Usually, I try and write a focused blog post because it enables me to engage in the delusion that I have control over my life, which is a ridiculous fantasy because, of course, I have none. Right now, I'm working on editing a portion of my novel-in-progress, Happy. It's an interesting experience, different from the pure--if such a thing is possible--creative act. Helpful, nevertheless. In late 2003, I relocated from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The purpose of that dramatic act--I'd never been to New Orleans before, much less the South, and I'd decided to do so on a whim two weeks previous--was to get out of Hell-Ay and write a novel based on my experiences in Porn Valley somewhere else. When I first got there, I stayed in a tiny room in a little B&B of sorts not far from the French Quarter. One of those nights, Richard Ford was on some terrible cable access show talking about how you had to be somewhere else to write about the place from whence you had come, so it seemed like a good idea, what I had done, at least to the gods who live inside the TV from whence they send you signs electronically. Not long after, I found a 1,000 square foot apartment on Esplanade, which borders the French Quarter. It had 15-foot-high ceilings, the biggest doors I'd ever seen, a balcony with a wrought-iron railing. In front of this converted old mansion was a giant Oak tree from which hung strands of forgotten beads from Mardi Gras past. There I started writing my novel. At that time, it was called something else, If Only These Hands Could Talk. I rode a pink bike along Bourbon Street. I made a billboard covered with inspirations. But, over time, that novel seemed to not so much not work but to unwork. It's central character was unhappy. And, I don't know, looking back, maybe I was, too. I thought I had left what was haunting me behind in LA. Instead, I think I brought it with me, inside of me. And, eventually, the novel fell apart. And then I did, too. As I've written here before, I had something of a nervous breakdown in early 2005, when I was living in another part of New Orleans, not far from where I had started, in the Bywater. I lived inside a pink shotgun not far from the Mississippi River. But this place was darker. The walls were a kind of moody gray-green. At night, I listened to the trains slamming their way down the tracks, shaking the house to its foundation. That's where, in the spring of 2005, I went crazy. And I gave up that version of the novel. I spent that hallucinatory summer reading The Divine Comedy, having imaginary conversations with people who weren't present, starting to wonder if there were things in this world that could not be explained, and began to envision another way to tell my story. The version of Happy that I'm working on today was born out of that summer in 2005, the summer after the spring I went crazy before August came and took everything, and me, away. After that, I came here, where I am today, and now I'm writing my story the only way I know how. As it turns out, that's from inside the mind of a madman named John Chance, a pornographer, a character who may be the only way I can bear to look at everything in my life that has come before this day. This version of my book has elements of psycho-noir, high-punk, and "Blade Runner." I don't know why. Does it matter? I don't know. But lately I've been thinking that I don't think so. In any case, it's all an evolution, isn't it? After all, I didn't set out to write this post about what happened in New Orleans. That is something that I do very, very rarely. But there I've gone and done it. So, thank you for reading it. I suppose you know who you are. Don't you? In any case, this is the quote that starts my novel. It's by Danilo Kiš and can be found, fittingly, in The Encyclopedia of the Dead. In a few weeks, my birthday is coming. And I can assure you, I never, ever thought that I would live this long. Surely, this is a posthumous life.
"Was it a dream? Was it the dream of a somnambulist, a dream within a dream, and hence more real than a real dream, since it cannot be measured against waking, since it cannot be measured by consciousness, because it is a dream from which one awakens into another dream? Or was it a god-like dream, a dream of time and eternity? A dream without illusions and doubts, a dream with its own languages and senses, a dream of both soul and body, a dream of consciousness and corporality both, a dream with clear-cut boundaries, with its own language and sound, a dream that is palpable, that can be explored with taste, smell, and hearing, a dream stronger than waking, a dream such as only the dead perhaps can dream, a dream that cannot be denied by a blade nicking the chin, for blood flows at once, and everything one does is but a proof of reality and waking; the skin bleeds in the dream as does the heart, the body rejoices in the dream as does the soul, there are no miracles in the dream other than life; the only way out of the dream is to awaken into death." -- Danilo Kiš
