52/250 A Year of Flash Week#36 - Playing Safe

Latest flash story up at 52/250 A Year of Flash here.

This story didn't happen to me, though Wesley did exist--he was a black cat.

News

My poet friend Steven has a new e-chap out. Download it here. As usual I don't quite know what to say about Steven's work getting published because it often feels like it has something to do with my life. You know what I mean?

Soon enough I'll actually be at Steven's reading in NYC, so I'll save the stories for a later time.

Here's Jimmy, a friend I met in HK five years back, in The New Yorker Book Bench. Jimmy was a TV news anchor in HK and moved back to the States (where he grew up) a couple years ago. At the moment he's doing a MA in Journalism at Columbia.

Jimmy is one of the most talented individuals I've ever met: a terrific writer and photographer; intelligent, self-aware and ambitious; a young man who pursues his passion. I'll be seeing him soon, too. 

As for me, aha, not much to report on. I'm still struggling at work, writing flash stories and now poetry as well...even have a poem snatched up by an online journal. Who would have thought?!

Dreams of Reason

Mick Karn, one of my favorite musicians, passed away from cancer at the age of 52. For those of you who are unfamiliar with early 80's music or British New Wave, he was the bassist of Japan, a British band that crossed boundaries from alternative glam rock to synth pop and anything in between. Mick Karn played a signature fretless bass--a sound that's much more melodic than what you'd expect from a bass guitar. After the Japan years, he became as an acclaimed multi-instrumentalist who explored a variety of musical genres--he was especially fond of jazz--in his solo and collaborative work. 

He was also a sculptor. 

The night I heard news about his death, I listened to some of his solo work and felt positively gutted. Can you miss someone you've never met, whose talent you embrace and admire from a distance? In his hands, the guitar sounds so much more fluid and imaginative...Now he's gone, gone, gone. Is it possible to feel a part of your sensibility going adrift, when an artist you've liked since your teens passed away?

That very same night, someone I've known for years told me one simple thing: it looks like I'm no longer interested in writing narratives. That my heart and mind have taken another path and it's time that I discover something new. I had nothing to say. I slept over it, and then I started writing. 

This poem comes with two songs by Mick Karn: Dreams of Reason and The Forgotten Puppeteer. How can anyone play such sad music on the saxophone and clarinet?

The Catalyst

I have become reluctant to write stories: to flesh out a character beyond its moment of conception, to string together the twists and turns of a plot line, or to expand a description of an object as the catalyst of the tale. It's been happening for a long time--maybe six years--when I wasn't looking. Time and again I tried. Every once in a while I wrote a good one. Other times I failed, pretty badly.

People asked me why I never wrote something longer, a novella or a collection of connected stories. I said I didn't have the patience: I could only write when an idea struck and once the spell was over, that was that. Or I wasn't in love with my writer's voice enough to engage in it for weeks, for months on end like some others could. That I lacked the writer's ego and I wanted to shield myself from the world.

There's some truth to that. And the truth is: I'm not interested in writing stories, at least not conventional stories with solid plots and characterization and decent lengths. I only thought I wanted to write stories because that was what I fell back on for most of my life. But something changed and the nugget of gold remained unnamed. I could hear it, but I couldn't see it or write about it. I let it sit there and tried to go the other way. I still wrote my failed stories. 

In the past week two persons told me the same thing: I'm not cut out for dealing with the real world, in life or in writing, and I should walk through the emotional maze and produce drugs for the human mind. Their words hardly surprised me--I wasn't disappointed, not in the least.  It's just another reminder that I have a lot to discover and to learn in my writing, and not a lot to look forward to in my daily life.

Like going to work. Seriously, it drags me down. As early as in high school I knew I would be terrible in a workplace, because I never intended to be someone who made anyone else happy. When I was a full-time journalist, life was easy--I came and went, talked to people, wrote a good story, and I was me again. In recent months I've been stuck in a place where I have to give, tear things apart, then fix them broken according to strangers' whims. Over and over.

This is why I haven't really written in this blog for a while. Soon enough I'll have happier news to share. For now, this is what it is.

52/250 A Year of Flash Week#34 - The Lost Island

This is the beginning of a true story about my grandmother when she was four years old. Her family sold her to two distant relatives who were childless and wanted some sparks in their household. My grandma was fair-skinned and exceptionally pretty--which did her more harm than good even as she grew up to be a young woman.

As for the rest of the story, I suppose I'll write it one day.

New Year Miscellaneous

The January edition of Negative Suck is out and our featured author is Sheldon Lee Compton. When I first read his work at Fictionaut, I left a note to say I was envious of his writing--and I still am. Check it out and enjoy.

As always, Dark Chaos wants your submissions. Send original prose, poetry and photography - dark and thoughtful stuff preferred, no whining monologue, please. Dark Chaos now has its own page on Facebook here.

The December edition of Language > Place blog carnival was reviewed as a BluePrintReview project by Casey Murphy from Folded Word. You can read the interview with Dorothee and me here. Don't forget to send your posts to the next edition of the blog carnival - the deadline is January 20th.