And The Writer Writes His Tales
(you're only as worthy as you feel)
In 1967 I was introduced to the mythical world of Oedipus and the Greek gods, to The Doors, and to the seductive, mind-altering sway of words. Jim Morrison led me through The Doors of Perception and taught me to pay attention to words and phrases, to use them. As tools, as vehicles, as drugs, as incantations for love and, when necessary, as weapons for revenge. I was never the same after the first time I heard "The End" by the Doors. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Richard Halliburton, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, William Shakespeare, and Jesus, too: revolutionaries all who dreamed of liberation and inflamed the status quo. They lit the fires in their times, fanned the flames, and left the embers glowing for an inchoate word scratcher like me. They filled my young restless mind with wild, high-flying, beautiful and dangerous ideas: Jesus, a true spiritual teacher, social agitator, and political insurrectionist; Steinbeck, advocate for the oppressed, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised; Vonnegut the anti-war, anti-stupidty, intellectual smartass; Dylan the original rapper; Ellison the acerbic fantasy and science fiction visionary; Lennon, the angry advocate for peace and justice who grew tired of pointing out that the only followers of the pied piper of tranquility were the rats; Shakespeare, who has held up a literary mirror to the rest of us for over 400 years to reveal, too often, our most unflattering reflections. These writers and many other writers taught me to question everything; to not be blinded by patriotism or dogma or politics. Think for yourself, they say, and cut yourself from the flock if the truth lies somewhere else.
When the earth moves again and I have moved on to a new horizon, wherever that may be, these books I've written will be my trail. Like you, I'm trying to figure out who I am and why I've led the life I have. Different choices naturally would have led to different outcomes. Life is a buffet. Choose the orange chicken and you necessarily pass up the kung pao and Mongolian beef. After decades of living, I'm still bumping into other people's lives and they into mine, still trying to understand why some people color my landscape, filtering into my dreams at night unbidden by me, and why others fade away like the afterimage of a camera flash. That's why I write. I write these books and stories because I need to. As my grandfather, who was a writer himself, once said to me, "A writer writes because he can't not write." I write because the characters who occupy these novels and stories are as alive as you and I are. Because you're in these tales just as surely as I am.
(you're only as worthy as you feel)
In 1967 I was introduced to the mythical world of Oedipus and the Greek gods, to The Doors, and to the seductive, mind-altering sway of words. Jim Morrison led me through The Doors of Perception and taught me to pay attention to words and phrases, to use them. As tools, as vehicles, as drugs, as incantations for love and, when necessary, as weapons for revenge. I was never the same after the first time I heard "The End" by the Doors. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Richard Halliburton, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, William Shakespeare, and Jesus, too: revolutionaries all who dreamed of liberation and inflamed the status quo. They lit the fires in their times, fanned the flames, and left the embers glowing for an inchoate word scratcher like me. They filled my young restless mind with wild, high-flying, beautiful and dangerous ideas: Jesus, a true spiritual teacher, social agitator, and political insurrectionist; Steinbeck, advocate for the oppressed, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised; Vonnegut the anti-war, anti-stupidty, intellectual smartass; Dylan the original rapper; Ellison the acerbic fantasy and science fiction visionary; Lennon, the angry advocate for peace and justice who grew tired of pointing out that the only followers of the pied piper of tranquility were the rats; Shakespeare, who has held up a literary mirror to the rest of us for over 400 years to reveal, too often, our most unflattering reflections. These writers and many other writers taught me to question everything; to not be blinded by patriotism or dogma or politics. Think for yourself, they say, and cut yourself from the flock if the truth lies somewhere else.
When the earth moves again and I have moved on to a new horizon, wherever that may be, these books I've written will be my trail. Like you, I'm trying to figure out who I am and why I've led the life I have. Different choices naturally would have led to different outcomes. Life is a buffet. Choose the orange chicken and you necessarily pass up the kung pao and Mongolian beef. After decades of living, I'm still bumping into other people's lives and they into mine, still trying to understand why some people color my landscape, filtering into my dreams at night unbidden by me, and why others fade away like the afterimage of a camera flash. That's why I write. I write these books and stories because I need to. As my grandfather, who was a writer himself, once said to me, "A writer writes because he can't not write." I write because the characters who occupy these novels and stories are as alive as you and I are. Because you're in these tales just as surely as I am.
