Self Portraits

These are pictures I took on my computer camera. I liked them, and thought I'd put then up on my blog. I didn't think they'd get a chance to see the light of day any other way.

The Songbook of Naos Ben-David

My friend Kron's Internet is down, which makes me feel somewhat lonely. I've enjoyed many fine conversations with him over the MSN this summer, and my favorite coffee shop feels lonely and a bit overwhelming, to the point where I am know listening to Charlie Parker on my Ipod as you can see. I was trying to get the picture of Charlie Parker in, but my Ipod screen is too shiny.
Good news though, I've written a poem. Or it may be a song, it could be both, but it's mostly a song. I call it "Evangelism Blues," and it's part of a project I'm calling The Songbook of Naos Ben-David. Yes, I know I'm starting a new project. I'm always coming up with new projects. Short Story Anthologies, Poetry Anthologies, Series of Novels, Borges-inspired Encyclopedias, but this one I'm going to do. I actually plan on having a Songbook of Naos Ben-David published. I've already got it set in my mind, I always saw Naos as a sort of singer-songwriter and I figured that I might as well write the songs that he sings. Sure, this first one isn't going to be Naos' Blowing in the Wind, but I figured it was as good a place to start with as any. I'm going to write eleven or twelve more for the first album. Maybe I could also learn how to play guitar so I could write the notes. Or maybe that would just distract me. I could have someone else make the notes.
I also discovered a new website called Poets.org. I'd link to it, but my computer has been all bitchy since I downloaded Firefox. Just go to www.poets.org, it's got all kinds of great poets and poetry and articles and things. I'll probubly set up a link to it somewhere on my blog. It's a great website.

More on Weimar, Novels this Time

I want to update you people on the events of my life, but so far nothing much has happened. I have a good idea of what I have in store for the various poor PCs into the world of Weimar Berlin, all the important people in the Consiliuum are set up, all I need to know is get all there information down. I think that if I do everything right, then I can get to 1933 by the end off Winter Term. By then I'm seriously hoping that the characters are smart enough to run, but I'm sure I can drop enough hints that running would be a good idea. Still, I plan on having all kinds of fun, and the environment is just messed-up that we can have various PCs of unethical leanings. I'd like them to take the moral high ground on some issues, if only because I like being around moral people. At least they won't be the most unethical people in this game, I should keep that in mind. Heck, I don't even need to make-up characters that are worse then them, one of the NPCs is Adolf Hitler.
Still not writing much. I've got a kind of Burrougheseque story involving Naos, Helen and a Nationalism Disease which I may or may not write, but I don't know if I like writing stories about Naos and Helen in the Desert. I honestly think I'm not ready to write the story of Naos and Helen. I see it as more of something like Doctor Zhivago meets Masked and Anonymous if it was written by Philip K. Dick. As such I see it as being pretty urbane. I should also read Doctor Zhivago if I'm going to make that connection.
I am not really reading anything at the moment. I am trying to get into Knut Hamsun's Hunger, but so far I haven't gotten into it. I'm also trying to read Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End. Haven't gotten into that either. I think I should make a list of books I should read. I'd like to read more Philip K. Dick, and when I get back to University I'm probably going to pick up a book of his short fiction. I also want to read some of the various books I have on me that I have yet to read. I still mean to read Paul Bowles, so I should probably get started on either The Delicate Prey and Other Stories and The Sheltering Sky. I'm going to have to make a reading list at some point. I do plan on reading some Christopher Isherwood when I get to University for the campaign though.
Anyways, waiting to get to University. Not sure how many days it is from now. Going to try and read some Gary Snyder.

Return to Weimar and Poetry

13 more days and I will return to University. I'm very excited, I can't wait. I wish I was there already. There is only so much of hanging out in the same cafe and messing around that a guy can take and I believe I have reached my limit. Alright, I'll miss my friends and my cafe. But I'll have friends waiting for me back at Waterloo, as well as a start to the Weimar Mage game. My vacation from that is over and I think I have found a stress free way of developing the entire consiliuum. Tarot Cards.

The Mage: the Awakening sourebook, Keys to the Supernal Tarot, give advise on how to create a character through randomly drawing Tarot cards. I think this could be a really good idea, as it saves me the time to come up with a concept to start with. I can just draw five cards from a Tarot deck, and I happen to own a Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and then work out the character from what I've got. It's a brilliantly simply way to develop this and I don't have to worry about getting my hair in a bunch. I'm also thinking about using Tarot cards to develop plot, and giving all the PCs and in-character reading, I can use the images in that for further plot devices with the character. Also, I figure that if I'm going to do a Mage game right, which is part of the reason I'm running this, I'm going to need some ancient magical, religious or philosophical background to draw symbolism from. Tarot is already built into the game. I was going to work in Kabbalah, but the rules for replacing that as the Magical system seem a bit complcated and I want to work through what the Sephirot actually mean.

I'm also reading, or trying to read, quite alot of poetry. I'm looking into Arthur Rimbaud again, and he's quite a fine poet. I don't speak his native language, but I'm reading the Wyatt Mason translation and I think that's pretty good. I'm a bit worried about reading poets in translation, because I worry that I'm not actually reading the poet, but the translator. Strangelly, I don't have this problem when I read Bolano or Dostoyevsky. Poetry is different. Poetry is about the words. Still, I like Bolano's language, even if I'm not reading Bolano in his native language. The words are still good and I like how they feel. Maybe I'm reading Rimbaud after all.

I'm also reading the poetry of Ezra Pound, because Ezra Pound is supposed to be a very important poet. For some reason I'm starting with the Cantos, which is supposed to be a major piece of 20th century poetry and Pound's greatest written work, which he wrote for most of his life. I'm not sure what I think of Pound, but the entire world of poetry is still very new to me. The only poet I can say I really like is Allen Ginsberg, and I sometimes wonder if I have simply decided to like him. I also like Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot. I guess I like more poets then I think. I guess that because of all this, I'm trying to become a poet. Once University starts, I plan on writing a good deal of poetry and read as much poetry as I can.

The idea of becoming a poet probubly came from listening to Indeefeed: Performance Poetry. As such, I'm inspired by slam poetry and I think most of the poetry I write now comes from a slam aesthetic. I feel poetry, at least modern poetry, is meant to be an oral tradition. I'm thinking of doing a thing on youtube, where I would read my poetry for videos. So far the only think I can think of for putting up are my poems "Anarchy Baby" and my only published short story, which I think I might go over. I didn't edit it the first time, and I think that I could do better with it. I have an account set up, but I need to figure out where I can get a camera to film the readings and then put them on the youtube. Thankfully, I have a cousin who's in the computer world and he will be with me on my floor. When I have something up I'll probubly put it up on my blog.

Well, I'm talking with a friend. I better go.

Cherry Pie

I just ate 1/3rd of a cherry pie. Awhile ago we got a cherry pie, because a friend of mine and I are having a Twin Peaks marathon before I go back to University. I thought I could take a third of cherry pie. I think I may have been wrong.

The Magic Naturalist Manifesto: A Novel

Greetings True Believers. I thought I'd talk more on Magic Naturalism, since I didn't say all I wanted to say about it in my last post.

As many regular readers may be aware, Magic Naturalism is a highly ambiguous art movement I have been fiddling together in my spare time using various loose bits of Remodernism, Surrealism and Alchemy, and most likely inspired by the Visceral Realists in Bolano's novel The Savage Detectives and the Beat Generation. I first used the term Magic Naturalist as part of the introduction of myself for my first published short story, and I didn't have any idea what a Magic Naturalist was, except a cool sounding name.

Since then I have been toying with writing the Magic Naturalist Manifesto. Through the inspiration of the only other Magic Naturalist in existence, I am going to write it as a piece of fiction. I have a bit of the first bit written, but at the moment I'd like to concentrate on short fiction. I'm also wondering if Magic Naturalism is more of an aesthetic then an actual movement. I think if Magic Naturalism was an aesthetic, then it would be something like a Bolano novel. The Magic wouldn't be visible, but if you read into it you can notice it. Or maybe the Magic Naturalist aesthetic is similar to Bolano's work, but with more noticeable acts of the supernatural. That would probably be just because I like the supernatural.

Still, I think that Magic Naturalism is a bit experimental. I want to experiment with forms. I want to see what happens if you rework the methods of alchemy to a piece of fiction. That is the basis of Magic Naturalist experimentation. I'm also come up with a method I'm calling "Tarot Stories," which is basically taking a Tarot deck, asking it a question like "Who killed the character in my short story," and then using the Tarot to figure out how that happened. I enjoyed it, though I don't know how much I should rely on this method. I think I may use it a bit for The Magic Naturalist Manifesto, but I think Philip K. Dick did something similar with the I Ching in The Man in the High Castle. It's probably where I got the idea actually.

Which brings me to what this post was about. Well, not really but I lost my train of thought. If I'm writing The Magic Naturalist Manifesto as a work of fiction, with a fictional plot and fictional characters, then does Magic Naturalism exist? The more I work over Magic Naturalism, the more it becomes something withing my fictional universe. I think it can be both though, but on the other hand I'm very afraid of becoming famous. I don't want people to know who I am. I don't think I want to be famous. Maybe I'll get a pseudonym like Archimboldi, maybe I'll just disappear into Europe or Asia or somewhere and never be heard from again.

God, I'm to distracted. To be continued...

Solve Et Coagula: The Magic Naturalist Magazine

Today the spectre of Nazism is not as powerful as it was yesterday. I believe that this is because I am now writing it out in a form that can help restore my sanity. I am currently working on a piece of short fiction that I believe will help me deal with the existential stresses of National Socialism. This short story will hopefully express the issues I have, while at the same time tear a hole of complete absurdity into the entire idea of Nazis. I think that's what Mel Brooks did with "The Producers."

Speaking of writing, I have been thinking about my idea of the perfect literary magazine. This would be one that I would help publish and it would be linked to the idea of Magic Naturalism. It probably would be THE Magic Naturalist magazine, "Solve Et Coagula." I came up with this idea last night. It would be a single magazine that would have an issue every three months or so, usually with a theme of some sort that would give a loose theme. The theme wouldn't be to important however, and some issues may not even have a theme. It would also have more or less the same group of artists, all of whom would be in contact with each other, thus we would have a highly regional magazine made up mostly of the Magic Naturalists. Each issue would feature what those particular Magic Naturalists were doing and show examples of Magic Naturalist stories, paintings, poems and articles. It would also have transcripts of discussions made by various members of the Magazines, in retelling form or through copying down MSN chats. There would also be a special "Guest Feature," in each issue where we would get someone who is not from the Magic Naturalist group proper who would act as a guest. If this was a perfect world I'd probably see if I could get Alan Moore to be a "Guest Feature," because I have officially declared him a Grandfather of Magic Naturalism.

I basically got the idea from the Hermann Hesse book I'm reading. It's called "The Glass Bead Game," or "Magister Ludi," but I'm calling it "The Glass Bead Game," because that's the proper name. It's about the life of a guy called Joseph Knecht, and takes place in an unspecified future were the Intelligentsia has evolved into various monastic orders and the highest form of which is a bunch of people who play the Glass Bead Game, which is some kind of multi-disciplinary game that is very complex and only really smart, educated people can play. I was really struck by the idea of the Intelligentsia Monks, because they seem to be doing this right, and not in a way that I'm doing. They're unconcerned with fame or money or any of that stuff. This made me question my own goals, am I writing because of fame and money? I certainly want to get paid for my writing, but I'm not so sure about fame. I don't want fame, yet I would like people to read my work. Is having people read my work the same as being famous? Mind you, I don't want a, say Michael Jackson level of fame, where they wont shut up about me. I don't want paparazzi following me around. But does the paparazzi follow writers around? Are they're really any famous writers anymore? I feel out of touch with the common man, if they're is such a thing? Is the common man the people who watch Entertainment Tonight to see if John and Kate have broke up yet and which one has custody over the plus 8? Do people follow Salman Rushdie around, or that guy who wrote American Psycho? I don't even think I know any famous writers of today. Well, I know Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon, know of them I mean, but they aren't followed by paparazzi. They both have to lie low, or Salman Rushdie does. I think Thomas Pynchon may have CIA connections, but that's just baseless hypothesizing.

I don't think we live in a world were writers are famous, they're just well known. I also think that if I really wanted too, I could probably disappear from Gossip Columnist Radar. But anyways, to tie everything back together, I wanted to make this magazine, which we will call Solve Et Coagula for now, as a way around this. It would be more a way for various artists with similar interests to communicate, and show they're work to each other. "See, this is what I did. Love what you did there. See that guy, man I loved his photography, we should have him in the Zine sometime." That sort of thing. I think it would be a good idea. It could be worked around the whole fame and money thing, and we could all just concentrate on the Art.

The Sinister Spectre of the Third Reich

It may be that in the past few months the Nazis have been more present in my internal life. I've been reading a lot of books that involve the Nazis in some way or another and it's been starting to eat into me. For one thing I stimmed for about a half hour because it's getting on my nerves so much. I think that a good part of this is the role-playing game, but over the last few months, starting from Winter I have been reading alot of books about the Nazis. For instance I've been reading "The Man in the High Castle," by Philip K. Dick recently, which is an alternate history novel where the Nazis won WWII. I've also finished up reading a book on Berlin in the 1920s, and watched the film "Cabaret" awhile back, both of these ending on the same bum note (The Nazis take over).

I've been trying to work the whole idea of what the Nazis are and why we're so repullsed by them, at least I was until I was completely unerved last night. Maybe I still am, but I really don't want to think about it right now. It's just at this moment I have been looking into this sort of thing for to long and I need a break. This is all just bothering me alot and I feel I need to excersize the Nazi demons around me.

MOVITS!

For those of you who ever wondered what Swedish Swing-Rap would be like...



Now you know. Your welcome.

On Role-Playing Games and Family Vacations

I didn't think I'd be posting in awhile, but this blog has been part of my life for so long that I can't see myself not posting. Yes, most of the time I post about nothing, but nothing really happens in my life. Especially around summer.

I don't know if the Changeling LARP is happening, which is a shame. I sent an email to the people there and have had no reply. Once University starts again I'll ask my contact if things are still going on. If it seems likely to continue I'll join, if not then I'll have to wait for another.

It's raining outside at the moment. Thunder and everything. I just thought I'd mention that, because I like it when there is rain and thunder. It's cool and I like the way thunder sounds. It means I'm stuck here at my local coffee house but that's alright.

Anyways, and I should have started with this, but I have done something recently. I have been to my Aunt and Uncle's Cottage in the Muskokas. I suppose it was fun most of the time, but I was also stressed because of all the stuff I had to deal with. There was to many people for me to deal with on a regular basis, about nine besides myself and hardly much in the way for me to really be on my own without bugs eating at me. I did finish Salinger's "Nine Stories," while I was there. I don't think I actually got it though. My friend who suggested it said it is about human interaction and sudden twists, but I didn't really get it. It was probubly my autism, so for the most part it was just a bunch of neurotypicals doing neurotypical things. I also finished Bolano's "2666," but that was before I even left. I don't think I understood that either, but not in the way I didn't understand Nine Stories.

I remember someone once compared Bolano's work to "Highway 61 Revisted," the Bob Dylan song. That made sense, and in many ways Bolano's writing is like Bob Dylan's writing during that period. It's beautifully written and dense and really dosen't make that much sense while still remaining spellbindingly brilliant. Besides that "2666" and "Highway 61" are both similar in various respects. Both revolve around a series of locations, the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa in "2666," Highway 61 in the Bob Dylan song. The location stays the same in both song and book, but various interconnected stories are told within them. I don't know what it is in the Bob Dylan song that connects all these stories besides Highway 61, but in Bolano's novel it is the murder of various women and the reclusive author Benno von Archimboldi. I don't know the meaning for either song or book, but it is something I am curious about both.

Anyways, the role-playing game I hope to run in the fall is becoming something of an obsession, most specifically desighing the supernatural political situation in Weimar Berlin. It was hard enough since I came up with just having Mages, but now I'm working on setting up a vampiric court. The way it went was that the game was going to become rather political and involve a lot of turmoil and it felt a shame to leave vampires out of it. As such I've got a list of the various roles withing a vampire court and am going to come up with roles for each. This is hard since I don't really have much of the political structure of the Mage Consiliuum set up. I have an idea on the Hierarch, his Provost, the Consilor for the Mysterium and a few other important people but not much else. I'm going to have to come up with everyone else during the time it takes to set up the game.

I'm not going to start the game immediatly when I get to University. First of all, I only have two people, and I want to see who else is interested. After that I'd like to talk with them a bit about their characters. I want to get a handle of what kind of PCs I'll be dealing with. I think this is a better idea then last time, since I can see how to work them into the story, which is more or less about the rise of the Nazis, though at first it's going to be rather political with various bits of the fun hedonistic side of Weimar Berlin. I'd like to work more of this into the game, but I'd like to know who is going to play and what kind of characters they are so I can put together the story. I'd like to put all the issues together, for instance one character is looking for his long lost sister, another is trying to stop the Holocaust. Does lost sister have something to do with the Holocaust? Maybe, we'll have to see. Also, it would help the players to look up things on the time period to add any biographical details. One of the characters is a veteran of the Polish-Soviet War for instance, and to run his Awakening I'm going to start with his participation in the Battle of Warsaw.

I don't really know if my obsession with this is a problem or not. I enjoy coming up with this game. I enjoy the research aspect and I enjoy coming up with ways to mess with the heads of the PCs. For instance, I'm learning about the New York Mafia now. One of the characters is a gangster, I think from New York but I can't remember, and as such I want to read up on Gangsters to make things more historically accurate though I fully admit that I'm using Wikipedia as my main source. If anyone knows the situation of the New York Mafia around 1922 - 1923, I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'm going to have fun role-playing all the Mafia Wiseguys during that character's Awakening and the New York Storyline I'm working on.