(cont.) "I've always been someone who sees strange things, or at least things that I consider strange, but miss more obvious things that everyone else is talking about."
"And then I think about these things forever. Like when I'm trying to fall asleep or just sitting around waiting for something to happen or whenever else."
"An example? Well, maybe fifteen years ago I was on an international flight back from Paris, and I was sitting in the back of the plane -- I've regrettably never flown first class -- and while everyone was filing into their seats and putting their bags in the overhead bins, this woman in the middle section of the aisle, just across from me but one row up, was eating an apple."
"Which, fine, she was eating an apple. So what. Well, for starters, I don't feel ever feel comfortable eating in any mode of transportation. Not that I haven't done it a few times -- like sure, if you're on a long flight, you're going to have to eat something -- but I used to really hate seeing people eat on the subway. It's just kind of too much for me to handle, probably because this one time I was really packed in to a subway car and this guy was eating a candy bar and I could smell it on his breath, even though he was behind me."
"It's little things like that that really gross me out and sometimes I think about them for a long time. Like what made a person have to eat a Snickers bar or an apple at that exact moment."
"Anyway, so this woman eats the apple, but first I should mention that the way she ate the apple was kind of fascinating and disturbing to me, also."
"Personally, I don't like eating apples that much, but if I do, I'm going to want to slice it into quarters, so that I don't have to deal with the core."
"But I guess if I'm absolutely starving to death, even though I just got onto a subway or plane, which are usually not places where you see a lot of malnourished people in dire need of an immediate apple, and I absolutely had to eat it as soon as possible without cutting it into quarters, I would eat around the core of the apple."
"By around, I mean in a circle. Almost like if you visualize the apple spinning on an axis and my mouth taking bites as the apple goes past it. Which I don't even want to think about, but I'm just speaking in a hypothetical scenario here."
"What I would definitely not do is eat half of it and then eat the other half, so that when you finish the first half, you could turn it around and, if the angle was right, not even know that the apple was being eaten."
"In my version of the world, food is not a venue for scary surprises, and I think anything that looks normal from the front but is secretly missing the back -- and because it was eaten! -- is just not something I ever want to encounter."
"So anyway, you've probably already guessed that this was exactly how this woman on the plane ate her apple. I couldn't understand it, it disturbed me, and yet -- yet! -- I couldn't stop watching. This was my version of disaster footage."
"But then, when the apple was finally gone, she was left with the core. It was a pretty regular apple core, I guess, but here's a question: what's the longest time you've ever spent holding an apple core? Like thirty seconds? Maybe four minutes like one time because you found yourself walking through a pristine indoor environment and didn't want to get rid of it? If the woman on the plane answered this question, she would have to say, 'oh, I once held on to a browning apple core for ninety minutes.' And I would have to say that I watch her the entire ninety minutes. She took things in and out of her bag, she put in her headphones, she talked to a man sitting next to her about things they had in common (he was not holding an apple core), all the while keeping it between her thumb and third finger, as though she didn't really want to be holding it, although she clearly did on some level?"
"There's a lot of major problems in the world, but there are small things too that each have their own brand of psychological dissonance. What's to prevent anyone from obsessively thinking about say, figuring out how to stop global warming, versus figuring out why people do the strange things they do? I used to think you could rank things pretty easily, but now I'm not so sure. I can't really rank anything. What's the point if people are going to just sit there holding an apple core for ninety minutes? The world becomes a place where the only thing that makes sense is that nothing makes sense."
"That was the same flight, by the way, when I got up to go to the bathroom during the quiet, dark part of the trip, when most of the cabin is asleep. I was standing around at the bathroom door waiting and I looked over and saw a light that was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was coming from or out of a passenger who had lifted up his blanket and I could just see it glowing and radiating, like there was this small star hidden under his shirt. I saw it and I stared for a few minutes, but I don't think about it too much, because I'm still stuck on the apple. It's like something is telling me that there's no point in solving the big mysteries until I've solved the little ones."
Pictures from Fort Tryon Park taken May 30, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project (Section 2: Interviews with the Institutionalized).
« Fort Tryon Park: April 30, 2016 | Main | May 12, 2016 (Bells and Gardens) »
05/07/2016
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.
All photographs on this blog can be purchased HERE in many formats including tiles :)