Friday Links and Therapy

Lately I’ve had the experience of putting my hands on the computer keyboard, and having no words come out. The words are in my head, but they feel almost like a lead weight, and don’t slide easily from mind to hands. While in London, I wrote a number of short stories. But as I bring them up and try to polish them for the Web, they just appear to be all wrong. I can’t quite arrange the characters, I can’t make up my mind about the plot, I wonder if they’re all that interesting. It makes it hard to finish anything, though none of the stories are ever really finished, at least not in my mind.

I don’t like a day to go by without some kind of writing—I feel like I’ve missed something at the end of the day, and I wake up feeling depressed. It’s like driving in a windstorm—you may want to go fast, but you can’t. The wind pushes you back and forth, and you struggle to retain control of your vehicle, and are exhausted by the effort by the time you finally are able to stop again. Fortunately, when I stand back and look at these episodes, I know that things are constantly shifting outside my center, and that this too will pass. Everything seems like forever in the present moment.

In any case, I wanted to share a few interesting links:

The first is a new website called TheRumpus.net. It’s absolutely brilliant, and I recommend that you add it to your feed aggregator toute suite. Created by Stephen Elliot, it provides reviews and commentary on books, art, and music that you would probably never hear about otherwise. I heard about it through the Mental Floss blog, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

The second is the SCADshorts site, which I hope gets some updates this year. There was a SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) short that made the blogosphere rounds last year. It was the May 2008 short featuring a girl and a large scary-looking pencil with a creepy smile. That gem of a film and its rather disturbing soundtrack got me to look at some of the other bizarre shorts being produced. The work is pretty amazing.

Lastly, I recommend looking at Karborn’s website. Karborn is an artist who also happens to be John Foxx’s son. I discovered his work via that connection, and his work is really staggering in its depth. I’ve always had a great admiration for those who can put onto canvas what I try to put into words. Art is so much more fluid than writing. Words often fall short of what can be conveyed in images, and I think his work is just amazingly deep—it stirs up something different every time I look at it.

Incidentally—I would mention in this crappy economic time that if you really support an artist or musician, you should BUY their stuff. Recently I bought John Foxx’s Cinemascope, even though I have some version of all of those songs somewhere else in my collection (though it does offer some great artwork as well). I’d heard some grumbling on the Web about why we need “another” compilation, but it’s simple economics. Musicians have bills and need money, just like everyone else, and that’s a difficult business to be in. So, show some economic support if you can.