Phoenix Ark's Blog

“The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.” TS ELIOT

I must keep remembering that quote given to me long ago by a friend. We all suffer, it’s just it all became one, and in the same place. Of course my editor was right in one sense – ‘cap it, it stays in the book’, or nothing gets transformed into art or by real art either. Perhaps she just did not understand the journey of those books, and I’ve myself to ‘blame’ for not asking, even insisting, someone else read my own work. I do think the psyche finds a way to heal, but I doubt it can ever heal being too exposed. A blog is also not a novel, or a non-fiction book either, and here there is also an attempt to be a little publisher, but something more personal than the norm too. Perhaps that’s why it works best though when blogging off the issue of why it started, with other’s stories, books, poems and cultural essays too. Problem with Eliot is you start recalling the Four Quartets, about the path ‘you did not take….into the Rose Garden.’, or something like that. Perhaps any life’s biggest challenge is always to resist those ‘Sliding Doors’ and ‘what if’s…’. There is another essay coming soon. DCD

Lordy, I’ve been accused of being caught in the ‘ex factor’ maze! It isn’t true, it is the combination of so many factors that made this a story worth telling, and letting out for me. I’ve no idea who that person is now, and ‘lost’ them long ago. The ‘maze’ was the connection of everything that matters in a life though. As I said before, it was the refusal of any kind of human peace around my work that made it the nightmare it became, but so cruel too, especially with the Half to Full Nelson hurt of it. You just don’t do that to people, or to writers, when their psyche’s are already hurt and fully exposed in having to write a long fantasy book. Authors usually hide the tough bits, but another writer told me a similar thing in New York nearly killed him. A publisher is not and cannot be the Pentagon, and however wrong I went, and why, they went fifty times more so, and said they were wrong too. It was also because an editor I needed to be both a real friend and a human being started going on about ‘our side’, and my publisher in a department tagged an email virtually threatening legal action, just at the point I was trying to let something go. Even when I apologised and tried to explain, voiding all the issues of how an ex behaved and why, a convenient ‘accusation’ was left over my head they now would not even let me speak about. When you have a fighting spirit, that’s a disastrous recipe, but it goes back to the question of who must come first, the editor or writer, and in fiction it must be the writer. But a human being could not have got more lost and maybe it does all require being far more positive about the future, each other and what’s possible now! It was three years ago, though only I’m still picking up the pieces, and it is essentially meant as a Cautionary Tale, not any kind of recommendation for anything.

I’ve said all I will now, because it’s pointless, and I did win those Erights back. But the unquiet heart becomes the bad heart, in the end, and if people refuse to see and refuse to heal, that’s their bag and their fear. “Physician heal thyself!” So here’s one from POLLIPIGGLEPUGGAR for the children in us all, and to be read, I hope, between parents and kids.

THE MOST WONDERFUL SOUND AROUND

WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
The Children all scream
Is the loveliest sound around?
Throw down your spoons, in the bowl of cream,
Then stamp your feet hard on the ground.

WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
The Monsters demand
Is the nicest noise you can hear?
Thump on the table, and don’t be alarmed,
When you shout it out loud and clear.

WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?
The Terror-tots cry
Is the sound that’s the kindest of all?
Shout at the ceiling, then scream at the sky
And bellow it right down the hall.

WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?
The maniacs moan
Is the sound that beats all the rest?
Call it aloud through a megaphone
And pummel your hands on your chest.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
LISTEN

Can you hear it?
The most WONDERFUL sound in all the world.

What, what, what?
Say the whispering kids
Is a sound that’s as light as a breeze?
A sound that is heard, without even a word
And is softer than wind in the trees?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Listen.
There it is…

Copyright David Clement-Davies 2001

This is absurd, any great confessional, or any Americanisms like ‘closure’ either, because Abrams knew all this for months and months on end. Firstly I told my ex on the phone about the whys. Secondly they printed up and read all my emails later, and in the face of a real tragedy. They first only backed off from the extended bullying when I challenged them on repudiation of contracts, because the only thing they can understand is the fight, and damn the damage or the loss of the human. It was purely an expedient toss up between my career and three books and their own employee. That an ex could seem so sweet before she changed, in the life grab, but act with such damage to someone who’s arms she had been is extraordinary. Maybe it’s just New York City, or maybe the world really has lost the true plot.

In my own disgrace in America, for whatever reasons, and disgrace is exactly that, dis-grace, reputations were very much on the line. It isn’t true I don’t care what people think of me, because then you just swap achievement for some awful notoriety, like the guy in Shamelesss. But only care what the people you love or respect think of you. I don’t care what ‘The World’ thinks though, because ‘The World’ is like a storm, and only the sum of swirling interpretations or judgments. I hope people who do know me are a bit more generous than a partner was, but Dad told a story once about when John Gielgud was caught cottaging in a loo in Piccadilly, and his friends immediately asked him to dinner! But then he was John Gielgud, and people usually want to know all the human bits. It’s only art that brings out the spiritual bits too. The whole story is really only about that, and it’s the saddest and strangest story I’ve ever read, or helped to write.

Now I’ll try to stop judging, myself and others, and remember what Paulo Coehlo said, ‘follow your dreams, dark and light, most people usually know where to stop.‘ We only ever understand what we understand, but he saw something long ago that made him write about those Warriors of Light! I prefer JK Rowling’s idea of Death Eaters being the bad, because you really can see too much, and in certain states, swallow darkness. Just throw away what denies life, light and growth, inside and out. But above all, at times judge or even condemn yourself, by all means, but don’t ever Damn youself and say you are not fit to live and love. My father said it to me in hospital, ‘Open like a flower’.

“And a Youth said, Speak to us of Friendship
And he answered, saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love
And reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and
You seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not
The ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withold the ‘aye’.
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart.
For without words in friendship all thoughts, all desires, all expectations
Are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaiamed.
When you part from your friend,
Your grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
As the moutnain to the climber is clearer from the plain.’
Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet

Kindly warnings about not returning to ‘the past’ are all very well, but fundamental human and also major publishing principles have been horribly breached, and for any individual rights and wrongs, in the nasty machine people are losing touch with each other, and real lives. So only connect and make something right. The team may wrestle the ‘Press This’ button away, but when do you start telling the truth and when do you stop?! Oh I know, that old ‘best friend’s’ quote – ‘you couldn’t handle the truth, buddy’. The truth does not have to be that we all merrily get ‘Hewed, Screwed and Glued’ and the system is either what we make it, or suffer because of it.

Now Herbert the Kitchen Phoenix, a name probably drawn from the most attemptedly decent person at Abrams, Howard Reeves, is taking a holiday from pointless blogging, a true story will be left here and ‘the world’ can think what it likes, it always does! DCD

HALF NELSON.

An Agent and Scream of the White Bear.

The Phoenix Team turn their eyes compassionately but rather sceptically too on the boss. “David, it gets rough sometimes, and we think you well meaning, but rather idiotic. The Past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, and always did. Have you forgotten the difference between life and work? A play, film or book is there to entertain, inform, inspire and produce catharsis, all the other stuff is the real and important stuff.”

David mumbles something beginning with “B….s” and says, “Look at the Kipling quote in The Blood Garden. I started writing it to bring someone a life.”
So the happy team open the novel, only to find words like this:

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!

There is a loud shout of NEVER COULD KNOW and BORING across the office and everyone has some fun.

THE END

There are many different stages of life, not everyone can ‘stand up’ and nor should they. Nor is everyone meant to ‘lead’. But I think we are deeply wrong when we see true hurt, can do something about it, but just close our eyes and refuse to act, to heal or to protect, and place our own interests so much above wider interests. That is the true meaning of the irresponsible and the disconnected. That is what happens in corporations too that led to real life stories like Erin Brokavich and the threat to people who cannot defend themselves.