Rest well, my friend

Internet is working again here on the moon, but my return was delayed again due to the recent loss of a friend and colleague. The funeral was sort of lovely (as much as such a thing can be), and I was glad to have a chance to meet his family and share stories of the man we all had in common, who shuffled off his coil at the still-tender age of 41.

His name was Kyle. He was a private man, so I won't tell you too much about him. He was often funnier than I am, and his hair was graying in the way all men likely hope theirs will: at the temples alone, a distinguished streak of white. Like Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four. I know he read this blog at least once, to catch a mention of himself as my "supervisor" so he could give me crap about it later.

But that's just trivia.

He was a really great guy. I miss him.

*****

But now it seems I must get my blogshoes tied up snug and make ready again, as Phoctober begins in two days. Last year was such a nice thing to have been a part of, that I would hate to not host it again this year.

I'll do a post tonight to let you know how it might differ from last year.

20 + 20 + 1 + 1/365

It was twenty years ago today that, twenty years ago that day, it was a year ago yesterday that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released.

Sure, that's a long walk for a premise, but I'm still a little mad at myself for not doing "It was 20 years ago today, 20 years ago today" a year ago yesterday.

If Paul McCartney is to be believed, it was 20 years before that that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. So, a bunch of people learned to play on June 1, 1947.

I'm not sure I believe that, however. I mean, whoever heard of someone learning to play an instrument in a single day? And if Pepper did indeed possess such extraordinary musical teaching ability, why was he never promoted above Sergeant?

Besides which, Paul McCartney is a dubious source for information. After all, we are talking about a man who has denied his own death for more than 40 years. Everyone knows that Paul McCartney died in an auto accident in 1966, and that the Beatles drafted a ringer named William Campbell to take his place to keep the cash machine a-rolling. The Fab Three and Mr. Campbell then sprinkled clues about this fact on all of their subsequent releases, ostensibly because they suffered from a condition much like fictional villain the Riddler.

Conspiracies are fun. Especially when we get to assume that those conspiring are thumbing their noses at us.

Personally, I always thought that the thing at the end of "Strawberry Fields" said "I'll marry in Gaul," which I took to be a prophetic vision of John Lennon's wedding in France more than a year later.

*****

I just heard that Bo Diddley died today. I'm not a giant blues fan or anything, but I enjoyed more than a few of his songs. If nothing else, I was always amused that his song "Bo Diddley" was often covered by other acts (including Buddy Holly, who was no slouch as a songwriter himself).

My song "The Moon Topples" has never been covered.

For Mr. Diddley, a moment of silence followed by a "buh. buh. buh. BUH-buh."

*****

Astute readers will no doubt notice that it has been a few months since I posted. Apologies. I never intended to stop blogging entirely. I still don't. I just had nothing to say, I suppose. With respect for your intelligence, however, I will avoid any sweeping proclamations regarding the blog being "open" again or anything like that.

Kurt is up in heaven now

Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. I can think of no person who has had a greater impact on my writing, my mind, my life. Certainly, there is no one among people I have never met who could claim as much influence. No other author has provided me with as much reading pleasure while haunting me for years afterward with the deeper thoughts he wrapped so carefully into his seemingly breezy novels and essays.

I participated in an online interview with Mr. Vonnegut in 1998, around the time Timequake was released. His message to us, over and over, was for those of us who had enough regard for him to take part in such an exercise to please, please, turn our computers off and go create something.

He was 84, which is the same age that his fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout lived to (going by the Timequake version of events).

When we were deciding band names in what was to become map of july, I suggested "Kilgore Trout." I suggested a number of other Vonnegut-based names, and I thanked him by name in the liner notes to our first album. I am still thanking him.

Aside from pleading with us to turn off our damn computers, Kurt Vonnegut really wanted, simply ached for people to simply be nice to one another. He loved people, loved dogs, loved writers, loved children of all sorts. He was once called a "bitter-coated sugar pill," which is a lovely thing to be called.

The first time I tried to write a novel was when I was nineteen years old. It was, more or less, the same story I have returned to, which some of you have read extracts from recently. The original draft, more than a decade old, was clearly an attempt on my part to write not only a novel but a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

I still find certain rhythms in my speech and my writing that I know I learned from him. I still find myself aping him shamelessly whenever I think I can get away with it.

I used to reread all of his books each year. I fell out of that habit at some point, and it is time for me to read again. I have never read one of his books without finding something new hidden within. This is a testament to him as a writer, and also says something about how I am slow-witted sometimes.

The title of this post is a small joke, and was the first thought to pop into my head when I read of his death this morning. Caveblogem beat me to the punch for using the joke on a blog, but here's a quote that explains it anyway. He's talking about humanism and the death of Isaac Asimov.

"Being a humanist means that you try to behave as decently, as honorably, as you can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. When we had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, I spoke at it and said at one point, 'Isaac is up in heaven now'. It was the funniest thing I could think of to say to an audience of humanists. Believe me, it worked - I rolled them in the aisles. If I should ever die, god forbid, I hope people will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now'. That's my favorite joke."

I wish that I could eulogize him more properly. This post will have to do for now.



[Edit: Basest has reminded me of a wonderful quote from Sirens of Titan:

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

And on my fridge I still have a printout of the following disclaimer, which he used in Timequake:

"All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental."]

(Just Like) Starting Over

I had to make some choices. I had 10,000 words but no momentum.

I looked over these words, squinting, trying to ascertain which ones were guilty of treachery, which ones were whispering to the others to fail to live up to their potential. As a group, they were hovering at room temperature, failing by far to boil over like I wanted them to.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I fired the lot of them. My word count is zero. I am beginning at the beginning.

On the plus side, I have been allowed entry into a cadre of folks racing each other to finish first drafts of their current novels. So far, I'm the odd duck of the group. I'm the only male and the only American. I had to promise not to get testosterone on anything.

So there are new links under the heading "Novel Racers" to the various participants. Some of them are already publishing. Some of them are newbies like me. More than a couple of them seem to write (or be writing) "chick lit," which leaves me the odd duck again. But they were nice enough to let me play along. Click 'em if you like, and learn about them yourselves.

I thought it might be nice to have a bit of the external pressure NaNo gave me. And already their word counts are causing my eyes to narrow in jealousy. So there's that.

I've cleared out most of the next couple of days to get a decent start. I'm hoping to get back to ten grand by Monday. Wish me luck.

Breaking news brings me down

I was just skimming the news and learned that they hanged Saddam Hussein at dawn in Iraq.

No doubt there will be all sorts of creepy celebrations, and I have no doubt he was a bad dude, but I don't understand the death penalty, and cannot get happy about its application.

Yes, he was a horrible man, and I cringed like most people when I heard of some of the things he had done the people of his country. I just don't see what killing him does, or solves, or prevents in the future.

President Bush says it's an "important milestone" on the Iraqi road to democracy. With two days left in 2006, the American casualties in Iraq number 2,996. There is, of course, no way to accurately gauge the Iraqi death toll. As the fourth anniversary of the initial invasion approaches, is there any doubt at all that we'll pass 3,000 Americans soon?

Milestone.

Obviously, my opinion doesn't actually matter. It's done. Can't unring a bell, and all that. I'll get back to trying to amuse you soon. Just makes me sad. The whole thing just makes me sad.

2006: Not a great year to be an aging black musician

Or Syd Barrett. But in fairness, it wasn't often a good year to be Syd Barrett.

Included in the collage at right is June Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, James Brown, Floyd Dixon, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Lou Rawls, Billy Preston (with George Harrison), Milan Williams (from the Commodores), Wilson Pickett and Syd Barrett (founding member of Pink Floyd/crazy person).

I'm pretty sure that, of the folks on this list, only Rawls hosted the Muppet Show, but there are other measures of success.

Here's hoping that 2007 is a bit kinder to musicians in general. The pic gets bigger if you click it.

"Go Power at Christmas Time"

James Brown died Xmas morning. Too much go and you're gone. Every recording he made from 1960-77 hit the Billboard top 100. 119 singles that charted. That is, you know, a lot. He was still performing at least as recently as November, and was scheduled to play New Year's Eve. According to one of the people around him when he died, he was mostly regretting that he'd miss the gig.

I like Jesse Jackson's quote: "He was dramatic to the end - dying on Christmas Day. ... He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way." I like the notion that he was in control, that he timed things to get better press coverage.

Brown was a complicated musical legend. When I told my mom he had died (after she asked if this was a joke, since I apparently find nothing as funny as a fictitious celebrity obituary) her first question was "was he in jail?"

Craig and I were planning to drive down to Memphis for a music festival in May. Brown was on the bill, alongside a collection of acts that can only be described as comical in its diversity. It turned out that we didn't go: both of us had quite a lot going on and the days absent from our lives would add to our general stress. It would have been nice to see his show, but since his passing was the first time I've regretted not going, it's probably for the best.

The department I used to work in over at Silver Lining used to do an hour of James Brown music every Friday afternoon. For an artist who released 50 albums, it's amazing that his greatest hits package seems to get the job done. I've never felt much of a need to dig deeper, while still loving the crap out of the stuff I know. They stopped doing this a while ago, but maybe they'll revive the idea this week, at least.

He was famous enough that he was one of the musicians I had heard of before I had heard. When the Tom Tom Club mentioned him in "Genius of Love" and I saw the video as a boy, I knew immediately who they meant. For quite a while I was aware of him mostly as the preacher in "The Blues Brothers."

His lyrics weren't exactly complex most of the time. A huge number of his songs were a phrase or two repeated over and over again, mixed in with comments about or to his band. He could be heard spurring them on, urging them and the audience into what was perhaps his favorite state of human emotion: frenzy. This is what he was going for in his live shows. He said he wanted to "give people more than what they came for—make them tired." His encores often lasted 40 minutes, his stage crew draping his sweat-soaked body in a cape and leading him offstage. He would break free from them and return to sing a little more of "Please, Please, Please."

Farewell, Mr. Dynamite. Aside from your criminal behavior and your treatment of women when it didn't cross the legal line, you provided a lot of joy and great music.