Success Comes First

I was thinking along these lines already when a friend sent me the video below, about two twelve year old kids and their heavy metal band – talented kids and all that but what struck me was their itinerary, their road map of success, in which they envision themselves touring the world and being rich and famous. Meanwhile, their enemies – bullies and doubters – suffer.

Unlocking The Truth – Malcolm Brickhouse & Jarad Dawkins from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

Success comes first. The greatest predictor of winning in the future is winning in the past. We all know this intuitively. It’s “The Power of Positive Thinking”. It’s “The Secret”, the “Bling Ring“. It’s “Dress for Success”. If you build it they will come. Dreams do come true. Believe! That’s all you need to do.

Of course, failure is not only an option, it’s the vast majority of cases, but failure is also addictive. Most teams do not win the championship. There can be only one. (This week I find myself “rooting” for the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals, though I don’t particularly like them and have nothing against the Chicago Blackhawks. I find it impossible to watch and not pick sides). But if you don’t act like you’ve already won, you don’t even have a chance.

You see this all the time. When you dress up to go out on a Saturday night, when you drive that car that’s you, when you put your best foot forward, when you polish up your resume, when you go step into the world like you’re stepping on stage. Everyone’s there to acclaim you. You know you have to put on that act. Success comes first, before there can be any success.

(in a theme common to this blog recently, but hopefully not for long, you see this in the self-publishing world as well, where indie authors must have a cover that forebodes success, and they must set their book at the successful price – hey, it’s $3.99 now, did you hear? – and they must do this that and the other thing the same way that successful people have done because after all, it’s all about success and success comes first).

Who doesn’t know that Superman is going to win in the end, or Iron Man, or, for that matter, every single popular fictional character ever? We already know, before it even begins, before it even exists, before we have it we want it and we know exactly what we want. That dream. That vision.

Again.

And over and over again.

There is no end.

Success comes first.

Recommended: Lands of Memory by Felisberto Hernandez

Felisberto Hernandez is a Uruguayan writer of the mid-twentieth century, often cited as a major influence by other South American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar. I heard of him through ‘Bartyleby &Co’ by Enrique Vila-Maltas. Felisberto (as he is known) was primarily a musician, a pianist who performed throughout Uruguay and Argentina, and many of the stories in this collection feature a first-person narrator who is also a touring pianist. Like many writers, his narrator blurs the line between fiction and autobiography and one would have to know much more about him to sift through the differences.

His narrators are often concerned with problems of memory – why we remember certain things and not others, and his memnomic associations of people, objects and events are often quite unusual and striking. Impressions once made are hard to shake and so he cannot recall a certain person without also evoking a specific image, color or scent. These associations lead the reader through a maze of memories, though always returning, when you least expect it, to the original thread of the tale.

My favorite of this collection is “The Crocodile”. Here an itinerant pianist is attempting to augment his meager income with sales of ladies stockings, and finding success in neither endeavor. He voyages from town to town trying to both organize a concert and convince retailers to stock his hose. One day he breaks down and starts crying in frustration, drawing the nearby lady customers over to console him. Their attentiveness helps convince the retailer to place an order, and in lieu of this unexpected achievement, our hero adopts this as a regular practice. Soon he is known as the wandering weeping salesman. Our amusement at his folly is tempered by our sympathy with his plight. As readers we are drawn so far inside the narrator that we cannot laugh at him without somehow offending ourselves!

Some samples of his imagery:

That afternoon she appeared and disappeared like a light rain interrupted by sunshine

But she was the one who was pushing her way into the story as forcefully as if it were a crowded bus

Interview with Piotr Kowalczyk

Nice interview here with Piotr Kowalczyk, one of the first ebook experts I came across several years ago, and author of numerous funny & intriguing stories published under the alias of Nick Name, available on Feedbooks. Also check out his E-book Friendly web site, a great place for all things ebooks

tidal

Out on the ocean on a sea kayak this morning, I could really feel the pull of the tides and the vastness of the sea, which was both exhilirating and frightening. There is definitely something addictive about the ocean, and I felt more understanding of my surfing friends, who long to be out there every day. I also can’t wait to get back. It was very different than paddling on a river or a lake, which I also enjoy. It’s something I will have to think more about. It helped add to the experience that I went out through the harbor, on a foggy, drizzly morning, with the old anchored ships looming out of the mist, and the pelicans and cormorants gliding along the surface of the green and rolling waters. Beyond the jetty the great Mavericks’ waves could be seen crashing far off shore. Altogether an entrancing ride.

Cue the Outrage

A dozen years ago or so, when the Patriot Act first came about, those of us who protested were dubbed liberal whiners who didn’t understand the new reality of the so-called war on terror. But things have changed. This week multiple stories “broke” (how that happens is another story – was it the Chinese who leaked it? Republicans? A lone-wolf-whistleblower-red-blooded-hero? The administration itself?) about the supposed scope of the privacy invasion that was the real fruit of that war. All of our phone calls are monitored and collected. All of our internet activity is mined and perused, not only for commercial purposes (we knew that!) but for political ones as well. Everything we say and do is being listened to intently by devious spies and nefarious agents worldwide.

Part of the outrage stems from the self-centeredness of every generation since the dawn of history, each one secretly yearning to be “the chosen” or “the last” or “the greatest”, blessed by “the end times” or apocalypse or dystopian disaster. It’s the “me generation” re-written as the “look at me” generation every go around. Now we are the spied-upon, the ones whose status updates are being watched over by Big Brother Obama.

Because that’s another part of the outrage. Democrats have longed – since Kennedy if not before – to take back the Alpha Dog position vis-a-vis the military against the Republicans, but somehow the Democrats’ old white men haven’t been as convincing as the Republicans’ old white men even though the leaders of both parties have lately been draft dodgers (Clinton, Bush, Cheney) and their military vets (like Kerry) somehow get emasculated every time. Along comes Obama, another draft evader, and hardly macho, but still a black man who has capitalized on the white fear of black men and then along with killing Osama Bin Laden he has not hesitated to use military force (against Somalian pirates, against American Islamist citizens in Yemen, maintaining the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc …), and this regained the high ground for Democrats macho-military-wise. The liberal whiners hate all that, and the Republicans hate Obama already for countless reasons, so this week the two wings have found the perfect grounds on which to collaborate.

Don’t you love the word “collaborate”?

Another sidebar of the outrage is the use of language in the denials coming forth from every quarter. The tech companies deny that the government has “direct access” or a “back door” or a “black box” and there are all sorts of discussions about the words being used here. The Patriot Act explicitly forbids these companies from telling the truth about what they’re doing or even not doing, so they have to use these tortured and obscure phrasings to skirt around what’s actually going on. It is impossible to read between the lines.

Already Big Data has been the hot trending topic of the day in Silicon Valley, and there’s no Bigger Data than everything everyone says on the phone or types on the internet. What is to be gained from all this data mining? We know very well that Google et al can target advertisements at you based on the content of your email. How does this translate to the National Security Administration? Talk about needles in haystacks! My guess is that the likeliest outcome is better search algorithms in the long run, and in the short run a lot of dead ends and useless information, and undoubtedly some innocent people becoming confused with some not so innocent people. “Mistakes were made”. We can expect to be hearing that too. It’s always a good bet that mistakes will be made.

As always, it’s worth checking out what David Simon has to say about all this (the story does remind me of his show The Wire)

No I don’t hate Christmas. Usually I end up hating Christmas.

My wife, watching a TV show on her laptop next to me, suddenly gasped and and shouted “oh shit”. At that moment I was reading this sentence from Roberto Bolaño: ‘At the end of the year they both traveled to Great Falls and spent Christmas with Anne’s parents.’ A timely gasp! Bolaño, like Sebald, makes the distinction between fiction and nonfiction seem completely irrelevant. Everything in their stories could be true or not and it would make no difference.

Is That Important?

Don’t have a thing to share
Won’t even comb my hair
But in our room so nice,
This screwed up life and I sit down
Is that important ?
I blow the good-bye test
And note that all my friends
Will use this time for sleep.
They know that talk is cheap.
But I know the words you say,
Cost more than we could pay.
Why leave on today ?

Lately there have been a spate of self-serving articles about self-publishing and how horrible it all is, things change but some things never change, it’s all about the money, and don’t forget the cover art and for Christ’s sake get an editor and don’t forget the social media. If you’re not a platform what the hell are you anyway? You’re selling yourself, right? Its all about you and your product. But still, don’t stop clinging to that dream of being the next Stephen King or even the next John Holmes, whatever, it doesn’t matter as long as you MAKE IT because after all it’s why anyone does anything anymore. Who doesn’t want to be a one-hit wonder, after all, and retire to South Beach where the hot people are? Is that important?

This one here freaks out about the perceived “cult-like” mentality of self-publishers rubbing his “dream career” aspirations the wrong way, and that’s nto all he’s rubbing in this all-vanity all-the-time article.

Here’s Paul St. John Mackintosh mixing references to Karl Marx, Robber Barons, Snake Oil Salesmen and Barkers while he himself shouts about how self-promoting all this self-promotion is.

And here he is again interviewing a goddess of e-smut and I swear you could substitute any genre for her “New Adult” one in this discussion about how important book covers are, and proofreading, and the brave new world of e-books. Hey, these new adults – I guess they are people between the ages of 19 and 21? in other words, 20? – have special erotic reading needs, so we look at them as A WHITE SPACE IN THE MARKET. There’s money to be made in them thar bedrooms.

Well, journalists have to write stories, and every new thing is a story, and every new thing follows the same trajectory from molehill to mountain to right back down again. In two or three years it won’t matter at all where the crap you’re reading came from. It will all be the same. It’s just words on a page. My god, I have friends whining about how Instagram is ruining the art of photography! I know other people who can’t let go of the difference between mp3′s and vinyl. I hear constantly that price is value and anything free is therefore value-free, and yet every day I see all sorts of interesting art from artists on Tumblr and listen to musicians I like, such as Lyttel Town, on Soundcloud and the hype has nothing to do with anything.

If you are someone who likes to be creative, then do it and pay no attention to all those people behind the curtain trying to sell themselves to you. The rule is that where there’s signal, there’s noise.

Ghosts’n'Things

We like to make up those kinds of store names, like “Blue Jeans Etc” and “Beverages and More”, only ours are even more stupid, if you can believe that, like  ”Pickles & Stuff” or “Bottlecaps Galore!”. But on the subject of ghosts, I was happy to see one of my “ghost stories” garner a genuine five star review on Amazon. “Hidden HIghway” has been neck and neck in a race for worst overall rating with “Fissure Monroe”, averaging somewhere around 1.8 on Goodreads, so seeing a 5 was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant one. And here it is:

 Roland and Josefa’s Ghostly Gossip Session May 22, 2013

Tom Lichtenberg has written a ghost story with imagination and quirkiness, the approach being two people smoking/drinking/eating and they gossip among themselves about the strange characters that inhabit their world of a motel. Just like the great gossip sessions you’ve attended, the flow of the book runs the same. Imagine someone telling you the characters in a soap opera, the who’s who and the what’s they done. It’s going to get complicated and under the hand of Lichtenberg, the story becomes fun with the revelations of the definite characters and the strange interrelationships. This motel is located in nowhere where nowhere people go to live, strive, and die. The nefarious activities that thrive around this end of nowhere is a ghost house supervised by the ghost witch Eugenia & the television watching and donut eating ghost Sweets. The vicious and jealous Henry watching over his hungry and horny wife Henrietta. The pimp. Potions. Hybrids. The situation is crazy and chaotic, all presented in the great gossip session of Roland and Josefa, employees at a motel found at the edge of nowhere. Hidden Highway is loads of fun with each section of gossip leading to the next and before you know it, you have a complete story, not overly long and enticing you with its charm when the world threatens to overwhelm you. As of the time of this review, the price is FREE. Consider this an invitation to Hidden Highway.

Hidden Highway is a spin-off (personal fan fiction, if you will!) of Secret Sidewalk. It follows the failed cult leader, Sharad LeMaster, as he flees from his cult members and hides away as a night clerk in a most obscure motel in the middle of Nowhere, Northern California. This attempt is foiled when a very dead witch lures him into her haunted house by tempting him with his favorite donut-loving, reality-TV-watching ghost, Beauregaard Sweet.

I’ve tiptoed around two other ghost stories. There was “The Ghost with the Really Big Tits” (included in The Mortal Hole collection) and now Jimmy Cruise, Last Chance, a sort of “dark romance”, featuring some rare adult content (rare from me, that is). My ghosts aren’t much at haunting. If they haunt at all, it’s done awkwardly and ineffectively. Usually they just hang around, bored and bewildered. The whole “ghost” idea has always struck me as too stupid for words, as ridiculous as believing in astrology or tarot cards. Ignorance can be strength, but only in an age of ignorance. It’s taking quite some time, but the movement begun (in Europe at least) with the Enlightenment is slowly but surely dragging our species out of its mental torpor. It’s too bad I won’t live to see this effort fully completed, but then again, who will?

A Personal Apocalypse

I used to think that if I had to classify my fiction in one specific genre, I would call it a literature of personal apocalypse. I’ve always been attracted to stories of peak moments. The climax is the point of the tale, and the rest is mere denouement, required (by most people) but fundamentally inconsequential. I don’t care about the “ever after”. I only care about “the” moment. Everything leads up to it, and I always prefer a story to stop right then and there, without the trickling bullshit that typically follows. I’m told that normal people don’t work that way, but all of us are somewhere “on the spectrum”. It’s a continuum, as my wife likes to say.

I came up with this heady notion while still a youngster, of course. In my early twenties, when I was writing my fingers down to the bone (literally, with pen and paper. I had a callous the size of a peanut on my right middle finger), I wrote a novel in “subway-surface” style that was subtitled “A Personal Apocalypse”. I later completely rewrote that novel, “Phantom of the Mall” and converted it into a personal/robot apocalypse, perhaps the only story I know of where the happy ending consists of androids becoming alcoholics.

I bring this up because I am currently reading an absolute masterpiece of the genre of personal apocalypse, “The Passion According to G.H” by the astounding Clarice Lispector. This is a story of a rich, bored woman who goes into her former maid’s room to clean it up and finds in there, in the wardrobe, a rather large cockroach. Lispector takes this germ of a notion and presents a vision of a person transformed unlike anything else you’re ever likely to come across. There is tremendous depth in the telling but also just some brilliant writing. Lispector says things that stop you in your tracks and make you wonder. I love it.

Turned in upon myself, like a blind man listening to his own listening

I ask myself: if I look into the darkness with a magnifying glass, will I see more than darkness?

I was for the first time becoming drunk with a hatred as clean as water from a spring

I was all acid, like a piece of metal sitting on your tongue, like a crushed green plant

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• On Clarice Lispector and breath. (Article) (pigeonweather.wordpress.com)

Galaxy S4 Homescreen

Screenshot posted here for Roku Channel testing purposes, nothing to see … move along … (although I do like how I used the new Secret Sidewalk cover art!)

and here it is on the TV