1. I felt grateful as I passed Amy Winehouse, who reminded me of a world in which Donald Trump was an irrelevant sideshow.
2. So much of my attention these days is occupied by memories and hopes.
3. I don't want to 'ignore Trump' and his inexhaustible supply of cohorts and supporters, but I don't want to acknowledge him/them, either. (And especially not on Twitter or Facebook.) I want to think about the light reflecting off the bending dune grass.
4. It seems wrong, somehow, to sound an alarm regarding a 'problem' -- let's just call it the impulse for a repressive, theocratic dictatorship -- that has been in works for at least 200-2000 years, as anyone who died in the French Revolution (and its aftermath) can attest. It also seems wrong, somehow, to sound an alarm when we are all afflicted with the same illnesses (racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism) and so often fail to acknowledge our symptoms even (or especially) as we castigate and mock others for suffering the same ailment, with the difference being only a matter of degree and/or self-awareness.
5. But dune grass aside, it also seems wrong NOT to sound the alarm. After all, we're the ones witnessing the death of a (sort of) democracy and must hold ourselves accountable.
6. In terms of 'resistance,' is it enough to exist? It's a question I frequently ask myself: sometimes I hope the answer is yes (because I'm old and tired, and have 'protest-marched' -- verb -- so many times already, going all the way back to when I was eight years old and, with my mother, picketed the Jimmy Carter White House for its/his failure to support the dying E.R.A.), and sometimes I suspect that I'm rationalizing.
7.If our society is a large body of running water, does it matter how tightly we hold together our fingers?
8. In the attempt to answer this question and many others (all related), I wrote a novel of political subversion/entertainment called #gods, which I hope you will buy direct from the publisher instead of on Amazon. Send me a picture and I will add it to the above collage, which represents the process by which a work of art, once released into the world -- and like a child -- becomes something other than which its creator can control. The official publication date is Tuesday, August 22. (It is the nature of life, when combined with the passage of time, to erase ourselves with our progeny.) That said, feel free to review it on Amazon :)
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08/19/2017
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.