(cont.) "When I was a kid, I didn't have many friends, which was fine with me. I wasn't bullied, but I wasn't popular, either. Mostly I felt like I was invisible, which is how I still feel today, so I suppose it was good practice. (Laughs.)"
"For years I took the bus and I was the first and last stop on the route. We lived on the edge of our town, and there were no other kids at my stop."
"I had the same bus driver for years. He was a grouchy old man who never said anything to me. He would just pull up, open the door, and let me walk on. No 'hello' or anything -- he always just kept his eyes on the road in front of him, even though it was almost always empty. I didn't care. He seemed very bitter, so I was happier not to talk to him."
"I've always been like that. If someone is angry or bitter or unhappy, I find myself drifting away. I consider myself very emotionally 'neutral,' I suppose."
"Growing up, I spent a lot of time by myself. My mother had to work almost all the time, and when she wasn't, she wanted to be doing things. We were opposites in many ways. It wasn't bad, actually, because we didn't fight. It was like we had an understanding. She provided food and shelter and I didn't interfere with her. Which was really fine, because I liked being alone. There weren't any kids around who I wanted to spend time with. There was a state park at the end of our road, so when it wasn't freezing, I used to go there almost every day. My friends were the trees."
"I'm sure that now people would be horrified that a little kid would just go into the forest without my mother or anyone else, but it was a different era back then. It never occurred to me that there might be dangerous people in the woods."
"Or if it did occur to me, I like to think I belonged to the woods in a way that made me safe. Remember, I already liked to think I was invisible and I was friends with the trees. (Laughs.) But I really knew my way around those trees and rocks. I knew all the hiding places. I used to practice standing perfectly still and walking without making a sound. I think anyone would have had a hard time tracking me down, not that I think anyone ever tried."
"I never felt lonely at all. When I was standing perfectly still or sitting in one of my hiding spots, I could listen to the wind moving through the trees and the insects and the birds and even the small animals. The forest was a symphony and I loved being its audience. My only regret was knowing that, because I was a person, I could never be part of this amazing soundscape. The best I could do was to be completely silent."
"There were other creatures in the forest, too."
"They were big -- bigger than most people -- but they ran so fast through the trees I could barely see them."
"I don't know why I wasn't afraid of them, but I wasn't. If anything, I found them exciting. I studied them. They usually came through around dusk, when the forest would be filled with that golden, shadowy light. Everything -- the birds, the insects, even the wind -- would get very quiet and I would feel something rush past, almost like a breeze, but as long as I remained still I could see them. Or maybe not them -- they were too fast -- but their imprint, almost the way you can see something fast running through a field of tall grass, but you only see the grass moving and not the animal. Except in this case the air in the forest was the grass and the tracks were a kind of soft, glowing outline in the dusk."
"I don't know what they were or what they wanted, but I liked knowing that they existed. I liked knowing they lived in the same world as I did but were completely different than me or anyone else I knew. They gave me hope."
Pictures taken in Fort Tryon Park on July 30, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project: A Training Manual (Section 2, "Interviews with the Institutionalized.")
« Fort Tryon Park, July 16, 2016 (Existence Is Sometimes a Belief, Too) | Main | Fort Tryon Park, August 6, 2016 (Notes on Dead Floors in Vacant Office Buildings) »
07/30/2016
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.