City of Legends

I was challenged by my friend Thomas to compare and contrast what is happening right now in regards to my writing to other muses, from my past.  This reminds me of a challenge a friend of mine once issued when he complained that Larry Bird was getting too much attention in the NBA.  We did a statistical breakdown on his play and found out he was the dominant player, by a major margin, at the time.

But, to mollify Thomas and put my current state of being in perspective, let’s use, as a yardstick, the following muses:  the Panther, the Leopard and Brigit.  I am selecting those as they are the benchmarks of my muses, in terms of number and quality of works, each having been involved with me over a span.

Let’s make it easy. 

Brigit was a factor in my life for approximately the same period of time that the Sunday Girl has been, so far.  During that time I wrote approximate 110 poems about her.  In a recent breakdown of my ten best works, none marked the list (sorry, love). 

The Leopard was a factor in my life for about 6-1/2 years, nearly twenty times the period of time of the Sunday Girl.  During that time I wrote approximately 150 poems about her.  Of those, one makes the all-time poems list.

The Panther was a factor on my life for a year and a half, about four times the period that the Sunday Girl has been in my life, so far.  I wrote to her approximately 800 poems.  Staggering.  In the base period, that period equivalent to my run so far with the Sunday Girl, I wrote 34 poems to the Panther.  Of the full 800, a single poem stands out in my all-time list.

The Sunday Girl.  Four months, more or less.  215 poems, as of a half hour ago.  6 of my top ten all time works come from that collection.  If I continue to create at this rate, by the time we reach the involvement duration I was with the Panther, we are talking nearly 1,000 poems, and already of a measurably higher quality and durability.

We’re not talking a distraction.  We are talking about major, profound and welcome change to the regime of the muses in my work. 

So, Thomas, does that answer your question?

I just found out that the line from my poem "Idol of Clay" -

"Hatred unlocks no doors in Heaven"

has become a minor mainstay at quotation sites for the topics of hate and Heaven.  I stumbled over someone invoking it on Twitter, then found it at several sites around the web.

Not complaining, it’s nice to be quoted (and quoted correctly, and attributed).  The poem itself was about a dishonest former lover (there’s another kind?) whom I was quite angry with and someone of our mutual acquintance asked why I did not hate her.  To me, hatred is like fear, a wasted emotion, disabling and manipulating us into wasteful thoughts and actions.

And, in truth, the last few times the lady in question and I have spoken, it has been as friends.  She even wrote one of the forewords to my book "The Compleat Panther Cycles" and, no, it wasn’t the Panther, but Brigit (for you muse trackers out there).

Ah, to have such epic ladies in my life again.  I fear I fall towards the gloaming.

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. 

Or so goes my rewrite of Paul Simon’s "Still Crazy After All These Years".

But the other day a former lover (Brigit) did re-enter my world, coming to me for advice on getting a novel published.  She was open and honest ) something she wasn’t always when we are together.  I gave her some sound advice…I think she was waiting for me to spank her for her treatment of me when we were a couple.  Not so.  People all have their crazy seasons, including me, when we do things that later we cannot explain or excuse.

This morning I sat down and tapped out a follow up to my suggestions and advice to her, here is what I sent her:

The publishing industry as most people know it is run, not as an artistic or creative enterprise, but as a business.  You look for maximum payout for minimum investment.  Unknown authors are a risk.  Even if you are not known for being an author, but for something else, you amplify greatly your chance of being published.

Or do you want to work at the job you are at for the rest of your life when we know you are better than that?  I would like very much to help you, to see you succeed, and to know you are on at least some level, grateful for my presence in your life, however peripheral.

That’s it.  Not asking for anything, just seeing someone fighting the same lame shadow-figures all writers fight and wanting to take a piece of them out, not just for her sake, but for my own. 

I just wrote a cute piece comparing the ebb and flow of my inspirational muses to the stock market, but decided it was insensitive to many, so I deleted it.

Just wanted to let you know, though, that we put some time in on it…pretty interesting stuff, just not for public consumption.  Check my archives when I am gone.

Jazz argued with me about Marilyn Monroe and her relative level of “hotness”.  I took the position that MM was not the hottest woman who ever lived.  Indeed, that to my tastes, I could name 20 women off the top of my head who, at their prime, were hotter than Marilyn at her prime.  Here’s my list, in no particular order, and subject to major revision if asked tomorrow.

20.  Olga Georges-Picot
19.  Alexa Davalos
18.  Suzy Plakson
17.  Brigit
16.  Yvonne Strahovsky
15.  Thandie Newton
14.  Danielle Bianchi
13.  Kate Beckinsale
12.  Gina Gershon
11.  Angela Bassett
10.  Tina Fey
9.  Angelina Jolie
8.  Katharine Hepburn
7.  Carrie Anne Moss
6.  Ava Gardner
5.  Scarlet Johanson
4.  Kim Novak
3.  Daryl Hannah
2.  Jamie Lee Curtis
1.  Ann Wilson (of Heart)

And this is just off my head.  I am sure, if I ponder for 15 minutes or so, I would swap in and out a few names.  Don’t make much of the fact that there are many major movie stars, musicians and models known for their beauty who did not make the list.  Hotness is all about resonance, we don’t all like the same things (I prefer Ani DiFranco to Britney Spears, for instance).  I was going to boycott all former and current muses from the list, but just had to, had to, include Brigit. If I was not allowed to use her, I would most likely bring in Shakira or Janis Joplin or Jessalyn Gilsig (hey this is MY list, go make your own).

Yes, Marilyn practically oozed sex from every pore (if you ooze sex from every pore, please see your doctor), but I never found her THAT irresistible.  Now, where would some of the more famous or infamous of my muses fit on this list?  That would be telling, but let’s just say that there are a handful currently on the list who would lose their ride on the mothership to help me colonize a new planet if all other things were equal and I broke the embargo (okay, semi-embargo) on the muses. And don’t ask me to choose, or disclose, further.  Like I need that stress.  Sheesh.  Let’s just say this list might surprise a few people.

Why do you think I wrote my muses poetry?  To keep from exploding; emotionally, spiritually and perhaps even physically.  FYI:  If you are in danger of physically exploding, please see your doctor.

Okay, now to deal with the hate mail.

Okay, time for our semi-annual ritual of rumour control. 

Very simple. 

I am not currently engaged, about to get engaged, secretly married to or anything else.  I am still ronin and that’s the current battle plan.

There are women I enjoy the company of, but I’ve learned a valuable lesson:  Even the best intentioned people don’t always know what they want.  That includes me, and the vast majority of women I have known in this life (I extrapolate that most fit the mold).

Yes, I have good friends and those who inspire me.  My most excellent friend Jazz (whom you may also know as nightblooming or Huerta), from whose playful work with the English language I take the word in the title you scratched your head at.  We have known each other for almost a decade, and she has even been the cover of one of my CDs.  We’ve flirted, and I have even used her as a muse in absentia of a primary one being in my life.  And make no mistake, I do find her adorable, and intriguing, she’s a very terrific woman (and tall, she’s sort of a Hispanic version of Brigit).  If the mothership returned tonight and said I could only take one with me, she’d probably be the first number I call…she just probably wouldn’t answer, being out in a mosh pit somewhere.  I’m not kidding.  She’s an accomplished rock bassist and writes some seriously demented poetry. 

There’s Liza, whose photography sometimes shows up here, on williamfdevault.com and the Amomancer blog.  Charming, brilliant, talented and sexy as only a Brazilian fireball can be.  The realities of geography and the chronography makes it extremely unlikely that I will ever fill a role in her life other than a counseling uncle, but I do adore her.  Much the same for Mariya, again a long-distance flirtation with many poetic works sparked by her fearless artistic photography.  But, last time I checked, she had a boyfriend and contrary to the mythology, if a woman tells me (not if the man tells me, as people don’t own people) that she is in a relationship, she is off limits.

For now I am left to my adorisimz (the word Jazz coined for our style of mock fighting with compliments), my memories and several decades of genetically ordained indestructibility.  By the time Shelley was my age he had been decomposing for almost three decades.  Urgh.

Besides, who knows what will be coming at me from an unexpected quarter (gratuitous book plug).  My first serious relationship came out of a chance meeting at an airport that ended with me falling down an escalator.  My first wife, I met while I was engaged to another (the one I fell down the escalator over).  My second wife, I met on an airplane and was dating only women at the time.  And these aren’t the weirdest cases.  I accept the fact that the thunderbolt chooses its own time and place to strike.  I just grit my teeth and hope I don’t disintegrate in the firestorm.

My phone could literally ring right now with a new opportunity or someone of my past yearnings, re-entering the orbit of my life.  When the jolt comes, expect me to seize on with both hands, my toes, teeth and eyelashes, and to write of what it does to me, for good or for ill.  I will welcome such an adventure with open arms and seek to carry it with me the remainder of my days, being faithful and monogamous, and maybe taking my time to give her a book cover.  I’ve put 4-1/2 women on book covers (the Panther, the Leopard, nightblooming, the Goldenheart and Aubergine (looking around) I don’t see any of them hanging around.  Jazz suggests, rather snarkily, that maybe I attract women who are seeking immortality, but not the immortalizer.  Hrm.

So to recap:  Not involved with anyone right now.  The poetic works you are seeing springing anew are being inspired my memories and speculations and the occasional sense of awe at the writings or artwork of someone I feel resonance with.  In the last few years there’s been a few near-misses, and one resounding long-distance collision (is that even possible?), but right now, in my soul of souls, I am in solitude, romantically, and it is not a bad place to be.   I am learning to accept and respect the role of the ronin, the integrity of who I am.

It is uncomplicated. No illusions, no doubts, no trust issues.  I used to get up at ridiculous hours of the morning or stay up half the night to be a human alarm clock or comfort food to the passion du jour.  Now I am more self-contained, more self-aware.  I have found some answers I did not think were knowable.  I have written things I would have not been able to a decade ago.

I have not lost faith in love, in romance, in faith itself.  Don’t worry about me.  I’m just getting started.

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 had to tell this anecdote before it grew cold in memory.

Or so I thought.

I shared it with the person it most involved and they had concerns about how they came off in it.  So I rewrote it.  Still not perfect…and I hate the notion that anything I might say could be construed as intentionally cruel or harmful to another person’s reputation.  If you have to be cruel to others to have your own way, you need to re-evaluate your life and your goals, as you are still a failed experiment.

So…no anecdote, at least not now.  I thought back to my memoir that I recently blasted to atoms.  A lot of stories in there that make me, and others, look like themselves, but not in the best lights.  The lesson isn’t supposed to be about people feeling bad about who they are or what they have done or been perceived as being, saying or doing, but rather that we are all human and everyone falls down…or is thrown down.

Maybe one day I will again write that memoir.  When I have something interesting to say about love and life and poetry.  When I know the answers to a few of my more nagging questions about who or why or when.  Too many of those right now.

I left the tags on this one after pulling out the anecdote, to drive everyone crazy.