Rambling Dream Fever (the creative process?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv6ZN2BaCEU

I created this song years ago, some time around when I first started learning how to play the guitar. It was really just a way to take what were (to me) a gibberish poem I had scribbled down late one night and set it to the few chords I happened to know at the time.

Lately a friend lent me a little device called a Maschine. It is neat once you figure out how to make the buttons do things, and I'm just tenacious enough with things that make noise to do just that. I am not exactly sure what the technical name for such a piece of equipment is. It is some sort of sequencer/synthesizer device. Simply put, you push buttons, and it makes noise.

I was listening to a hip hop song called Dead and Gone and I had been struggling with this little do-hicky thingamajig for about a week, thoroughly convinced that anything that could make so many different noises must be a good thing, but equally convinced that I had wasted a whopping amount of time creating sound patterns I would probably never do anything with it.

I suddenly remembered this old rambling song that I rarely play.

It took me a few days to "finish" the new version, which is quite different than the chords I used to pick out on the guitar. I was not able to add guitar to the song because of the tunes incredibly strange tempo. In fact, the backbeat little piano melody thing keeps horrible time.

More importantly I do not think that anything I did on the guitar actually added to the song.

It is what it is.

Life comes full circle some times. "Rambling Dream Fever" is a song created from a "poem" I wrote back in high school, written at a time when I hardly knew how to play the guitar. Ten years later it has taken a new form, created entirely on a new instrument, this time called a Maschine, that I hardly know how to play.

I wish I had more time to learn all the instruments I would like to play.

I love making noise.

The Tragic Story of Bob

Can the flapping of butterfly wings in Timbucktoo cause the tornado that blows Dorothy to Oz?

Would you be surprised if the answer seemed like it could be yes?

Bob wonders. He really wonders. You see, Bob tried to get a job selling batteries. He won't get that job for a variety of reasons. Someone was cheated. Someone else was hurt. In another town, a guy named Alan was let out of jail and pardoned for his crimes. It turns out that Alan was not as deserving of his special treatment as it had been originally surmised. A wrong decision was made.

Many people were upset that these terrible things were happening, and it was confusing since in many cases the people who were the most upset were not the people who actually had the bad things happen to them. 

Bob made the mistake of going to a bar one night. In retrospect he probably shouldn't have. Butterfly wings are very powerful.

Bob punched someone at a bar. The person very likely deserved it. Bob received an assault charge and a criminal record. He had to take an anger management class and serve some community service. Later he would tell people that he felt very bad for having punched the guy in the bar who deserved it. It was a silly thing to have done.

Bob could not have known at the time that there were more obscure reasons for not punching the guy at the bar who deserved it, reasons that extended far beyond that it was simply a silly thing to have done. A man named Alan was pardoned, and Alan should not have been given a free pass. Alan was not responsible for the someone who was cheated, or the someone who was hurt, but had the system not been flawed enough to grant Alan a pardon in the first place, then it seemed logical to assume that these other bad things might not have happened.

People were tired of bad things happening. They tried to put more laws in place to stop bad things from happening, but for some reason that had little affect. They decided that the only thing left to do was make sure that punishments were more severe and long lasting. Mayors and Prime Ministers and such were fine with the decision since they were tired of bad things happening as well. Every time something bad happened, like the whole Alan incident, their names kept getting thrown around negatively in the newspapers.

The Mayors and Prime Ministers had long ago determined that it was very hard to fix holes in existing plumbing. It was much easier to simply remove the plumbing and let the shit fall where it may. A bill would be passed eliminating Bob's chance to ever receive a pardon for having punched a guy in a bar who deserved it. It was foolproof. No one could complain about Alan being given an unfair pardon if nobody could receive pardons anymore.

Why wouldn't a peace loving society pass a bill eliminating pardons? Bob could be a person who cheated or hurt people, or might some day be wrongfully let out of prison. Right?

Unlikely since Bob was never in prison in the first place, though he does share at least one thing in common with the above mentioned man named Alan, in that they both have a criminal record.

Meanwhile, a corporation somewhere decided that it was okay to push the boundaries during their interview process. They got away with asking some questions that they should not have been able to ask. After all, it was written in black and white under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that the corporation was not allowed to ask the sorts of questions that it asked.

Bob did not know when he punched the guy in the bar who deserved it that corporations were getting away with asking questions they were not allowed to ask. He was not aware that the company that sold batteries was one of those corporations. At the time he would not have even cared because Bob always wanted more for himself than working for minimum wage selling batteries, but he punched a guy in a bar who deserved it, so many of his options went the way of the Dodo.

Bob, it turns out, thinks that it is horrible when bad things happen to people. He feels very strongly that people should not be cheated or hurt, and people who should be in jail should probably stay there, and that some people should not receive pardons. What Bob did not understand when he punched the guy in the bar who deserved it was how those things he believed very strongly in would have anything to do with him getting a job selling batteries.

Too bad for Bob. Butterflies flapped their wings. The battery company is going to ask Bob some questions that they are not allowed to ask. If Bob answers these questions he will not get the job. If he refuses to answer these questions, he will not get the job. The battery company is able to ask the sorts of questions it is asking, which it is not supposed to be allowed to ask, because someone was cheated, and someone was hurt; somewhere someone stole a cookie from a child, and somewhere else some vandals wrecked a tombstone. Plus there was Alan.

Bob deserves what is coming to him. After all he once punched a guy in a bar who deserved it. Why would we want someone of that calibre selling us batteries? Bob was irresponsible once, so there is absolutely nothing to say that he won't be irresponsible again some day.

Of course, that is the price for freedom. The Bobs of the world get swept under the rug, then the rug gets driven over by a Mac Truck. Tolerance and Understanding breed weakness, and Criminals like Bob prey on weakness. Everybody knows that.

Right?  

Flying (A poem)

Am I alone when I dream to fly?
Do ants go to sleep to be fireflies?
Do elephants imagine feathered wings?
Do penguins long to ride on the wind?
When I close my eyes and float on the air
Am I the lonely one up there
Or do the many-legged bugs
All feel the same, and envy doves?
Am I alone when I dream to fly
Or do we all wish to ride the skies
To cast away our earthly binds
And sail, and soar, and dip, and glide?

The Saw

The house is silent. It is almost nine o'clock and already shadows gather to make their nightly rounds. One room escapes their tide, kept at bay by the glow from a small crackling fire. Here in the den a grandfather clock counts away the seconds, its wise oak countenance always wary of time's fickle passing. The room smells of age, reeks of it in fact. Volumes of tattered yellowing books line the shelves, gathering dust and age. A sense of loneliness pervades, the oppressive feeling that belongs to all neglected objects. It has been a long time, too long, since any of these volumes were opened. Here was a room that was once filled with dreams, that was once vital and alive. Those dreams are gone and what was once vital now lies comatose, just like the old man who sits across from the fire. His eyes stare in to the embers, but he is not looking. His vision is fine, yet still it has been some time since he has really seen anything. The fire longs for a new log, even just a poke or a prod. In his faded green leather chair, the old man fails to care. Like the neglected books, like the encroaching shadows, like the watchful grandfather clock and the slowly dying fire, the old man waits.

His hair is a disheveled mess of white and gray strands, wild like an aged Medusa. Skin dry as leather hide, he was once a strapping young man and worked a hard life. Those years of toil have left their mark in the sallow complexion which stares back at him on the rare occasions he glimpses himself in a mirror. Where sharp eyes used to take in the world, listlessness now resides. There are many who have commented that he looks dead already. He used to maintain a goatee, sometimes a beard. The wiry nubs of hair that grow on his chin could hardly be called either. He appears a homeless man, and isn't that how he feels? Isn't that why he sits alone, bitter from memories he has long since locked away? His eyes tell his tale. One look and the whole story is revealed. He has the look of Lear, and has fallen just the same.

The old man's name is Fredrick Mourn. This house is his life. He has been alive for seventy-four years. He has been dead for far too long. In five years he has not made a single attempt to leave his house. The drapes are closed tight. The outside world is a virus, his home the quarantine. Neighbors have pondered over his mysteries. Some even tried to be helpful. He stopped acknowledging their attempts at consolation long ago, and they stopped caring. The young children have decided he is a warlock, or a vampire. If life were that magical, he would not have had to lock himself away. He talks to his lawyer three or four times a year over the phone. He hangs up on his children on the rare occasions they try calling again. There are hours between when he wakes up and when he sleeps. They have long since become a blur. Just at night, when he takes a seat in his old leather chair and stares at the fire, does he really pay attention. He sometimes thinks. More often than not, he doesn't. His heart still beats. At times he is angry for that. He comes to the den for comfort. He is not completely alone, not here. A strange companion found him five years ago, right at the time he sealed his tomb. It lives in the far corner of the basement, covered in spider webs, dust and shadows. Nothing spectacular, except for once every night, without fail. A reminder perhaps that not everything has abandoned him.

The table saw is broken. It was broken nearly ten years ago, perhaps more, and it is still broken. Its cord hangs dispiritedly on the floor. Even if it was plugged in, Fredrick is reasonably sure the nearest plug was one of the ones damaged in the flood of '83. It is unlikely the machine would get much of a jolt. The circular blade was damaged on the last job the little rust bucket was employed for, and now sits at an odd angle within the device, rusted to the point that Fredrick would not be surprised if it simply would not budge even if the saw had power. The tool should have been taken to the dump long ago, and yet, just like himself, it remains in the house, stubborn and refusing to pass on.

At nine o'clock on the dot every night for five years the table saw has turned on. The blade has started spinning, the motor buzzing. In a house of silence it is the closest sound to joy that Fredrick has known. For sixty minutes the saw sings, uninterrupted and without fail. At ten o'clock, as mysteriously as how it turned on in the first place, the saw shuts off. In the early days, Fredrick used to busy himself trying to understand the phenomena. He would travel down the rickety old stairs to the basement risking death if he fell. He would surely crack a hip and there would be no one coming to check on him. He would get to the bottom of the stairs and look dumbfounded as the saw roared as if new. He checked the limp cord and noted that it was not plugged in. He sliced a few pieces of wood a time or two. The cuts were straight. That blade should not have even spun and yet the pieces were flawless. Of course he wondered whether he imagined the whole thing. He lived by himself. It was conceivable he had gone mad. After a while he realized he didn't care. It was just himself and the table saw now, alone in the house and sealed from the world. He cared little for that world, the one that would insist that the table saw could not turn on once a night at nine o'clock. So he started coming to the den. He would sit in his chair and stare at the fire and listen to the saw until it stopped.

The grandfather clock began to chime, its resonant voice announcing what Fredrick already knew. The table saw had started to spin. It was nine o'clock. He pressed his lips and cast a wary glance around the room. Everything looked the same. Everything was the same. The books, the fire, the clock. Was it the fire that was different? Perhaps it did not burn as bright as it normally did. He listened to the sound of the table saw. Was it the same sound it always made? He couldn't be sure. He thought that it was. Castrating himself mentally for his sudden anxiousness he tried to settle in his chair. Something was different. He could not put his finger on it but he knew for certain that he was right. Being the sole resident, the self imprisoned recluse in this house for five years, you had come to know its feel. The taste of the rooms, the feel of the spaces, expansive or cramped, the give of the floorboards. It was not a lot different than a spouse, not to Fredrick. This house had been his mistress. He knew her every secret.

The thought brought with it a tide of memory, the kind he had locked away long ago. Painful. Accusing. These were the reasons that Fredrick was hiding, but it was no use. A switch had been flipped. The flood came and his eyes widened.

The car.

Janice.

The black Cavalier lurched around the corner like a locomotive. Eddy Pierce was at the wheel, drunk. Sober Eddy would have had time to stop the car or swerve out of the way. Probably. Fredrick could almost see the Cavalier's evil intentions, always remember the way that haunting vehicle had laughed at him. That didn't happen though, did it? Janice had already stepped out on the road. She didn't see the black Cavalier coming. It had happened so fast, but there had been time. Time enough to save her, to shout at her, to leap out and push her out of the way. Why hadn't he saved her? He just stood on the sidewalk, frozen, and watched for Christ's sake!

It started at the wake. People whispering. People always whisper at a wake, but Fredrick knew better. They were talking about him. They had probably read the paper. That article about the accident might has well have spelled it out in black and white. It was right there between the lines. They all thought it was his fault. Fredrick Mourn could have saved his wife and he didn't. Now they whispered. The kids too. Stacy the worst. Tears barely covered the malice you could see in those eyes. She knew her father was guilty.

“It should not have been her.”

Who said that? Was it Stacy? Adam? Someone said it. He knew what they meant, whoever said it. No, it should not have been her. Not Janice. It should have been him. They knew, and he knew. All those eyes, weeping and accusatory.

The whispering did not stop with the wake. Every time he went out he could hear it. In every consoling look he could see it. They wanted Janice to be walking out of that house. That was what their looks said. They loved Janice. The world would be better if she were alive and he was dead. Stacy would phone. Adam less so. Adam had always been that way, never had a great relationship with his old man, but Fredrick knew the real reason. They were ashamed of him, probably couldn't even wait for the inheritance now that mom was gone. Greedy bastards. So he drew the lines while drawing the drapes, mounted his defenses inside his castle, and waited.

He had not thought about Janice in five years. He could feel the tears mounting in his eyes like water behind a cracking dam. He felt wretched. For five years he had forced himself not to think of his wife, the woman he had loved for forty-two years. He had never grieved her loss, never accepted that she was gone at all. Stacy and Adam tried to get through but his shield was too strong.

He wept, each tear carrying another regret to pool upon the floor. There was something different tonight. He thought that perhaps it had been different for some time now, that he had just been ignoring it. He tried to stop time five years ago. How foolish. How childish it now seemed. The black Cavalier killed two people that day, they just hadn't buried the second in the ground yet.

He thought he understood the permeating differentness in the house. Death. That old trickster would not be fooled by a few pulled drapes. He almost smiles, except it is not funny. So many forms the reaper could take, it chose this one. He supposes he is not afraid. He thought that he would not care, but he does. If he could do things differently, but no, no one gets a chance to do things differently. Just Jimmy Stewart.

I'm sorry Janice. Stacy. Adam.

I'm sorry Fredrick.

The house is quiet. It takes a moment for the realization to dawn. The table saw has shut off. It can't be ten o'clock yet. He glances warily at the grandfather clock. He feels suddenly very alone. He can hear the quietness of the house. It is almost maddening. The crackling of the fire, the ticking of the clock, the clanks and clunks of the ducts. It is only 9:32. In five years the saw has been consistent. Why has the table saw turned off early? He feels faint. A shortness of breath attacks him and for a moment he thinks that it may be a panic attack. An image of a scythe etches his thoughts, not a scythe this time but a circular blade. A rusty, bent, circular blade. He knows why the table saw has quit before its time. As the last breath escapes his lips, the fire dies out as well.

The End

We'd Like to 'ear Another Story

He stared at the keyboard, fingers trembling. They would come again tonight, they always came. He could run, they would follow. He could hide, they would find him. No door could stop them, no wall could keep them out. Tiny eyes, glowing red, would watch him. Then grimacing mouths, full of razor teeth, would open, and they would speak.

"We'd like to 'ear another story," they'd say in their hackneyed English accents. Their tiny heads, beneath their little bowler hats, would nod as one. They were naked except for those bowler hats.  They would repeat their request and look to each other expectantly.

"We'd like to 'ear another story."

He loathes to remember the night he did not have a story ready. He can still feel those talon-like nails tearing at his skin. They had screamed in his ears, ripped at his clothes, scratched at his eyes. They were like children, demon children. One day, their tantrums would kill him.

How much more could he take? There were no more stories to tell. They demanded entertainment and he had nothing to give them. He panicked, stood from his chair, paced the room. He felt the coiling snake of despair in his stomach. He wondered what would one day be chiseled in to his tombstone.

Died by Writer's Block.

He dreamed of escape, even if that escape meant death. He had tried before. Oh, how he'd tried.

“No, no, no,” they would say as they patched him up. “Not tonight, no, not tonight.”

Would he ever be free of this torment?

“You are wasting time,” he cursed himself. His future hardly mattered, it was the present that concerned him, and they would be here soon. He could not take another night of torture. His fingers began to type.  With sudden vigour and purpose, he typed. His tired eyes widened. It was a good story, perhaps one of his best. He did not look up at the clock until he was finished.  It was almost midnight. He was elated, at least for the moment. He cast a final look at the tale and sighed relief. He had done it.

They came as they always came, sitting down and waiting patiently for him to begin. They loved him, he knew, but it was a very conditional love. While his words continued to fill some void in their demonic little lives, they would continue to come, night after night. If his stories stopped, or failed to be interesting, that love would turn to hatred. The tiny demons would cast him aside, rip him asunder, discard him to the shadows and loneliness and death that awaited him; then they would move on, restless to fill the insatiable void once more.

“We'd like to 'ear another story,” they said, their eyes aglow with that red excitement. 

He spun his tale. They listened. He had survived one more night.

Search Engine Syndrome

I am not sure that getting published, or just plain getting noticed, was any easier in the pre-digital era. Surely the number of books available at book stores and libraries has always been significantly less than the number of books written in hopes of publication. Nowadays, however, it is almost sickening trying to wade through the heaps of useless information to try to get a nugget of truth on exactly what an author should be doing nowadays to get published.

I think my problem is that I love fiction. If I were to produce an ebook full of useless rhetoric and out of date information, and call it something like "10 Explosive Ways to Impress an Editor" I would probably receive much more instant recognition.

One day you read that agents are interested in book proposals; the next you go online to find a plethora of dung heap token "advice", likely written by people who have never been successfully published in the first place. The day after I get published, the last thing I am going to have time to do is write a how to guide for other people. I'll be busy at book signings, or figuring out inventive ways to spend the truckloads of cash pouring in.

I have read websites that essentially say this same thing. Don't publish anything of value. Simply find a topic that people are interested in, and then do some half-brained research and throw a few facts together.

The moral of this story is, people who are successful generally figured out how to do it themselves. The likelihood that you will find any relevant or useful information on the internet by typing, "How to become an overnight youtube sensation" is pathetically low. People who become overnight youtube sensations did not waste their time on search engines. They were busy making videos of old ladies letting one rip during confession, or horses getting hit in the face with cream pies.

There should be wayyyyyy more videos of horses getting hit in the head with cream pies.

Owning the World One Fast Lane Ticket at a Time

I remember when I was younger and the world was a magical place, full of dreams and possibilities and ideas like freedom. I remember when young girls knew what clothes were, and understood that they were supposed to wear them. I remember standing in line for a ride and being part of a group, a small society of fellow people who all shared this wonderful line waiting social custom.

I heard one time that "All good things must come to an end" or something along those lines. I did not know that quote applied to the world as a whole. Freedom seems to have gone out the window, nine year old girls might as well be walking around naked, and now for an additional fee, if you're willing to pay, you can be an A-Class member at your local theme park and not bother with the tradition of line ups at all. For only $30 to $45 at Canada's Wonderland, on top of the regular cost of admission, you can buy yourself a smug expression, a callous air, and walk about the park waving non-chalantly to your fellow comman man as you butt in line. Just a small additional fee, and you can snub your nose at fairness while giving a grand Nazi salute to Capitalism.

I think it is a marvelous idea that deserves to escape the cold metal gates of Canada's Wonderland. Driver's Licenses should definitely start offering premium options. Why should I have to follow the regular speed limit like my fellow pitiful human beings, when for a monthly membership fee I can gain a Fast Lane License that comes with its own increased speeding limits?

Why should I have to prove myself like my fellow students in a math test, when I should be able to just buy a Premium Scholarship Package at my local school, which comes with a gym bag sized nerd who will take those math tests for me?

Why should it be first come first serve at a movie theatre? I want to just pay twice as much for my tickets, arrive as the curtains raise, and kick that family of five out of their front row seats so I can watch the second instalment of Despicable Me.

Way to go Canada's Wonderland. $15 to park your car, but for an extra $5 you can have access to one of the reserved parking spaces closer to the park. $50 for a day pass, but for $90 we'll push little old ladies and small children out of your way so you can go on more rides. Why not implement a premium beverage package? For an additional $25 a day, ride operators will steal water from your fellow peasants and give it to you if you're thirsty.

I wish I could go back to the world of my youth. As is, modern society is like having a 300 pound naked, hairy man walk in to the room while you are covering your eyes during a round of hide and seek. You thought you were just playing a fun game, but then you start to open your eyes, and the more you open your eyes, the more unsightliness and horror you see.