What I’m currently (not) writing.
Monday September 3, 2001
Having finished an Indigo chapter, I am supposed (according to my own silly ground rules) to be thinking of the new James Sisters chapter. Logic and structure dictate it should be another excerpt from Leah’s journal, though the bit of me that actually has to do the writing is getting cold feet at the idea, since a) I did not present an admirable performance the last time I tried something from her point of view, and b) offering up glimpses from someone that close to the heart of the mystery is dangerous, at best; there’s a hair-thin tightrope to walk if I’m going to pull it off without causing the whole ephemeral mess to come apart in my fingers. To thoroughly mix metaphors. Better, perhaps, to retreat? Stay with Carter? Play with Andi, some egregious self-reference, and (finally) work Dare Wright into the mix? (Skip ahead 19 minutes into the Real Audio feed, though the whole show is fun.)
None of which will probably get settled any time soon; I am, of course, distracting myself: never-ending work on Ruthie’s Club, which ought to be easier than it is, and probably would be, if I got around to getting organized; work on this site; the dreaded Day Job (at least I’m actively enjoying this one)—and seeing, on Friday, the first four episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion sparked something in my brain—when combined with a minute-and-a-half promo downloaded for Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda (a show I’ve never watched; I was just curious to hear what James Marsters sounds like without that British accent), which uses a really snappy piece of techno well enough for a TV promo; and with a half-remembered story from about eight years or so ago (typed on a real live typewriter, if never finished) involving zeppelins and remote-controlled war— Anyway. There’s something a-brewin’. Working title, “Sex & Violence”: giant robots, problematic desire, a reversal of a couple of my usual tropes, and, well, lots of sex and violence. If I don’t sell it to Ruthie, it will appear on ASSM when finished—just don’t hold your breath.
(And then there’s the half-joke I tossed out this morning as a what-if for an ASSD post: Chambers’ fictional play “The King in Yellow,” if it really had been written, but by E.R. Eddison, which idea is stubbornly clinging to the underside of my brain.)
Still and all, facts and faces array themselves for use whenever I can spare a moment for the James girls: this story, from a columnist I’m going to have to read more of, and which makes me wonder if perhaps I might not try mapping pornotopia a little more explicitly, or sketching its borders with more thought: borrowing the idea of the Four Corners—of Arcadia, Lord of the Flies, New Jerusalem, and Brave New World (from Auden by way of Delaney) to map out or at least organize the utopian and dystopian axes of the pornotopia in question. —To be a little more specific, and a little less obtuse: the Croatan houseboat from the sixth chapter is, indeed, the Lord of the Flies, the dark, anarchic terror of the utter lack of rules and structure; the Athletic Club, and Clive and Emily Bragg and co. (who have yet to appear) would, of course, be the converse of Croatan: the Brave New World, as it were. A party like the DUMBA soirée described by Taormino, or one of the parties from Potential, by Ariel Schrag, might serve (for Leah) as an Arcadia to Jessie’s and Carter’s Lord of the Flies experience in Croatan: the obverse: everything is permitted, rather than nothing is forbidden. —Which makes me wonder what would do for New Jerusalem…
But that’s entirely too reductive and simplistic. Nice to use as an organizational principle, to set up (for want of a better word) harmonics and chords between episodes, but when I’m actually writing, it would be best to forget such stuff. I’d be disingenuous, after all, if I didn’t admit there was something darkly seductive about Croatan—desirable, even. Necessary, in fact. I’d be playing the sort of utopian/dystopian games that exploding the idea into four corners is supposed to render irrelevant.
And dualism is bad, after all.