I've been very busy lately working on what may be the longest set of liner notes ever written about a rock band. (I have no idea if that's actually true; I'm sure it's not.) I don't want to give any details yet, except to say that it's been a lot of fun going back and seriously listening to a band I used to love twenty years ago and -- thankfully -- still do. As I wrote in the notes, when you go back and listen to bands you once loved, it often happens that you find that you have changed, but the music has not; as a result, listening becomes an exercise in nostalgia, sort of like thumbing through a photo album. The appeal is limited.
In this case, however, I found that the music was speaking to me in new ways, which was validating. It made me feel like some of my past instincts were good, even if I couldn't have explained why in very specific terms at the time. At some point in the not-too-distant future, I will have approximately 25,000 more words to offer on this topic, but for now this paragraph will have to suffice.
In completely unrelated news, I went out to dinner on Saturday night with some visiting friends in midtown. We went to an Italian restaurant in the Garment District, on 38th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenue. The reason I mention it is to say that the meal was great and -- unlike what I associate with so many other parts of downtown and Brooklyn on a Saturday night -- the place wasn't obnoxiously packed; it was just pleasantly crowded. It felt kind of miraculous, actually, sort of the way I'm sure I would feel if I boarded a plane now and found a few empty seats and plenty of room in the overhead bins. After dinner, we strolled east and had a drink at a hotel bar, which was also neither crowded nor empty. I wondered if we had died and were living in an alternate version of Manhattan; but no, the secret-- which I now share with you -- is to find the calm in the eye of the storm.
I spent the rest of the weekend working on the liner notes and watching the sun occasionally pass over the sunflowers, which in the shadowy light looked like an oil painting.
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01/20/2014
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.