Monday, April 09, 2007

Incorporate - The Dreamweaver at work


I incorporate my surroundings in my writing, my art. I see a tree, a street or a situation, and it’s burned into my memory. It stays there, live there, changes there or not, and it’s put on paper, like they would have said in the old days, before all writing all art changed, with the onset of the computer and portable laptop.

When I travel all new places stay with me. And even though I’m fairly good at describing places I’ve never been, too, you would probably know where I’ve been by reading what and how I’ve written about a given place or city. Up until recently I’ve usually written about real places. Now, with new books, like the Afterglow series and Alarums of Reality I’m creating cities and cityscapes in what I experience as a new thing for me. I’m building them, from scratch, taken a piece here, an image, a smell there, and changing them into something new and different. At least I am doing it more consciously than before.

I’m evolving yet again, and it feels good, so good. What any decent artist should worry about is growing stale, festering like a closed-off pond.

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time in what you might consider my hometown and area. I walk through and pass by places almost every day, and even if that’s not a situation I’m comfortable with, I’ve discovered it has its uses. One side of a building is one book, one story, the other a completely different scenario, miles, and even an entire universe away. I dream, like I always do, and I create upon it, into other dreams and nightmares and yearnings and failings and everything.

Even in the midst of desolation there are dreams and rebellion and liberation.