penitent, turbulent, multiplex!

I’m writing a book.

But that’s not the subject of this post, it’s just the backdrop.

The subject of this post is raw materials.

So hear this: I wanted one of my characters to be a musician, a mixed-media artist with a musical focus. But, as previous album and concert reviews on this blog will indicate, I am a neanderthal when it comes to things artistic.

Yesterday I spent some time at the Toronto Reference Library reading the compilation book “Arcana”, a John Zorn project. In it, I found an essay written by someone who exactly fits the mold of the character I wanted in my book.

How did this essay end up in my bucket of spare parts?

I can tell you how it happened. In 1985, I occasionally visited my youngest uncle. He had a Texas Instruments computer that ran on audio tapes. This introduced me to video games. Specifically, though, it introduced me to computer games. Atari and Nintendo were cute, but I still wanted a keyboard in front of me.

I suspect that this is the reason I became a computer scientist. But that’s a different story.

Back to me liking computer games. Computer games are sometimes hard. They are so hard, in fact, that there are communities of people out there who write up guides on how to beat them. In 2001, I was tinkering on GameFaqs.com, the largest such community, presumably looking up FAQs on how to beat one of these hard games. I was also a fan of heavy metal music, and I noticed that there was a heavy metal message board on the site.

I clicked around and discovered that quite a few people were raving about a small “astral metal” band called “maudlin of the Well”. Someone posted lyrics from one of the songs, and I almost gagged at their cheesy-gothicness.

Back then, I was in the habit of actively seeking out things to deride. So, I went to their label’s website. (At the time, this was the label “Dark Symphonies”.)

Lo and behold, they were selling all of motWs discography at a massive discount. (I noticed this with little surprise.) I bought their entire discography of 3 albums for something like $10, shipping included.

It arrived at Christmas of that year. I listened to it obsessively for the following three years. It was really captivating, and I quickly forgot my initial impression of the band. I was a convert.

maudlin of the Well eventually became the band “Kayo Dot”. The lead influencer of Kayo Dot, Toby Driver, also eventually signed with Tzadik Records, John Zorn’s label.

Some years later, (in 2009 or so, I think) Toby Driver wrote an essay for a John Zorn compilation book called “Arcana IV: Musicians on Music”, or something like this. I knew this because I was on his mailing list. I was curious, because I’d read a few interviews by Toby, and I was always inspired by his words.

Since the book was labeled “Arcana IV”, I inferred that there should also be an “Arcana I”, an “Arcana II”, and an “Arcana III”. (Possibly even an “Arcana V”.) I looked them up, and they were available on Amazon for prices that more or less overcame my curiosity about them. So, I never got around to buying any of them.

Fast-forward to this month, where I found myself reading bad interviews of art school grads and dancers, and thinking to myself, “What would be the next best source of inspiration for this character?” I suddenly remembered the Arcana book I’d wanted to read, and so looked it up on the Toronto Public Library website. The very next day I was pulling it off of the Performing Arts shelves in the reference library, and discovered exactly what I was looking for.

I’m not sure what provoked me to share this story, other than that it was sort of brewing in the back of my brain while cycling around the city. Hopefully someone out there finds something to take from it — perhaps in 20 years or so, some trace of it will even appear in a bad novel somewhere.