Charlie's Massive 2011 Blow Out Post

I've rather quite abused this blog the past year or so. I always want to commit to working on it, having some kid of through line of consistency, but I wasn't able to keep that due to other commitments. Whatever, life is hard, etc, etc, but wishful thinking and all that.

Back in January of this year I wrote my statement of intent for 2011 (check it out at No Future For You; 2/1/2011) and I look back at it now and I realise I failed in a lot of things. I wanted to do 5 things over 12 months, and I packed all but one of them in pretty early, I think. Those five things, to sum up: 1) Get Zenith out 4 times a year. 2) Self publish first novel, finish second and third. 3) Make Zenith! viable across the board, not just as a hobby. 4) Work harder and 5) Move away from home.

Well I fucked all those up, don't you think? Zenith! is cancelled. Rajiv moved to Dubai, and sure, we've been talking about bringing it back, and we got to talking in December, but it took me two weeks to respond to an email about the name of the magazine, so how on Earth am I going to be able to commit my time to the project? Hopefully, fingers crossed, I can come back to it down the line, but what's the point?

I can't even get my novel out and done, I don't even want to go through self-publishing it (because isn't self-publishing almost like admitting defeat before you've even fought the battle?) so how am I going to co-ordinate a bloody magazine. Shameful, maybe, but I need to have enthusiasm, I need to be able to get something done, and I haven't been able to do any of that. I haven't even finished all the fanfare required around the first (chapter-by-chapter breakdowns, more on that later) let alone got my second and third in a position to start... damned irritating. I've worked hard. I know that. I worked damned hard. Again, more on that later.

And... I still live at home. That's not a bad thing. That's not terrible. I'm saving to move out, but it's slow going. I got a raise (two raises!) this year, so I'm happy, I'm able to save, I'm going to be able to move out soon enough. Just got to keep my head above the water.

So I made some faux-resolutions. Framed them by saying "I won't make resolutions, I'll make plans and just do these!" and then I didn't fulfil them at all. I don't believe in resolutions, like I've said everywhere. They're just promises you make to yourself that you don't feel bad breaking. I want to move out by the end of the year. I probably won't be able to by the end of 2012 but I'm saving toward it.

I'm working on the others that I can. I'm going to keep working hard (no reason not to, and I enjoy my job, so why wouldn't I? I want to go far) and I'm going to keep chipping away at novel things. I kind of need to there. (Again and again, more on it later). So, Charlie, the plan is: Don't make plans. Try your best. If you do that then you're not letting yourself down. Eh. We'll see how it goes.

This year has been hard, but at the same time, it flew by. I started a new job in November of 2010, and I'm still there, still doing well (I hope) and still promising to get better. It feels like home more than the cinema ever did, and not only does it feel like home, it feels like there's a future there. I like that. At the cinema... you just kind of wasted away. Did the same thing again and again. Managers had a go at you for some perceived slight, you took it, you accepted it, and you did the same thing again and again. Horrible existence, and I'm sorry to all my friends still there. But I'm out. I got out and I got others out at the same time, so that's all right, I think.

I wanted to do some kind of grand summing up of the year, but thinking about it, I don't know if I can. I'll just keep talking into the wind and see what happens. The problem, I guess, is that I don't know where the year went. Work was insanely busy for the most part, and this whole "9 to 5"-esque mentality (which was in fact 8 to 6 most nights) took me completely by surprise. It was good though, don't get me wrong, I worked like a dog, and I enjoyed very minute of it, but a year went by like nothing else before it.

And now it's New Year's Eve. A day (event, some might  say?) that I absolutely loathe. NYE is a night that you should have someone there for you. The worst feeling, the most horrible feeling in the world, is to be surrounded by happiness and not having it for yourself. And sure, that sounds selfish, whatever, but when the clock strikes 12 and the crowd has finished shouting down "10, 9, 8..." and everyone embraces and you're just... stood there... God, I've lived through that enough times to know that I don't need to. I'll be at home. Sure, it doesn't help that I've acquired some kind of awkwardly timed end of year cold, but I guess I'm lucky like that. Now I have an excuse: 1) I hate NYE. 2) I can't stop coughing and my voice sounds like my throat has been accosted by a cheese grater.

What did I do with my year? I finished the blasted novel. I got it into a place where I just had to say "no more" and separate myself from it. Then I did the story synopsis and then the chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. Then the shit hit the fan:

1) The editor I met in May at a party who had been quite receptive to my emails and my asking of advice didn't respond to an email. Now, this could be for many reasons. a) She might not have received my last email, and she's at this very minute waiting to hear back from me. b) I wasted her time. We met in May, I got the thing into a shape in, what, August? So I don't blame her. c) She wasn't a real editor. I think it's probably more the middle option than than the former and latter. I took so long to finish the bastard thing that she stopped caring because I kind of stopped caring too.

But I digress.

2) I lost the chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. I spent a fevered night doing them. A blurb of every single event in the novel, broken down by chapters. I did it, was ecstatic. Finally, I thought, real progress. And then when I opened them up a couple of weeks later... I found that I had overwritten them with the bloody time-line I had started writing to keep track of everything. So I lost all that, and I need to do it again. I couldn't leap back into it straight away. It's heart breaking to lose progress, it's absolutely soul destroying, because you've poured yourself into words and typed them out/written them down, and then they're gone? God, I don't know how anyone else can do it. I break.

In the end, it helped, I think. I started adding to the narrative, coaxed about the word count over 100,000 (which amazes me, because I didn't think that was even possible) and then I got it to the place I was happy with. I could keep writing the thing for years but I don't know if that would make it better or if it would just make it bloated, so there came a time I just thought... No. I'm done with it now. All I need to do is commit the time to getting the chapter-by-chapter breakdowns done and then I can work myself up to actually sending it off to publishers. Why not? It's done. I want to make a career out of this. Better to put myself out there then just kind of... waste it.

I need to own this poster.

I was considering doing some kind of "Top Ten" countdown of things from 2011 but I can't really be arsed. That said, if you were to see any film in 2011, it should have starred Ryan Gosling, who was just amazing in anything he decided to be in. Drive was my favourite film of the past 12 months, it had me gob-smacked and speechless by the time the credits were rolling. It was beautifully shot, and the level of sublime photography lulled me into a completely false sense of security for when the explosions of violences took place. Gosling was amazing, Carey Mulligan was as good as she's ever been (Mulligan is consistently one of the best things in the films she's in. I remember her in Doctor Who, way back when, "Blink", and she was brilliant). Everything came together, visuals, soundtrack, score-- the work by Cliff Martinez was inspiring, I thought-- everything, and I have never been happier with such a sad, dark film. You really happy to see it.

I didn't read enough this year. I read comics, sure, but no one counts them, even if they are something amazing. I feel like I should have read novels, epics, something to keep the brain sparking and going, but there was nothing out there that really piqued my interested. That said, I had my annual American Gods reading, which  is always rewarding, and I picked at other things to. I believe that my lack of reading impacted my ability to write this year. I had long periods of being unable to do anything, no inspiration, no ability to write anything. When I read, be it an Encyclopaedia of the Supernatural, be it American Gods or others, I wrote like nothing else. The two go hand in hand. You want to write? Read. Simple. I started plotting a grand old story, something that would work brilliantly as a television show. I was chipping away at that, but really, I think what I was more interested in was the potential of it, the stories that could form around the concept, so I spent more time staring at a blank screen than writing the actual stories, but separate from that, I spent more time writing ideas down to come back to later. It was fun, but not really effective, I think.

 I have tried to get my life in order these past few months. Removed myself out of situations that might be toxic to me. But this hasn't even worked. If anything, it's like I've amputated aspects of my social life, but the problem is... and I've said this before and I've said this elsewhere... I don't meet new people. I don't get to right now, due to the nature of my work and the hours inherent to that, so if I meet someone new I enjoy it very much, but because I don't... well, I don't. Life goes on.

I thought I would have more to say but I guess I don't. 2012 should be good. I hope it is. I don't want to make any promises to myself, but I'll try, none the less, to make it better. I'm writing this-- and have been writing this since the morning-- as more a statement of the year. It went no where, which is unfortunately. I guess as posts go, it could be worse. And as "end of year" posts I've read worse (no I haven't, I haven't read any)...

Screw it. Happy New Year. We'll be back here at the end of 2012, but until then... let's make the most of what we can.

There is one quote that I keep close to my heart and in my head at all times. I'm considering getting it as a tattoo some day, but where? And why? Tattoos, in my mind, should be something eternal and resolute, and I don't know if I could handle having something like this on my skin forever. Not that I don't love it, not that I don't adore it, but... have I ever been one for tattoos? Nah.

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."

--From "American Gods", by Neil Gaiman

Exeunt!

Quotes of Importance

"Let the philosophers rave on about the summum bonum and mystics about embracing God. They are still vertical humans and therefore even their adorations still have something aggressive about them. Humans in the horizontal position have always struck me as less likely to be violent and destructive. So I take my place beside the poets, and less arrogant than the philosopher or mystic, am prepared to find the greatest good and embrace God whenever I hold a woman in the act of love. It is then I know with assurance and inexpressible delight that whatever it is life promises us, this must be it; and that a universe containing this experience must have something grandly important going for it."

-- Irving Layton

I read this quote at this link, on Katie West's blog, and I fell in love with it, and have to share it with you, too. So yes. Quotes. Love them as I do.

Words To Live By...

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."

--From "American Gods", by Neil Gaiman

I live by this concept.

Grant Morrison on "Marvel Boy"

"Not only am I working with one of the best comics artists ever, the colouring gauntlet has been thrown down once again with the most incredible video game lighting and atmospherics. The whole thing really becomes something new with issue 3, however, which I'm unusually proud of. Apart from the fact that the potentially impenetrable central idea (HEXUS, THE LIVING CORPORATION) wound up beautifully simple, original and ridiculous all at once, that was the issue I really began to utilise J.G. Jones' preposterous genius to its best effects and decided to rethink the prevailing vogue for cinematic/money shot panel structures and page layouts. Marvel Boy's visual style becomes more like MTV and adverts; from #3 on it's filled with all kinds of new techniques; rapid cuts, strobed lenticular panels, distressed layouts, 64 panel grids, whatever. We've only started to experiment but already MARVEL BOY looks like nothing else around. Some of the stuff J. G. is doing is like an update of the whole Steranko Pop Art approach to the comics page. Instead of Orson Welles, op art and spy movies, J.G.'s using digital editing effects, percussive rhythms, cutting the action closer and harder, illuminated by the frantic glow of the image-crazed hallucination of 21st century media culture and all that. Comics don't need to be like films. They don't need to look like storyboards. This is not to dis the many great comics which have used filmic narrative techniques but I wanted to go back and explore some of the possibilities of comics as music."

-Grant Morrison on "Marvel Boy"

Quotes of Importance

I collect quotes. This is for many a reason, mostly so I can smile and remember how much they mean to me, or others because they inspire me. They create a chain reaction inside my being that drives me forward... so yeah, they're important to me.

I kept them on my Facebook but realised I need to have them near me, so they're going in my notebook, but they're also going here, so you can have them with you too.

"Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes."

-- Stephen Colbert

"This is not over. Nor is it close. Until the moment it is over, it can never be close. Because if we see the finish line we will flag and they are absolutely counting on us to do that. In the room, reason. On the streets, on the net, I say reason is for the 'moderates'. Remember what they've done. Remember what they're trying to take from us. FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT."

--Joss Whedon

"I’m a big fan of pretension. It means 'an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment.' It doesn’t mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow."

-- Warren Ellis

"I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments."

-- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity

"We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest."

-- The Film Maker, Signal To Noise

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.'"

-- Jim Jarmusch