TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT, I LOST MY MIND
I started an editorial for my Big Talk column at onipress.com that I ended up ditching. It was a reactionary piece, responding to a third-hand comment lamenting that Oni is no longer the same publisher that published Oni Double Feature five years ago. It pretty much kicked the shit out of the myths about that book and the nature of an anthology in general, as well as the notion that we should be the same publisher as we were back then—but I’ve backed off. Sometimes you just got to be quiet and let the critics have their day and just not worry about it. The defense ended up belittling what was essentially a very good book with very good work by very good people. But if you’re reading this and thinking, “Gosh, I liked that comic,” then you need to realize it’s been gone since 1999 and if it left that big of a hole in your life, you maybe need one in your skull.
Shit, bitterness rising.
I am working out in public again. I want to get the last quarter of Gravitation volume 2 out of the way. I turned in the first half already, and have been whittling away at the next half, and if I can get it done, I can turn it in tomorrow, three days ahead of the new deadline, which is four days ahead of my original deadline. I am using different headphones tonight and playing Spiritualized’s second disc of Complete Works, and I have it loud, and “Medication” is damn noisy—yet my fears that anyone might ask me to turn it down due to any sonic bleed-through are quelled by the fact that this woman the next table over is actually talking loud enough for me to hear her. There are words for her that shouldn’t be typed in polite blogs. (Maybe I should start an impolite one.)
Have you ever noticed how my entries are much more spiteful when I am out among the masses?
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I e-mailed Matt Fraction the other day and told him he could have made me a star. Had I taken him up on his offer to do a column for Savant, I’d be announcing a project with Epic right now! Ha!
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Gravitation is an odd book. In every same-sex relationship, the boys are all insisting they aren’t gay. “I’m not gay, but let’s fuck.” This is how I imagine it secretly is in frat houses across the country. (I said “imagine,” not “fantasize” – it’s a distinct difference.) “So, Pledge McNutty, I’m not gay or anything, but you wanna cornhole?” Do frat boys put on frilly nighties and have pillow fights?
Plus, one of the boys is a sixteen-year-old monk. Must be some religion, the way he apparently puts notches on the headboard.
I did get to write some goofy lyrics in this section. I ripped the opening line off from Joy Division and then went from there. It was a good start. The original lyrics appeared in English in the untranslated book, and I used their mistakes to my advantage. They had “borden” for “burden,” for instance, and in the funky font it looked like “border,” so I ended up using it that way, making the poetry all the more pretentious.
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Today, two people asked me how the novel was going. I joked that calling a book The Everlasting was a bad idea, since it ended up describing how long it was taking to write it more than the book itself. My next novel is going to be called No Time At All.
Current Soundtrack: Spandau Ballet, Reformation, disc 3 (12” mixes); cool J-pop mix from Elin
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