As reported* in the Guardian, the woeful, socially and environmentally suicidal––not to mention corrupt and half-assed––preparations for the Rio Olympics are proceeding apace. This is not isolated, but within a long tradition of short-sighted SNAFU Olympic preparations dating back a century. Three-time Olympian Megan Kalmoe offered an entitled apologetics for the tip-of-the-iceberg "brown water" situation I will row through shit for you, America. To which I commented:
​
"If the athletes banded together and created a consensus declaration that Olympics preparations must be done in a sustainable and financially transparent  way, countries would have no choice but to listen. Then the athletes we admire would have accomplished something for the greater good."

#‎endwriter #‎fabric

As you can see, the #endwriter tag** is now pretty fixed and stable, probably getting a few dozen views daily through Twitter, FB, and journalistic comment sections. The others come and go depending on the topic of a particular post or blog article. #fabric, #AriPark, #Even, and #ChasingTheSun are the three that seem to have evolved. #Cowachunga may come after I reach the halfway point of the Arisugawa Park (oh wait, there's one more) #CloudNovel project.

Speaking of which, the next section of the cloud novel should be coming in a few hours. I am taking time to make sure that each section feels somehow new and complete. I really enjoy spending time with each character, at points in my day between  coffee, tea,  flute, pale pilsen, books, daydreams, and beach jog swims. 

*My FB comment on the original article: "Seen from a certain perspective, the Olympics are an excuse for corrupt developers to go in and make land grabs and create white elephant project and "gift" communities for civil servants. Eye opening."

​** Short for #endurancewriter and also representing a group of earth-shaping cloud writers (and multi-media creatives) who will shape future history in the multi-level literary concept EVEN. 

I'm back in Boracay after some adventures in Guimaras and Iloilo, the fabric concept hitting me harder than ever. So difficult to find time in the day to create music, cloud novel, hang, earn money, and conceive of fabric.

But after a long conversation with Gerhard, owner of Frendz resort, over Globy pizza and mango shake (both excellent) a lot of things were clarified about how Boracay could work as a beta. He even knows someone who may... let's just leave it at that. 

For Arisugawa Park followers, I have painstakingly constructed––100 percent new––an imminent Hayao retracing Eve's steps and communing with stray felines section. You want the full process of creating literature to proceed in real time? Get used to an occasional wait. Just like I got used to writing quality shit with no compensation the past decade. I realize now that the penalty of refusing to play their game is..... big shrug. 

​#endwriter

I decided to go ahead and put the evolution of Chasing The Sun on Soundcloud. The thing is, I’ll be in Boracay for a month writing, jogging, swimming, jamming flute, and canvassing fabric for the first (or second) section of EVEN, tentatively titled Habagat.* 

Considering my track record with devices, there is a good chance that my laptop will explode and my backups get washed off in a tsunami. Meanwhile John Dumagod at Alchemy does not seem any more secure with his files than me. At least this way there is something up, a recorded legacy of all this inspiration and half-assed progress.**

What I present here is the first four studio tracks, in the order I see them flowing well (barring some later sounds that nestle in-between with plentitude).

There are plenty of “extras” in the recordings that will disappear in the final edits and master Here, a little cataloging, as much for master-mixer John’s benefit as for the reader-cum-listener:

1. Lost Upward - all is good.

2. UFOs and Labyrinths - Nix background chatter. Take out the vocal section between 5:13 and 5:34. Make the ending scat vocals a little less powerful on the ears. Maybe increase volume slightly on beginning and ending “Pork Pie Hat” sections. 

3. UFOs (Fragile Bones) - Altheia’s vocals lower just a bit. Chatter wiped. Thinking of taking out Altheia’s vocals from (? to ?). Need to hear both versions to compare. 

4. Fly Away Home - Transition between intro instrumental and vocal starting has obvious continuity issues… maybe a little light cymbals or guitar to segue them? First two vocal verses need to be redone… the low speaking voice does not do it for me.

About the section where the climactic guitar was excised (20:30 to 20:43)––there is a missing rhythmic flute flourish that we already recorded. Another issue is that we need to get some bongos circling around that absence of guitar, early-1970s Santana style. Some of the flutes after that are wrong, need to make sure the right tracks are in place. This will take some sit-down editing. 

*Habagat is the often grey season between “summer” and typhoon season. Acoustic guitarist Paolo went so far as to suggest, considering my preferred musical dynamics (or simply the recent weather?) that we call the project Chasing Habagat.

**That is until $70-million-in-debt Soundcloud goes under and takes their massive archives with them. hehe.

***It is interesting that the flute sounds comparatively so shitty on these field recordings… has to do with the very subtle, quick tone variations and the number of bits available, or so I’ve heard (similar issue experienced with the trumpet).
​

First time I can say this about a contemporary writer in a good long while: James Morrow’s The Philosopher’s Apprentice gave me a major shiver…  on page 69 I realized that all the archly knowing, slightly antiquated, philosophical English (bad puns and faux etymologies included) has been taking me somewhere––

My notes at the time (major spoiler: "the two girls Lonny and Donny must have been biologically interbred by Edwina Sabachtani with her own eggs, in cahoots with the mad doctor Charkov, with some some fast-and-loose animal kingdom intellect, like a cephalopod. At the very least they are cloned sisters. They both have exactly the same issue, a lack of rectitude, and the ability to read and process super fast. Oh shit… what a mind warp. This is not Swiftian, this is….. philosophy for the biogenetic era. 

And 30 pages on–– "the book really kind of lost me. It moved too fast––could have explored a whole host of other philosophic  imponderables while making the reader really care what would happen to Lonny when she found out she was a clone of her “mother” and inhabited an island with a “clone” sister. The curse of (post) modern literature, even of the traditional sort. Moves two miles ahead the moment you start to care about characters as real persons.

Note to self: Don’t play this same trick in the sections of EVEN. Make them cohere.

The concept of EVEN as a multi-part novel continues to evolve:

The idea now is to commence a series of writing projects that last no more than 40,000 words each and explore different aspects of the EVEN scenario. This approach is not unlike that Isaac Asimov took with the Foundation “trilogy” which was pieced together from short stories published in Amazing Fact over the course of the 1940s. Full disclosure, I have not read them, could not stand Asimov’s style in the one book of his I owned, A Dictionary of Nearly Everything.

​I came across the Foundation concept in––get this––an article I wrote as part of my Azimovian 1,500 words of fresh, acceptably self-edited prose each day for my dot company. Clients like the darnedest things and I learn a lot through the process of regurgitation––usually with an endwriter twist.*

Back to the music:

I have been listening to the current Chasing the Sun tracks quite a bit and there are  four that cohere as an incipient song cycle. Though John has been completely unresponsive at Alchemy and they are in a way embryonic, I can listen to these in order and  enjoy the experience as one that objectively moves me. Never mind the thousand things I see in each that need fixing, this will happen in time. The thing is that the music is completely original and I find it compelling. 


My aim with CTS: not Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, contemplative Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, pre-1974 Bob Marley, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Jim Morrison, Grażyna Auguścik, Django Reinhardt, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Jack Johnson, Sublime, Mark Eitzel, Mazzy Star, John Mayall, Nick Drake, Lana Del Rey, Beatles, Fleet Foxes, Otis Redding, pre-1975 Pink Floyd, Jun Mazeree, Alex Chilton, Brian Wilson, or anyone else. But it would not be out-of-place on a record shelf with those artists. 


Current song lineup:

1. Lost Upward
2. UFOs & Labyrinths 
3. Fragile Bones (I’m On My Way)
4. Fly Away Home

I just had this little Facebook exchange with Althetheia (who makes tracks two and three what they are) about the album, as it takes shape:

D: Maybe there could be one with your husband and you and my flute... like a cosmic poetry––intertwining of three sounds. I'm pretty sure this is an approach only people who don't read music take, but... the album is taking shape as a song cycle somehow.

A: Yessssss lets do that! also i was thinking maybe you wanna grab those guys who we jammed with at the office to do the smoke to joints/englishman in new york HAHAHA

D: hmmm... I am thinking that if we did something, we could start jamming that, but you know... I am all about original stuff unless it’s an interpretation I really care about

A: yeah remember our jam it was so far out!

D: and none of it got recorded! hahahaha the mike did not really work––so we will have to do an even more space one, maybe at the beach or waterfall

A: yes!

D: One cover song I am thinking of for the album is Bob Marley's Heat of the Day. I like these rare, unknown gems really. I have a feeling your husband could get these chords and sound down... maybe he could even sing it.

A: hell yeah i was thinking what if we also did a random song and we all play instuments we are unfamiliar with hahahahhahaha

D: you on the flute, me on the bass... the interesting thing about that song I did with you is that in parts your voice is actually in the same tonality as the flute... it sounds like a flute. like this is really something new if we get one really deep song out of it.

A: hehehe your flute and i get along!

D: like sustain it across an entire song, we could trade off on the parts, like when I improv you do some repetitive sustain and vice versa. Can't tell the diff, which is flute and which is human?

A: haha yes like the whole album is made to confuse the listener hahahah

D: the point is not to confuse, but to catch the listener by surprise––make them really hear that there is a  message in music of the now. because the earth can’t wait.

#endwriter

The Beach, Somewhere 

*Recall the “one step ahead of the bots” conceit mentioned in the previous blog? Guess where it comes from.

​*At least, by being totally nonfunctional, the latest version of Pages prevents me from attempting to be my own publisher and layout editor. (For the same reason, sayonara iMovie, Photos––moving toward totally distraction free). Incidentally, all this talk of Apple devices brings me back to thoughts of Dennis, who is fighting. 

** Actually, Notes works for all media types, I guess that is the future. Waiting for some multi-dimentional artist to create a "Note-book." Which leads to a fundamental question: how to partition the written word, which is what I really want to see, from the distractions that are pushed on me?

*** Weebly does this too, though it is a blog design platform, not on the same level of sin.

**** This is not quite the end of the story––forced linguistic sameness opens its own evolutionary pathways. In EVEN there is an intellectual clique that actively blogs in algorithmically new ways along certain channels, staying ahead of the bots. These endwriters actually go where fabric cannot as a capitalist platform (considering economic paradoxes that get increasingly well defined as the years pass and little progress is made on global warming). Through advanced SEO and the ability to influence linguistic and (Pandora-fed) music trends, the endwriters push profoundly toward a cloud-influenced reality that is sustainability oriented. They bypass the physical altogether and go for the information jugular––for a cause. The creation of the first truly "non-favoring-the-rich-countries" global agreement with teeth (move over WTO and United Nations) EVEN––the Environmental and Engineering Neutrality Pact.

The failsafe of learned experience, the sounds of speaking something so quiet it approaches wisdom. 

The mass quantification of data, projected onto offline activity, takes away one of the great mysteries of literature. It had nothing to do with how many people actually read the damn book. 

You could not quantify influence, maybe you still can’t––but perception is two-thirds of reality.

Technology has become, if not a god, something trusted way too much. And feared––fear has always been the basis of a good religion. “God is a DJ” was no accidental formulation.

We are all in this together. We all gang up on the same bright minds. We sap their energy and imagine we are immortal. To the furnace, you and I….

Shed my smartphone like the snake it is––leave it to know-it-all nothings, hack amateurs, and trolls. I want to experience what real knowing is again. To not hashtag and geolocate adventures… if no one knows, mystery is preserved. If the formula is buried… seldom shared… people start digging and begin replicating the cicada patterns of only arriving when they are ready. 

Literary tie-in: Staying one or two cycles ahead of the current state-of-the-algorithm.* Obscurity a bargain among those who want to speak and never quite be found. To out-Pynchon the best, to stay one step ahead of the thunder. 

Delivered, bundled, transmitted, and discretely logged. And amidst all that basic confusion. If we know everything why is the earth insistently telling us we know very little? The bogeyman is… you guessed it….**

* FABRIC future novel spoiler: state-of-the-algorithm, SOTA to endwriters.

​** Pogo, circa 1968.

​#endwriter

When you’re in a slat-windowed traditional Filipino house, open to the outside (think Hawaii), get used to ants. Lots of them, quick ones. Remembering that water comes from a well and must be laboriously retrieved outside. Therefore water cannot be liberally splashed around on countertops. If you use paper or plastic it will be burned or buried in the backyard––what to do?

You could get all toxic on the ants with chalk or poison, but ultimately what’s the point? They’re cleaner than us and as Ivy says after a nice dinner of roast chicken, and malangay and papaya laden tinola (chicken soup), cooked over charcoal, “they’ll all be gone by tomorrow and the counter will be clear of crumbs.” Which is true.

And what of the flying beetles that go after computer screens at night? Well––what of them?
#endwriter

As Facebook reminded me... a year ago... well, I had an agent, she was talking to the big publishers. Ego stoked and expecting at least a small advance, I decided to start putting up my next novel as I wrote it. Cowachunga was something new, the plot is still with me. 

However, it was paused indefinitely as I realized that Arisugawa Park would never get out there unless I put it up as a cloud novel. 

The novelizing process continues incrementally and all I can say is that my writing is up here, for those who care to explore. Until a time comes again that quality writing earns cash it's a sideline, a slow and steady hobby.

The wifi has been iffy to nonexistent, which means I have actually made some progress on Ari Park in lieu of reading constantly about how the wheels are coming off the bus.

I realized that––perfectionist that I am, I cannot go forward with the cloud novel without an episode of Hayao winding his way around the streets of Azabu and ruminating––on the scent of Eve. I am also trying to decide certain things about how David's time at the ultra-luxe hostess club Peach progresses. 

Thank you for your patronage. Visitors seem to come in steady here, whether I post or not. Thinking about working out an algorithm, cutting and pasting materials from around the Interweb. Let the bots do the work, feast on the toils of writers past. Surf the surfeit of raw data.

#endwriter

How many times out there 
did you spill your guts 
and how many shrugs

How many push notifications
did you ignore on your way 
to some kind of defining space 

Away from Pokemon seekers 
and faded Dust Bros. sneakers

Kept hip intravenously 
through the soul drip

In the beginning was the scroll, 
and the scroll was Jack.

#end writer

The Chasing the Sun studio project continues, with an assortment of artists I think of collectively as  fabric. I am naturally a competitive soul, with lone wolf tendencies (in the face of relationships defined by algorithms, property, and superstructures). Playing the bamboo flutes is a way of disarming those instincts and defining how to make music within a group. Simple flute and spoken word may have been enough in certain Bohemian circles, but they never quite a complex composition made. 

As fabric––disparate musicians bound by a united vision––we have struck the mother lode and are carefully mining. In an era of beat-driven propulsion, each acoustically generated instrument and voice is being positioned for maximum narrative impact. There is no autotune on these tracks, despite cousin and trumpeter Paul Rogers' initial impression that there was on Fly Away Home. My vocal chords are simply going places that are new to me. Music as an evolution, the dragon chasing its own tail. 

At the same time, traditional studio work of the type that reached its apogee in the early 1970s is continuing. The bits and pieces of the songs that annoy me (from flute to guitar and vocals) on repeat listens are slowly being replaced or excised. This is a time consuming process, because the stitches and excisions must not interfere with the spontaneous melodic flow and harmonic underpinnings. The sense of free interplay between actual musicians. 

Also, the Alchemy crew, as brilliant as they are, operates on Philippine time. This means that sessions will happen in late night snatches, when they can. Often several days later than planned. 

As we move forward with the shaping of tracks, I do not want the song's first-take qualities to deteriorate through over manipulation. The sound of the musician surprising him or herself in the studio is one of the enduring traits I find in songs that stay with me over the years. Many of Bob Dylan's records, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Bang sessions, a number of jazz sessions from the late 1940s on––Axis: Bold As Love, Bitches Brew, the original Getz-Gilberto bossanova sessions, a few key Floyd concerts––even slightly overproduced works by the Beatles, Dead,  Doors, and Zeppelin. A lot of pieces by less popularly recognized artists. You really do strive to capture and contain live heat in any way possible.

*Interestingly, the proto hummed version of Fly Away Home––embedded within the semi-mythic city to hidden cove narrative Flute at the Wild Lagoon is getting a few listens.

All Rights Reserved Damon Shulenberger