rambles and half-essays

by KM Brunner

  • art, clichés, feeling today tomorrow

    KM Brunner

    There have been days in my life – once, two full weeks – where I felt out of time. It’s similar to dissociation but more of a disconnection. Reality remains, but it’s not solid (while dissociating, reality remains – I know where it is, but I can’t engage). For those two weeks in 2017 I felt strongly that it was actually February of 2012 and I had an essay due. I felt that, somehow, I had to get it together to write about Lord Byron and his club foot.

    Februaries can be hard.

    And there are days when I feel small and young, and I remember my childhood hamster. Her name was Angel and she was very mean. I kind of liked that. Her hair matched mine because it was orange (pictured at left).

    I often feel very old, but that tracks with my real timeline. I am not chronologically the oldest person who’s ever lived, but my personality doesn’t quite make sense for the average 30-year-old.

    I am sick. That’s why. Nothing exciting. I’m old because I’m still here and I’m cranky because no one seems to care about what is important. Unfortunately, what is important is what they say is important: family, friends, love, art, nature, experience.

    Hallmark sayings and boring cliches do have substance, which I find a little frustrating.

    I think you have to be old – in experience, not years – to understand them. “Be yourself,” especially. No one can tell another person to be themselves and not sound patronizing, but the moment it clicks, when you realize that you must be yourself and there is no other option – the phrase is suddenly frightening.

    “Be yourself” can be an awful thing to say. It used to be for me, but now I find freedom in the phrase. It gives me permission to wear menswear and to draw monsters and to write science fiction. It allows me to stop competing with writers I admire and gives me the space to appreciate their work. Being myself is nice, and it would be even more fun if I liked my body.

    But like I said, I am sick. It is hard to enjoy a body that doesn’t want you there. Sick bodies want to die, and so they’re inhospitable to the life in them. I am that life and often, I wish I weren’t. And yet I must be myself, there is no other option, I have to remain and continue to flicker my bullshit electricity over a half-dead brain.

    I used to wish I weren’t sick, but you can’t do that when you pursue being authentic. If I weren’t sick I would not be this person. I think it’s unfair that she exists because suffering is an awful way to forge a personality, but I’d rather be her than be anyone else.

    Anyway, I’m done talking about this. I’m going to send you home with a gift bag full of media treats:

    Comic: Beyond Real, Vault Comics

    1. Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton – the textbook I’m following to learn to draw figures more accurately. This is a pirated pdf.
    2. Three Stanley Avenue Guest House (Kingsfield, ME) – I stayed here for four days a couple years ago. They have crappy wifi and there is no one in the town. It was one of the best vacations I’ve ever taken. Cheap as hell, too.
    3. Ebony graphite pencils are the best. Soft and quick – perfect for drawing fast on newsprint.

    The most moving and most interesting piece of music I’ve listened to recently:

  • mixed media, writing, mastery

    KM Brunner

    I’ve been experimenting with visual art lately. It’s made it hard to get writing done but I think it’s helping me from a creative standpoint, so maybe it’s worth the time I spend in front of clippings and paint and my new fine-line pens. I love my pens.

    There are (free) online courses you can take that’ll teach you how to make comics. I’m taking one on Coursera and it’s been a good time. I don’t want to be a comic writer, but two of my characters are visual artists, and it’s been fun to get a better picture of what they’re up to.

    My sketchbook is insane, which is the point of it. There’s a guitar pick taped in there somewhere.

    I do wish I were better at drawing figures/characters so I could make better thumbnails for the book, but I am what I am. No use doing anything other than practicing. I’m getting better. Slowly. People get degrees in drawing – I’m not expecting to be good at it, maybe ever. Art school seems hard and though I am working in a sense, I am certainly not working toward mastery.

    I’ve got two degrees in writing. I am seeking mastery, there. Awards are not my goal; I am interested in creating sincere, earnest work. I want to create something that gets at big questions using specific images and storylines. That’s what I’m working toward, and I think that goal’s realistic enough.

    Here are some things:

    1. This kid is a fabulous songwriter. I think he’s the new iteration of “emo” music for the youths. He doesn’t sound emo, but his vibes are emo as hell.

    2. Comicazi – my local comic shop. I love Boston and I love this shop.

    3. Paper Girls from Image Comics.

    4. Rosebud Salve – weird inclusion but it’s my favorite lip balm. Look it up yourself.

    5. Another song. In Limbo by Rigby. I love the vocals.

  • thesis-less

    KM Brunner

    Most blog posts have a point but I cannot think of one for the life of me. I still want to write, but I have nothing to say. Intuitively it doesn’t make sense but I’m compelled to write. Always have been. Maybe that can be my point: the compulsion to create doesn’t let up, even when it maybe should.

    I’ve got a ton of loose papers, pictures, art, and filed them all away yesterday. I told myself I’m going to use them for collages and maybe I will. I hope I will. But truly there is no use for them. Why am I making art? Why do I pursue creation?

    No one is making me. There’s no deadline. I don’t have to finish this book. I can go to workshop after workshop and make no progress and maybe I’d be happy.

    What ruins that is the compulsion. I’m compelled to continue and to work toward an end, whatever that may be. It’s a little frightening, if I’m being completely honest. I’ve always been like this so I’m used to it; when I’m not stressing myself out because I haven’t created enough, I’m in a depressive episode. It’s actually the thing that I’ve learned to watch for so I can get myself some help.

    I know I have to stop looking for a “why”. There isn’t one, and it’s not some cosmic thing. Or maybe it is – but if it is, there’s no use trying to understand it. I am preoccupied with these thoughts probably because it’s the one constant in my life and the thing that most fulfills me. I love to create. I don’t know what to do with that.

    Stuff:

    • Book: After the Revolution – post-America, post-apocalyptic novel. Very action-forward and fun.
    • Save the Cat Writes A Novel – craft book. Free PDF at the Internet Archive. I’ve been plotting my novel with it.

    KB

  • new genres, old imposter syndrome

    KM Brunner

    Writing sometimes gets me down but it happens more often when I’m less prepared. I’ve read a lot of literary fiction and creative nonfiction. I’ve even read a good amount of fantasy. But I’m writing – and most enamoured with – science/speculative fiction. I’m almost finished with a huge collection of Bradbury’s short stories and I’ve been blown away several times. His writing was – is – so inventive. Ahead of its time in many ways, and maybe even ahead of my time.

    These authors, including Ursula Le Guin, Phillip K Dick, Stanislaw Lem, whatever – they’re just cool with cool ideas and next to their imaginations mine feels shriveled. Prune-sized and flavoured. Prune. Flavoured. But prunes are all right some of the time, I suppose.

    Give me a day and I’ll be over this and back in a writing mood, but God is it hard not to compare oneself to other people.

    That said, I find a lot of other other people boring and derivative, so focusing on geniuses is definitely a me problem.

    Here’s the media I’ve been into the last couple weeks:

    • Comic: Kill Your Darlings (Image Comics)
    • Nick Drake – just revisiting him, he’s great. I put on Pink Moon every few days just to feel something.
    • James Ensor, painter. I also quite like this YouTube channel – Blind Dweller. Seems like a nice guy who’s just really into art.

  • writer’s sketchbook

    KM Brunner

    Like a lot of artists, I do a lot of art. Because I’m impatient and scatterbrained, I do several different types of art. I’m a good musician and play the occasional gig.

    I am not a good visual artist. Granted, my poems are worse. So bad. So bad you have no idea. So bad that I write them as almost a joke. And like most almost-jokes, they never land. 🙂

    Drawing is fun, though. It came free with my hands and you can do it on most anything. It’s tough when I can’t execute what I imagine, but if you draw enough you get better – good enough for a rough outline, which satisfies me.

    On YouTube I like to watch visual artists do sketchbook tours, where they film themselves flipping through their sketchbooks and do a voiceover. The art is pretty and professional, most of the time. It’s a really peaceful thing to watch.

    But I’d like to see someone do it who’s just straight-up bad. Like, someone who doesn’t care about looking like a professional. Me, maybe. I could do that if I wanted to. I could cut the bits of writing out of the sketchbooks (my drawings often devolve into writing).

    I just can’t add another hobby to my list. I know that. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to. The idea of a series of “writer’s sketchbook tour” videos is funny to me. I love fuckery.

    I’m debating whether I should take pictures of my sketchbook and put them in digital form to do a less time-intensive version of the video idea, but again, it’s just…another thing. And I have so many things I need to pursue. Want to pursue. Time is a limited resource and I wish it weren’t.

    KB

  • an easy out

    KM Brunner

    I’m determined to remain lacklustre, so this post is more word vomit/journal entry than anything useful. Similar to the last one, if I’m being honest. I do write every day – properly – but this is a place to let loose. Get out all the energy in my body.

    Creative energy, I mean. Other energies are still in me and becoming very, very inconvenient. What do you do when you don’t have a partner and are frightened of intimacy? Anyone got ideas? I’ve got “go meet people” and “marinate in self-pity” but there must be better ones.

    There are so many projects in my life I need to finish, including a novel whose direction changed drastically a few days ago. Means I have to rewrite everything, but I am excited to do that. The change makes the storytelling much smoother. It doesn’t feel like I’m fighting my characters anymore.

    Writing science fiction/speculative fiction is difficult, but easier than literary fiction and more interesting than creative nonfiction. I decided recently to start submitting short stories, but have yet to write one that remains short. So I’m working on that, I guess…

    Let’s get to the list; I’m boring myself.

    Untouchable – Luna Halo (Pop punk but in good taste? Again, a very catchy track. It’s corny but not in the way that most pop punk is.)

    Beneath the Trees (Where Nobody Sees), Image Comics – A comic about an humanoid bear serial killer illustrated like a children’s book. It’s buck wild and I really recommend checking it out.

    • Anne Truitt, Daybook – journal of a frustrated, middle-aged female artist. She sounds like I do in my head and it was so refreshing to read.
    • Currently Reading: I Sing the Body Electric! – Ray Bradbury. Batshit short stories, very cool, very abstract.
    • Song in E – Julien Baker. A great song about love and alcoholism. Has one of my favorite lines in it: “I wish that I drank because of you and not only because of me.”

  • starting a blog in 2024

    KM Brunner

    When I think of a blog I think of the ancient site Blogger and its orange branding. It’s still around, I think, though I haven’t checked because if it isn’t, I’d rather not know.

    The point of this blog is to be like those blogs, by which I mean: bad. I thought about creating a Substack like a real writer but I’ve got no bandwidth to add another time-sensitive responsibility to my list.

    Work, my neglected magazine, and my personal writing are enough. If I’m ever able to get out of the 40 hour grind, maybe I’ll pick up something else. I’ll dedicate some time to my painting, or properly produce the album I wrote in 2021. Who knows?

    As far as the writing I’ll keep here, I haven’t pinned much down but the point of writing is to do it, which means I have to start. So far, I’ve figured that some posts can be proper pieces, and some posts, like this one, will be a short ramble and a list of things I’m into at the time of posting.

    Here’s what I’m into:

    • Join the Club by Tilly Louise (indie rock, afab vox, catchy hook, and when I say catchy I mean catchy)
    • Hexagon Bridge, an Image comic, still being released monthly. It’s a cool story but the art is better. There’s a robot named Stanley who is mind-melded to his friend, Adley, though it’s clear (so far) they’re meant to be siblings. I’m really worried for them.
    • The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa. Beautiful novel. About colonialism, generational trauma/memory, familial relationships, beauty, and so much more. The writing is so gentle.
    • Give It to Me Straight, a podcast/show hosted by drag queen and comedian Maddy Morphosis, who’s known primarily as the only straight cis man to ever perform on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case – everything’s fluid, even the straightness of cis white men – but she should be better known as an interviewer. God, she’s good. Like Nardwuar but less painful to watch, more emotional, and much prettier. The people she interviews are also much more interesting than his, and she connects with them on a level deeper than a cheap “gotcha!”. My favorite episode is below, with Mrs. Kasha Davis.