Old words, new friends.

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I suppose every writer understands the awkward, uncomfortable experience of trying to re-read or edit something they wrote a very long time ago. 

For me, at least, that experience tends to begin with cringing, and then moves on to a desire to we-write from scratch, just to avoid any more uncomfortable re-reading. 

At that point I usually just close the editing tool I have open and walk away. 

I used to write all them time. I was once a reasonably accomplished tech writer. In  early 2004 I started blogging, writing almost daily. Writing short essays several times per week is great practice for a writer. 

I’ve written a number of short stories, started a novel at least three times, actually finished a novella. 

It all stopped a few years ago. Social media rose and blogs stopped being a thing, and then the friend who hosted my web sites died suddenly, leaning me locked out our server for good (I was able to export most of the writing, fortunately, and have since at least gotten the blog back up, if not kept it up to date).  

In any case, I just stopped writing, for a very long time. 

Recently, however, a friend of mine asked to read something of mine, so I fished a piece of fiction out of archives and shared it, getting positive feedback; this got me stated writing a few things, just descriptions of events or experiences. Nothing ambitious, but vastly more than I’ve written in a decade. 

Then a second friend made a similar request to read something. That friend then recorded herself recording a piece of  my writing, is planning to do a more complete recorded reading in future.

Hearing it out loud, hearing the story, and hearing all the little things I needed to fix somehow gave me the kick in the ass I needed to actually complete a long-avoided re-edit. A task I’ve been avoiding for literally a decade, if not more. 

It’s been cathartic, and I am thankful for the friend who got me started on this, as well as the one who liked my work enough to try reading it out loud. 

Wanton is back on line.

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After losing my blog hosting a few years ago, non of my other writing (erotica, etc) has been on this site.

I finally got it back up, thanks to some inspiration from my friend Elizabeth.

find it under Writing or directly here Here.

 

please drop a comment if you visit, it’s lonely out here in the Moronosphere.

And that brings us up to date, again, with nothing

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it’s weird to realize the last time I posted was just before – well, weeks before but time means nothing, never would again – before the world changed all at once (which is going ti be a theme for everything I post today, which is, well, this I guess).

I see my last post before pandemic,  of me playing my then-new gretsch in my friend Chris’ house, shortly before the last xmas that actually felt like xmas.

Since that time, i’ve more or less stopped playing guitar (at least stopped playing nearly enough), sold all my motorcycles (the FXDB and the thruxton), bought a new one (FSLRS low rider softail). I’ve gotten older than I ever shiould have gotten, and then started to fight back with a renewed go at fitness. I’ve quit caring about work, so much so that i’m now having to decide if I can ever get back to being good at something for a living again.

I’ve been though familial upheaval I wasn’t sure all my family would survive, though we did, at least so far; my younger daughter now lives in North Carolina, where she’s doing vastly better, as are we with her there.

And I’ve figured out that my favorite people in the whole world are dogs, and that I don’t really need anything much from here on (see the instagram links to the left, if they still work, or way below if you’re on mobile, for pictures of my dogs, who are so cute they’ll melt your eyes).

It’s been ten years in two years, and yet in effect nothing happened, and everything changed, and very little seems very real anymore.

I should have more to say about it than this, really, but it turns out that I had nothing at all to say for two years, so, this may take a bit of practice to get out, since writing is now something I do only into slack windows, with people who care way too much about things that do not matter in the least, and who will throw a fit if you use the right words for things and they don’t like the words.

So writing, as someone once said to me, without a net isn’t something I know how to do anymore. At least not yet.

Who knows if anyone will ever notice; blogs seem so quaint in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world changed

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My god it’s been a long time.

I miss being what you might call a writer or at least a blogger.

I miss days when it mattered.

I miss being creative, and living a life that routinely got me in trouble – I miss the trouble, and the people I used to get into it with. Well, certain people anyway.

It’s been a long fucking pandemic; will any of us ever be the same, when this is objects-closer-than-they-appear in the rear view? Not the over that people are pretending now, the ‘it’s not over at all but we’re too tired of it to know that’ kind of over thats’ whole-cloth nonsense. Will we ever, though, be who we used to be?

I need a martini, but I need it with the people I used to drink martinis with. My dogs are good company and all, but, well, it’s not the same, now, is it? They can’t mix a decent drink, and though they’ll definitely kiss, they also don’t kiss nearly as well as – well, as some other people –  and gin doesn’t cover dog breath.

I need to write something better than this. See if I still can.

Maybe i’ll be back tomorrow. Or maybe in another year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What i’ve been doing since.

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It’s been a long, long time since I was active as a blogger, and i’m not going to go recap everything in my life since FEBRUARY 7, 2014, the last time I wrote a blog entry (before Brandon’s death, which is where it all ended with losing my server). And anyway most of the people who used to follow me here either are Facebook friends now, or follow me in Instangram, or are long lost as far as this place is concerned.

But, life moves and on I figure a few things would be worth mentioning, if not in one post, then in several.

In no particular order, then, i’ll start with the most significalt personal achevement.

This was something I posted a year ago, so this would now say ‘about two years ago’:

One year ago this week, I quit talking about taking up the guitar, and actually did it.

I dug my old 80’s epiphone strat out of storage, re-strung it, and tried to remember more chords and that E, G and F.And with the aid of tutorials on youtube (which didn’t exist 30 years ago), I starting over at the beginning.

A year later, i’m still working. I’m not a natural musician, but week by week, i’m learning. Learning technique, improving my ear, getting vaguely closer to having a sense of rhythm. I’m a long way from ‘let’s jam’ or getting up in front of anyone and getting through a song. But i’m not in any hurry, because it’s not about that; it’s about the challenge, and about (i admit it) the gear. I now have a couple of decent guitars i love playing, a hand-made amp and some cool pedals, and I’ve met a lot of really talented, unique gear makers and players who inspire me to keep going and keep learning.
Because, as Lemmy once said, “If you think you are too old to rock ‘n roll, then you are.” And I don’t think there’s any such thing .

It’s been a long, slow process; I”ve taken lessons for the better part of a year and while my practice hasn’t been quite as consistent since I posted that in November ’18, I a still working hard to build on my rudimentary abilities. I’m getting slowly better at it, and better at getting good sounds, which is in many ways as important to me as being skillful.

Am I anywhere near being on a stage? No. But it remains a goal. I don’t have any dreams of being in a band or making records – but some day i’ll be able to play a song with my (vastly more talented) friends, without it being tragic. Hey, it’s a goal, anyway.

Not My Guitar

Previously on…

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So, you can see that it’s been close to six years since a tragic, stupid, pointless death stopped my tragic, stupid, pointless blogging. Sometimes life is a series of small, largely irrelevant disruptions amounting to never getting a goddamn thing done.

Whatever.

Last week I posted something on facebook to the effect that most human progress begins with simply getting frustrraded and fed up. And that’s more or less how I got here, and have a web site and blog again. For quite a few years I tried to get help from Brandon’s family, and from hosting company Digital Ocean, to recover whever was left of his server (and which contained my blog and many of my friend’s blogs.) We never got anywhere with that, after after a while I just began avoiding the whole thing.

Last week, I wanted to find something I’d written, and didn’t have any place to put it, and I just got fed up.

So – does that matter? Does anyone care about a blog anymore? Probably not, but I care, and small achievements matter sometimes more than big ones.

I don’t have everything recovered; images and songs were not all archived with blog backups, and some of the auxiliary blogs (like the one with all my short stories are erotica) will have to get restored separately. NOt everything posted back in the day needs to be out in public anymore, either, so some entries will probably get un-published.

But here we are, anyway. If you happen by here, please comment so I know you’re here. Because while this is just for me, if no one at all is reading, I might as well just be yelling at a wall.

Brandon Dawson – Fallen soldier, lost friend.

Karl Elvis1 Comment

I just now learned – 3 fucking months later – that Brandon Dawson, my friend, my business partner, and the guy who’s provided hosting for me all these years, passed away xmas eve 2013.

I’m crushed. He was the guy I came to for web help, and he never failed me, no matter how rough things got. He was more a family member than just a friend; I’ve helped him out of jams, he’s helped me keep my life afloat emotionally for years, just by providing this space.

I don’t even begin to know how to process this.

Dammit Brandon, what happened? Was it that bad you could even reach out?

The world I’d a poorer place; I’m fucking sorry I didn’t know it.

All hat, no story

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I have this dream of writing a western.

Not really – you know, a whole novel (because hell if I can finsih anything anymore). BUt at least a short story.

In concept, it makes complete sense. My fiction is all tough-guy, man of action, violence, loneliness, and heartbreak. Bikers, cowboiys, private eyes; noir of the old west.

I have it in me, because – well, I can fucking write.

The trouble I’m having though – aside from the never having a fucking minute to myself problem – is that I just can’t find the form. I can’t quite internalize what a western really is, what it should be. I’ve attempted Loius L’amour, larry McMurtry, Zane Gray, Jack Schaefer, Cormac McCarthy. It’s not that I don’t like them – some, anyway. But it’s that I can’t find that onw voice that resonates enough to do it myself.

With Noir and hard-boiled crime fiction, i have it; I’ve read enough Dashiell Hammett, enough Raymon Chandler, enough Ross Macdonald and Dennis Lehane and John MAcDonald, enough James M. Cain and Elmore Leonard. I get it; I speak it. I can write it.

But the western isn’t resonating with me yet; I’m not hearing it in my head.

I’m currently reading Hondo by Loius L’amour. I have a real weakness for Loius L’amour, because my grandfather used to read him, and I’d find the paperbacks around our house, and pick ’em up and read. I like L’amour’s masculine, strong prose. But I struggle with the cliches, the tendancy to tell us over and over, that Our Hero is A Hero; repeated referneces to strength, hardness, squinty eyes.

It’s not my prose, as a reader, or as a writer.

Maybe it’s the mode problem; I am always most comfortable working in first person, and I’ve yet to read a western that’s not third-person. Maybe I can’t find the voice to narrate in the voice of an 1870’s westerner. Sure, I can get around it; I could narrate as the side-kick, or push myself to write third person; but perhaps I just can’t hear the narrative because I have yet to read any in that mode.

I tought myself to write by reading; I have an ear for narrative and dialog, and know when something sounds right; when it’s clean and sharp, when it’s awkward. I know it by feel, not because I learned the rules and follow them. Rules and I have an uneasy relationship. So I need a model, a sound, a structure. Not to follow, but to measure against – Does This Sound Wrong.

So my search continues. Maybe the form is more appealing in concept than in fact; maybe, really, I just do not love the western. But in my head there’s a rough, damaged man in faded denim and worn-down boots; a man who’s fraught and lost, who’s running from his past, or himself. A man who’s got a last battle to fight, before he goes down and dies in the dust, or finds himself in the wild lands and the struggle for some greater good.

I have a character, I can see him. I just have to find a story and a voice.