Monday. Podcast, ongoing & going on. The beginning of Part Two, Alisa’s Statement & Chapter 5 & another Alisa’s Statement from “Self-Portrait of Someone Else”. The author reads it. 12:58 minutes
Previous chapters can be found under Images & Performance on this blog; they have been posted every Monday. Part Two continues next Monday.
To listen, click here: Audio clip/podcast – Self-Portrait of Someone Else, Alisa’s Statement & Part Two, Chapter 1
My favorite color is blue. My favorite food is pizza. Do you like me yet?
No?
More?
My parents divorced me when I was very young. No, that’s negative….did I say “divorce me”? Well. Wow. Freud slipped right in there, didn’t he? Well, you’re starting to get to know me.
Hey, how many minutes do we have again?
I like films, TV, anything based on reality. That’s not true. I have fantasies. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a fried egg, sunny side up, and be the yolk as the edge of a crust of toasted bread broke me open and all my yellow would flood and run everywhere. Always wondered that. Or maybe it’s all sexual. Who knows! Mysteries of the human—sorry?
Time’s awasting.
Maybe you want to know this stuff about me. Dior. Picasso, the European car not the painter. Saab. Let me say that again so there is no mistaking. Saaaaaab…. Sensuous, huh? Vogue. Vanity Fair. The New Yorker, optional. Silk. Silk. Silk. I cannot emphasize that enough. “Houston, we have a problem.” That still works for me. Shakespeare, the comedies, if I have to. Teen comedies, no. Slapstick, I’m a girl, so I don’t get all of it. Piercing, tattoos, goes without saying, not on my body. Terrorism. What is this big deal about terrorism? Did none of those people have parents when they were growing up? Oooh, terrorism. So scared!
Is this helping any? How about family stuff—
My father has a mustache, my mother dyes her hair red. I had an aunt who was a drunk and an uncle who I think tried to touch me improperly when I was young but I have blocked it all out, almost. Sorry, again, too negative.
I’ve never been to Bermuda but I’d like to go to Spain. Yes, the Bermuda Islands. No, not the shorts. You must think I’m crazy. I’m looking for love. I don’t have any pets. I think about politics but don’t get involved—what? Pets? Allergies. Ah-choo. Their fur. Or saliva. I need to take some medical tests on that.
Snow. Surf. Turf. Like it all.
God, where’s the time gone!
My grandparents are dead.
What more did you want to know?
Food, pizza. Color, blue.
I was toilet trained at an early age so I’m good that way. Same with tying my shoe laces. A snap.
Also, I may be allergic to dust or I don’t clean my place enough. One or the other. Love drives in the desert. Hate it when I’m in an airplane and hit an air pocket and everything goes zoom and people scream and things go flying and my stomach comes up. What? You too! Gosh. We have so much in common!
I’ve had maybe fifteen boyfriends. Sean, Bob, Frank, Tony—oh you don’t want those details.
I have a driver’s license, own a bicycle and went go-carting once. I follow my instincts. I’m very emotional, but don’t believe in Astrological signs. I mean, please, the Big Boom happens and the Milky Way comes out so neat that my future is foretold up there? I wish. If you look up at the stars tonight and see my fate, please, give me a shout. I’d really like to know. What? The Big Boom was the Big Bang? Big difference. I’m sure the universe wants us to get that terminology right.
Time!
I’m taking cooking lessons. Drugs—just say no.
Do you sort of like me yet?
Foods. Not too processed. Love. Not too processed. This—what?
No! No! My time is not up. We still have a chance of making this work. This is my life! It’s not ending. It feels like it’s just at the start.
Time?
Time.
Time!
But what about our love then?
I picked these matches up in a eatery in Boston. I was in town for a different reason. To experience something glorious and historic. The experience ended in a small, sharp expletive.
The following video was inspired by the matchbook from the Union Oyster House.
Monday. The end of Part One, Chapter 5, from “Self-Portrait of Someone Else”. I’m reading it. 9:08 minutes in total.
Previous chapters can be found under Images & Performance to the right of this blog; they have been posted every Monday. And will continue, with Part Two starting next Monday.
To listen, click here: Part One, Chap 5, from Self-Portrait of Someone Else, read by the author
My mother calls the place she’s in, “The House of Diapers”.
I bite. “Why?” I ask.
“Because,” she answers over the telephone, me in Europe, her in Vegas, “here it’s all about different bags going back and forth in different places. They feed me to make nice poo-poo. Then I make poo and they change me. Then more food, more poo. People telephone me, I tell them I live in a shit house. They’re changing shits all day long. That’s where I live.”
She tells me about the very quiet woman she shares her room with. “I keep the curtain shut between us all the time.”
I bite yet again. “Why?” I ask.
“She paints with her poo, and eats it.”
She tells me from the best place her retirement funds can afford in Las Vegas how she remembers so many things that happened to her in her long ago world. And in great detail.
“Really?” I say, biting less.
“I’m letting my mind wander yesterday, and I remember my life when I was young, but I’m living in today, and the images get all mixed up together. Someone comes in and asks me something, and I have to look at them, and remember my circumstances, come out of my past, and this takes a few moments to do. And then they think you are old and slow and stupid. All I am is in the past, surrounded by every little detail. I’m remembering when I was a child at my Uncle’s fruit stand in New York asking him if I can have an apple and there’s the smells and sounds of the streets, it’s sunny and my uncle is talking to people of the neighborhood, weighing produce, and I’m by his side looking around as I bite into my apple and the taste is so overwhelming and sweet and then someone comes into my room and asks if I’ve gone poo in my diaper this morning. It takes a while to come back from New York and to my poo.”
She tells me how she can’t get out of her bed as she used to. How her bed is near the toilet door, but it’s just too much of an effort. How she just sleeps and sleeps. She coughs, gargles with excess saliva. I listen to her burps over the international telephone line. She sings snatches of songs. She breathes in my ear, living on.
Me, I’m still in New York, watching her uncle weigh produce.
ONE
I am currently completing the writing of a short novel (short, the only kind I like these days) called “DON’T”. About a 69 year old guy in Brussels dealing violence and urban threats, some sex, foreigners, digital photos, long-term marriage and short-term lust, a Polish cleaning lady, a comfortable sofa, robberies, hit and run accidents, haircuts and gel, police, hospitals, comas, online porn, writing workshops, possible manslaughter, navel piercing and its seems I’ve got my hands full when putting it all out there like that. Maybe it’ll be done in another couple of months? No promises. Then let it rest in a dark drawer. Thereafter, baste according to taste.
TWO
Next to be published under my hidden people company later this year is the first in my series of ARTISTS, this one called BRUSSEGEM (A Snug Hell), and after that a kid’s book called THE BOY IN THE SANDWICH. BRUSSEGEM is all proofed and copy-edited, laid out, and ready to go except for the cover. Still have to photograph the village sign of Brussegem for the cover so the graphic designer can move forward but I’ve been waiting first for the snow to melt and now waiting for the rain to stop. Everything is completed with the kid’s book, but interior layout needs fine tuning and I’m having a meeting with friend/illustrator to do an illustration for the cover as well as for each chapter…which will then turn into t-shirts and suchlike spin-offs.
THREE
I have gotten a few kind interested souls wondering on how sales actually going after “How to Find Yourself” video campaign. Ah, thanks for asking, you and whoever, but I’m not counting at this point. My POD printer and Amazon only gives a statement every quarter and pay after 60 or 90 days. I’ll see when I see, but I’ll get on the ball about this and be A Serious Business Entity. My focus right now is creation with “the rest will follow” simple-minded hopefulness attached. This indie publishing company is based on a two year build. Meanwhile, more YouTube, more blog, more stories and social media and so on and very much so forth.
P.S.
I have a pretty good story I’m posting this Friday (the less-than-600-words kind), and working on another matches video for next Wednesday and a “Self-Portrait of Someone Else” video on the reviews it received. And Don’t Don’t Don’t….
It is Monday (yep, I skipped last week due to bad throat and general awful feeling), the next audio clip from “Self-Portrait of Someone Else” that follows on from Part One, Chapters 1-3. This is from Part One: Report, Comment, Statement & Chapter 4 (7:48 minutes in total).
To listen, click here: Audio book fragment: Reports & Part One, Chap 4, from Self-Portrait of Someone Else
You can right click after you have opened the file, and save and listen when and how you want. Thanks for showing interest and listening. Hope you enjoy.
Due to a sore throat these last ten days, I was unable to keep up with my voice over for delivery of today’s podcast/audio clip. I will record further ahead in future to avoid this. Also, I am in London and off-line (happily, willingly) for the next days in workshops and conferences (video stuff). Friday is my birthday, and, as usual, I plan to do plain nothing. Usual fun and games resume next week. Thanks for reading.
As I’m beginning to introduce the re-issue of my novel, Self-Portrait of Someone Else, into the big, wide world via blog, video, email, social networks and whatever else comes up, I want anyone interested to be able to read a sizeable chunk of the book. Just as you might when browsing a bookstore.And for free.
And yesyesyes, if they/you likey, buy the sucker.
Previously, I’ve put up two stand-alone story excerpts on this blog. You can also read/download those excerpts here at Hidden People.
Today I’m posting the first 70 pages of Self-Portrait of Someone Else (out of 244 pgs) in pdf. This way you can download the excerpt right to your hard disc or eReader—if it supports pdf files—and have at it during your grand and roomy leisure.
Here’s the link, along with that wondrous American word that sends you on your way, as though to a tasty meal: enjoy!)– Self-Portrait of Someone Else – first 70 pgs
PS
Oh! You want to see the suspense-thriller bookie-trailer-type thing? Lucky, lucky you, just happen to have the link HERE–THE VIDEO.
PSS
I’m using a rather chatty, throw-away style talking about this rather serious, intense book that got a lot of good reviews on its initial release and which I’ll bring up at another time, but using this chatty-shatty tone can happen when I feel I’m getting into buy-marketing-promoting-show-off mode; so I cover me up.
You’ll remember my series of videos for my humor book, “How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)”–five in all. Now another book, completely different, and thus with a different approach.
“Self-Portrait of Someone Else” was originally published by Viking Penguin, N.Y. and is re-issued by hidden people limited. I suppose one could call it a psychological suspense thriller. Originally it was presented as a literary novel.
To view the video, CLICK HERE.
The approach I take with this video is more like a book trailer, giving a dramatic taste of the book. A “Teaser”, as they say in the biz.
Hope you like. If you like, spread. Thanks for reading this.
P.S.
If you want to read a couple of stand-alone extracts of the novel, to get another sort of “taste”, here’s a link to ONE STORY and a SECOND STORY.
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