(cont.) "I've always felt a connection to 'Mother Nature' [laughs] but thinking about it now, I'm not sure that my version of nature is the same as the real thing."
"You see, I grew up in the suburbs, where there really wasn't much in the way of nature. It's like fake nature, a few acres of woods that for some reason someone had saved from the developers. But I used to walk through on the way home from school, and there were birds and deer and salamanders under the rocks, but nothing really wild or 'pristine.' It was very suburban, because it was a good place for all the freaks to go drink and smoke, so I would always see beer cans and cigarette wrappers, lighters, porn magazines, that sort of thing."
"But it was easy to avoid the freaks. They usually didn't come out anyway until after dark, by which point I would be long gone. What I really liked about those woods -- and get this, they were called 'Green Park,' like can you imagine a more boring name? -- was that it was the first place where I felt completely alone."
"And by 'alone' I mean there were no other people, in case that wasn't obvious, and I also mean alone in a good way."
"As a kid, one of the big existential crises I faced was realizing that I didn't like people very much even though I was -- obviously [laughs] -- a person."
"Why didn't I like people? Because they frightened me. And I frightened myself. I knew I was different in ways I had to hide, because if other people knew, they would have killed me. Like no shit, for real. I saw it happen to other kids."
"Actually -- no, I'm not exaggerating, and no, I don't want to talk about it. Just pick up a newspaper. And I'm talking about forty, fifty years ago. You think this stuff is new? It's just that it never got reported before."
"Anyway, the other place I considered 'nature' was this path you could take behind some of the houses. It was what we used to call a 'shortcut,' meaning you were technically trespassing on people's property, but back then, even in the suburbs, certain yards didn't fit together that well, so there were these gaps in the property lines and holes in the fences, places with nothing but weeds and maybe some trash. Rusted metal. It wasn't something you just discovered, either. In my case, I followed some older kids one day and learned how to get through from one side to the other."
"That was exciting because it made me realize there was always space beyond the official rules and boundaries. People are always imperfect, thankfully. I liked being in this space because even though it felt risky and dangerous -- being on someone else's property wasn't a trivial offense where I came from -- it was liberating, too. I can still remember pushing aside those weeds and crawling through a hole in the fence and how good it felt to be outside of the margins, so to speak, even for a few seconds. It gave me a little hope for a change."
"It was one of the only times I remember feeling completely alive as a kid. In school, in my house, pretty much wherever else I had to go, I felt numb because I had the barriers up. But in Green Park and on the shortcut, there was no reason for barriers."
"It took me a long time to figure out that nature -- for me -- is a mental space, as opposed to a physical one."
"Don't get me wrong. I'm a big proponent of 'real' nature, except I'm probably more radical about it than most people, meaning that I think there should be large swaths of the world -- and, for that matter, the oceans -- where people are never allowed to go. No roads, no outposts for scientists or campers or whatever. Definitely no corporate exploration and permits. Just the wilderness. One hundred percent unmanaged. Just knowing that such spaces exist would help our society a lot, I think, because it would make us feel slightly less responsible for ruining the rest of the planet. It's not like the 'national park' model, where some landmark is cordoned off so that 'future generations' can enjoy it, I'm talking about just letting the world exist without people, as much as that's even possible these days."
"Personally, I think walking through an urban wilderness like Central Park or Fairmount Park is way more interesting than Yosemite or Yellowstone or any of those other photo-opp parks where you can drive from one parking lot to the next surrounded by the hordes."
"I don't think a majority of people -- much less the tiny minority that actually has all the power -- would ever go for my plan, though. I mean, look where I live now, right?"
"Maybe if we find another planet, we can just live on half of it, even if the whole thing is filled with gold and oil and other precious minerals that are worth a shitload of money to some big corporation. And if that happens, and I'm still alive, you can sign me up to move to the populated half and be certain that I won't ever have to see the rest."
Pictures taken in Fort Tryon Park on August 13 and 20, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project: A Training Manual (Section 2, "Interviews with the Institutionalized.")
« It's Too Hot To Blog (Op Eds) | Main | Fort Tryon Park, August 27, 2016 (Go Home) »
08/21/2016
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.