This is an attempt to explain the fact and fiction in my wok. The prose is very rough, but I think the thought is there...
My writing philosophy is fairly simple. . . I like to use fiction somewhat historically. I take events that are now happening now that I think are interesting, telling, and 'showcasing' them with the flourishes a writer knows. And sometimes, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down --- for me, as well as my readers and certainly the radio audience, and those at live shows, which is why I write a lot of comedy about dark matters.I go from ribald humor to flights of religious reckoning, pondering, predicting, prophesizing in my ill-equipped, sometimes inaccurate way.
My characters of late have been extension of events happening in my life. Why? Gangsta X is an extension of my own politics, and uses some of the truth of my own work. I take the truth of the media campaign I had been working on, and still am to some degree, though I am presently trying to sublimate almost everything I write into fiction... which is how I force myself to put together the hundreds of short stories.
My life has become too interesting to ignore. I do not like writing about myself, and avoided doing so for many years. I wanted to invent various characters. I would write story after story on the web, and I was funny enough that people would show my work around the office, etc... if I spent a few months writing comedy, the readership on my blogs would begin to sky-rocket.
Then, rather out of nowhere to me, I became the center of a storm. I was amazed to find someone launched a blatant attack on my mind. I was offered a radio show, and then brainwashed into another person. I wonder now who wanted that personality on the radio show -- and who was so afraid of who I am when I am back to myself, as I am now. I know, I know... I am getting fantastical to the unwitting, and I apologize. Believe me, if I wrote EVERYTHING I know. . . well, when I have written certain things before, they simply disappeared from my blog. Once, I put my address on the blog, and it disappeared, within about an hour. I took the dog out for a walk, came back and that was missing. Another time something to do with the mob. I left both things out afterwards, because I do not want to stir up trouble, or bad feelings, unless I have a true reason to do so. Especially with people who easily take offense. This is part of why I do indeed not like the idea that no one can put Allah in a cartoon, I still feel like I have to respect their culture -- the same way I understand that some blacks resent the confederate flag, and just about everyone hates the Nazi flag.
You have to be careful who you please, and reckless about who you piss off. I like to think that I am open to seeing the worth, and the universal, underlying ethics, in any major religion. They all help people live ethical lives, and brought ancient wisdom to the modern age, in some respects. They are, however, more a reflection of what was going on in their times, writing in a bible that was supposed to grow, into a virtual library of writers confronting the ills of their times, and preserving how their struggles for the generations to come. The universal nature of the human struggle means that we all relate to the best of the books, the ones that have been chosen over the years by the various religions.
I believe that when churches stop the influx of new ideas, and congeal around a few ancient texts, they are intentionally remaining ignorant to the wonders of God, as displayed by science. People who cannot adapt their religion to science should wonder why the universe offers this knowledge to human beings, if we are not to use it? Why would God give man science if he did not have a divine purpose under His doings. I like the Hindu practice of just absorbing any new deity, saying, sure, he must be a God... or a prophet, angel, etc...
My writing is also an attempt to pass along what I think of as a particular philosophy, to create a room of words that people can enter that is different that mainstream society. A place, I believe, where truth comes to the reader like a welcome friend, and take me for a trustworthy narrator. I used to think that was atheism. Readers came in who felt the same way I did about organized religion -- that it was some kind of virus. Man, how that changed over the two days after the seizure, when they would not allow my girlfriend to see me.... and my personality had been wiped away. I did not recognize my girlfriend for days. When I came back to myself I was not sure who I was. I had asked for a Mormon bible at a Catholic Hospital when this started, after refusing the one they tried to give me... I can't give any good reason, it was all very instinctual, like I just knew what I had to reach for.
In the hospital, I read the Mormon bible, Moroni's story, and I could feel myself living that life, and also, the words seemed like I myself had wrote them.. Moroni, the angel, and narrator, had been me once. The idea that I was Christ and the world I knew before was completely over. I was myself, beffudled, drawing, easily distracted, at times.. and others, I was being invaded by a most unexpected visitor, a personality inserted into my mind. Christ.
Amazing how the saviors story seemed so similar to my own, and how our central philosophies were exactly the same, even though some might not notice in my work. I seem very different, but the message is essentially the same -- God is love, and sooner or later, life ends of the planet, for everything, when the sun goes out, and then something else happens. To your souls, an energy that lives on. Both of us are more overwhelmed by what we cannot do, rather than impressed with what we can.
Now, the intelligence stuff, and the media coming to my aide, then being forced to rather abandon me in a very mysterious and effect manner that bespeaks of a conspiracy large enough to involve everyone in the White House. Certainly Obama knows about this. I got that directly from the horses mouth.
My fiction is filled with events that happened to me. My fiction has more top secret events than wikileaks. You think that is not causing me to have weird events in my life? This among other things... has left me very much in the position that I write my general is in. And my Jesus, as well. This leads to a blurring of myself and my characters. These two are the most obvious. Johnny Pain, the serial killer, freaked people out to the point that they thought I was a serial killer.
This is Gonzo Journalism folks, in a way. I take the concept further than Hunter S. Thompson, and others, seemed to do... by further I mean into fiction, not that I have improved what they did. Like the General. I too have a certain influence among some people, and believe a lot of the Gnl writes comes from my heart. His main goal is to find a peaceful way to change america. The fictional part is his association with people who are violent. I make it out like the General has a lot of armer troops who are just itching to fight, and sometimes do. They never tell him about any of this, because they know he would not approve, and to protect him from prosecution. This happened to me in a campaign once. A violent element entered the mix. They took my metaphors of war to mean that it was time to attack the system with weapons. I was then cut off from all contact with my supporters. Whoever was fighting me thought this was best, though I cannot think of a stupider thing they could have done. When they finally did come to me, I helped them restore sanity. Brought the revolutionaries under control. Had I known what was being done because of my campaign I could have stopped them. I brought them out of their closets, and the revolutionaries, a lot of communists. Interesting.... or I just caused the FBI and Homeland Security, or whoever, to grab the Communists and beat them, take their money, and drop them in Chicago -- which I assure you is a defacto jail. A lot of people know this.
I wrote recently that I was giving up on the main stream media, and took down the movie star reviews and all that shit at the beginning of my blog. I should explain this.... I was ... for the first time in many years and the last...yuck... for a long time to come, if ever...drunk. Pain, out of pills for a day due to pharmacy being closed for the snow... bad luck all around. Anyways, I wrote something that has to sound plain out mad to most, but a few... a precious few.... know exactly what i am talking about when I write that I have been told that leaving town is not allowed, and once when I did leave, innocently enough just to help a buddy withhis kids while his wife was having surgery, my computer and phone were suddenly sabotaged, and I could not make my plans for days, due to an amazing number of co-incidences, and then when i got to sleepy little bowling green, lo and behold, seven cop cars sitting across from the sleepy little house where my friend lived. He said he had never seen anything like it. I was like, Welcome to life. People have threatened to kill me. I have security.
So... part of why I AM writing this is to assure people who I have been sincere with on these topics that there is a lot more to me than there seems. I do have a story to tell, and have worked closely with revolutionaries, the media and intelligence and at different points in my life. All of this was more others being influenced by my work, and inspired by my story. They put me through HELL though. Bush punished me for my position. He wanted me to like him and I dissed him big time. Oh, how he must hate me. His fucking last speech as president he referred to me, saying only writers and whiners have anything against his presidency. Fuck him... he is so wrong that it is not funny. Oh, well.
As Evil as the actions of Bush appear to me, I am not the one to judge on his actual life, etc.... the law has to do that, or it just is not going to get done. That is the way the real world operates.
Jesus has to appear much more certain than I am. He believes in a cosmology that has a God at the center, who has a place for some souls in Heaven, and who mercilessly leaves others behind.
The General is committed to Revolution in a way that I can only write about (we all have our talents, and have to use them for our own particular battle front). I hope that I never have to get in another fight with a human being, let alone kill one. I hate to even argue. Getting stupidly violent is not my style. I have been challenged by drunks a few dozen times who I could have easily beaten to a pulp, but what good was that going to do anyone? I might hit them for one reason or another, I suppose, but not being drunk or stupid. That just happened too often for me to take it seriously.
The only revolution that matters to me in using our system to enforce Democracy. This can be done. We can all get behind a Socialist from Vermont, and let others know they will be supported if they run. Ultimately, I would like to socialization of oil, electricity, and a few other key industries that could provide the government with enough money to send us a check every year, rather than charging taxes. All of the people could be taken care of, rather than than the ever shrinking rich few (who it is no co-incidence, are displayed on tv day and night... even the lowly weather guy makes 150 grand a year... you think they want to see people paid what they need, and not what they selfishly want, damn the earth and all that).
Who am I to judge? That thought comes to me a lot lately. You have to be careful what you judge people on, and how... by this I mean, you can be against someones politics, hate how they vote on some legislation, but that hate has to be directed toward their behavior, not them as a person. Especially politicians, who are more than likely a reflections of their constituents (often to the point that their real politics have to be ignored so they can get re-elected).
I can't help almost but to have strong opinions on what is happening to my county. Driving the cab for all those years, I met all kinds of people, and I always tried to get up a conversation that might lead to a story.
For the first few years of driving, I was so blown away by what I was seeing and experiencing that I wrote about the incidences in my first manuscript, with the main ca driving character going mad and having Arthur Rimbaud appear to him. He knows he is making him up, actually, but the experience still becomes disturbing to him. ... So, I have met and spoken with and learned to love those who are being oppressed by this system, the elderly and young -- always the weakest, the disenfranchised, the jailed, the drugged out, the given up on. I can find something to like about most people if they are open to being liked. I also know how to ignore people and sometimes wished I did this more when people dragged me into their crises story of the night. Other times I was jumping out of my cab and rescuing my fare from a gang attack, where her grandmother had already been slashed. I was smart enough just to grab one from behind, lock their arms at their sides and say, "Look, you have beat her all to hell. Now you have to get out of here, before the cops come. Go." I don't think this gang banger expected that... anyways, they left, then... I got the two in the cab. They were too broke to tip me, but they assured me they wished I could. Etc....
I always scoffed at writers who just put off fluff that was not about anything more than sucking readers into a fictional dream with cute people getting caught up in mysteries that have to be solved, despite whatever odds.
So there is my rambling testament to the truth of what I am doing on line at this point. Did you get that? I am writing fiction that has elements of fact. I am also using the veil of fiction to write truths that are very uncomfortable to a lot of people. And odd benefit of being a fiction writer is that I can write whatever I want, and you cannot call it slander, as long as it is fiction. Now, I wish they would sue me for slander, but that would put my story in a court of law and they are not going to let that happen easily.
So there you have it.... I am trying to create enduring political organizations as well, by laying down the ground work to gather kindred spirits, I hope.
