It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
dark and red and dry as bone,
wine that tastes like tears.
It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
downing it all by my lonesome,
drowning out my little fears.
Pour the wine.
Raise the glass.
Give a toast to yesterday,
It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
and I don’t care what you say.
It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
another night,
another glass.
It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
if you don’t like it,
you can kiss my ass.
Pour the wine.
Raise the glass.
Give a toast to yesterday.
It’s midnight and I’m drinking wine,
and I don’t care what you say.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Monday, December 15, 2014
The Art of Asking
I've been reading Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking. The book was gifted to me by one of the regular customers at my day job. It came as a pleasant surprise and I've been enjoying the book enormously.
Although primarily as expansion of her TED speech, Amanda Palmer includes a lot of autobiographical detail in the book. And although I don't think of myself as an artist, a lot of what Ms. Palmer writes and shares has resonated with me.
One of the things she writes about is the three types of artists. There are the collectors, who take the greatest pleasure in amassing the experiences that they later use in the creation of their art. There are the connectors, the people who take those experiences and connect them, weaving them into story or song or street performance. And then, there are the sharers, those artists who get off on sharing their creation with the world.
Miss Palmer firmly states that she is a sharer. That connection with her audience, her fans, the public in general is her particular bliss.
I think, in my case, I'm the connector type of artist. I like the make things: stories, pictures, whatever. That's what gives me the greatest pleasure. I've been doing it for decades, for all my life, in fact.
One of my earliest memories is sitting on the back steps of my childhood home and telling myself stories. Weaving a vast fantastical story in my head about winged people in outer space just for my own amusement. I never wrote it down, I never told it to anyone before this and it didn't matter if I did it or not. I was happy just telling the story to myself.
Connecting the dots, weaving the story is what gives me the rush. Sharing it with the world? Not so much. As for collecting the elements of story? Well, for me at least, that just sort of happens.
So what does any of this have to do with The Art of Asking?
Nothing.
Everything.
It's a good book.
If you're a creative type, or even if you're not, I'd say go out and pick up a copy.
Maybe it'll make you see that you aren't as alone as you thought. That those midnight thoughts we've had aren't unique to us.
And maybe, if enough people read it and get it, we can put the fucking Fraud Squad out of business.
Although primarily as expansion of her TED speech, Amanda Palmer includes a lot of autobiographical detail in the book. And although I don't think of myself as an artist, a lot of what Ms. Palmer writes and shares has resonated with me.
One of the things she writes about is the three types of artists. There are the collectors, who take the greatest pleasure in amassing the experiences that they later use in the creation of their art. There are the connectors, the people who take those experiences and connect them, weaving them into story or song or street performance. And then, there are the sharers, those artists who get off on sharing their creation with the world.
Miss Palmer firmly states that she is a sharer. That connection with her audience, her fans, the public in general is her particular bliss.
I think, in my case, I'm the connector type of artist. I like the make things: stories, pictures, whatever. That's what gives me the greatest pleasure. I've been doing it for decades, for all my life, in fact.
One of my earliest memories is sitting on the back steps of my childhood home and telling myself stories. Weaving a vast fantastical story in my head about winged people in outer space just for my own amusement. I never wrote it down, I never told it to anyone before this and it didn't matter if I did it or not. I was happy just telling the story to myself.
Connecting the dots, weaving the story is what gives me the rush. Sharing it with the world? Not so much. As for collecting the elements of story? Well, for me at least, that just sort of happens.
So what does any of this have to do with The Art of Asking?
Nothing.
Everything.
It's a good book.
If you're a creative type, or even if you're not, I'd say go out and pick up a copy.
Maybe it'll make you see that you aren't as alone as you thought. That those midnight thoughts we've had aren't unique to us.
And maybe, if enough people read it and get it, we can put the fucking Fraud Squad out of business.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
BREAKING WHITE WINDOWS
In crisp white windows they sit,
letters as black as black can be.
Jet. Obsidian. Onyx.
Impossible to miss behind frozen
glass, sitting on white velvet sheets.
We reach for them, you and I.
We press against the clear glass,
fingers splayed, hearts in our throats,
feeling the heat of words,
the beating black heart of waiting letters.
The glass gets in our way.
It holds us back until we smash it.
We reach into those white windows,
we cut ourselves on shards,
spattering little drops of our blood
on the white window dressing.
The letters burn, icy-hot,
but we do not let them go.
We clasp them tight,
hold them against chest and belly,
letting them mark our skin.
Later, when they’ve cooled,
we bend our heads and take bites out of them.
We bite the letters, breaking teeth,
not caring at all about it.
Our mouths fill will blood and words.
Then we run from the scene of the crime,
clasping our ill-gotten goods,
laughing and gobbling,
all the way to Dream City.
We spit out words as we go,
bits of story, pieces of poem,
a hacking expectoration of drama.
We run, fast as our legs will carry us,
until another white window catches our eye,
and everything begins again.
letters as black as black can be.
Jet. Obsidian. Onyx.
Impossible to miss behind frozen
glass, sitting on white velvet sheets.
We reach for them, you and I.
We press against the clear glass,
fingers splayed, hearts in our throats,
feeling the heat of words,
the beating black heart of waiting letters.
The glass gets in our way.
It holds us back until we smash it.
We reach into those white windows,
we cut ourselves on shards,
spattering little drops of our blood
on the white window dressing.
The letters burn, icy-hot,
but we do not let them go.
We clasp them tight,
hold them against chest and belly,
letting them mark our skin.
Later, when they’ve cooled,
we bend our heads and take bites out of them.
We bite the letters, breaking teeth,
not caring at all about it.
Our mouths fill will blood and words.
Then we run from the scene of the crime,
clasping our ill-gotten goods,
laughing and gobbling,
all the way to Dream City.
We spit out words as we go,
bits of story, pieces of poem,
a hacking expectoration of drama.
We run, fast as our legs will carry us,
until another white window catches our eye,
and everything begins again.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Monday, December 1, 2014
SUICIDE SPECIES
"Status, Mohawk?"
"On the ground and scoping the scene, Fly," says Mohawk. "Stand by."
She hunkers down on the roof, her eyes making soft zip-zip-zipping sounds as they zoom in on the street below. It’s green, covered by a carpet of mold at least a foot thick.
She checks her clean-field’s integrity, is pleased to see it’s still holding. The last thing she wants is to suck in a lungful of mold-spores and get drawn into the spore-mind.
"Fly, things look quiet. No reaction. Update?"
Twelve miles up, Fly is circling the site in lazy loops. He’s strapped into an air-rig, plugged into the wave, surfing data from a thousand nano-tech sprites.
"We got a pea-souper in the works," says Fly. "Breach is imminent."
Mohawk grins with anticipation. "What do I do?"
"What you were born to do," says Fly.
She can hear the grin in his voice and responds, smiling so hard her face hurts.
Dumping her pack, Mohawk pulls it open and takes out the egg. That’s what they call it, ‘cause that’s what it looks like. A big silver goose egg. It’s light and cold, even through her gloves. Gripping the upper and lower halves of the spheroid, she twists.
"Scrambling," says Mohawk.
In her hand, the egg is getting warm. She tosses it from hand to hand.
"How long?" she asks.
"Soon," says Fly.
"This gonna work?" she asks.
"Yeah," says Fly.
"Good." Mohawk smiles and lobs the egg over the side of the building.
It hits the moldy ground with a sizzle. Smoke rises from the street, which starts to undulate and convulse as the mold-mind reacts to the flame.
Mohawk laughs, wishes she’d brought fireworks with her. That would show ‘em!
The mold arrived in a meteorite, a veteran of galactic conquests. It had subjugated whole worlds, devastated entire species, absorbed alien cultures and repurposed them to suit itself. When it landed on Earth, it had expected things to go as usual.
But humans, it seems, were irrational. They lived in an environment that they deliberately poisoned. They bred even though natural resources were growing increasingly scarce. They fought wars with weapons that only advanced their own extinction.
They were a mad, suicidal race and the mold never had a chance.
Humanity carpet-bombed the infected territories with nukes, killing millions of their own people. Then they nuked the surrounding territories, just to be safe.
The mold was lobotomized, traumatized, but not defeated. Not yet. So long as a single spore remained it could rebuild itself. That’s what it had been doing here, on this little island in the Atlantic, growing quietly in cellars and attics until it burst onto the streets and devoured most of the populace. It was determined to win.
Humans, however, were just as determined to wipe it out.
Honestly, the mold was the first real challenge that humanity had ever had and they embraced it. They hated the mold so fervently, in their subterranean cities and satellite colonies, that they practically loved it. It was not a healthy relationship at all; it was obsessive and stalkery.
The war continued and attracted people like Mohawk. She of the tall, gangly build only made more so by the black mohawk she adopted that became her trademark and her call-sign.
She’d grown up in one of the under-cities, a smart girl with a bad attitude and an unhealthy obsession with killing herself.
The army snatched her up and promised to help her achieve her goal in a truly spectacular fashion. They trained and equipped her as a suicide bomber, waited for the right mission to present itself and then happily sent her off with a nuclear egg to kill the enemy.
Mohawk crouched on the roof and watched, grinning, while Fly counted down from ten.
The egg cracked when he was on three, and the world went white.
Around the world, the mold-mind shuddered and writhed in agony as a significant portion of itself was incinerated.
And, not for the first time, the mold wondered what cosmic power it had pissed off to find itself on a planet full of mad bastards?
"On the ground and scoping the scene, Fly," says Mohawk. "Stand by."
She hunkers down on the roof, her eyes making soft zip-zip-zipping sounds as they zoom in on the street below. It’s green, covered by a carpet of mold at least a foot thick.
She checks her clean-field’s integrity, is pleased to see it’s still holding. The last thing she wants is to suck in a lungful of mold-spores and get drawn into the spore-mind.
"Fly, things look quiet. No reaction. Update?"
Twelve miles up, Fly is circling the site in lazy loops. He’s strapped into an air-rig, plugged into the wave, surfing data from a thousand nano-tech sprites.
"We got a pea-souper in the works," says Fly. "Breach is imminent."
Mohawk grins with anticipation. "What do I do?"
"What you were born to do," says Fly.
She can hear the grin in his voice and responds, smiling so hard her face hurts.
Dumping her pack, Mohawk pulls it open and takes out the egg. That’s what they call it, ‘cause that’s what it looks like. A big silver goose egg. It’s light and cold, even through her gloves. Gripping the upper and lower halves of the spheroid, she twists.
"Scrambling," says Mohawk.
In her hand, the egg is getting warm. She tosses it from hand to hand.
"How long?" she asks.
"Soon," says Fly.
"This gonna work?" she asks.
"Yeah," says Fly.
"Good." Mohawk smiles and lobs the egg over the side of the building.
It hits the moldy ground with a sizzle. Smoke rises from the street, which starts to undulate and convulse as the mold-mind reacts to the flame.
Mohawk laughs, wishes she’d brought fireworks with her. That would show ‘em!
The mold arrived in a meteorite, a veteran of galactic conquests. It had subjugated whole worlds, devastated entire species, absorbed alien cultures and repurposed them to suit itself. When it landed on Earth, it had expected things to go as usual.
But humans, it seems, were irrational. They lived in an environment that they deliberately poisoned. They bred even though natural resources were growing increasingly scarce. They fought wars with weapons that only advanced their own extinction.
They were a mad, suicidal race and the mold never had a chance.
Humanity carpet-bombed the infected territories with nukes, killing millions of their own people. Then they nuked the surrounding territories, just to be safe.
The mold was lobotomized, traumatized, but not defeated. Not yet. So long as a single spore remained it could rebuild itself. That’s what it had been doing here, on this little island in the Atlantic, growing quietly in cellars and attics until it burst onto the streets and devoured most of the populace. It was determined to win.
Humans, however, were just as determined to wipe it out.
Honestly, the mold was the first real challenge that humanity had ever had and they embraced it. They hated the mold so fervently, in their subterranean cities and satellite colonies, that they practically loved it. It was not a healthy relationship at all; it was obsessive and stalkery.
The war continued and attracted people like Mohawk. She of the tall, gangly build only made more so by the black mohawk she adopted that became her trademark and her call-sign.
She’d grown up in one of the under-cities, a smart girl with a bad attitude and an unhealthy obsession with killing herself.
The army snatched her up and promised to help her achieve her goal in a truly spectacular fashion. They trained and equipped her as a suicide bomber, waited for the right mission to present itself and then happily sent her off with a nuclear egg to kill the enemy.
Mohawk crouched on the roof and watched, grinning, while Fly counted down from ten.
The egg cracked when he was on three, and the world went white.
Around the world, the mold-mind shuddered and writhed in agony as a significant portion of itself was incinerated.
And, not for the first time, the mold wondered what cosmic power it had pissed off to find itself on a planet full of mad bastards?
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