Reading: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
Also reading: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn
Writing: The penultimate chapter of my novella, Gates to Illvelion
Listening to: Tangerine Dream stuff
Category: music (Page 2 of 3)
Listening to: Michael Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in D
Reading: “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Drinking: Magners Cider
My reading list grows ever longer. The Coleridge came about because I was rereading How to Be Idle, and there’s a little anecdote about how Coleridge probably got the idea for the poem after walking in the countryside and taking some opium. Does not surprise me. I hadn’t read “Kubla Khan” in awhile, but reading it again was fabulous. Very DCC RPG in a lot of ways.
Other books currently reading or in the queue: The Two Towers, Labyrinth (yes, the movie novelization), On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (by G.K. Chesterton), Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers, and Jack of Shadows (this one is in the queue). Plus, I have about a dozen more I really want to start reading in earnest. Too many books. I really need a week off from everything just so I can read. It will never happen, but a girl can dream.
And anti-Nazi too.
Awhile back, I discovered dungeon synth and thought it was super-cool. The Italian punk label HDK put out cool tapes (Kobold, Gnoll, Basic Dungeon), and I thought, “Hey! This is fun RPG music I can listen to and get inspired!”
Then the YouTube algorithm led me to other bands: Fief, Thangorodrim, Elador, Quest Master, Midnight Odyssey. I was digging all this new, evocative music.
But just the other day I stumbled (whilst looking up RPG stuff) onto a Reddit thread where people were talking about the Neo-Nazi, Neo-fascist dungeon synth scene and I was like, “Whoa! What?!” and started feeling all icky and gross because what if I had been listening to some disgusting fascist crap?
So now I am trying to research every album that popped up on YouTube and finding very little information about most of these bands. From what I can tell Fief and Thangorodrim are anti-fascist. And the stuff from HDK seems like leftist/anarchist; no Nazi stuff there, from what I can tell.
But I don’t feel safe listening to this genre anymore. It’s hard to find info about a lot of these bands, and I don’t want to listen to anything even remotely connected with racist or fascist ideology. I think HDK is still okay, especially considering they are more punk/diy/arthouse and seem to be coming at dungeon synth from the left. But it’s incredibly frustrating and upsetting that what seems like an innocuous subgenre of electronic music is very much attached to horrific Nazi stuff.
So just an explicit announcement: this blog is anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-Nazi, anti-white supremacy. From now on, I will probably leave off listening to most dungeon synth and just groove to old soundtracks from 80s movies.
Reading: The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich
Listening to: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #1
Watching: The Last Blockbuster
I have thoughts about nostalgia, video rental stores, Blockbuster Video, the documentary referenced above, etc. that I might riff on in another blog post. Overall, the best parts of the documentary were in watching Sandi the Blockbuster store manager do her thing, and seeing how a humanely-run and community-oriented business can be such an important part of people’s lives (the humanely-run and community-oriented business in question is specifically the franchised Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, not Blockbuster stores in general).
As far as the Illich book, I don’t know what to think. I was very excited to read it, and it’s the first of his books I’ve tried, but I’m worried that I’m not intellectually up to the task (i.e.: I’m not a good enough reader/not smart enough).
I feel like maybe I’m not getting the nuances of Illich’s points. Based on my reading so far (about 2/3s through), his ideas would fit right in with today’s Covid anti-vaxxers and denialists. And yet, thinkers I admire like Sam Rocha and L.M. Sacasas are Illich guys (as is Mr. Idler Tom Hodgkinson) so I’m not sure if I’m just reading Illich wrong, misunderstanding him, or being too quick to lump him in with the “Free Michigan” people who stormed my state’s capital last spring. Or maybe my reading of the book is right, and Illich would be very much against the vaccine and masks and everything related to slowing the spread of Covid, things I consider to be necessary for the common good and do out of concern for my fellow humans. David Cayley’s piece on Illich and Covid seems to indicate that I am reading him right, which is kinda… bleh.
I was very excited to dive into Illich’s writings because I’ve become more and more disillusioned with our current meritocracy, with our hyper-Capitalist society, and with the ways in which we devalue work that doesn’t contribute to the GDP. But in reading this book and seeing Illich argue against things like gynecology and giving birth in a hospital just seems insane to me. I and/or my daughter probably wouldn’t be alive today without modern obstetrics. His weird swipe against breast self-exams and mastectomies was jarring too. Like, why are you against women getting treatment for breast cancer, Illich?
Anyway, maybe I’m not following his argument or I’m missing some important details. I’m planning to give Tools for Conviviality a try next.
After my sojourn through the realms of Dungeon Synth, I finally figured out why my writing sessions have been so “blah” lately. My routine has been to write after putting my kids to bed, but for the last several weeks, my mind has been foggy, my imagination has been feeble, and the words have come slowly. I wondered why. Was it just because I was writing at night, drained of energy by the long days? Or was I not reading enough? Not enough input?
Well, in a way, that was exactly my problem. But it wasn’t a problem of not enough reading. I’ve actually been reading more books lately than I have since winter began. The input problem wasn’t a literary one: it was a musical one.
I realized the other day that I haven’t been listening to enough music. My days are filled with kids yelling and causing a ruckus, with podcasts, with NPR, with students discussing novels and poetry, with conversation and talk. Most of these are good (minus the yelling children), but they aren’t music.
I have been living a musically-deficient life for awhile, and I think it’s having a detrimental effect on my writing.
Ever since I was a teenager, music and my creative process have been intrinsically linked. Songs would inspire stories, lyrics would generate images, melodies would create moods and feelings that led to ideas. The novella I’m working on right now — Avalon Summer — wouldn’t exist without the music of R.E.M. The Merlin’s Last Magic series owes its existence to The Smiths, 80s New Wave, and Loreena McKennitt . And my Icelandic-Sagas-Meet-Film-Noir world (the one where my short story “Things” takes place) wouldn’t have been conjured if I hadn’t been going through a Franz Ferdinand/garage rock phase in my late twenties.
Whether it’s Led Zeppelin or the Grateful Dead or Miracle Legion, music has been the seed from which so much of my creative work has grown.
And why am I struggling right now? Because I’m not listening to my music!
The forays into dungeon synth helped me realize that I NEED music to give me ideas and conjure images. Without images in my head, I can’t write. Without the moods and feelings that come from music, I have trouble generating the spark that gives my ideas life.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is what I’ll do for Lent. It’s coming up soon, and I think the right answer for me is to give up the internet (with exceptions for my teaching work and this blog). I’ve done this kind of sacrifice before, but this time, I want to make sure I fill the space with something good. Prayer, of course, is the best thing to do in place of my doomscrolling, but maybe I can also use that time to listen to music. Grab the ol’ ipod and some earbuds and go on a sonic journey. Maybe the more I immerse myself in music again, the more I’ll be bursting with ideas for my writing.
Just gonna leave this here for anyone who wants to roll some dice and fight some lizard men. . .
Honestly, this music is so evocative of a certain era of gaming, of fantasy, of childhood, it’s hard to believe how perfect these dungeon synth albums are. Bands like Kobold, Basic Dungeon, and Gnoll: they all make time machine music. I am instantly transported to being a kid again, even though there was hardly any music like this when I was young — outside of a few computer and video games. But the dungeon synth stuff is *just* close enough to old video game music — and just close enough to the musical scores of old 70s and 80s fantasy films — that it feels like it’s from that earlier time.
I love the track names too. The last track on this album is “Three dangerous artifacts.”
I wonder what those artifacts could be. . .
Perhaps a bowl crafted from star iron, a book of royal genealogy, and an amber scimitar that will banish all wights and ghouls (but only if the blade has tasted the blood of a sand dragon).
Once again, YouTube has led me down another musical rabbit hole that must be explored. . .
Next up: Fief – IV
