Alert: The American Book of the Dead won Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival.

Finally done with this song. Pleased with it – please listen. The story in the novel – World War III is over and the residence of the house in the L.A. hills finally decide to take a trip down south of Sunset Boulevard to see what remains. They’re mortified, of course, and feel guilty about surviving among so much devastation – while their corner of the world remains untouched.

We shopped down at the market
for all our needs
going out of our minds
We bought only the knowledge
that we were thieves
going out of our minds

We saw the grass is greener
for those we grieve
going out of our minds…

This song is actually two songs and the second half gets more into where I was personally while I was writing the book. Soon, I’ll start working on TABOTD Volume II here. I’ve got to get my head together to do it, when the time’s right. It’ll be about my life in real time (fictionalized). And this song is more a reflection of that – A Year in a Day. While I was finishing up the book, I was out on my own after the dissolution of my marriage, raising my daughter as a single father, while taking lonely trips to the doctor where she informed me of the progress of my chronic illness. A rough year, every day felt like a year. In the book, the chapter is about the characters taking a day to look at the year-long destruction of the city. There are parallels with my own life falling apart and the end of the world in the novel.

I don’t know how I made it
But I’m here now for the ride
And I’ll start over with the weight of the world
Like a widower of my life

So I went to the doctor
And she told me that I might die
She told me my weakness is in my soul
But my body will survive
I said back, Yeah that’s all well and good
But my body doesn’t lie
She replied, It only tells you the truth
If you want it to be right

That wasn’t the only thing going on
with me that year
There were women
And a girl who told me
I was far more than my fears
I was father to a world I could build
As my world burned away
If I started to believe in my dreams
And stopped believing in my fate.

Full lyrics here.

Where the Green Grows/A Year in a Day by theamericanbookofthedead

I’m late coming to this, but I want to write a few words because the Apocalypse has become such a driving force in pop culture, and when I started TABOTD, in 2002, I was alone in my paranoia. Last weekend was apocalypse weekend here, as I finally saw “2012″ in a tiny theatre at the Beverly Center, with 50 seats and a 10-foot screen, like a wealthy person’s private screening room.

Want to preface this by saying I absolutely love “Independence Day.” A masterpiece of crap. “The Day After Tomorrow” is watchable enough. So I had some hope for “2012,” but it was very bad. Offensively bad. One wonders if Roland Emmerich saw “Cloverfield” – a more-realistic depiction of what a Godzilla monster would do to a city compared to his heinous “Godzilla” – and said, fuck it, I don’t do realism, I do fantasy. And so he made “2012″ which has no relation to reality whatsoever. At least “Independence Day” had a modicum of reality about what an alien invasion might look like. As did “Day After Tomorrow.”

One of the dumber – but forgivable – scenes in “Independence Day” is when Air Force One just escapes the White House being blown up in a cloud of fire. Fine, if done once. But in “2012″ Emmerich chose to do this over and over again – death-defying escapes from every possible explosion: 10.5 earthquake in L.A., super volcano, etc. etc. But what is so offensive is that he had to use this escape trope at all, as if the entire destruction of a city is not dramatic enough – especially in light of what is happening in Haiti and what this type of destruction signifies. I think there is something vaguely disturbing about turning so much destruction into pure purposeless entertainment. It’s as if Emmerich doesn’t want to face what he is actually portraying, so he paints it in a coat of stupid.

When I saw “Titanic” I thought, Jesus, you’re just watching people die for two hours. There was something distressing – and worthy of study – about just why this was attractive to people. But at least in “Titanic” you had some historical sense of what maybe the sinking of the Titanic could have been like. In “2012” you get nothing of the sort – you just get chase scenes.

You could say – a truly realistic depiction of the end of the world would be too harrowing and depressing, but there are significant ideas that can be explored with this premise. The fact that – not once – do they discuss the implications that a long-ago culture predicted the end of the world and what this signifies, or even how this ties into the Book of Revelation, shows how intellectually empty the movie is. But there’s none of that – it’s just about explosions and escaping from explosions.  Surprisingly forgettable, I was hoping for more.

The Road

When I first read The Road I was critical. I am very averse to anything that fetishizes suffering. And The Road is full of that – setting up scenes only so that people, including a child, will suffer. This is what I wrote about the book initially.

It was at this point I realized what this novel is: literary torture porn. Or a zombie novel for people who read the New York Review of Books. The only people left walk around with makeshift clubs, cannibalizing whoever they can find. Yes, it’s a zombie novel. Pandering and cheap, too easy for someone who takes such great pains with language. This end-of-the-world scenario was much better, for me, in Earth Abides, in which a man walks alone through the country after humanity has been decimated. But it’s without the comic book savagery of The Road. The people he meets retain who they were, rather than being transformed into monsters. Alas, Babylon, about the survivors of a nuclear holocaust in a small Florida town, is also much more measured. Some people turn violent, but not all.

The incongruity of the setting bothered me as well. Why, if there are only a handful of people left, and some cities are still left standing, can’t people go to the many storehouses to get canned goods? I can suspend disbelief and think, that’s just the way it is in the universe of this novel, but the people are always dressed in rags and their faces are always dirty – even though there are houses full of clothing and they’re camped out right next to the ocean. Why are the cannibals keeping a bunch of diseased people in a basement – how useful is diseased meat? Maybe small things – but it contributes to my feeling that these scenes are set up only to show people suffering, needlessly.

As a movie, “The Road” is serviceable and basically unnecessary, as the book is about the mood as conveyed through words, rather than plot. All that said, the emotion of “The Road” – the movie – got to me, especially at the end. And whatever disagreements I have with the book, it’s very hard to disagree with this reaction, from an interview with Cormac McCarthy:

I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, “I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them.”

After “2012,” which serves no purpose at all – not even to make you fear, just to kill your time – I can definitely see the value in the novel.

To set the scene – which contains slight spoilers, but whatever. World War III is over. The survivors of the war are rounded up in a neighborhood in Los Angeles dubbed The New City. Lead character, Eugene Myers, is happy to be alive, as is everyone else, so:

The New City is my home
And I love all I know.

He wonders if this new world might be the beginning of something better – as was the point of the war: to jolt people into evolving, or bring about the Second Coming – as outlined by the fundamentalist President Winchell, or his father, Benjamin Winchell (Dick Cheney), who’s a lunatic of a different stripe. Eugene Myers himself wonders if this might be the makings of something better, as he’s seen evidence of a new type of consciousness, with elements of dreams becoming a reality. So:

In the beginning…
of our childhood
Is it the end of adult vice?

In the beginning…
of our rise
Is it the end of our decline?

The New City by theamericanbookofthedead

Another layering of guitars song, which becomes a kind of wall of sound, but this song represents the finale of the war. Full lyrics here.

Thanks to Charles Dodd White for the interview with me on his site.  His blog is described as promoting the literature of the New South, which doesn’t quite describe me.  I’m New York born, Los Angeles raised, and live in L.A., but the bulk of the research and the early writing for this novel was done in Wilmington, North Carolina.  It’s even referenced in the book – the writer talks about moving to Willamette, South Carolina (doesn’t exist, so far as I know) and beginning work on a book.  The introduction to the novel is pretty accurate about what my life was like in North Carolina.  Post 9-11, I moved there with my then girlfriend and we conceived our child.  Me, having terror dreams about planes crashing almost nightly – a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing 9-11 while living in downtown NYC.  For the years we lived in North Carolina, I basically lived at the New Hanover Public Library, reading every book they had on fringe/freak ideas, ordering some others from far-off libraries. I was obsessed. Check out the interview for more about that period of my life.

I also mention how I’m starting at a loss:

Not only am I writing about fringe subjects that people don’t take seriously, I’m using a publishing platform that people don’t always take seriously.

Which is sort of the point: using a fringle platform to write about fringe ideas.  I want to get these ideas out there – I think they’re important – even if it means having to give it away.  Then again, if I was published by a Big Publisher, it would be much easier to unload books.  I wonder, though, if I would feel the same kind of freedom with the music I’m recording if I was accountable to a mainstream publisher.

While I’m here, here’s a piece from me about the self-publishing movement I wrote recently for 3:AM Magazine.

A little about my book. It was started several years ago, long before I’d heard of Barack Obama or Sarah Palin. And while the Obama revolution was happening, I wondered if I had to revise the novel, as the country seemed to be heading in a very different direction compared to the years under Bush. My president – Charles Winchell – is a Bush-esque character, a fundamentalist Christian who poses as the anti-Christ so he can start World War III and bring about the Second Coming. Along the way, he starts believing that he’s Jesus as well.

It was my most paranoid fantasy of what dry-drunk Bush jr. might think in his most private thoughts. I’ll admit, I thought this desire for the apocalypse was actually on the radar of the Republican party. Why else would they try to curtail efforts to protect the environment and enter into wars that make the world more volatile. It all seems very aggressively self-defeating, almost with purpose. And the rise of Barack Obama seemed like this kind of fear and paranoia could be a thing of the past.

But then came Sarah Palin.

She’s a deeper fanatic and inspires a deeper fanaticism than George Bush ever did.  So I’ll least pat myself on the back that I was right about some of the instincts of this country.  But I’ll admit this: Sarah Palin is a far more riveting fictional character than Charles Winchell.  I could never invent a celebrity-obsessed wonder-woman who carts around her disadvantaged child to prove her pro-life bona fides.  I think what attracts people to Sarah Palin is what attracts people to any movie star: even when they’re off the screen, they seem a little unreal.  Except with Sarah Palin, people tout how “honest” and “real” she seems, which is exactly opposite of the case.

Nor could I invent a world in which this seems like a good idea. How can you watch this and not be terrified. A world in which “loving the homeland” is popular again – said in a dark, demon’s voice, without irony.

The novel covers dual stories. On the one hand it’s about a writer who’s dreaming about people who turn out to be real, so the world of internal consciousness is becoming a reality. The writer and the president are after the same thing: evolution. The president is trying to achieve it through war and his version of religion. The writer is trying to achieve it by writing a book. But if you want a sense of what the presidential half of my book is about, this is a pretty good start:

This song is more general, unlike the last one. The scene: the group of survivors of World War III (who the protagonist, Eugene Myers, dreamt about) end up in a mansion together, north of Sunset in Los Angeles, CA. They don’t have much to do but wait out the war and see if they’re going to die, lamenting the people who brought them to that place (”We’re in a prison of others’ ideas.”) So the lyrics say,

Come on, peace
You arrive today (on the way)
What a relief
We will pass away

Sunny! But it’s the end of the world. A major theme in the book is life after death – if we literally knew that our soul traveled on after we die, it would change the fabric of everything. Death would no longer be seen as a punishment, so war would lose its utility, and there would be a different reaction to many different types of suffering, such as sickness. Can’t be certain of this, however, so the song ends,

What’s beneath the silver lining?
Is it peace or is it dying?

Please take a listen to this one. It’s in three parts and pretty much covers the ground musically of where I’m going with the book’s soundtrack.

Full lyrics here.

Dear World/Come on, Peace/Silver Lining by theamericanbookofthedead

This song gets to where I’m going with this songwriting project. To set the scene – the lead character, Eugene Myers, writer, has been dreaming about people who turn out to be real. He’s so desperate for it to happen again, and wants to avoid the fear of a turbulent plane, that he instead starts writing about a person, rather than waiting for a dream to come. He begins,

A New York apartment. I know it’s New York without being told. I can feel it because I’ve lived in a place like this before. Grates on the kitchen windows that look out on the dirtied brick walls between apartment buildings. I had an ex-girlfriend who lived in a place like this. Almost exactly the same….

I understand what is happening in this room. I’ve been around junkies enough in my life. Done it myself. The pride in their wide eyes, as if they’re accomplishing something. Which they are, partly, but what you learn from dope you learn quickly and the rest is redundant. I don’t know where they are in the process, probably somewhere near the beginning. They’re still healthy-looking, not pallid, still excited as they snort, don’t shoot, another line….

She’s a junkie model named Dominique…who actually turns out to exist. So he goes to meet her in New York where she says to him,

“Part of the reason I trusted you is because I feel like I’ve seen you before. In a dream, maybe. I’m just crazy enough to not think that’s crazy. It’s a big universe out there and in here.” She touched her temple. “And there’s a lot more than we can see with our senses. It’s why I started doing dope, you know? To feel God. Because I can’t feel it otherwise. But I know it’s out there. I know it.”

So…the lyrics reflect this:

There might not come a day when I meet the God who made my soul
So I’ll buy it for a song
And like the human race I don’t want to be a waste of love
So I’ll breathe it all day long

Chorus: Models breathe through shallow lips
Making love into made-up faces
Horses breed through shallow hips
Giving birth to made-up embraces
Models breathe through shallow lips, whoa!
—
I think I’ve covered the range of heroin-related animals in this song. Except monkeys – but “Monkeys flinging their own shit” wasn’t quite poetic enough.

Full lyrics here. Song here:

Shallow Lips by theamericanbookofthedead

Recently on Daily Kos I got into a long discussion (argument) with an atheist about the possibility of God. Think it pretty well distills my point of view (as well as the point of view of the hardened skeptic) so I’m posting it here. The discussion began in a post about 2012 – no doubt sarcastic and dismissive.  I’m not a great believer in 2012 being the End of All Things, but I still think it’s an interesting concept. I am always struck by the cynicism about any type of esoteric ideas on a site that’s the epicenter of liberal thought.  So I wrote:

God how I hate the condescension about spirituality here. Is the world going to end in 2012? Likely not. Is the concept of humans evolving to a new type of consciousness an interesting one? Yes.

A poster responded,

Since every “new layer” of spirituality so far has never been much more than another coat of paint on the structure of Stupid, I think the condescension is warranted.

Every religious person believes things that are as dumb and unprovable as the Mayan 2012 “apocalypse.” It’s just that most successful religions put a lot of those things in places and functions inaccessible to living humans. We normally avoid attacking such ideas in deference to everyone’s freedom to believe anything that doesn’t actively harm his or her neighbor, but if you do start the conversation, don’t expect to be treated gently.

I responded,

Atheism is unprovable. I actually think such an outright denial of spiritual issues shows as much willful ignorance as “the structure of stupid.”

My point of view: it’s a very big universe and humans’ current sense of perception is very limited. To not be open to the possibility of something else is – I don’t know – really fucking boring.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. I got into a long drawn-out dialog with an atheist that lasted well after the post had lost any more commenters. I’m posting our dialog here as Atheist and Believer. “Believer” brings to mind someone with unquestioning faith and that’s not really me, but I will admit that I want esoteric ideas to be true, just as the other commenter seems to want no existence of God.

A: Are you open to the possibility of atheism being on the money?

B: Of course.

A: What criteria do you use to determine which might be the right, or at least, more likely creed to be correct?

B: I can’t possibly have a criteria to say, “OK, now God has been sufficiently proven or disproven,” because there’s too much we don’t know right now – about both perspectives – to make a definitive statement. Until we’re able to travel to the 16th multiverse and see what exists there, we might be more informed. Right now, we’re not. My bias is my own enjoyment in exploring spiritual issues, rather than discounting them. I guess intuition plays a fair role, as does hope – which some might say clouds my judgment.

A: So, all beliefs of all kinds are equal in your vie? Belief in the Tooth Fairy, in Xenu and Thetans, in Zeus, in Jehovah, in Jesus, in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in Batman, in Harry Potter, in alien abductions and cattle mutilations, in vaccines causing autism, in 9/11 being an inside job and in flouride in the water being a Jewish plot to poison America – as well as in the nonexistence of gods or supernatural phenomena – which you called “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

I ask about criteria, because you say, “atheism is unproven”.

What belief of yours is “proven”, and, if none of them are, why are you so sure atheism is “fucking boring” and “willfully ignorant”?

If you don’t have any criteria to determine what is real and what is not, what is likely and what is not, what is consistent with what we know and what is not, then how do you decide on anything?

B: I didn’t say anything approaching that. I’m just saying you can’t make any definitive statements about the existence or non-existence of God. Sure, some things are more provable than others. But we’re not talking about the tooth fairy, we’re talking about God – and I think agnosticism makes a hell of a lot more sense.

And the term “flying spaghetti monster” is a perfect example of the kind of cynicism I’m talking about. The subtext is: if you entertain the thought of any kind of God, you’re a fucking idiot.

I’m sure atheism is more boring than theism because IF God exists and we can access it/harness it/whatever doesn’t this make life more “fun” than a world where it doesn’t? It increases life’s possibilities – atheism decreases it.

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“Spoken Word Piece” by the Minutemen

Liberal Man meets Conservative Man
Conservative Man wears his myth on his skin
Liberal Man has to explain his and keeps his shirt all buttoned up
Conservative Man greets Liberal Man with a well-rehearsed cold stare
Liberal Man replies by issuing forth horseshit
Conservative Man retaliates by taking the concrete reality of the
situation and lodging it, like a wedge, right between both sides of
Liberal Man’s brain
Liberal Man is caught off guard by this apparent non-abstraction
There is one full minute of confusion
Liberal Man becomes Conservative Man
Conservative Man becomes Liberal Man
War is declared
Liberal Man cheats by calling in reinforcements
Conservative Man is set upon by a mob and murdered
Said mob then turns on Liberal Man and he dies a broken man

Something has happened in America. The teabagging right has sucked all the fun out of being a conspiracy theorist. When I began writing The American Book of the Dead, we were in the middle of the Bush administration, and I let some of my paranoia get the better of me. Part of the reason it took me a few years to write was because I had to get some of that paranoia out of my system or the book would start reading like a tract rather than a novel. But at one point in my life I had a deep-seated fear of the people in power. My novel’s about a president who declares himself the Anti-Christ in order to start Armageddon and usher in the Second Coming of Christ. I actually believed at one point that George Bush jr. was capable of this type of hysteria. The Bush administration seemed to be proving right all the paranoid rantings of people like Alex Jones and Jim Marrs. The Patriot Act exists: it’s not a fabrication.

One of the disappointments of Obama’s election was seeing how seamlessly conspiracy theorists switched from Bush to Obama, as if they’re identical. And it proved Robert Anton Wilson’s theory that conspiracy theorists are just “adrenaline addicts.” They like having something to fear. It gives you pleasant little self-righteous jolt that you really know what’s happening and there’s an actual enemy that can be defeated. And now that type of conspiracy theory has entered the mainstream. By holding up pictures of Dachau to protest the health care bill, teabaggers have drained the enjoyment out of believing in conspiracies.

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