June 29, 2014

June 29, 2014

I’m losing my perspective on a moment-to-moment basis.  Without a doubt, I just have to invent a world so I can exist in it.  As I approach my sixth decade, I realized that time is not working in my favor.  I need to devote my life to an idea that is important to me, and everything else must fall off the personal map.  Right now I have something like 500 vinyl albums, and that is way too much for one man to take in.  I am going to remove every album, except for my complete Dial recordings of Charlie Parker and his music. I also have a recording of Yves Klein’s “Monotone Symphony” as well.  That particular piece represents a beginning as well as an end.  It’s a full orchestra that plays one note for 20 minutes, and then silence for the next 20 minutes.  I play this piece every day.  It frees up my thoughts for the day, so I can start to write.

For the past twenty years I have been writing a series of crime novels that are translated into French, but never came out in English in the States.   The series of novels be called “San-Antonio, ” who is also the author of the Tales, as well as its main character.  The novels are all first-person narratives, and they deal with murder in its various narrations.  I couldn’t find a publisher in the States, but a French publisher picked up on it, and it became a huge success over there and French speaking areas of the world.   Since I don’t read or speak French, it seems that the translations are freely based on my original manuscripts.  Even changing the plot time-to-time.  One would think that after spending a great deal of time writing these novels, that I would be upset about the changes or even the re-writes of the work, but alas, I am simply amused.  It seems the harder I work the more money I get, but alas, my original work is totally erased by others. Yet, through a pseudonym do I exist, but only as a shadow.

I’m grateful for Chan Parker’s memoir about her life with her common-law husband Charlie Parker.  All I had was his music and some black and white images of the great man, and yet, the personal remembrance of a loved one, is much needed in this picture I have of Parker which was ghost-like and one got the feeling would be totally forgotten, if not for the few went out of their way to document their experiences with him.   Either by design or fate, I pretty much destroyed any connection between yours truly and the world out there. “San-Antonio” will exist, but it will always be a mist or vapor that lingers in one’s memory, but never be able to place where that thought came from.

I’ve been writing a memoir of sorts, including a number of posts on Facebook. So just one can hopefully can leave a record of my existence.  But obviously I don’t own the Facebook site, and that can disappear over time.   No wonder I was drawn to the film “Taxi Driver” where the principal character is a person who barely exists.  Only by an action of violence did he make a mark on the world. The main musical theme in “Taxi Driver” always conveyed a certain fatalistic narration, where one is not going to be able to dig themselves out of the grave that they helped dragged up.   I prefer to leave confidential messages on the sand at the beach, which eventually the ocean and tide will erase.