My Fiction Sucks

Given that you are vested at least one blog deep in this 4 weblog empire, you are no doubt fully aware of the fact that I can’t write fiction. Now, I can write some serious nonfiction. I can write it fast and funny, good and great, understated or overblown. But I can’t write fiction.

Which is a bummer for me. I’d love to be able to toss that perfect phrase onto page to sum up where I’d been, why I was back, and why it mattered. And I never could. I just ended up thrashing, like some kind of medical-crazed rock critic with a fat thesaurus and a bottle of whiskey, and a compulsion to lie.

The diagnosis of cancer—serious cancer—sort of brought all this into focus for me. Seems like the moment when somebody with brains and ambitions and a sense of destiny would promise him or herself get this hands and his heart under control and write that novel he’d had kicking around inside for decades. Not for me, though. I know I don’t have it in me. I got a different problem.

I’m runnin’ a nightly race between pain killers and recorded music. I have a couple dozen really nice originals and creative covers all scribbled out. They are really good. With a little luck, some drive, and short periods of coherence before the hard stuff kicks in, I should be able to get two or three drafts into digital format every evening, Which could get me a decent album a month over the next 6. Not bad, even for a slacker like me!

Completely covered. The future’s so bright…I gotta wear shades… .

Or would have to, if I had actual drive and ambition. So here’s where I’m heading. I’m gonna start sticking the draft music up with the tunes on http://theresaturtleinmysouplblogspot.com/ after I’ve produced ‘em within an inch of their lives.  I’ll keep the sustainability science at http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/, the cancer stuff at http://endoftheworldparteux.blogspot.com/, and family and friend and general news as htt://docviper.livejournal.com/. Remember, it’s an adaptive system. Let’s make it work for you!!!!

Lebensraum

A few years ago, jazz producer and entrepreneur Joel Dorn (I think) ended up with the tapes of a radio broadcast concert by Rahsaan Roland Kirk from Germany in the 1970s. To the disgust of his record company (and it was HIS record company,BTW) he insisted on naming the resulting (outstanding) album “Brotherman in the Fatherland”. Even though Dorn recounts the deal at length in the liner notes, it remains unclear why he stuck to his guns on this. I’m gonna guess that it was because: a) Kirk would have appreciated the irony; b) it pissed his record company off; and c) he could. 


For vaguely similar reasons, I’m titling this one with the vaguely similar Lebensraum. Based on none-too-productive casual research, I’m beginning to think that the “German” side of my father’s family may have been Alsatian Jews. And that at least some of the Germans in my mother’s ancestry may have been Jewish as well. As many of you know, I pretty much live for irony. Not necessarily TASTEFUL irony, of course… . 


Anyway, here’s the deal. For the foreseeable future (which, given present state of available cancer therapies is NOT going to be pretty), I’m going to shift http://endoftheworldpartdeux.blogspot.com/, originally intended for commentary on music and mass media, to the diary of my illness. But, having recently discovered how smegging easy it is to record shit on Mac laptops, I still need a place to park music and music reviews. So I’ll just make http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/ into a food-plus mode, where we’ll pick up entertainment along with dining. That will leave http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ for ecosystems analysis and sustainability science, and http://docviper.livejournal.com/ for family, photography, and general fun. Hopefully this meets with your approval. With a little luck—like I’m still here to be writing this shit next year at this time—maybe we’ll rearrange priorities again. I’d sure as hell be up for that!


“Brotherman” is an outstanding album, BTW. Highly recommended—no household should be without!