Tag: The Persistence of Memories

Sunday catch-up

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I usually write these entries on Sunday afternoons after we get back from our morning jaunt around the neighborhood — the farmers’ market, a coffee run, lunch ordering, what have you — and while doing errands around the house like the laundry. I like doing it this way because I have a lot more time to think about what to write without worrying about running out of time to work on my WIPs. I have nothing else to worry about as most of it is either already done or in progress. I’ll also clean out my email inboxes, run the PC cleaning software if needed, and of course leave time for giving much-demanded attention to our two cats.

I think of it as my Sunday catch-up time. And now that I think of it, it’s also a bit like how I handled Sundays as a teenager: it’s when I got most of my homework done as well. Yeah, I was totally a do-it-at-the-last-minute kid, even the term papers and projects I should have started weeks before. But while it was a terrible habit then, it’s actually a perfect one for me now. The only assignments I work on now are my own, and I can certainly crank them out if and when needed. I spend an hour or so working on an entry or two for this and Walk in Silence while I update the apps on my phone and ereader and the laundry finishes up, another half hour on the 750 Words, so by the time the early evening rolls around, I can focus just on my current WIP (in this case, the Remaster of The Persistence of Memories).

And maybe listen to some of the new music releases I’ve recently downloaded, of course.

It doesn’t always work out that way of course, but it’s nice when it all falls into place and I get all sorts of things done and out of the way. Makes the rest of the week just a little less stressful!

Songs from the Eden Cycle 1: Annotated

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Recently I’ve been visiting the early days of the Mendaihu Universe project, specifically when I’d started writing it mid-March of 1997. I’ve talked about the background of this story quite often here, but I’ve sometimes commented about its influences only in a passive way. When I started The Phoenix Effect, it was going to be more dark and intense than its previous incarnation as True Faith. And I can safely say that the primary influences of this version were the movies/series Bladerunner, Gall Force, Bubblegum Crisis, and Johnny Mnemonic, and the Masamune Shirow mangas The Ghost in the Shell, Dominion and Appleseed.

Then of course there’s the music. Nearly all of my writing projects have dedicated mixtapes and/or playlists — yes, even the juvenilia and the trunked ideas — and Phoenix was no different. At the time, this new story was still considered part of a much larger extended universe I then called the Eden Cycle, with vague outlines for several books spanning multiple storylines and eras. [That in itself was inspired by the Star Wars expanded universe.] Mind you, I was still nowhere near the write every day goal I was aiming towards, so by June I was only a few longhand chapters in, sessions squeezed in before my shift at HMV or in the evening after dinner.

The first volume of Songs from the Eden Cycle was created for two reasons. One, I needed all the inspiration I could get, and ‘soundtrack’ mixtapes always worked for me; and two, I was heading out on a weeklong multi-state road trip to visit a good friend of mine, and what better way to think about my project than while I’m on the road? I may have only gotten one writing session in during that trip, but I’m sure I gave that mix a few repeat plays at the time.

Songs from the Eden Cycle Vol 1, created June 1997 (likely later in the month).

SIDE 1

  1. Poe, “Hello [Band Version]”. When I first started making the mixtape in the back room of the store, I knew this was going to be the first track because it had inspired the new direction for the Vigil project. Plus, it’s a banger! I liked that the lyrics were an obvious nod to cyberpunk, and to my ears a nod specifically to Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer. At the time, Phoenix‘s plot contained the idea of spirits with the ability to switch bodies, including cybernetic clones. The “phoenix” part of the title then was meant to evoke an idea of being reborn, specifically in a violent way. The opening of Phoenix is almost exactly the same as it is in A Division of Souls, only that the Awakening ritual was originally a catastrophic ‘ring of fire’ explosion at the Tower. [Note: Spotify doesn’t have this version available, so the original album version took its place.]
  2. Failure, “Heliotropic”. There’s no specific scene or idea for this song, only that I was listening to Fantastic Planet quite a bit by this time and this was added more as a vibe than anything else. The heavy and distorted bass and the thundering drums to me evoked a grimy night city scene a la Bladerunner. B-Town was never planned to be all grime and grimness, mind you; just certain parts of it to make sure there’s a visible line between the haves and the have-nots.
  3. U2, “Mofo”. I was also listening to Pop a lot at this time too; I loved the album even despite the critics hating it. I loved the almost non-human sound coming from this song, which hinted at that ‘phoenix’ idea; the story at the time had these newly awakened spirits hiding inside cybernetic bodies just this side of the uncanny valley (another Bladerunner influence).
  4. David Bowie, “Dead Man Walking”. Another “phoenix” idea I played around with: what happens to the original bodies once the spirit leaves and enters a new one? What remains? They were a husk at most, and a possible target for a different and malevolent spirit at worst. [I hint at this in The Persistence of Memories when Caren and Poe meet Saisshalé for the first time.] I was also listening to Earthling quite a bit, pleasantly surprised that I’d finally found a non-greatest hits Bowie record that I really liked.
  5. Psykosonik, “Need to Die”. This CD was given to me by a coworker at the record store who was really into the whole electronica and darkwave thing. He liked it all, even though he was not a clubgoer. This darkwave band was similar to bands like VNV Nation and Front Line Assembly, which I also gravitated towards. I liked this laid back groove and thought this song fit the mix. [Note: I would only find out years later that one of the band’s members, Ted Beale, would end up being the infamous Vox Day. I keep the two as separate as I possibly can.]
  6. Live, “Lakini’s Juice”. Secret Samadhi was their weird album, I think. It was the follow up to the hugely successful Throwing Copper, and while there are elements of their heart-on-sleeve earnestness they’ve always had, it’s a much darker affair. This was the first single and definitely a left turn for them: grimy and gritty and unsettling. I thought it fit the flow and mood of the mix nicely.
  7. Elysian Fields, “Lady in the Lake”. Bleeding Cedar was one of the early promo CDs I’d gotten from the store, and I was taken in by the band’s sultry goth sound. It was like listening to a much darker version of Mazzy Star in a way, feeling like the aural equivalent of a ghost story. While “Jack in the Box” was the single, this was the track that appealed to me. Lyrically it doesn’t quite fit but the vibe is perfect.
  8. Moby, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”. Despite my wondering why he decided to cover Mission of Burma for his non-electronic ‘punk’ album Animal Rights, I kind of liked this take on one of my favorite Boston-centric songs, as he manages to retain the meaning and energy of the track. Why here? I think partly because WFNX was playing it a lot at the time and I needed to fill out the last part of Side 1. It does sort of fit the mood of Vigil’s take on the situation: if someone has to take the reins and get shit done, it’s definitely going to be them.
  9. The Verve Pipe, “Veneer”. I’d loved the Villains album and had seen them live at Avalon in Boston in May, where I learned the story behind this dreamlike track — driving alone on a deserted Michigan highway while high as a kite. Hearing it in its proper context made me absolutely love the track. In the context of Phoenix, I think this was how I thought a newly ‘awakened’ spirit would feel: completely out of sorts and confused, maybe akin to being high.

SIDE 2

  1. Richard Einhorn & Anonymous 4, “Exlamavit (from Voices of Light)”. I was obsessed with this album in the latter half of 1996, having heard it on an NPR station as I was driving into Boston one night. Einhorn wrote it as a soundtrack to the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. It intrigued me because it was the first modern orchestral piece that caught my interest, and reminded me of my favorite Dead Can Dance moments. This intro piece fit perfectly with the “ring of fire” moment in Phoenix.
  2. Pulp, “Common People”. This was a good year or two old and I was passingly familiar with it but it hadn’t resonated with me until around this time when I finally got what the band was about. I’d been listening to the store copy off and on and knew this was the big hit. It might not completely fit in with the story idea, but the vibe of distrusting those who mock or hate you fit in perfectly. It kind of fits Vigil’s vibe as well.
  3. Sponge, “Isolation”. I’d also been listening to the Working Class Hero John Lennon tribute album quite a bit at the time. It’s a song about Lennon dealing with the darker side of fame and feeling isolated despite being constantly surrounded. While the original from the Plastic Ono Band album is more plaintive and laid bare, this version is more pissed off, and it works alongside the above song with that feeling of social disconnection. [The tribute album is not on Spotify and is thus not on the playlist above.]
  4. The Offspring, “Gone Away”. This song was super popular on WFNX (does anyone remember the first single off this album?), and it sort of continues the whole feeling of social disconnect, this time from a deeply emotional point of view. It inspired a possible idea of a recently awakened character who felt this deeply yet didn’t quite understand where it was coming from yet.
  5. Filter, “Hey Man, Nice Shot”. There were actually a good couple of songs I thought fit the opening ‘ring of fire’ scene, and this was the more ‘violent’ one I came up with, fitting perfectly with my still-occasional use of Miami Vice style of writing. And I can never pass up a song that perfectly uses the quiet –> LOUD dynamic.
  6. Failure, “Daylight”. Even then I’m pretty sure I saw this song as an “ending credits scene” track, because it has such an epic coda that just builds and builds and leaves you breathless at the end. I’m also sure even then I pictured a hard cut to black when the drums and guitars kick in after the last verse. This is the first of many mixtapes where this song makes an appearance.
  7. U2, “Wake Up Dead Man”. Could this be a denouement scene song after all that? Perhaps? It’s near the end of Pop, after all the louder and bigger songs, and it evokes a feeling of exhaustion after all the pomp and noise. It also fits pretty well after “Daylight” — while the former song is the moment where something life-altering happens in the story, this song is the moment right after when one suddenly realizes what its consequences are.
  8. Jamiroquai, “Virtual Insanity”. I’ll be honest, this was more of an “I need one more song to finish this mix off” song, but it also fits the theme and the flow as another ‘end credits’ track. In my mind it does somehow fit in with the feeling of something life-altering happening, and now here we are having to deal with the fallout.

Not bad for a first volume, and it got a ton of play over the next several years. I’d be making two more volumes by the end of the year, with a fourth and then-final one made late in 1998 when I was working on the transcription and revision. Several of the tracks on these early volumes have had direct influence on The Phoenix Effect. [I will talk more about these in future entries here.]

A few variations would show up over the next few years, but in 2018 I’d revive the Songs from the Eden Cycle series as a way to keep the universe in mind. The most current one is Volume 10, created in late 2024.

Remaster Status: on schedule

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While I haven’t decided on a specific release date for the Remastered Edition for The Persistence of Memories, I can say that I’m still on schedule. I’m about halfway through, which is where I expected to be at this point. Not bad for a month and a half’s worth of work! It does help that I had an easy time of this one to begin with, so there aren’t too many issues to focus on. If I keep up with this schedule, I should be ready for a late fall release. I’ll have a more concrete date in mind once I get closer to the end.

I’m thinking, though, that if I do start the RE for The Balance of Light in 2027, that one might take some time to finish. It was the toughest of the three and I think it still needs a bit more TLC to make it a better book. Nothing as terrible as the original revision when I first self-published it. (I cut a lot from that one, quite possibly 15-30k…the final draft was a beast.) There’s also the fact that I’d like to think about what I’d like to work on next, be it a return to Theadia or finally starting on the next Mendaihu Universe book. Either way…we shall see.

For now, I’m just going to focus on the present.

Back to normal

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Today marks the last of five days in a row of my oddball day job schedule as the person whose job I was covering has come back from their three-week vacation. It’s taken a lot out of me and I’m sore and exhausted most of the time, but I survived intact. The trick was to purposely not run myself ragged at top speed every single moment. There were a few tense moments where I had to hide away in the bookkeeping booth to wind myself down a bit, but for the most part I kept as much as I could under control.

I’m even kind of surprised I managed to get a lot done with the Remaster for The Persistence of Memories! Then again, this is (a) my favorite book in the trilogy and (b) the one I feel is the best of the three. Most of the work has been the occasional spot-clean and rewording a few clunky sentences here and there. I’ll give it another reread once I’m done, and hopefully have it ready for re-release by the end of the year!

But yeah…after today, I’ll be enjoying a quiet four-day reprieve, and I’m looking forward to getting some remastering work done!

Clarity

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[This was also posted at my Dreamwidth blog yesterday as something that’s been on my mind lately.]

As I get older I find myself seeking clarity more and more. The problem with doing that when I was younger was that I was still stuck looking at that in terms of extreme opposites: I’m either Totally Locked In or I’m Completely Disconnected. I either have All The Feels or I’m Cynical and Don’t Give a Shit. I knew that wasn’t want I wanted, bur nor did I want to keep pretending that I could find a happy medium where I could be all at the same time. That just became emotionally and mentally exhausting.

Lately I’ve been thinking about it in terms of my own levels of media consumption. I’m not exactly talking about avoiding the online doomscrolling, though that has often been a problem. It’s more along the lines of remembering when I could consume with clarity. That is, like what I like to whatever degree, ignore what doesn’t resonate with me, and for the love of pie it’s not a contest with everyone else in the universe. Social media is fine if you set your own boundaries and catch yourself when you’re slipping into obsession, or the fear of missing out.

That was my issue: I’d set those boundaries and then completely forgot about them because my brain is wired to obsess. [Thus my ridiculously large music library.] I realized this when the pandemic started and made inroads to rewire my head a bit. It took a few years considering it had gotten out of control like weeds in an untended garden, but I got there eventually. There’s always weeding to be done, but it’s much easier to do now.

And now I’m at a point where I can do a bit of fine-tuning. With age and experience — and a rewired brain — I can say, ‘okay, this is where I want my head to be at, so let’s head in that direction.’ Listening to my favorite music from the past is helping, because I’m purposely not doing it only as a way to reminisce. I’m currently listening to the stuff from 2002-2003 while I work on the Remaster Edition of The Persistence of Memories. I’ve been posting the Thirty Years On series at the music blog and talking about 1996 (and continuing into 1997 because why not). And the long-game reason for doing this has to do with rewiring how I listen to current music: to once more listen to new releases that resonate with me, and to have it stay with me for more than just a few months. I know it can be done because there have been current releases that have done that (GIFT’s Illuminator album, for instance). And slowly, I’m starting to reclaim that.

It’s definitely an ongoing process, but it’s one that I’m able to control if I keep at it.

Back to work

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Okay, I feel much better now.

I managed to survive six early starts in a row by way of keeping my energy levels to a minimum. No going above and beyond unless absolutely necessary. Knowing when to say no or not having the ability to take on yet another Thing To Do and letting them know about it. And not pushing myself at home, either, other than sitting down and working on the Persistence remaster. The two days off were well-earned and spent, catching up on errands and writing stuff. And thankfully the upcoming work schedule is a much more manageable off-and-on that offers me more of a respite.

Now if I can only get it together enough to post more over here! I’m going to make it a point to have something up for Monday, as thankfully have Sunday off, and Sundays are perfect for prepping blog entries ahead of time.

See you then!

Getting through

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This past week has been a bit tough.

On the home front, we’ve been dealing with weird weather that’s been stuck in the mid-sixties with 85-95% humidity for a full month without a break, which means high pollen count, and which also means that my sleep patterns have been interrupted by serious sinus and ear congestion waking me up unless I take a few Benadryl before lights out. And on the day job front, I’ve just finished off five 4am starts in a row (filling in for main bookkeeper who took evening shifts to train a few night people to ease our morning workload). Suffice it to say I’ve been feeling exhausted and loopy the entire time.

The good thing is that Sunday’s weather was quite enjoyable, a much more tolerable 65% humidity and yay, the sun finally blessed the Richmond District with its presence! Heh. Windows were opened and rooms were dusted so that perhaps I can breathe a little easier in the next few days. If all else fails, I think we still have the air purifier from our old apartment somewhere in garage storage that I could bring up and run for a bit.

Meanwhile, yes, I have somehow managed to keep plodding on with the Remaster project for The Persistence of Memories! After chilling out after work and getting my second wind, I have managed to get a good few pages done every night, right alongside getting myself reacclimated with my daily 750 Words. Despite my exhaustion this past week, I’m still powering through because this is a project I’m enjoying, and it’s something I really want to do. And that’s a good a reason as any!

Meanwhile

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Another Independence Day has come and gone, this one not much more than a footnote here in our otherwise quiet neighborhood. We had some stray firecrackers going off a few days early (once at 3am, annoyingly) but due to Karl the Fog’s consistent presence in the evening these past several days. There wasn’t much to see from our new abode other than a few flashes of underlit fog. Suffice it to say, the cats were not happy about the noise. Thankfully, we were well away from the nightmare traffic of North Beach and the Marina District that apparently lasted multiple hours.

I am happy to say that the Remaster work for The Persistence of Memories is running smoothly so far. I did need to pull out my physical copy of A Division of Souls (yes, the remastered one) to check on a reference or two, but otherwise there haven’t been too many major changes as of yet. Just a few word choice fixes and minor edits is all. I am expecting a few major fixes to arise eventually — last I recall, when I last did a reread I remember one or two things sticking out that bothered me — but for the most part we’re still on schedule. I haven’t made a concrete drop date yet, but I’m figuring it’ll be at least some point in Q4.

More to come soon when I have news!

Finding a writing process

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[NOTE: The below is mostly from my 750Words entry from yesterday, but I felt it worth sharing here.]

We were talking the other day about Your Name — one of my all time favorite movies — and how, when we went to see it in the theater in Japantown awhile back, I was reminded of just how perfect a movie it was. Every part of the story has meaning, is there for a reason, and is woven into a rich tapestry. It’s a perfect example of what I like to call ‘they’ve done their homework’. There are very few movies, books, and music that resonate with me that deeply (The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity is a current one, of course) but as I’d said to A yesterday, I always saw that movie as a benchmark for me to achieve with my own writing. I doubt I’ll ever reach the levels of Makoto Shinkai, but it gives me a firm goal to work towards.

I think that’s close to where I reached with the Bridgetown Trilogy, and especially with The Persistence of Memories. It wasn’t just a perfect storm of positive personal life, great music and a wave of unbridled creativity. Those things of course fueled it, but it wasn’t entirely borne out of it, now that I think about it.

I’d gone into the trilogy with a few things on my mind:
–This would be the end result of a long-simmering project dating back to 1993, so I did not want to do a half-assed job of it.
–I had such a deep well of ideas for this created universe dating back to the same time, and I did not want to waste any of it.
–I was at a day job at a warehouse where I didn’t have to waste much-needed brain power problem solving (the most pressing things I had to think about were building pallets neatly and correctly, where to stage them, and how to get them to fit onto the truck), which meant that I could spend most all of my waking hours focused on my writing.
–I knew that if I stopped and ‘took a few days off’ I’d get lazy and miss even more writing days, which was part of my undiagnosed ADHD issues, so I purposely drove myself to hyperfocus on the writing instead…while also ensuring that I kept it fun for myself. It was a balance between wanting to reach word count and becoming super excited about wanting to keep this story alive.

And to tie in with what I was saying above: this was a story where ‘I did my homework’. The further along I went with it, the deeper and richer it became. And the wild thing is that most of this happened in my head, because I was really not that much of an outliner! Like I’ve said numerous times, the most I ever planned out with the trilogy was maybe three or four scenes ahead, or maybe one or two chapters ahead, and even then it was less an outline than a vague list of beats to hit as I came up with them.

All the while, I was keeping multiple character threads going in my head. Caren and Poe were focusing on two things: balancing their own spiritual awakening while protecting Denni; Anton knew he wasn’t in charge but had to make it look like he was; Natianos believed he was pulling the strings but didn’t expect Denni and Saisshalé to take over; Nehalé was going through a crisis of faith; and so on and so on. This is why the scenes are set up as they are: they focus mostly on the important character in that particular scene, fully and with deep immersion. The other characters might have been in the scene as well, yet I would only focus on their reaction (or non-reaction) in a later scene. Everything and everyone was interwoven into this story, but I had to see the separate threads going.

Looking back on it, it’s kind of amazing that I did that with my first professional novels. I did it to a much lesser extent with the standalones, but that’s because they didn’t need that much intensity. It was a process I came up with on my own, one that worked for me, and one I still use to some degree. In fact, I’ve been contemplating following my own example with another attempt at rewriting Theadia. The only reason I’d stepped away from that process was because the Trilogy had been such an incredibly long project that I needed to try something small and compact — both to give myself a mental break and to see if I could pull it off.

Like I said, I don’t expect to hit Shinkai levels of perfection, but I remain inspired to at least ‘do my homework’ and write the best work I can.

Back to Bridgetown

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It’s been a while since I actively sat down and reread the trilogy, so it feels a bit strange to be back in Bridgetown after focusing on Beam City (the city in Theadia) for so long! I’m not going to complain, however, because I’ve always loved it here. It’s one of my favorite created worlds of mine and I’m always glad to come back and visit every now and again.

I was thinking the other day, though, if this current remaster might inspire my long-dormant desire to write further stories in the Mendaihu Universe. I’m not going to push it or demand it happens, because that never works for me. But I do wonder if it’ll offer some clarity on some of the ideas I’d had for it. For now, I’m just going to focus on cleaning up this second book in the series and see where it takes me.

It does help that I’ve been revisiting some of my favorite albums that had come out then: Oasis’ Heathen Chemistry, Dishwalla’s Opaline, Beck’s Sea Change, Sigur Rós’ ( ), Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights… all the music during the Belfry Years that influenced and inspired the trilogy. I’ve even been thinking lately about why those few years were such a high creative point for me. That’ll probably be another future post, I think it was really a case of great timing and positivity on several fronts, both creatively and personally. There’s a reason I often think about that time and everything I did then.

I think I’ve learned over the last couple of years that the trick is not to try to relive them or recapture them, or make them happen again… but to approach the current time in a similar fashion, and let the positive aspects of the present work for me. [Easier said than done in some respects, sure, but if I still have the ability to do so I’m not going to let it pass me by anymore.]