Some spoilers here and there.

Sad to say I didn’t watch that many movies for most of 2025. Some, sure, but not as much as I used to. Busy year for all things, life and bills to pay and writing. Being here on Substack definitely budded into my movie-watching time but I figured it was a good enough momentary sacrifice.

It wasn’t until a mass lay off that’s somewhat crippling my northern abode that I realized how much I missed sitting down and watching something new and astounding. I might have sighed the first time I laid back to finally dive into my collection of movies to burn through. It’s a different kind of relaxation. Reading books is more work than watching a movie – but a real good film is not an empty thing.

For the first half of this year I’ve read a small dozen plays for fun and to set myself into a certain mood for a play I’ve started working on myself. I don’t know what it is about the aesthetic of a play that’s always attracted me since I first saw one. There’s a magic to theatre that trumps aspects of cinema. I think for me it has to do with the darkness surrounding the actors on a stage, the darkness they equally stare into when reciting their soliloquies. Plays are also a perfect example of minimalism if that’s your thing. I’m sure you could write a play with more detail – maximalist play? – but I think from what I’ve read, the filling out the details comes in the production itself. Otherwise, you could do what Beckett did when writing down the setting of your script like in Waiting For Godot: “A country road. A tree. Evening.”

Here’s a list of what I’ve read this year so far, not including novels:

Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade. Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Suddenly, Last Summer. The original Marlowe version of Dr. Faustus. Goethe’s Faust: Part One – Part Two I’ve yet to get to – and Jean Genet’s The Maids.

Nothing crazy, really. As for a few others on my shelf, I still need to get to Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Lorca’s Three Tragedies, O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Genet’s The Blacks and The Balcony.

During the binge, I’ll probably read Shakespeare at some point. Hamlet and the usuals, obviously, but there are a few more I haven’t red yet. I might also reread Oedipus the King and the Oresteia, the latter I’ve not read, among other Ancient Greek plays. Long Days Journey Into Night is something I’ve had on my shelf for quite a while but never approached it yet as I’ve heard it can be quite a depressing tragedy, but I’ll have to try it sometime, right?

Among these plays, I’ve also watched many of the films adapted out of them. All versions are equally praiseworthy. A Streetcar Named Desire among its 1951 film version is an amazing experience. Brando played Stanley’s character in the stage adaption far before the film more than 800 times and it shows. I wish we had footage of what that acting performance was like in those first few to compare his change by the time of the film. All of Williams’ plays are amazing, or those I’ve read. The three plays of his I’ve read border something dreamlike at times. The Glass Menagerie for it being a memory play, but even Blanche’s attitude in Streetcar being one full of magic and whimsy, though easily shattered by Stanley’s outbursts. And then you have the climax of Suddenly, Last Summer, and I don’t even know what to say about that one. Pure pandemonium is a good description, heavy on the Freudianism which always shone through Williams’ other works.

Jean Genet’s The Maids was also a great read and watch. I laughed during most of the reading, then noticed I had laughed more from reading this stack of plays than I have most books. It cold be my fault, for a long time I never felt like humor worked much in a story. Gravity’s Rainbow was a good exception, also parts of Moby Dick here and there. But maybe it’s my own attitude about things, exploring humor in my work and slowly discovering the humor of classics as I’ve gone to reread them. Dostoevsky is full of comedy in each of his books if you choose to read it that way, even McCarthy’s dark humor in recent rereads has pulled a few laughs out of me.

Anyway, The Maids, if anyone is wondering, or cares, is about two sisters who take turns playing as their madame when she is away. They play it as a sort of game, bickering, even striking one another until, by the end, the maid is allowed to let out their anger on the temporary madame. There is even – true to Genet - a sadomasochistic angle to their game. The end goal to this performance is to poison and kill their madame in real life. I won’t spoil much else but both the written play and the movie are fantastic. Glenda Jackson playing as one of the maids steals the show from the moment she begins speaking. It almost gave me a feeling of whiplash to see her act this way as opposed to the stark difference of her role in Marat/Sade. The theme of Genet’s work often involves the body, criminality, queer sexuality and power dynamics. He was a thief in his own day for much of his life, spent years in and out of prison and wrote his work often behind bars. He wrote books before entering theatre, and from what I’ve read many of them are semi-autobiographical, but goddamn is it hard to find him at my used bookstore. Not that he never shows up, as the storeowner always tells me, someone else just comes by to pick him up as soon as he puts his work on the shelf. He’s quite the interesting character and I’m eager to read more about him as well as his work.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Claude Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of Marquis de Sade. Or, Marat/Sade, is probably my favorite of these plays I’ve read. It might even be my favorite play and the movie isn’t that far away either. A play within a play in which these asylum inmates perform before another audience, taking place as a fictional debate between the Marquis de Sade and Jean-Claude Marat, with de Sade working as both director and actor. Like Genet, the play explores themes of power dynamics between the high and the low, set in 1808 during the reign of Emperor Napoleon, the play takes us back to the French Revolution in which Marat argues for policies which – by the time of the play – have led and will lead to countless deaths by guillotine, not only of the aristocratic class, but also the citizens the revolutionaries called up arms to originally defend, all while Sade, representing a sort of anarchism, slides into cynicism and nihilism in his arguments against Marat’s perceived utopia through slaughter, supporting the sort of freedom the revolution promised but also criticizing where it eventually leads: to a high aristocratic class and a poor population still struggling to find food. Just another revolving door. It’s philosophical, asking questions surrounding human nature and freedom, all of it presented while the inmates of Charenton sing of their class struggles that never really change. Being that every actor in Sade’s play is an inmate of Charenton, the performance often dissolves into lunacy and disorder – occasional bursts of laughter in the background between another’s line, stopped by orderlies dressed as nuns and occasionally shut down by the director of the asylum himself to warn Sade about other actors using censored lines.

Photos of various stage productions of Marat/Sade are outstanding and I long for one to be performed close enough for me to see it. The film is another wonder. Sade is brilliantly acted by Patrick Magee and Glenda Jackson once again shows off her skills as Corday as if it were easy – a character suffering from melancholy and sleeping spells, who stutters and speaks softly; a far cry from the furious and sniveling Solange in The Maids. The way they use the setting of the asylum bathhouse as a stage, using various props to mimic the sound of a guillotine with various inmates dropping into a pit to appear like a pile of heads. Outstanding stuff, perfect performances. Oh, I didn’t even mention it’s a musical. The way the play is written – almost Jacobean – lets you fall into the rhythm of the various songs throughout with ease, even coming with song sheets if a reader wanted to get the full picture in their head.

In my edition, Peter Weiss gives a much-admired historical background of the play I wasn’t aware of. Turns out Sade, who spent much of his life in prison and insane asylums for the vulgarity of his work and a dozen heinous crimes – even ordered to be placed under arrest by Napoleon himself – would produce his own plays while locked up in Charenton. Apparently they were quite a specialty and were even attended by aristocrats from all over France. All in all, Marat/Sade is an amazing play and a very quick read, could even finish it in a day.

Some more banger films for you. Funny thing is, and I don’t know if this is because I’ve been reading so many plays in a row, but my favorite films of this collection present themselves as a plays on their own. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover was the most glaring. Besides the stage play comparisons, every shot is like a damned painting. Wide, taking up whole rooms with colors from greens to reds and white filling the screen. The clothing design is perfect, the color of a character’s clothes even changing depending on which room they’re in to deepen the emotions of each scene. The musical score is spell binding, composed by Michael Nyman, it sets the tone from the very first shot and adds to this tension throughout the film that only eases off just a little throughout at times, but never truly goes away until the very end. This tension is also heightened thanks to the outstanding acting, the thief of the film particularly also stealing the show like Glenda Jackson does in her roles. Albert Spica, played by (Dumbledore) Michael Gambon – holy shit, what amazing acting. He plays a vulgar criminal who has recently taken over the restaurant most of the movie is set in. Every night he dines there with his thugs, fighting – sometimes physically – with the staff and other patrons, effectively scaring off the clientele. He’s loud, obnoxious, violent and unpredictable. He never stops talking! He brings along his wife, Georgina, played by Helen Mirren, and constantly abuses her both verbally and physically throughout the runtime, all while she spots another man dining in the restaurant and takes him as her lover. As I was trying to explain earlier, the film is the kind that grips you at once from the moment it starts and never let’s go, leaving you – it certainly did me – with a sigh of relief when it’s finally over.

Two other films I want to glorify real quick, which also reminded me of plays. Iranian films, Taste of Cherry and It Was Just An Accident. No, I’m not watching them because of what’s going on in the world currently, I’ve just had them on my list for years and have yet to get into Iranian cinema out of others, so you can fuck off regarding any opinions. I’m still fresh on It was Just An Accident so I probably won’t go too deep. It’s about a man who takes matters into his own hands when he recognizes the squeaking of a man’s prosthetic leg as that of his past torturer. Yet, filled with doubt, he goes to find other political prisoners who suffered similar abuse by the same man to confirm whether it is really him or not before carrying out his other plans. Let me just ramble on a bit more about theatre to be annoying – you could see this movie on a stage no problem. There’s even a reference to Waiting For Godot. At one point the characters of the movie are all sitting around waiting and pondering, spread out across the screen in various poses that stuck out to me as something you’d see on a stage. This could also have to do with the more “subtle” its director, Jafa Panahi, had to film it due to the state of filmmaking in the country. Wonderful film, one I was never bored watching, all of it leading up to a perfect climax and a final scene that sticks with you.

Taste of Cherry doesn’t so much as present itself as a play but you can see how it could be acted out that way. It’s a simple film, minimal, if you want to call it that. It follows a man driving around the city looking to hire someone that will bury his body after he’s committed suicide. That’s as much as I’d like to go into the story as it’s an incredibly beautiful movie and I think you should see it. I think it’s the way the film approaches the idea of life and death that grips me so much. The idea of paying someone to bury you after you’ve done something so far as killing yourself. There’s something unique in how it approaches and ponders the idea of death, as well as life and beauty and poetry – even the taste of cherries. I can’t quite put the feeling to words. It approaches death in a unique way almost like Salieri’s ambitions in Amadeus. Not that they have the same goals, but it’s the concept that tickles me so much. Salieri, who feels slighted by God because of Mozart’s – who he describes as divinely gifted – talent, seeking to destroy him in order to perform Mozart’s own symphony as an insult to God. I don’t know, it’s amazing stuff and I realized I’ve fallen into a tangent. But you should watch Taste of Cherry, especially if you’re feeling the itch for some beauty if you choose to watch it that way.

That’s all I got. Has anyone here read or seen any of the work I mentioned here? Have a play or movie you’d like to recommend? Throw it my way. What’s the aesthetic you’re attracted to most in theatre? Or have you read or seen Marat/Sade? I feel like after all my gushing for Pedro Paramo that I need to start plugging this one to death, but we’ll see.

Later.

Took me around three weeks to finish this chapter I’ve been working on. I’ve been battling with it since the first draft and she was a bitch. I don’t even care if the algorithm shuts this down or no one reads it, this was madness and holy crap I needed it for a second.

I was working on it in the early mornings going up to five hours on some days, sometimes returning to it later in the evening if I had the time or energy. Couple times I even put the manuscript on my bedside when I got sick for a couple days. This draft is a deliberately slow process, taking good time with every line, or the best I can do it. But I’m also a bit of a stubborn ass when it comes to moving on to another sentence if I really feel like it isn’t working. Other than the bones of the narrative, it’s almost completely different to what it was before. For my environment I listened to music maybe once for an hour, opened the window for some traffic noise, but otherwise remained completely silent. I wanted it to write as raw as I could – or at least as focused. I even unplugged my wifi for the last few sessions completely and stuck to an oxford dictionary – which is a real fun gift and nice to have to just flip through.

Look, I’m getting outside, feeling the sun, seeing friends, touching grass, la-di-da. I just happen to be one of 84,000 people up in the north who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands. It’s limited time for me, so I figured why the fuck don’t I treat it like a vacation?

Writing for a long time, you tend to run into some other writers, or some who are straddling the line, maybe not quite decided. I always encourage it, and as the years go by I’ve begun to recommend poetry as a better start. But if you’re already in or drawn to fiction, who am I to stop you?

To the question on whether I’d advise writing a novel? Absolutely yes, but these days I can’t help but throw out a caution sign. May Be Dangerous To Your Health. Writing something as complex and complete as a novel can be a mentally, physically, spiritually taxing experience. Don’t forget time consuming.

The work stays in your thoughts sometimes, even when you’re trying to sleep. Hey, guys, seeing more of New York as my friends see it on a diet consisting of two chocolate bars, a bagel, a pizza slice and a chicken strip shared to me by a bus-mate on the way back home named Qui, is all fun stuff, while deep down you’re wondering if you need to scrap everything you’ve written or put this line here and this line there and thinking – damn, look how much time I’ve wasted. Being around people that care help, for sure. And I finished it, so I can’t complain. Even though it’s not really finished, just this pass. People will probably nail me to the cross for it but I don’t care.

Anyway, I’m more of a typewriter guy myself, but find I go longhand quite a lot for later drafts. Nothing ever stays the same, the way you do things, write and what not. At least I haven’t had to wake up at 3am for a little, but I’m keeping the door open. Actually, I’m writing a little more at night these days. Sure, there’s always the morning wake up, stretch, get to it, but after the rest of my day depending what I’m getting up to – go out, catch some spare work, catch up with people, read, workout – I tend to fiddle with notes, work on poetry or other smaller projects. But sometimes I go back to the novel and work into the night.

Guess what I’m wondering is does anyone else find their routine changing over time at all? Do you usually write in the mornings or evenings and never change? or does it shift around?

Don’t take me too seriously on my caution against writing a novel. If it’s screaming inside you then you got to let it out. Just remember to get yourself out as well. You don’t write very well if you don’t see what’s out there in my opinion.

I’ve said before that I treat these ruminations more as a journal for my own range of thoughts and still treat it as such now, but I also put these thoughts here as one: something my readers or a reader may be curious about or care, and two: a sort of a promise to hold myself to a few things. I’ve always found I work better under a personal deadline, but this makes it a bit more serious when you make a promise to potential readers. Making ones writing of any form – fiction, poetry, essays – stirs the brain differently when compared to the writing remaining purely for your eyes. Sharper focus, more critical of the finished product. Fiction, a novel especially, are legacy pieces, and you have to put your all into it if it’s really something you are going to walk into the grave proudly for. And I will also take any avenue to get the gears turning. But what am I doing when I ask you to read my work? Bottom line of it is I’m asking you, a reader, to put your time into reading something written by one person you don’t even know. It could be a poem, a short story, or a novel, but every line takes up a precious amount of time you will not get back. So what do you get out of it in the end? In this day and age where trust is most important, some form of transparency would be appreciated, written in consideration of any readers that still unsure on whether my work is for them or not.

I like to put it this way. I’m a writer. Writing novels is my highest ambition and goal. But why should you care? Effort comes both ways, obviously. I write my poems and short stories and put my thoughts on the web; it takes a reader to see if they really like or care about my work in any way. Sure, I could write something they hate, and they might miss something they could love in the next work. I would hope in the end none of it – including this – would waste your time. That’s the risk in all this.

Returning to the question of the why you should care category. There is no one right answer, but that’s why I try to keep a bit of a schedule when it comes to what I post. I love to write, and for me that includes a lot, have never and could never stay on one thing. Being on Substack, putting my work out there, being read, meeting and getting to know other writers and readers, on and on, has changed me more as a writer than when I was just sitting by getting rejection slips, if that, and trying again with the next one. My highest aim is to change a reader’s life, be it immense or a grain. Inspire, uplift, make them understand they are not alone – this and more that gets thrown around the room since the written word began. But what I seek most is to make one question. Questions have existed before the writing itself, going back before the word even existed and could also be called curiosity. What’s over the next hill and so on. To ask questions can often lead to more questions ebbing and flowing in different forms. Take death for example. What is it? What happens after? Is there something else beyond it, some other existence or do we wake up in another room? I could go on.

There’s an unending number of other wants and desires out of this writing thing that has stayed with me for years, so I could go for chapters. I’ll try to keep myself reined in, and go into the work itself. The very effort is something important to me. I want to know I put my all into my work, to be exhausted, because – by God – I feel so alive. This and more is a necessity over getting some bag. For the first time I finally see a way to make these years of stories matter, so I’ll break my back for it.

What I’m working on

If you’re still here, and are curious what I’m cooking up, I’m trying my best to make it clear that I’ll be doing this for decades to come. Substack shuts off tomorrow? Well, now I have enough experience and ideas on getting out there to grab more eyes. And if I can’t do that, I still have the writing.

Writing more short stories has been profound for me. I approach each with a specific focus in mind for style, voice, character and so on. Considering myself a novel writer from day one, the way this form has changed my longer work is something no writer who had not attempted it can anticipate.

Say a novel is the only thing on your mind, bit like me a few years ago. Well, how can you make it the best novel you or anyone had ever written? You say you can’t but why not try? Write for yourself, sure, but what about other people? How much of yourself will the page change when the work is for something other than yourself? With a short story, you can hone that craft down to the thread. Structure, form, language, color, theme, who its all weaved together changes with a more critical eye. This is my experience anyway.

Short stories can surprise the writer creating them more than anything. A novel I’m working on was inspired by a short story. Chapters and passages have come out of the same. Short stories, I’m noticing, are also ripe grounds to distance yourself from the work, or to build the skill to thread what you consider to be yourself into the narrative of what you’re writing – depending on how you approach your fiction.

The novel

I set aside a larger two-year long project sometime last May to bash out a draft of another novel that had been sifting around in my head without a single written word until it was finally ready. I go back to the first novel-in-progress for notes but don’t plan to return with my full attention before finishing this piece, which has become my main focus as of now along with a stack of other projects.

The most likely title is Thought It Was Over But I Just Keep Falling. It is about a man returning to Southern Ontario after some years living on the east coast of Nova Scotia, linking up with old friends and enemies while surrounded by hallucinations of carnivalesque characters he calls the band. To top that off he and is also being chased by a demon-woman. There’s more to it, but I’m just giving you bits and pieces before I really start to market it. I’ve been throwing out various photos of the physical draft for a while now and plan on releasing other pieces on the process of revision itself.

I’m currently going through a deliberately slow third draft, marking every line, flipping back and forth through pages and notes for each chapter while adding additional notes for later drafts. Polished, in short. Research, tinkering and lots and lots of cutting! More and more the manuscript moves onto digital as what will be needed to put it into print. But I never like to work purely digital anymore, and maybe the only moment I will is when I format this thing into the physical form it’s supposed to be for print. So I often rewrite whole passages, pages, parts of chapters and whole chapters with the typewriter or by longhand. But I’ll talk more about the note taking process another time.

The novel itself is more fun to write with each draft. The type of novel it is lets my imagination run wild, bringing back that original joy you have when creating that first work of art.

It is, among other fiction I’m working on – notes for several novels, short stories, a novella and a play – my main focus. I don’t plan on deviating from it if life gets in the way, not before putting other pieces on hold beforehand at least.

Other Projects

Nonetheless, I’m also preparing on announcing a type of interview/reports on various subjects outside of literature I find interesting, most of them involving people. I don’t have an exact timeline on it yet, as what I’m looking takes a bit more time to build than a standard interview. You’ll probably get some finnicky pieces when they first appear as I explore the style and so on. Either way, some of you might be interested, or maybe another readership itself will be. I’ll have more to say on it soon.

Spinning back to the novel; the timeline I’ve given myself is to have it in your hands roughly by a year and a half to two years. Sure, if it has to go longer to make it perfect, course I’ll do it, but as I said about the deadlines – plenty of other monsters have been born from the same.

2026 is the year in which I’ll also be making a greater effort to put my work out onto a more local scene. Poetry readings and linking up with other nearby writers will be one thing, but how will I find the readers? I have some plans that just might get my name out there where it matters a little more.

As for this, I never stop writing poetry. Some days the flow is slower than others, but finding the time for poetry is just as important. Being outside as often as I can has done me the most. Poetry is not something that is forced either, at least I never try. The moment it hits – you can almost feel it painting the glass behind your eyes – is when I try to write it down, almost blindly, you could say. Its impact on my fiction writing is unparalleled. Even compared to short stories, poetry can teach you to really make every word count.

Well, let’s see if I can hold myself up to a few things written here. It’s amazing how much has changed just by taking this first step of releasing my work, so who knows what the next year or two will bring us all.

Later.

First time reading this one, and my 3^rd Pynchon. I have little to complain about. It’s a suave 1970’s noir; wild and smooth and fun, layered and stinking with Pynchon’s classic power of paranoia. Some people can’t stand certain parts, but I’ve always loved Pynchon’s affinity for long digressions that veer away from the main story. Sure, my eyes can get a bit crossed if I’m a little tired, but the novels hippie lingo as well as Pynchon’s humor kept me going for the ride.

I’d like to read it again some day before I do a deeper dive into more of what the book is, what it stands for and so on. But there’s a moment in the book that’s stuck with me, something I underlined while reading through. A short moment, but glimmering with some of my favorite aspects of Pynchon’s work. Little rundown – Inherent Vice is set in the fictional land of Gordita Beach, California. It being the 70’s is important, as it wasn’t too long before that when hippie free love era officially died. Manson made his course, shadows in suits pulled their strings, space splitting drugs and chill weed descended into something bleaker, soul sucking and family shattering. Something Joan Didion predicted excellently in her book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The Manson murders happened after the books release, further proof to her point that the magical hippie era was doomed to die. In a way, though very marginal – as this is Pynchon we’re talking about – the world of Inherent Vice is not too dissimilar to what Didion predicted it would become. Maybe without the ultra paranoia, at least.

Back to business. Our boy, Doc Sportello, is taken away from nearby ears by Detective Bigfoot Bjornsen to a restaurant to discuss their cases. In the midst of devouring Swedish lingonberry pancakes, Bigfoot ruminates on the state of California, highlighting the fear that seems prevalent in the state after the Manson murders.

“Odd, yes, here in the capital of eternal youth, endless summer and all, that fear should be running the town again as in days of old, like the Hollywood blacklist you don’t remember and the Watts rioting you do – it spreads, like blood in a swimming pool, till it occupies all the volume of the day. And then maybe some playful soul shows up with a bucketful of piranhas, dumps them in the pool, and right away they can taste the blood. They swim around looking for what’s bleeding, but they don’t find anything, all of them getting more and more crazy, till the craziness reaches a point. Which is when they begin to feed on each other.”

Doc, in classic Pynchon irony, follows with:

“What’s in ‘em lingonberries, Bigfoot?”

But Bigfoot is still swept away in his own thoughts. He thinks it’s like there’s some kind of ‘evil subgod’ ruling over California, almost like he can sense there’s something in the air. Doc replies:

“Well, what I’ve been noticing since Charlie Manson got popped is a lot less eye contact from the straight world.”

I vibe with that feeling Bigfoot is trying to describe. But I think that cloud spreads over a lot more than just California. I look around in my day to day and see plenty of good people. I see plenty more that won’t wait much longer before they begin turning on each other, and those same ‘good people’ I mentioned would just need a bit more of a push to do the same.

Maybe this wasn’t the intention, but I think of cities a lot when I read that passage. Cities are, in a way, made for the weak. They were created to protect against the dark and frightening forces of the outside world. Dragons and monsters and wild men on horseback riding through villages with fire and sword. They put up those walls because they knew they couldn’t defend against these raiders otherwise. You didn’t have to move to the city to protect yourself, but in terms of numbers, you were a lot safer in those walls. In my eyes, people with that kind of choice have only those two options. Shit, or shit. The cities in those days weren’t much better. For much of its history even far after the empire, Rome’s streets were a cesspool of criminality, filth, garbage and plague. The people who could not find the strength to survive beyond its walls could do little to fight against the starvation and rot that purified that city on the daily.

Sure, we live in easier times now, better cities, depending on one’s term for easy; depending also on where and what city one may be living in. But we’ve got enough history – and plenty of current events – to show what happens when the ‘safety’ of a city begins to tip, for whatever reason that may be.

Doc’s comment on less eye contact hit me like a brick. If I were in the room in that moment, I would have said there’s no eye contact anywhere. Straight world, crooked world, wherever you may be. Doc continues, saying he thinks it’s because if people don’t look at the potential mass murderer, then it won’t happen to them. Valid point, one I’d agree with. But one wonders if that’s really all there is to it.

Crossing from dark to dark on late December 11^th, the shadows on my face a little worn through the mirroring bus window, maybe due to being a few hours past bedtime. Could be I think about death too much as a writer and the way these shadows illuminate the shape of my skull fascinates me. I chop it up to my body setting up the visual decorations of how I am going to feel by the end of my galivanting on little sleep.

New grounds for me. About a year ago I would have laughed if someone told me I’d be busing down to New York soon – a city I’ve not once seen with my own eyes. Not that this is some freewheeling trip. Caught news of a pretty swag party with a few ink spillers in attendance. But never being one to let an hour go to waste, it was decided long before I crossed the border that I would never turn down an experience, laying out some pre-arranged plans with thin enough sketch lines to allow for some venturing off the path when the moment presented itself.

First couple of hours weren’t so bad other than sleep being nowhere near enough to catch it and being too dark to even read – spending my time fighting to perceive the dark land beyond the road and trying not to think of my bank balance. First stop in Rochester leads to an older lady to climb aboard and find her seat beside me. Somewhere in her sixties, old Trudy. She reeked of fermented piss and by the end of those next ten hours the smell would imbed itself into my clothes. But she was a nice enough lady, telling me she was coming to Manhattan to see a girlfriend and over these next many hours I had to stop the driver from abandoning her at a pit stop in the Pocono Mountains, and grabbed her arm to stop her from falling on her way to the bathroom. Despite the piss, I let her sleep on my shoulder a few times and only ever gently nudged her off when she would try to wrap her arms around me out of whatever dream she was having. I was a little envious of the sleeping part.

Things get a little smoother once the sun starts to rise and everything takes shape. I spot some old churches through the naked branches like little brushstrokes of east-coast puritanism still clinging to canvas seams. At some point, just before slipping into the city, I see a small glowing snowman hanging from what looks to be a noose in the trees. No house nor settlement nearby. So this is America.

But it was fair to say the piss was a little heavy for me and I ended up getting off the bus in Newark a little earlier than intended for sake of sanity. I gave Trudy a cookie a friend had made me and told her to take care.

Subway systems from where I hail aren’t like what the big city has to offer. Never seen a warlord in tattered attire and leather hockey pads before. He was wielding a hickory staff upon which an ebony idol sat. Tried talking to him but he started giving me a cross guard so I kept my distance. Had places to be anyway. After some grueling moments of panic navigating through the shrieking subway system, I find myself linking up with a contact giving me a place to crash for the night. Goes by Teach.

It wasn’t long into the first handshake that we got into the stream of conscious riffraff biz of just about any topic we could come up with, most often slipping off into the dark hush-hush world of shadowy chess players in suit and tie before eventually meeting up with Teach’s best bud, Chang, and battle our way through traffic to a bodega for some breakfast. They talk so loosely with each other, these two – these men that call each other brother with the occasional love you slipped in upon each farewell. Not something you see many men do unless you go where the phone cameras don’t – making me think of how tight in the taint we can be back home.

Back at the spot, I tell them a little about Canada’s intricacies and they tell me a little about themselves between long drags and steady rotations of a soul obliterating joint packed together by Teach and Chang with the delicacy of Queirolo carving the Disinganno. Naturally, Teach got lost in the smooth drifting haze of dopers contemplation and deduced – not the first to do so, I’m afraid – that I looked like Tony Soprano’s son. Between pitching to them why and who they should read – with perhaps a bit of a mistake in pointing Chang a little early towards Pynchon – we chat about writing, poetry, New York, family and the things they live for. Community based violence intervention. Trying to better their community – their own little New York – in some way. It’s not easy work; sometimes they fail. They could be hurt for it, killed for it, others have already gone before them. But they already know that, they just want to help people, children, communities. I wonder between trickles of psychedelic incense if what I’m doing could ever add up to that.

Then we were off with sundown to the streets of Kearny and Newark for some grub and drinks in a few of the local spots. Places tourists don’t tend to run into unless they get a little lost. Being in a couple places with so much bustle and clinking glasses and music couldn’t compare to the smiles of everyone working there. Made me a bit nostalgic. I fought until two in the morn to keep my eyes open so as not to miss a thing. At one point I found myself alone at the bar looking for a seat while my handlers were back at the car. Got to chatting with a sweet eyed lady when her hubby went off to use the bathroom. Her midnight black weave swayed like curtains, and she told me this was her four-year anniversary, and that she had nothing but hope for the future. Told me she was from Brooklyn and, when she learned I’m Canadian, told me I had to get to Dumbo for the views and found myself quite intrigued.

Got maybe four hours that night out of a total of a 48-hour stretch of wakeful wondering. Hard to sleep much past six anyway. Think me and Teach needed to recoup a little before heading off through the Lincoln and into East Village. I savored everything I saw along the way. Before going our separate ways, we caught up with a few at a small hallway bar, one of which happened to be someone from my very home town and together we reminisced the nowhere roads of Southern Ontario.

East Village was something sweet. Overheated in a Chinese restaurant with amazing food and a few glares from staff. Danced around some rats and watched photographers snap a few shots of people idling on a few benches. But couldn’t linger long with a party to get to. On Avenue A, I ran into Mr. Dimitri standing outside a corner store, asking me if I could get him some cigarettes. So I do and we exchange names and I ask him to tell me a story and he lifts his toque to show me the fresh split skin. Told me he just got jumped in by his boys, that he’d been trying to get brought in with them for years now. Asked him if he was coming from his celebration, told me this was it; that they all went off home after. “Something, huh?” he adds. Asked him if this was really what he wanted to put his years into, answered that’s what he was wondering. We shook hands again with a Merry Christmas and take care.

Got to the gallery nice and early so I could watch everyone arrive for the Non Grata launch. Never been in a room with so many people that give a shit about literature. Couldn’t even hear the music – didn’t want to for all the names I got to catch. Marigold’s seen me before and I’m sure had a bit of a memory flash of our sauntering’s in Boston, so I gave him a wave and chased him around the block for an ice run, lulled into tranquility by Adam Pearson’s faint southern twang and gushing over Faulkner. People start to trickle in over time. Lo and behold, another Canadian in the crowd! Had a good time talking about our respective boonies and poked fun at Alex Muka about the Blue Jays really winning the world series – stepping back before he could knock my teeth out with that mighty forehead and add praise to a genuinely good baseball game. Lillian seemed quite surprised over the number of beheadings that come about in my snug home across the border from time to time.

Such a small room leads you to flow in and out of conversation and back again, sometimes pulled in by Lily to get myself introduced to some other fellow writers, bless her; but heard she had a few too many later that night, so maybe I’ll light a candle for the hangover. Each time the one across from you gets a little drunker, but that only led to me and Pearson rambling off with comparisons to the power and range of McCarthy and Faulker. We both agreed that McCarthy’s strength of language was unparalleled, but praised Faulkner’s range as a writer of character.

I write a few ideas and names in my notebook, slapped palms with Michael O’Donohue with some stunning photography making up a portion of the magazine. First reading I’ve been to in years. Was always a little hesitant what with the flavour of writing sifting around the university towns of my area. Can’t say I was disappointed to hear Annalisa’s piece, Post-Nut Clarity on the J Train, however. Maybe readings aren’t so bad after all. This piece particularly blew me away and makes up only a portion of the good writing in this mag.

Got to shake hands with Ross Barkan while he chatted with Muka. Was going to ask him if he’s ever been train hopping before I was pulled aside by barkeep Sudana with a proclivity to serving rather strong drinks. She challenged me to a fistfight in the alleyway upon party dispersal out of some violation I could never find the source of. Claiming pacifism, I nonetheless waited but she never showed and I took it gladly as a forfeit.

Shit, Marigold, speakers were a little loud but you sure know how to throw a party. Wondering around a little longer and finding that it was just getting good, tic-toc, gotta close shop. Bands form and scatter – disappear into the city. Muka slinked off like a beast searching for a mint to hide from the wifey how much gin he drank – which he later told me she knew the second he walked through the door just how much that was. So happened I got entwined with Marigold off to a Brooklyn afterparty. Couldn’t see much with the rain and resulting fog, but, damn, was that East River something to look at. Still, way the city looms through the fog is an experience I’ll appreciate the Borough for.

What did we talk about? Books, of course. Writing and the days ahead. Got lent a collection by Miller and wished I brought a bit of Paramo or some other obscure work to do the same. Was told by some wise soul who knew the tepid waters well that Moby Dick is the next best thing after the bible and nothing truer has been said since 1851. Even grazing these avenues is like a joyful exhale. Pearson, having disappeared, came waltzing through the door later into the night like he just stepped out for a second. We spoke of symbolic literacy and a touch of home. When it was finished, we all went our own ways. Beds or places to crash while I had a bus to catch. Maybe everyone would get a glimpse of the fog and rain through the blurry streetlight ray while I think about my footfalls from Jersey to Brooklyn and what’s in between.

Early morning Sunday, December 14^th. Quick cruise to Times Square. Got swallowed up by the flickering jumbotrons, never feeling this small under all those towers, keeping away from the Elmo mascots with sticky fingers. I’ve got some time so I go for a bit of a walk through the lower brightness under a sky so black. But the snow was falling, drifting across everything, stone to screen, curb and alley. Quiet in its own way, perhaps the nearest these streets get to sleeping.

I think about everything that’s happened in this short blip of a lifetime. Names, places and stories cram my head. But home is a calling, and my mind is bothered with that familiar tickle of doubt. Doubting if I’ll eat the next weekend and where I’ll be living in the next few months. Thinking I’m failing a few folks back home and whether all the years running and waking up for this have been worth it; if it’s really going anywhere. But I see some people down the road trying to catch snowflakes. I tell myself if I were never to return that a snowfall in Manhattan at five in the morning is a good way to go.

Missing a few z’s sure did its number. Caught a few ticks before blinking awake to a marble gray sky and rolling mountains. I watch for a long while, admiring the trees made fat with sticky snow and the shimmering Finger Lakes. Couple detours on this route prolonged a few Virginians from their own stops and bringing forth a few complaints. I tune them out with my headphones and Hope Sandoval’s voice drifting me into tranquil watchfulness as a golden eagle floats suspended against thrashing lake winds. Hallucinations started kicking in around the time we got to the border. Flickers of pale eyes, black hair, a quick fright, then gone. No biggie. For me it’s cause for notes. Not that I meant to try it through sleep deprivation and would not recommend it for sake of health and sanity.

I’m scribbling away at the notebook the entire route home, as always, flinching a little when the flickers dance across my peripheral. I probably look like a skull at this point but the glass doesn’t tell me. Puts me in a sort of hurry to get things done before I eventually clock off – and I’ve got a lot of things to get done. But I don’t worry for long. The words come, maybe a little urgently, but ceaselessly, ending the trip by sighing my relief when I finally get down beneath the covers for some much-needed sleep.

In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark; as if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial floor, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

Don’t read on if you don’t want spoilers for the ending of Moby Dick – if there can be spoilers for a nearly two-hundred-year-old book. I wouldn’t call this piece an analysis of the book in any way, more just general thoughts and praise. Still, I really don’t want to spoil the ending of something no one’s read yet and wants to get there themselves. So, SPOILERS. Enjoy.

I tend to blow through the last hundred and fifty odd pages of Moby Dick even when I try to remind myself to slow it down. It’s not so much as a rush to get to the ending rather than a feeling as if I’m slipping into Melville’s sea of prose and poetry to the point where my eyes feel as if I haven’t blinked in several chapters. I guess it could be obvious to some as to why that is. As we near the grand finale, more of what we would call story starts to weave itself into the book, leaving behind its encyclopedic chapters. Those chapters have always been slow for me, but I still appreciate them. It’s Melville flexing his experimental muscles in a way, creating a universe of whale hunting facts, sometimes inaccurate, but even then, it feels as if there’s still a point to it all. Even in its most dictionaryesque moments, there’s still a meditative feel to the novel thanks to Melville’s powerful use of language.

We see much more of Ahab as we sail on to the last page, his sermons upon the Pequod, his interactions with the Carpenter and the Blacksmith bursting with poetry that just keeps the pages turning. Ahab is a grand figure, an epic figure of Homeric proportions. He stands among the likes of Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He’s a villain. From when I first read Moby Dick to my latest reading, I’ve never really been able to shake away from that fact. Some will say he’s not a villain in the metaphorical sense, going on about the evilness of the whale, maybe even a gnostic interpretation on why his actions are actually heroic. Gnostic – biblical – or not, I’ve never been able to ignore the plight of the whales as the ‘sea dogs’ of the Pequod ‘duelled them dead without winking.’

But it does not matter if Ahab is be a villain. His grandness is incomparable. He stands like a monument over the crew of the Pequod. He could represent anything from Bloom’s Promethean figure to American imperialism – or even the mad ambition of mankind itself – for Ahab would ‘strike the sun if it insulted him.’ A line like that makes me think of the moon landing for some reason; man’s unending quest to know everything, to step on everything, to build a weapon that could kill anything that may be able to kill them, thus ensuring their self-taught superiority.

His power sways the crew with the same essence of a cult leader. Moby Dick is not a straight through ridged novel. The characters change as the book goes on, Ahab among them. The most prominent change is amongst the crew, who praise Ahab’s quest to hunt down the dreaded white whale, but doubt still lingers in their minds, slowly slipping away as Ahab works his magic over them chapter by chapter.

It is in The Candles when I believe the crew of the Pequod become fully subservient to Ahab’s will. He dances beneath ‘God’s burning finger’ as they pass through the typhoon. The lightning that courses along Queequeg’s tattoos – giving off a ‘Satanic’ glow appears almost summoned by Ahab, or perhaps taken by his hand and bent under his control. They almost fight back, given courage by Starbuck’s reasoning, and yet they cower in fear beneath Ahab’s shadow and burning harpoon, finally fleeing in dismay when ‘with one last blast of breath he extinguished the flame.’

It seems Ahab’s pagan harpooners are most committed to his cause. Under the captains orders, Tashtego’s last act of nailing a new flag to the spar shows this brainwashed devotion the most, hammering away even as his head is submerged under water, trapping a sea-hawk against it as some last defiant spite against heaven before the close.

There’s not a dull word in The Candles, as it is so with The Symphony.

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep.

Harmony of sea and sky. The imagery comparing the swelling waters with Samson’s rising and falling chest in sleep uplifts this book to yet another epic proportion.

It is in The Symphony when we see Ahab in his most human state ‘gnarled and knotted with wrinkles.’ He becomes ponderous as he lifts ‘his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven’ and the ‘lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last dispel, for a moment, that cankerous thing in his soul.’ I never noticed Ahab dropping ‘a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop’ the first time I had read Moby Dick, to then find it during my second reading. A few more readings and I was finally struck by the power of that single tear. Starbuck, seeing how heavily Ahab leans, approaches him.

Ahab laments the life he’s lived at sea. Forty years of whaling and only three of those spent ashore, a career of solitude, ambition leading onto weariness, the young wife he ‘widowed when I married her,’ leaving her behind on shore to sail the seas the next day after marrying her. What does Ahab have to show for it? Madness, frenzy, ‘boiling blood,’ a missing leg. He calls himself a fool, an old man burdened by the load he places upon himself. In Starbuck’s eye he sees his wife and child on the shore.

His words fill Starbuck with emotion for his own family waiting for him in Nantucket. His plea for Ahab to turn away from this hunt and sail home sounds like a man on the brink of terror.

Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail. Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy’s face from the window! the boy’s hand on the hill!

But Ahab refuses, for something unknown claws from within, commanding him onto this purpose. He knows that this quest is doomed.

Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field.

His defiant yet resigning words break the despairing Starbuck.

Then we arrive at The Chase chapters. The ultimate confrontation. Throughout the book, several times the question of what the whale truly is dangles itself in front of the reader. A dumb animal reacting out of instinct, or a conscious inscrutable and malicious thing, or perhaps still conscious, yet indifferent to Ahab’s quest. A first-time reading of Moby Dick, or from a surface level and logical perspective might tell a reader it is the latter. But Melville never really answers that question in the prose. We see the whale as both an animal defending itself from sudden foes and as a malicious thing bent on destroying anything in its path.

We see the malignantly of the whale when ‘the white whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made.’

Delving further into the whale’s malevolence, a scene that could almost be described as outright horror appears when Ahab’s mysterious Parsee, having vanished on the second day of the chase, now reappears ‘Lashed round and round to the fish’s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.’

But in that same moment, mere paragraphs later, Moby Dick seems intent on escaping the Pequod, dashing and slamming any plank in his way, yet intent on his own path all the same. Indifferent, or an animal that just wants to get away. Starbuck tries once more to reason with his captain.

See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!

Assaulted again by Ahab’s harpoon, the whale slaps the boat aside and knocks our Ishmael into the sea. Then the whale turns about, ‘catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it – it me be – a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing pros, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.’

I can’t help see both possibilities of the whale being a mere animal and a malicious thing in that moment.

Moby Dick strikes the ship; the hull is breached. It begins to sink and the crew laments their final moments. Ahab watches on, torn to see what his quest has brought upon him and his crew. Yet, in his madness, he fights on, fighting even if it means sinking ‘all coffins and all hearses to one common pool.’ And we are given one last soliloquy.

Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled combed of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grappled with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up my spear!

I’ve written in another recent piece on Moby Dick about its theme of silence. I’m still trying to sort out what exactly that means. In the beginning, we go from little mention to Ahab, even the white whale, until we first read his name without seeing the character himself. And when we first lay our eyes on him, though already a grand and frightening character, we still see so little, learn so little of who he is. As the novel proceeds, we see more of Ahab, hear more from him. His ravings and sermons grow and grow as if towards a crescendo. It comes to a point where these last few dozen chapters contain nothing but Ahab as we approach the finale. He talks and talks, spouting questions, demanding answers, believing those answers will come when he slays Moby Dick. He even demands the head of a recently killed Sperm Whale speak to him of the mysteries of the deep. Yet the whale never speaks. Its silence maddens him. And as Ahab gives his final sermon before throwing his harpoon, the line is caught around his neck and Moby Dick drags him down beneath the waves, uttering not a single word.

The crew watches on in silence, then the vortex of the sinking ship pulls them under. The ‘great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.’ And we are left with the epilogue, beginning with a line from the Book of Job:

and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

And then Ishmael, lone survivor of the Pequod, is saved by the passing Rachel, who ‘in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.’

My God, what a way to end off this amazing book. An epic John Martin painting put into print ending off with the quiet rolling waves of the sea. I don’t even know what else to say. This novel is a prose poem – there, that’s it, that’s enough. I want to read it again just going over these lines. I may never stop, who knows.

I wouldn’t call this piece an analysis or lecture. I love this book and for the most part wanted to put my thoughts on it into words. Knowing me, I’ll probably return to it again when I open it back up a year or less from now. Would love to know your own thoughts on this book if you care to share.

I’ve been struggling with how to approach my favorite novel of all time. Moby Dick stands as a mountain over all other books for me. I just love it. Every time I read this book – something I do once a year – I catch something new between its stack of pages. It’s a prose epic more than a novel. Experimental, Miltonic, some moments written like a musical and other moments a play – Shakespeare put into a book, the Great American Novel, a meditation on the oneness and threads of the universe more than a story delving deep into philosophy; even then you’ll find plenty of that here, in the great Moby Dick.

This isn’t a review or deep dive of this book however. I think I’m still deciding how to approach that. Rather, this piece is for me to ogle on a particular chapter with prose and imagery I find myself returning to quite often. I plan on coming at the book again soon with some sort of angle to finally attack the thing, but for now, I mostly want to give praise to a particular passage in Chapter 70: The Sphynx.

In The Sphynx, we see the aftermath of a whale hunt, a recently slain Sperm Whale done so it seems more to practice for the great showdown with the White Whale than for the profit such a kill may reward. The whale is slaughtered, cut, skinned and melted down for its precious oil – its decapitated head acts as a weight to keep the ship from tipping while the work is done. By the end of the day, the crew of the Pequod venture below deck for dinner. In the quiet to follow, out monomaniac Captain Ahab emerges. Tormented by his want for vengeance against the White Whale, tormented further by the endless questions surrounding his great enemy, Ahab approaches the severed head, observing it, then speaks to it.

“Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”

I would say this were my favorite passage in all of Moby Dick if it weren’t for so many others fighting to take that place. Maybe it would be for a time, only to change when I then run into the next jaw-dropping line, say, in The Candles or The Symphony.

What strikes me most is the imagery in this passage. I see every word in my mind perfectly, awe-inspiringly – the way the moss on the whale’s head makes it almost appear bearded. I approached this reading of Moby Dick with a more biblical perspective this time, which is why, for some reason, the line where Ahab says the whale ‘moved amid the world’s foundations’ reminds me of a passage in the Book of Job:

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Maybe Job wasn’t there to witness such, but perhaps the whale was.

I see the navies Ahab speaks about, rusting and fraying on the ocean floor. My mind takes on the perspective of the whale itself, watching from beneath the surface as two lovers leap and crash into the waves – the water shattering, the sky above them, the bubbles exploding around their forms. Of the murdered mate, I see his body sinking down, down, down for however long, wrapped in the dark of the sea while his murderers sail on above.

There’s something about silence to this novel, something I might write about in the near future. This passage ends with ‘not one syllable is thine,’ as the whale, no matter how much it has seen and how much Ahab implores it, will not give up its knowledge and secrets. Maybe it is that silence that maddens Ahab further as we see his mind further splintering throughout the fantastic chapters of this book.

There’s not much more I can say. Or maybe there is and I would just go on and on. If you haven’t read the book, please do. It is an amazing work, one of the best. It will challenge you and you will miss things, but I think to approach Moby Dick with an open mind will lead to an unforgettable experience – and further rereads will only be more enlightening.

Not that it matters, but I usually like to give myself a set goal of books to read every year. It’s not really a competition or anything, and most times my number is low compared to others – mostly because I am not a speed-reader in any way and I like to do my best to retain what I’m reading.

This year of reading has gone somewhat slow so far. More so because I’ve mostly made it a “big book year,” to finally start chopping away at the stacks of tomes growing on my desk and bookshelf. This was also the year I decided to do a marathon of Dostoevsky’s five major works, from the shorter Notes from Underground to the colossal Brothers Karamazov. Having read them all in scattered order before and wanting for a while to go through them again, originally, I never intended to return to Dostoevsky with a marathon in mind – but each time I found myself finishing one of his works, about to move onto someone else, I then picked up the next masterpiece from this grand writer.

A little tangent, but I think there’s a different kind of magic to reading someone’s body of work straight through, book-to-book, focusing entirely on that author and the words they’ve written. Dostoevsky was in my head for quite a while this year and I think I need a little more time to really put to words just how much that may have impacted me.

Anyway, as the title of this post states, I’m mostly writing this to gush about Dostoevsky’s power of character. I’m sure it’s been talked about before, but these ruminations are more for myself – and those who might not have read these works before.

The depths of his characters are some of the deepest and most complete I’ve ever read. I have compared him before as second to Shakespeare for that power alone. In another essay, I’ve talked about Dostoevsky’s chaotic, rushed and feverish prose, how it’s part of what makes the Russian writer so great. You see that same style of prose through his characters, mostly in what they say. Through their crazed tangents, ponderings, speeches and conversations that can shift like a swaying ship into a battle of words to something tender and human, we learn their political, theological and spiritual beliefs. We see how they react to the world around them, to their friends and family, to threats of violence or others trying to throw them off balance physically and intellectually.

It’s through these characters that we see Dostoevsky’s true strength as a psychologist on a level that inspired other psychologists. Like when James Baldwin said the writer’s books made one feel less alone, a reader paying attention will find character’s saying and doing things that excellently convey similar thoughts and actions to oneself – sometimes even taking that same emotion we’ve all at some point felt and pushing it to its extreme.

My favorite example is in Notes from Underground, where the Underground Man constantly throughout the novella will say one thing and do another. One moment that cracks me up most is the battle of wills between the Underground Man and his manservant, Apollon; so convinced in avoiding having to pay the man to raise himself up on a pedestal above the manservant only for Apollon’s sighs and hilarious unblinking eye contact through the crack of a door leading the Underground Man to break and go back on his word.

Why stop there when we can look at a book like Demons – a disordered, wild and bleak piece from the author’s body of work. Stepan’s conversion is its most moving and quiet chapter in many ways after the teetering madness of those previous, shown so subtly throughout the novel as we see his perspective of the world around him shift. Then there is the darkness of the At Tikhon’s chapter and Stavrogin’s confession of his assault on a young girl, his every thought taking us through the dark corridor of his mind, his befriending her, the way he almost acts like a child before that very moment just to put her guard down. Sickening stuff. Evil is something written about often in superficial ways, not that I would say that’s the incorrect way. Often it’s a representation of something – Sauron, Anton Chigurh. At Tikhon’s, for me, is one of the darkest chapters I’ve read anywhere for how deep it goes into the mind of a skillfully written character that specifically chose evil when he also could have chosen good. And yet, evil is not all we see. We learn a lot about Stavrogin – even if for the most part it is at a distance. We are given plenty of room to study his character ourselves, revealing to us his contradictions and emotions. It’s almost why I prefer reading the At Tikon’s chapter at the end of the book, where we see a character that feels so utterly human suddenly shift into something so wickedly evil. And if one thinks about it, the evil of Dostoevsky’s most heinous characters are not that far off from ourselves. Every dark act is an extreme to an emotion or thought we have once felt. There’s enough material in this writer’s body of work to make even casual readers realize just how much bad we are capable of.

As I was writing this, my thoughts have already started slipping to another piece of magic in Dostoevsky’s works, that many of the discussions and arguments between various characters like those of Raskolnikov and Porfiry, the Inquisitor and Jesus, Ivan and his brother Alyosha, are in many ways Dostoevsky arguing back and forth with himself, doubts and convictions always constantly shifting. Obvious, sure – and definitely already written about. But the thought is starting to dominate what I think about regarding Dostoevsky as a writer anyway. I’ll have to come back to that at some point.

I might have to make a marathon like this a recurring thing, maybe something every couple of years. Though I’m certain I will return to Demons and Brothers quite often.

Thanks for reading my shifting thoughts. Maybe some hesitant readers will want to take a crack at Dostoevsky now.

I’ve sometimes been asked by friends, followers and strangers why I post so many quotes from writers of the past on Notes. I aim for one a day, and, for the most part, have followed through with it almost from the moment I joined Substack. I won’t lie that a majority of my readers/followers are here for the most part because of these quotes, rather than my own work.

This output of quotes by others before me has resulted in a few to claim I’m nothing more than a bot account. Others say and probably will say I will be building my own ‘success’ off the backs of others. I’m not necessarily writing this to fight against accusations of being AI; I know the work I put into every inch of this process I’m going through, and don’t care to argue. But I would like to explain myself.

I was always a reader as far as I could remember, but was not led towards certain works like the canon. I was given free reign in many ways to find it myself. When I eventually did, I dove in head first. I mean – Lord! – could these books pack a punch. They made something click for me, as if I found something I was always looking for. I’m sure many agree that reading the works of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Kerouac – and many more – at a steady and consistent pace can be a life changing experience if one really reads openly and deeply.

Alongside this experience came the quotes. Marked from pages I would annotate or find over years on the web. These words, insights, passages, all taken from books I had read or those I had never even heard of. In a way, these quotes led me into becoming a deeper reader. This constant feed of rereading a passage from Moby Dick or As I Lay Dying, as well as rereading the works themselves, helped me ponder what I was really exploring. It was almost as if, one day, as I poured over these words I realized: “Oh, so that’s what it means.”

I discovered books and writers I had never even heard of before thanks to these accounts, botted or not. These are books I perhaps never would have found if they had not been lifted from the page for me to find. These words made me ponder the great questions of life that makes literature so powerful. Life, death, philosophies, love, friendship, the fabric of reality. A drastic change came over me as I surrounded myself with such transformative words that now float through my conscious thoughts every day.

I’m confident enough to admit that these quotes, in some way or another, and among so many other factors, led me to where I am as a writer today. My readers would most likely have never even heard my name and perhaps my draw to writing would even be weaker.

I believe that to be a great writer requires unshakeable belief in your work and who you are. We live in a world that seems hellbent on tearing such beliefs apart. Many break under the weight or are shaped by it in ways that make them bitter and cynical. Dread can make one blind and begin to sway to the wayside. Quotes, for me, are just like any motivational video you may find on the web pushing you towards a goal you deeply desire – to lift a certain weight, climb a mountain, or write with unceasing passion.

I post these quotes to inspire others as they have inspired me. These insights can not only give one the belief and motivation to chase their passion but can also mold one’s life into something unrecognizable – can further push them into a better life, even if they never take up the pen.

My output on Notes is, of course, a way to make the algorithm look my way and catch more eyes. A majority of the followers I’ve gained through these efforts will not read my work, whether they be bots or real living people. But, for every dozen faceless accounts that subscribe to Blind Poets, there’s always one gem that climbs through the mud who will become a genuine reader. Then there are those who will reach out, engage in conversation and trade words like any other person at my favorite diner might. Even if some of them are those that just want to tear apart the words or the person who spoke them, finding these people is like striking gold, all of it an opportunity for me to learn something new or see something in a different way and perhaps do the same for others. It’s one thing to speak with your friends and family who do not read like you do, if ever; but it’s another to speak to someone who has, at least somewhat, the same sort of wiring as yourself.

There’s a chance, even if small, that somewhere out there is someone who may look upon a saying by a great writer that I posted and may be changed by it. They may be led to write, or to release their work where before they never would have even considered it. They may be led to discuss such words with their peers, others or myself. Their lives may even be changed in some way beyond pen and paper. To change people, to make them see the world differently, to affirm their lives is more fulfilling to me than sitting with these words to fuel my own love for writing.

Thanks for reading my scrambled thoughts.

Do any of you ever approach a book with certain expectations only to be disappointed so much you nearly throw it across the room and reconsider the power of said book as you originally thought? Do you then look at the rest of that authors body of work under their belt and hesitate on ever touching them for fear of slogging through a similar grueling tome again?

I have a complicated relationship with Dostoevsky. I loved him, then I hated him, now I love him even greater.

I didn’t always read the best books ever to come from the written word. There was a point in my life when I never read a word of Melville, Faulkner, even Dostoevsky. I heard their names plenty of times, knew the concepts of a few of their books, but the interest to dive into them wasn’t there. Maybe I thought I didn’t need them. Can you believe that?

Behold and many years ago, I began reading the real stuff. Dove or slipped, I can’t really say. I began to listen a little more to what people were saying regarding Dostoevsky. At this time in my life, I was hooked on the themes of human nature – the good and despicable – and deep insights into psychology of which everyone said Dostoevsky was a master of. Thing is, when I finally turned to the master novelists work, it was rather early into my exploration of the canon and power of what good fiction really does.

I think that was my first wrong step.

I had read Notes from Underground. I liked the last half, but my, my, was that last half tough for me. I thought, okay, hey, some of these novellas written by the masters can be pretty dense, hard-hitting, let’s step into the novel and see what we could find with perhaps “a little more breathing room”. I decided Crime and Punishment was the best next step.

Took my about six months to read. I was gripped for the first hundred pages, but after that point, my eyes started to get a little crossed.

My biggest complaint, as is the main topic of this rumination, was the prose. I don’t even know how I can describe it. Loud is one way to put it. Ecstatic, rushed, wild and all over the place, outright unhinged at times. It was repetitive many a time. I found myself, in those six months, to be editing the text in my head, telling myself this passage would have been better if a passage here and there was trimmed of its fat, would even roll my eyes to characters after an event had just happened only for that character to explain what just happened in the next paragraph. For me, it was quite simply a slog.

I put the book down when I was finished and am ashamed to this day to say I was glad it was over and even believed I got nothing out of it. No themes woven between the text, no deep insights beyond the prophetic dream of the main character at the end of the book. For a while, after reading that exact scene, I thought this was great and for a moment believed it was all worth it. Then I remember the six months it took to read the roughly six hundred pages of Crime and Punishment and decided it wasn’t worth it at all.

I was confused. After everything I had heard and read of Dostoevsky and his work, I thought we would hit it off like nothing. Where was the deep exploration into evil, goodness, willpower and God? I blamed the translation I read. I blamed its age. In the end I started to believe Dostoevsky just wasn’t for me.

But there was always something calling me back to his work. I can’t describe that feeling, but I get it with certain works I struggle with - that despite the toil, there’s this feeling as if you just caught sight of a point of light somewhere in all this darkness and you want to chase its warmth. Maybe it’s my fault for being the kind of reader that jumps into the harder stuff without massaging myself in. I knew with some shame that Dostoevsky wasn’t a flop, that there were gems in his words. I just needed to know where to look. I had read a dozen more books since then, reading deeply, reading further on Dostoevsky and his work, scholars and reviewers and so on. I built a better understanding of literature’s true might. It was when I dove back into Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment that the pieces started coming together.

I understood after giving it another try that Dostoevsky’s prose, the ranting and raving and spitting, is all intentional, that much of it serves a deep purpose to each book. In a way, similar to Shakespeare, Dostoevsky’s writing is a language of its own. I started to see that prose similar to Faulkner or Nabokov – the flowery sentences, descriptions to make your eyes sparkle – would have made Dostoevsky’s work suffer, in a way, if he had gone the same route as them. His work is about character and ideas, voices through scrambled thoughts rather than long poetic passages of the subject at hand, pacing and speaking their thoughts similarly to how the writer would have gotten it down himself.

Much of it is reminiscent of an early stream of consciousness style, perhaps coming off as such due to how many of his books were written – recited to his stenographer and wife, Anna, who strove to put his words to ink with the same haste as he spoke them. I haven’t read many deeper biographies on Dostoevsky so far, but if his prose was intentional, as I’ve heard here and there from scholars that it was, it seemed each style was crafted for each book to represent the mind and setting of the stories themselves.

Understanding this, I began to flow with Dostoevsky’s work with new excitement. Reading deeply, I was immersed with the tense, anxious thoughts of Raskolnikov, felt Mishkin’s serenity and impatience when facing down the firing squad, couldn’t help myself but laugh at the comical moments threaded between the darker pages of Demons, and was enchanted by the deep emotions running through The Brothers Karamazov thrumming like a beating heart.

Maybe this highlights the importance of rereading more than anything else. Now that the foundation was laid with my earlier reads, I was given more space to really look around the room I was in, metaphorically speaking. I caught wind of the humor Dostoevsky was prevalent in using – something not brought up quite as often as the bleaker aspects to his work. But I found even more crammed into these pages than I thought I would - the deranged, hyperventilating absurdity in Demons to the tense air between the Underground Man and Apollon I couldn’t help laughing at.

The symbols, allegories, metaphors, themes and so much more is all there, hidden beneath the convulsive prose. You see Raskolnikov’s crossing the line from fantasizer to murderer when he enters the old pawnbroker’s apartment as stepping over a figurative threshold. The prophetic vision of Dostoevsky alone is outstanding, in my opinion, seen best through his work Demons, with seething radicals describing Europe as a Babylon set to fall and how could we forget the toll for these “utopians” to achieve their peace will only be found through the lapping off of a “hundred million heads.” And in one of the most dazzling passage I have ever read, Alyosha’s spiritual awakening – described with a touch of ambiguity as “something” steps into his soul. Reading closely, you catch wind of the psychological depths Dostoevsky was able to explore. Each decision or indecision, each atrocity or act of goodness by a certain character - actions, thoughts, cowardice, guilt or grief. You read these words and, like James Baldwin, understand that it has all happened before, and knowing that makes you feel less alone.

I know there is plenty more to pour over in this body of work. Deeper insights that go far beyond a mere religious believer that some will chalk him up to be as if it were so simple. I know I’ve only scratched the surface of what some would call the Russian soul, and through Dostoevsky, among the plethora of other Russian writers, one may find something all too human beneath much deeper depths.

This is mostly just a ramble of thoughts on my part. I’ve seen people here and there that have struggled the same way I have with Dostoevsky’s work, with some even resolving never to return to him. I’m sad to admit I was nearly one of them. As unacademic as this is, I hope this stream of thoughts can give a little clarity to anyone struggling with their volume of the Russian master’s work and perhaps convince those who walked away to return.

When I pour through the pages of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury, I feel as if I’m sitting in a dark forest before a low fire, across the flames of which sit Faulkner himself, pipe in mouth, the twang of his voice seeing to mold the very smoke into flashes of burning bars, floods, skies soaring with buzzards and crumbling plantations.

He was a man in love with his art, striving with such focus on his craft that one wonders just how deep he had to dive into the void and who - what - had taken his place. His characters could ruminate on the weather and just as quickly spout great Platoesque philosophies all hidden beneath layers of language and thought from characters so in tuned with the Deep South that one would be forgiven in thinking these were real characters.

But through all the prose, characters, setting and endless passages on time, I find small paragraphs nestled between the words describing, almost as if they were parables, on the craft of writing, even on the powerful urge to create. So deep and entwined with the foggy air of a Mississippi river in the bird-awakening twilight.

Maybe whoever reads this will understand such an urge – a clawing deep down you can’t ignore, knowing that doing so will only make it worse, even painful, breaking you into a sweat, forcing a cry from your raw throat, lessened when you are finally able to return to the brush, chisel or pen. A compulsion, a twitching of muscle memory collected from something else entire, be it river or song. A daemon whispering in the ear. The upholder of some oral vow.

Take this passage from Absalom, Absalom! A stream of words meant to be an epiphany for the character of Thomas Sutpen, the mythical figure with a long shadow over all things Faulkner believed made up the essence of the South, but which I believe can also be attributed to the call all great artists feel from the depths of the heart.

On page 178 in my edition:

“All of a sudden he discovered, not what he wanted to do but what he just had to do, had to do it whether he wanted to or not, because if he did not do it he knew that he could never live with himself for the rest of his life, never live with what all the men and women that had died to make him had left inside of him for him to pass on, with all the dead ones waiting and watching to see if he was going to do it right, fix things right so that he would be able to look in the face not only the dead ones but all the living ones that would come after him when he would be one of the dead.”

I feel a lot of Faulkner speaking in this passage. It reminds me of what he said in one of few interviews in his life:

“The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then.”

He likens it to a sensation of just knowing what is it you are compelled to do. This understanding that to refuse this call – need, desire, cause – would only be smothering a piece of yourself, a suppression that will come to haunt you in your dreams and seep its way through you like a rot and cause all else to fall around you.

It’s a powerful passage. Even if it wasn’t a nod to the compulsion and determination of the artist, it has still carried me through dark moments of doubt. Like the work of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Woolf, Baldwin, Conrad, Joyce and so many more with stories and characters that can make one feel less alone in the world, Faulkner’s subtle allusions to the duty of an artist can also.

Thank you.

Let’s be honest, the world is set against you. And not just because you write. This fallen world, it seems, despises those that want to be themselves – who strive for their passions and commit to their obsessions.

The world seems indifferent to literature these days, even the arts as a whole. Moreso, it seems there are more forces by number today who seem bent on destroying the written word. You hear a dozen different names at fault for this state. Publishers, editors, agents, politicians and contrarians. Those who deem the written word meaningless now that everything has been written. Others who simply want to walk into extinction and bring everything with them. And so on and so on.

What’s wrong with them? Various artists will give you different answers – leaving you to summing it up to everything. Profit chasing, leaning on the numbers. Personal preference against a certain prose style. Not the right story this particular person is looking for. Bias. Politics. Outright laziness. Contempt. Envy.

Other times it seems it’s not the fault of a literary establishment at all. These days, most people just don’t read. The visual has rotted the mind to the point more and more generations are growing up with little to no literacy ability to begin with. We numb out minds doomscrolling endless feeds of memes, cute animals, ‘alpha males’ yelling at the camera about how weak you are, sexualized content and tragedies taking place on the other side of the world. If most people today have anything to say about reading, its how boring it is to read seemingly endless pages of text, or how meaningless it is to read something made from fiction, incomprehensible to the universal truths fiction often gives one a glimpse of – often pried from within our very selves. Or is it that reading is too difficult, that the imagination is too weak to picture the scenarios described on the page? Or perhaps it is that a paragraph is simply too long – and by the end the reader can no longer remember how the passage had begun in the first place.

At times it seems the world – all its people included – seem to be working on forgetting the power of reading all together. It seems, in many ways, to fear an inward look into itself. For there are stars in the deep recesses of our hearts, yes, but there is also darkness. So much darkness. The thought of such realizations in our “perfect, pretty, everything is positive” world, that we can be just as evil as those we claim to stand against, can break down most into tears.

It can be enough to give up, isn’t it? Why not take an easier path? Do what the publishers tell you to do – write the things they want to see, follow the market, the numbers, all the Booktoks telling you what you should be, what you should write.

Let me ask you something. Did Hemingway listen to those people? Did Joyce? What of Faulkner? Morrison? Flannery O’Connor was told by the people of her town, including her own mother, that she should write happier stories, things that people will actually enjoy. Michelangelo craved to sculpt marble at a time when the artform was at its least popular, outright circling the drain into total disregard before he took up the chisel. Can you look at our history and tell yourself that every writer that wrote something worth a damn to the human soul followed the rules? Look at most of their personal stories and you’ll find them battling with the crowd over what they would write and publish. The crowd, their friends, even their families tried to hold them back – encouraging to be more in tune to the times. They didn’t listen – they followed their own rules and look where it brought them.

You must not care about how much the world sets itself against you. In the end, you control how you will face this outcome. Strive, climb, seek, discover. Be willing to fail; live in ecstasy just to be able to toil and struggle for it. Try and then try again. Take the damn risk.

Do not consider what the world wants from your work. Most who dare make demands are those who seek to twist your work for themselves. Do it for yourself. Sail the forbidden waters within yourself. Snag the great whale that comes passing beneath the surface. Land on coasts with stars whispering in the sands.

Stop blaming the world because no one may look at your work. Any work that is not completed is because of yourself. You are your own worst enemy, ignore all its doubts. If there is an audience, they will find you. If your first story is answered with crickets, write another one. Do it for you, but also search deep into yourself, deeper than you ever had before. Try, for the sake of whatever god may be out there, to remember the very first reason – the first spark – that set you on this path. What was the cause you dedicated yourself to? What made you ache for the pen? Keep writing.

This was written in the heat of the moment and was mainly a way for me to shout without much care for who may hear. If you find any odd phrases or bad grammar and what not, welcome to Blind Poets, it’s going to happen.

We are not born into the aristocratic class of which many writers that have made their mark on the world came from. We don’t have the leisure to travel the world with the funds of a patron or inheritance. Many of us have families, responsibilities, jobs that suck away the hours we know with so much dread could be used for writing. We do what we can to find the time, to carve it out of a packed schedule, chipping away every useless distraction and activity to clear enough space for us to sit over the keyboard and deliver our work of art.

Many only find themselves with two hours of time to write a day. Many more even less than that. Then, after toiling to find such time, we sit before our work and nothing comes. You freeze. You stare at the screen or sheet of paper and you try and you try but the mind needs the time you have built to warm itself up and get the gears turning. By the time they do, you may notice most of your precious minutes have been wasted and your left with only a last few to write down what you can before you rise and attend to your daily tasks.

Even more tragic is how restless we become when facing this blank wall. We fidget, tear ourselves from the page and take notice of the books on our desk, the painting on the wall, the trees seen through the window. Or eyes wander to the phone sitting across the room or in whatever nook you hid it in. Set on silent, yet in our mind we feel it vibrating with each notification and message. Before you even rise to pick it up, it’s already over, the magic severed.

It’s enough to make some turn from their craft forever. Our time is so short. And if the brain takes its time to draw gold from the well in our souls, what can we do?

The habit makes things easier. A routine. Sitting down at your desk every day even if the output is small. Those little steps take you far.

But sometimes there is no magic to it. We crave those days of euphoric bliss we once had when we first took up the pen. I tell you it can still be found by doing what I call writing into the void. Simply enough, it is the flow state. That moment of deep concentration and focus, a state in which something else takes over be is spirit or daemon. To me, it feels like a river, its current flowing through me. No writing is unfamiliar with it. You step out of your own body, immerse yourself in the words. The senses are dulled, music fades, your aching fingers go unnoticed as you type, even the sound of the keys vanishes. Immersed so deeply, you don’t even notice the shadows climb up the walls as the sun makes is journey across the sky, rising in the dawn or falling into night. Then your time comes. You blink and the world comes back to you, or you come back into the world. Before you are pages worth more to you than gold.

There’s nothing new to this method of writing into the void, only that it is cranked up a few levels. I put this process to mind when I read that the American writer, William Faulkner, was said to write 10,000 words a day in his peak. I have no idea if this is true, but if you look at his earlier period novels, from 1929 to 1942, Faulkner was turning out novel after novel, spitting out ten quality, ground-shaking words in little more than a decade. These works range from The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August and the monumental Absalom, Absalom!

What we know of Faulkner’s writing process was just that – the man wrote. He slapped his fingers on the keys and kept going until the clock said stop. Many drafts show little to no punctuation at all, some sentences, even paragraphs, with no spaces in between. A mess, some would say. But it’s the focus that’s important as well as an output that can be gold for one with a tight schedule.

We all have our writing process. Our magical hour, or proper setting, the right music, the right clothes and room temperature. Some hate the thought of writing with such wild chaos. Truman Capote wouldn’t even call it writing, saying: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

But if it gets the work done, who cares? For me, as someone who likes a loose outline out of what I write, it’s a good way to break from the routine. Routine, while important, can become rigid and confining if kept under lock and key for long enough. Changing it up now and then can be fun, can be refreshing for the mind. Just let everything go, allow everything to come flowing out of you. Don’t pay any mind to punctuation or messy sentences – it will still be there when you come back. For me, the breaking of my normal routine for writing into the void feels like a weight lifting from my shoulders. I breathe a sort of relaxed sigh when it’s done.

Maybe it’s not the perfect answer for someone struggling to bring the words out of them. I don’t know, I just know it works for me. Writing into the void is similar to leaping into its dark depths and letting its flow take you where you will. It is a surrendering of yourself to the process, the will of something else, a sort of trust in this daemon so that it can get the work done.

But the muse must find you working first. Always remember that. It will not carry you to the typewriter, nor lift your hands to the keys. You must flip the switch, get the waters flowing. Only then will it strike and then you will be there, in the void.

Do what you can, anything to get the words down, as long as you write. Follow a certain exercise, watch the characters in your head, note their every movement – start a story about the chipmuck in your backyard. “Once upon a time,” and so on. It is a walk leading up to the run. You’ll feel it as you notice your fingers begin to run faster than you can type. Then, you know you’ve made it.

Don’t touch your phone. If you write in the morning, the void is at its strongest when you are tired. To open your phone upon waking is to make that veil between these realities a wall – then the moment is gone. Hide the thing, sit down and tell yourself you can do nothing but write, then start.

If you write at the end of the day, follow something similar. Find a moment where you can put the phone down for a while. Find some silence, bathe in it, look over your notes and let the mind begin to work itself into the raging fire you will use to forge thought into words.

Do it everyday. It will become easier. You will come to love it if you aren’t already – and if you feel the process is lost to you, then perhaps you’ll find it against. Remind yourself in your darkest days why you are doing this and then keep going.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

// Helen Keller

Most writers are often propped up as a lone wolf type. An outlaw that sticks to their own, going through life with no friends, to places where no one knows his face - seeing and breathing the world. They hunch over their desks, clumps of discarded paper laying at their feet, losing sense of the journey of sun and stars as they strive to capture within the written word a moment in life. Scarred, teeth chipped, bones broken. They sleep little, confide in no one. They have stories of passions and exaltations to tell - carrying a need to shout into the void.

But I don’t much believe in the lonely artist. The great artists who pushed their craft to such extremes that it could never be missed were never alone. Don’t get me wrong, the act of creation itself, be it literature, painting, sculpture, is a solitary act. It must be done alone, the noise cancelled, our inner well explored. But when I look at their careers, their lives, I see not men and women who stood alone against the world. I see them flanked by likeminded individuals, all playing some part, even small, in helping the artists flash like a shooting star across the sky, leaving behind words that make us tremble.

Anthony Marigold from Guerrilla Literature highlighted the importance of community in art through a fantastic article titled: The Rebels Need to Topple the Literary Establishment. Quoting his words below:

“In the past, much of great literature came from small bands of kindred spirits working in close proximity: the Lost Generation artists in Paris; the Barranquilla Group in Colombia; the Literary Brat Pack in New York. Nowadays, they are all too disparate, making it difficult for new ideas to reach escape velocity. The lone wolf is at a great disadvantage compared to the outsider surrounded by other rebels like him, groups that can riff on ideas and band together in the face of the Establishment’s fury.”

It's a fantastic article on its own by Marigold, highlighting the current state of literature and giving one much to ponder. I encourage anyone that may be reading to check out the full article here.

It was the call for unity that captured me most. He spoke of the Lost Generation, later on speaking of the Impressionists, two groups with great impacts on the world of their craft, sending ripples still felt to this day. This highlight got me thinking of other artists of the past, men and women with such large shadows they are still seen after death. But when I look at them, even if they were not a part of a formal group such as the Lost Generation, I always find, in the wings of their careers, figures who, no matter how small, did their part in making these writers known.

Let’s jump down the rabbit hole of history.

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Let’s start with a bang and talk about William Shakespeare. The playwrights of Elizabethan England would have all known each other. Working together as a part of the same company, even as rivals. Throughout his career, Shakespeare would have known and perhaps worked with the likes of Thomas Middleton, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, going on to collaborate and train the up-and-coming playwright John Fletcher. Referenced most would have been the friendly rivalry between he and fellow playwright, Ben Jonson. In this small but competitive world of theater steadily growing in London, these artists would have collaborated and built off the work of the other – while also not abstaining from moments of criticism. It is even said the famous scene of the play-within-a-play in Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a satire of his contemporaries, mocking their styles and methods.

But it wasn’t just the other writers of his time which helped further Shakespeare’s vision. He worked for a whole company which would have had a hand in chopping the material into something to be performed at a timely manner. They would have offered criticism and helped inspire changes and polish to the man’s work. Basically, they would have been the equivalent of editors today. Richard Burbage, the best actor of the Chamberlain’s Men, later becoming the King’s Men, who have worked closely with the playwright to bring his ideas onto the stage the way it was meant to be.

Let us move onto Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, both of whom were friends. In 1816 they, among Mary’s husband, Percy Shelley, along with Byron’s physician and writer, John William Polidori, spent the summer together in Geneva. Rainy weather caused them to spend much of their time indoors, telling stories and encouraging each other to write something of their own. This encouragement, as well as the dreary weather and the folktales lingering in her mind led to the inspiration of Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne were friends also, meeting at a literary gathering and continuing their correspondence through letters. It was Hawthorne that inspired Melville to push the limits of his own writing, molding and adding such complexities that it brought out the fantastic and monumental Moby Dick. How much hollower would the world be without that book? My gratitude for Hawthorne will remain endless.

And what of these giant figures comprising the Lost Generation? Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Hart Crane, Harry Crosby. I could go on and on, many more readers are certain to know.

These people mingled, partied, traveled together. They reviewed each others work, made suggestions, got each other published through their own connections. It was Gertrude Stein who took Hemingway under her wing when he came to Paris. She encouraged his writing and introduced him to the likes of Pound, Fitzgerald and others. It was Pound who got Hemingway’s poetry published. It was also Pound who connected Joyce to this congregation of writers, reviewing his work, exchanging letters and boosting each other up. Hemingway, Joyce and Fitzgerald attended the same cafes, drank together and even fought together. Well, Joyce was at least there to witness such fights, cheering Hemingway on as he slugged at his chosen opponent.

William Faulkner, said to be somewhat of a loner in the category of the Lost Generation – experiencing Paris when its literary height had already come and gone. Even then, there were other writers at his corner. He went to New Orleans, bubbling with its own literary movement at the time, rubbing elbows with Sherwood Anderson, who inspired the Mississippi writer to further hone in on his craft, to cultivate a vision truer to himself.

Down the years, who could forget Truman Capote and Harper Lee? A sad story in the end, I’ll admit. Jealousy and envy led to a rivalry that seemed never to be mended despite having a friendship since childhood. Yet both impacted each other’s lives in a such a way to help them craft their own masterpieces.

Don’t let me forget the Beat Generation. The true outlaw poets, master of style and prose, who traveled the roads with a rucksack and poetry stuffed in their back pockets, intent on living life to the fullest and putting their experiences to words. Members including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neil Cassidy. Again, I could go on and on - but not before I throw Bob Kaufman into the lot, who must never be forgotten.

Many in the Beat Generation were friends. They met and mingled in cafes and bars. They introduced each other to more members of their time as well as editors, publishers and so on. There are photos of plenty of the above-mentioned poets together. Hell, they even visited the graves of those that passed before them.

This doesn’t mean writers or artists have to be friends just because they like the same things either. Another contemporary of Shakespeare named Robert Greene was critical of the playwright’s work in his early years – calling him an ‘upstart crow’. Look at William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway when they butted heads. Constantly trying to top the other in skill and experience, ranging from their talent as writers to their heroism in the first world war – ironic being that both of them exaggerated their roles in such a conflict. Then again, I wouldn’t much call what these two had between each other a simmering hatred but more of a friendly rivalry. Each of their spats containing within a slight edge of humor. As well as remember Faulkner’s detailed review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, glowing with praise. Not something I feel would be done for someone you hated.

And hey, don’t think a literary community, band, or gang of outlaws, is just limited to writers themselves. Agents, editors, critics or anyone with a loud enough voice and influence are just as important. Look at Sylvia Beach, who published many of the Lost Generation’s work, giving them an outlet to be noticed by readers. Then there’s Charles Bukowski, one of the few I would consider a real lone wolf. But where would he be if John Martin had not seen something in this aspiring poet and taken a chance with his work? Surely, Bukowski would have spent the rest of his days alone in his apartment, writing away to a world that would not listen.

The stories are endless, but I think I’ve made my point.

But how do we achieve this same kind of unity? I don’t think there’s one answer, truth be told. I think with the internet and Substack itself; the possibilities are broader than they were in past eras.

I think the key is in what’s listed above. You can find your tribe locally, staking your claim on some bar or café for others to congregate. Reach out to those you’re drawn to, make connections, act like a human being and start a conversation. Offer tools that may help one another, or just have a damned good time with yourselves. Who knows what a simple conversation could lead to? Beyond companionship to stand against the spite and malice of an old guard that strives to see you forgotten – a simple book recommendation from one friend to another could spark one’s imagination just as Byron did for Shelley. Sometimes it’s hard to get your friends to understand your work, what you’re trying to accomplish. Some are willing to take a look at it, but how many of them are looking at it the way you’re asking them to? Dissecting, analyzing, ruminating. It’s hard. Even if you’re friends read, some people just want simply that, to read. There could be a likeminded artist out there who can and would love to help in such a way. Without an agent or team of editors, knowing someone with similar understandings can be big. You never know if you don’t try.

With the tool of the internet, the opportunity becomes even greater. Like their work, don’t be afraid to slap down a comment, ask questions, offer criticism. Trust me, the real artists love that kind of stuff – they want to grow and sometimes well thought criticism can do wonders.

And no, this doesn’t mean we all have to meet up in one room and write together. God no, writing is just too personal to me, an opening up of myself that can only be done in solitude. Sure, maybe it will work for you; again, the options are limitless.

What is most strikingly apparent is the power Substack itself has given artists to make their voices heard, as well as giving readers the power to hear such a shout. The reader also has the ability to make the next generation of artists possible, supporting their work however they can. It really is a new playing field for writer and reader and I’m ecstatic to see where it will go.

But this isn’t something that will be done by writers alone, though I will admit, in this day and age, we need more writers who can market themselves. Just like Sylvia Beach for the Lost Generation and John Martin for Bukowski, there is a need for new dedicated publications unafraid to take the leap of promoting another’s work – who know good literature when they see it and will strive and toil just as hard as the writers themselves to see it come to light. They will need to be savvy in the publishing world, as well they will need connections of their own, and they will be brave, braver even than other artists. They will be willing to expose a work outside of the old guard’s checklist without so much as a flinch.

Let me mention something regarding the rivalry Faulkner and Hemingway were known to have. Don’t go out there begging someone to reach out and be some kind of nemesis. Don’t go looking for it. It’s fake and we all know it will be. I shouldn’t have to say it but I feel like I do. If it happens, it happens. Just do your work.

But let me stress this. A new generation of writers will not succeed out of purely transactional desires. We are here to make our lives a work of art and I believe friendship is another piece of that art. Bringing the art life to fruition will require you to be true to yourself and those you will come to know along the way. Such honestly may inspire dozens to do the same.

I’ll say again that there is something romantic in the idea of a lone wolf. Creation is a solitary act. It takes guts. It is a stripping bare of the soul. The process can destroy some and lead others to realizations that could never be found otherwise. But a lone wolf is easy to kill. A body of work read and acknowledged by no one is easy prey for the critics and gatekeepers. Alone, the artist will be thrown into the shadows before they ever have the chance of reaching the light. But when there are those at your corner who share the same drive as you – willing to shout and cheer and give a helping hand can make all the difference. Even if we may never meet in the same room – each will bear the same passions drawn from the same well. Their convictions will make them fearless.

In the end, we’re all going to do our work in isolation. Sometimes just knowing we aren’t alone in this struggle is enough on its own.

Thank you.

There is excitement, if you can call it that, for the opportunity to bear witness to how AI will shape our world. Its impact on humanity, our consciousness and spirit, the nations of the world and its laws. As a writer, how can I ignore the opportunity of recording how this will play out? What tragedies and affirmations will come of it and how will it impact us all?

This excitement, however, makes up only a fraction of my thoughts. The rest, unfortunately, are of concern. I see the benefits it could bring – what it could do in the medical field, how it could fight and impact crime, how it could also benefit the artist in pursuing their work and seeing it to its completion. I look at the benefits it could bring me as a writer: the ability to tear myself away from the screen, my needs fulfilled through the functions of a robot while I am given the time to fully dedicate myself to the written word.

But is this really what will happen? In a world of flawed humans, creating with their own flawed hands something of their own design – can we trust each other not to ruin it out of some Dostoevskian need to shatter it all out of sheer boredom? Can we trust the future tyrants not to abuse it and the idle citizen not to give everything up when it is demanded from the authoritative voice?

These ruminations make me think of the internet as a whole – AI, and the progression of certain technologies that can link our very minds to the web. There is something to this linking I find most disturbing, as there are those who consider the internet to be a physical manifestation of the subconscious – as well there are others who believe, through the processing and downloading of our minds onto a shared digital space will create a manifested collective consciousness.

The thought leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. The subconscious is of something inward. What this ‘manifestation’ people speak of is created out of cold metal and wires, something physical, a distortion of something we wish we could have but fear the climb which is required to achieve it. The digital world is physical, its reach still pales to what is threaded together through dreams. The lies, gossip, misinformation, propaganda, bullying, cynicism, life denial, brain rot, abuse, misuse, exploitation, meaningless meandering of dead eyed influencers all moving along this bloody conveyor belt. It has brought some to suicide and left others as shells. Why would I want to plug my brain into that?

We want things for the world and humanity that appear noble on the surface. But just as we want to colonize planets before truly knowing and exploring the depths of the sea on the world we still live on, so too do we seek to launch our brains into a system of code before fully discovering and knowing the deepest depths of our souls.

It was Tom Robbins who said: “I believe in political solutions to political problems. But man’s primary concerns aren’t political; they’re philosophical. Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, they’re condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. It’s a cruel, repetitious bore.”

We think a new phone will make our lives better. A better wage, the new car, new clothes, a house. We have left a trail of bodies in pursuing an Eden on earth. We tell ourselves to take this pill, to ostracize this dissident, to strip all matter of our brains and replace it with a cold metal shell. Only then, we are told, will the world become a paradise. Only then will we be saved.

Mankind seems bent on proceeding down this path regardless of the dangers it brings before taking one look into their own selves. Many of us seek to bring about a better world, yet we want to take the shortcut, to avoid the struggle of fixing ourselves before we can focus on anything else. Another phone isn’t going to help us, nor a chip in our brains, nor a computer built by bias hands. It’s an endless cycle of torment and memory loss leading to more torment and memory loss – a wheel cranked by our own hands. Seeing the current road we are on, I see the outcome being no different as all the other ages in humanity’s short time on this earth. This time it will involve new and shinier stuff.

Who knows what will become of us in the dawn of this new world. I’ve chosen my road already, ashes or utopia - so I’ll just keep on writing.

“It’s so freeing, it’s beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

// David Lynch

I could talk about his work, but there are many out there already discussing such things. A plethora of work that has touched me in a deep way as they have for many others. Art that I would lift to the heights of Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Kurosawa, including artists of canvas and the written word, yet hitting whole other strings very few, and I mean very few, other artists have, sparking within me profound thoughts and emotions that affirm my being.

But what I admire most in the man was his extreme joy for life. This was a man that found life in the beautiful, the comedic, the horrifying. Someone who could ruminate on deep existential thoughts and live life with carefree bliss. Someone who sat outside on an L.A. Street with a cow to promote Inland Empire. Someone who spent whole minutes encouraging a child to display fear and terror in a scene that only a few seconds worth were used in the final cut - having fun all the while, speaking with joy, excitement. An artist who moved me through the beauty of tender moments between friendships and love, the frightening strobic assault in scenes of horror, and nearly brought me to tears as The Elephant Man’s Joseph Merrick cries out: “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!”

He spoke with a thrill layering his words, a thrill for simply being alive. He immersed himself into his art, adopting it as a lifestyle, not just a hobby. He was no saint, but he was human. Just as he could bring you to meditational awareness by talking about the most mundane topics such as a donut, so too could he just as quickly bring down the fury of Michelangelo with all his irritation upon the heads of producers and editors who dared try to constrain his art. He did this because he was an artist.

Take what he believed of Vincent Van Gogh, who is so often seen through the lens of his suffering:

“I don’t think it was pain that made Vincent Van Gogh great – I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.”

// David Lynch

Van Gogh, his artwork so often overlooked for his suffering. But Lynch focused on the opposite. He took the figure of Van Gogh and clung to the most beautiful parts of him. Gogh, through all his sufferings, continued to paint, diving into himself, and, Lynch believed, was happy - truly, utterly, said so by Gogh’s own notes. I feel that Lynch felt similarly with his own art.

It’s a sad day for the world of art with the recent passing of David Lynch. His death, I think, should remind us that a specific era of artists is coming to a close. We have only a handful of masters from those years left - those of film, literature, music, etc. What will be left when they are gone if we do not strive to create something worth remembering? Who will pose questions and keep the wheel turning? Who will risk diving so deep into themselves? Who will commit their whole existence to art?

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The passing of Lynch is a sad one, but it’s not a sadness I will dwell on. I rather sit with the melancholy long enough to discover something from it. I choose to focus and be affirmed on the body of work he left behind. Films, paintings, coffee, weather reports. The friends he made, the stories he helped tell. His work has made me cheer for his characters in their success, and mourn for them in their bleakest moments. And made me stumble, lost and stupid, through dreamlike states where everything was a puzzle and all its pieces flew through the air too fast to catch. Confusing, exhilarating, moving. What more could I ask from him?

He is one of the greats, in my mind, because he makes me ponder death through his words and work. That great question which haunts us all at some point. Many artists have ruminated on death in ways that make me set the book I was reading down and piece together what I had just experienced. Art, be it painting, film, literature, etc. is to me, the readying oneself to die. At least, that’s one of its main attributes. It was the director Andrei Tarkovsky who said:

“The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

// Andrei Tarkovsky

Looking at what the man himself also had to say regarding the reaper, I don’t think it was something he believed he should fear.

“Death in my mind isn’t a finality. There’s a continuum: It’s like at night, you go to sleep and in the daytime you wake up, or whenever you wake up, and it’s a new day.”

// David Lynch

It goes into so many more questions as well as thoughts I have similarly pondered before reading these words. He contemplated one of the great questions, peeled back the layers to get as far as he could. Many who do so are often left filled with dread, succumbing to letting life take them by the collar and throw them to the wind. But not Lynch - he chose a life of art.

His outlook on the world reminds me to find happiness in my own work. Joy, excitement. To feel every aspect other than the pain. ‘Beauty and terror,’ as Rilke would describe it. Yes, there are dark places to go, Lynch believed that himself. Facing the darkness is necessary to make ourselves truly living beings.

For my work, pain and suffering is there, but that is not the whole story. Between the lines there is beauty, joy, love, music and poetry. A lust for life. Suffering is a part of life, a necessary part if you are to have truly lived. But I choose to live past the suffering, to create despite it. Not art through suffering, but art despite suffering.

I would like to end off my stream of thoughts with some more words of wisdom from David Lynch. Perhaps they will remind people out there who may be doubting their dreams to keep the fire in us alive.

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”

“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”

“I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.”

“These so-called bleak times are necessary to go through in order to get to a much, much better place.”

So long, David Lynch.

Thank you.