Tag: creating

Making stuff: up, real, and nicely.

The Zine Scene

A LONG TIME AGO, IN a post office far, far away, our mailbox was fraught with wonder and excitement.

In those cultural Dark Ages of pre-public Internet access, creative folk could communicate through the medium of “zines” – homegrown/amateur magazines, usually (but not always) photocopied by the dozen at the local 24-hour Kinko’s. Zine subjects were limited only by the interests and imaginations of their creators: politics, music (mainly punk rock), personal essays, communality, underground comix, satire, movies, TV shows, media criticism in general, religion, cassette culture, spirituality, alternative lifestyles, history, science fiction, fantasy, sexuality – the list goes on.

At the hub of this textual universe stood Factsheet Five, the quarterly “zine of zines” stuffed with hundreds of brief reviews and publisher contacts. Each issue opened up entire worlds of conceptual adventure, and she and I would take turns devouring it and highlighting the publications we wanted to receive. Per-issue costs could be anywhere between a few stamps, a few bucks, or trade for “something interesting” — including one’s own zine.

We were both well-supplied to swap: she with her women’s spirituality “perzine” (personal zine) Sacred Wilderness and me with my elsewhere-described Far Corner, a UFO/paranormal satire journal. For those small but intense investments – thinking, writing, copying, and postage – we netted a substantial return from independent publishers all over the planet.

Factsheet Five has passed into the What-Was, having ceased production in 1998. Blogging, vlogging, Substack, YouTube content, and social media in general now fill the creativity gap once occupied by zines; they’re cheaper, have a potentially longer reach, and can be published and accessed with greater immediacy. As a result, the weekly post-box trip has become more prosaic and less exciting. But the memories remain, of a secret world populated by anyone who could afford to get their personal word out and connect with likeminded others. I like to think that, though the medium may have dwindled, the spirit hasn’t. Long live the revolution!

Points of Honor, Literary and Otherwise

– STUFFING SENTENCES TO CARRYING CAPACITY.
– Never starting a blog post (or sermon) with “I.”
– Punctuality.
– Creative segues.
– Repeating verbatim whatever someone wants said to another.
– That only what I actually heard appears inside quotation marks.
– One-sentence ledes.
– Snappy ledes. (“If you can do that, you’ll never be out of a job,” quoth a mentor.)
– Keeping an open mind, especially when it’s difficult.
– Never speaking in absolutes. (Present list excluded.)
– Crediting my sources.
– Communicating as accurately as I can. (Challenging, but aspirational.)
– Pushing through my shyness. (Also aspirationally challenging.)
– Being kind to cashiers, sales clerks, waiters, and tradesfolk.
– Saying “Take your time” whenever necessary.
– Waving at passing cars.
– Not speculating.
– “Killing my darlings” (per Wm. Faulkner, via Stephen King).
– Making an effort to pet stray cats.
– Greeting passersby with (at least) a smile.
– Concisifying.

(And yours?)

Let’s Get Real

ON THIS DAY EIGHT YEARS ago, I stepped out from under the shadow of a decades-long cannabis addiction. And I haven’t been the same man since.

Thank God.

What brought me to that point was twofold: I decided that 1) I was being selfish to the ones I most love by robbing them of my alert and unaltered presence, and 2) I just didn’t like feeling stupid all the time anymore.

Looking back, I realize that cannabis had structured my existence in some scary ways. I planned my life around it, spent my money on it, self-sabotaged with it, and turned into a raving jerk when I was deprived of it. What I didn’t know at the time was that these behaviors are all symptomatic of addiction. Continue reading “Let’s Get Real”

Word to Bring Back: “Fastuous”

– Definition: adj. 1. haughty, arrogant 2. ostentatious, showy
– Used in a sentence: The fastuous have taken their first steps down the rabbit-hole of militant mediocrity.
– Why: It sounds similar to “fatuous” — silly and pointless — and rightly so.

(Thank you, M.F.K. Fisher. Good one.)

Too Bad

“WE PASSED THROUGH SEVERAL HUNDRED media-transmission shells on our way in,” the communications officer said. “Of course, we were eager to see who had made them.”

By the pale light of a flickering viewscreen, the captain’s expression was thoughtful. “I can see why,” she told the communications officer. “Judging by their cities and transportation networks, they built big and dreamed bigger.”

“Indeed. They even made entertaining fictions about lives on other worlds, in other times. Some were quite remarkable.”
Continue reading “Too Bad”

Words To Bring Back: “Perfervid”

– Definition: adj. intense and impassioned
– Used in a sentence: The perfervid activists had trouble with their blood pressure.
– Why: There is something attractive about a three-syllable word replacing a three-word phrase. (Maybe it’s the concisifier in me.)

Words to Bring Back: “Shambolic”

– Definition: adj.; chiefly British chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged.
– Used in a sentence: Our political and cultural landscapes have become shambolic as all get-out.
– Why: Because we need a more polite (and adjectival) descriptor than… those in current usage.

Word to Bring Back: “Amphitryon”

– Definition: (French) n. person with whom or at whose expense one dines

– Used in a sentence: My father is a well-known and gracious amphitryon.

– Why: Aside from its capitalized Greek origin (Amphitryon was, according to Sophocles, a king of Thebes and companion to Heracles), famed 18th-century gastronome J.A. Brillat-Savarin is wholly enamored of its use in his seminal Physiology of Taste wherein it is synonymous with “host.” (If you’re going to steal, steal from the greats. Especially if they stole it first.)

Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.