Matthew Wayne Selznick

James Melzer is a buddy and a steadfast supporter of my creative endeavors. He’s also a very popular indie author in his own right — his podcast novel “The Zombie Chronicles: Escape” has gained a huge following and will be published by Permuted Press in the near future.

He made this video for me… at first I thought, hey, that’s cool, James went to the trouble to record a little congratulations message about the launch of my new serial fiction webzine, “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.”

But… I think that was just an excuse. Something’s up with James Melzer, and frankly, I’m concerned.

I’ll let the video speak for itself. I guess we’ll learn more on June 17, 2009, but between you and me, I hope it’s nothing serious.

I’ve spoken before about how expectation, self-doubt and self-sabotage can cripple the creative process. It’s a factor in my creative productivity. Just about every writer I know can be hamstrung by similar issues. Even if there are no external expectations set upon us, art itself is laden with a burden of societal expectation. If you are an artist, the world expects something remarkable from you.

Many years ago, I had a telephone conversation with a poet friend. We were talking about the inevitable response people give when you describe yourself as a writer. “Oh, have you written anything I’ve read?” My friend said something I have never forgotten but nevertheless need to remind myself of from time to time:

She said, “Writers should be recognized for writing, for starting and finishing the work. Not for how society accepts the work.”

Easier said than done, of course. We are social animals, primates who thrive on connection and acceptance. What does a child do immediately after their first experiments with paper and crayon? Run to show the results to their mother, who has the right idea: praise the passion and lip-biting effort that went into the scrawl of color.

The other members of our species need to meet creators halfway to celebrate the process and act of creativity as much as the tangible result.

Elizabeth Gilbert, who is a contemporary enjoying a sudden success many orders of magnitude beyond anything in my own experience, spoke at the TED conference earlier this month. She’s been giving this a lot of thought. Please watch, all the way through.

I’m an atheist with a great love and respect for ritual. It might surprise people to know the idea of assigning an external partner some or all of my creative power appeals to me. It resonates. I remember the first line of one of the first great literary accomplishments of humankind:

“Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles…”

The poet begins the poem by asking his muse to sing, so that when Homer opens his mouth, that song might spill forth. And boy, did it. And everyone in the audience understood what they were hearing was a collaborative effort between a man and his genius. A dance.

I know my old friend would be moved by the last minute of Gilbert’s talk, just as the audience was. Me, I sat in my chair and wept, and tears come to my eyes writing about it now.

Creators, do your thing. World, celebrate the doing.

Thanks to C.K. Sample for his own post about the creative process, which pointed me to this video

I never watched “The Sopranos” (no HBO) but now, thanks to Victor Solomon I can get the gist of the entire season in about a half an hour.

REALLY SERIOUSLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK:

Okay! Hmm… I’ve always been interested in “Deadwood,” too… anyone..?

Recently a friend loaned me an acoustic guitar. I reckon it’s time I made use of it.

On Sunday, January 25 at 3:00 PM Pacific time, I’ll perform in a live virtual house concert (my house) which will stream on video through uStream.

I’ll play for forty five minutes to an hour — a bunch of original music, maybe some surprises, too. It’s the first time I’ve performed a full set since 2004!

Admission is free, but I will have a little tip jar set up. Everyone who donates $20.00 or more the day of the event will get high-quality MP3 versions of every original song I play during the show — at least a dozen live songs!

Here’s a little commercial I’ve created for the event. Please embed the video on your own site and anywhere else you can, and mark it as a favorite on YouTube to help get the word out!

If you think you can make it on Sunday, January 25 at 3:00 PM Pacific time, please RSVP:

1. Make sure you’re registered as a user at uStream.tv
2. Leave a comment on this post letting me know you’ll be there, and be sure to include your uStream username

See you then! It’s gonna be fun!

Watch the Concert January 25, 2009 at 3:00 PM Pacific Time!

Welcome Back!

When you’re a fourteen year old boy, the fairer sex can seem powerful and mysterious… as evidenced by my teen-aged self’s ode to the “Girls of Earth.” This is poem number three in the Purple Parchment series — poem two seem lost to us, hopefully not forever.

This Episode’s Poem

“Girls of Earth”

Bodies move like liquid amber
Move in time with the world
Move in harmony with biology

Faces like a thousand stars
Breaking through the fog in young minds
Illuminating minds with a song of life

Eyes like shining pools of rainbows
Drilling deep into young mens’ souls
Capturing hearts without effort

Hair like silken dew
Laying in silence
Tying pubescent hands

Lips like lasers of flesh
A touch and a boy’s mind is theirs’
Lost in a well of dreams

Girls of Earth
Men are helpless
Slaves to your minds

07-17-1981
#3

Teen Poetry Episode Two: Girls of Earth by Matthew Wayne Selznick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.