[late-nite update: the title of this post is a Lou Reed reference but I have since deleted the Lou Reed content, may the title live on]
Starting on Thursday, November 10, Sotheby's is auctioning off David Bowie's private art collection, almost 400 pieces in all, with an estimated value of $13 million. Bowie's art collection is famously far-ranging - from Tintoretto to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Bowie's spin-painting with Damien Hirst (though there's no sign at Sotheby's of the rumored "small Rubens" he's mentioned in interviews) - and Bowie himself was an avid painter and critic (he served on the editorial board of Modern Painters for many years; his paintings are gestural portraits in the spirit of Bacon et al). From his departure from public life following a heart attack in 2004 until his unexpected reappearance with The Next Day in 2013, most media accounts of his life depicted Bowie settling comfortably into old age and collecting artwork (it was one of these accounts that directly inspired the first stories in SATURN).
It's fascinating to look through the collection (which as far as I know has never been catalogued for the public, only speculated at piecemeal) and trace certain pieces to their particular eras of fascination in Bowie's ouevre, to find their echoes in albums or costumes.
One example: take the series of minotaur prints by Michael Ayrton (undated); a collection of bronze African heads and masks (here's one) acquired from a South African gallery in 1995; the aforementioned Hirst spin painting from 1995; an orgiastic Jacob Epstein illustration for Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (acquired by Bowie in 1994); Odd Nerdrum's Dawn; Stephen Finer's Head of a Woman: blend them all together, and you effectively have 1995's 1. Outside, a sprawling, atmospheric concept album about mutilation and murder in the name of art, with an artist/murderer called "the Minotaur" at its center, whose cover was a self-portrait by Bowie. Watch the video for "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" and you'll see what I mean.
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I just finished Trinie Dalton's first story collection, Wide Eyed (Akashic, 2005). It's a wonderful book of charming, bizarre stories full of specific knowledge. In essence it's built from the same kind of thematic association as Bowie's art collection (and his music): deep knowledge of salamander anatomy in conversation with Marc Bolan's "Salamanda Palaganda" to service a larger point about wanting to feel protected and small (in "A Giant Loves You"); fixation with A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and an attraction to serial killers/predatory men as a desire to find a moment of perfect innocence ("Chrysalis"); bloodied tiles as the ultimate abhorrent image ("Tiles").
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Luna Luna recently reprinted one of my early stories from Masterworks (a series about reenacting famous works of art), this one on Goya's Witches' Flight, in their Halloween issue. It's one of my favorite stories from the series - if you like that one, you can read the rest here. There will be two final stories in the series, which will be published in Paper Darts in good time.
I also have a story coming up in Joyland later this month that I'm really excited about. Otherwise, I am still trying to get this novel published/finish the next one.
I thought it was worth letting you know here that, if you
like, you can buy copies of SATURN—my
collection of David Bowie stories recently out from Spork Press—directly from
me. Right now, they are $12 (including shipping). Obviously I will sign all of
them and additionally include a ripped-out page of a Bowie biography from the
era of your choosing. If you’re interested, give me a shout, and prepare
to divulge 1) your preferred color (slime or blue, see previous post for
evidence), 2) your favorite Bowie era (to determine the biographical
excerpt), and 3) mailing address.
In other news, a smallish piece of fiction called “Accession” was published in Everyday Genius earlier
this month; it’s kind of about utterly defacing famous works of art, and is a part of the book that I’m
working on (thanks to Dolan Morgan for picking this piece up).In case you’re tracking these things,
another death-focused part of this book appeared in the latest issue of Forklift, OH, but you’ll have to
go to print for that one. (If you do, it comes with a packet of seeds; it also
comes with Ben Kopel’s “Sad Punk Sutra,” which you wouldn’t want to miss a word
of.)
Since last we spoke (and in direct and pointed contrast to
defacing works of art), I’ve also started writing MASTERWORKS, a recurring
flash fiction series featured every month in the Paper Darts e-newsletter. It’s about reenactments of famous works
of art. Sign up for the mailing list here, or peruse the three
installments that have been published so far:
It’s all paintings as yet, but this month (November) it’s
going to be a monolithic stone object, which should be fun. These stories are
mostly ornate little echo-boxes, and it’s probably the most fun I’ve had
writing in a long time; basically I want my stories to be the written
equivalent of this song.
Let me know what you think, or if you have any artworks you
would like to recommend. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS.
Here is a selection of the colors in which SATURN is now available, alongside commentary with what movie I was watching when I learned that these covers existed, basically:
1) Red: I am pretty sure that I watched The Skin I Live Inthe same night that I received these (it was very rainy), which is potentially appropriate because that movie is all about masks, costumed invaders, abuses of the ultra-rich, dastardly medical procedures, and Marisa Paredes (so often does life become an erotic thriller). (Did you ever see The Flower of My Secret? It is EXCELLENT.)
("gory," "blood" version);
2) Silver: when I saw these, I think I was reading The Dream of Doctor Bantam, by Jeanne Thornton, which is a book that I love and which I would recommend to virtually any reader. Here are no. 2-6 on the itemized list of “things that I
loved about this book,” as written enthusiastically in an email to its author
(no. 1 was incomprehensible even to me):
2. the sentence on p. 91 in which
Julie wraps herself up with a sheet "like a human pita";
3. the canoe scene, specifically on
the rocks;
4. when Julie bums a cigarette from
the 'patch-and-hemp' kid and thinks, "I do not want to take this cigarette
from this person. I hate this person. I despise this person for his
weakness," and then takes it anyway;
5. when Patrice asks Julie if she's
proud of her for being the youngest Unbound;
6. the whole freaking opening
scene, pants, ihop and all.
(my mother's favorite version of the cover, because it's "less gory" and "less clear what is going on");
3) Green: I don't remember what I was doing here. Do you?
(Speaking of which, I would like to point that there is a Beach Boys song (pt. 2 of "California Saga"), which includes the very traditionally un-Beach Boys-like lyric: "spilled down the hill, a wagon-load of bodies lay scattered.")
(I call this the "poor little greenie" version, Spork: "Slime and Gilded Blood Edition," which is somewhat more ornate);
4) Blue: I think I saw these on the same day as was released the full cover of David James Keaton's The Last Projector, which comes out Halloween of this year and will probably be the best book about movies ever written. (If you have ever read this blog, you have read of DJK - he wrote a zombie novella, a short story collection called Fish Bites Cop!whose decorative murders rival Nick Cave, and is the subject of an 8,000-word interview that remains unpublished, where the topic that takes up the most space is the physical consistency of blood across several movie-decades.)
(Spork: "summer bluez"; I prefer "cosmic").
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SATURN has gotten a pretty exciting amount of attention lately - I'll spare you all the grisly details here (you can check the special SATURN tab above for links to pretty much everything including reviews in The Rumpus and NANO Fiction; clicking virtually anywhere on this blog will send you places to buy it), but I am very grateful to everyone who's bought it thus far. If you've done so, let me know what you think! I may have a special surprise for you.
Have a pleasant night (watch a movie you fruitcake),
SATURN officially launched at AWP in Seattle last weekend. Here is a photo of SATURN on the Spork table, at the beginning:
R3
It sold out. All 50 copies, gone.
Despite what people tell you, it feels very nice to be a sellout. If you bought one of the 50 - let me know! Like any narcissist, I'd love to hear what you think of it, or if you want to debate my facts. Since I wasn't in Seattle to endorse the copies for you, I'll propose something similar: if you let me know that you got the book, I will tear out highlighted/annotated pages of the classic 1986 David Bowie biography Alias David Bowie and mail them to you in lieu of a signature. It's definitely much more practical this way.
Right now, Spork has returned home without SATURNs, but they are always busy, and I expect that very soon there will be more books and it will be available to buy on the Spork website. This offer will stand for as long as I can manage it - even if you don't want a scrap of paper mailed to you, I'd love to hear what you think of it. Or if you have any photos or tactile descriptions (as yet, I haven't held a physical copy, so I am interacting vicariously), by all means, send them along. I would like to thank you, at least.
There are over 500 pages in Alias David Bowie. Plenty to gut.
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While Spork continues making books and books and books, a few SATURN stories have made their way into a couple of new journals: first, online, in the inaugural issue of The Knicknackery (brought to you by the very estimable team of Sonja Vitow and Keren Veisblatt Toledano) you can find "David Bowie Sleeps with 1001 Arabian Nights Next to His Bed," which is, of course, about unending stories.
In print, Skydeer Helpking, a new journal put together by Russ Woods and Jeannette Gomes, also just released their first issue, and inside you can find both "David Bowie Approaches Tilda Swinton to Play Him in the Movie of His Life" and "David Bowie Confronts His Digital Self in Omikron: The Nomad Soul."
Did you ever play Omikron? This is what he looked like:
Finally, in non-Bowie-related news (thank god), I have a small story called "Booties" in the last (!) issue of Fractured West, a print flash fiction journal from Scotland. It's really beautiful and full of equally tiny things.
Today is David Bowie's 67th birthday, which is an especially appropriate time for this announcement:
My first book, SATURN, a collection of David Bowie stories, will be published in early 2014 by none other than Spork Press.
I bolded that. And increased the font size. You bet I did. It's the biggest news we've had around here since ever!
You know Spork, right? The press responsible for such beauties as Colin Winnette's ANIMAL Collection, Joyelle McSweeney's The Necropastoral, and Zachary Schomburg's From the Fjords; handbound, hardback books (they have such sturdy spines), embossed covers, each one of them made with love and sweat and tears and definitely blood beneath the hot sun of Tuscon, Arizona. David Bowie could not be in more loving hands, and I could not be happier.
The book is 19 stories long - I like to call it, very loosely, a latter-day biography of potentiality. There's a lot of trivia in it, a lot of factoids for David Bowie nerds (I know there are a few of them out there), a lot of heart/soul/minotaurs/etc. I think you'll love it. My mother read it and said to my father, "It's amazing, the things he knows."
SATURN will probably be out in February, definitely in time for the Spork table at AWP in Seattle, where you'll be able to go and purchase your very own little piece of All-Simon to take home and treasure forever, along with all of your other David Bowie collectibles.
I won't be at AWP this year, unfortunately, as I will be on the hunt for the ever-elusive Snowy Buffalo.
(yeti)
Rest assured, as soon as SATURN is out, you'll never hear the end of it. There's even a cover now, which is one of the most badass pieces of art I've ever seen; it's not completely done so I can't share it with you just yet, but again: we don't keep these kinds of secrets for long.
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If you investigate the newfangled links at the top of the page, you'll also see that I now have something called a 'mailing list,' which, if you sign up, means that you'll receive cryptic updates from Simonthia about as frequently as I post on this blog, which is very close to not at all. Basically, I set this up in order to send pictures of weird fish to a defined, self-selected group of people, and also because the Mailchimp logo is, obviously, a monkey, and I wanted to support that.
There's also now a page specifically for SATURN, because why not, under which you'll be able to find excerpts, reviews, interviews, etc. as they appear. If any of you invisible readers out there are particularly interested in knowing more about the book or the project, let me know and I'll overwhelm you with information. Thanks for reading! A book, a book, a book.
If you haven't been following along with the music videos David Bowie's been releasing in support of his new album The Next Day, there are three of them, and they are all exceptional. "Where Are We Now?" was the first we released and I wrote probably too much about it back in January (it's my favorite); the second, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)," which sounds like the title of a disney song, was released in February, and it's great because it finally pairs Tilda Swinton with Bowie and has a very attractive androgynous cast. Finally, there's "The Next Day," which appeared virtually without notice (Bowie has no real need anymore) a few weeks ago. Here it is:
DO YOU SEE THIS?
YOU CALL YOURSELF A PROPHET?
There's a lot of jumbled iconography in this one. Gary Oldman, dressed as a priest, punches a homeless kid in the face within the first five seconds, then heads into some kind of decadent bar filled with sultry and deformed religious figures. There's wrinkly bishops, self-flagellation, stigmata, spurting blood, Marion Cotillard dancing in a slow-motion kind of way that would shimmy her dress right off if this were a Fall Out Boy video, and a shockingly young-looking David Bowie presiding over it all dressed as a shepherdprophet and pointing like he's shooting lasers, but by far my favorite part comes at the end, when the music fades away and David Bowie says,
"Thank you, Gary.
Thank you, Marion.
Thank you everybody."
and then VANISHES with the sound of a bell. Obviously I consider this to be entirely symbolic, and I think this means we've seen the last of David Bowie, possibly forever. But up until five months ago we thought he'd been permanently gone for 10 years, so who am I to speculate?
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A few publishy things since I spoke here last, only three of which have to do with David Bowie:
Speaking of space, I had a story called "Evacuees" in Paper Darts last month and just LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING ILLUSTRATIONS (Meghan Murphy is responsible for those; she has that magic). Paper Darts is my absolute favorite, and I've always liked this story so much more than anyone else, so I am 200% thrilled that they liked it and that Meghan's illustrations rendered it so perfectly. :') It is worthy of both emoticons and genuine emotions.
A story about deserts and atrocities in Monkeybicycle called "Villains." Because we are first villains, and then we escape.
Things unrelated to David Bowie coming soon, but, really, is anything that far removed? Has anyone else ever created so much stuff out of a single obsession? Let's have a discussion!
Hey peoples. So, Bowie madness continues, with this article that I read (last week? the week before? I've been meaning to write this for too long - I need to blog more impulsively) in NME, in which Tony Visconti, the new album's producer, says that these tracks have been under wraps for two. years., and that, moreover, The Next Day is significantly less melancholic than "Where Are We Now?" would suggest. (Which itself strikes me as a very typically Bowie-esque manuever, to release a single that isn't representative of the album it comes from.)
Visconti reports that Bowie is "smiling a lot." Well, yes.
Needless to say, I am excited for March 12.
I'm in New York City now, and it's pretty great but I'm still at the point where I get anxious doing just about anything. So, hit me up if you're in the city and let's connect.
I've been trying to write things here but every time I try I end up watching another episode of Parks & Rec instead. Damn.
That being said, I have had some writerly things go live in the last week: first, Hobart published a cover letter that I wrote them for a contest last year.
And then, over at PANK, I conducted a fairly lengthy conversation with Eric Raymond about his novel, Confessions From A Dark Wood (out from Ken Baumann's Sator Press; you should read it post-haste).
I should have new fiction coming out soon, possibly this month. I'm excited for that because it's been a while since anything new has been published. I worry though, each time I finish a story, that it will be the last good thing that I write. And I haven't written a new story in months.
I had a minor meltdown on Twitter last night when I learned that David Bowie had - completely without warning - released a new single and accompanying video, "Where Are We Now," his first new music in nearly a decade (Bowie turned 66 today), from the album The Next Day, due to be released in March:
Back in high school, David Bowie was the first musician I listened to in any kind of intentional way, and he's been, by far, my biggest artistic influence in the six or so years since then (before I knew his music, he was Jareth the Goblin King and my aunt's biggest crush). As someone who's kept a fairly close watch on all the nothing that went on on the official David Bowie website until midnight this morning, I was completely stunned last night when I went to the site - just to see if there was anything there re: Bowie's birthday, as the site hadn't been updated in nearly a year (as well as for other reasons that I'll get into later), and found, instead of the pastel-colored blah redesign leftover from his last album, 2004's Reality, a new splash page announcing the new album and its first single. I was floored; I didn't believe it at first.
I've been writing poems about him for months (hold on, I'll get to these later), but never, never this. I get the impression that NO ONE - not even the traditional insiders - knew this was coming. There has been, literally, no hint of it.
As far as singles go, to me "Where Are We Now" is damn near perfect, a gently propulsive, atmospheric, piano-and-haze-drive ballad with a marvelous Bowie lilt as a vocal, with lots of German place-names thrown in (the artwork for the new album cover - if you can call it that, really; pastiche? photoshop? - is taken from "Heroes" and reflects on his time in Berlin, mid-70's), and it includes wonderfully oblique, poetic lyrics like "The moment you know, you know you know," "just walking the dead," and "You never knew that, that I could do that."
The whole thing ends with a marvelous descending piano line outro, the kinds of chords that always hit me the hardest and turn an otherwise regular song into a mood-turner. (Honestly, it sounds a lot like some of the b-side material from his late-90's and 2000's albums, which is absolutely fine with me. Tony Visconti can lay his hands on any Bowie he likes as far as I'm concerned.)
The video, too, is really wonderful and stirring. In a cluttered artist's studio (Bowie has a thing for the cluttered artist studio), two dolls - onto whose faces are projected video of Bowie and a silent mystery woman - sit before black-and-white footage of Berlin, presumably from about the time that Bowie lived there. I was particularly captivated by the woman's face projected on the doll - she doesn't sing or anything, and serves as a silent partner, but has such an intimate expression on her face that it just kills me. Bowie, too - like they're both trying to hold something huge in. Then, at the end, we see Bowie standing there, and damn, 66? The man looks GOOD.
It seemed like even his official Facebook page was taken by surprise: two hours before the website was updated (which I think happened at midnight EST, right as his birthday crept about), they posted some random portrait of him asking everyone to join alongside "DBFBHQ" (David Bowie's Facebook Headquarters, presumably) in wishing the man a happy 66th. And then, BOOM.
Today, the internet is reeling.
David Bowie has taken over the iTunes adspace for probably the first time ever. Yet a statement from Bowie's people promises no interviews, no dates, no appearances.
But this is a blog, mostly about myself, and I'm getting to that, so let's expand by way of doing the opposite: I think, for the most part, until last night everyone thought David Bowie was done forever. Finished. Spent. No more. He had every right to be, after 29 studio albums and a 40-year career. So when you're offered something completely unheralded and magnificent like this, what are you supposed to think? I had staked my claim in Bowie being gone forever (read on), so, WHAT COMES NEXT?
See, I've been writing poems lately. Poems, specifically, about David Bowie, but about a David Bowie who has effectively vanished off the face of the Earth as we know it, and gone to hide with his family, collect modern British art - which, until last night, was all that the media knew/reported he was doing - and, in my poems, examine his legacy, fearing every inch of it, every hour of his age. These poems have ridiculous long titles, things like, "David Bowie Approaches Tilda Swinton to Play Him in the Movie of His Life", or "David Bowie Discovers that His Official Website Hasn't Been Updated in Ten Months" - quite simply, things that, all of a sudden, just don't apply anymore. Now, I worry that the poems don't make any sense.
I have about a dozen David Bowie poems, and they all assume this anxious, afflicted persona of him. It's been the most fun I've had writing in a long time, and I think part of the great appeal in writing them was knowing that my version of Bowie and what he was doing with his life was just as possible as anyone else's speculation. No one knew what he was doing - he might as well be building a minotaur or reading 1001 Arabian Nights or worrying about his future. But now, this new music, this sign of activity, this giant fucking blip on the radar.
Is Bowie back? Has he put out this music only to disappear once again? What does this sudden resurgence mean for my poetry? I've come to the conclusion that it either means these poems are now completely irrelevant, or potentially more interesting and relevant than ever, since, thematically speaking, they are very much in line with what we've heard of this new music.
My plan was to make a book of these David Bowie poems, eventually. I think I'll still try. None of them have been published or accepted yet, but, we'll see. Nevertheless, this has put me in a really weird place, generally speaking. The short story collection I've been shopping around (PARTNERS) lost its latest contest last week, and now Bowie returns to silence my poems. I'm beginning to think - albeit halfheartedly - that the cosmos is trying to tell me something.
I'm moving to New York City on Friday. I'll admit, part of the original draw is that Bowie lives there, in Manhattan, and I wholeheartedly believed, in the tiniest part of my brain, impossibly, that I would be able to seek him out, to find and meet him after 10 years of public silence and tell him that I KNEW, that I wrote ALL THE POEMS for him, that he wasn't forgotten for a single second.
But.
Now that there's this song, this album, this sudden attention, though, and my dedication seems a little... unnecessary. Insignificant. Redundant, I guess. Plus, if he's not planning to give any interviews or play any shows, then Bowie will be in super-hiding, and there's absolutely no way that I could find him.
Maybe my poems will?
You can see the delusion here, obviously, and I recognize it, too: clearly I would never have met the man, but now it just seems infinitely more complicated and difficult and unlikely. While, really, I should just be celebrating this new music. It feels like the cosmos again.
So, all in all, I don't know how much this new song changes things, but potentially quite a bit. Maybe you understand? I don't know, but this is a blog and, really, you don't have to.
Where are we now, indeed.
Thanks for reading. Do let me know if you've made it this far, I'd love to hear from you.
