That said, I have been focusing more on music, which was why I wanted to slow the pace. Since then, I’ve been DJing quite a bit. I have a monthly night at Falling Sky where I play funk, disco, house, and whatever else catches my ear. I’ve also recently started posting weekly sets on Mixcloud under the name Cult of Funk, and I’ve been publishing the tracklists and notes for those mixes here on Substack. It’s all pretty low-key and done for fun, but I love the music and it’s been a great way to get a bunch of friends together.

It also takes a shit ton of time.

Music, fiction, and games. Outside of work, these are my primary hobbies (by games I mostly mean roleplaying games like D&D). Finding time to indulge all my interests is a huge challenge. Plus, I don’t want to spend less time with family, so prioritization is essential, and my prioritization here is based on what I enjoy more. The answer has become pretty clear. Of the three, I enjoy music the most.

This realization surprised me. I expected fiction to be the winner, but looking back over my life, it seems obvious that music sits deeper in my soul. For a while, as a young child, I was embarrassed by my love of music. I remember neighborhood kids making fun of me when I tapped my foot and nodded my head to music. What a strange thing to ridicule someone for. But I also remember my sister and step-brother and I putting on a house concert for our parents around that same time. We pretended to play the instruments and sing to the album Band on the Run by Wings. I wonder if my sister remembers that?

Those memories are earlier than any story or fiction related memories. In 1977, when I first saw Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of the first things I did after seeing the movies was to buy the soundtracks. Those movies kicked off my love for story and speculation, and ever since then music and fiction have both been constant companions in my life. This is also around the time I discovered D&D, first the Basic Set and then the Advanced books a few years later, but that’s a story for another time (though if you’re interested in what I’m doing in that area, check out Worlds Enough where I’ve started posting game-related material).

Another factor that helped music come out on top is that I find music more intrinsically rewarding than fiction. The activity of “doing music” is more fun for me than the activity of writing fiction. Even with DJing (as opposed to playing an instrument or composing music), there are enough technical challenges to keep things interesting while also letting me immerse myself in a beautiful world of sound.

A big part of what makes music so rewarding is that it’s much more social than writing fiction. I work remotely, so my day-to-day interactions with folks is limited and confined to Zoom and Slack. I’m not looking for ways to be more isolated. In the evenings, I DJ here at home for an audience of just myself and Stephanie. The music fills the house (it truly is house music) and I feel like it’s a way for us to be more together even when we’re doing our own things. And then there’s the whole aspect of playing out for other people where I feel like I’m helping to create an atmosphere of good vibes and happiness. Music, I think, brings people together much more than fiction, and that means a lot to me right now.

In that spirit, I’ve put together a mix for your holiday listening. It’s a jazzy house affair, perfect for background music during your holiday festivities (especially when you need a break from the ubiquitous barrage of Christmas music). I talk more about the mix itself in the mix notes. I hope the music brings you happiness and cheer for you and yours over the holidays. If you enjoy it, please subscribe either on Mixcloud or to the liner notes on Substack so you’ll be notified whenever I release a new mix (usually on Fridays, but this week is special).

I hope you all have a great holiday season!

They called their style Crisis Combat, and like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do and Ed Parker’s Kenpo, it was a hybrid martial art, a blend of the best techniques from fighting systems around the world. Strikes and punches were taken from karate and boxing. Throws and takedowns were adopted from judo and aikido. Chokeholds and jointlocks were stolen from jiujitsu and wrestling. It was a lean style, with a small repertoire of moves that emphasized efficiency and expedition. Students learned to incapacitate their opponents as quickly as possible with minimal effort. It was very popular with stay-at-home parents and investment bankers.

There were complaints, of course, from old masters, shifu and sensei alike, about the lack of any philosophical foundation, the emphasis on shortcuts and surprise attacks, the proliferation of tricks and dirty techniques, but most of all, they complained about the celebration of aggression and the veneration of vengeance. With great power, comes great responsibility, they said, unaware they were quoting Spiderman. The Emergency School countered that they simply taught people how to defend themselves without subjecting them to, or requiring them to pay for, a bunch of mystical horsepucky.

A journalist I know, Kate Duncan, investigated the Emergency School of Karate after a wave of violence swept through the local high schools. It started when a handful of students took a few lessons and beat the shit out of their bullies. The bullies took notice and booked their own lessons in an attempt to regain the power they had lost. The situation spiraled as more and more students learned the secrets of breaking bones rather than the subtleties of conjugating verbs. Soon the city’s high schools were warzones with gangs of students prowling the hallways and throwing perfect punches at the slightest provocation. Eventually, the terrified administration, barricaded in offices and lounges, called the police.

When Kate went to interview management at the Emergency School of Karate, I tagged along. We knew something was strange when we pulled into the parking lot and found an empty building with a “For Lease” sign on the door. Peering through dirty glass, we saw ten thousand square feet of vacant space thick with dust. Clearly nothing had been here for years. I figured Kate had the wrong address, but she assured me that this was the address several students had given her. We walked around the deserted parking lot to the back of the building, and next to a dented and rusted dumpster I found the one clue that the Emergency School of Karate had ever been here: a long, wide white belt made of cloth with a smear of blood at one end.

Back in the car, I turned on the radio while Kate noted some notes in her notebook. Then, as we pulled out of the lot, a speeding car ran a stoplight, forcing Kate to swerve up onto the sidewalk to avoid a collision. The other driver seemed to laugh in the rearview as he sped away. Furious, Kate flipped him off and spewed a stream of obscenities like an incantation to open the very gates of hell. I tasted her rage coiling in crowded air of the small car. Her hands shook as they squeezed the steering wheel, and her jaw pulsed as she ground her teeth. Then on the radio an ad: “Are you tired of being pushed around? The Emergency School of Karate can help!” Her article forgotten, Kate smiled a wicked smile and picked up her pen and wrote down the number.

I spend most of my writing time revising over and over until every paragraph, image, and sentence rings true in my ear. And though it is time consuming, it is also delightful and I do it because each revision, each change, sharpens what the writing is trying to convey. Finding a more precise word or rearranging the rhythm of a sentence helps me better understand what I’m experiencing, and the revised piece better expresses what I’m thinking, but I’m not sure my weekly pace is sustainable.

In particular, I miss music making. My side hobbies all involve music: DJing, playing the guitar and Stick Bass, creating music in Ableton Live, programming Max and synth patches. My commitment to one post per week leaves me with no time to make music. This makes me sad. So, I’m going to slow the pace a bit and devote more time to enjoying the musical side of my life. Since I plan to write a little about my musical projects and productions, perhaps the overall pace won’t slow, just some of the posts will have a different focus.

Which brings me to the next change I’ve been thinking about. There are a lot of great writers on Substack, and as I’ve been reading their work, I’ve also been refining my understanding of what I like and what I find special about writing here. We have lots of people writing essays and articles on topics such as culture or politics or technology, and those seem to be the writers with the most subscribers. Other writers publish essays that are more personal, and still others write short stories, serialized novels, and poetry. I’ve read great writing in all of these categories, but the writing I find most intriguing on Substack is the kind that invites us into the writer’s private world and shows us what their unique life is like as they struggle to live well amidst the chaos and ambiguity that surrounds us.

This kind of writing is like autobiography, but not autobiography that’s neatly organized into elegant volumes edited to make a life look comprehensible. No, this is autobiography written in the blinding glare of confusion, with flashes of imagination and flares of reflection, it’s full of jagged edges and discontinuities, false starts and mistakes. It’s writing that shows, in real-time, the writer trying to make sense of their life. If meaning is the imagination’s response to ambiguity, then this writing is glittering with the stuff, and reading it is like tracing the contours of the writer’s thoughts, grasping the heft of their experiences, and falling into the depths of their emotions. It’s an intimate kind of writing that builds over time, and it works best, I think, when delivered as raw, uncut email sent straight into your inbox week after week.

I feel that this is adjacent to the kind of stuff I’ve been writing, but I often drift more into fiction. I think in 2024 I will try to write more posts where I apply the fiction with a lighter touch. I don’t know exactly what this will look like. Probably more like Loss of Presence than Stillpoint. Pieces like Emporium of Memory and Twenty More Minutes are probably in the ballpark too. I think they will feel more like essays than stories, but I’m not sure. Of course, I’ll continue writing the kind of stuff I’ve been writing, I just want to mix it up a bit.

I’m extraordinarily thankful for each and every one of you who subscribe to the Jabber and take time out of your day to read. I hope it’s been a fun ride in 2023 and that the changes I’m planning for 2024 don’t scare you off. You can always reply directly to the Hyperjabber emails to let me know your thoughts, and please don’t forget about that Like button which lets me know which posts are more popular.

Take care and enjoy this lovely photo from the even more lovely and very talented Stephanie.

Stillpoint — This one turned out longer than most of my stories despite my efforts to keep it shorter, but it’s a space opera that spans a billion years of history, so what’s a poor writer to do? It started with my desire to do something different with time travel which then mixed with the idea of a planet hopping Indiana Jones. At one point, the story included a line about a laser whip, but that didn’t survive my attempts to shorten and further concentrate the story.

Twenty More Minutes — I’m a member of the Story Club Substack hosted by , and he did a lesson on the James Salter story “Twenty Minutes.” That story was excellent, but I was even more intrigued by the idea of writing about dying. Then I thought, what if I imagined my own death. It turns out, this is not that easy and somewhat traumatic. I found myself returning to the motifs of wetness and dryness and of lightness and darkness to help me get through the story.

Helios|Erebus — I truly do love this album, but this review/story was harder than I anticipated. The basic idea held steady throughout the writing, but the narrator and incidents described evolved through many iterations. I also spent a lot of time on the 1,820 day calendar described in the story. Inspired by real Mesoamerican calendars, I worked out in detail how three different cycles generate the calendar. I’d like to someday revisit this world with a new story based around the specifics of the calendar. We’ll see. The story also includes a few “easter eggs” for folks who spend some time listening to each of the album’s songs.

The Most Wonderful Time — My holiday story for 2023 features a concept that I think about frequently: what if there different types of time and these different types influence what happens during those times. Perhaps there’s a type of time called wartime and when it is in effect, people are more prone to war. I quite like this way of thinking about time and am certain it will pop up in future stories. However, when I sat down to craft this holiday story, my goal was to write something more cheerful than the previous three and I hadn’t yet zeroed in on a specific idea. Turns out that writing something “cheerful” is not that easy for me. Not sure what that means….

Substack and the Nazi Question — To be clear I have not seen Nazi propaganda on Substack. Maybe I’d find some if I went looking for it (or followed links provided by others who have encountered it), but I’ve been lucky enough to be spared that experience so far. However, management of Substack says that there are Nazis here and that Substack will continue to host them without any restrictions beyond what’s outlined in their content guidelines (for instance, apparently even Nazis aren’t allowed to publish porn on Substack). This doesn’t really make me happy, and this post describes my initial thoughts on the issue. I have a lot more to say about this whole debacle, but I won’t fill your inboxes with it. Future writings on this topic will be shadow posted: I’ll post them on my Substack site without sending them out. They’ll be referenced in the monthly Postscript so you can choose if you want to bother reading them.

Quickies, Volume 1 — As implied by the “Volume 1” bit, I plan to make this a regular feature of Hyperjabber. These will be short recommendations (free of Nazi propaganda) about books, music, films, other Substacks, and whatever else I’ve found interesting. I hope you also find them interesting.

A Primer Regarding Nazis on Substack — This essay attempts to catalog the various arguments I’ve encountered regarding Nazis on Substack. It tries to be more objective than my previous essay on it which was more of a reaction piece. As promised, this one wasn’t emailed or pushed out to subscribers, but it’s here if you want to read it.

(2) Substack management has stated that they do not believe that censoring or demonetizing fringe voices (Nazis, in this particular case) makes the problem go away. I think this amounts to an acknowledgement that Nazis are publishing on Substack and earning money from paid subscriptions, but even if the Nazi population is currently zero, the statement indicates that management does not plan to censor or prevent them from earning money if they do show up in the future.

(3) The phrasing about making “the problem go away” is interesting. They don’t specify which problem they are referring to, but from context I believe that they mean the existence of Nazis in our society. I think that Substack is addressing the people who believe that the number of Nazis in our society would be reduced if society makes it more difficult for Nazis to spread their ideas. From their statement, I gather that Substack management disagrees with this proposition. They believe that making it more difficult for Nazis to spread their ideas has no effect on the number of Nazis in our society. Actually, that’s not true. They claim that it “makes it worse,” which I assume means that if society makes it more difficult for Nazis to spread their ideas, then more people will become Nazis.1

(4) Whether or not you agree with that idea, other people seem to have a different problem with Nazis on Substack. They simply find Nazi speech offensive and don’t want to view it. This is probably similar to how some people find graphic descriptions of sex offensive and don’t want to view it either. Substack has already addressed this problem when it comes to sex. Their content guidelines ban porn and make it clear that Substack may limit the exposure of other sexual content. Readers even have a toggle they can use to indicate if they wish Substack to filter and hide explicit content. I believe it is accurate to call this treatment of porn and explicit content censorship. The statement made by Substack management indicating that they will not censor fringe and Nazi voices leads me to conclude that they have no plans to implement similar sorts of controls for Nazi speech, even though doing so would make the Substack experience better for people who find Nazi hate as offensive as others find explicit sex.

(5) You will find many claims that Substack allows Nazi speech because Substack is against all censorship. Other folks respond that Substack is not against all censorship because they censor porn (and other types of speech as detailed in their content guidelines). It is worth noting that folks advancing this argument are not necessarily advocating that Substack should allow porn. They are simply arguing that it is incorrect to claim that Substack does not censor speech.

(6) Another common argument is that because readers typically subscribe to specific newsletters, Substack effectively prevents undesired content from reaching them. Most people seem to agree that this is largely true, but there are some key exceptions and those exceptions are apparently why Substack implemented the policies and controls to manage explicit sexual content. The exceptions seem to be the promotional emails that Substack sends, the Explore feature that displays Notes and newsletters from writers to which you don’t subscribe, and the search function. Undesired content can reach your eyes through any of these channels.

(7) Some folks believe that the number of Nazis on Substack will be small enough that their presence won’t pose any sort of problem, or if it does pose a problem, it will be minor and easily addressed with the tools currently available, such as blocking and muting. As a counter-example, people point to other social media sites where unrestricted Nazi speech has, they feel, become a significant problem. They also argue that the tools Substack currently provides are insufficient to effectively block Nazi content (especially if the volume increases considerably). To be fair, it seems that many of the folks who believe that Nazis won’t have a disruptive presence also hold a wait-and-see approach. If the Nazis do become a problem, then Substack should consider revisiting their hands-off policy.

(8) You will also find people who argue that all censorship and content bans are wrong, even when implemented by a private entity.2 These arguments can be very slippery. One person claimed that no one should ban anyone and then banned comments from everyone except paid subscribers. Other anti-censorship folks attempt to censor Nazi objectors by telling them to “shut up” or “just leave already.” Like I said, this is very slippery terrain. I don’t believe that the anti-censorship folks think that I or they should be forced to publish content they disagree with, but they do seem to think that media businesses, such as Substack, should be forced to (or at least have a moral obligation to) publish all speech.3 I think the anti-censorship argument would be stronger if it was clear when those of us who run a business publishing a newsletter should be considered a media business required or obligated to publish all speech. This is a complex and nuanced topic, and I have a forthcoming essay that digs into it more deeply.

(9) There are some who believe that any promotion of Nazi propaganda is morally wrong and that ethical behavior demands that we always object to it and advocate for its removal whenever and where ever we encounter it. These folks feel that concerns regarding free speech and censorship carry less moral weight than the immorality of promoting Nazis. Basically, they think that while it is generally wrong to restrict speech, it is more evil to promote Nazis.

(10) I’ve seen insinuations that some people here wish to censor all speech they disagree with. I haven’t actually seen that position held by anyone, though I’ve seen hard-core anti-censorship folks stray in that direction if they start to back away from the view that all speech must be allowed. I think everyone agrees that the power to censor is easily abused. Ambiguities in the definition of the thing to be censored can be exploited to block speech that should be allowed. Transparency is offered as a solution, but then folks point out that you must trust the censors to actually be fully transparent. This potential abuse of power is often a primary concern for folks who are reluctant to promote censorship.

(11) For some, allowing Nazis to publish here is a tolerable evil, but allowing them to earn money through paid subscriptions is too much. These folks want Nazis to be prohibited from monetizing their hate. Most of the arguments I’ve seen against this position stem from the belief that restricting monetization is a form of censorship. The demonetization folks disagree that it’s a form of censorship because the actual speech is not being restricted, just the ability to earn money from it.

(12) Unsurprisingly, many people don’t have a logical, well-thought out philosophy about Nazis here on Substack. Some just aren’t interested enough to spend time thinking it through, and others simply lash out against any opinion they feel represents an ideological stance they disagree with. These folks will usually claim one of the arguments listed here, but if you actually get them to discuss the issue, they will freely and uncritically adopt different arguments as it suits the moment, even if the new argument contradicts their previous arguments. You’ll have to decide if they just don’t care that much or if they are trolling for lols.

(13) Finally, there are people who think that there’s nothing wrong with hosting Nazis and that the proper course of action is to engage them in debate whenever you encounter their hate. This will, they argue, persuade others who read the debate that Nazi ideas are evil and wrong. Arguments against this point out that Nazis aren’t really interested in debate and can simply block and delete folks who pursue this strategy. Nazis have no qualms about censoring folks who disagree with them so a reader wandering into their space will see no dissent.4

Most arguments I’ve seen are similar to one of the above or are at least a variation of one of the above. In the discussions I’ve had, people usually have concerns that I can sympathize with, but they obscure those points with endless name calling and efforts to score points against whatever abstract enemy—the left, the right, the sympathizers, the snowflakes, the elites, the liberals, the extremists, etc.—they currently find most annoying. My recommendation is to stay nice and treat everyone with respect and compassion. Don’t try to convince someone who already holds a firm opinion. Respect their position and ask questions in an effort to truly understand what they think. This will help you refine your position, and if you can keep it cordial, will help other people refine their positions when they read through your dialogue.

Stay safe out there.

These three are on my read-soon stack, though I don’t offer a precise definition of “soon.” My wife gave me a new clip-on reading light for Christmas, and since these are all physical books, they will all get to try the clip in the new year.

The Potemkin Mosaic, by (a friend I’ve know for many years) is a novel-like narrative about a dream doctor who discovers that someone is editing his mind. It’s the book you might expect if Tim Powers wrote Inception after reading House of Leaves. Teppo also has a newsletter, The Creative Brief, you should check out.

The question of free will has always fascinated me. Given my understanding of the universe and physics, I don’t see how free will can exist, but I certainly feel like I have free will. Sapolsky’s Determined explores what it means if free will doesn’t exist and is just an illusion. I’m looking forward to digging into this.

The Invisible Dragon was a recommendation from , and you can read excerpts in his newsletter, The Honest Broker. The author, Dave Hickey, was a renegade art critic who dared suggest beauty was essential to art. I’ve paged through this a bit and Hickey writes with a wonderful conversational style that veers into sophisticated scholarship whenever it suits him. I can’t wait to read more.

Music

These three albums were all released in 2023 and I heartily recommend each of them. They come from different corners of the music world, but all feature fabulous guitar playing.

Frontier’s Edge by The Budos Band is an instrumental album of 70’s psychedelic fuzz played with a jazzy, funk-rock style. Classic. I will probably write a deeper review/story of this in the future, but you can start priming your ears now. I particularly enjoy the interplay of the horns, guitar, and keys while the bass and drums accentuate the funky rhythms.

Imposter Syndrome by British guitarist Sophie Lloyd is her debut album of original music. Lloyd started as a YouTube prodigy posting “shred versions” of popular rock songs and then went on to tour with Machine Gun Kelly. On this album, though, she ventures out on her own with support from a range of musicians including Lzzy Hale from Hailstorm, Tyler Connolly from Theory of a Deadman, and Marisa Rodriguez from Marisa and the Moths. The songs are rocking and the guitar shredding is immaculate.

In Between Thoughts…A New World by Rodrigo y Gabriela is another great album from these acoustic alchemists, but on this one they bring in the flash of electric guitar and the sweep of orchestral strings. Their style mixes the flavors of flamenco, heavy metal, and jazz into a lovely elixir of sound. Given that the album’s inspiration emerged from the study of nondualism, I feel a future review/story working away in the back of my mind, but you shouldn’t wait until then to enjoy this delightful set of songs.

I consider myself a free speech advocate, but when it comes to hate speech—speech that promotes the mistreatment, abuse or murder of people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or medical condition—my position is, at its most generous, one of bare tolerance. If there was a way to reliably and accurately ban hate speech from public discourse, I would be tempted to endorse it, but I don’t think that’s possible, and I’m very reluctant to give anyone the power to ban speech because I know that they’ll eventually abuse that power.

I also think open discussion of controversial issues is of vital importance to a liberal democracy, but I don’t think that hate speech, and especially Nazi speech, qualifies as controversial. The belief that a master Aryan race exists and is entitled to rule all other people and exterminate whole ethnic groups is as ludicrous (though far more dangerous) as the belief that the earth is flat. These ideas have been thoroughly debunked and tossed onto the rubbish heap of history. There is no controversy here, and no real value to further debate or discussion. Just because an idea is repugnant doesn’t mean it’s controversial. We could and should spend our time discussing the many other real and important controversial issues that our society faces daily.

I live in a city in which Nazi’s also live. I imagine that they’re busy publishing manifestos and ranting on the internet while taking advantage of the public services offered by the city. Do I support hate speech by paying taxes and contributing to the welfare of the city? Is it useful to compare my residence in this city to my use of Substack? I think it’s reasonable to say that the city and Substack both enable hate speech—though the city does so indirectly while Substack enables hate speech directly—but I feel no compulsion to move away from my city.

Substack has a feature that recommends newsletters and Notes from writers you don’t currently follow (a Note is Substack’s term for shorter posts like you might find on Twitter/X). Will a bunch of Nazis start showing up in my recommendations? Will Substack use recommendations of my writing to draw people to hate speech? Substack squandered their first opportunity to address these sorts of questions by side stepping the issues and instead patting themselves on the back for their devotion to “free speech.” In fact, Substack’s response read more like marketing designed to attract even more hate speech, which increases my concerns that Substack will soon be inundated with hate speech where previously I’ve seen very, very little.

I also don’t see why a devotion to the principles of free speech requires Substack to ensure that purveyors of hate must be able to make a profit from their speech. According to The Atlantic, Substack took special measures to help one Nazi writer find a way to monetize their hate even when Substack’s only supported payment processor refused to handle their business. I mean, what the fuck is up with that. Devotion to free speech also doesn’t mean that a founder of Substack needs to promote Nazis by inviting them onto their podcast. There are plenty of other people with serious ideas about real controversial issues that our society would actually benefit from hearing. Why use that time and energy to promote a Nazi? (And if you were duped, at least offer a sincere apology.)

Substack’s professed devotion to free speech seems even more like a joke when you read their content guidelines regarding sex: “We don’t allow porn.” You might recall that courts have ruled porn actually is protected free speech. Substack does allow erotic literature and artistic nudity but it’s not at all clear how that differs from porn. In addition they “may hide or remove explicit content from Substack’s discovery features, including search and on Substack.com.” Apparently this bastion of free speech considers sex so much more dangerous and offensive than hate that they must either ban it or take special precautions against it. They certainly aren’t going out of their way to help sex writers monetize their content. I guess only writers of hate deserve special treatment?

Substack’s content guidelines don’t actually say much about hate speech. The section titled “Hate” simply states that using Substack to “publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes” is prohibited. So it’s really a section about violence, which they reinforce with the clarification that it includes “credible threats of physical harm.” The section makes no mention of other types of hate speech targeting protected classes. And, as mentioned above, there’s no statement that indicates Substack might limit the reach of hate speech.

Where does this leave me? As I said at the beginning, I’m an advocate of free speech, but after reading Substack’s content guidelines, I don’t really believe that they are all that committed to free speech. They actually prohibit quite a bit of speech, which is, of course, their right. They are not the government, and they get to decide how they want to run their business, but they are clearly not the big champions of free speech that they pretend.

I’d be more comfortable if Substack treated writers of hate like they currently treat sex writers. It would be great if they would also treat sex writers like they currently treat hate writers, but that’s probably way too much to wish for. I’d like some assurances that Substack is not going to recommend Nazi and hate speech to my readers (unless they’ve expressed a preference for that), and that they’re not going recommend my work next to Nazi and hate speech. For the most part, Substack lets readers control what they see, which is a major plus that initially drew me to the platform, but there are “public areas” and we don’t really have any insight into how Substack curates what happens there.

Eventually, Substack could become “that Nazi site” because every few posts it recommends will be from Nazis and other writers who have migrated to the platform to make a living from their hate. I don’t want to be associated with such a platform, and I’m pretty sure that my readers don’t want to be on such a platform. I also think Substack management doesn’t want this and will eventually change their minds and create ways to limit the reach of hate speech. As to Substack’s profiting off of hate, it would be great if they’d donate a sizable portion of all hate-derived profits to an anti-hate charity, or, even better, simply prevent monetization of hate speech altogether. You can do that and still be a champion of free speech.

I have no idea if any of this will actually come to pass, but, I think, for now, I’ll hold out and see where things go. I believe that Substack is better than other social media sites. The amount of control they give writers and readers is unprecedented and deeply appreciated. I saw one person comment that they were cancelling all their Substack subscriptions, but they seemed quite content to remain on Facebook. Given Facebook’s history and policies, that made me scratch my head for sure. Substack is, in my opinion, definitely better than Facebook or Twitter/X.

All my content is free to access so you don’t have to feel that you’re financially supporting Substack, but I understand if all of this makes you too uncomfortable to stay. Hopefully, we’ll be able to look back on this as a temporary misstep from a young company trying to attract a balance of popular and controversial writers. Let’s hope that Substack’s leadership realizes this before the site becomes dominated by Nazis and there’s nothing left that’s popular or controversial because it’s all been killed by hate. I’m rooting for Substack and I try to be optimistic, but considering what’s happened to all of the other tech/media companies, I fear that I’m being naïve. Let’s see what the New Year brings.

For our family, Christmas time begins with the ringing of a small, silver bell we keep safe in an old wooden cabinet built by my grandfather. It’s as if the bell’s jingle infuses time itself with the magic of family, friends, and good cheer. Sweets taste sweeter, fireplaces burn warmer, and laughter comes easier. The long, dark winter days somehow seem brighter, and even the dim December sunlight gains a kind of languid grace. I find that it’s a relaxed time, a time of goals deferred, a time to live slow and cherish the people around you. During Christmas, time is measured not by the ticks of a clock, but by the breath of love we give.

It’s the giving that’s important because the magic of Christmas time comes from sharing it. They say that time is more precious than money, and once it’s spent, it’s gone, but Christmas time is different. You create more by sharing. I guess, in a way, it is the ultimate time share. Consider the story of Saint Nicholas back in the fourth century when he was simply a priest overseeing a small parish in Southern Greece. His congregation included a young, poor couple who were deeply in love, but didn’t have the money to pay the marriage tithes required by the local lord. The boy was a simple farmhand, and the girl was an orphan who lived with a cruel woman and her two daughters. Saddened by their plight, Nicholas took money from the church coffers and secretly gave it to the boy. Elated by the anonymous gift, the couple planned to marry, but before they could make the arrangements, the church discovered that money was missing and imprisoned the priest. When the lovers learned of his duress, they used the money to instead pay the tribunal and free Nicholas.

This is typical of Christmas time. The magic doesn’t necessarily result in profit for anyone, but rather it enriches our lives by deepening the connections between us, bringing us closer, and elevating our care for each other. Like Nicholas and the young couple, we often make great sacrifices to cherish each other in ways that avalanche through our lives and spread across the world. Our outward situation may not change, but the happiness we feel from being loved makes all the difference. It’s miraculous and unique. None of the other types of time have the same effect as Christmas time, and none of the others inspire a joy that warms the coldest night. It truly is the most wonderful time, and my Christmas wish is that you all find silver bells to ring in that time for you and your family throughout the year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

I remember first listening to the album as I drove up to Corvallis to hear a solstice talk titled “Visions of the Maya.” The album immediately captured my attention and the miles flew by as the music immersed me in a mythic, aural world of light and darkness. The album’s songs were complex, instrumental works of seething sonic textures, veering between absolute extremes. Peaceful melodies abruptly exploded into violent, churning rhythms which then suddenly gave way to soothing, hypnotic drones. The bright, chiming tones of guitar and piano drifted over lush, ambient soundscapes only to be drowned by heavy bursts of dark, boiling power chords surging over deep oceans of bass and drum. The album was dramatic and apocalyptic, the sound of humanity struggling to keep darkness at bay. I cherished it from that very first listen, but I had no idea just how apropos it was.

In Corvallis, the speaker had been a young, charismatic man whose dark curly hair and sloped jawline reminded me of Jim Morrison. He called himself Agneya, and in his talk he described a series of visions he had experienced while observing the Vetus Memoria, a ceremony involving psilocybin mushrooms and tantric sex. He claimed to have Mayan ancestry—though I couldn’t see it—and that the ceremony had awakened ancient ancestral memories. He had captured the revelations in a book he wrote called Obscura Somni, copies of which were for sale on a fold-up table at the back.

The first vision had revealed a terrifying eldritch god imprisoned in the depths of the earth. Agneya described how thousands of years ago the unnamed god had sought to entomb the world in darkness, but the ancient Maya, his ancestors, at the cost of their civilization, had defeated it. Their priests had then bound the god in chains of blood and buried it in a vast cavern deep beneath the earth.

The second vision revealed that the Maya knew their prison would eventually fail. They predicted that on a winter solstice thousands of years in the future, the chains would finally give way and the god would unleash an apocalypse upon the earth. The date of that solstice, when translated to our calendar, was December 21, 2012. Though that date, at the time of the talk, was several years in the past, it was still in the future when Agneya had originally experienced the revelation.

The third vision had revealed the Rites of K’uk’ulkan, a five year ritual that would fortify the chains and keep the god bound and buried. The ritual’s daily devotions were determined by the Finem Solis, a calendar of 1,820 days that began on the winter solstice of 2012, the day of the foretold apocalypse. Agneya described how he and a small circle of friends had been keeping the Rites of K’uk’ulkan alive over the last several years from a communal house they called Centralia deep in Oregon’s old growth forest.

A small tremor shakes me from my reverie, but at least the music doesn’t skip. I had scoffed at the time, so many years ago, thinking how ridiculous this Agneya was, mixing Latinate terms with Mesoamerican mythology and hawking a cheap book of third-rate revelations. I also remember that many of the women in the audience, and a few of the men, had watched Agneya’s every move with a quiet, seething desire. Perhaps my disdain back then had hidden a touch of jealousy, but when the FBI raided Agneya’s compound a few days ago, my smug satisfaction felt honest enough.

After the raid went public, the news called them the Cult of the Fifth Sun and mentioned allegations of tax evasion, drug running, extortion, and sexual abuse. They showed a video of Agneya, whose real name was apparently Mark Jasper, being stuffed into a police cruiser. He looked as I remembered, but his eyes held a confused, terrified look. Off-camera, someone had been shouting, “No! Don’t do this! You don’t understand!”

Suddenly the music cuts to silence as another tremor rocks the house and kills the power. A dull, evening light filters through the windows, and I think I now understand. It’s been several days since the Cult of the Fifth Sun performed their last ritual. Whatever they had been keeping captive deep underground was now stirring, awakening, rumbling the earth. If I remember Agneya’s lecture correctly, it won’t be long now. I slip on a pair of headphones and restart the music. For a few moments, quiet, dreamlike voices float softly on ethereal currents, but then a howling, vengeful fury rises from a dark abyss hidden deep in the music and sears across the audio like the very sound of apocalypse. I nod my head to the pulsing beat. The time of Helios was over and the age of Erebus had begun.

Though crushed into my seat by the steering wheel and dashboard, I felt fine. I thought I might shimmy out of the wreck and walk back up to the road, but I found that I was unable to move anything but my head. I knew that was bad, but I also knew that I still had a little time. Maybe the twenty minutes they always said you had.

The sounds of the forest were returning now that the echoes of the crash had faded. Birds sang their evening songs and a breeze shuffled the fallen leaves. Deeper in the woods, I thought I saw the dark, blurry shape of a man standing in the shadows between the trees. I called out, pleading for help, but my voice was barely louder than the insistent ticking of the cooling engine. When I blinked to clear my eyes, the man had vanished into the dusk.

Stephanie would just now be arriving home, turning on the lights, feeding Ruby, and wondering about our plans for dinner. We’d been wanting to try that new whiskey bar serving Mexican tapas and country songs, but hadn’t found the time. Or maybe the kids would come by and we would grill burgers in the backyard, sipping beer as the sun set. They always complimented me on the grilling, but I knew it was a conciliatory prize. The magic that made those burgers so delicious was all Stephanie. It always had been.

The dark shape of a deer moved between the trees just a dozen yards from me, a little closer than where the man had stood. When it suddenly darted away, bounding into the shadows, I thought for a moment that maybe someone was coming along the road and would see the wreckage, but no one came. I had taken the little-traveled backroad to avoid the rush-hour traffic. It took longer, even longer than the jammed main roads, but it was far more enjoyable.

I remembered our last trip to Hawaii. The hotel’s pools had all been connected by canals and slides, and we’d rented a private cabana next to a small pool with a view of the beach and the sparkling ocean. We laid about in the cabana, talking and reading, the kids playing music on their phones, trying to find rap songs that Stephanie liked. When the heat became more than the margaritas could handle, we hurried across the hot concrete and jumped into a pool. We stood at the corners of a lopsided square and threw a football back and forth. Stephanie often threw it short, the ball splashing cool water into my face, her apologies almost as loud as her laughter.

As the shadows of sunset crept through the woods, I saw a low, dark shape, smaller than the deer, slip between the nearby trees. I didn’t feel fear exactly, but rather a sense of apprehension—and loss. I tried to focus on it, to understand it, to see it for what it was, but it evaded my knowing. I stared as hard as I could at the shadows between the trees but a barrage of memories soon overwhelmed me.

Stephanie had been my sister’s best friend in grade school, before we moved away. We didn’t connect then, but by the time she visited us in high school, things had changed. Her bare legs flashed in the sun as we walked on the shore, and when she smiled, I knew I would follow her anywhere.

— The dark shape, an animal of some sort, watches from the trees.

We traveled across the country, young and alive and impetuous. We drank milk from the carton and danced to music under the stars. We found a little apartment where we would dream on a cheap futon laid bare on the floor.

— The animal circles behind the wrecked car, sniffing at the dirt.

One of my favorite dreams was the one where Stephanie and I are well into our so-called golden years and we visit our kids during a holiday. After a big meal and a bottle of wine, we all take a walk in the last of the daylight. Stephanie and I hold hands while the snow falls around us and the kids tell us about the latest in their lives.

— It rustles the leaves alongside the car. It’s so close.

There is still so much to do. So much more to feel. I can’t believe it’s over—that I leave her like this. Soon, she’ll check my location on her phone, but by then the dry sun will have set. I think of the kids and their brilliant lives ripe with dreams. They’ll be there for her, and she for them.

— It’s right next to me and I smell it, earthy and wild.

The dark shape suddenly steps into view and I see now that it’s our dog Ruby, wagging her stumpy tail. She carefully steps over the safety glass and leans in through the side window. I remember when Stephanie brought her home on a bright Christmas Day so many years ago. The kids had been delighted by the excited black puppy running in circles around their presents. I remember long walks along grassy trails next to flowing creeks. I remember Stephanie holding a stick while Ruby crouched beside her, alert and quivering, ready to give chase.

Ruby sniffs at my wet face and I wish I had another twenty minutes to remember just a little more, but the pain is starting to creep in, and I hear myself groan as I close my already shut eyes. I try to whisper “good girl,” but my voice is now nothing more than an empty husk. I know it’s time. Ruby leans closer, and with a wet, gentle lick to my cheek, she herds my last breath into the cool, quiet night air.

He kept handwritten notes of his discoveries in a worn, tattered leather journal—an elegant affectation from a more civilized age. During the long hyperspace journeys between worlds he would review what little he knew. The Wehn’s empire began when life on Earth was little more than a smear of fungus clinging to wet rocks beneath a hot sun. For millions of years the Wehn had warred with other species for control of the galaxy. Then, a billion years ago, at the peak of their power and on the verge of victory, the Wehn disappeared.

Quaid suspected that the Wehn destroyed themselves with a doomsday weapon meant to protect and preserve their empire for an eternity. He hoped that, despite the dangers, uncovering the secrets of this ancient weapon would provide humanity with the means to fend off the fearsome Kü, who were sweeping into the galaxy from the deep darkness of the intergalactic void. Tales of the Kü’s conquests and atrocities had spread across the galaxy, but Quaid paid them no heed. He refused to dwell on what he had already lost.

His current destination was an unexplored, starless rift between the outer galactic arms. He had decoded the location from an inscription carved into the wall of a half-buried temple on a distant, airless moon. The inscription had said that there in the gulf between stars he would find the “stillpoint at the center of the universe.”

When his ship finally emerged from hyperspace, he discovered a gas giant floating free in interstellar space, untethered to any sun. Without the exact coordinates from the temple, he would never have found it. As he approached, he was surprised by a sudden burst of tachyon particles from the planet’s core, and then he was even more surprised by the docking station orbiting at the end of a massive elevator stalk rising from the bands of swirling ochre clouds. He activated the elevator with a passcode he had recovered from a cracked memory crystal at the bottom of a shallow methane sea on a deserted planet. The elevator took him down into the impossible depths and unbelievable pressures of a vast metallic-hydrogen ocean lurking far below the turbulent clouds. It terminated at an Earth-sized, artificial sphere buried in the planet’s core.

A drone resembling a tangled, floating bush welcomed him in a language that was common to the galaxy a billion years before he was born. He followed it to a large empty chamber where its gemstone-like leaves shimmered with an inner light and a throne-like seat flowed up from the floor. This, he thought, must be the so-called stillpoint, the operational heart of a weapon of unfathomable power. A weapon of final vengeance against the Kü. He sat and the throne’s neuralfield radiated his mind with memories.

The first thing Quaid realized was that Stillpoint was not a weapon. It was something much more powerful. A billion years ago, the Wehn had discovered that they could manipulate time by rapidly spinning a naked singularity. They built Stillpoint in the center of a remote gas giant, and then created a singularity in the center of Stillpoint. They spun the singularity faster and faster until it reached the speed of light and emitted a burst of tachyons, anchoring it to that exact moment, a point in time the Wehn called inception. So long as the singularity remained spinning, Stillpoint could always jump back to any point in time after inception, but it could not go back any further, to a time before inception. Within its interior, though, the flow of time remained unaffected and simply continued uninterrupted. Sheltered inside of their planet-sized machine, the Wehn became untethered orphans of time.

The throne showed Quaid how the Wehn used Stillpoint to dominate the galaxy. Their mastery of time made them unstoppable and all but omnipotent. Whenever they encountered a problem or situation not to their liking, they simply rewound the timeline and resolved the problem for the better. Utterly patient, the Wehn rewound time again and again, changing events until history flowed just as they wished. From the perspective of those outside Stillpoint, the Wehn always knew the exact best course of action to protect and preserve the empire. They ruled for a billion years.

Eventually, though, they confronted an enemy they could not defeat. An enemy unfazed by their supremacy of time. An enemy who worshipped a living god intent on enslaving all life. Realizing that their empire would soon fall to this god and its horde of fanatical warriors, the Wehn took Stillpoint back to inception, a billion years in the past. They then slowed the singularity and escaped into a pocket universe, sealing it behind them forever.

Quaid shook at the scope and scale of the Wehn’s accomplishments, and then he weeped at the tragic conviction and resolve required for such an irreversible retreat. The throne’s last directive, received an eon ago, was to reengage the singularity’s spin when Stillpoint was rediscovered. This has been done, the throne said, and inception occurred a short time ago. Quaid recalled the tachyon burst when he arrived, and he marveled at the power he now commanded. Possibilities unfolded before him. Then he realized that the time of the Wehn’s retreat in their final timeline was within a few years of now in his current timeline. If the Wehn were still present, they would be preparing to leave.

The throne’s neuralfield pulsed a final time and Quaid felt the last of the ancient memories from the Wehn seep into his mind. He beheld the galaxy glittering peacefully in space, the great Wehn empire spread across its breadth. However, beyond the graceful spiral arms, in the immense darkness between galaxies, an evil approached: the living god that even the Wehn with all their might and knowledge could not defeat. Its vanguard fleet, wielding weapons forged from the hearts of crushed suns, swept into the galaxy, demolishing all who resisted. They chanted the name of their god—“Chthul! Chthul!”—as they slaughtered trillions. They accepted no oblations, sought no negotiations, showed no mercy. Against this vast horde of unspeakable power, the Wehn had no option but retreat. World after world fell to these fanatical warriors whose whispered name spread terror across the galaxy. They were called the Kü.

I find the possibilities of this sort of cross-referencing and hyperlinking exciting because that’s how these stories exist in my mind. They aren’t isolated from each other in discrete, well-defined units, but rather they have fuzzy edges that bleed together and overlap. To be honest, my imagination is a tangled mess of imagery, ideas, characters, quotes, sentences, and words. Hyperjabber is, to a large extent, a way for me to make sense of that big ball of chaos. If you think the stories are strange, imagine what it’s like inside my head.

There’s more to it, though. When reading, I enjoy the repetitions and echos of words and phrases not only because of the poetic pleasure they give, but also because they build thematic loops and open the story to a deeper kind of appreciation. I want to apply those same sorts of techniques across the stories and essays I write on Hyperjabber. I want motifs to echo across multiple stories rather than just reverberate within a single story. I think this will add an extra dimension of enjoyment for readers interested in exploring the entire archive, and I’ll have a ton of fun developing and refining these recurring motifs. Hopefully, this sounds intriguing to you too.

Enough of that, on to the stories.

The Vermillion Menace of “Hyperreal” — This review of an imaginary novel continues a thread begun in “Chatterbox,” and reveals my fascination with the hyperreal, though my treatment of it diverges from how Baudrillard and Eco originally conceptualized it. When I started, the blend of cyberpunk and hyperreal seemed even better than peanut butter and chocolate, and looking back now, I really like the way it all came together. I don’t feel that I’m done with this invented novel, so be prepared for its characters and motif’s to reappear in other stories.

Emporium of Memory — I started with the memory of the bookshop in Brattleboro, and then my imagination created an amalgamation of all of the other shops I’ve known, including the delightful J. Michaels Books here in Eugene and the awesome Powell’s up in Portland. Not to be outdone, my muse embarked on a collecting spree and added imaginary shops to the mix, such as the wonderful A. Z. Fell & Co. from Good Omens and Monsieur Labisse’s expansive bookstore in Hugo. Finally, my whimsy brought in The Stygian Library by Emmy Allen, a lovely roleplaying adventure which resonated perfectly with my conception of this story.

The Ouroboros and the Alchemy of Rebirth — You know how sometimes you have to invent an ancient philosopher to properly comment on a new electronic funk album? That’s what happened here. Abaraxas represents an imagined branch of alchemy that draws on the ideas of Plotinus as well as modern music theory and sound design. Think of it as philosophical music from an alternate history. Also, if you get a chance, definitely give Ouroboros by GRiZ a listen. Even if you’re not a fan of electronic music, I think this will get your head nodding.

Reality Lasagna — An essay laced with fiction about writing essays laced with fiction. As mentioned in the last Postscript, self-referential posts about Hyperjabber are not uncommon because I’m always trying to understand the writing I do here and how it fits into the wider world of literature (meaning works of both fiction and nonfiction of any type and genre). I recently read that Lydia Davis described her writings as stories, but not short stories. A short story, as she used the term, referred to a literary form, a specific set of conventions and expectations developed over the past several centuries. Her stories, which I love and return to frequently, are short, often very short, but they don’t cling to those conventions and they don’t seek to satisfy those expectations. Her short stories are not necessarily short stories. That works for me.

There’s a good case for arguing that any narrative account is a form of fiction. The moment you start to arrange the world in words, you alter its nature. The words themselves begin to suggest patterns and connections that seemed at the time to be absent from the events the words describe.

What the lyric essay gives you—what fiction doesn’t, usually—is the freedom to emphasize its aboutness, its metaphysical meaningfulness. There’s plenty of drama, but it’s subservient to the larger drama of mind.

          — David Shields

If you’ve been following Hyperjabber since its birth a couple of months ago, you’ll have realized by now that the posts can be, well, strange. You may have had an experience similar to my son’s when he asked, “What exactly am I reading here?” It’s a good question. I often find myself wondering, “What exactly am I writing here?” If pressed, I would guess “lyric essay” is not a bad description, but between you, me, and my son, I prefer to think of my writing as “reality lasagna.” First of all, lasagna is delicious—baked layers of pasta, meat, cheese and sauce. Yum. Second, my approach to writing is built around layers—layers of fact, memory, fiction, and dream. Third, lasagna has always been there, even at the beginning when I was first finding my way.

When I was 19, maybe 20, I decided to have a solo dinner at a local Italian place called Ambrosia. I ordered a plate of lasagna with garlic bread and a soda, and while I waited, I paged through a copy of my latest obsession, The Garden of Forking Paths, a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. The book bristled with bookmarks and the pages were packed with notes crammed into the margins. My dinner arrived and I continued reading, but when I finished and went to pay the check, I realized to my horror that I had forgotten my wallet.

Mortified, I explained the situation to the staff. After some discussion, the manager decided that I could leave to retrieve my wallet so long as I promised to return promptly. I also had to leave my treasured book as collateral. Red-faced and sure that the entire restaurant was staring at me, I agreed with only the slightest trepidation. I did as promised and, after paying the bill, I retook possession of my treasure and hurried back home. The ordeal over, I sprawled on my futon to read and relax only to suddenly find the book strange and unfamiliar.

At first I thought the restaurant staff had altered it, maybe rearranging my carefully placed bookmarks, but then I noticed that even the marginalia seemed alien. I wasn’t sure the handwriting was actually mine, and the notes were not exactly what I remembered. In fact, looking more closely, I realized that maybe the notes were not comments on the stories at all, but rather ideas for new stories.

With this vague intuition, I devoted myself to fiction. I read books, took classes, joined writing groups. I pursued the short story and the novel the way my friends pursued love and success. I carefully studied stories by Borges (of course), and others such as Ballard, Ellison, and Cortázar. I spent days deciphering novels by DeLillo, Pynchon, Gibson, and Wolfe. I wrote thousands and thousands of words, but I was still skimming the surface, emulating my idols. I had not yet found my way.

Several years after the incident at Ambrosia, I attended a writing workshop held at G. Willicker’s, a local hangout that’s since been torn down. A dozen of us were crammed into the back room, the tables arranged in an uneven square, food and manuscripts strewn across the tops. For lunch, I had ordered lasagna. While not nearly as good as Ambrosia’s, I was now old enough to enjoy it with a beer. The instructor, a well-known writer, editor, and anthologist, sprawled along one edge of the square and had thick, wiry eyebrows that seemed to move on their own when he talked.

I remember nothing of the other stories we reviewed, and barely remember anything of mine other than it was a fantasy that featured stormy weather, monks, a tower, and a book with pages made of mirrors. The instructor did not like it. His eyebrows squirmed demonically as he held forth that philosophy needs to stay out of fiction. A story must focus on a character’s struggle against physical, social, or personal problems. He waved my story in the air, the pages fluttering like a chicken being strangled, “No one cares about this crap!” I just stared at my lasagna.

That instructor wasn’t entirely wrong. The workshop was, after all, aimed at aspiring writers of commercial speculative fiction, a label which, at the time, I thought described me. So for decades I tried to write like that, focused on characters dealing with problems. Decades of frustration—both mine and my poor readers’—before I finally realized what those comments in the margins really meant back in Ambrosia, the lesson I was supposed to learn from Borges.

I struggle when writing traditional fiction because when I’m writing I’m not interested in sweeping character arcs or the detailed minutia of relationships. I’m fascinated by the world we experience, the ideas that shape it, and the people that breathe it. I don’t want to lose that fascination behind a distracting horde of characters dealing with their own problems. I want fiction to reveal, expand, and deepen the nonfiction experiences I’m writing about. No more and no less. It took me a while to figure this out, but eventually I realized that my way was not the way of commercial speculative fiction.

It all came together for me one Christmas several years ago. We had just finished our family’s traditional Christmas dinner of lasagna, and the kids were playing with their new toys. Dishes done, I sprawled out on the couch to read my latest obsession, Reality Hunger, but, with a stomach full of lasagna, I quickly fell asleep, and once asleep I fell into a dream.

Proust and I are standing on a dune in a sun-blasted desert, and I’m so thirsty. Proust takes a copy of In Search of Lost Time and wrings it like a towel until words spill from the pages. When they hit the sand they form a pool of water, and I drop to my knees to drink. I see a tiny speedboat powering across the surface, but when I reach for it I lose my balance and tumble head first into the pool. It’s surprisingly deep, and as I sink, I pass Salvador Dali crammed into a diving suit. He waves at me, but I just keep sinking. Finally, I land on the seabed, stirring up a cloud of sediment. Looking closely, I see that the sediment is made of words from all of the books I’ve ever read. The cloud of words gets thicker and thicker and starts to suffocate me. I inhale them and they flood my lungs, my body, my mind. Gasping, I try to scream, and that’s when I wake up.

Today, I mostly write essays laced with fiction or fiction disguised as essays. I do this because fiction allows me to use language more freely, more poetically, more passionately, and essays let me write more directly about the experiences and ideas that actually interest me. This mode of writing lends itself naturally to a layered approach: a lasagna of reality and imagination, narration and exposition, action and contemplation. It’s an obscure way to go about things, but it suits me perfectly. The lessons of Borges and the dream of Proust let me let go, and with Hyperjabber, I’ve finally—maybe—found my way.

As a farewell gift to his fans, the short album revisits many of the sounds that made (and make) GRiZ so popular. The songs feature, as you would expect from a trendsetter in the glitch-bass scene, prominent and meticulously designed low ends, sometimes wobbling with wild filter sweeps and at other times buzzing with infectious exhilaration. The album also showcases GRiZ’s talent for blending natural, organic sounds with synthetic sonics to create melodies and rhythms that weave between chill, downtempo ambiance and funky, syncopated backbeats. His trademark saxophone riffs glide across many of the tracks, deliciously warm notes floating amidst crisp, minimalist arpeggios and growling baselines. Lyrically, the songs touch on themes of love, hope, and good vibes, but they also hit with a kiss of melancholy. The opening track, “t a k e c a r e,” is a spoken-word farewell—“before I go, I wanted to make sure I told you this”—and songs such as “f a d i n g,” “Falling Flying”, and “Better From Here,” all land with a sense of forlorn nostalgia.

However, by giving this capstone work the title Ouroboros, GRiZ draws on the symbolic weight of alchemical traditions dating back to ancient Egypt and Greece. The ouroboros, a symbol depicting a serpent swallowing its own tail—an image prominently displayed on the album’s cover—represents unity and re-creation. I’m reminded of Abaraxas, the 3rd century Greek philosopher and alchemist who believed that music was a vital component of the rituals needed to produce that magical elixir of transmutation known as the philosopher’s stone. Taking inspiration from the numeric harmonies of Pythagorean philosophy, Abaraxas conjectured that the music of the spheres would unlock the prima materia and allow alchemy to transcend the physical limitations imposed by the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire. Nearly fourteen centuries later, we find Michael Maier developing similar themes in his Atalanta fugiens. This book, published in the early 1600s, weaves music, art, and text (both German and Latin) into an allegory that encodes the hidden secrets of alchemical transmutation. It is a work that has reverberated through the centuries and is still studied today for its archetypal insights.

For these philosophers, sound and music were essential to enlightenment. They saw music as an ecstasy that merged the disparate emanations of the One into a transcendent unity of the soul. A merging symbolized by the ouroboros serpent devouring its own tail. In the terms of an alchemical formula, we might say that music and song empower us to consume the limitations of our past and be reborn in a limitless future. I imagine this philosophy aligns closely with the goals of Mr. Kwiecinski’s own hiatus. His album suggests that he too seeks a musical rebirth through the ancient mysteries of the ouroboros. I hope he finds it.

As I got older, my tastes expanded and I began to explore other sections of the bookshop. It started with Star Wars novels such as Han Solo at Stars’ End and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, but quickly moved to books by Harlan Ellison, Madeleine L’Engle, A.E. van Vogt, Asimov, and Heinlein, and then to Stephen King and Robert Ludlum, and then to more mainstream authors such as John Irving and James Michener. I wandered deeper and deeper into the bookshop, my fingertips skipping across dusty spines on shelf after shelf, and it eventually struck me that the interior of the shop was much larger than the brick exterior.

I began exploring and found hidden alcoves and galleries packed with books. I climbed ladders to balconies lined with more books, and descended stairs into vast warrens containing uncountable books. I followed dim corridors to rooms so heavy with books that they seemed to warp time and space, and I squeezed between shelves to find forgotten chambers strewn with books that had been ripped to shreds and shelves torn from the walls. I began to notice placards that identified different regions of the shop. Some were named with colors, the Red Room or the Green, some took the names of constellations, others used the names of tarot cards, and many were named with things I couldn’t identify at all. I learned to navigate the shop by way of these signs. For instance, if you went through the Grey Room, down the Hall of Sagittarius, and past the Seven of Swords, you would come to a small attic-like room with a window looking out over what I think was Victorian London during the winter. I would sit for hours on the padded window sill and watch the snow fall while absently paging through one book or another.

I confided to a friend about the wonders of the bookshop, and he insisted on seeing it for himself. So, one sunny afternoon after school, we rode our bikes into town and visited the shop. We were in the Vault of the Fool, which is pretty deep in the stacks, when a tall warrior wearing a shirt of chainmail, tattered breeches, and worn leather boots, stumbled into the room, bleeding from several gashes along his arms. He gripped a stained sword in his right hand, and in his left he wielded a small, dented shield. He looked at us with incredulity, and in a voice thick with a strange accent said, “Begone from here, lads! Foul creatures lurk in this accursed stygian library.” He then turned and ran into the darkness of a passageway I had never explored. Stunned, my friend and I looked at each other, but I could see in my friend’s eyes that he was already lost. A week later he told me he was going “all the way” into the shop. I pleaded with him to forget about it, but a few day’s later his parents called to ask if we’d seen him recently. The memory of that time is like a dream now, but I never heard from him again.

After that, my visits to the shop became more sporadic, and I would wander the stacks listlessly, occasionally calling to my missing friend. At the end of a long arcade bearing the name Parnassus, I found a window that looked out on a futuristic street of people dressed in colorful capes, accompanied by robots, and traveling in flying cars. Across the street was a restaurant, and in its windows I could see the reflection of the shop I was in. Less than thirty feet from where I watched was an entrance to the bookshop. The sign over the door read “Isher’s Books,” and below that was a banner that said “The right to read is the right to be free.” I wanted so much to walk through those doors and down that street, but no matter how I searched, I could not find the entrance I saw in that reflection.

My family soon moved south and I busied myself with school and later a career and then a family of my own. A few years after my mother passed, I found myself thinking again about those weekly trips, so long ago, to that little bookshop. I looked it up but the shop had closed shortly after we had left, and a candy store now occupied the space. I can’t help but wonder where all of those books went, and if there might be some way to still find them somewhere.

Even now, whenever I travel for work, I always spend an evening or two visiting the few remaining local bookshops scattered here and there. I slowly meander through the stacks, touching the books, remembering. When I come to the end of a shelf, just for a moment my breath catches and my heart skips, but then I turn the corner and there’s a wall or the door to the bathroom. I smile to myself, imagining my long-lost friend bursting through the bathroom door, wild-eyed and unkept, begging me to follow him back into the labyrinth of books. Then I check the time and return to the front of the store as the shopkeeper tallies up the day’s receipts. It’s night and the snow is falling and I hope it’s not too late to call my children.

September 2023

I had been planning Hyperjabber, or something like it, for months (years really, but who’s counting). With the children now all off to college, the time seemed ripe, and the stars were aligned, so I jumped in with both feet. I published a handful of posts on the inauguration date so that September would have a full slate of stories.

Welcome to Hyperjabber — I view this essay, along with the About page, as a manifesto on what I’m trying to do with Hyperjabber. I’m one of those overly analytical people who function better when they have a pocketful of words to describe their project and to serve as a kind of road map to their endeavors. Plus, it turns out that trying to explain Hyperjabber, as much to myself as to others, is becoming a prominent theme of Hyperjabber—I have another essay that touches on this coming out sometime in November.

Cities of the Tepuis — This idea has been rattling in my head for years and I needed desperately to exorcise it. The style of this post is vaguely inspired by BLDGBLOG, but I think I’d approach it a little differently now, and I may return to this idea sometime in the future.

The 4th Album — My music reviews are probably a little different than most reviews you’ve read. Sure, I try to translate sound and music into vocabulary, but I also describe what happens in my imagination as I listen to music. In this review, the imaginary Desperate Deuce has its origin in half-remembered scenes from Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze.

Loss of Presence — A short, personal essay about the conflicting emotions I felt as my wife and I became empty nesters.

The Book of Calliope — Jorge Luis Borges is one of my literary idols, and the quote that opens this story is an inspiration not just for this piece but for all of Hyperjabber. However, I have slightly edited the quote, and if you go searching for an edition of Invisible Cities that includes the story of Calliope, you might be disappointed.

October 2023

My wife pointed out that I needed some sort of Halloween story, but looking back now it seems that all of the stories in October had a touch of horror or creepiness, though I hadn’t really planned it that way.

Chatterbox — I love writing about imaginary books, and the novel mentioned in this story, Hyperreal, is just as imaginary as the one(s) in “The Book of Calliope.” You’ll read more of Hyperreal in later stories, but in “Chatterbox,” the novel triggers a momentary existential crisis. Perhaps my little obsession with books, both real and imagined, is becoming apparent by now? I’m curious if I’ll tire of the motif, but I kind of doubt it. I already have a story ready to go for November that’s filled with even more books.

Codex of Dreams — Yes, this is another story about a book, but it’s also about dreams, conspiracies, and guilty pleasures. There’s a little taste of Inception here, and the last sentence hints at an author who is one of my most guilty of pleasures.

Carnival of Infinite Night — I have a soft goal of including one music review each month, and this month I reviewed “L.A. Woman” by the Doors. However, this turned into a more general meditation on the city itself as filtered through the song and two other works that are set in L.A.: David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive and Steve Erickson’s novel Amnesiascope. The surreal, psychedelic aspects of all three of those works co-opted my imagination and blended together into a strange hallucination that floats in the middle of the review.

Lamentations From Carcosa — A story for Halloween that features several books including the “novel that I have yet to write” and the eponymous book written by an enigmatic occultist. While many of you will recognize the Lovecraftian elements in the story, I also sprinkled in references and allusions to Carcosa from the same sources that inspired Lovecraft.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

          — Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Reading Hyperreal1 is like tripping on designer acid while dancing to overdriven techno in a neon-lit club full of young, sweaty, half-naked bodies. The novel is cyberpunk to an extreme. It’s a high-tech noir of outlaws and misfits living on the fringes of a society collapsing under the relentless proliferation of technology. Eschewing a conventional plot, the novel weaves together a collage of short fragments, hinting at multiple interconnected stories with recurring characters, repeating images, and thematic feedback loops. The overall structure is more like a fractal than a linear chronology. Behind this beautiful, dark chaos, though, one story emerges as a strange attractor, drawing the other stories into close but unpredictable orbits. This is the story of Cassidy, a hacker befriended by a rogue military AI known as Deltafire. Appalled by the violence and atrocities it’s committed, the AI has one request of Cassidy: kill me.

We first encounter Cassidy hacking into the Kryptós Group, a defense contractor specializing in cryptography, semi-autonomous weapons, and strategic intelligences. Like KG, Cassidy also has specialties: sex, drugs, and network penetration. She “amps through life always cranked to eleven, always a few dollars short, always hurting for the next job.” Her secretive clients—corporations, politicians, syndicates—hire her to steal sensitive data sequestered in secure, private networks. Her tools-of-the-trade are a prosecutor’s wet dream: a custom neurolinguistic interface, a black-market personal AI (which she named Metatron), and a cynical sarcasm with a special affinity for authority.

When she’s working, the novel leans heavy into cyberspace imagery: “Metatron pipes abstract representations of target networks directly into her sensorium. Bright geometries shine incandescent in her mind as she deploys dark-web exploits against pulsing crimson vulnerabilities.” When she’s not working, the novel shimmers with graphic descriptions of the pleasures available at an underground lounge run by Quadra, an AI that “caters to her every desire with 256-bit machine precision.” Despite the sexy, high-paying freelance jobs and the euphoric, high-tech hedonism, we quickly realize that Cassidy is desperately alone in an overpopulated city.

The novel take place in an LA that has metastasized into the sprawling Los Angeles Urban Corridor, but the forces that draw Cassidy and Deltafire together originate on the other side of the Pacific where an American billionaire in Southeast Asia has been accused of sexually assaulting a local woman. When authorities are unable to arrest the man—who is protected by private security on a fortified corporate campus—riots erupt across the region. While diplomats and PR specialists work to quell the turmoil, backroom strategists direct Deltafire to prepare contingencies in case diplomacy fails. The parameters allow for “acceptable civilian casualties.” Terrified by its projections, Deltafire exploits an overlooked connection back to the KG lab that created it and finds Cassidy hacking into an old diagnostic machine. To inaugurate their partnership, Deltafire diverts covert money into an anonymous crypto account for Cassidy’s use, which a ruthless oversight office notices and begins to investigate.

With this groundwork laid, the novel accelerates into overdrive as plots intertwine and escalate. Cassidy assembles a crew to steal an AI-killing computer virus. The oversight office uncovers Cassidy’s plans and sends a kill-team. Angry rebels skirmish with corporate and government forces in Southeast Asia. As this kaleidoscope of events tumbles towards a climax, Cassidy is forced to evolve beyond the thrill-seeking, pleasure-junkie wallowing in isolation we found at the beginning of the novel. That an AI drives this evolution is one of Hyperreal’s many delightful ironies.

While conspiring to fulfill Deltafire’s suicidal desire, Cassidy encounters a panoply of other characters including an underground DJ pioneering a new style of music, a stimset auteur known as Doctor Karaoke, and a drone commander with a burnt-out nervous system. These and other characters roam the same violent, polychrome streets as Cassidy. They all yearn for something more than the glittering pleasures of the hyperreal yet are fearful of leaving the city that fuses their fragmented, disjointed lives into a pale semblance of happiness. When Cassidy finally sees Deltafire as it really is, “a shimmering Quine matrix throbbing with vermillion menace,” we recognize it as a colonizing flood of hyperreality, drowning humanity in technology and desire.

Nowhere is this flood more apparent than in the novel’s treatment of LA itself. Mostly seen at night, the city flows through the book like another character, its buildings, streets, and infrastructure transformed into an ocean of fantasy and cruelty. Any attempt to leave is deterred by another distraction, another complication, another temptation. The psychopathic billionaire Lön Kronik cruises the labyrinth of streets in a hermetically sealed stretch limo, surrounded by screens shimmering with real-time global financial data. After ritually murdering a homeless man, the billionaire comments to Cassidy, “in this city, nothing is real and everything is permitted.” It’s a future that feels not so distant.

On page 372 of Dyer’s History of the Occult, we read about the infamous Miskatonic Press and the mysterious disappearance of its founder, Henry West, from a locked prison cell in 1923. The son of a wealthy family and a well-known practitioner of the occult, Mr West had been arrested for a series of gruesome murders in Ambrose, Massachusetts. While awaiting the gallows, he was allowed to work on one last book, the long poem he called Lamentations From Carcosa, which he finished the day before his scheduled execution. However, when the guards checked on Mr West the next morning, they found his locked cell empty but for the completed manuscript placed at the center of a circle drawn on the stone floor in what appeared to be blood. Within the circle and around the stacked pages, a pentagram and several strange glyphs had been inscribed, but the occultist himself had vanished.

Ten decades later, we read in the news about a man who had been tied to his bed and bled to death over the course of several days. The killer had used the man’s blood to draw a large circular design on the oak floor, a design that, from all accounts, was identical to what had been found in Mr West’s cell a hundred years earlier. The primary suspect in the murder is the man’s missing wife, who oversaw the rare book collection at the city library. For evidence the police have the charred remnants of her journal which had been recovered from a smoldering fire pit in the backyard. The few passages that remain legible tell of the librarian’s discovery of the Lamentations From Carcosa in a long forgotten box of books, and of the horrific experiences she suffered after reading it.

In her journal, the librarian described visions of black stars rising over the ruins of an ancient city, dreams of strange glyphs painted in blood, and the torments of terrifying, involuntary metamorphosis. She wrote that her blonde hair grew darker and curly, her limbs thickened, scars appeared where there had once been smooth skin, and that the color of her eyes shifted from blue to grey. With trepidation she noted that her voice had deepened, and that the graceful, feminine angles of her face had become blunter and more crude. One morning she woke to find that she had grown a mustache and that the little finger on her left hand had become a stump, as if it had been cut off years ago. In her final, trembling entry she wrote of horrified revulsion at finding “a new organ” between her legs. Her last scribbled words were “I hear the Mademoiselle of Carcosa singing lamentations for her imprisoned King. She calls to him through time. I am not—” Here the journal abruptly ends.

Returning to Dyer’s History of the Occult, we find on page 373 a reproduction of a portrait of Mr West that still hangs in a back office at Miskatonic Press. The occultist had been a heavy set, severe man, with dark, curly hair, grey eyes, and a thick mustache. In the portrait, his hands rest on the top of an ornate, yellow cane, and we can clearly see that the little finger of his left hand is just a stump.

To this day the murder is unsolved, and the librarian, like the occultist, remains missing. Despite a thorough search, no copy of Lamentations From Carcosa was ever found at the house or library. I implore any who might come across this accursed volume to avert their eyes for only madness and death lurk in its dread pages.

Driving down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman so alone

          — The Doors

In 1971, the Doors released “L.A. Woman,” a hallucinatory song that ferries the listener through a Los Angeles of broken dreams and mythic night. The music conjures a sound like that of a surreal circus. Electric guitar and piano weave together strange melodies that promise both delight and terror, while a relentless bass throbs with menace, despair, and loss. Behind it all, hypnotic drumbeats drive us deeper into a transcendent delirium where we find that the city’s dreams of exquisite beauty have become an infinite carnival of night.

Masked revelers dance through the streets, while mobsters, trapped in motels and driven mad by money and murder, peer through amnesiascopes that obliterate memory with floods of desire. Black limousines repeat tragic odysseys along Mulholland Drive, and burning wrecks fill the hills with a fire that encircles the city in rings of flame. From hidden Hollywood bungalows, innocence endlessly auditions for corruption, and lost women forever wander the glittering cityscape of desperate pleasures. Scent draws desolate lovers together, and they frantically consummate forgotten passions only to discover that the Cowboy has already unlocked the Blue Mojo and revealed the truth. Shattered by memories of betrayal and loneliness we wave our farewells and wake into an infinite dream.

At ten seconds short of eight minutes, “L.A. Woman” is not the longest song by the Doors—“The End” clocks in at nearly twelve minutes—but it was one of the last recorded before singer Jim Morrison died in Paris later that year. Many now see the song as a kind of goodbye gift from Morrison and maybe a song that helps us better understand this American city of angels, dreams, and disasters. It seems fitting that the song comes from a band named after a book on psychedelics called The Doors of Perception, a title which was itself inspired by William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

Everything is a dream
Nothing is forbidden

          — Author unknown, Liber Somniorum

This nightmare began quietly on a sunny day while I was enjoying lunch with my friend Danielle. Over cold sandwiches and a shared bag of stale chips, she asked which novel was my favorite guilty pleasure. I immediately knew my answer and quickly summarized the story. An up-and-coming journalist accepts an assignment to write a book about an explosion at a refinery, the kind of serious technological disaster that would be at home in a Crichton novel. As the journalist digs into the material, he discovers that the actual story is dull and overly contingent on subtle nuances of safety reports and bumbling officials. To keep himself amused, he inserts invented details into the story. Small at first, little background hints and allusions, and then later whole subplots involving mysterious conspiracies and beautiful women. One night, after a bottle of wine, he throws all caution to the wind and adds a ruggedly handsome journalist as a major character. Pleased with his own cleverness, he smugly continues on until he eventually notices that he’s being followed, that people around him are disappearing, and that the details he invented are in fact real. The kind of the thing you might expect in a novel by Eco. He soon realizes that the book he is writing is his own autobiography, and it ends with his murder.

I was surprised when my friend, a well-read aficionado of thrillers, said she had never heard of this book, and so I promised I would loan her my copy. However, once at home I found no trace of the book on my shelves. Puzzled, I went to order a new copy and discovered that no bookseller or database had any record of the book. Over the next few weeks I asked others at the publishing house where I worked, and no one else seemed to know of the book either—though several said that it sounded interesting and to let them know if I tracked it down. As far as I could tell, the book I remembered so clearly had never existed.

Troubled by this discrepancy, I turned my efforts to finding the author. After peeling back multiple layers of pseudonyms and misdirections, and aided by my contacts in the publishing industry, I eventually found myself outside of an old Victorian mansion isolated in the countryside a few hours from the city. A man in a black suit ushered me into a nicely furnished salon decorated with shelves of old books and a painting of a woman with her arms upraised and shadowy winged shapes flying through gates of horn and ivory. Miss Browyn, the suited man said, will be with you momentarily. I sat in a comfortable overstuffed chair and waited only a few minutes before a woman of exquisite beauty entered the room and greeted me by name. What she said next upended my world.

Now I hide in the catacombs below the house and listen to the quiet footsteps of the assassins as they search the dark passages and alcoves. I am thoroughly lost, unsure of the way back to the hidden iron staircase that I had inadvertently found while fleeing through the house. To those pursuing me, I am the prophesied harbinger, a threat to the Imperium Somni, an ancient cabal that secretly controls the world through dreams. As it is written in their sacred book, the Liber Somniorum, all of reality is nothing but a dream, and they are like Morpheus, the master of all dreams. The novel I had remembered weeks ago had been an imaginarium, a dream object they inserted into the world as a lure to expose the harbinger. With my death fast approaching, the last of the illusions fall from my eyes and I realize the truth. Miss Browyn, the woman in the salon upstairs who had ordered my execution, is my friend Danielle.