Further Stealings

I am having fun again jumping into random books and reading sentences and stealing them in order to see what I get. I must say it is quickly become one of my favorite activities, this "stealing" of other humans and their random - or not so random - sentences. In fact, sometimes I am even thinking it might give me good reason to dig up the password to my rotting Facebook account and log back in and just start stealing people's actual statuses in order to give birth to stories. But alas! Nevermind that for now and, instead of using that dullards website, let us see what a thief can get from... hmm... this book here, I suppose, named After the King: Stories in honor of JRR Tolkien. The sentence I am gonna pluck is as follows:

It could be that the King of Stones had taken him beneah the earth, and that he would lie there without breath, in silence, forever. 

Ok now what the Hell can I hope to get from that? Anything? Nothing? Something? I am rubbing muh old hands together thinking.... there's gotta be a way to twist it .... but how ridiculous, or not ridiculous, can I hope to make it? How about something like this:

It was on the famous Celebration Day when the young Tinwan realized what his father the King had done, which was that he had taken his own sister, the beautiful Alyssa, and he had buried her, purposely, far beneath the Earth. And as the young boy sat there thinking of it on Celebration Day, with all those crowds of people & elves & magicians around him, the flutes playing, the drums banging, he realized that he would never see his beautiful sister Alyssa again. He realized that she was under the Earth because of her wicked father - their father - the King. He realized that she would lie there forever, in tranquil cold silence, without so much as a breath. With this thought in his mind, he broke down weeping, his hands covering his face. The songs of Celebration Day alas, still continued to blare in the distance. 

Ok that one... I don't think it was necessarily the best work I've ever done but it wasn't all that rotten either, and I think I particularly liked what I did there when I manage to gank not just the thing from the book in tribute to Tolkien but also when I managed to gank the idea for "Celebration Day" from the famous Led Zeppelin Song that I've probably listened to, stoned outta my head, a million and one times in my life. In fact... in facT... the while thing about songs now gives me a whole other idea for thievery, because songs are in fact a very , very worthwhile place to plunder, or even, if you're inclined, to take honest inspiration from when you're in the mood.

For example, in Italy there is a beloved singer-songwriter named Fabrizio DeAndre whom I am somewhat obsessed with (especially in my "I hate English and Anglo Saxon culture makes me want to hang my queer self" moods) and, a few years ago, a book got released in Italian called DeAndreide, which is basically a compilation of short stories that creative Italians all put together , and each story is inspired completely by one of his songs. For some reason this same thing has never happened stateside with Bob Dylan (Anglo Saxons and Americans are perhaps not as creative as Italians) but I have still thought of it from time to time and often wondered whee I could go with it if I tried. There are certain songs Dylan has that could easily be twisted into full on fantasy tales... same as the Zeppelin stuff. "All along the Watchtower", "Shelter from the Storm", "Idiot Wind", "Mr. Tambourine man", and certainly that all time favorite of mine "Man in the Long Black Coat" (lesser known) all come to me rather often when I think of plundering his work and stealing joyously to create my own all new forgeries.

The Tambourine man in particular to me has always seemed like a good character to steal and frankly I am surprised other songwriters have not already tried to steal him! I remember I did once, a few years ago, in a song I recorded on my acoustic that is now lost somewhere in the Youtubian ocean ... and it went, I believe, something like this: "I was walking around and I seen the Tambourine Man/ I think I seen him singing in a garbage can." The idea of course was supposed to be some sort of social commentary about how highly regarded all of this once was and now high ... low...it has fallen. Singer songwriters, after all...well, I am not even going to get into it. Fuck that noise. But how about we try to do something with this Tambourine man?

Say, does Bob ever at any point in the song describe the Tambourine man's boots or anything? His outfit? I do not believe he does. Well personally I've always envisioned him dressed in those 'hobnail boots' John Lennon was often going on about . I've also always seen him as a sort of, I dunno, something like a dunce. I definitely think he would have had make up on his face . Maybe sort of like the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, you could say. In fact, I would probably -the scholar in me, at least -- would definitely tell you that the Tambourine man and the Alice in Wonderland universe absolutelyy go hand in hand. Just like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (both by Lennon) also go hand in hand with the Alice in Wonderland universe. It is strange to think now but that story about dear Alice actually experienced a sort of marvelous resurgence in the 60s. Mostly with the Englishmen (Alice was English, you'll remember) but Dylan and Hendrix and especially Grace Slick with the "White Rabbit" song.

Alas I got off topic....let me take a hit off my frosty bubbler here ... ahhhhh so nice and chilly mmm... and let me see what I can think up for the Tambourine man. I remember I wanted to ... put him in an outfit of some kind, didn't i?? Yes yes I wanted to get that boy dressed. And I suppose I want to give him a friend or put him somewhere. Should I perhaps try to put him , like, in Wonderland, near a watchtower, with black riders somewhere in the distance riding? Say should I give him a weapon? Imagine if I give him a blade and I make him a rapist and a murderer? Sad to contemplate isn't it? A "troubled" Tambourine man...some ugly hunchback of Notre Dame sort of dude who goes around living in sewers in some nightmare Mordor eating little girls hearts and shit.....

Should I  .. woah this is an idea here...should I put him somewhere and give him an harmonica and have him singing the words to *another* Bob Dylan song? Or maybe, like Stephen King did in the 7th Dark Tower book (never read it, only heard stoned stories from amigos) shall I make him aware of the fact that he's the creation of Bob Dylan? So like the story will open up and he will be sitting there in a pair of black hobnail boots and he'll be playing harmonica, seated in front of a watchtower, with riders riding in the distance, black riders of course, he'll be singing some lyrics to "Idiot Wind", or no, scratch that, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door ", AND, last but not least, he'll be having the realization, as he does all of this, that some guy named Bob Dylan, some really rich guy who never has to worry about starvng anymore, created him, in our world.

Whew that was quite a thing right? I don't even know if I can fucking write it now. But I am an American and we believe in hard work so Im gonna try:

No. I am sorry. I can't do it. I wrote something just then but then I let out a yip and I deleted it and now it's gone forever. I'm taking another hit from my chilly bubbler again and taking sip of black coffee and I am trying to think og something else. I think I .. you know what happened don't you?? I played out the Tambourine man by discussing him with you is what happened. Had I not discussed him with you, vile reader that you are, he might have survived. Now he is dead and I throw his story to the wind. Some kid 200 years from now can pick it up and steal it for all I care.

Now I want to try another story and maybe forget about Bob Dylan who is, Joni Mitchell tells me, a plagiarist himself anyways. Now I want to try something about....(flipping through hundreds of books).... hmm what about something sort of like that famous Moby Dick story by Herman Melville? For some reason that little tall tale just started coming to me. You know I have always wanted to read that tome but I never got around to it. Usually when I think of it I see that McCauley Culkin film from my boyhood the Pagemaster . That was good shit. I rewatched it blitzed outta my mind a few years ago on mushrooms. And now I am thinking I could maybe steal something from that book. Let me run a Google search and find out just what the most famous scene in the book is and we will see if a theft is possible.

Alright here is a good one .....

"Consider the subtlleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began." 

This is a pretty wordy quotation I took here and I am not sure I am going to be able to do anything direct with it since there is no action. That doesn't mean I can't rob Herman Melville blind though cause I certainly can, a good thief always finds something to rob. So what I think I will rob here are the descriptions he gives us of the sea and its creatures and its universal cannibalism and I'll see, like, if I can somehow use it in a short paragraph about some girl just setting sail. Please keep in mind that I have often tried to create sailing stories and oftne fail. The sea is very difficult to explaim.... but lets try:

Maggie stood on the shore looking out at the sea, at once considering how vast and subtle it all really was. She could remember long years of yore when she would be out there with her father, on his boat the SS Carlyle, playing the tambourine at night,all the sailors gathered around her, and the smell of the salt upon her nose. 

Her father used to always sit and smoke a briar pipe watching the sea at night, often straight until the dawn without sleep. He would speak with his thick Scottish accent talking of how the sea was a place of cannibals, eternally at war with itself. He would tell her how all the creatures in the sea, from the little fish to the hammerheads to the great big baluga whales .... "they all prey upon one another, Maggie girl, they all are at constant war....just like we are with these Spanish pirates who never cease to chase us..." 

"Yes," Maggie would say, sitting by his side, often dressed in a blue corset then , the childhood corset she used to wear (where's this coming from?) "and it is just brilliant don't you think, father?"

"Oh.." he would say, sucking on the pipe and blowing out rings of smoke that would burst into fireworks "oh its devilishly brilliant, Maggie. I love the sea...I do ...its just that its so remorseless that it sometimes makes me cry. All the tribes of the sea, Maggie, your grandfather Herman used to tell me as a boy, they are remorseless tribes of murderers."

This one was pretty good, in my opinion at least, and I also have to admit I was a little surprised that dialogue came because that does not always happen. In fact I will tell you that I have long been of the mind that, once you start getting dialogue (assuming you started with just descriptive prose) then you can safely say that somthing "powerful" is coming through to you. I don't know why exactly I think this but it has always seemed to be the case to me.

 Like, often I will read back something I wrote, and when I read my descriptive prose, I will hear what is so clearly my voice, as the creator, but then , when I read the dialogue, it really is often like I am reading the words that someone else wrote. I'll often remember entire paragraphs of descriptions I have written but dialogue just...bloop...it slips away, probably because it is not really being written by me -- but rather simply transcribed. Because you do know , as a mushroom tripper (or at least a former mushroom tripper) that I believe, what do you call it, esoteric and occultish shit like that right? OF COURSE I DO! I have never believed tht I am the sole creator of stories. I have long believed that I am 'receiving' them from some...thing...some where. A stream I guess. But everyone believes that don't they? I sure hope they do, otherwise they''re a MORON!

I just go fishin you know and when I am fishin inside other books for lines to steal it is almost always, as a rule, somewhat more intriguing than just fishin inside me old noggin. Mostly I think because it's probably what the Gods have always intended y'know? Like, you honestly have to ask yourself, if the Gods didn't want you steal from other books, why would they have left so many around? What the hell y'know? Doesn't make any SENSE, man (or lady)! It doesn't make any sense. Its like ...its sort of like that age old hippie argument about why pot oughta be legal and smoked in great quantities: The Gods seem to have left it edverywhere! It grows naturally! So why not rip the weed outta the ground and go down to the bodega and buy a Swisher Sweet and roll that bad boy up and get zooted and listen to  ... who...Azealia Banks...while yer stoned? Why not envision Wonderland? Why not STEAL Wonderland for your self and do what ye want with it? Why not? Just cause some Ivy Leaguer? told you it's plagiarism? Fuck him what does he know.  I'll pay a Puerto Rican $15 bucks break an Ivy Leaguers jaw dude....

OK but for real f'real let me try to write something with Alice from Lewis Carroll again now . I want to make Alice a rap fan I think, now that Azealia has come to me. I want to have Alice dressed in Moschino with a nice big golden Lil Kim belt and I'll put her out at sea like in Moby Dick and she will have ... she will be older for one...not a child...18 plus...and she will have beautiful golden locks that a Jamaican named Raechell has braided into cornrows for her .... (i love cornrows)....and Alice will be jammin' to some otherworldly hip hop songs out on a big boat named the Happy Raider and she will be puffing a drug in the book known only as "Pink La" and ... she will be a buccaneer or something like that y'know... a hip hop buccaneer. And just to make the whole thing unbelievably offensive for suburban white sensibilities, she will only sleep with black pirates even though her skin is white as Norwegian snow! Ahahahaha....

(ends)