Wild blue yonder, here we come.

I stand now at a mere fraction of an hour away from being On The Road, ready for Swampstockin'. And I'm not even taking near the insane amount of stuff I'm usually inclined to, though Stacy might disagree. (The klong yaw's always an awkward fit. It's hard to travel light with a good-sized klong yaw.) And I'm doing the World Premiers of two, not one but two, brand-new songs. Well, sort of new anyway. Newly completed, like.

I wonder if, as we approach the WV border, I'll be able to not think of Rose's line from GOOD INTENTIONS: "Don'cha see, John? It's you what makes 'em bad."

Anyway, it's off and away with me to the Land of Summer's Twilight. Back in four to the mundane world.

Happy, happy! We are on for the all-weekend Swampstock, after only a little wrangling. That's two, count 'em, two four-day weeks on the heels of each other. Whatever shall I do with myself? Otter dance of exultation and joy!

But no Tony this year. Bummer bummer bummer. He says he will definitely absolutely make next year, for the 10th anniversary. He'd better. It won't be the same without those groovy prog licks on "Master van Rijn." Profound sigh. Otter dance of melancholy and resignation.

AND I get to deal with this whole pimping situation, which there's just no way I seem to be able to come off looking good in. I don't think that angle occured to me back when it seemed like a good idea to introduce single friends to each other. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for chemistry anyway, or at least alchemy. Who knows - maybe a furry hat with ostrich feathers will turn out to be my thing.

During some fit of literary masochism, seeing as I just don't have enough books I'm about halfway through, I started PERDIDO STREET STATION the other night, and I'll tell you what - that China Mieville is one twisted dude. I think it was the bizarre eroticization of the bug-headed chick that tipped me off. Damn fine book so far, though. I needed a break from wanking the hell all over NOBILIS anyway.

Er, back to work now.

A moment of contemplative vainglory, imagining myself in a future as a famous author, and having it be revealed that once I wrote an instruction manual for the document imaging system for the George Washington University. Chaos ensues as mad fans pursue the elusive monograph, which may or may not still be extant. A dubious copy sells for upwards of $100 on the internet. Soon enough it becomes part of the general legendry surrounding me, with much debate over whether or not the manual is apocryphal, and I, secluded in my cabin in Massachusetts, carefully avoiding either confirming or denying the rumors in interviews. The mystery will be unsolved even with my passing.

Well, come on. Wouldn't we all go nuts to hear that Neil Gaiman in his youth wrote, say, a programming textbook? Wouldn't copies suddenly appear on Ebay and be fought furiously over? Stranger things have happened.

A fellow can dream.

Last night, despite rainy dreariness and some marginally dodgy sesame chicken from Wok Gourmet, proved fairly productive; I got in a few hours of work on the Ligottiesque story suggested by the recent TLO discourse, and pondered the future of Jenny Haniver, Orwn Dvarra and a handful of like creations. All was well. I find it's quite useful to have the thumbnail-size version of the Jenny Haniver portrait Spyder did for me (which even at that scale has personality in spades) staring up at me from below the monitor with that sardonic look in her eye, the panatella at the corner of her mouth trailing blue smoke, looking as if she's about to say, "Okay, genius, time to put down the iced chai and start typing." Brilliant. Thanks, Spyder.

Solitude helps. Or at least it allows me to play Current 93 with no fear of offense. THUNDER PERFECT MIND is every bit as good an album as they say. Boy, was I grooving on "Hitler as Kalki" for the trippy stuff last night.

All this while Stacy is off learning the fine art of editing, which I think she's better at than she gives herself credit for. Bit of a double-edged sword though. I don't think I can hand her something I've written ever again without feeling like I'm eight and showing off my first Tolkien pastiche. "Oooh, Johnny, very nice. And do you think you'd like to become a writer someday?" Gaaahh.

And now the frelling AC's on the fritz again. Any more of this and it really will be funny. In a desperate, black-humor, defeated-by-inanimate-objects Ionesco kind of way.

I do enjoy having the place to myself once a week. Last weekend was very therapeutic, having lots of me-space for a few days. Got to watch odd movies, read CORALINE and NOBILIS and the new LUCIFER, and discover a recipe for Beef in Oyster Sauce (which could be summed up as, "Cut up some beef and vegetables. Cook the beef and stir-fry it with the vegetables. Open a bottle of oyster sauce and pour it all over that motherfucker." Pragmatic folk, the Chinese).

But I hear tell I very nearly got a visit from my brother, and that would've been good too. I'm easy to please. Especially when it's for someone for whom "straightening up" means "make sure there's at least one clean glass and try and remember to shove the porn under the couch." So dammit, Tony, next time just show up.

Which reminds me, I need to practice "Ziggy Stardust" for Swampstock in a couple of weeks. A bit sad about probably having an abbreviated stay this year, but duty calls, so what the fuck. That's a day or two I can spend getting in some quality slack this fall.

That's all I got for now. More as I think of it.

Well.

I've been reminded recently that I haven't exactly been keeping up with this lately. (I haven't kept up with my haiku journal, either, if that makes any difference.) Fair enough. I suppose six months (!!) is quite enough of a hiatus, or sabbatical, for anyone.

So I managed to shake the funk afflicting my writing that hung around all winter, and produced a handful of stories I'm fairly proud of. Nothing up on the site yet, but, hell, there's only so much time in the day.

Not much else to add here, except that I'm back. The public may now rejoice.

I have, indeed, survived the winter holidays, not without a slight case of the blues resulting from the end of my ten-day vacation from having to think much about anything important. I could relate all that happened in that time, but it risks being tedious. Suffice to say I helped to make sure the sun would come back, and had a lovely Christmas with family and friends, and a rollicking good New Year's Eve, and saw LORD OF THE RINGS three times. I couldn't have asked for better.

I did get the rather odd (but good) experience of running into my high-school ex-girlfriend in a Chinese restaurant in Parkersburg, WV just before returning home, and only a handful of hours after thinking, "Gosh, I wonder what Becky's up to these days." She's doing quite well, as it turns out, having graduated law school and gotten married (and now a fellow member of the Hyphenate Club, I was pleased to see). And she seems happy, which has been a back-of-my-mind concern for a while, though she was certainly on the way there by the time she threw my bachelor party nearly four (!!) years ago. So we exchanged all the important info and I got a very nice, very touching email from her telling me how much she's always valued my friendship, which made my morning. We had such a strange, angsty relationship when we were teenagers, not that most people don't. I'm terribly glad to see that she's become even more the kind of person I want to hang around with than ever, and I'm glad we're in touch now. Sometimes people don't take up their right place in your life until you quit trying to be in love with them. So it goes.

And I'm back in the grind of things now, trying to get my mind right for getting some writing done, which I don't quite feel up for yet. I'm still . . . drained a bit from this post-holiday melancholy, and the brutal cold, and fending off what seems to be a sinus headache with copious and varied pain medicine. AND figuring out why I can't seem to turn off the closed-captioning on my new DVD player. Oh, the frustrations of these miraculous toys!

In the mail yesterday, to my great delight, was my almost-as-good-as-new copy of FORMS OF HEAVEN, the second collection of plays by the talented and polymathic Clive Barker - out of print these last few years, but had at bargain price through www.addALL.com. And this is significant because, aside from the fact that it now pretty much fills in the last empty slot in my Clive library (and has, to boot, that beautiful mid-90s cigar-in-hand shot of the the author on the back - Mr. Barker is SO on my freebie list), it will allow me to read CRAZYFACE, the Tyl Eulenspiegel play, and write up a proposal for it for the local theatre company that's looking for directors next season.

Bit of a longshot, of course, as this is likely enough to bring every damn bargain-basement would-be Roman Polanski waving a well-thumbed copy of YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU or similar out of the woodwork, and I've barely looked at a stage from either direction in nearly six years. Sigh. But I'd rather be turned down legitimately than sit around kicking myself for the next two years for not giving it a try at all. Welcome to the Industry. Sitting around at home being brilliant is, shockingly enough, only a beginning.

So I've got my work cut out for me this week, and I can hear the cobwebby wheels start to turn in my head as I'm reading - already trying to solve problems of staging and multiple roles and French scenes and whatnot. Can I sell it? Is the world truly prepared for a Dan L-K vision of CRAZYFACE? I guess we'll know soon enough. And I'm sending in a treament for THE TEMPEST at the same time, just in case this one's too, y'know. . . askew for the public palette. May the Mystery smile on my lovely wife, in any case; she's the one I owe for spotting the ad in the first place, and not allowing me to waffle about giving it a go, longshot or not. I'm often surprised at times like that, though I shouldn't be; I have myself all convinced that Stacy's more or less just as glad I'm not gallivanting around at all hours away from home trying to create Theatre, and then she turns around and knows how to become exactly the right combination of cheerleader and drill sergeant to get me off in the right direction. I don't know why I don't know better. Damn guilt's a bitch.

Wooch. I'm all goofy and bleary-eyed today from being up far, far too late past my bedtime due to attending last night's Jim's Big Ego show at Iota in lovely downtown Arlington. It was worth it several times over. Rediscovered how rewarding it is to be a fan of these guys; Jim Infantino is just a damn nice person, as are his bandmates, and they really make you feel good to have come out and given them your time. There should be more bands like that.

(So go and tool around on www.bigego.com, if you haven't already. Get a copy of NO PLACE LIKE NOWHERE and the companion book of Jim's lyrics and poetry, LEGITIMATE GRIPES. Well worth the time and money, and it supports the cause of good, smart, fun music. See how long it takes before you're inflicting it on everyone you know, and waiting for JBE to come play in your area.)

AND I got to hear my contribution to the obligatory Napkin Poetry segment made into a call-and-response refrain ("Bean soup - Too much curry!"), and meet Seth Cohn (if I'm spelling that right), also formerly of the Boston singer-songwriter circle, or community, from whence Jim hails. We talked briefly about how easy it is as songwriters to find that you're suddenly writing stuff with an Infantino sensibility, and that there are worse fates. And then Jim sang one of the verses of "Slow" as Tom Waits. A fine evening, plus we earned our fanboy moments of hanging out with the band by pitching in as on-the-spot roadies. It was a privelege.

So I spent an enormous amount of time last night working on The Website (http://users.starpower.net/otterinmotley), editing and converting various bits of my writing for all and sundry to see there. Had that awful moment of doubt where I had to wonder if anyone cares enough to involve themselves in the workings of my twisted mind to spend time slogging through it there, especially with almost nothing up that has anything like an end or resolution or any of the other satisfying qualities readers generally look for in entertainment. OTOH, the feedback on Fantasybits for almost all of it has been so strongly positive for so long that I have to believe there's SOMETHING there. Vainglorious, indeed. The one thing publishing works-in-progress like that really has going for it is the potential to keep me honest, keep me working at it until it's done because I've got some other poor bastard involved in it. I can hope so, at least. It's certainly possible I'll finish something and the damn thing will sit there without anyone ever seeing it in all its glory. "What if I wrote a novel and nobody came?" It's surely happened to better than I.

And then there's the stuff I can't seem to be making headway on, like the William Burroughs poem I started for the "invisible stalker" topic and have been picking at like an old wound for a month or so. I know what I want to say, but I'm having a hell of a time getting there - two lines at a time on a good day, and it constantly wants to veer off in some unintended and unsatisfactory direction. Maybe I'm just overly conscious of not wanting to repeat what I had to say in "Sailing to the Western Lands." But I'm terribly afraid this is going to be like "S. T. Joshi in Dreamland" and sit around on my computer for five or six years without an ending because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Could it be that this whole poems-about-writers thing is a clever concept that fails when actually put to the test? Gods, I hope not.

And "A Lizard in Crimson" has been, or continues to be, back-burnered for a time while I work on some other stuff that needs attending to - THE RESIDENTS #1 for starters, and a couple of other things that seem to want some tinkering with (not to mention getting ready for the holidays and assorted pesky RL stuff). Hope this doesn't upset my adoring public TOO much, since it turned out to be my breakthrough 'Bits storyline in a number of ways, including being singled out by the weightily talented Vishal Bharadwaj in a recent missive to me. Vishal shall be richly rewarded for that, let me tell you.

Sigh. I'm torn between the burning desire to delve into the work and the burning desire to get away from all of it for a while. The latter is frought with danger, of course - I'll take a break and get into something that I've had on the "to-read" list for a while, like URTH OF THE NEW SUN, and come back trying to make everything feel like Gene Wolfe, layering six new kinds of grotesque strangeness on top of what's already in there. Story of my life - trying to find the point at which the extra dash of curry helps the soup instead of turning it into a bowel-torturer.

Or I could take the night to rent a movie or something. I dunno.

Just got my first response this morning from my esteemed collaborator Maija re: THE RESIDENTS, and the news is good. She likes the ideas and is still interested in working on it. What can I say? It's more than I deserve. I think I called the project "ambitious" and "vainglorious" in my response to her, both of which are true. It just blows my mind that there's anyone willing to put ink to drawing board to make this insane creation of mine come to life.

Almost as good, the last time I sat down to it I wrote "Page 5, Panel 3" and didn't draw a total blank. Could it be I can actually do this? It seems too much to ask. Probably a little soon to assume that I have a talent or anything for it just yet. The proof will be my providing a text that Maija can work from. We shall see.

Speaking of which, I need to catch up on her ANGELWINGS story, which I've been, y'know, "saving for later." Bad collaborator! *smek*

Ah, well. Better to have too much to do than the alternative.

Well, crap. I just typed up quite a long post and lost it to the great etherial void where such things go to die. Some kind of weird Javascript error. Grrr.

Hi. I'm Dan Layman-Kennedy. This is my new blog.

With any luck, I'll be coming here from time to time to throw my thoughts into the void about life, art, writing, good food, good books, magic, the Universe, and everything. Hurrah!

Or maybe I'll just be using it to bitch and moan. Whatever.

I feel sort of like Bridget Jones. If Bridget Jones was male, hairy, American and about a hunnert pounds heavier, that is.

Anyway.