M. David Hornbuckle

Blog

  • A Little Disappointing

    I’m very depressed today, but I’ve found that whenever I look under the depression or the anger, it’s really about fear. The fear I’m feeling is largely about my creative life, as it almost always is. I’m afraid that I’m really not good enough, that I’ll never produce anything really worthwhile. In a more general sense, it’s a fear that I’ll never DO anything really worthwhile, that everything is basically pointless. It’s a standard, run of the mill, existential crisis, and to be honest, that realization is a little disappointing.

  • Dreamlog

    “She was as brave as a widow’s daughter.” I dreamed this phrase last night, and it seems significant somehow. But then I also dreamt of Liz Pulos cleaning houses dressed as a superhero. In my dream, she was cleaning Sarah Fische’s apartment, which was much nicer than I imagine Sarah’s apartment is in real life, though I’ve never been there.

  • Live and Learn

    I’m remarkably chipper, considering I just had a sudden bought of projectile vomiting, inspired by some bad Pom I drank earlier in the morning. It happened so quickly, I didn’t quite make it to the bathroom. The Pom had been in the fridge since my birthday party in November. But I had some a couple of days ago, and it seemed fine. Live and learn, they say.

    I’ve been having a lot of crazy dreams lately. Last night, I had a lot of dreams about the supermarket. In the dream, I ran into an old friend, Samantha Jones, who apparently was working there. She morphed into another old friend I haven’t seen in a long time, who then became my ex-mother in law. The things I was buying were things that are actually on my RT grocery list.

  • Chords, Lyrics

    GGFGFGGFGFGGFGFGG

    D Eb C Bb

    You give me no choice because you’re unable

    To hear my voice when we’re at the bargaining table

    In an abandoned mind.

  • BWC Notes, Metafiction

    I’ve been taking a writing workshop and showing them pieces of BWC as I rewrite it as an independent piece. Next week is the last class for the semester, and they’ll be reading some sections near the end. My guess is that they won’t get what I’m trying to do.

    Although it’s been a comically long time since I utilized this journal in any way, I figured this would be the place to clarify, for my own purposes, just what that is. I’ve held back from explaining it in class so far for two reasons: (1) it might give away too much too soon and (2) it will probably sound incredibly pompous. Nevertheless, here goes…

    I don’t think there’s anything experimental about metafiction at this point. There’s not much more it can say about itself and the nature of narrative. But it is now, in my opinion, an established tradition, which can be used for whatever purposes an author sees fit.

    Within that tradition, there’s an idea of the author or artist as a kind of god-like figure. One of the things I’m trying to do in this piece is have a character, Thom, who believes in that rather literally – that he is a character in a book, and that his every thought and motion is subject to the whim of some author, and he carries a deep resentment about that. Maybe he thinks that BWC is somehow that author. I’m not quite there yet.

    The point, though, is that I’m not trying to use this technique to say anything about the nature of narrative, at least not anything particularly new. Instead, I’m hoping to use that established tradition as a foundation for making a statement about the nature of God. Because to me, that’s what all art is about at its core.

    With BWC, we have a counterpoint to Thom – an artist in a state of spiritual crisis, which is solved through meeting Jennie Mae and thus shedding that layer of solipsism that isolated him. Through Jennie Mae, he is able to become an active member of the human race and to become the artist that before was only an insular fantasy, one of a thousand possible worlds, none of which were reality.

  • Southern Detachment

    Something I noticed growing up in the South. Often, left-leaning young people have a way of casually mentioning that they or someone they know participates in an alternative lifestyle. “My friend Brandy, who’s a Wiccan, was at my house the other day…” “People don’t realize that I’m bi, and I don’t know why they’d care really.” Etc.

    This serves two purposes. One, it makes a great show of how little it affects them, that it’s no big deal. Two, it tests the interlocutor for a reaction, which could be shock, disgust, or a similar faux jadedness.

  • Kazoo

    This is an actual conversation I had with someone in my writing workshop. He’s a retired antique bookseller. I’d mentioned previously that I play guitar in a band.

    – I don’t play an instrument myself… Although sometimes, when my wife isn’t home, I play these old 78s. There’s this instrumental interlude, and I like to play along with it on the kazoo. Only when my wife isn’t home though.

    No response from me.

    – What’s that instrument that Louis Armstrong played? Not the trombone… is it the trumpet?

    – Yes, trumpet.

    – Yeah, that’s what it is. The kazoo sounds really good with that. And sometimes, I take the lid from a sauce pan, and I hit it with a spoon like a cymbal.

  • Lice Roulette

    CW told me a great story from when he was on tour with his other band. These kids they stayed with played lice roulette. They had six hats in a circle on the floor. One of them was totally infested with lice. I’m not quite sure what the point was, but I think I can do something with it.

  • Tame Party

    Story idea: Rich girl, maybe post-post college, left alone in her parents’ house. Wants to have a crazy party, but her friends are boring. She tries to invite people that she thinks would be wild, but they’re not wild enough for her.

  • Poetry Lives at the Cloisters Diner

    So much poetry that you’re inundated with in New York just sucks. I mean, it’s not really inventive or artful or even any of the things we traditionally judge poetry by, to say nothing of the fact that most people don’t have the foggiest idea how to appreciate good poetry on the rare occasions that they come across it.

    Tonight, two seats down from me at the counter of the Cloisters diner, a woman was either having phone sex or talking someone out of suicide, I’m not sure which. I’d like to think both, maybe to two different people, one on the call waiting line.

    When I was thirteen I started writing poetry, some of which involved suicidal fantasies.