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Monday 9/27/21

Ran 3000 stairs.

I've figured out most of the new story, "Earwax," that I began this AM. It is usually the same. There are the characters. The characters are real. The characters are more real than anyone you know. They tell me the story. I listen to them. They will always tell me their story. I am connected to things beyond myself. That I am is also a large part of who I am.

I was looking at my Twitter feed, and there was this mention from just a few days ago of having written a 2700 story. For a second I didn't know what I meant. Because I wrote the first 2800 words of a story yesterday. Then I started that other one with the first 2000 words today. That 2700 word story was "Devil Lines." In between there has been another one I've started, several I've come up with, and "The Sweat in the Leather," which I've written in full. All of it better than anything anyone else can do. But yeah, lock him out, bigots.

The first of these Sam Cooke guest author blog posts will be going up at the 33 1/3 blog tomorrow. One should compare it with the ones others have done. I think that will prove quite a telling exercise.

Here's an interview I gave the other night, for 360degreesound. I took a quick peek. There was a "your" instead of a "you're," which was a transcription error, but this is what I said and how I said it. It's like I wrote it. But that's just how I talk. Was nice of them to take the time to transcribe all of that.

I mentioned blood on the decks yesterday and some posts already being written. The ones from today were not them. That's nothing. I am going after some people and exposing them. Hard. And I won't stop. Because I have had enough. I wonder if some of these people are that stupid that they thought I'd just sit back and take their abuse and bigotry forever. I don't think they thought about it. I think they think they can do anything they please, and no one will say anything. No one has. Ah, but there is no one who 1. Has ever been in my situation 2. Has my track record and body of work and 3. Is remotely like me. Fair warning. There has been so much fair warning.

Tonight I watched a documentary that takes the form of an interview with John Sweet, who starred in Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale, one of the most powerful works of art I know. He only appeared in that one film. He was a real-life member of the military, and he was a great, great man who gave his salary for the film to the NAACP. The documentary was shot in Canterbury in 2000, with Sweet having returned to where the film was shot in 1943. He's eloquent, wise, even brilliant. He talks about how he had noticed, until the night before, how there are all of these shots in the film with the actors looking upwards. Looking beyond themselves. To something richer. Remember, this is 2000. And then he starts talking about the internet, and mobile phones, and saying you're not going to find meaning there. It's this elderly man at the start of this century. This beautiful man who gave a performance unlike any I've ever seen. I was much moved. Much moved indeed.

Regarding "Devil Lines": I can write no better. It's big boy writing. What do I mean by big boy writing? I mean that no one else could do it. And as I've said often, I don't like to rank my work, because it's all of a piece, it's just different from work to work, so this is tricky in that I mean it, and I intend it seriously as I say it, but I also know I could say it about any of it. But this is what I am saying it about. If there was like a personal Hall of Fame for my stuff, there are certain things I'd have in there. The final third of "Fitty." When the plot points start to come together, and build to the end that will rock anyone to their core. "Dead Thomas." The beginning of "Terry from the Cape" from Between Cloud and Horizon. The long, continuous section of "Dunes Under Sand" in Anglerfish. When you find out who the narrator is in "Upon Becoming a Ghost." And also that section in "Devil Lines" when the devil shows up with his kind in tow and knocks on the narrator's door. Art's just not going to be better than that. To be able to do that, and you're sitting there having just done it, and you know exactly what it is, I'll tell you, there is nothing that feels like that. It is like you are in on the secret of it all. You see it all, you feel it all. You're there.