning out the legendary print versions of V For Vendetta, a brilliant run on DC’s Swamp Thing — during which he also casually created the character John Constantine (and therefore I suppose generated another horrible movie, as well as the present TV show), From Hell, Watchmen — which is still considered by many informed sources to be the greatest comic book ever, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He even applied his manic hand to many standard superheroes not of his own creation, producing such classics as the epic clash between the Joker and Batman in The Killing Joke graphic novel.

Joker: See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum. And one night, they decide they don't like living in the asylum anymore. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away into the moonlight. Stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren't make the leap. Y'see... y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then the first guy has an idea... He says, 'Hey, I have a flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me!' But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... he says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was halfway across!’

Batman and Joker: (both laugh like hell)

From the start, his comic book stories were never quite like other people’s.

I suppose that the main drive is to find the edge of something and then throw myself over it.

On the issue of creativity, from the interview with Channel 4, "V for Vendetta: the man behind the mask" (11 January 2012)

V For Vendetta is all about anarchy. From Hell is occultism with a vengeance. Swamp Thing in 1986 portrayed nothing less than the hand of God touching the hand of Anti-God with the resulting mix altering the very fabric of reality itself forevermore. (The Swamp Thing movies were definitely not based on Alan Moore’s work on the title.) Watchmen is to conspiracy theory what The Family Circus is to whatever it is The Family Circus is about. Questioning the very role and psychology of what it means to be a superhero in a chaos-defined world. And somehow rendering the issue more human than ever.

But I think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is just about offending as many people as possible. Tearing down and redefining idols is very much what Alan Moore has always been about.

Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

"The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)

Some people work strictly within the box. Some people claim they try to think outside of it. Then there are some people who were never aware there was a box in the first place.

Or a standard, four colour comic book panel.

We need more writers like Alan Moore.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The fallout from the Malory-Ish “Morte de Mak” hits this week, with the results posting on Monday and The Electric Detective Chapter Three appearing Friday, February 6th. It’s Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition — Episode Three, concluding at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Newbies beware! Watch out for veterans of the Contest elbowing you out of the way at inopportune moments.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

All with illustrations by the author. Working through the Contestants in the order of their appearance at the moment.