Saturday, December 28, 2002
It's easier to talk about writing (or, as the case may be, to talk about not writing), than to actually do the deed itself. And since I did say that I'm past the point of making excuses, it's sufficient to gripe about the inconvenience of "real life" and how easy it is to allow it to take advantage of me. It feeds off time, reduces time, removes time from my grasp and digests it. I didn't really get anything done yesterday. I wrote the entry here. I had phone conversation with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. Mariah at Vertigo called to say that I need to do a couple of additional captions for the last page of Bast #3 — I intend to get on that this evening. I did force myself to spend most of the day in my office, sitting in front of the computer, which is at least a step in the right direction. There's still so much unpacking going on, and trying to get things ready for the imment arrival of my oftmentioned Rhode Islander (more on her later).
I did discover a notebook that I thought I'd lost, the one in which I made the first notes for The Five of Cups, in September 1990. I'll be revising the "preface" a little in light of the discovery. Along with it, I found the absolute earliest typescript (discounting the high school fragments that made their way into the novel at various points), also circa late 1990. It was originally intended as a prologue, though I actually ended up using the scene in Chapter Five.
Then, last night, when I unpacked the video tapes, I turned up about a dozen or so that were unlabled. Most were nothing of interest, crap that should have been thrown out or taped over years ago, but a few were more interesting. First, I found a tape I made in early or mid October 1993, video that I shot as reference just before or just after I'd started work on Silk. At the time, I'd thought the novel would be set in Athens, Georgia, and there's about an hour of footage of the town. Then it cuts to Morris Avenue in Birmingham, where much of the novel actually was set. I think I'd intended to transplant Morris Avenue to Athens. Anyway, it's just me and Jennifer (I'm filming), walking up and down Morris not long before sunset. The building that had been Dr. Jekyll's was still standing. But the disarming part is when we finally reached the eastern end of the street and there's the old Liberty Overalls factory building, deserted and in disrepair. Of course, when we moved back from Athens to Birmingham in August 1997, the building had been converted to lofts and we rented #303. It was astoundingly weird, looking at the footage, at the me who didn't know that just four years later I'd be living right there at the end of Morris, in that big, empty building. Dot to dot, connecting this moment to that moment to now. It always frells with my head.
Then I turned up a tape of a Death's Little Sister show at the 40-Watt Club in Athens, from November 1996. I watched about four songs worth of it —” "Anchorheart," "Pretty," "House of the Rising Sun/Amazing Grace," and "Twelve Nights After" — before I was too freaked out to continue. Unfortunately, both the sound and video quality is pretty crappy. The sound tech was supposed to be minding the camera, but it turned out to be one long, out-of-focus, static shot of the stage. Still, it really made me miss the band (never mind that we pretty much all hated each other by that November), being in a band, doing music, singing, and it made me wonder how extraordinarily different everything would be today if, in February '97, when I left the band and it subsequently split up, I'd chosen DLS over my writing. It made me dizzy, realizing just how much would be different, the things that never would have happened, the things that might have happened instead. Sad and tired and dizzy.
The last of the three "interesting" tapes was raw footage from an aborted attempt at a little documentary that was originally to accompany the limited edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Me outside the water works tunnel on Red Mountain, and then on top of the mountain, talking about history and industry and geology. It wasn't nearly as strange to see as the two before it, since it only dates back to September 1999.
I swear, moving is like dredging, disturbing all the dusty, forgotten layers that have been allowed to accumulate at the "bottom" of your life, out of sight and mind.
And speaking of residential archaeology, I figured out yesterday that, back when this building was still an elementary school, my office was a restroom. I found a roughly circular depression in the concrete and finally it dawned on me that I was seeing a drain that had been sealed up, and that all the other patched spots along the west wall must be where toilets or sinks or urinals once stood. It kind of grossed Jennifer out, but didn't really bother me. It seems oddly appropriate.
Today my Rhode Islander (she has a name — Kathryn, or Thryn, or just Spooky) is en route to Atlanta. Right about now, I expect she's probably somewhere in Maryland. I'm trying to get the loft ready for a new round of boxes. She'll be arriving late tommorow, hopefully about 24 hours from now. So, I should end this longwinded entry and get back to work. Not real work, though. Cleaning, unpacking work, which is necessary, but annoying and only makes me feel more guilty that the frelling writing isn't being done.
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