Here are the highlights of my latest writing playlist, named “Samuel”, after the character over whom my tight-lipped third person limited-omniscient narrat(or)-camera hovers for the latter half of my third novel.  Included in this list, culled from well over one hundred songs, are the powerhouse tracks that really influence me.  I’ll explain why for each.  Come, take a tour of my soul.  Or something.

1. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade ~ The Decemberists. Making Samuel’s playlist was a challenge at first, because he’s a relatively new character, and other playlists have focused more on tone and content of writing, rather than the personality of a character.  Once I got near the POV switch I began splitting the extant playlist for the novel in two, one for Samuel and one for Sam’s father, David.  I came to realize eventually that what I was trying to contain in the playlist didn’t need contained at all.  A kid is scattered, pulling himself together anew daily, finding and losing his voice constantly.  With that in mind, I set out to make this playlist contain multitudes but more importantly weaker voices.  This Decemberists track achieves quite a lot.  It’s anthemic, it sets a strong tone, and yet very clearly it’s for the more tremulous among us.  A huge thank you to The Tall Brunette for introducing me to this song.
2. The Black Crow ~ Songs: Ohia. This is as dark as things get.  This novel more than any other is marked by death–slightly odd, considering the subject matter of the others.  When I listen to this song I can’t see anything for the iridescent feather-black in my eyes, and its desperation is perfect for both Sam and David, characters who feel helpless to change the world around them.
3. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) ~ Arcade Fire. As made clear by the award-worthy preview of Where the Wild Things Are, Arcade Fire’s Funeral is an album for youth.  Every note hums with the weight and significance all events have when you’re younger.  Running away seems possible.  If you could walk as far as the horizon what was behind you would no longer be there.
4. 16, Maybe Less ~ Iron & Wine and Calexico. Another youthful song that speaks to the mythic, ethereal presence our earlier years have on our lives.  Where Arcade Fire brings snow to mind, this song is deep green, trees and vines and cut grass, a song of summer.
5. Crosshair Chapel ~ Knife in the Water. This is a band few people have heard of, and I can’t sing their praises loud enough.  Excellent stuff.  Soothing, menacing, entrancing.  Like staring into the eyes of a snake.  Crosshair Chapel in particular has an apocalyptic feel to it that’s mirrored in my work.  Sam is a very perceptive kid, and he sees things are going wrong everywhere you look, and it colors his views.
6. Bottom of the World ~ Tom Waits. The world seen through the broken lens of Tom Waits’ head.  There are enough bridges for everyone to sleep under, and just enough beans and barrel fires. Sam will dream of this sort of existence from time to time, but of course he hasn’t been knocked around like the narrator in this song has.  He doesn’t know what’s out there.
7. New Doomsdays ~ Mimicking Birds. Another dark song.  I imagine this floating through my head at the bottom of a well.  This song is probably too mature for Samuel, but it hints at a depth to his character that he’ll grow into.

I thought of adding in a few of my postrock picks, but the explanations would be boring: “makes me think of the end of the world”, for every one.  And the postrock is all in another playlist anyway, for the less-human moments in the book.  I tried to make my mentions at least somewhat lesser known, and I hope I’ve exposed some of you to something new.  Next up I’ll talk a little about Butcher’s Crossing and maybe a book I just picked up, a debut novel from Brian Hart called Then Came the Evening.

I’ve thought a time or two about quitting this.  I don’t need to sing to you, to string words together that aren’t half as good as what I could put down elsewhere, to tell you the story of my life as though its saying was worth the breath.  I don’t know that it is.  I don’t know that it ever was.  There are plenty of others who do it better than I.  My mind has never been focused that way.  Time is better spent elsewhere.

Last night I did the right thing.  I didn’t before, and that cost me.  I didn’t know that it would and maybe it shouldn’t have, but that’s not the point.  I did the right thing last night.  It was not a transformative experience.  It was hard in a dull way.  But that’s probably how it should be.  If it were an easy thing everyone would do it, and looking outside you can see that isn’t what’s happening.  I wasn’t relieved when it was over.  I wasn’t happy or proud.

I feel as stony as my friends joke that I am.  I don’t feel bad.  I don’t feel particularly good.  I feel pulled in different directions but all of them are away.  I feel encumbered.  I want to be rid of things.  What I want leaves and what I have is unimportant.  I want to wear my soul thin from walking.  I want to barely feel myself except in the thinnest boundaries; my skin against the wind, my feet against the ground, my eyes against the sun.  I want to open my mouth wide and forget how to speak.  I want to invent a language with no verbs.  I want to stand so still I become a monument.

This was never meant to be such a diary as it became.  It was supposed to have a tinge of that, but mainly to be about writing.  I’ll be trying to refocus.  Will discuss John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing and talk about music, playlists, and their influence on my writing next time.

It has been a hell of a couple days.  My interweb waves come to you from stolen wifi at my old house.  I traveled across the country and brought some west-coast sickness with me.  That’s right, Ohio, I’m diversifying your immune systems.  You’ll thank me later.

Let’s backtrack a little.  The house in Riverside has been empty since Monday.  I helped my fellow Ohioan move out for most of the day and was paid in food.  Found out I’m stronger than I thought–was pulling a bookcase out of the van when the housemate asked if I needed help, and I just slung it up and took it around, said, “apparently not”.  All of this being undercut by the cold that fell on me hours after and has been an annoyance since.  Thanks for all the food, Kelly.  I ate most of it already.

I made sure I had everything packed Wednesday, cleaned things up a little.  Noel drove me to my reading in LA, at Avenue 50.  The Splinter Generation folks put together an excellent event, I thought.  There was beer and wine and a little food.  Kate Durbin, who graduated a few years ahead of my entrance to Riverside, read, and was very good.  Lisbeth Prifogle read this, and I read “My Wakeup”, making the prose readings very war-centric.  To pat myself on the back, at the end of the evening I went up to Lisbeth and shook her hand, thanked her for serving.  She thanked me for serving, too.  I told her I hadn’t.  There were some musicians, and some poetry read by Scott Miller, who’s the poetry editor for Splinter.  Some great, fun stuff from him.

Nico showed, with some friends.  He proved to be every bit as cool as expected.  He fed me waffles and we played Geometry Wars.  We went out to a bar called Footsies and had whiskey, met up with some of the heads of Splinter and one of the bands.  Talked a little lit.  It was a great time.  We headed back to his place after and Nico played his guitar for I don’t know how long, just fiddling, and it was really soothing.  The man is skilled.  We went up on his roof and looked at the lights of town, saw a surprising number of stars.  He also exposed me to This Will Destroy You.

We listened to them while heading to LAX.  Probably the most stirring and fitting music for leaving a place like California.  All the lights and the buildings, the curves of the 101.

Most of the rest is a blur.  I slept a wink or two on the plane, got delayed in Denver, caught about an hour of sleep there, and flew to Columbus.  Sick flying, stress, no sleep.  Weird looking out my old window.  A little strange seeing bare trees.  It’ll be good being here in my old room.  I’m writing a story that’s nearly non-fiction.

Go submit something to Splinter.  More later.

I’ve deleted two posts trying to write this down.  I’ve had trouble concentrating late at night and I have trouble sleeping–though the latter’s nothing new.  I feel like I’ve successfully compartmentalized myself.  I feel like I’m in a Murakami novel.  I’ve put my heart and brain away in jars and I take them down from the shelf when I need them and when I don’t the rest of me may as well be in formaldehyde, too.  I’m driven, I’m dedicated.  I do exactly what is necessary to go out in the late afternoon and write a day’s worth or more.  I eat and sleep and I am careful to use my brain for nothing so it’s fresh for those five or six hours.  If you were to ask me to cobble these days back together I’d be hard pressed to say more.  My memories are disjointed, tangential.  If you cut up a dodecahedron–if you lay it out a certain way– it can look like a Rorschach, or a mechanical butterfly; only one pentagon touching more than one other pentagon.  That’s how I remember, lately.  There are long walks and long moments where I’m about to cry and the few hours of In the Valley of Elah in which I’m taut enough to sing like fencewire.

It’s not that I’m numb or disconnected.  I’m where I want to be, given my means.  This is what I wanted.  I come alive on the page and otherwise I’m not invested.  My heart rests.  But that’s not true.  Broken up into these pieces, there are phases, moments, quadrants, in which I literally shake.  I feel so strongly about some things these days.  I’m up against a wall with one part of my life and with the others I grab at the thin air.  I feel surrounded by absurdity, by irony, by things so abstract I can’t discern any meaning and I see people relishing in them.  I’ve been rededicating myself.  I found myself searching for a kind of morality in Ohio and here I see its opposition.  I know what not to be.  I know where I stand and I know what’s below me.  We all walk on the bones of the dead.  It’s not something I’ll forget.

My field of vision narrows.  My interests dwindle.  I love the writing I’m doing.  I’m trying to read Notes from the Underground and I struggle because it’s so self-indulgent.  If it’s not a story of sacrifice and toil I am repulsed.  This is my Metamorphosis, except I wake up in bed to find myself a bitter old man.  But it’s good that some people write about other things, about themselves like I am now, about tripe like “the boundary between public and private”.  If everyone wrote something of moral import I’d have a much harder time getting noticed.

I’m trying to become more moral.  To live the way I write.  It’s a code I believe, it’s just not something I’ve been able to follow yet.  I find myself becoming a little harder again.  I don’t blame God for anything anymore.  I find myself becoming more religious.  I’ve asked him for something twice, recently, and I won’t deny it was selfish.  But I haven’t been confronted with anything I wanted that deeply in so long.  Ten years.  He didn’t grant me my wish and neither did the stars, and what does that mean?  That the alternative is better, I hope.  Not that it’s His plan, and He had it ordained this way, but that the compromise is too costly.

I feel best when I’m my own master, and I feel better knowing there’s nothing to lay blame on but myself.  I’m taking that weight.  The weight of the future, of the distance.   I have an idea of what’s to come.  The end isn’t clear but the path is worth it.  She’s worth it.  She and California, the distance to and from, the miles to Ohio.  When we started talking she had a path of her own, a long trip, and she told me she’d be better for me for having taken it.  It’s coming true of me, too.  I want to wear my bootsoles thin walking to her.  And if she’s not there I can still say I’ve gone those thousands of miles.

Taking a leap from the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, presented to me and you by 20SB, I give you my year in reading, approximately.  I say approximately because there’re a few here I can’t remember if I read in 2009 or the close of 2008.

• The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.  The only non-fiction I read, discounting a little of Ernest Hemingway on Writing and Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.  Egan does a wonderful job of bringing the Dust Bowl to life, and it is a world apart, let me tell you.  You can’t even imagine.  Comes with pictures that, if you’ve got any tie at all to the land, will chill you to the bone.
• Shadow Country by Peter Mathiessen.  Pick two of the three novels this was formed from, and read those.  Damn good writing, but not worth retelling a story three times.
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.  Another book I’d choose parts to read and parts to leave behind.
• Twilight by William Gay.  You thought I meant something else, didn’t you?  His most disappointing work.
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison.  I don’t know why you’d call this a novel.  It’s a novella, tops.  Good, for how short it is.  Needed more meat to it, I thought.
• Secret Son by Laila Lalami.  Dickensian, in that Great Expectations sort of way, plus Morocco.
• Slouching Toward Nirvana by Charles Bukowski.  The first poetry I read this year.  A letdown from the superb Last Night of the Earth collection.
• News of the World by Philip Levine.  Really good, really heavy, dirty, depressing poetry.
• The Speed Limit of Clouds by Jon Veinberg.  Go read it, now.
• The Bell Jar by you oughta know who.  Didn’t like it.  Don’t get why others like it.
• Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.  It’s not American Psycho, but it is as plotless.  Good for his first novel– Ellis’ prose was masterful right from the start.
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  Timshel.
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.  The only good noir I read this year.  Never read Mickey Spillane.  Just don’t do it.
• Double Indemnity by James M. Cain.  Not too bad?  Not very good.
• Reread Blood Meridian, Suttree, No Country, Islands in the Stream, Provinces of Night.

Though a reread, Islands in the Stream was my favorite for the year, I think.  It kept me company through some hard times this summer, and for a while turned my inner monologue Hemingway-flavored.  I doubt I’ll be able to pick it up again without thinking of the pool and the lounge chairs and the sound of the palms overhead.  It’s really a wonderful book.  The beginning is Hemingway at his best–simple, evocative, powerful.  Thomas Hudson is a painter living on the Isle of Bimini, and the novel opens just before his three sons come to visit.  The book involves drink, sport, and war–Papa’s holy trinity.  People don’t read his posthumous works enough.  I suggest you do.

Mostly a post of miscellany, but with this little kernel:  a long, long time ago I diagnosed myself with a deep need to appease the father figures in my life.  My dad was absent or lacking through a part of my childhood, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put these two things together*.  At present, there’s a lot to take from my father’s behavior, a lot to learn from, and a lot to mediate.  My dad, I assume, is one of the last of his kind–the old breed that has a helluva time talking about anything, would sooner take you out to kill animals than talk about feelings.  And that’s fine, I know how he feels, and I would sooner have him than the manchildren that pass as adults these days.

So, in an odd way I’ve been trying to teach myself how to be a man.  I don’t think I am one yet.  Occasionally someone will describe me as such, and I take it as a compliment.  But I’m bothered by my complacency, and if a real man is anything, complacent isn’t it.  I was on a balcony at school the other day and I saw a guy take a seat on some steps, peel open a pack of cigarettes, and let the wrapper drift away.  I wanted to yell at him, but I didn’t.  I thought, have I been blameless on this front?  Have I littered, or let friends litter?  And, yes, of course I have.  So it would be hypocritical to call him out on it.  But that’s not right, is it?  Your moral standing should not give you pause when you see an injustice.  It’s a luxury, hypocrisy.  We happy middle-class, we’re able to stay our action with political correctness, with our own position, and that shouldn’t be so.

Well, nevermind the miscellany.  I had some things to link you to, but I’ve forgotten them or didn’t save them.  Down the pike I think I’ll try to remember all the books I read this year (not many), as a lot of litblogs are doing that sort of thing.

You’ll note at right that I’ve linked to My Soul is a Butterfly, another one of those lovely, soulful blogs.  Hannah’s writing drips with the stuff of existence.  Also, I went and got a Twitter account, for god knows what reason.  You can find it here.  That’s it for today.

*I don’t know why you’d ask a rocket scientist to do that.

I walk a lot here.  I walk about two miles to the grocery for a few pieces of fruit and some bread and my housemates laugh when I come in and see the bags.  Gone for two hours for $10 worth of food.  I guess my time just isn’t worth much these days.  I have a lot of it and I have a lot to kill.

I’m so far in my head these days.  I write a lot, drink a lot of coffee.  My sleep suffers a little from that but when I wake up in the middle of the night it’s no inconvenience.  The quarter is nearly over and I have most of my work done.  Finish off a short story and a paper and I’ve got a while to do nothing, to prep for my reading and write more.  That’s what life is out here.  I thought I’d be okay with that, and largely I am, but I never gave it a thought that I’d be pulled so powerfully away.  At first she was supposed to be with me, a little magically.  We’d be living with Viking in the condo and laying out together or maybe trying to grill, or whatever, just living together.  Seeing what sort of a home we make.  When that didn’t come together it was that there was nothing, that I was supposed to forget, or to put her away.  Now we’re somewhere in the middle of that.  Thousands of miles away, across time zones and weather patterns.  But together, in our way, and happier for it.

I find myself writing as an escape, as much as anything.  It’s not suffering for it, but it is a distinct impetus.  I’m living in wait, trying not to count the days.  There are a lot of them.  I daydream of gray skies in a new city.  That should surprise you.  But I know that’s where I’ll find her.  Whether I come to her or she to me, it’ll be a new city, one I’ve never lived in, one that has rain.

I wrote a poem about a year ago that I put up for workshop a few weeks back, and I’ve been revising it and really considering its heart.  The whole premise is that I meet people, women, and fall in love with them, and what I remember and think of more than anything is the architecture of our relationship.  I think of the buildings we saw, the spaces we were in, what we sat on and what we drove through.  I’m not sure why that is.  It strikes me as something very masculine–not manly, but rather inherently male.  It may seem less romantic but when I think of her and what might be it’s a place that I may bring her, a home I can try to make again, streets that we can walk down.

I missed you powerfully last night.  It was a good night, fun, and even through that I wanted you.  I looked away often, up to the stars, sat back and listened for the things that they didn’t hear, things that even I didn’t hear; the sound of your voice, the passing of time.

To contrast my last post of substance:

Everyone thinks they can write a book.  They can’t.  Everyone thinks they’ve got a story in ‘em that’s worth telling.  They don’t.  Half of the people who’ve even taken steps to become a writer fall into this category.  Probably more than half.  And I don’t just mean get a book published.  I mean write one.  And not even a good one that goes unnoticed.  I mean just finish one.  A bad one.  Most of you won’t do it.

It’s one way or the other with folks, but often enough I think it’s both.  Writers are, as we’ve covered, mystical figures who ride unicorns and drink the moon’s laughter.  And at the same time, everyone thinks they can be one.  I met Billy Collins a couple years ago, and he had (very roughly) this to say:

I was introduced to an accountant at a party.  We exchanged pleasantries, names.  When he recognized mine the accountant said, ‘why, my nine year old daughter is a poet.  She writes poetry all the time!’ And I said, ‘you know, that’s funny.  My six year old is an accountant.  He was playing with change just the other day.

The truth of the matter is that dabbling in something doesn’t make you a professional.  I’m interested in physics, but I’m not about to call myself a physicist.  Just the same, entertaining the idea, even sitting down to begin a story, does not make you a writer.  There is no hard and fast definition, no certain point at which you can say you are one.  But you ought to know when you’ve crossed it.  And it’s not even necessarily when you’ve finished a book.  I’m comfortable with calling myself a writer after having spent three years at it, getting a few pieces published, and finishing two books while working on a third and going to school for writing.  If you took away any two of those things, I’d probably not call myself a writer.

My thesis is this: I like colons in blog posts.

My thesis is this: while writing is a job, even just a job, it is not something you can claim as a title simply because its definitions are so liquid.  Furthermore, with more accuracy than any weatherman, I can say that you aren’t a writer.  It’s gonna rain, and you aren’t a writer.  Put down your pen and grab an umbrella.  Everyone thinks they can write a book, a lot of people say they will someday, but only writers do.

I was hoping to generate some discourse with my last post, but it would seem the world according to five people other than myself agrees with me.  No one will stand up and defend Homer as a prophet, or as someone who shook the world?  Shakespeare was just doing his job, building the English language as we know it?  Okay.

In case this got by you, the Wall Street Journal for the past week or so has put out a couple great pieces: one, a bunch of writers let slip how they spend their day writing; and two, a killer interview with John Hillcoat, director of the festive and heartwarming holiday movie The Road and said loving tale’s author, Cormac McCarthy.  It’s mainly McCarthy’s show.

Remember how I had that post about William Gay?  Seriously, read him.  Here’s an long interview with Gay at Oxford American.  Better than the McCarthy interview.

Last is an interview with Tobias Wolff, a really warm piece about the short story, state of publishing, MFA programs, that sort of thing.

I get most of these from reading the litblogs to the right, by the way.  You can cut out the middleman and read them, instead.