–Talib Kweli

Most of us only comprehend the B.P. oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an abstract concept.  It’s a horrible idea to be sure, but it exists only in our imaginations and doesn’t really impact our daily lives, right?

Watch this video and then try to wrap your head around this scope of this disaster.

http://theinternettoday.net/videos/man-defies-bp-laws-by-flying-his-plane-over-the-gulf-and-shooting-video

You don’t have to be paranoid to believe that the longterm effects of this are being discreetly hidden from the public.  On the other hand, it’s possible that no one knows just how vast the fallout from this will really be . . . or just how long it will last.

Consider this:

http://www.oilspillsyndrome.com/?p=106

Well, real life has a way of taking over and contentment has a way of marginalizing creative projects that were initially fertilized in bitterness.  Fortunately, the characters and concepts of “Baby Girl” are strong enough that they want to live, damn it!  Moreso than any other cast of characters that I’ve dreamt up, the dramatis personae of “Baby Girl” and “She Is Risen” want their stories to be told.

To do this, however, I’ve been radically reimagining the gist of the story.  The story isn’t completely different, but the focus and tone will be.  For most of the last year, I knew that “Baby Girl” would end up being more about the relationship between Cub and Anna much more than between Anna, Emma and Ben.  The opening chapter (fragment) which I posted last year reflected this, but was still rife with increasingly stale bitterness that I simply don’t have a lot of use for anymore (and one could argue, that I never did).

Character backgrounds will remain largely the same, specifically with regards to the fact that Anna and Emma have a history together.  It’s just in moving forward with the story (and life), this will no longer be what drives the plot.  The “three woman” dynamic will work more like this:  Emma is a woman who was lost and in finding the right partner, she has found her way.  Anna is slightly older than Emma and is still lost (although not nearly as lost as she thinks she is) and Cub is a young woman who is still seeking her way and realizes that she has the potential to not allow herself to get lost.

My plan is to throw all three into the melting pot (along with initially peripheral involvement of Em’ and Anna’s respective lovers, Ben and Jo’ Fields) into a storyline which alludes to back stories and motivations which I’ll explore later.  Partially, because I know that I would stagnate and get distracted if I tried to trudge through the flashbacks and shared histories before plunging feet first into my story, but mostly because I don’t feel quite confident enough yet to do those stories justice.  I’d rather write some surreal fantasy pulp first and then I’ll try my hand at human stories later.

So, this is where the project is at.  The pages of “Baby Girl” that were previously posted for public viewing have been hidden to go back and whittle away the diseased fruit and infected wounds so that this thing can grow into a thriving, healthy tree.

I came up with the band name and the album title.  

Pretty much everything else was the brainchild of composer/keyboardist/producer, Sam Lee and vocalist/lyricist, Heather Williams.  I also provide the hammy emcee vocals on track 4, “No Guns Allowed.”  Of course, Sam is the real wizard behind this.  It was his idea to put together this kind of project and he’s the one who damn near worked himself to death, hoisting this thing over two years of obstacles and drama like Fitzcarraldo and that damned boat.

Sam and his violinist, Johnny Benson are ones to watch.  Both of them almost certainly have a future scoring video games and movies (which, I believe, they are working on under the not-quite-top-secret name of Manatap).

If you want to look and hear without committing precious drive space, there’s always the lovely MySpace page.

http://www.myspace.com/theclockworkdolls

–

Here is the band performing their most accessible (and undeniably FIREFLY-influenced) song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBJQVkf8LkI

That clip gets a lot more watchable after that moment when the camera seems to swing for the rafters.

And here is a slightly more awkward video in which I join the band on stage and blow my cues all over the place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5hOCb9IUzk

Enjoy!

But forget those videos and enjoy the album.  It’s a credit to the blood sweat and tears of the maestro behind it that it all somehow came together.

Here’s a little bit of background on what the concept is:

Sam, Heather and Johnny have essentially crafted a garage band musical and it really, really works. I’d have been genuinely stunned if you musical fans in the audience didn’t appreciate this.

The last two tracks are lovely, aren’t they?

Here’s a little bit of background for you:

–”Clockwork Maid” tells the story of Allison Curval, the clockwork automoton who is charged with raising a wild young, noble girl and making a lady out of her (which, as you can hear, doesn’t really go well). I think the song starts one year before her wedding and ends on the night before. That’s where the song really gets you.

At the end, Allison sings Helene to sleep and is left alone with Helene’s dress which she dances with and sings to in the moonlight coming in through the bedroom window.

This was originally the first song on the album, but I suggested to Sam that it wouldn’t have been a very commercial move given how theatrical it is.

Chronologically, “Clockwork Maid” gives way to “Maiden Voyage.” Helene and Allison make a break for it on her wedding day and she commandeers an air ship called the Serenity, er, I mean The Dame de Fere. From “Maiden Voyage” to “Impartial” we are introduced to some of the crew (hence the title, “Dramatis Personae”).

“A Safe Rest” which shares the track with “Clockwork Maid” (and acts as a hidden track) is a flashforward to the end of the story in which Helene, having been forced to kill Allison (trust us, it’s necessary) and sings her to sleep.

And that, I argued, is why it should’ve been moved to the end since it’s a mirror reflection of “Clockwork Maid.” Besides, most of the album is about the air ship and the crew. The Helene/Allison stuff is really just a preview of what the second album will be about.

As for what comes after that? Heh, heh, heh. All I have to say is, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!! THE CABARET D’INFERNALE PROUDLY PRESENTS . . .

“. . . YOUR FAVORITE HOSTESS AND MINE, THE MADAME OF THE DAMNED, AAAAANNNNNNNNNE FERNALE!!”

It’s going to be The Clockwork Dolls doing our version of “Cabaret” starring Anne Fernale and the gravelly voiced gentleman thug, Harry Mandall Barker.

We’re going to be looking for choreographers for that one (hint, hint).

It’s showtime, folks!

–tom

P.S.: Oh, and for goodness sake, YES!! Share it!! Leak it, burn it, link it, rip it!!

Get it out there! We only have 100 copies of the cd now. Hopefully, it will be up on iTunes before too long, but now now, it’s FREE!! Well, the download is free. The cd will cost you 10 bones.

–tom k.

In the unlikely event that anyone has been visiting this site other than spam bots out to sell cheap Viagra or exotic dildos to my readers (I sift through dozens of such ads in the comment section of this blog every week and as I read about the beauty of dildos written by someone who does not understand English, I see an unintended abstract mastery of the language to which I can never hope to aspire; Sascha Baron Cohen has nothing on these guys), you may have noticed a page link tucked away over in the right hand column titled “Baby Girl part 1.”  A single click later, you see that “part 1″ is in fact that first seven pages of what is now the first draft of “Baby Girl.” 

The current format for the story is a first person narrative within a first person narrative (Anna Thomas is telling the story to you, the reader, and Cub’s first person narrative is being conveyed through Anna) has taken a looooooooooong time to hash out.  Yeah, I know it seems obvious now, but you have no idea how difficult it is to figure these things out unless you’re starting it from scratch. 

There have been other fragments and scraps of this story handed around over the course of this year and as the few of you who’ve been with this project since the beginning know, the current tone, voice and format of “Baby Girl” is nothing like those early notes and thank goodness for that.  Writing from a place of despair is just as much a fool’s errand as trying to find inspiration from a place of total contentment.  I’m now in a place where I’m finally feeling happy for the first time (thanks in no small part to the patience and support of my wonderful girlfriend who is essentially my partner in this process, getting first look at every excerpt and the most credence when it comes to criticism) and I have the benefit of hindsight and (I hope) perspective which makes this an even handed story even as it crawls like a junky towards a place of healing and redemption.

Of course, that’s not to say that this narrative will be a zen meditation free from blood and thunder drama.  It would make for a boring read if that were the case.  Eggs have already been broken towards the thickening of this omlette and more are still to come.

There’s also the matter of how to address the inspiration for this story and its characters.  This narrative will include a disclaimer which assures all readers that this is in fact a work of fiction.  The irony, of course, is that I may begin “Baby Girl” with a prank disclaimer that I may use to open all of my future fiction, “Based on a true story.”  I always find it funny how much credulous audiences can be when works of fiction begin with those terms.  Hey, even documentaries are inherently dishonest so how much stock can you really put into a second (or third or fourth) hand account in writing or a movie which is no better than a dramatization?  The truth with my writing, of course, is somewhere in between.  In fact, it may encompass the entire grey area in between solid fact and complete fabrication.

The problem comes when a disclaimer has to add, “Any resemblance between the characters in this narrative with persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”  Well, that would be total bullshit on my part since I not only know exactly who the people are I’m writing about, but they are certain to recognize themselves if they were to read it.

So, here is my personal disclaimer, a rewritten and condensed version of which will almost certainly precede the final version of “Baby Girl.”

This story is a work of fiction based explicity upon dreams I have had and the memories of people I have known and loved.  Names have been changed for artistic intent and in some cases, names and motivations have been deliberately swapped.  In some of those cases, I’ve mixed and remixed identities to underscore personal or thematic parallels between certain characters.  In other cases, I’ve done it arbitrarily in the same way that our subconscious seems to randomly remix our lives in dreams.  There may be meaning or valid analysis to be gleaned from the randomness, but that doesn’t mean that I consciously intended it.  Of course, as someone who delights in obsessively “reading too deeply” into just about anything, you’ll seldom find a meaning or possible explanation for any element of this story which hasn’t already occured to me at some point. 

The narrator, Anna Thomas, is my alter ego and that’s not something I’ve ever bothered to disguise.  I’ll leave the discussion of her gender for another time (although the most obvious one within the framework of the story is that although Anna is romantically and sexually interested in women, no one ever considers her to be a real man…which is, needless to say, something I can relate to).  Aside from Anna, pretty much every character in the story is based on a real person (even if some, or even everyone to some extent, is a composite) except for Cub.  Cub (aka. Alice Star among other aliases), the titular character in “Baby Girl” is the only one that I pretty much invented out of thin air.  She started out as a private joke in that I wanted to give the “child phobic” character of Emma O’Toole a baby, but like all babies, she continued to grow and grow and grow. 

“Baby Girl” starts off in a bar which represents a state of mind (yes, it’s that kind of story).  Anna Thomas is a sentient memory of a woman trapped in a forgotten corner of her ex-lover’s mind.  Cub is the daughter of her ex-lover who is merely visiting the sprawling reaches of her mother’s mind (yes, it’s that kind of story) to seek out this secret woman.  As the story begins, both women share memories which blossom into vivid reality around them.  Such is the promise and perils of spending time in a location composed of pure thought.  You can visit your dreams and memories (or the dreams and memories of others) with no more than a thought to conjure them, but it’s easy to get completely lost since there is no map for the human mind (especially when one consciousness mixes with a second…and a third….and a possible fourth).

So, once the rules are established (as happens a page or two beyond the seven pages currently available to you), “Baby Girl” becomes the story of people exploring their memories while quickly becoming aware that no memory can really be trusted as fact.  At the same time, I’m exploring my own memories as I write this, but always with the understanding (and not so secret satisfaction) that I can twist and reshape them as I see fit.  Because if I pretended to write my actual memoirs of events as they actually happened, it would still be a lie despite my best efforts to keep that from being the case.

And so it goes.  As I continue to dream “Baby Girl” into being, I am always wrestling with the question of how tactful to be.  Of course, like one who claims to fight for sobriety while knocking back shot after shot of liquor, it seems to be a game I’m playing to lose.  And as detail after detail spills onto the page, those who are following this work in progress may assume that I am cheerfully losing the battle with tactlessness and really only pay lip service to it as a way of mocking it.

I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I value sobriety and no matter how drunk on this drama and the resulting dream that I may seem, one day I will inevitably wake up and I will be sober.

—

“It’s human to lie. We can’t even be honest with ourselves.”  –The Commoner, quote from Akira Kurosawa’s “RASHOMON”

“I don’t mind a lie. Not if it’s interesting.” –The Commoner, quote from Akira Kurosawa’s “RASHOMON”

“Just do me a favor.  Don’t try too hard to be truthful.  You’ll leave out important details if you do and you’ll end up lying anway.  Just tell me the story as you remember it and let me decide what to believe.”  Cub aka. Alice Star, quote from Tom Kessler’s “Baby Girl”

http://akirakurosawa.info/forums/topic/rashomon-the-audiencethe-truth-and-the-baby

“Baby Girl” will mark the first time in 17 years that I’ve actually seen a writing project through to fruition (not counting school papers and blogs).  Every bright idea that I’ve had throughout college and beyond has usually disintegrated due to lack of confidence, laziness and general boredom with my own concepts.  Of course, at least two of those bright ideas have found a home within “Baby Girl” so perhaps I’ve been brainstorming this project all along which would make it my own personal “Chinese Democracy.”

For those of you who’ve been following this blog, there have been big changes to the story.  Instead of a trilogy, I’m condensing it into one story and cutting out some major plot developments that simply didn’t work.  The biggest deletion is the story arc that would’ve comprised the entire second volume in the trilogy:  the book formerly known as “She Is Risen” has been more or less killed.  I may keep SOME of it in the midsection of “Baby Girl,” but it will have a very, very different impact that it originally did.  In the new version of the story, it will represent a kind of Wonderland dream world spinning out of control as opposed to the futuristic sci-fi pulp epic that it was originally going to be.

For those who were drawn into this story by the hook of “women take the world back from men and establish themselves as the dominant gender,” DON’T WORRY!!  That concept WILL survive, but it will be part of another project which will be (almost) entirely separate from “Baby Girl.”   And besides, there is still the matter of a “Baby Girl” sequel, but we’ll get to that in just a moment.

By condensing “Baby Girl,” I’ve solved a few nagging problems.  For one thing, we now have one story that will exist as a self-contained entity.  If I never have the opportunity to write a sequel, then that won’t be a problem because the ending of “Baby Girl” will have definitive closure.  Yes, at least two of the main characters (if not all of them) will be able to return for another story, but the primary arc and conflict of “Baby Girl” will be resolved in one story. 

Thankfully, I’ve been able to discard the need to jerk the audience around for two entire volumes to preserve my sub-Shyamalan style twists.   Yes, TWILIGHT ZONE-style plot twists which force you to reevaluate everything you’ve just read or seen can be a lot of fun, but they also involve the need to develop red herrings instead of exploring important character arcs and this story just wouldn’t be nearly as good if I went that route.  My current plan is to alert readers (and viewers when I inevitably take it to that level) of the dynamic between characters early on so that you will be able to follow the story on its terms the first time you read (or see) it and not be forced to take it in a second time (although I hope that to do so would yield its own rewards).

Most importantly, I’ve established Cub as the new central character and this has allowed me to radically alter the tone of this story in a positive way.  Cub brings a youthful sense of perspective to the older characters who often run the risk of taking themselves too seriously.  She’s a moderator who has a personal interest in the romance between Emma and Ben (seeing as they are her parents after all) and Anna’s bitter jealousy (seeing as Cub knows what it’s like to feel alienated and excluded where her parents are concerned). 

Anna remains the narrator, but Cub is the one pulling the strings.  The “dream world” of this story exists on her terms and she is able to learn who her parents really are (through a fantasy filter of a teenager’s imagination) and enable Anna to finally find peace.

“Baby Girl” has a lot more heart than it used to which is a good thing since deep down, I’m a big softie.  I’ve been warned about making this story too dense or complicated for first-time readers, but I honestly don’t think that will be a problem.  Aside from some David Lynch/Charlie Kaufmanesque plot machinations, it’s actually a fairly straight forward drama about two alienated women who teach one another to find peace within themselves.

When I finally close the book on this story, I hope that the personal issues I’ve been struggling with will also be put to bed and that the characters who’ve taken this journey with me will stick around for an entirely new adventure.

Were I rigid planner, the structure and trajectory of “Baby Girl” and “She Is Risen” would have been set in stone months ago and my day to day task would merely involved cushioning the bones of a story with the type of warm meat that would make it a living thing.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way I do things.  I’m an inexperienced writer with an intuitive sense of structure and rhythm (which is a fancy way of saying that I have no idea what I’m doing) and in the interest of making things interesting for myself (and prospective audiences), I tend to come up with ideas that are perhaps a little bit beyond my skill range to write.

Oh, and I’m a male.  If you’re simply reading this blog on WordPress, that’s never been made explicit and if you’re approaching this through MySpace then it’s flat out misleading since I have the project’s gender as “female” which means that most people will assume that the writer is female.  To be fair, my obvious alter ego in the story (my “Mary Sue” if you will) is a female character so I figured that my attempt to write in literary drag would be enough of a rationalization to lead folks to believe that I am a woman.  All I’m really doing is asking the world to enable my gender fluid delusion without actually having to physically dress as a woman and pretend that I was born as anything other than what I clearly am.

So, there.

The fact of my gender is one of the reasons that I want for there to be an all-female anthology volume as part of this story.  In my initial pitch (and quite frankly, the concept that seems to have fully engaged the support of the good friend and lovely Appalachian woman who is producing and acting as editor on this project), “Baby Girl” would develop into a story in which mankind evolves into a matriarchal species and women suddenly find themselves as the dominant gender in this world.   Quite frankly, I don’t feel qualified to write this concept and if I do, I’m sure it will be interpreted as an expression of my dysfunctional (and possibly misogynistic) relationship with women.

So, there.

Back at the ranch, you would expect to find my hard at work building a house from which this project will emanate, but the reality is that I just keep staring and the cornerstone and occasionally heft it.

So, what’s happening?  What the hell is this thing anyway?

Well, the original inspiration was discussed in the very first blog so I won’t go overboard reiterating it.  It started out as an idea for a kind of adult themed Supergirl story based on a dream that I had eight years ago.  I dropped the idea because I knew that DC comics and their titanic multinational corporate overlords would never allow me to do a story in which Supergirl swears, has sex and gets high.  Since I was (and continue to be) a lazy writer, I ignored the obvious path of writing this as an original story with no overt connection to the world of Superman and Supergirl.

Last spring, I had a renewed interest in trying to do this story again as a way of writing something quick, fun, shallow and sexy.  I could take all of the basic themes that I enjoy and steamroll them through a quick, hopefully fun pulp story as a way of recharging my batteries and actually getting something written since all of my oh-so-personal epic works of art just flat out defy my attempts to wrap my head around them.  Even the title “Baby Girl” was intended to be a way of liberating myself from being so damned serious all of the time.

(Un?)fortunately, the drive to dive into “Baby Girl” was immediately followed by the end of a romantic relationship (and the immediate beginning of another one, but we’ll get to that another time) so the story quickly became a way of dealing with that break-up hence my shallow sex, drug and superheroine story suddenly became another personal epic that is both intoxicating to sit down to and, for the longest time, more emotionally exhausting than fun to write.  I’ve been able to partially dilute this by convoluting the story into the type of shifting identity puzzle that I seem to love in the work of others.  Instead of a relatively simple revolving door of three (or more) first person accounts, I’ve decided to blur all three (or more) perspectives together into the same narrative and essentially giving myself license to change the rules based on who the dominant character is at any given moment.  A simple graph would clarify the shifts in the story and which character’s have the most influence on what you’re reading, but there won’t be a graph within the text.  I’m going to have to hope that I’m a good enough writer (or a disciplined enough self editor) to make it work.

Am I skilled enough to pull this off?  I have no idea, but I suspect that the answer is probably no.  As an underachieving reader and an undisciplined writer, I’m trying to change the rules in a medium that I have no educated grasp or mastery of.   To further complicate things, I keep changing my mind about what the tone and nature of the story actually is.

Last summer, this story was clearly intended to act as my own dreamlike, surreal speculation on the new relationship that my ex’ is enjoying with her new significant other, through her testimony, is too good to be true in a bigger than life way.  That element still exists, but for as unconventional as my handling of that romantic relationship is, I’ve worked so hard to canonize it that I’ve rendered it as shallow.  It’s a romance that I’ve tried to imagine as literally living up to the type of ecstasy that occurs in the minds of two people who are very much enfatuated with one another.  It’s a nice idea in theory, but I find myself choking the spontaneity out of it.  For all of the quirkiness that exists between those characters, they come off as cartoonishly wise and perfect which makes them less interesting and sympathetic than I want them to be.

The most complicated character in the story is the one I’ve always envisioned as being the antagonist.  Of course, she’s my alter ego in the story so she has unsurprisingly come to dominate the project.  Were I a stronger writer, I could probably flip the dynamic between her role and the role of our mythological lovers but that would also be dishonest.  As it stands, Anna dominates “Baby Girl” and that’s probably as it should be.  She sort of wandered into this story from a story idea that I literally dreamt up 13 years ago and then abandoned.  Now, she’s essentially a kind of Salieri figure, narrating the story of two heroes from the position of jealousy and an awareness of her own relative mediocrity.

But even her story has changed and taken a kind of salacious turn.  Several years ago, I decided that I could probably break out of my writer’s block by indulging in the one thing that never failed to hold my attention:  sex.  So, the plan was to break my writing fast by cranking out an erotic story (which is a nice way of saying that I was going to write pornographic fiction).  I had a basic idea that was kind of a twist on EYES WIDE SHUT that would find two co-ed roommates dealing with their unconsummated frustration by going out and essentially wandering through a series of increasingly unlikely sexual scenarios.

I started writing this thing while waiting around at the Motor Vehicles Administration (MVA in Maryland and the Department of Motor Vehicles or DMV everywhere else).  That seemed like the perfect situation in which to write some porn so I whipped out my composition book and got started.  True to form (and acting as an unintentional parallel to EYES WIDE SHUT), I never quite got around to writing anything overtly sexual.  The story fragment that I wrote ended up being more about the psychology of frustration and self repression.  Draw your own conclusions.

So, that didn’t quite turn out like I expected and yet that template has slowly crept into “Baby Girl.”  This raises the question of what kind of story I’m actually writing here.  Needless to say, if my story is brazenly pornographic, this will limit its appeal in a big way.  Should I even care?  Well, I do care seeing as I think I may have a story concept that would appeal to a wide range of people varying in age, gender and taste.  It was always going to be a strange story with an unconventional sexuality to it, but there was actually a time when I’d planned to tone down the overt sexuality in the interest of delivering a relatively accessible character story.

And I still may.  For the moment, the plan is to remain as true to my muse as I can so I will probably explore this decision to thoroughly eroticize “Baby Girl.”  And even if I do go through with this, keep in mind that it is only one draft and should I stick to this course, I’m not opposed to offering the story in two different forms, with a “clean version” (oh, how I hate implications of that phrase) offering a distinct enough alternative that fans of one version would be able to find something rewarding and different in the other.  In fact, I foresee having a lot of fun writing a less graphic version of the story which acknowledges the sexuality of the story without overtly addressing it.

And as far as the screenplay version that I keep sitting down to every time my imagination skews cinematic over literary, I suspect that it will ultimately be a mash-up of both versions (with the option of skewing closer to the “clean version” if I find myself trying to reach a wider audience).

Do I have the ability to pull this off?  Hell, the only thing that’s really holding me back is my lazy work ethic.  If I plowed on through, I may wind up with an unholy mess but at least it will be mine.

And yours should you choose to accept it.

The gears are turning ever so slowly, but they are still turning.  “Baby Girl” will be a reality and so will the “She Is Risen” site.

Since this is all rather early in the game and no one really cares about it anyway (except for the one or two of you who do), I feel I can speak freely about where we’re going with this and what I hope that Team Baby Girl can achieve.

This is the most ambitious creative project that I’ve ever attempted and as such, I’m still a little bit skittish about my inexperience as a writer.  There will be bells and whistles aplenty (oh, you’d better believe it), but the success of “Baby Girl” and “She Is Risen” is ultimately contingent on my ability to produce quality work.  I’ve been accused of “over thinking” this and while that’s certainly true, I want to be very careful to make sure that this is a project is sturdy enough to withstand the skepticism of a mass audience and compelling enough to hold their interest.

Speaking as a bona fide latter day member of Generation X (thanks, Doug Coupland!), I think it’s safe to say that my peers and I know a thing or two about hype.  Media hype is the real religion hiding behind whatever materialistic idealism came out of the ’80s.  Every single one of us has been inundated by it and that’s why we all know what the “bat symbol” was back in 1989 without any text to remind us that it was the call sign of Tim Burton’s BATMAN.  That’s just one example, but if you’re old enough to find interest in this blog then you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

So, before the “Baby Girl” mothership lands, we’re going to have some fun establishing what the story is with an interactive website.   “Baby Girl” is a very personal story for me, but it also has the potential to be a franchise.  What makes a franchise?  Well, in my definition, it’s any property that one can geek out and obsess over.  To accomplish this, you need a mythology which can be expanded upon and “Baby Girl” certainly has one. 

At its heart, “Baby Girl” is meant to accomplish two personal things for me.  It’s a way of using specific examples from my recent history as a way of examining the unhealthy patterns that I fall into when in a relationship.   When I started writing this thing, it was very specifically about a recent break-up.  And while the characters and their internal dynamic remains the same (I’m so locked into the character of Emma O’Toole that I couldn’t possibly fathom changing it now), it’s become a much broader project with some nudge/wink surprises for “insiders” who think they know the story.

A close second to the personal aspect of the story is the opportunity for me to build the type of fictional mythology that I love and respond to in other people’s work.  I’m an obsessive and compulsive individual and somehow, I’m finding the ability to create a world with its own internal logic is something which comes naturally to me.  It’s my way of rationalizing a concept which is thoroughly absurd.

Okay, so what IS the story?  Can you keep a secret?  It’s about a young woman who discovers that she can fly and has a strange relationship with pain.  She can withstand physical damage, but she’s not impervious to pain.  It’s just that she sort of enjoys the sensation that others would find agonizing (like lighting her hand on fire).  In an unlikely development, she meets an awesome guy who is also a werewolf (though he may not be) and this works out rather well since his desire can lead to bodily harm and she is someone who can withstand extreme bodily harm.  This leads to much frolicing and self discovery in the woods.  I’d give her a red hoodie, but that might verge on silly.

Meanwhile, she has just had a brief fling with a psychic lesbian (aren’t they all?) who isn’t taking this new development very well.  Fortunately for her, after spending a little bit of time in our heroine’s head, the unstable young tomboy discovers that she has abilities similar to lady love and with her new ever-suffering girlfriend/sidekick, she goes off to discover the Em’ within herself.

In addition to her new girlfriend, my psychic lesbian anti-heroine befriends a young girl who always seems to be hanging around and clearly knows more than she should about the strange events of our story.

And so, that’s the set-up.  It’s going to unfold in that nonlinear way that I seem to like so much, but my challenge is to write an intentionally incoherent narrative that others can actually follow.   Speaking as one of the most insecure writers you’ll ever meet, I honestly think I can do it.  Hell, I’ve already begun.

Once it is done, please feel free to meet me in Montauk.

Before that happens, there will be more than a little bit of business on this very website that will give newcomers something to occupy their time with.  Without spoiling the trajectory of “Baby Girl” or its sequels, I know where this story is going and I’ve roughly established the mythology behind it.  Ultimately, you’ll be able to explore that mythology for yourself by clicking around on http://www.sheisrisen.com.

But that’s still months away (to say the least).  For the moment, I’m putting out a call for illustrators and web designers who want to discuss how we can format this site.  My imagination and vision when it comes to web design and programming is so 1993.  Oo, oo!!  I want it to be just like THE 7TH GUEST!!

Nooooooo.  We’ll have none of that (well, maybe a little of that).

My plan is to have a kind of interactive game that will allow users to unlock the characters and their backstory while also exploring the mythology of the “She Is Risen” world.  True, I’m doing this to buy myself some time to get it finished (”She Is Written?”), but it will also give me an opportunity to tease newcomers and drum up some interest in the project.

If all goes according to plan, this should be a lot of fun (and hard work).

And needless to say, this message will self-destruct when the game is on.  We have to preserve SOME of the mystery.  It’s just that for now, you have a unique opportunity to have an insider look at the creative process.

Once it’s done, I’m gonna go all Larry Wachowski and stonewall readers. 

And get a sex change (okay, only in print).

An ornamental story of erotic horror and a bauble of kinky intent.

When I met Clive Barker, I remember telling him something like, “Three months before I discovered masturbation and three years before I discovered drugs, I discovered your fiction.”

He clasped my hand and said, “Thanks!!  What a wonderful series of events to be included in!”  For the record, I have never discovered drugs nor have I masturbated.  I am a zen non-entity of exquisite, tantric frustration and tension.  But we’ll get back to honest Clive and his influence on my life as a sober celibate in a moment.

Where was I?

Okay, so writing “Baby Girl” has been aptly described as an excavation project.  The problem with excavating that which you call your mind and could figuratively pass for your soul is that it’s a painful process.  Oh, it’s fun!  Don’t get me wrong.  I was sharing that last dialogue exchange with my dearest muse and she has figured that it comes from a place of pain.

Well, yeah.  Sort of.  Look, the reality is that writing of this story is actually kind of fun.  It’s a way to rearrange memories and fantasies and mix it up with a heaping yellow snow pile of wishful thinking and poetic license.  You know, it’s kind of like a Snoopy SnoCone Machine. 

Be that as it may, I have a tendency to overthink things (along with a murky, procrastinating work ethic) and this makes the process of writing this particular story really sloooooooooow.  But I have a cure!  Nooooo, it’s not to cognatively reprogram my work ethic!  Circumventing a slow work process is kind of like trying to cure a hangover.  You can’t quite get rid of the hangover, but you can do something to make it a bit more tolerable.

This is why I’m pleased to announce “Totem!” 

“Totem” is a short erotic horror story that began as a Tanqueray-glazed gleam in my eye while chewing on some lovely rosemary/sea salt/garlic bread.  I had this idea about a group of folks in the woods, armed and wary.  They know that SOMETHING (The Blair Witch perhaps?) is out there and they’re waiting for it to show itself.  Out of the woods shuffles a lone indvidual wearing a creepy canvas mask with a funky, alarming face painted on it (kind of like those paintings of Satan with a bulbous head an an animalistic expression that used to disturb me back in Catholic school).

The stranger certainly looks human, but most people watching him are expecting some bizarre, creepy behavior on the count of, um, something or other.  Imagine if some authority (or vigilante group?) decided to get to the bottom of the Blair Witch kids’ disappearance.  They know they’re up against something bizarre and scary, but not sure what to expect.  And what they get is some mute weirdo in a creepy canvas bag mask.

And then all hell breaks loose.  A group of people including two young women who were just along for the ride are watching from what they hoped was a safe distance, but there is clearly no such thing under these circumstances.  Suddenly, anyone who hasn’t immediately disappeared starts suffering what feels like the onset of a nasty migraine.  As their symptoms escalate so does the sense that random demonic possession is even nastier than it looks in those cheesy horror movies.  The twist is that it comes with a nice helping of libidinous ecstasy.

So, will all of our heroes and heroines get a nasty migraine that turns them into fierce carnal demons?  Or will the entire campsite descend into orgiastic madness that would make Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful blush?

Stay tuned.  Once I have a finished draft and an idea of how we’re going to format original content on http://www.sheisrisen.com you’ll learn the answer to these headache-inducing questions.

My plan is to have a draft finished by New Year’s Eve, but those who know me also know how I am about deadlines.

But who knows?  With enough egg in my noggin, perhaps I can ably churn out some yuletide in the form of demonic lust.

Who wants to place bets?

Oh, and to quickly explain the Clive Barker thing:  I was a huge fan of Barker back in my fresh-faced youth.  It started with a taste for early Stephen King which was inevitable if you grew up in the ’80s with parents and other elder relatives who were casual King enthusiasts.  And then somewhere along the line, I tripped over the hype surrounding Mr. Barker and his cinematic debut, HELLRAISER.  See, the thing is that Barker is not a natural born filmmaker.  He’s a writer and a painter who talked his way into the job of directing one of his own adaptations through sheer charisma and chutzpah.

The movies were one thing (flawed, creatively nasty and ambitious), but his writing was something else altogether.  Barker had a unique voice for weaving intense violence, baroque fantasy and extreme eroticism all with the same, lilting voice.  As my former English teacher (and editor of “Midnight Marquee” magazine) described it, Barker had a way of making profanity seem classy.

At a young, impressionable age, Clive Barker helped me to understand that there really are no limits or social taboos that you can’t explore with writing.  On the page, even the sky isn’t the limit.  So, while I’m not a gorehound by any means, i came to appreciate extreme fiction as a means of expressing oneself..  Of course, it’s not all about gore or violence, but when you’re reading someone who cut his teeth on horror, that comes with the territory.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve cooled off on the need to write that kind of extreme fiction.  Once I start getting to know my characters, it’s hard to force them to submit to the tortures of the damned.  “Baby Girl” has suffered just a little because of my cold feet.  Not that I need for the “Baby Girl” characters to get flayed and encased in leather like the demons of HELLRAISER, but the story actually does have an s-&-m element to it which allows me to flex my muscle when it comes to writing sexuality.  That’s all well and good, but the set-up and tentative trajectory for the sequel requires a bit more “conventional” horror story elements to be introduced even though I don’t think of “Baby Girl” as a horror story.

I’ve sort of worked my way around that by reigning in certain elements (the undead theme in the sequel is been reworked to be more about living with cancer rather than being a sentient zombie) and keeping my far out story a bit closer to earth.

With “Totem,” however, I plan to push  myself and see just how far I’m willing to go.  The younger me who worshipped Mr. Barker would hopefully approve of what I’m going to do here.

So, will I deliver a quick and dirty piece of eroticized horror?  Or will I submit to my cold feet?

I’ll let you know.

You want independence, but as with success, you wait for others to define it for you.

You want friends, but you are a tough judge.

You pass judgement without guilt and feel guilty for being so forgiving.

You want to be a lover, but you mistake hallucinations for the friend who stands by you.

You want to define success by writing a specific, personal body of work and yet you can sit alone and do just that without anyone telling you that you did it wrong.

When you were younger, you wanted fame until you read between the lines of tabloid culture and came to understand what celebrity would cost you.

You want influence, but you have all the influence a functioning mind can contain and an entire body politic to govern.

At some point, you will realize that what you want is what you already have.  And what you have is passing before your eyes, through your fingers and slowly changing you, moment by moment.

Say hello to it or wave to it…

…or just watch it as it goes by.

Only close your fingers around it if you enjoy the sensation of closing your fingers.

–Tom Kessler

I knew that “Baby Girl” owed a fair amount of debt to writer/director, David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but after rewatching it last night, I now realize that I may have to give Lynch a cowriting credit. Weird how I hadn’t quite noticed it before.

Over the course of the next several blog entries (not this one per se), I’ll be discussing that actual plot of “Baby Girl.” That will most certainly be a big help for outsiders who are completely in the dark as to what this project is really all about. For now, I’m going to make the unconventional move to discuss the work that I was somewhat subconsciously ripping off.

First off, I want to discuss the notion of “ripping off.” This is tricky since I’m terrified that this blog will serve up enough ideas to those who would like to procure their own introductory storyline. It’s tough to put your eggs in one basket (however temporary you think the one basket will be) and then see it snatched up and launched by someone else.

I’m doing this blog project under the guidance of Amber: mentor, guru and the force who is most actively championing this project. This online copyright thing is a slippery legal slope that we are both learning (with my curve being much more steep than hers). Be that as it may, I do want to protect “Baby Girl”, “She Is Risen” and “Cub.” This is a tricky, personal story and I want to make sure that this version of it (because it isn’t nor could it be the most original story ever told) arrives fully formed with my final stamp of authorship.

Now, there is a paraphrased quote from Robert Altman that I’d like to share. It’s from the commentary he recorded for the Criterion dvd release of his film, THREE WOMEN (which would also be an apt title for the “Baby Girl” trilogy). He talks about how he approached Paul Thomas Anderson (the writer and director of BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and THERE WILL BE BLOOD) and told him how much he enjoyed MAGNOLIA. Anderson’s response, according to Altman was that he (Anderson) had just been ripping him (Altman) off. This apparently took the elder filmmaker by surprise since he didn’t recognize his own work in Anderson’s film. Altman then goes on to explain that the techniques and shots that filmmakers like P. T. Anderson take from his films were in fact “ripped off” from films that Altman was inspired by in his youth. Altman concludes that there really is no such thing as ripping off, especially if you’re taking inspiration (or even direct quotation) from someone else’s work and making it your own.

This is a relief since “Baby Girl” and her sequels have pretty direct quotations from sources that I’ve loved (perhaps a little too much) while still mixing like paint with influences which are incontrovertibly based on my own life (perhaps a little too much).

I should mention that I’m about to discuss major plot *SPOILERS* for MULHOLLAND DRIVE. If you’ve never seen the film and think you someday will, you should probably not read this until you do.

Otherwise:

David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE is the story of Diane Selwyn, a naive Canadian girl who moves to Hollywood when the opportunity is pretty much handed to her.  Her aunt has died and Diane moves into the older woman’s Hollywood home with a bit of money that also seems to have been inherited.  It’s an arrangement that she arrived at through random luck rather than as a result of talent or effort.

Diane’s story is intentionally murky, but it seems to play out like this: As an aspiring actress, she doesn’t make much headway. She does, however, fall into the arms of a gorgeous goddess of a woman named Camille Rhodes. Diane ends up finding her Hollywood dreams fulfilled in the arms of this unlikely woman. And through the ecstasy of hot sex, Diane falls in crazy love a little too quickly.

I have no idea what Naomi Watts pulled from to play the role of Diane, but her expressions of sexuality, crazy eyed obsession and strung out despair are alarmingly convincing. Lynch even comments on her ability during an audition scene in which we see Watts, sharing an intimate moment with a quintessential “older man” (her father’s best friend, don’t ya know) transcend the script to show us desire and rage that seems all too real.

You could debate the nature (or even the existence) of love, but in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, Diane’s obsession with Camille is certainly not healthy (or shared by Camille). And the minute that she finds mutual affection in the arms of a successful filmmaker, Camille drops Diane like the bad habit that she is.

Diane’s downward spiral is largely implied, but the gist of it seems to be this. She takes on the sickly, agitated demeanor of someone who is abusing hard drugs (which Lynch seems to represent by showing us seemingly endless cups of coffee) and is allowing her jealousy to tear her apart.

The climax of MULHOLLAND DRIVE (to me anyway) is a dinner party sequence which seems to begin with a tense, lonely car ride (or it could begin with that scene of sad, desperate and pathetic masturbation) and ends with an incomplete engagement announcement. This is not only Naomi Watts’ finest hour as an actress, but also Lynch’s most devastating sequence as a filmmaker and a storyteller. It is front loaded with a walk up a secret path “short cut” in which Diane, walking hand in hand with Camille seems to be ascending Mt. Olympus led by a goddess. It is here that Watts makes me believe that Diane, damaged and pathetic as she is, has truly fallen in love. It’s also the truest moment of happiness that we see the character experience (and I have to confess that it makes me tear up a little).

After that, however, when Diane realizes that Camille is lost to her as a lover, Watts shows us a quiet, slow-motion train wreck of a meltdown that is heartbreakingly convincing. Diane Selwyn is not a likable character or a good person, but Lynch works magic when he invites us to sympathize with her.

I think I was always alarmed at just how much I did identify with Diane when I saw this movie (FIVE TIMES!!!) back in 2001. It was just after 9/11 and Lynch’s journey into despair, jealousy and mortality was just the poison I was craving. I remember driving out to DuPont Circle in D.C. to catch this film a week before it opened in Baltimore. It was sold out so I had to hang around for a few hours to catch the next showing. In a neighboring auditorium, however, was a quirkily titled art flick called DONNIE DARKO and we’ll be talking a lot more about that in a future blog entry.

And not to spoil the ending (or the beginning?), but Diane makes a deal with a seedy dude which, while never specified, seems quite clearly to be a request to have Camille killed. When she receives evidence that the deed is done, her guilt eats her alive and she ends up putting a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger…

…which may take us back to the beginning of the film in which we see an alternate dream version of Diane and Camille’s relationship unfold as, well, as a rejected television pilot for ABC.

It’s a well-known fact that MULHOLLAND DRIVE began life as an attempt for David Lynch to launch a new t.v. series for ABC as an attempt to reboot the appeal of his surprise (and short-lived) smash success with TWIN PEAKS (another artistic and pop culture milestone that will likely be discussed on this board). The t.v. show aspect of MULHOLLAND DRIVE is likable and quirky without having any kind of focus or point. It just meanders around looking for something to be about, occasionally focusing on the unlikely friendship between Naomi Watts’ naive innocent from Cananda and Laura Harring’s noirish brunette amnesiac. ABC understandably rejected this pilot. As textured and addictive as it is, there’s no sense that it held any promise as a long-running television series. Lynch seemed to be enjoying himself, but there was no hook like the question of who killed Laura Palmer. Thus, there was very little mystery or suspense to pull a mass number of casual viewers back for a second episode let alone an entire season.

With the understanding and any Lynch product is likely some kind of masterpiece waiting to be polished and packaged, French distributor CIBY 2000 bought up the rights to the pilot and gave Lynch the money to shoot re-edit the existing material and shoot new footage to give the pilot a definitive cinematic ending.

What Lynch seems to have done is take a fun, cute, tease of a pilot and distill it down to the grittiest subtext. It’s hard to deny the coy sapphic undertones to the television show with the perky Watts clearly flirting with and crushing on her smoldering lady friend. The new third act shot for the cinematic version wipes all of the pieces off of the game board, flings the board to the ground and shows us what really seemed to be going on underneath the retro cutesiness.

And for those familiar with Lynch’s past work, consider it like this: If the first 100 minutes of MULHOLLAND DRIVE are like the entire run of the TWIN PEAKS television series, then the final 40 minutes are the equivalent of the stark and brutal cinematic prequel, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME in which the sexuality and suffering of the characters is delt with in blunt, plain fashion as opposed to the sneaky implications of the t.v. show.

So, why are you reading about MULHOLLAND DRIVE in a blog about “Baby Girl?”

Well, it was impossible for me to re-experience MULHOLLAND DRIVE last night and not acknowledge that I was seeing the precedent for my conflict play out in front of me. “Baby Girl” (specifically, the first of the three stories in this series) is indeed about a young woman who behaves in an unstable and erratic way once she is dumped by her (short-term) lady love. And much like Diane Selwyn, our antiheroine makes a very bad decision for which she ends up enduring the tortures of the damned in the sequel, “She Is Risen.”

I have no qualms about showing my co-conspirators on this project the inspirations for my storyline. It’s been easy to define the proper heroine and a little bit less easy to define her lycanthropic lover boy. But the antagonistic protagonist has been a little more tricky to define. I’ve used characters from GINGER SNAPS, THE CRAFT and CAT PEOPLE to try and make my point.

But when watching Naomi Watts squirm in the back of a limo on the way to her rendezvous on Mulholland Dr., I had an epiphany that I could no longer deny:

“This is the girl.”