I’ve seen reviews for DIGGER start to appear, and, as with MEGALOPOLIS, it makes me want to see it more. Which is not something I thought I’d ever say about a Tom Cruise film.
That brain-tapping thing when you spend all night meditating on a story space, and get the penultimate solution to it about twenty minutes before bedtime. Also – and this isn’t the same for everyone, but – that rrrrreally annoying liminal point where you have everything the story wants except for the actual complete plot. Drives me bugfuck. I have a possible beginning and a possible end and nothing in between, so I’m going to be drafting story spines and checking logical progressions all bloody day. Except I’m not, because I have other scripts to write. So this will be haunting me all day.
OPERATIONS: ALL THE THINGS FFS STATUS: i have like five different deliveries scheduled for today, so no fun lunch at the deli for meeee READING:TENTACLES LONGER THAN NIGHT, Eugene Thacker (UK) (US+)
…a notion of the divine as shadowy, dark, and absent (apophatic or negative theologies). But as Dionysius takes care to note, the divine is “dark” or “shadowy” not because it is lacking anything, but because it is superlatively beyond human comprehension. The most one can take away from this enigmatic thought is a negative knowledge, the thought of the limit of thought – or to use Lovecraft’s phrase, the thought of the “inability of the mind to correlate all its contents.”
LISTENING:
THE WILL OF TONGUES, Sarah Davachi (UK) (US+) (bandcamp)
LAST WATCHED: two episodes of season 2 of BOOKISH, which hasn’t engaged me as much as season 1 did. I admire Mark Gatiss’ writing a great deal. DRINK: dropped two shots of O’Donnell’s cherry moonshine into two glasses of cherry soda and made something cheerful
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Didn’t get enough nailed down yesterday. I have the full shape of two stories, but I really wanted to get into scripting and to firm up the scripts on two other jobs. Possibly I was being ambitious, but there’s little point in not being ambitious. Anyway, one artist has a rough pitch for a piece, and I’m a few hours away from finalising the style for the other, and then I’m into scripting up from notes and bones on those two other things. I don’t get bored.
Which is a pity, really, because sometimes boredom is when the backbrain starts assembling pieces of things to amuse itself. However, that is also why I take a notebook and a music player to the coffee shop. Something I’ve done since the age of the Walkman, except in the early days it was pubs or all-night burger shops.
Ended up buying more Silvine record cards, a mini clipboard and a card holder for the desk. Committing to the bit. Not going full Zettelkasten, though. Zettelkasten articles make my head hurt.
OPERATIONS: already moved 8pp out of the office, am two pages into another thing, working across two other scripts today, broke ground on Sunday’s newsletter STATUS: it’s raining! READING: re-reading ANTWERP, Roberto Bolano (UK) (US+)
We were on the edge of the reservoir and the sky was very blue. A few fishermen were visible in the distance and smoke from a chimney rose over the trees. Green wood, for burning witches, said the old man, his lips hardly moving.
Imagine a story where the events in our lives that happen online are never depicted or mentioned. A day would seem twelve hours long and the protagonists would spend two thirds of that time asleep.
I was gifted this Panerai Table Clock by a client a few weeks ago. I should be keeping it in its box, as it’s crazy expensive. But what’s the point in having things and not enjoying them? So it lives on my work desk, sitting on top of the little box containing a medal I was given in Ireland years ago. It’s a reminder to myself that I need to stay disconnected from the internet. Testing a site blocker on the laptop today.
Had dinner at the local haute restaurant on Friday night and it was as ever fully insane. There was a mushroom risotto with walnuts, walnut ketchup, fresh Parmesan and riced mushroom in place of the rice that was simply MAD and they made it just for us. We also got experimented on with a few dishes and god damn please keep doing that. We have been informed that we are Regulars now, and that is delightful.
I had an Idea on Saturday and realised I’d lost the day to sitting thinking about it, which was annoying, so I’ve booked myself a gig for next Saturday to make sure I leave the house. I am naturally so bad at leaving the house and I really need to.
ACCESSIONS:
MAIGRET IN VICHY, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+) was on sale, and it’s one I haven’t read.
MUD DUCK, Travis Malone (UK) (US+), because the author emailed me yesterday and since it’s currently free on Kindle (in the UK at least, I dunno about the US right now) it was easier to just grab a copy there.
Recently divorced and having drank himself to unemployment, Iain McHughes has no idea who he wants to be anymore. When his former rehab roommate offers him a second chance he hasn’t earned by way of a business opportunity he can’t afford to pass up, he loads everything he owns into his car and points it west on I-10.
Somewhere between San Antonio and Las Vegas, in the miles of nothing between the man he used to be and the man he hopes to become, mania, anxiety and a CB radio are the only tools left at his disposal that can help him rewrite his eulogy. Mysterious towers dot the countryside, phantom voices bleed through his radio, and Iain struggles to ascertain whether his mind is deteriorating or the world around him is. When Iain’s new business partner inadvertently pushes him into the middle of a dangerous business transaction, Iain must finally determine the legacy he wants to leave, and what it will cost him to leave it.
OPERATIONS: updating the boards, getting into scripting with one hand and story development with the other STATUS: slow to get started. READING:THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+) LISTENING:THE REGYKLA VARIATIONS I-III, ASHTORETH & ONSTURICHEIT
Wearing a Victor Victoria shirt from the Nineties and a Swatch Metropolis from the Eighties and accepting that all this is “vintage,” not “last year.” Julbo don’t even make those shades anymore. DEPRESSING
ACCESSIONS:
While I was reading PHENOMENA by Annie Jacobsen (click this link and scroll halfway down for my initial notes), which is in large part about remote viewing used by the US military, I kept being reminded of this book I read when I was a kid. Written in 1973, FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE was about a cadre of military remote viewers sending their “astral bodies” out into the world, and I remember there was a bit about sliding into an alternate reality termed Algeria-A, or Time Two. So I hunted a copy down on eBay for a whole one pound plus postage. I’m going to be very curious to see how it reads to me, more than forty years later.
OPERATIONS: This week is a bit of a sprint – essay for a reprint collection, story solve, generate two new projects – but hardly the worst. STATUS: attention reclamation attempt once again READING:IF RUSSIA WINS, Carlo Masala (UK) (US+) LISTENING: SEA SWALLOWED WANDS DRINK: Boulevardier, amended – half-shot Campari, half-shot red vermouth, one shot whisky, dash of orange bitters. Victory.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Searching hard for my motivation today, because I am not particularly in my body or particularly with it. Not enough coffee in the world, everything is kind of wavy, and I really need to wipe down the boards and reset things. And also start backing things off this machine in prep for the arrival of the new one. But a musician has been sending me raws of her new music videos and maybe I’ll just sit and watch them for a while.
Received in post, a gift from the author as routed through my literary agent: A POCKETFUL OF HELLFIRE, Alan LaRue (UK) (US+)
Alan LaRue was a devoted reader of the Ken Socrates World News Organization when he was young. Like any fan, he read all the articles and books, he knew and adored the Gonzo journalism, the crazy adventures and the wild personalities. He was especially enamoured with Ken himself, the wildest and most Gonzo of them all. He had even written and sent in few fan letters full of glowing praise and insight only a truly dedicated follower would appreciate. The letters included his return address, and a joking offer of drinks on him, someday, should Ken ever find his way to Alan’s neck of the woods.
Then, after the sad collapse of the KSWNO, after its founder being missing, assumed dead for years, Ken showed up at Alan’s door, looking for those drinks, and his quiet life as a librarian and amateur pie baker was turned on its doughy little head. Humanity itself was under dire, imminent threat and, according to Ken, only they could save it.
Here’s the weird flex of the day: the cover of Charli xcx’s new record MUSIC, FASHION, FILM is a simple shot of… John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorcese. And an ashtray.
OPERATIONS: script and pitch STATUS: The weather has turned cool and rainy, and the mancub is sad and needs comforting, as he’s been living in the garden ever since the top of the summer arrived. Or, as I have long suspected, he thinks I control the weather and he figures that if he’s nice to me I’ll bring the sun back. READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) (hey, it’s a really long book) LISTENING: “Vika Hidas,” Draamakuu:
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
After losing several hours yesterday to running every fix and check I could think of, I came to the sad conclusion that this laptop, a T580 from 2018, is now starting to fail and therefore must be sent to live on a farm. This machine has had its keyboard replaced twice over the years and kept on chugging, but now its chipset is dying. So I caught the end of the Lenovo May sale by a whisker and ordered a new ThinkPad. I doubt the new machine will have the durability of this faithful monster, which I will be sad to retire.
A biotech startup called Bexorg is doing something that sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a cyberpunk novel — or from the script of “RoboCop,” for that matter.
The company is extracting human brains just hours after their owners died and then hooking them up to specialized life support machines, Science reports. While the masses of pink mush no longer host electrical activity, most of their key functions remain intact, allowing scientists to test experimental drugs, such as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, like never before.
You’d hope that the disembodied cerebrums are most assuredly dead. But according to the reporting, an extracted brain hooked up to one of Bexorg’s proprietary life support machines, BrainEX, “hovers between life and death.” There’s no spark of consciousness, and yet the brains are kept running on an artificial lung, kidney oxygenate, blood, and other fluids.
OPERATIONS: got the new cover for a graphic novel reprint currently codenamed PROJECT WALLOPS, so we will be headed to solicits shortly. I need to get a script off the desk today and then figure out how to zero out all the fucking money I spent yesterday STATUS: I am physically de-teched until such time as the Google app that replaced the FitBit app is fixed to the point where it no longer hallucinates bicycles READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) LISTENING: a musician sent me her two new videos last night and I am playing them repeatedly today.
Annoyingly, this is just a quick logging, as I lost yesterday to trying to figure out new accounting software I’ve been told to use which doesn’t seem to want to work for me, inbox is at 160, I have three unopened packages, and I’m a few days behind on work production.
So on Saturday afternoon I went to the Jazz Centre to see blues guitarist Chris Corcoran play.
And on Saturday evening I went to Konsztrukting Soundz, which I’m going to try and note in a separate post at some point, but one of the performers was harpist Rhodri Davies:
Accessions:
Rhodri Davies was selling CDs, and I noticed the Eliane Radigue piece he and his sister played on that I discovered online in January, and grabbed his TELYN RAWN at the same time.
Another cold snap. Had to take a rootbound acer out of a pot yesterday and plant it in the ground, sowed some seeds around it, so of course I woke up today to discover the local wildlife turned over the ground and tried to dig the acer out.
I think looping and iteration are very much a part of the creative process. Often I find myself starting with a feeling or an idea. I know I want to get to a place and then it’s just a matter of putting in the time, the thought, and the effort until I get there. You can be looping and looping, and then sometimes you’ll have a conversation with a friend, or you’ll encounter new ideas about technology while you’re working, and that’s what kicks off new ideas. Maybe you’re running a lot of loops simultaneously and they’re all informing each other—so it’s not so much a closed, but expansive system. I don’t think of loops as a trap.
OPERATIONS: dev day. Too many half-finished ideas and outlines hanging STATUS: running all the damn heaters in the middle of May READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
…when Timothy Leary, the counterculture icon who advocated the use of hallucinogenic drugs, wanted to travel to Jordan he was rudely rebuffed.
