top 11 films about writing

So here they are, in alphabetical order: my personal favorites that always inspire me to pick up the pen (the laptop) and get cracking again. It’s a subjective list, yes, so don’t be shy. Add your own picks to the comments, or just throw in your two cents on why this list is so complete and awesome. I tried to include videos of my favorite scenes from these films as opposed to just embedding the trailers, but often I was thwarted in this effort by the seemingly thousands of fan tributes made to certain films that almost always have scenes from the movies edited with overlapping songs by the likes of Nickelback and Lifehouse (I’m looking at you, Shakespeare In Love). Don’t be alarmed, I spared you that aggression, so don’t be afraid to watch the vids.

Adaptation

This film is, for me, a perfect representation of how difficult it is to try to make it (and fake it) in the writing industry. Celebrated screenwriter Charlie Kaufman took his plight—writing a screenplay adaptation of best-selling New Yorker columnist Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief—and turned it into something all his own. In the process, he created not just a moving ‘adaptation’ of Orlean’s book, but also a moving tribute to the process of writing itself, complete with sell-out, pander-to-the-masses ending. I love this part of the film, where he decides that the only possible way to tackle the subject matter is to literally start at the beginning of time. 

American Splendor

I really relate to this film, in that it is a biopic of sorts, focused on the higher aspirations of a seemingly run-of-the-mill ‘Joe Sixpack’ file clerk. By the time we meet Harvey Pekar, he has already found the fortune and fame he aspired to at the beginning of his unlikely comics writing career. That we know this in the beginning makes it easy to root for him as he is confronted with one setback after another. And this film made Letterman look douchey long before he announced to the world that he was an employee fucker. For whatever that’s worth.  

Barton Fink

Not to sound elitist or snobby, but I love *forcing* people to watch this film and see if they last past the first 20 minutes. Of all the great Coen Bros. movies, this stands out as the least accessible. And why not? It’s all about the process of writing to a market and trying to make your talents as a writer fit into a very limited, very specific mold. Who writing these days for any sort of significant scratch hasn’t felt these pressures? You are, after all, only as good as your last success. (See that old dude from Frazier portraying an F. Scott Fitzgerald clone to get the full effect of what ‘selling out’ truly entails).

Capote

Even completely disregarding the genius that is Philip Seymour Hoffmann in his portrayal of the lispy, lilty Truman Capote, one must acknowledge the powerful message this film delivers. Capote was one of the most celebrated writers of his time, and his novelization of the murder of a typical (read: Norman Rockwell depiction of) heartland American family catapulted him to literary stardom and single-handedly created a new genre of literature—narrative non-fiction. But the toll of inserting himself into the broken lives of the murdered family and that family’s death-sentenced murderers literally tore Capote apart. He never published another novel.  

Dead Poets Society

This film is quite possibly the most influential movie I was exposed to in my young life (I was 15 when it was released in 1989). Yes, long before my self-imposed Robin Williams backlash (mine began long BEFORE the Good Will Hunting, so fuck you, you trendy fucks, lol), I wanted nothing more than to have a teacher of John Keating’s caliber. Not because I was enamored of poetry, necessarily, but because Williams’ portrayal of Keating was a picture of an adult who cared not just about the specific subject he was teaching, but also about the lives and families and career trajectories of his students. In short, this film took the tiny grain of sand that had been implanted in me when I was first assigned to read Whitman’s Song of Myself, and brought that little bastard into full bloom; after witnessing this movie, poetry and writing were, to me, nothing short of an immediate ticket out of the reality that had for so long held complete control over every aspect of my existence. This movie gave me a key to the lock, a free pass to a life that awaited me if only I took the initiative to make it happen.

Henry Fool

My old friend Brandon first exposed me to this quintessentially ‘Hal Hartley’ Hal Hartley film. “You have to watch this, dude. You’re Simon!” he said, handing me a video tape. This was what, 2004? Anyway, we popped the thing into his VCR (yes, this form of viewing entertainment was considered “old school” and not just “backwards” in those days), and after watching a fast-forwarded preview of some piece-of-shit David Schwimmer movie (who the fuck decides how to market this garbage???), the movie immediately struck a chord with me. Like Simon in the film, I too had found internet success that led to some form of literary acceptance. Unlike me, Simon was universally heralded by Pulitzer and Nobel committees, as well as the general reading public (again, there was still such a thing as a ‘general reading public’ way back in ’97, when this film was made) and was able to afford a swanky uptown Manhattan apartment that effectively shielded him from the rest of the ‘chattering masses’, but there was enough of a correlation there for me to really get where Hartley was coming from with this picture. Basically it is about substance over style… and how the best of us maybe don’t find universal recognition and eventually have to commit accidental—yet justifiable—murder in order to fulfill our destinies. Or something.    

Permanent Midnight

I’m putting this movie on the list mainly because I have a pretty amusing story to tell about it: when I was first trying to find authors to blurb my novel back in late 2007, I figured out a way to contact Jerry Stahl, who is one of my lit heroes, and the author of what I consider the best memoir ever written regarding drug addiction, Permanent Midnight. Stahl had been a writer for shows such as ALF and Moonlighting back in the mid-late 80s, so the book is also about how he struggled with drug addiction while writing hit TV scripts (his story about withdrawing from smack and coke while on the ALF set is hair-raising). Anyway, I contacted Jerry Stahl and he read my book and gave me an awesome blurb (which ended up making it onto the front cover of futureproof). He also gave me his phone number and told me to call him. So I did. And I fucked up the conversation almost immediately. I told Jerry that I loved Permanent Midnight but that I thought Ben Stiller just wasn’t gritty enough or something to pull off the proper Jerry Stahl impersonation, “I mean, I like Stiller, don’t get me wrong,” I said to Jerry, “but he sucked in that movie.” This is, after all, an incredibly dark book, with some very funny shit in it, granted, but it was chosen for whatever reason to be one of the first vehicles to star Stiller and Owen Wilson. Just doesn’t do the book justice. Anyway, there was a pause on the line and Jerry Stahl sort of laughed and then said, “Yeah, Frank, well—he’s a friend of mine.” Sigh. I guess I find the story amusing, the one about me sticking my foot in my mouth the very first time—the very first minute—I meet my lit hero. Yeah. It’s pretty f-ing funny. SIGH.

Shakespeare in Love

I don’t know, every time I think about this movie, I wonder if it still holds up since its release and subsequent Best Picture Academy Award back in 1998. I can’t say if it would hold up or not, though, because I haven’t seen it since then. When I remember it, though, I think of it as being a great fictionalized story of a young Will Shakespeare falling in love with Gwyneth Paltrow when she was at the very pinnacle of her hotness (yes, even when she was dressed like a man) and hadn’t yet been ruined by Chris Martin of Coldplay. I also remember it being a great depiction of love and inspiration, and how something as powerful as love can really make some amazing things happen, writing-wise. Made me really miss the days when being smeared in quill ink was sexy.   

Sideways

I love this movie. It is, ostensibly, about wine appreciation and snobbishness, but there is so much more to it than that. If anything, it does have some great wine-snob smackdowns in it, but also relishes in alcoholism and the destruction of the soul at the hands of love, and of course the rebirth of the soul under better circumstances. It is about failure and acceptance and brilliant metaphors between wine aging and the way people get to a certain point in their lives before it all goes downhill from there. Also the second movie on this list to, perhaps coincidentally, star Paul Giamatti. Favorite quotes from the movie:

Miles: Well, the world doesnt give a shit what I have to
  say. Im not necessary. I’m so insignificant I cant even kill
  myself.
Jack: Miles, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Miles: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath,
 Woolf. You cant kill yourself before youre even published.
Jack: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He killed himself before he was published. Look how famous he is.

Stranger Than Fiction

For a Will Ferrell movie (his entry into the “top-dog comedian trying to stretch his acting chops by playing a ‘serious role’” genre), this movie sure has a lot of beautiful sentiments to it. Well—more serious than “I love lamp” anyway. The plot is fairly boilerplate: middle-aged guy is frittering away his life when he meets a beautiful rebel girl who changes the way he sees everything. The twist here though is that it turns out it’s too late for Ferrell’s IRS auditor to turn his life around and really try to suck the marrow out of it. He begins hearing his every action and thought narrated by a British woman’s voice, and during the course of this disconcerting narration he discovers he is going to die: “Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.” Also, it has Queen Latifah playing a publishing house stooge sent to keep the author working on her book so that she will make her submission deadline…which will also keep Ferrell on track to ….DIIIIIIIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Whole Wide World

Incidentally, the name of the song that Will Ferrell plays to Maggie Gyllenhall in the scene embedded above is by Wreckless Eric and is called…(wait for it…) “Whole Wide World”!!! How’s that for synchronicity??? Anyway, regardless, I cannot believe that one of my favorite films about writing is actually a movie starring Renee Zellweger because, as I have made pretty clear to anyone who has kept track, I cannot stand Renee Zellweger, especially after that whole Bridget Jones thing, when all the talking heads were all a-twitter (and this was pre-Twitter!) about how she had fatted up for the role, had actually weighed like 140!!!! I was just like, Jesus Christ, that’s the only time Renee Zellweger has even looked remotely attractive, with those giant teeth and half-closed eyes??? I mean, her teeth aren’t as big as Hillary Swank’s, granted, but they’re still….nevermind. Anyway, the guy from Full Metal Jacket who the drill Sergeant torments all the time, who then eventually kills the drill Sergeant before killing himself, portrays the creator of Conan the Barbarian back in the 1930s, Robert E. Howard. An overbearing mother and mental illness (possibly caused by the overbearing mother) pretty much chase the guy into a fantasy world where people like Arnold Schwarzennegger run the joint and people like Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket get to lose themselves in lusting, beautiful half-naked women. It’s a very touching story. I hope I don’t come across as making light of it. Renee Zellweger, despite having a smile that is about as fake-looking as the Jack Nicholson-era Joker, is actually really good in this movie. And when Pyle doesn’t stick with her in the end, instead opting to stay with his ailing mother, you start to wonder how many other genre-changing works of art have been created at the cost of their authors losing something significant and irreplaceable in their lives. Like love.

At what cost, Love?

Starting now, I am getting back into blogging after a lengthy absense. This is my attempt to make sense of my life as it is now, and to hopefully create for both you, the reader, and myself, a logical, illustrative longview of my life so that I can effectively move forward with my writing career and my duties as a Humanist and a father to my remarkable children. Please take part if you have a minute. Feedback keeps me going. Let’s converse…..

 

I have been at a major crossroads concerning love and its place in life. I can safely say that I no longer “believe” in love. For as long as I can remember, I looked at love as this all-soothing salve, as though it could cure every last one of life’s ailments. And isn’t what we have been taught about love all growing up after all? Look at the movies and books and songs that we were not only exposed to, but encouraged to buy into when we were growing up. Love, to paraphrase (actually, directly quote) Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge, “is like oxygen, love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love.” This clip from that film pretty much sums up what I now consider to be one of the biggest collective frauds in the history of mankind. (Yeah, I can’t believe I’m quoting this movie either, but it contributes to the larger point and is therefore necessary).

 

Lies! All lies!!!

So do any of you still buy this take on love? Yes, by the end of the film we see that regardless of the fact that Christian was able to break into Satine’s once-cold heart, he still loses her (to TB, mind you, so although their love ends up doomed, it is through no fault of their own). But what about the reality so many of us live? What about the divorces, the broken homes? Do any of you still believe that love as we were brought up to believe in it can still actually be real? Because I’m thinking now that love is really nothing more than an excuse to exchange meaningless vows on a symbolic altar, vows that really aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Because the reality is that marriage is something that is about as sacred as your latest cup of coffee these days. I have decided that the old way of doing marriage, the way that so many find despicable now, was the only logical reason to even indulge in such a thing as marriage: families had their children marry as a way of increasing both families’ economic standing. It was nothing more than a business transaction. This is scoffed at now, but why? Now that the hydra that is love has been jammed into the equation (thanks Romeo and Juliet), you have children growing up devastated that their parents have separated and looking at divorce (after years of therapy) as just another ‘normal’ step in childhood. We prime our kids to get ready for heartbreak. It’s fucking sick, as far as I’m concerned, and makes me sad that I ever could have believed in love or marriage in the first place.

 

It’s all down hill from here.

Last night I was watching one of those crime show documentaries about this guy who was a Wall Street trader who had a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids (aint that always the story?), but who decided to start robbing banks. Why did he do this? Because when the roof caved in on the economy the money dried up and suddenly he couldn’t afford to pay for the cars or the house or any of the other things his wife had long since taken for granted. His logical solution: rob banks to maintain the façade. By the time he was caught, he had robbed 10 banks. He got off relatively easy when they gave him a 9 year prison sentence, but what do you think happened to his marriage? Yep, she divorced him. Now, I’m not saying that she should have stayed in the marriage. Nine years is an awfully long time to wait for someone, especially when you aren’t getting any younger and you are for all intents and purposes in your prime. But think about the rationale: the guy said he did it because he couldn’t imagine having to lose his house, for his kids or wife to have to go through that loss. But surely he knew that the line of credit he was feloniously taking to maintain the illusion that everything was fine was only an incredibly short-termed stop-gap. I realized while watching this show that he knew his life was going to fall apart regardless of whether he robbed the banks or not. It was all about an excuse. If he stayed on the so-called ‘straight and narrow,’ and then he and his family lost everything material that they had come to expect, the pain of that rejection and yes, betrayal, would have been so much greater than the pain he has surely experienced since being incarcerated. With serial bank robbery under his belt, how can he feel betrayed by his wife leaving him? She deserves the right to leave right? And he can say he was only acting out of desperation to keep his family’s quality of life intact. But what is not said is that he handed his wife an excuse to leave on a silver platter. To quote another movie:

In Spike Jonze and Charlie Kauffman’s Adaptation, Meryl Streep’s character tells someone that if she had almost died because of her husband’s negligence she, too, would have gotten a divorce, “because I would have an excuse, a free pass.” So I ask you, dear reader, is this what the institution of marriage is now? Is this what so-called eternal love has been all along? Because I am now firmly in the admittedly jaded camp that pretty much lives on the belief that people just eat each other alive on a daily basis, all trying whatever it takes to get ahead. Yeah, it’s the stuff of great fiction and film and song, but at what cost?

 

Pain, destruction, betrayal: merely the stuff dreams are made of.

One Man: Tank Man

The Massive FUTUREPROOF Book Give Away

It has recently come to my attention that I have 35 so-called “author copies” of my novel, futureproof, just sitting in a box at my agent’s office. So I thought to myself, “Why don’t you sign all those copies and send them out to readers?” Fairly obvious thing to do, I guess.

But here’s the catch: I don’t want to send these books to just anyone. I want to send them to the people “pop” sociologist Malcolm Gladwell refers to as “mavens” and “connectors.”  My novel is doing well three months out of the gate, but there is still a very large, untapped audience out there who don’t even know it exists. Alas, this is the plight of nearly every author. It is one thing to find a willing publisher, quite another to find the audience for your book once it’s actually unleashed upon the world. There are so many different choices for today’s entertainment consumer, it’s no surprise that there would be a struggle for any writer or musician or filmmaker to find all the people who would be truly interested in what he/she has to say. And artists cannot rely upon them to find us. There is just too much obliterating the senses to expect the miracle of overnight success.

So that’s where YOU come in, you mavens and connectors out there. I am looking for SEVEN (7) people to whom I will send five (5) copies of futureproof apiece. One copy will be for you to keep, the other four will be for you to give to other mavens and connectors. (For more in-depth description of just what, exactly, a maven and a connector are/do, you can look at Gladwell’s The Tipping Point wikipedia page, the next best thing to actually reading his incredible book). The overall hope for this futureproof give away is that 35 influential readers will get their hands on these books and spread an epidemic of futureproof fever. Every book has an audience, and this is my push to really find the audience who has been (unknowingly) waiting for a copy of this book to fall into their hands.

So…think you fit the bill? Can you help me find the readers who would really connect with my novel? If so, if you want to be one of the LUCKY SEVEN who has five copies of futureproof mailed directly to your door, email me at NFRANKDANIELS AT GMAIL DOT COM, or just leave a comment under this post. I’d like to have all 35 books mailed out by early next week, so contact me asap.

Oh, and for a good idea of what people are saying about futureproof, take a look at my Myspace page, right column. And thanks in advance for throwing your weight behind me.

Craig from Craigslist Talks To Me About Finding a Job Through The Site He Founded

Funny how connections are made. When I was in Nashville a few weeks ago, desperately trying to find a job, I, like many other job seekers in metropolitan areas, turned to craigslist.org for help. But instead I was greeted with a litany of scams. Frustrated, I Twittered something to the effect of “Is there one motherfucking real job offered on craigslist or is it all bullshit?” Thats when THE Craig (I’d say the most well-known Craig on earth aside from maybe Jenny Craig?) contacted me about rotting out these scammers trying to take hungry job-seekers for what little they have left.

I was impressed. I mean, this guy personally took it upon himself to try to make craigslist better for one single person. That, my friends, is customer service. So I asked Craig if he’d grant me a short interview. He agreed. And from thence forth N. Frank Daniels’ faith in mankind was at least temporarily restored. Here’s the interview:

Me: Craigslist is one of the most popular and well-known web-sites on the
planet. It is a place where people can buy and sell items, where one can
look for dates, but in these difficult economic times it is probably most
depended upon as a place where job-seekers turn to look for work. As with
any site as highly trafficked as craigslist, it is also seen as a mecca
for scammers and spammers. Can you give me a brief run-down as to what you do to try to cut down on these sorts of activities on the site?
 
Craig: I don’t think we’re seen as “mecca” for bad guys, since they learn that
we’re really good at helping cops locate bad guys. However, our first
line of defense is our use community, which flags away most of the bad
stuff. Over time, we’ll get even smarter about dealing with this.

Me: You’ve told me in previous emails that you put in 15 hour days personally trying to rid the site of as many of these scammers and spammers as you can. What is the process you use to try to rid the site of these manipulators? Do you find that this is an ever-increasing problem now that websites such as CNN and others are publishing stories of individuals looking for work on craigslist, thereby increasing the visibility even more?
 
Craig: Every day, I work around eight am to eleven pm irregularly, taking the hours off I need to get errands done, to relax, maybe see friends. for the
most part the bad stuff is brought to me attention using a variety of
tools including email and internal software tools. It’s not really
increasing; there are only so many bad guys out there.
 
Me: Any advice for us job-hunters as to how we can smell out these fraudulent job offers?
 
Craig: We have a lot of good advice at:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Me: Do you take pride in the fact that craigslist is playing such a major role in giving desperate job seekers a glimmer of hope in finding work? Does
this increased visibility on the help wanted section of craigslist change
the over-all vision you have for the site?
 
Craig: I feel really good about that for a moment, then it’s back to work, in
part, wondering how we can help more. No vision, just, how do we do
better?

Thanks for taking the time, Craig. Again, I appreciate your help with this. Just the fact that you have taken the initiative to personally answer my emails says volumes about you as a buinessman and a person.

THE Most Amazing, Inspiring 6 Mins. I Have Witnessed In Years

The woman above singing into an old hairbrush has completely changed the way I look at everything. Now, look, I know I am no stranger to hyperbole, but the performance this woman gave two days ago on the British show “Britain’s Got Talent” is nothing short of incredible.

Susan Boyle is her name. She lives alone with a cat, has never married, has never even been kissed, and be honest, she looks like the most easily ignorable person you’ve ever met.

But watch this fucking video. Watch the way the three judges, including Simon Cowell, completely disregard her, how the entire audience laughs at her, and then how she literally moves them to tears.

I don’t like showtunes. I HATE American Idol. I generally hate musicals. But she sings the song from Les Miserables “I Dreamed A Dream” and it FLOORED me. I was literally crying, so fucking enraptured. Read the lyrics:

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

And still I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

She tells Simon that she has not made it as a singer because “I’ve never been given the chance before.” The words to the song testify to what kind of life this 47 year old woman might have lived. Now, because of one chance, one MOMENT, she is inspiring millions.

I’m just…so thankful for every minute of this life. And the beauty and inspiration that can come from places you would have never thought to look.

P.S. Watch Simon Cowell’s look of bliss at 4:04 in the video. His chin is in his hands and he literally sighs. Just incredible.

Even When Damned, You press On

In L.A., city of ‘Angels’, without focus or goal. Despite the drawn blinds still trying to ignore the sun pushing through the window.

I’m going home to Nashville tomorrow. I’m going home.

“Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. We’ve all been there.”

My face looks like Rudolph got punched in it. The cold, the sun, the sick. The red marks they all leave behind.

“Life was something you dominated if you were any good.” ~Fitgerald, The Crack Up

“He: I could have been someone
She: Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
He: I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Cant make it all alone
Ive built my dreams around you”

So the time approaches. I will get in that chair, hold that book in my hand, read those words on the page, make eye contact with that one and then that one, shake that hand, bend in half but not break, get on that plane, file off, find the field behind the office building. All I ever was was this.

And of course Amy. There was always Amy.

Reading at Book Soup in West Hollywood at 7 p.m. I’ll be as un-drunk as possible. Or not.

Radio Interview, Facebook, Twitter

I did an interview for Atlanta’s AM 1690 (The Voice of the Arts) the day before my February 1oth reading. You can hear a streaming mp3 of the interview here.

Oh, and I’m on Facebook now (and actually log in every now and then).

Twitter, too.

 

Hit me up. Its buckets o’ laughs.

Meeting the Fans, Seeing the Fam

 

I did my first readings for futureproof’s Harper Perennial release on subsequent Tuesdays, February 10 and 17. The first reading was in Atlanta at the Highland Inn Ballroom. It was hosted by my home bookstore, Atlanta’s own a cappella books. No, I dont technically live in ATL anymore, but a cappella has always had a place close to my heart. They were founded in 1989 by Frank Reiss in Little 5 Points and I remember going into the store frequently fucked up out of my mind on any combination of intoxicants, longing for the financial ability to buy out the whole store. While I still dont have the financial or spacial ability to own all of the books a cappella stocks and sells to the more discriminating of the reading public, I have since found in them what I consider to be the true greatness of independent book stores. The back of their t-shirt says it best:

I had done a reading once before with a capella last spring when i was out promoting the anthology I co-edited, Santi: Lives of Modern Saints. At the time I was in a very, very dark place, and was pretty much a walking disaster. The night before the reading I had drunkenly tripped over the leg of a chair in my apartment and went flying head-first into the carpet. But the funny part was that I didnt just fall—I tripped, fell, and apparently went sliding face-first across the entire length of the living room, literally giving myself a wondrous case of rug-burn straight down my forehead and nose. Trivia: the author pic of me on the back cover of futureproof was actually taken later the next day. The photographer, Rachel Bradley, was also the illustrator for Santi, and was in town for the readings. I had to submit the author pic into Harper and was already late doing it and so after Rachel snapped the shots she then had to photoshop the hell out of the resulting picture so that I didnt look like i was suffering from leprosy.

Anyway, at the reading that night last April, I drank almost an entire fifth of bourbon, the effects of which did not fully hit me until after I’d finished reading. But I wasnt in the clear as far as narrowly avoiding making a complete ass of myself. We went to a bar down the street from the book store and I climbed up on a two foot high wall before just as quickly falling on my face yet again for the second time in two days. It was just fucking marvelous.

 

This time would be different though. I had a much better overall view of life this go-round and therefore kept my pre-reading alcohol intake to a bare minimum of five jack and cokes. That might sound like a lot to some of you but I’ve found that that amount is just right in taking the edge off, and (mostly) killing stage fright. My brother and sister-in-law/long-suffering publicist Nicole drove me downtown for the reading. We jammed to some massive Daft Punk beats and then descended the stairs to the ballroom. Music was blasting, courtesy of improv art-rockers Schwarzcommando. There were what looked to me to be an assload of people there, a few of them friends from high school who I hadnt seen in years. But the coolest thing was that sitting on couches around the joint were clusters of people immersed in the din of the band jamming on the stage—and, with drink in one hand—were all reading copies of my book. I would give fucking anything to have a picture of that sight. It was an incredible feeling for me. Plus how often can you go to a club and have a band blasting the doors off the place while people sit around reading?

 

I was introduced by Frank from a cappella, then walked onto the blue-lit stage, my own drink in hand, and read from Transmission 12 (Tripping In A Field Full of Daisies). Then I answered questions. About the life of an addict (sucks); about going from self-published to ‘traditionally’ published (exciting); about what the opposite of ‘futureproof’ is (I believe the answer settled upon was ‘future-full’). People lined up to have their books signed. Can’t express here what that felt like, seeing that. Talking to people excited to read my writing. A dream.

Next was Nashville. Nashville was a strange little possibility in that I technically live there, yet the press response there was far lower than it had been in Atlanta, where I have done four different interviews for newspaper and radio.  

In Nashville I hadnt done one. But I knew Davis-Kidd book store was behind me. They had a massive poster of futureproof right by the front door. They had smaller cardboard stands around the tables trumpeting the reading. But in all honesty I was more excited about the four days I was going to be spending with my kids, who I hadnt seen since November due to my moving all around the fucking country trying to stay out of the cold. My kids and I had a great time together. Wrestling and jumping on hotel beds. Walking. Talking. Its incredible how the most seemingly mundane things can have such importance and significance once you havent had them in a long while. I take nothing for granted anymore. NOTHING.

And when I saw my wife the night of the reading for the first time in months, I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion. I didnt know how to talk or what to say. I just loved her. She held my hand. I tried not to cry. She told me the fingerholds were still there, that the grooves were still mine. I just wanted to stay in those moments and for the most part I did.

I dont know what happens next.

Tour Dates

 

Tuesday, February 10 (this Tuesday), 2009

Highland Inn Ballroom

644 N. Highland Ave. N.E.
Atlanta  GA  30306

7 p.m.

 

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009

Davis-Kidd Booksellers
2121 Green Hills Village Drive, The Mall at Green Hills
Nashville, TN 37215

7 p.m.

 

Monday, March 9, 2009

w/ Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight, Painkillers)

Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd.
W. Hollywood CA 90069

7 p.m.