The grain of the voice

Long ago I read an essay by French author Roland Barthes entitled The Grain of the Voice, which was included in a (translated) collection called Image • Music • Text. The collection itself was rather influential in certain (English speaking) academic and intellectual circles, particularly for such essays as The Death of the Author and Garbo's Face — but it was The Grain of the Voice that particularly resonated with my sensibility at the time, and it still does, although I think my remembered sense of it has likely evolved enough to be considered a considerable departure.

Actually, it was my departure from it that was part of its sustained pleasure for me, and what allows it to still register on me as an influence. Any creative work I love, and which I can cite as an influence, has this feature: I leave it behind. It puts its breath in me (like a magician blows breath into clay to make it human) — or at least, its breath fills my sails (my "motivation" — as if that can truly be said to exist as any less a metaphor than sails are said to be), and off I go. Where I go and I how go and where I come to rest as a result of that may be fairly judged as divergent, if not contradictory — but regardless, I am happy if I can say that it is different. It's an evolution.

So, that being said, I was thinking about it again — about that phrase and how I understand it: The Grain of the Voice — and the way that it is interesting to me to allow both "grain" and "voice" be generally representative of expression with creative works. I should probably put 'creative works' in quotes too — but at a certain point, everything should be put into quotes, which can be rather tiresome. Therefore, let me express a proviso in this post that 'everything is anything according to some context'. If that context is not clear here, oh well. But let me just say that I was thinking of the "grain" of the "voice" in terms of an ineffable quality in works of "creative expression" (and that I put these words in quotes to signify what should always be apparent anyway, which is, that it is not necessarily obvious nor final what is meant by them).

Not too long ago, I suggested to someone who works as a professor at a local University that "reading" could have a loose enough meaning that it could encompass any process of analysis, decoding, comprehension, cognition, etc. (such that you could speak of literacy or competancy in the context of various cultural languages ["languages", i.e,. social grammar, social syntax, vernacular, argot, etc.]  and hence, for instance, broaden the perspective of research methods and analysis with regard to literacy itself), and he was rather imperiously disinclined to accept this connotation. That is his prerogative, of course, as it is mine to consider his refusal symptomatic of an unfavorably narrow-minded scholarship. I don't pretend to be right, but I do like to write and reflect on what is interesting and stimulating and moving to me.

I think the concept of grain is as difficult to explicate (perhaps inevitably, perhaps necessarily) as that which it inexactly refers to. I like the word. It reminds me of the Chinese word li [理 "the markings in jade; the grain in wood; the fiber in muscle" —c/o Alan Watts] (in the context of Taoism), and it makes me think, naturally, of seeds in general, and of the famous "grain of sand" within which one might see eternity. It makes me think of wood grain of course, and the understanding of the difference between going with and going against it. But these are material in a way that the grain of the voice might not seem to be so obviously similar.

The concepts are married in the notion that the grain of wood and the grain of the voice are both expressions of an inherent order, being, soul or spirit. At the subatomic level, things may share a common structure that makes them indistinguishable, and that is interesting, but at the level where they are distinguishable, and where there is interaction and relationship, what can be truly remarkable, interesting and even profoundly moving, is how their difference is expressed.

The grain of the voice is an allusive trace of something equally allusive, and yet both, the sign and the signified, are palpably evident: felt, experienced, known as a knowledge that is inadequate to the task of exposition. This inadequacy, this limitation is not a disappointment to me. I consider it a natural consequence of what might be called the course of being.

The more material something may be, the more its meaning and value may be managed by various economies and power structures. This is even true of philosophical (or spiritual) principles. What is truly seductive to me about the grain of the voice is that it is not managed. To any extent that there is an attempt to do so, it disappears — slips out and away from under that thumb. It is present as a natural consequence of being. It is being, really — or if you prefer, life, presence — and always different, unique — and yet also, somehow, strangely, inexplicably, familiar. It cannot be had.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

A deliberate error. Or not. A case of dyslexia? There is a good deal of interpreting going on, and a lot of it shows itself to be presumptuous. We are privy to that, of course. So, assumptions and expectations are generally, then, made evident. For instance, when reading an adventure story, one might expect the the hero to prevail in a valiant, graceful, expeditious way — at least, inevitably, i.e., despite certain initial setbacks. This expectation, here, is confounded. Although not entirely unrealized. But subjected to a good deal of “slippage”. The irony is that this confounding of heroic success, or precision of its execution, is so consistently done, that it itself becomes expected. What might be meant to confound, thereby, can become predictable. In fact, irritatingly so. It becomes somewhat tiresome when every time one of the “white hats” attempts to exact some sort of justice or retribution or gain freedom from the tyranny of the “black hats” that they bump up against something that interferes with their actions, and causes more damage. At the point when the “black hats” are finally dispensed with, it is at great cost indeed, and the cathartic satisfaction is minor. That may be the point.

Aside from a partly disappointing emotional journey, however, there is some great suspense and some lively action, as well as some very interesting, albeit oblique, meditations on causality, strategy, perceptions, economy, weapons, chivalry and grace. The latter is a fascination for me, and so I would tend to wish for more attention to that area. The suspense is served with a great deal of deferral, which is both entertaining and exasperating. It is never entirely clear who the central protagonist actually is, if there is indeed meant to be one, which is interesting and agreeable to me. It has a multinational cast, with even the terrorists being mixed (Middle-Eastern, Asian, African, American). The stars are, what might be called in a movie, character actors, who are variously Irish, Chinese, Hungarian. Zula functions in a way like Helen of Troy. She is the vessel for grace. Or is it vassal? (There is much mention of vassals in the context of the online game that is at the centre of the book — speaking of which, this is much like way the virtual game functions in Snow Crash — in fact, there is an early joke made about the relationship between the game in Snow Crash and 2nd Life, along with continuing meta-referential gags about authorship throughout). There is a good deal of environmental description, which I always find tedious.

A very well written book, which left me in some respects vaguely disappointed — likely a result of my own expectations. I remain a devoted fan, nonetheless.

Ken Sparling : INTENTION IMPLICATION WIND

I read it very slowly. Because every time I read it, it was startling. And I wanted it to continue to be startling. I didn't want to ever take it for granted. I had to read it like it was -  as it was written. So it could keep on being startling. It was always being startling to me. That was quite important. It was beautiful and startling. And startlingly beautiful. 

Things would just come out of it. Poetry. Very meaningful. Nested there. Growing out of it like flowers break through concrete. Which defined and superseded it. Like fish jumping out of rivers. The sun glinting briefly off their skin. Eyes flashing. Mouths trying to breathe air. Incongruous and perfect. Reminding us. And making evident the space around us, between us, and within. A brilliance that shimmers briefly in banality, but registers most deeply thereby. Like something unexpectedly you see caught up in the wind. It blows away before you can get ahold of it. You’re left grasping for it, only catching hold of empty traces of it, which remain full of imminent meaning. Until it turns into something else.

There is a story there. I would be inclined in one way to say that it is told impressionistically. I would be inclined in another way to say that it is told like cubism does portraits. I would be inclined in another way to say that it's just like any story told: the sense of it is aggregate. The characters and things that happen and the feelings everybody has, and the perceptions, all become evident in complex contradictory ways over time. Repetition. Like relationships. Thinking, or knowing, that it is something whole, even though each part rests easy on its own.

There is a story there. But more than a story, there is writing there. There are sentences and paragraphs the like of which i've only read in few, very few, writers. It does stand out. This is literature as an art form. 

One of the very few books I will return to, to continue to read and be inspired by.

INTENTION IMPLICATION WIND

Traveling

(A slightly different version of this was published by Dandelion Magazine in Spring 2005)

Snow and open road

I am riding in a car

A dream of the past

            – Senta’s 23rd Haiku

I wake up in the body of a man. He’s in a car. He is the passenger. The woman driving is, I think, his wife. She looks like she is in her 40’s. I think she is attractive. I like the way she’s dressed. She looks pretty cool. Maybe she’s an artist. It’s hard to see her body, but I think that it looks good. Her face is dark and beautiful. Her eyes are green. Her lips are full and are very red.

I look down at the body of the man. His hands look older than my hands. His clothes suggest that maybe he’s an artist too. I can’t control him yet. She is talking to the guy. I can’t understand it yet. But I can tell that she’s concerned about something. He seems a bit distracted. But I have to wait for clarity.

It’s their instinct that I always tune in first. The stuff of the reactive mind. Then I get the feelings. The senses and emotions. Then I get the dreaming. The poetic flow of imagery that reflects the hidden soul. With this I must be careful not to pay too much attention, but sometimes there are important clues. And finally I get the thoughts. The thinking mind. The notions and abstractions that coalesce the other layers of the total mind, and which shape the personality. It deliberates the self’s sense of its own self. The mirror, the sword. This is where my work gets done, where I can have some influence. I am hidden here.

The car is on a highway. We are traveling fast. I think we’re in the Rockies. There are a lot of mountains. They really look amazing. Snow is on the ground, but the roads are clear. There is not a lot of traffic. Inside the car is warm. But it doesn’t seem that cold outside, despite the presence of the snow. The sun is shining brightly and intensely. Its reflection off the chrome and glass of passing vehicles is nearly blinding. I think that we are traveling west. The dash board clock reads 2:00.

The guy feels pretty calm. I think he’s meditating. His wife is talking to him, and it’s starting to make sense. He answers her, but doesn’t have that much to say. I think they’re sorting something out, but it doesn’t seem that critical. He seems preoccupied with something that might be interesting.

I see the gate ahead of me. I’m not overly excited by the place I’ve traveled to, but I think I’ll stick it out. I have a kind of feeling for the thing. So, I let the gate go by. There’ll be another one. The gates are always there when I really need them. I shouldn’t be so cocky though, in case I slip on the cosmic banana peel. I might get stuck somewhere, and that would be a drag. I need to travel. It’s everything I am.

I can feel the dreaming coming on. I brace myself. The guy seems very calm but who knows what’s underneath it all. Watch out for the quiet ones, is what people always say. But it’s not that bad. In fact, it seems like he’s controlling it. Perhaps he’s meditating. He’s dreaming about space. My favorite thing. In fact, his dreams are something like my own. They’re very geometric, but it’s really about meaning. Then I see the ship.

Oh, he has a ship. That is quite surprising. Then his thoughts come into focus. In his mind he says “I am the passenger.” That is interesting, and somehow alarming, because that’s exactly how I feel about the places where I go. I feel my flight instinct kick in, but I manage to calm down. I check to see if there’s a gate, but there isn’t one. But that’s ok, I’m going to stay. This is intriguing possibly. What does he mean?

I can understand the woman now. She’s asking him about a trip. Is he all prepared to go? And he is saying that he is, but he doesn’t let her know that he is worried. It’s about the ship. He is not a driver. But he must drive the ship. He has a theory about that. And I think that he is right. He cannot drive the ship. He has to let it drive itself. He is the passenger. He has to let go of control, and be one with his desire, then his will can be the driver. It is just like the device. His ship and my device are very similar. And I’m not a driver either.

I am a passenger. I am his passenger. I have been in many people. Watching and observing. But I like to take control. Just a little bit. It’s interesting. It’s a bit like backseat driving, but in a subtle way. It doesn’t work as well to simply say to people where they ought to go or how they ought to get there. No one likes a back seat driver. But you can encourage them to dare to take a route or go off in some manner that they secretly desire. If you are too pushy, then they get upset, and then you feel like you are sick. They try to shut you out and that makes you feel much worse. Then you really need the gate, and even when you make it out, you feel hung over for a while.

This guy has made himself a ship and his wife has helped him out. She’s some kind of a mechanic. He drew up the plans and she helped assemble it. It’s a lot like the device. It’s metaphysical, but it looks like a space rocket with an art deco design. It’s very beautiful. It’s set up in their basement, but it’s also in his dreams. She isn’t going with him, and  I wonder why she can’t. Perhaps she can’t receive it in her dream? I think she has the mind for it, but not the inclination. Clearly, he has both. Which makes me think I may have stumbled on a fellow traveler. But where exactly is he going? Maybe he’s looking for a gate?

He pulls the windshield visor down and lifts the flap up on the mirror on its back. He looks a bit like how I think that I might look when I’m his age. He’s staring into his own eyes, but I feel like he is looking right at me.

“I’m here,” he says to her. And she frowns at him. “What do you mean,” she asks? “I’m here!” he says emphatically. “I’m here inside of me.” And I know that he is right. But I move through space, not time. So I feel that he is also wrong. This all confuses me. She says, “Tell him, Quick!” He says “It doesn’t work that way.” And I don’t understand, but my flight impulse is very strong and I see the gate again. He tries to hold me back, and if he really wanted to, then probably he could. But I make it through the gate.

***

I wake up in the body of a dog. He’s running in a field. The dreaming of a dog can be very entertaining. But I play it cool in there and don’t pay much attention. Instead I take the time to think. I’ve never traveled through the temporal fields. I’ve always traveled through the space ways. So if that was myself that I was in, was it an older version of myself that exists in parallel? Or was I wrong about the mind, and about the gate?

I studied the Geometric Calculus of Mind at Ontos University. And I understand that the application of such science to the Society of Mind Theory, in concert with some specific Metaphysics. That’s what made the device a possibility. But none of that would matter, if it weren’t for my condition. I am genetically predisposed to memetic network transport; I have the right stuff for traveling. But unlike others, I am not an agent. I am a self-indulgent mental tourist. And as such, I am considered absolutely useless to anyone that matters in the ruling of the world. In fact, I only barely matter to myself.

There is the possibility that the guy could have been a Clone Bot. But why and how would it be older? And why would it be me? No, I think I may have missed something in temporal physics class. But if I did time travel, I don’t know how I did, or if I could again.

What could he not tell me?  Wouldn’t it be weird if I were just his dream?

The dog runs around. I feel its excitement. Dogs have a strong sense of freedom that comes to them from moving. I indulge in the feeling.

Streaming

Sometimes i use a voice for writing. Sometimes a voice uses me for writing. At least it feels that way. Sometimes I have a notion that a certain way of writing is best. For instance, the voice that "uses me for writing." But when i try to deliberately use that voice, it fails. It puts me in a curious position as an enthusiastic audience to my own writing, one that seeks to emulate or copy the style i find inspiring, which i supposedly produced, yet cannot successfully reproduce.  I have mostly resigned myself to not bothering to chase after it any longer. I think this particular style i'm mostly referring to is best suited to shorter pieces anyway, and my failures with it have occured when i attempted to sustain it over time in discrete bursts oriented to an extended narrative. Recently I tried to use it for a novel, but it fell apart. Although finally the proper voice for that novel has come. But i think i shall salvage the original inspiration that produced the text i tried to make into a novel and serve it as a short piece. No one would ever publish it, i don't think, so I'll post it here at some point.

In the meantime, here is the original piece that i wrote that inspired this contemplation to begin with. It is obviously not without its antecdents in other authors, stylistically, (kind of kerouac meets gertrude stein, oddly) but i myself revelled in how it allowed to me portray something i otherwise could not have done with simple conventional description. I wrote it around 2003, i think. It is very interested in the idea of "there" - particularly how any city, any place really, has a particularly character or personality that is present in its, or as its, "thereness." It is also entertained by the way that "you" can be used interchangeably with "one" (or for that matter "I"), but how by using it, the reader is implicated in the experience. Of course some readers may like this, and some may not - as is always the case with anything written.

New York Story

- We went to New York  and there was nothing there specifically that you could say was just one thing about it that was there, but there was a lot of everything that we were always feeling there and feeling it as everything was like always feeling it as being in New York and the feeling of New York -  it was all about the fact that you were there and feeling it as there, that everywhere was always New York there - like there was this awesome moment when we went into a small and casual eating place  - the kind of place where you go up to the counter like a deli and all the food is there under the glass and you ask for it and they heat it up and you pay for it and you sit down with it at the tables after picking up your plastic cutlery, and there are different people all around, and when you're done you take your paper plates and cardboard cups and plastic cups and plastic forks and knives and the napkins that you had to look around for because they came out of a dispenser shaped like an upside down trapezoid that reminded you of something, but you're not sure what, except maybe it was like something not quite typical but for sure it's in some bathrooms, but it didn't look like something that would be the thing that you'd get napkins from, and the plastic cutlery was different too because it was so thick, and you felt bad a little like you were being wasteful because you went and got some more of them after you got a brownie because you weren't sure if she picked up a knife the first time when she got the cutlery for the pizza you were sharing and for stirring sugar into the coffee you were drinking, which she didn't need because she was having iced-coffee, and you shared the brownie, and she touched base with people you were meeting up with by calling on her cell phone, and you looked around at the different people who were sitting at the tables or waiting for the tables, and you saw that there was a specific table that people did prefer, because you saw that as soon as one group left, another group would take that spot - it was coveted, it seemed - and all of this was regular, this action was quite normal, but some things were quite special - like the kid who served you at the counter who said go pay the beautiful girl down there at the cash - and he kept saying that like he wanted her to hear that he was saying that, calling her the beautiful girl that we were supposed to pay, and all the while he was smiling and being playful and getting us to play along, and there were a couple of young girls down there by the cash and  he was trying to point out the one he meant, and you didn't really know which one he meant but you were surprised and you were delighted too by the whole routine and he had an interesting face, a latino face, an open face, a friendly face, a playful face, and you felt special in some way like you did the whole time you were there in New York city this time when you were there, like you were somebody, like as if everybody thought that maybe you were somebody, like you never feel at home, quite the opposite in fact, unless you're with your friends, but that's different because they know you, so the whole thing was remarkable and a little bit perplexing and a little something else because you thought you were a nobody but you didn't want them to find out because you liked the feeling, like you thought that they thought that maybe you're a somebody (like when those people threw that party for the new book by Thomas Pynchon and nobody had ever really seen him but everyone decided to come to the party in a bar in New York city dressed or made up like they thought that maybe Pynchon dressed and therefore looked like, and there was one guy there that no one recognized, so they thought that maybe it was really him, especially because he had a bad fake sounding french accent and a big white hat and because when someone took his picture he got upset and ran away just like the way they figured Pychon would because he had never had his picture shown or given any interview and would likely run away and be upset the way that this guy was, but it turned out that it wasn't him, but everybody thought perhaps he was, they thought the person was a somebody, you see, and that's the feeling that you had like you were that guy who people thought was Pynchon, even though he wasn't, and maybe he caught on to that and didn't want to disappoint them and let them know that he was not, and because then also he would have to feel that he was really no one and maybe that was something like the way that you felt too) and because it made you feel like maybe you were someone after all, and you tried to set yourself, compose yourself, and hold yourself and carry yourself too in a way that was agreeable to you and fit in  with the general feeling that you were having, that maybe you were someone, which was remarkable - and you even had a look once at yourself, at your reflection in the window of a subway car and thought that you looked pretty good, which was unusual for you and not a feeling that was a common one for you to have, and perhaps it was then all of these remarkable and wondrous things combined, that rushed together suddenly as you looked around at the people in the diner as you both were getting your coats on and throwing out your trash and looking at the people there again, perhaps it was the all of everything that gave you an epiphany and made you feel a rush of love and joy for all the people there in the diner and all the people there in New York being how they are, all different of course, but somehow in some way being part of something that was peculiar, distinct and singular and specific to that moment - it was glorious - and it's getting even better as i think about it now.

Book by Ken Sparling (Pedlar Press)

This is book is sublime. Every time I read anything by Ken Sparling I get excited about writing.

Book is an unusual book. At first you might think that there isn't anything holding it together as a book, like as a novel, but the more you read it, the more the sense of it as a total thing emerges, mysteriously, ineffably, but none-the-less as there.

Some of the sentences and paragraphs are so good I can barely contain myself when I read them. Brilliant.

Book Tour - Montreal - Reading Anderson

15 April 2011

The night before the reading was magic. We went out with our friend Dayna. We were meaning to just go for one drink somewhere and then go get something to eat. But the barman, for an inexplicable reason, but very serendipitously, decided to engage us, me in particular, with a discourse on scotch that came complete with object examples. There were some very great samples at a very agreeable price. I reckon he was a saint.

I read at Drawn & Quarterly, which was an exciting prospect. So many colourful books. So many great books. If I weren't so distracted I would have bought the lot of them. I meant to come back the next day - record day - but the weather and our disposition dictated otherwise.

The event was very casual. I read with Jacob Wren. There were two nice people behind the cash. There was a stage and a microphone set up and a music stand with my and Jacob’s book on it. No one introduced us. We decided the reading order. I went first. We decided when to read. It was very cold on the stage. This was funny because everywhere we went I commented on how hot it was inside. So we were always taking off our coats in stores. It was cold and damp outside, but so hot inside everywhere. So I went on stage without my jacket or even my hat on. And it was very cold up there. Afterwards, we offered to sign books.

It was so great to talk with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. The audience was full of people I knew. That made me glad and nervous at the same time. It was like how I feel when there is a party for me. A birthday party. Or whatever. I always feel excited by that, but also rather conspicuous. But it felt good to read to my friends in Montreal. It was like reading to family. To that other kind of family.

I hadn’t been in Montreal for about 3 years. And the last few times we were there, we were dealing with all our stuff that we had in storage. A lot of stuff. So this was the first time together without that business to deal with. But there was this other business to deal with, which is a rather different kind of business. I was a bit distracted while I was waiting to read. Then afterwards, we went to a place to drink and eat and celebrate, and that was very much agreeable. Then, the next night we went out, but I was nervous thinking about Kingston, which was the next day, so it was difficult to enjoy myself, even though I saw even more people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I spent more time with my dear friends.

Sandra had just been recently to Montreal, so she was less overwhelmed by it than I was. Montreal has a very special place in my heart. It does for my whole family. It’s always been a part of my life, one way or another. It is one of those places. There are not very many of them. Fewer every day. It was great to be there, but I wasn’t quite there under the circumstances in the way I would have liked to be there. However, there were moments. Very magic moments.

Wherever you go -- there you are.

Book Tour - Montreal Preview

I'm going on a little book tour to read from my new novel, Anderson.

Actually, "tour" is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm reading in three cities: Montreal, Kingston and Toronto. They're all along the same route. Once I've flown to Montreal, I'll take the train to Kingston and from there also the train to Toronto. I quite like the train and miss travelling that way, which isn't so much a thing out in the West.

So, it's kind of a long weekend tour. The first stop, Montreal —April 17th at 7PM— I'll be reading at Drawn & Quarterly bookstore. This is quite exciting, and possibly dangerous for my wallet, given my love of their comics/graphic novels. They have some of my favourite authors in that medium: Linda Barry, Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Julie Ducet, Joe Matt, Julie Morstad, Joe Sacco, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. That's a pretty amazing list, and there are plenty others I've still to explore.

I'm reading at Drawn & Quarterly with Jacob Wren, who is another Pedlar Press author. I read with Jacob and 4 other "Pedlar Men" in Vancouver for the launch of Anderson. I bought everybody's book that night, and have read and been impressed by all of them, their unique voices. Pedlar Press is a publisher I'm very proud to be with. Jacob is based in Montreal, and I like to think of Montreal as home, even though I don't live there any more, and my immediate family is all in Toronto. But Montreal has a special place in all our hearts, wherever we live. I still have a lot of friends there that I stay in touch with, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. Hopefully, spring will be at least somewhat in effect -- I can hardly think of any where else I'd rather be when the warm weather finally returns to Montreal. Everyone is soooo happy for those first few weeks.

New Novels

I'm going on tour soon with my new novel Anderson. It is a short tour, but nevertheless I am thrilled by it's prospect. I shall be reading with other people, which I do enjoy, in two of those locations. One of the people I shall be reading with is another Pedlar Press author, Jacob Wren, whose book, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is very interesting.

I shall write about all of that a bit more later. But right now, I'm thinking about how I have a new novel out, and yet I am also working on a third one. So, in a way, I have two new novels. I thought that I would write the one I’m working on faster. I was sort of planning to be nearly done at this point. But I'm learning that what I think about such things is unreliable. And in fact, I seem to be better off not thinking about it one way or another. Rather, I ought to just write it, and when it is done, if ever, then I can think about it in other ways.

Because I have been a bit impatient with this book, and I was a bit with Anderson too, I find that I have reiterated it a number of times. My first book, Monkey, I was very patient with, and I let it form itself the way it was, without thinking about how I should go faster to get it done. The impatient relationship to my writing has proven to be unproductive. I hope therefore, that I am abandoning it as an orientation, strategy, or whatever I might think it is. It is not beneficial.

There is a possibility, I haven't ruled out, that I do this sort of thing to myself in order to trick myself, to pretend the value of a certain abstract relationship to production is worth committing to, only to discover that it isn't working, and thus serving to make me revalue the process that was challenged by this abstract relation. Such an elaborate ruse seems a bit absurd, but it could be part of an over all (crazy) purpose. Whatever the reason, I have discovered yet again that impatience with my work is pointless, and surrender to my natural process is rewarding.

I've been working on the new piece since November 2008, which is about when I handed in my manuscript for Anderson. I was intensely into writing this new piece, and I wrote about 60,000 words, and then I started rewriting it. I was playing with a different method for writing also. I usually go forward with a piece. I start here and I go there. Then I go back over it a number of times, adding, subtracting, refining. But with this one, I deliberately wrote in a fragmented manner. So that the pieces could be put together afterwards. This was interesting. But it has turned out to be rather unsatisfactory. Now I have assembled all of the bits and pieces and gone over it and cut it all down to about 35,000 words. I have changed that bit 3 or 4 times, trying to find the best way to tell it. And now I am back to my natural method. Now I know I have it, the relationship to making it that works with it, and I am rolling it out in a forward movement like music.

Symphonies can be written in different ways, with different sections being composed at different times, and reassembled in an order separate from when they were written. Film and TV, of course, are also usually produced this way. But musicians who improvise have this way of going forward in their composition that I relate to as a writer, who was at one time also a musician.

Anyway, I just did an interview for a radio program (Mouth to Mouth) in Vancouver, and also for the Toronto Quarterly, and it’s got me thinking about my process.

writing is like food

Writing is like food. Different foods affect the way you are. If you want to be a certain way, find the food that will affect you in that way. I'm talking about writing.

About Me

This is the introduction that was read before the reading for the launch of Anderson. It's a bit long, but I think it might be interesting as a short history. Bio's are usually dull affairs. The pedigree and all that. I've always found it more interesting to find a story in someone's bio. So, I tried to make one. Bios are strange things in that they are often written by the people they are about in the 3rd person, because they are supposed to pretend to be written by somebody else. I don't know why this convention is observed when it is rather apparent who is actually supplying it. Anyway. Here is the bio that was read, 3rd person and all, despite the fact that I wrote it.

Michael Boyce was an army brat. This means he moved around a lot as a kid. His first 4 years of school were spent each year in a different city in Eastern Canada. He didn’t like school much. At 16 he was thrown out of one. He didn’t go back until, at 21, he went to university as a mature student.

In the interim 5 years, between being a high school dropout and a university student, he played experimental rock, jazz and punk rock music. He thought he was a musician.

When he started back at school, he thought maybe he was a writer. He had a book of prose poems published by Stuart Ross’s Proper Tales Press. He would stand out on the street with a sign around his neck, just like Stuart, Lillian Necakov, Mark Laba and Crad Kilodney used to do. But he didn’t do it very well. One of his teachers scared him about being a writer because he pointed out how hard it is to succeed and survive as one. So Michael started thinking that he was an academic, because he seemed quite good at that. But somewhere during his PhD studies in Montreal, he decided that he wasn’t. He just didn’t like the culture. Instead, he thought he was an artist.

He worked in university radio production doing shows with International Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and star Pianist Dana Reason, and got into video documentary and media art.

After taking his PhD in Humanities, he worked with Montreal film makers Daniel Cross and squeegee punk Eric Denis (aka, Roach) on a film called Squeegee Punks in Traffic. He worked with his wife, Sandra, and two other artists on an interactive installation. He shot a lot of dance on video. He made his own documentary and some small video-art pieces.

Then, when he turned 40 he thought he might be a writer after all. He started working on a script idea, and then decided maybe he should write the story first, and then the story became his first novel, Monkey, published by Pedlar Press.

Then he and Sandra moved to Banff, where it was very good and interesting to think about himself again as an artist. As a writer who’s an artist. He met a lot of amazing artists there and he is now working with one of them, Myron Campbell, on an S3D animation for the NFB based on one of his short stories.

Another short story, which he was writing while living in Calgary, kept getting longer. When he and Sandra moved to Vancouver, he kept writing it, and it eventually became a novel. It is now this novel, Anderson, also published by Pedlar Press, which he is presenting to you today.

Larissa Lai's Anderson Blurb

Larissa Lai was very nice to write a blurb for the back of my book, Anderson. I love her work. Her novels When Fox is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl are quite distinctive and just great. I particularly found Salt Fish Girl a haunting peculiar novel with a sensory quality like no other I've read. Needless to say, therefore, I was honoured by what she wrote about my book—and of course I'm very grateful.

Here is what she wrote:

Michael Boyce’s Anderson is a neo-modernist novel for the new masculinity. You could think of it as the love child of a threesome among Virginia Woolf, Alfred Hitchcock and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. What I’m trying to say is: this is the weirdest novel I’ve read in a decade, and I mean that in a good way. Michael Boyce has produced a wonderfully interior, completely over-the-top, disturbing and hilarious portrait of the inner life of a self-confessed detective of the soul. It remakes urban-realism, 1930s fatale-noir and dark fantasy to produce a genre that queries the relationship between text and experience, or, if you prefer, body/mind and representation. It makes an art of telling feeling to exhaust the language of affect, producing emotive and spiritual perception anew. After irony lies a blacker humour that possesses the body and haunts the reader to the edge of her capacity to perceive.
—Larissa Lai, 2010

Anderson Acknowledgements

Anderson started as a short story that kept getting longer and longer until I had to admit that it was a novel. Part of the reason that I had to admit it was because I was sending bits of it to Myron Campbell, whose curiosity about the character and excitement about what was happening and anticipation of what was going to happen next spurred me to elaborate on the matter. So I definitely have Myron to thank for that. Once I committed to it being a novel, I sent it in serialized form to him, Ravi Rajakumar and Trent Noble. They were an attentive audience whose feedback allowed me to gauge what was working and what was not. Ravi, as always, also provided much needed attention to errors and questions about unusual syntactic treatments, which is part of what I like to play around with. I’m additionally grateful to Myron and Trent for ideas on how to spread the word.

I gave an earlier version of the first few chapters to J.R. Carpenter, who’s general comments resulted in a very specific change to the novel’s flow. My sister Donna read a version and paid Anderson the incredible compliment of wanting to hang out with him. That endorsement meant a lot to me. Her husband, Bruce, also provided an insightful and critical reading.

I am ever grateful to my lovely Sandra Dametto for her support, inspiration and strong understanding of structure and story.

I feel very blessed to be part of the Pedlar Press family. Beth Follet is a dream I don’t care to awake from. Her sense of things is perfect, her editing spot on, and her support is amazing. Designer, Zab, is sublime, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have two of my books designed by her.

Thanks to Larissa Lai, whose novels I love, for her support and endorsement and the amazing blurb she wrote for the back of the book.

General thanks go to Stuart Ross, Aaron Peck, Laurie Dawson, Mitchell Politeski, my remarkable mother Dot, sister Maureen and brother Ron.

The city characterized in this book is a composite of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York City, San Francisco and somewhere else altogether imaginary. These cities have all been formative in some way or another of my interest, comprehension and apprehensions about cities conceptually, aesthetically, philosophically, socially, etc. —and by extension, are instrumental in the development of my general sense of place, what it means to belong somewhere, and the great mystery of being anywhere.

Certain music inspires, invokes, evokes certain spirits of writing. While writing Anderson I listened to a lot of jazz from the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Dana Reason, Art Blakey, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Herbie Hancock, and Frank Zappa, as well as things like Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Brian Eno’s Ambient music, Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Remain in the Light, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Neu and Kraftwerk.

Other things that helped to spawn this work: Comics like Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, Neal Gaiman’s Sandman, The Hernandez Bros’ Love and Rockets, Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Segar’s Popeye and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy; the Films Noire of the 1940s and 1950s; Humphrey Bogart’s John Huston and Howard Hawk’s films; films in general by Akira Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles; writing by Gertrude Stein, Earnest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Neil Stephenson, Douglas Adams, Lao Tzu, and Eckhart Tolle; and cartoons by the Fleischer Bros, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Shamus Calhane and Fritz Freleng.

Thank you all.

Anderson Book Launch

Here is the poster for the event at Sitka Books & Art in Vancouver. It features 6 authors, including me, from Pedlar Press, organized under the rubric Pedlar Press: Men In Print Reading Series. The other authors on the bill are incredible - all very unique voices.

Writing Anderson

Anderson started as a story entitled Anderson Detecting. It was originally written with the same sort of cadence as Monkey. I started it around the time that I was finishing Monkey. The writing style didn't suit it though. It felt affected. It didn't come naturally like it did for Monkey. It was just a style I was enamoured with and wanted to keep using. Things don't usually work that way for me. Everything I do has to have it's own personality. Like children.

I put it aside but the character still appealed to me. And the title. My work flows out of the title usually. But the title changed because it was a title that was in the style of Monkey's writing also. So eventually the title changed to just Anderson. I like one word titles. But the book I'm working on now isn't a one word title. I tried to make it a one word title, but it just felt like I was being affected again. I have more stories to tell about that book later.

Anderson was a short story for awhile. I had a plan to write and publish some short stories in hopes that my name would get around and people would trace it back to Monkey. I wanted more people to read Monkey. It got very good reviews, but not a lot of people read it. It is a very unusual style, and that may be part of the reason why it remains a bit obscure.

Short stories are an interesting form. There is very little support for experimentation in the short story by those who typically publish them. I don't particularly like short stories over all because of the standards and conventions that prevail with respect to them. But I do like to write them. I find them very good for getting film ideas out, and I do believe that they can surprise me by turning into novels, like Anderson did.

I was determined not to write in the style of Monkey after Monkey because I determined that was the Monkey style and should only be for it. With Anderson, I was finding a more simpler style to work with. It took a little while to find the right voice for Anderson. Myron Campbell helped to turn the short story into a longer story, and into a novel by way of his fascination with it and the character. Ravi Rajakumar was helpful in this respect with regard to Monkey. There is nothing better for writing than having an avid reader. But J.R. Carpenter was indirectly responsible for the voice of Anderson. It was simply because of a comment she made about one of the opening paragraphs. I was thinking about what she said in the context of situating the character in this particular paragraph. And as I thought about it and tried a sentence in different way, it suddenly dawned on me that I should change the whole thing. It was an epiphany. Anderson became wholly active from that moment.

I like things that manifest indirectly and organically. The more planned something is for me, the less interesting it is. There is a degree of planning, of organization, but it is very much done in the service of discovery.

now and zen

I haven't written here for a while because I feel too conspicuous.

I used to use this space to write in a mostly harmless not so careful playful way about some movies and some books I like. But now, since I make my living editing and writing, and work often in a freelance capacity, the prospect of a potential employer sizing up my ability to write copy for them on the basis of this material has stymied me. Not to the extent that I've taken it down and stopped writing in this form altogether, mind you. I just use different tools to write the sort of things I like to write for my friends and more anonymously for the general public. Respectively, Facebook and Twitter.

I do also have another blog where I write experimentally in a more or less intellectual capacity, though nothing that anyone would ever dare actually publish, because it is very experimental -- but I do that using a pseudonym, and very infrequently also. The rules of blogging (which i hate--as soon as something becomes popular, people start writing the rules for success in doing it) dictate one must publish frequently. Oh well. Perhaps my notion of success is different.

Why do I keep this thing, then? I entertain the notion that I could actually use it to address those potential employers. Although the prospect kind of bores me, and I resent the implication that I have to do injury to myself for the benefit of an absurd assumption (i.e. that I how I write with a personal weblog is how I write professional copy). But I don't really have time to do extra free work like that.

Anyway, I'm not sure that blogging is that interesting or viable a creative writing medium any more (mostly now for current events commentary). I'm not sure it isn't either, though.

So for the moment I remain suspended.

dear david bowie

The other night we went out to a club and did some dancing. Been a while. They were playing at nostalgia for a former club night that was long ago to some. Trading on its reputation history. The dance floor would sometimes have more people and sometimes have less people on it. We were goofing around. Play dancing. Then one of your songs came on: heroes. The dance floor flooded with people. Our minds were one. Our hearts were bursting. Kinship, love, remembrance, revived hope in nothing in particular. There you were, you and Eno and Fripp, all earnestness and sonic whimsy and joy turning it out. Sublime. And we were all full and as though knowing all each other.

t'was brillium.

movie reviews

I've been thinking about a different approach to writing reviews of movies - write about they way they make you think and feel and be, the way they drive your walk, the way they shape your own imagination, not about their narrative, not about the way that it succeeds or fails in meeting expectations, not about how good the technical achievements of it are, not about the way it lines up with your prejudice, or even your ideals, not about the way it reinforces policy, or even the philosophy that you prefer - but the inspiration it produces for you, how it is a generative thing - The occasion of some other thing ...that’s when it does get interesting to speak or write ...not “about” it, but “from” it in a manner of speaking ...in a manner of speaking saying writing and etc. ...on the occasion of this movie , I feel inspired or compelled or driven in whatever way to say the following ...but that preamble can stay silent or inferred perhaps only by the title of the iteration piece of writing dialogue or speech or whatever you might call it after all.

why i like chester brown

I just re-read I Never Liked You, by Chester Brown, and it got me thinking about his work and why and how I like it.

There are often times I read about or hear about the narratives that Chester Brown makes. Chester Brown is good at making narratives and so of course it does make sense that anyone would say that he is good at making narratives. I do say so too, but I would like to say more pointedly that what I really like and do enjoy and find to be remarkable about Chester Brown is his drawing.

The drawing is the thing for me even though the story is the thing for me as well, i.e., the narrative. The drawing has a space in it, a silence and a special kind of stillness to it, that I find to be remarkable because I find, I really find, I really do discover every time I look at it, at any of his drawing, that I find that stillness space is there in it, because I find that it is there in me, whenever I look at it.

What is reading anyway? What is looking reading anyway? What is looking anyway? And listening? All of these are me doing something similar, and it’s not entirely because of seeing with my eyes or because of hearing with my ears or because of thinking with my brain, because the mystery begins when the limit of machinery and process is apparent, because it all is only ever looked at, read, analyzed, or understood (when understanding is an action more than when it is an object).

What I like about, what I really like about Chester Brown is his drawing, and what I really like about his drawing is the way the silence and the stillness and the space of it finds itself in me, and how I find it there and look at it and notice it by feeling it and seeing looking at it reading it inside the panels of his drawing. There is such a holding still in it, in them, in him, in me, when I am reading looking seeing them it him. There is stillness there, and anyone can see it find it feel it there and correspond with it because it’s there in anyone, is anyone, differently perhaps and similar perhaps. That can be interesting, and that can be the way it is remarkable or not.

I say it is remarkable.

Tell It Slant - Beth Follet

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children ceased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
— emily dickinson (quoted in Tell It Slant)

I recently read Tell It Slant by Beth Follet, and I must say that I think it's very much beautiful and great - quite vivid - and it makes me miss Montreal. (I am often missing Montreal, and it happens a lot, it seems, when I am reading things ... I think I have some sort of fundamental association - a correspondence, if you will - with Montreal and writing). There is a triad of cities in the book that are settings for the writing that I can currently relate to: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver.

Where you come from means something, and of course where you are means something else. There is often a relationship between the two, but sometimes the places are where they are, meaning whatever it is that they mean, without referencing or figuring predominantly in relationship to one another.

Sometimes you move around to different places, and doing so is tantamount to moving around in different modes of being. And sometimes it is just you dealing with different environments. And choosing to be anywhere is about choosing the environment, which is like choosing the space-of-being to be in.

There is also always sometimes a place you would like to be where you are not. And you can hope to be there, plan to be there, long to be there, etc. -- and yet not be there. And that also is a way of being; like being out of being and wanting to be in being.

Places can make you be some way, can shape you into being some way, influence the way you are. And people can in this way also be like places. So, going to places can also be like going to people, and going to people can be like going to places -- and both can be like going towards what or who you are, can be, when you are there in them, with them.

And of course all of this is very much like time, because when-you-are is very much like where-you-are. And you can think about the way you were, and think about what happened, and remember when you were with whom, where, about what and how -- like as though you’re in a dream (or writing) about what you think you do remember, and what you think and feel about it all.

You are now and you are then and you are you, but different in each place. That is, when it is or was.

This is how it all becomes to me, thinking now about it, like it all is what a diary is like, without it being written like a diary in form. It is, in this respect, sort of like the heart of a diary. Or, like the art of letters, when the letters are disclosures, poetic, of the heart and soul, growing, grown, finding, losing, lost.

But you are there when while it is all happening, so it doesn’t have the comfy cosy feeling that a thing that’s already happened and now you’re being told about it all does have -- it has the current feeling of whatever it is that is happening right then. And yet even though you are there with it, going along as it is going, you are also not there but outside of it, and so it is still in its way comforting to read it all. It’s a confession that is literary in form, and that is why and how it can be both romantic and aesthetic.

The book makes me think about Roland Barthes: The Lover's Discourse, (one of the many books I loved by him, but that one in particular was very important); Camera Lucida, (its sense of the erotics of slight disclosure, and I note the main character in Tell It Slant is a photographer); and Barthes By Barthes ("read it as though it were a novel" he says at the start of his autobiography ... more literary confession, more romance, more aesthetic, etc.). All those books went a long way to shape my approach to writing theory/criticism/philosophy (... dare I just call it writing?).

There is a peculiar kind of space in Beth Follet’s writing that I find very peaceful and languid; a sort of melancholy that is liberating in a particular sort of way. I love the way it is seamlessly fragmented - the shifting time frame - the slippage between the first personal singular and second personal singular - (I am fascinated with how saying "you" can be like saying "me"). It is writing that does not present itself as writing but as the shifting interconnectedness of stories/memories/impressions, of a seeming narrative making you become and be through unraveling it all, until there's nothing there but the everything that makes it possible ...  the silence, the stillness.
Very nice.