City of Legends

My poem "the philosophy of dreams" has taken on a life of its own, gradually, and now I have been the latest to open a can of something closer to worms than whup-ass over it.

Earlier this year the poem got some attention when it was revealed that a reading of mine of the piece had been sampled by Euro electronica wizard Ophidian.  After hearing what he did with it for his piece "Phoenix" I totally approve of what he did with it and it is cool and righteous to realize how many thousands of chemically altered young people have heard my voice booming out at them at raves across the continent.

Very cool.  Very righteous.

Now I find myself accused of a retcon (retroactive continuity, a phrase that emerged out of the comics industry for when you rewrite the backstory of a character or event without regards for inconsistencies that emerge).  It seems some people latched onto the muse breakdown I offered up for loveaddict and noticed that despite the fact the poem in question "the philosophy of dreams" appearing in the book, Brigit (aka the Crimson Panther) is not listed in the muse breakdown list.  There is a muse named "Crimson", but it was correctly surmised that she is not the majestic Titian-haired goddess christened Brigit.

The truth is, after time and tempest has passed, I had decided that, in reality, "the philosophy of dreams" was more in the "Abstra" column than the "Brigit" column, and identified it so in the new volume.  That simple.  Okay, not that simple, as it took a helluvalot of soul-searching to come to that. 

I stand by my decision and will continue to evaluate the source and force of my works as I deem proper and accurate and true to the spirit of my work.  Believe me, many elements of my life would play easier if I could delude myself and rewrite my histories, but that is not in my nature or my passions.

And it is a question, as visitors to my Amomancer blog clearly see that I am not currently writing to a single central inspiration of the female persuasion.  The fire is there, the focus is not.

Huerta the other day sent me a frowning emoticon, , when I expressed that I need to find a new major muse.  The fact she frowned tells me that there is much ignorance, even amongst my closest circle, as to what a muse is to me.

God, or rather, Goddess.  Simply put.  But with an explanation.

Not to replace the one true God, but to give me a focus as a writer, which is, perhaps more than man or human or liberal Democrat who has been married and divorced twice, my most evident self-definition. 

The furnace of my passions burns as hot as ever just as the core of the Earth itself is a molten mass of radioactive isotopes and stone.  But without a path for release, what you (and I, and the world) get are small volcanic outpourings, just enough to keep me from being torn apart.  They are impressive in and of themselves, but they are not Krakoa.  And I, personally, am a big fan of Krakoa-sized eruptions (see Psyche, Panther, Brigit, The Goldenheart, Aubergine and even the Leopard).

I am, by my very nature, a monogamist.  I believe in, I celebrate, I enjoy having one person that I can revolve around, like the Sun for my planet to orbit.  I find no shame in that, in basking in a radiant glow that warms and nurtures me.  Without it, my "planet" dies a slow death.  Not just from the lack of heat, but also the tidal forces that pull and stretch, toss and catch me as I spin through a remarkable universe.  Those forces rip me up inside and keep the heat burning, the magma churning and I, myself, learning what is good and beautiful and foul and fair and truth and illusion.  These are the reasons I get out of bed in the morning, these are the reasons to lay down beside someone else at night.

And I have to admit, I miss it.  I’m not looking for a fling, but an Olympian thing.  Someone strong enough to push back when I am half-mad (I never fully get to the whole mad).  Someone who isn’t going to bullshit me about their status and the realities of their world just because they want a taste of the ambrosia that gets flung around like cheap beer at a Steelers game. 

I’m not perfect, God knows.  I can, and have, put up with a lot from people who seemed to get in the door a little too easily with the password "I love you" and then started trashing the place.  I hate playing bouncer in my own heart and soul.  Hate it.  Someone who I can write about their beauty and virtues without having to lie to myself, that when I go back and read the works they inspired, I don’t have to ask "what was I drinking?"

The muse is a sacred thing to me.  It allows me to be who I am.  Without artifice, the vessel of my craft and spirit.  I have made myself Ronin, by choice, and the voice I hear when I speak is diminished as I strive to learn enough about myself and the nature of life that I speak no more blasphemies of the gods of love.

I’m not looking for sympathy.  I don’t need it or even deserve it.  I have been very fortunate in this life to have seen glimpses of beauty and passion and talent of the magnitudes I have seen.  There are those who would say I am being greedy in asking for one more, perhaps one final, run of the Chariot of Apollo across the sky.  If this is greedy of me, then I am greedy, and selfish.

But not dishonest or disloyal to my faith in love, to my unnamed Goddess.  I would rather die for a single, simple truth, than live for a lie. 

Love, romance, sex.  The high of raptured contact.  First kiss.  Parting kiss.  The discovered lie.  The damning truth.  The smell of brimstone.  The smell of jasmine and warm skin.  The spirituality of making love.  The necessity of pain.

Themes.  Themes to be covered in loveaddict, my next book (you’ve seen the cover in my last entry).  What was originally to be a volume of all new poetry, exploring the nature of love and why we are drawn to it, has evolved.  I am not giving details.  I want to surprise you, to please you like an unexpected kiss or a bundle of roses.  I will tell you that the book is a confession, and the titular character is me.  Not a confession of some great evil or crime, but of how my mind and soul work and how I have sought to fill the need for love and to love in my life.

I am still editing at this time, but we are probably looking at around 160-175 works.  Many published previously, elsewhere, in various literary and poetry journals (I don’t keep track of my publication credits, which I find in the ghetto of academic poets is considered a worse sin than plagiarism.  Fuck ‘em.  This is not a game to keep score in, this is my religion, not a dilettante’s hobby).  Many of the poems are new, so new you can smell the afterbirth.  Some are refractions of the past, distillations of the present and visions of an uncertain, but hopeful, future.

There are reflections of the catalog of my muses, from Alabaster to Aubergine.  From the Mad Gypsy to Brigit.  Valkyrie and Goldenheart.  The cats are present, Panther and Leopard, but only there because the Radiant Tiger found virtue in them, spoke of them, and chose to make the words public.  There are new muses, or at least ones you have never met before. 

Soon after the book comes out, I will be removing selected selected earlier volumes of my works from circulation.  Some of my older volumes contain works that, in the filter of time, I have judged disposable.  Just as I have decided certain people are.

The blurbology for this one will be interesting.  I haven’t decided yet who to approach.  Maybe Larry Jaffe?  Some new people.  Som non-writerly types, even.  Many were startled when "Artisan and domestic diva" Michele Beschen, the host of B. Original, blurbed As such…

I do wish to thank the lovely and talented Liza Lorraine for her contribution to this book, in the form of the cover photo.  It is stunning.  If one poem in this volume speaks to one person the passion and evocation of emotion that her photo does to me, I will be pleased.

Now. back to the editing. 

In my spare time (ask anyone who knows me, I define "manic") I have been polishing my poetic inventory. Well, actually my overall writing inventory. Just to see what all I have. Hey, it beats the hell out of reruns of "Two and a Half Men".

My current catalog breaks down thus (as of midnight, August 1, 2008. We all know that I have written about 50 new works since then…deal with it).

• 18,642 poems
• 143 essays
• 82 short stories
• 3 novels in various states of completion
• 3 screenplays in various states of completion

This does not account my general discourse on my various blogs, which numbers int he thousands of entries.

The poetry breaks down, as best I can figure, out of the 18,642

• 285 sonnets
• 46 villanelles
• 22 poems greater than 100 lines

Credited inspiration:

• 2,182 to Abstra (the abstraction muse)
• 740 to The Panther
• 488 to Aubergine (I have gone back to using totem on this one)
• 94 to The Leopard
• 82 to The Selke
• 72 to Brigit
• 55 to The Goldenheart

Some of these numbers are a little rough. I tried not to dwell on anything for too long.

So what does it all mean? I don’t know, but it was an interesting exercise that gives me fodder for internal debate for a while. And don’t think that the numbers mean much. In terms of classic, timeless and quality pieces, I would say that Panther is way down on the list, for instance. I will let history decide which muses were really luses and not just channels for a generic creative spirit needing outlet.

I think this is the first time this has ever happened to me. A song is wedge in my head, playing soundtrack to the hours I am spending here, at the computer, editing some technical documents and writing a proposal for a client. Hairy-scary proposal, too. You don’t want to know which branch of the US Armed Forces it is for or what they do with our services if we win.

But back to the song. Wow. It is one of my own. One of the ones off of my CDs. I can’t recall it happening to me before. But the taste, which is the musical version of the taste of remembrance, is doing its thing in my brain, and I am enjoying it. I am rediscovering me.

Not a bad thing, I think. I am happy.

The poem, itself, is something of a miracle. Clearly an Abstra work (one written about not a single person, but an abstraction) I still called upon specific memories of specific women at different moments as I wrote it and later recorded it. The slow, malevolent and mournful guitar was my vision.

I conjoured the Leopard, the Selke, Brigit and Psyche to fuel the work.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it:

I am working on the manuscript for my next book of verse:

"As such…love poems of a new life"

and I started collecting together the best poems I have written of or for Candy since I first started actually writing of or to her (for you trivia buffs, the poem was "Above room temperature" written on September 1, 2007…and I don’t think the lady herself knew it was about her at the time. It was a complicated time and I ran a poor second for more than a lap or two.) and I encountered a problem.

Too many poems. Way too many for the modest volume I had envisioned.

So…tough luck. This will not be the juggernaut that was "The Compleat Panther Cycles" but many of those poems were not to the Panther but to an ideal and an abstraction, and they were written over a year and a half, not 4 months. We are looking at about 170-200 poems at this time (a very thick volume). Thicker than "from an unexpected quarter", thrice the thickness of "Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite".

Candy, thank you for the inspiration, really…but sheesh! A guy has to sleep and eat. How bad is it going to be when we’re together in the same room?

Heh. Heh. Heh. That’s a different kind of poetry.

The title line is a poetic fragment.

It is driving me crazy. The fragments of poetry flitting in and out of my awareness as my preconscious processes and propagates the phrase "she shines".

Who is "she"? What does it mean "shines"? Is she an abstraction, an amalgam, a prophecy or a singular woman from my past or present? Elements of the poems that are whispering themselves to me bear elements of any of several ex-lovers: Nancy’s brilliance and grace, Jan’s intellect and sense of humour, Ann’s beauty and fragility, Brigit’s charisma and cunning, Karla’s vulnerability and talent. All goddesses, all. All shone (shined? did shine?) and shine on.

Perhaps I am just flashing on the whole. Or perhaps, perhaps I am extracting an archetypal menu for my next all-consuming passion.

Perhaps. Perhaps. But, regardless of what it means or how well I express it, she shines.

Whoever the hell "she" is.