So the hatemail dubbed me THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!! (sic) So I will wear that with pride, cuntfuckers. It's like The Outlaw Josie Wales only better, right? I mean, did he have a fully capitalised THE, an extra-long dramatic pause, and two exclamation marks? No, he did not. Chickenshit.
Being an excerpt from TESTAMENT, for the benefit of Pope Benedict, Cardinal O'Brien, Bishop Davies and every other motherfucker:
Then one of the lawyers answered.
Rabbi, he said, saying thus you reproach us also.
Woe to you also, he said, you lawyers! For you laden men with burdens grievous to be borne, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. [And on Fox News, the night before, the reverend from Jerusalem, in his patronising tone, explained he did not hate the sinner, just the sin, how those with these sorts of desires were blessed to have a greater testing, greater trials that only made the victory over them a greater glory to--I walked out of the room, lit up a cigarette with shaking hand. I'd been in Capernaum a week now, been so readily adopted into the clan, I thought I was home. Mary and Salome vying to mother me, I was happy, accepted, just needed to find the right time. Then suddenly reality had spat in my face.]
Woe to you, lawyers! For you shut up the realm of Zion against men and have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering in. [And on Fox News, the night before, the reverend spoke on of marriage as a sacred institution that simply couldn't be opened up to include such unions--and I felt Joshua's hand on my arm. Was I alright? And I told him of the reverend's so-called therapy, of the friends I'd had in Jerusalem who'd been sent away for treatment, close friends. And it wasn't right, and I knew my father was just like theirs, so if I was like that, if I was like that... And then I stopped. So I never told anyone, I said.]
Woe to you! For you build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the virtuous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Truly you bear witness that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets. [And on Fox News, the night before, the reverend solemnly condemned all hate crimes, lamented tragic suicides--and Joshua led me back to stand before the TV screen, whispered a few words into my ears, and I saw the earth rolled back before my eyes. I saw the Roman features of Justinian blaming famine, earthquake, pestilence on the sinners, Valentinian ordering public immolation of the sinners, Constantius declaring unions born in love a crime, a sin. I saw the world as he did. The Empire never ended, Joshua said.]
Therefore the wisdom of the sublime said also, Behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them you shall kill and crucify; and some of them you shall scourge in your congregation houses, and harry them from city to city, that upon you may come all the virtuous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of virtuous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Johoiada, whom you slew between the temple and the altar.
For sure, I tell you, it shall be required of this generation. Fill up the measure of your fathers then. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the sentence of Gehenna?
And as he said these things, the clerks and the Select began to urge him vehemently, provoking him to speak of many things, laying in wait for him, seeking to catch something from his mouth that they might accuse him. [But the realm endures, said Joshua.]
And Joshua walked by the Sea of Galilee and came into Capernaum, and went into the congregation house, dark granite, oaken doors, a presbyterian interior of plain white plaster, brass plaque on the wall commemorating the dead of the Great War, cool Hebridean light slicing in through thin windows of clear glass. And he taught there, but the kirk elders muttered among themselves, saying, These teachings are unlike any we have ever heard, and if men shall follow them we cannot know what other teachings they will follow.
And he spoke a parable to them, saying:
The kingdom of heaven is like a young man who was to be married but who had no family, and the bride also had no family, so they would invite to the feast those friends who they loved and who loved them. And a servant, who had looked after the bride and groom always, he came to them saying, Let me be the master of the feast.
But when it came time to invite the guests, the servant considered each in turn and deemed them unworthy.
He came to one:
This woman loves the sound of her own voice, he said, and will want to perform the ceremony. And the wedding will be turned upside-down and ruined.
He come to two others.
These two men love each other's embrace, he said, and will want to be married with them. And the wedding will be broken in half and ruined.
And the rest were delinquents in his eyes, so he invited them not; and he invited instead all the servants under him, judging them to be worthy because they served him well.
But the bride and the groom were always with their friends, saying what joy it would be to see them at their wedding. So all the friends came notwithstanding, and stood at the door asking if they were not invited. And when the bride and the groom came down they saw all the servants sat as guests and all the guests at the door.
And the groom said to the master of the feast, Do you not know that these are our friends who we love and who love us? And this woman is right to love the sound of her own voice; our joy will be raised up if she performs the ceremony. And these two men are right to love each other's embrace; our joy will be doubled if they are married with us. And the rest are delinquents in your eyes because they do not serve you, but we would have them at the feast that we may serve them.
So too shall it be when the everyman comes, said Joshua. For those who have asked to serve are become masters of servants, and do not serve; and those who are invited as guests stand at the door, and the bride and the groom will have them enter, that the joy of the feast be raised up and doubled.
... dedicated with all my heart to Cardinal Keith O' Brien, the opening number from the musical I would write were I to write... a sort of sequel, shall we say, to Jesus Christ Superstar. A sequel which would just have to be called, as far as I'm concerned...
CHRIST: THE COMEBACK
SCENE: A mountain in the desert. JOSHUA* sits on a rock, stage-right. Dressed in red, THE ACCUSER stands behind him, hand on his shoulder. As the guitar riff comes in, quiet but driving, THE ACCUSER leans in to say something. JOSHUA turns, clasps his hand warmly, as a close friend saying farewell, and THE ACCUSER exits. JOSHUA stands and comes forward to face the audience. The guitar riff is insistent now, building. Think "Heaven on Their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar meets "The Spirit of Man" from War of the Worlds. Maybe throw in a little "Brave New World" and "Thunderchild" for good measure.It's all a bit more Carl Anderson / Phil Lynott than Ted Neeley, put it that way.
UPDATE: And as if by Garageband, here's one I made later (an instrumental version, that is):
JOSHUA:
Forty days in the desert with the devil, and I have not slept.
Twenty centuries watching and oh, how the two of us wept
At this rock, stumbling block, that you've built to be kings of the earth.
Now the hour's arrived to revive -- witness my rebirth!
JOSHUA whirls round and, at the sweep of his hand, the backdrop falls away to reveal:
SCENE: The Plaza of St Pilate's Cathedral. A white marble dome fills the sky, capped by a golden cross. Stage-left, a row of pulpits runs from front of stage to the back. PRIESTS and MINISTERS preach piously to the CROWD of faithful who fill the Plaza. Heads turn as JOSHUA rips loose now.
JOSHUA:
Today I am Christ, you scribes and select,
You hypocrites whipped from what's already wrecked.
Your church it was fallen the day it was built,
Your blockhead betrayed me the day I was killed.
You've denied, and denied, and denied what is true,
And all I can say now...
[beat]
Is woe unto you!
Unrest ripples through the CROWD and it turns to face him, clears a space as he strides forward to accuse the PRIESTS and MINISTERS.
JOSHUA:
You deacons and demagogues, you're the disease.
You've stolen the kingdom, you thieves of the keys.
The gates should be wide, free for all to walk in,
But you've locked out all life with your lies about sin.
Even you're on the outside, if you only knew.
So all I can say now...
[beat]
Is woe unto you!
The PRIESTS and MINISTERS react with outrage, whip up the CROWD to angry protests, but there's dissent. As JOSHUA moves into the throng, arguments erupt at its margins. Some split off from their fellows, move away, stage-right. They listen with interest.
JOSHUA:
Empty words, repetitions, petitions and prayers,
Confessions, processions, and none of you care,
For the dogs and the fuckers, the faggots and whores.
I told you to love, not to judge and play pure.
Your faith is adultery; to my word it's untrue.
Your judgement is judged now...
[beat]
Woe unto you!
The CROWD falls back now, clearing a path between JOSHUA and the PRIESTS and MINISTERS. They continue to vent their outrage, but those stage-right begin to fall in behind JOSHUA, forming a CHORUS that builds through the break.
JOSHUA:
You popes and theologists!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You Roman apologists!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You clerics and cardinals!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You evangelist carnivals!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You pastors and priests!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You greatest and least!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
You lawyers and Pharisees!
CHORUS:
Woe unto you!
JOSHUA:
Hear this prophet from Galilee: Woe!
Woe unto you!
The PRIESTS and MINISTERS come down from their pulpits to confront him, the CROWD falling in behind, pressing forward. With a cry of "Blasphemy!"an angry shove sends JOSHUA back and to the ground. He sings on from his knees, the CHORUS moving in to help him to his feet.
JOSHUA:
What do you know of the sacred inspiration?
What kind of soul rots in your revelation?
A cemetery sideshow, your chastity white
Is a crypt for the dead, full of bones and all shite.
It's not how you fuck, it's the filth that you spew.
You think you're so righteous?
[beat]
Woe unto you!
The CHORUS surge forward now, scattering the CROWD. In the confusion, JOSHUA strides through the PRIESTS and MINISTERS, takes one of the pulpits. He holds a Bible up.
JOSHUA:
You swear by your book, but it's truth that you bind.
You circle the world to make converts as blind
As your cruel indifference that blackens my name,
No mercy, no justice, no wisdom, just shame.
Lemme open your eyes, lemme buy you a clue.
Your word is worth nothing.
[beat]
Woe unto you!
He comes back down, moves centre-stage, Bible open in hand now, held up, shoved in faces as damning evidence he's confronting them with.
JOSHUA:
You quote from the scriptures the prophets of old.
You kneel to your statues with haloes of gold.
Your crucifix shone as the wine of your wrath
Was poured in your pogroms, your pious bloodbath.
You've lain all the blame in the hands of the Jews.
He throws the Bible down in fury, rounds on them all.
JOSHUA:
It was you crucified me!
He grabs a sash from one PRIEST, twirls it like a locker-room towel, whirls and whips.
JOSHUA:
Woe unto you!
Front of stage, as he sings, JOSHUA drives the PRIESTS and MINISTERS from the plaza, stage-right. Back of stage, the CHORUS send the CROWD after them, return to the Plaza that they've taken.
He throws the sash down, and at another sweep of his hand, as he turns back to the CHORUS, a banner drops in front of the dome of St Pilate's, a simple two-word message: OCCUPY HEAVEN.
JOSHUA:
Woe unto you!
End scene.
*NB. Jesus, Yeshua, Yehoshua, Joshua. Certain features of this opening number from a non-existent musical may or may not give you a vague notion of the content of the next novel. I can neither confirm nor deny this.
Yes, it's been... a long time, to put it mildly, the last few years having mostly, it seemed, consisted of running excitedly ahead on this or that project, and slamming face-first into a brick wall after just enough steps to get up the optimum speed for breaking one's nose. OK, let's get this show on the road, let's get the ball rolling, fire up the creative engines and -- SMACK! What the -- why the - who the fuck put that there? And what the fuck is it anyway? A financial crisis, you say? A relationship meltdown, you say? Ach, never mind, I'm sure I can soldier on and -- THUMP! Oh, that would be a slow and crawling dread that you've really, secretly written the One Book that was in you, that having exorcised this 400,000 word monster from your backbrain, that daimon that was in you is now gone, flown the nest. Oh sure, it pops back to visit from time to time, and over a passionate evening, weekend or fortnight, you and the muse get busy, and out of these sporadic flings comes some short fiction or poetry, but is it going to stick around for the long haul on anything now, or have you had your share?
Thing is, the way gamblers are about Lady Luck is the way at least some of us scribblers are about the Muse -- irrationally personifying it, that is, attributing it all sorts of freaky behaviours that largely amount to fucking with our heads. As soon as you get far enough into a project that it's properly a project now, not some half-arsed experimental notes and jottings -- as soon as you commit, basically -- that's when the Muse decides, I'm boooooooored; I wanna do something else. And so you find yourself sitting at the laptop, this inner monkey clambering out of you as you try to grab it, climbing the curtains, clamping itself on your shoulders when you pry it down, twisting around till it's latched on like a facesucker from Alien, till you're screaming through a mouthful of fur: Fucking sit the fuck down and fucking BEHAVE, YOU FUCKING FUCK! Swear to Cock, sometimes it's like getting a dog into a bath, a cat into a box and a child to bed -- simultaneously -- just trying to get your own creative MonkeyBrat to do... what it fucking wanted to do in the fucking first place. What it fucking demanded to do, insisted was the single most important thing in your life.
Now, me, I seem to have evolved a couple of coping strategies for dealing with my inspirational sprite's wantonness and disregard. The first is not entirely healthy, I'm sure, since it basically consists of not fucking stopping for other than the most cursory necessities of teas, pees, nosh, snooze and booze -- the latter meaning, like say, a weekly pub meeting with mates, required to maintain at least some sense of connection with reality. I'm not talking PKD's amphetamine-fuelled week-long stints here, but if you don't give the MonkeyBrat time to lose interest, if you can keep the momentum up, writing through the wee hours to midday, writing till you're too fucked to write any more... well, I do find it keeps me in the Zone. When you wake up at five in the afternoon after a three hour nap, you're still thinking about the story -- and that's what counts, right?
As I say, it's hardly the healthiest approach, but I've found it a way to get something done even when the MonkeyBrat is refusing point-blank to work on, say, the retelling of Gilgamesh that's meant to be your third novel, the one that you've been blathering about for years, the one that tons of people are really quite excited about, the one that you open up in Scrivener and stare at only for the MonkeyBrat to leap out of your head, plank itself on the keyboard and stare back at you in utter inscrutability. Actually maybe it's less of a monkey, more of a lemur. Like this guy:
Lemurs have more of a "I might just be evil, you know" look to them, I think. Like, "I look all cute like a monkey, but I might just have the babybreath-sucking soul of a cat, bwahaha. Not that I'm telling you."
Anyways, with that little fucker staring me coldly down over FUR, realising that I just wasn't getting anywhere trying, Cock knows, trying to trudge on ahead word by word by word, I did find that just saying, Fuck this shit, and jumping into short stories was one escape. I've seen others say similar things when it comes to writers' block, that for them it's seldom an absolute and crippling inability to write anything at all. When you can write a full short story in a one night blast, dusk to dawn, of impassioned swashtyping, wordbuckling, swaggering wild-eyed zeal, really, it seems even a bit nuts to describe yourself as blocked. It's projects that run into ditches, stall with bone-juddering suddenness, grind to a halt, gears jammed... if you can't keep them running at a breakneck speed for the finish line, going so fast that there's just no time for something to fuck it all up.
Of course, health aside, the real problem with that "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" approach is that it's therefore more suited to short fiction than long. Whipping the MonkeyBrat into a shrieking howling fury of (somehow wondrously right) word-flinging can only be sustained so long. Sooner or later there's... well, not so much a Person From Porlock as a Long Weekend In Porlock. Some fucking thing comes up that takes you out of the Zone for two, three, four days and when you're done with it, you sit down at the slightly longer project, the one that's not a full novel, but pushing towards that length -- "Assault! On Heaven!" say -- and there he is, sitting on your keyboard, staring at you again:
So you extend the "jumping ship" technique to a strategy in its own right. OK, if that novella ain't going anywhere right now, I've got an idea for a Bradbury-meets-Davenport idyll on a terraformed Mars. It's gonna be long, but let's see how far we can get on it by treating it as an escape when I'm meant to be working on "A!oH!" And if you grind to a halt on that, why, that's when you jump back to "A!oH!" treating that as an escape from this other novella that the MonkeyBrat is now refusing to work on simply because the little fucker is now seeing that as work ergo not fun ergo not a creative act. Fucking pig-headed fucking intransigent fucking stubborn fucking downright thrawn bastard motherfucker of a gleetsucking cuntmunch, you think, I will hoodwink you into getting something of a decent length completed if it's the last fucking thing I do.
So, yeah, this has been the shape of things for me over the last few years, to be honest, all too aware of eager eyes awaiting projects I am actually still stoked about but hadn't, until recently, been able to evolve the requisite writerly discipline to defeat the wicked wiles of the MonkeyBrat. Until recently, I say, for bless the little cotton socks of Gary Gibson and a fair few other writers on Twitter -- none of whom probably actually have the little cotton socks that phrase actually conjures for me (like, ickle girly bobby-sox, yanno?) -- I have found Freedom.
Yes, apparently there's a third strategy for getting around the MonkeyBrat which simply involves switching off the fucking interwebs. Duh. It sounds to simple to be true, but yes, this little piece of software that just kills your internet connection for however many minutes you specify, up to eight hours at a time, somehow turns MonkeyBrat into this:
Whut the WHY?! says MonkeyBrat. No interwebz?! Buts what are I do NOWZ?!?!?!
Lookit, MonkeyBrat, says I. A shiny half-written novel... Look at it just waiting to be finished.
Awwww, buts novelz am BOOOOOORI- ooh, wait! I GOTZ AN IDEA!!!! I GOTZ AN IDEA!!!!
Seriously, having somehow miraculously managed to sustain an insane pace on the new novel through the hectic hurly-burly of my 40th, most of the way up until the Christmas/Hogmanay period, getting halfway through the second draft's work of weaving in a framing/interstitial narrative thread of what I guess you could call an "unreliable editor," so close to the end I could fucking taste the Guinness waiting to be downed in celebration, I found that the Feastival Fortnight In Porlock had derailed all that momentum completely. And trying to get back into it, I found myself yet again gnashing my hair and tearing my teeth at a frustrating inability to engage with a work that I cared about deeply and that, this time, was near enough completion that I knew it wasn't a matter of some misstep here or missing piece there.
(Like, I got blocked on "Escape from Hell!" for *cough* months because I hadn't realised a crucial but simple detail about Lucifer's viewpoint. I suspect one common cause of project-specific block might just be the niggling quasi-conscious knowledge that something isn't right, that there's something gone wrong somewhere, something that's maybe just not there at all, and unless that's fixed the rest is going to be dead on the page, stone cold fucking dead. And you can't know something until you know it, and until you know it, you're only going to fuck it up, end up with a half-arsed failure of commitment, a fucking compromise of a work where you've shrugged and said, oh well, I suppose that'll do. Bollocks to that. Adequate just ain't adequate, man. Mediocrity is not a fucking option.)
So, yeah, there I am discovering yet again the joy of Xeno's Paradox as it applies to writing fiction, where you half the distance to the end again and again, but with each push forward the time it takes doubles -- if it doesn't go up by an even larger exponent -- until it feels like wading through tar. And MonkeyBrat, of course, starts kicking off now, climbing the curtains, hurling objects from the top of the fridge. Only this time, spurred to action by the wise words of the aforesaid Mr Gibson, I download the free trial of Freedom, install it and fire it up. And forty minutes later, the internet withdrawal shakes are kicking in and I'm up there on the curtains with MonkeyBrat, but I have... a little bit more written. And I check my email and Twitter, fire up Freedom for another forty minutes and... end up with a little bit more on the page. And indeed, the more I do it, the more MonkeyBrat starts behaving.
Oh, look, there's the little pop-up that says time's up and we can get back on the interwebs again!
Shooshtz! I are SKRIBBLING here! Iz FUN!
And lo and behold, in just a few days, I'm back in the Zone, and in just a week or so I'm... done. I feel like I've kicked a crack habit. No, I feel like I've taken it out back and put a fucking bullet in the back of its head. That little app, Freedom... man, it's well-named. I haz a new novel done and dusted. Finally. After fucking forever.
I await with no small trepidation to see how my agent and the few beta-readers I've sent it out to will respond to TESTAMENT, my anarcho-socialist détournement of the gospels -- that would be the five gospels, by the way, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Thomas -- written in seven parts of six titled sections of four panels of exactly five hundred words each. It's... out there. I mean, sure, Michael Moorcock and Gore Vidal and Philip Pullman have all tackled that subject matter. And while it's fair to say my own approach is somewhat confrontational over the anti-Semitism I root in two millennia of Roman apologism*, this is a serious engagement with the scriptural mythos in a way that "Escape from Hell!" is not. It is not, by any means, transgressive just for the sake of being transgressive, or even as EfH! is, in fidelity to a balls-out satirical stance. But I'm all too aware that the word "controversial" is likely inevitably, tediously going to be attached to this. That the subject matter and some of the metafictional devices at play may well make some readers think that, yep, he's actually followed PKD into religious nutjob land. And yeah, that the whole five hundred words per passage thing... well, I'm sure editors just love working with texts confined by crazy arbitrary Oulipo constraints like that.
But fuck it. I think it's a fucking good book right now. Right now it feels fresh and fierce, and most of all it feels finished. No doubt I'll fall out of love with it if and when it gets sold, fingers crossed, and I have to work my way through edits and copy-edits and page proofs till I'm cursing the infernal thing. But right now, I have that kick-ass satisfaction of a full-on novel in the bag after too many years of fucking around. Almost feels like something I needed to get out of my system, the culmination of years of thematic flirtation. Like now I can get on with everything else. I'm itching to get the sequel to "Escape from Hell!" done and dusted too, hopefully over the next few weeks. I know what's up next. The MonkeyBrat feels like he's back inside my skin, his hands mine as we fling words at the screen with wild-eyed precision. We're back in business.
And talking of business -- talking of "Escape from Hell!" and aforesaid Mr Gibson as introduced me to the blessed Freedom -- just as a little addendum, I should probably let y'all know that it looks very much like "Escape from Hell!" will be joining the line-up of Gary's new ebook imprint, Brain In a Jar Books, and thereby becoming available to all you as likes to read on them thar newfangled whatjamaflips rather than via dead tree mulch. So yeah, all is good with the world, as far as I'm concerned. 2012 is shaping up nicely so far and I'm keen to get me teeth into stuff as will keep it going thus.
Ciao for now.
*Two millennia of Roman apologism carrying on right up to the 2000 production of Jesus Christ Superstar wherein, as you'll see from about 3.09 in this YouTube clip, the process of fucking blood libeling the Jews as "Christ-killers" reaches its absolute fucking nadir (apotheosis?) in staging the scourging so it's not the Romans whipping him, oh no, not some fascii-toting centurion soldier of the occupying force, but rather the Jewish people, one by fucking one running up to slap the Aryan anointed with their blood-spattered hands.
For real. By visual symbolism, they actually transfer even the action of the torture -- transfer not just culpability but action -- out of the hands of the Romans and into the hands of the Jews, not just exploiting but developing, furthering, what is possibly the single most heinous textual taproot of systematic scapegoating in all of history, that whole, "Let his blood be on our hands and on our children's hands" line. I would almost say, watching this, that words fail me. But they didn't. They don't. Words boil up out of my soul in bloody defiance and accusation. Eighty four thousand words to be exact.
