Progress Update: "Who Saw The Deep"

With one issue fully scripted and a second on the verge of being completed, and new concept art rolling in, I thought I might as well take the time to update you on my latest project. It's called "Who Saw The Deep" and it's a 13-issue graphic novel. Think a modern-day city, perhaps only a few years in the future. A cleaned-up corporate sheen everywhere you look. For anyone who's interested in cyberpunk, this is where it begins. We're setting the stage here and now. At the threshold of the world's very first megacorporations.

Okay, so it's not exactly the most relevant topic in light of today's increased government intervention. Or maybe it is. Indulge me. Picture a laissez-faire America run out of control, if you can.

The idea for the story is mostly derived from the one I ran with for Business of Screenwriting. We had to pitch an existing script idea over the course of the semester, so I quickly threw together a very early, rough version of "Who Saw The Deep," which in and of itself was heavily derived from that "Fiends of Nashville" comic Josh and I were developing at the time. Basically, I just felt like doing a film noir ("Fiends" was a western). Mostly for practice. I was using the same character, the same premise, just putting it in a noir context. (I didn't really have any long-term plans for it.)

Well, after Business of Screenwriting was over, I just shelved what was "Who Saw The Deep," with tentative plans to revisit the material sometime in the distant future, perhaps as a novel. Once summer started, I began working on "Fiends" in earnest. Which has currently been put on hold.

Pretty much for the last year and a half, Jake Hollander, this guy I sat next to in my first animation class, had been bugging me to collaborate on a comic. We did a couple of brainstorming sessions here and there, but nothing really stuck. Then, when Josh told me he couldn't make a solid commitment to "Fiends," I turned around and started talking to Jake again. I remember paging through that old "Who Saw The Deep" .pdf while on aim, and I was like, hey, I have about 70 pgs of workable dialogue here that could serve as a foundation for a noir/cyberpunk comic (we're both really into that blend). I was about halfway through writing "Land of Confusion" at the time. He got really excited about the prospect, so I said, let me finish this vampire thing and I'll start revisiting "Who Saw The Deep."

Overcome by a fit of laziness, I felt tempted to basically re-use the "Who Saw The Deep" script for the comic, word-for-word, breaking it into issues where appropriate. Then I started realizing how similar the material was to "Fiends." I mean pretty much same protagonist, exact same relationships explored. And I realized I didn't want to do that all over again. Also it wouldn't be fair to both Josh and I in the event that we would one day get back to work on "Fiends." So I went and overhauled the characters and story completely.

What emerged was the outline for a 13-issue story arc about robot consciousnesses, supercomputers, memory-altering drugs, a conspiracy, the mob, and a nostalgic hard-boiled detective. Basically an attempt to break free of the "Fiends" mold while remaining as close as possible to the original "Who Saw The Deep." Also, bringing in a lot more ideas that Jake and I had been throwing around. And ideas that had been broached in my Business of Screenwriting class, responding to the original idea.

I have to say, I think it's pretty good. And if you know me, you know that's saying something.

Anyway. The first issue is completely scripted, like I said, broken down into a page-by-page, panel-by-panel layout. All that remains is the art. The second issue is also nearly complete. I'm very pleased with how it's turning out so far, and perhaps a little surprised by the relative ease at which it's coming along.

Below is some original concept art by Jake. The first is a drawing of a female character who was cut early on, and exemplifies the Sin City-esque style Jake and I were thinking of running with originally. The next four are all images of our protagonist, Gene Foster, from his earliest to most recent incarnation. (The third one, with the squinty eyes, is actually mine. Jake and I both decided he looked too mean. More like a pissed-off Asian with a Bruce Campbell chin. I decided to throw it up here just for kicks.)





Not sure when you're going to see a finished product. All I can say is, with the winter break right around the corner, Jake and I will have plenty of time to get cracking on the art.

The Voids

All of our actions, the cause and effect of our daily lives, can be traced to loss. An endless series of voids that we attempt to fill in vain--because nothing, that we cling to in this reality, is permanent. Nothing is absolute. We react to the inevitable loss of these impermanent attachments by seeking others to fill the voids left in their wake. The voids can be filled only temporarily, before we experience loss yet again and must seek out new attachments to take their place. Everything that we cling to as human beings--material objects, places, people, ideas--are placeholders. For those of the past and those yet to come. The pursuit of these placeholders is what defines us. Our actions, our choices.

No one of us dwells for too long in the voids, because there is where we find the death of ourselves.

Land of Confusion update

Well, it's finished. Draft 1, that is. And what a draft indeed, at a whopping 173 pages. Nearly a 3-hour movie. Whoops. Which means in order to prepare it for the Written Image contest at the end of this year (which I plan on entering), I have to trim 43 pages. [Insert expletive here]! Not sure how that's gonna happen, but at the moment I don't really give a hoot. The .pdf is saved, tucked away in a safe folder for anybody out of their right mind who wants to take a look, but I'm just going to leave it there, in a digital drawer, for the next month or so while I get to work on my next project.

Which brings me to my next order of business. I'm about to start work on a comic/graphic novel with a friend of mine from the Animation world, Jake Hollander. The idea is something I've been flirting with off-and-on for the last couple years or so, so let's hope I can bring it down off the pedestal like the jar of cookies that it is, cause I'm hungry. Long story short, it's kind of a neo-noir, a dash of cyberpunk to taste, about a detective investigating his own murder. That's about all I care to get into right now, but give me a few days and I'll start to expand on that as I develop the general storyline and the script for the first issue.

Here goes nothing...

"Experience," Part 2

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I've been busy with that "Land of Confusion" script, the first draft of which should be complete any day now. This charcoal portrait's been staring at me from a dejected corner of my room the entire time, and it was only until a couple days ago that I gave in and decided to bust some more of it out. The eyes were really bothering me, as you can see. Fixed them, and started adding white charcoal. I was getting frustrated at first because I haven't worked with it in forever, but then out of nowhere I had a breakthrough and it really started coming together. I'm really pleased with this one, which is definitely saying something for me. Hopefully I'll be posting the finished product soon.

Land Of Confusion...

...is not just a phenomenal Genesis song. It's also the working title of my new script, about--you guessed it, vampires. Here's the first scene, just a little sampler to...sink your teeth into.

Land Of Confusion.pdf

Forgive my egregious pun, by the way. I'm a real sucker for them.

There is nothing in this world...

...more intimidating to me than a blank page.

New Project

With three issues of "Fiends of Nashville" in the can, and Josh doing some catching up on the art end, I decided to put that project on hiatus temporarily in order to pursue something of my own, with total creative control and independence. Long story short, I was getting a little disenfranchised with the prospect of writing something that was essentially going nowhere, at least fast. This summer was supposed to be my opportunity to produce like mad, and I haven't exactly fulfilled those (as usual) lofty expectations for myself. Josh is currently unable to commit all the way to holding up the art end of this comic thing, and who can blame him? But it was getting harder and harder for me to get attached to something that was looking less and less like it would ever see the light of day. I was writing scripts for a concept to which I did not hold the copyright. It was Josh's original idea, so I couldn't really do anything with these scripts I'd written. Couldn't really take them anywhere, like Dark Horse, for example. Unfortunately that's the problem with collaborating on a project; often it's a different priority for each party involved. Especially at our level, working our asses off trying to break into a creative industry somehow, just clinging to economic survival. "Fiends of Nashville," by necessity, became a job, a chore, and not the fun little diversion we'd set out to entertain ourselves with. I have a feeling it's something that will have to wait until both of us have a foot in the door apiece, something to distract us from the tediousness of our lives once we actually have jobs.

Anyway, I came across the movie "The Lost Boys" at a discount DVD store last night and, overcome with a sense of childhood nostalgia, the memory of cowering under the blankets at a sleepover when I was seven or eight, I gleefully forked over the $5.99. To give you some perspective provided you know me, I was more excited to get home and pop this in than I was to see District 9 last week. I hadn't seen this since I was a kid and I'm always a sucker for an eighties soundtrack, especially one with "Cry Little Sister" by Gerard McMann (I'm listening to Tears for Fears right now as I write this).

No, it wasn't as cool and frightening as I remembered it. No, I didn't cringe when Michael was eating the maggots. No, I wasn't freaked out by Keifer Sutherland's facial transformations, nor was I gripping my seat when the kids were poking around the old hotel and they saw the vampires hanging like bats. Yes, Jami Gertz was a lot sexier than I remember when I was seven years old. Oh, and what the hell was Cory Feldman doing with his voice, trying to sound all badass or something?

No, it wasn't exactly the eighties vampire movie that I wanted it to be, but it definitely deserves its cult classic status. And man, those Ray Ban Clubmasters that Michael is wearing are fucking cool. I think I'll grab a pair to ride ahead of the trend, as a little "fuck you" to all you punks who copied my Wayfarers (just kidding, Josh). As I watched the movie, and my few expectations slowly fell the less Joel Schumacher decided to earnestly delve into a thorough examination of the life of a vampire a la "Let the Right One In," I experienced a strong desire to fill in the blanks where the movie fell short, to provide a more intelligent and un-Hollywood rendition of a story that had potential but never went anywhere interesting. "The Lost Boys" was nothing to hold a torch to, to be sure, but it inspired me nonetheless...

To write a vampire script.
(Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.)

But seriously. Why not put my own spin on something that's been done countless times before and just have fun with it? So that's what I'm going to do. No, it's not going to be "Twilight." So fuck you. Last night after watching the movie I immediately sat down and wrote out everything I liked about it and everything it was missing that I'd wanted in it. I realized that before it was produced and marketed as a cheap-thrills teen horror movie, it might actually have been trying to say something worthwhile, using the concept of a "vampire" as a kind of metaphor for misguided youth embracing the raging, subconscious homicidal killers inside them, their middle finger to society, maturity, and the responsibility to give back to the greater world. Surprise! Everything I've ever tried to write about. No, I'm not going to set out to do anything pretentious, I just kind of want to truthfully examine what it would actually be like to become a vampire, creature of the night, call it what you will. I have a feeling I'm going to consolidate this project with the one I put on the backburner a while ago about the room with uncanny temporal properties. In other words, the protagonist is pretty much based on me and all the shit I've been tossing around in my head recently, coping with changing philosophies and new life situations. In between lives, so to speak. I think the running title I'm going to use is "Tiding Over."

I have a strong desire to get started on this one right away. Maybe tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

New Portrait, Part 1

Today I got bored so I decided to commit to charcoal a photograph I took last June of a homeless man on the street (figured I'd buy something with the dollar I was giving him). Anyhow, I'm pretty happy with the way this is turning out. Took me about an hour to get this far. Maybe I'll come back and finish it tomorrow.

Issue #3...

...Is complete. The script, that is. I'm starting to loosen up now. Becoming more comfortable with the process of sitting down for 4-5 hours at a time and entering the world of my characters. So far this is my favorite script yet, and I can only imagine the writing continuing to improve as I go along.

I'm starting to remember how fun this was.

Fiends of Nashville Page One

Here it is, the very first page of "Fiends of Nashville," Issue #1 for your viewing pleasure. Josh Richter is the talented artist, and I couldn't be more pleased with how it's starting to turn out. Seeing my words finally visualized in art was a very exciting experience.

You should note that this is still a rough sample and will only improve before the issue is actually finished.

With any luck, expect to see a completed Issue #1 by the end of this month.

Random Joshua Danton Character Sketches

Apocalypse Series Update

After an incredibly productive guerrilla shoot this weekend, here are a couple new additions to my ever-expanding "Apocalypse" series. I'm starting to feel re-inspired by some prospective locations, so expect to see more up soon.

Fiends of Nashville Progress

Josh Richter and I had our first production meeting of sorts this weekend to discuss the first two issues, which are nearing a final draft state, as well as our ideas about the layout for the artwork. Josh will be designing all of the art, sending me about a rough page or two per day for review. Expect some page samples to appear here sporadically, as well as concept drawings as we begin to put this thing together. A cohesive picture is beginning to emerge out of the purgatorial void. I'm pretty excited.

Assuming our production schedule is realistic, we should have a .pdf, if not printed, version of Issue #1 in our hands by the end of August. The plan is to submit it to Dark Horse, and, failing that, get it on the shelves of Graham Crackers independently.

Tomorrow, I'm going to hit the word processor again after a week break to start writing Issue #3. (*cracks knuckles*)

Pxldust Contest Results Are In...

...And I have to say I did pretty well, so thanks to everybody who voted. Here are the details:

My charcoal drawing, "Filters," placed fifth overall out of 1,055 entries, after 180 days of voting. Two of my other illustrations, "Marilyn" and "Filters 2" also placed in the top 25. Both "Filters" and "Marilyn" have been printed on Pxldust magazine's inaugural competition poster. Check it out at:

http://pxldust.com/posters.asp

You can view the first issue of the online magazine, featuring all of the published winners, at:

http://www.pxldust-mag.com

Apparently Matt Ansoorian, the creator of Pxldust, is going to be publishing a hard-bound printed book featuring all of the winners' artwork. Not exactly sure if that's still in the works or not but I'll post the details here as soon as I know.

Website Progress

Spent pretty much the entire day working on my new website. It's really starting to come together. I've posted a couple teaser screenshots of what it's looking like. But yeah, expect to see it up and running by the end of the week, assuming we don't run into any more issues (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer...)

New Day's Dawn

Woke up at 7:00 this morning to find my backyard draped in a ghostly fog worthy of some shots.

The Beard Project

Sketches of what Joshua's beard activity might look like after a few weeks of walking around purgatory without a proper razor.

The undeniable feeling

that all of this has happened before, and not just once but countless times, over and over again, a closed loop, and you are merely retracing steps you've already marked for eternity. You are living a memory, a memory that will never end.

In a sense this is already true: this moment, everything you are sensing now, is merely a memory your future self is accessing, somewhere further up ahead. Pre-determined. Nothing you do now in the "present" has any spontaneity; your future self is merely recounting it.

Remember

You've had a breakdown. You might have known it was coming, and

here it is.

It's become an image. It's become your tool for grabbing "success."
You've become so caught up with comparing yourself to your peers, judging your "worth" as far as society is concerned, you've lost sight of what it was originally for.

It was never for anyone else but you. You were never supposed to play to an audience, shock people into new modes of awareness.

You were a kid with an imagination, telling yourself stories.

All that shit you thought you wanted, were brainwashed into thinking you wanted, that's not for you.

You didn't care about any of that shit.
You were above it.

Remember when it was something you did to entertain yourself? To imagine new realities because your current one sucked?

You've been out of touch with reality for years now. Your reality has been a lie, an illusion crafted by you, a joke. It was never meant for you.

Remember when you didn't have the internet? Remember when you didn't have a portable, easy-access means of comparing yourself with your peers? Remember when you weren't plugged into an electronic social network? Remember when you didn't have all these various online portals you used to validate your worth as a human being?

Remember when you weren't pressured into achieving certain rewards by a certain age?

Remember when you were self-motivated?

Remember when you didn't have to worry about putting up a facade?

Remember when you had all the time in the world?

Remember when writing wasn't easy,
(it's never been easy)
but you braved the obstacles anyway to write something nobody but you was ever going to see?

Remember the enjoyment of it? Remember when it wasn't your job?

Why do you keep trying to fool yourself? You've never felt like an adult in your entire life, and you never will.

Issue #1...

Is finished!

Well, part 1 anyway. Of the first issue of the first part of the sprawling epic otherwise known as "Fiends of Nashville." The very first issue, when completed, will be about 40-48 pages long, a two-parter of which the first part is now complete. A couple weeks ago I was sitting around trying to figure out how to tell a chronological story that takes place in the afterlife, a place where time is eternal, there is no passage of time. I finally figured out the answer, and it's so good it scares me.

Anyway, part one starts off with a single title card: 1989. Then, we're introduced to Joshua Danton as he's walking into a Louisiana bayou roadhouse. Very choppy storytelling here, we're flashing brief, small details as Joshua is hit with a flood of sensation. This is the last moment of his life, and it's going to be preserved in his memory for the rest of eternity. Before he dies, we're cutting ahead to things he hasn't even seen yet. Before his eyes the bar starts to take on western properties, foreshadowing where he's going. We start to make the transition to the afterlife even before he's "killed" so it seems that much more seamless.

On page 19, Joshua dies, and by the end of this first part he arrives in Purgatory. We don't know a whole lot about how he got here, except in the literal sense. We know he was looking for his wife, who he thought was taken prisoner by these guys with guns, but it might be that she simply walked out on him.

In the next part, Joshua begins to explore his new bleak, bare world, and in doing so, builds it from the ground up. Technically at this point he's just a disembodied mind floating in a stream of electronic data. His reality is undefined, so he has to construct his own from essentially nothing. The reality he's going to construct for himself is a western, straight out of a John Ford movie. But in the beginning, there is only chaos. So the second part of this "pilot," so to speak, is told mostly through flashes of random-but-not-so-random imagery, memories of where he's been, scraps of dialogue that he took with him to his grave.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my progress. I'm pretty excited to get back to work and see how this thing starts to come together, because right now it could be anybody's guess.

Purgatory

Like being in a fishbowl. That's what purgatory must be like. Swimming circles in a fishbowl, without any concept of time or space. Awareness only of the present moment, mind numbed. Perhaps a vague hint of either past or future, the blurred shapes beyond the glass membrane of your reality non-discernible.

Project Update: Fiends of Nashville

So I hope to post periodic updates on the statuses of all my current projects here, and the one that's starting to emerge as the most realized and tangible at this point is a little comic my friend Josh Richter and I are putting together called "Fiends of Nashville." Alternatively you'll be able to view progress on "Fiends" on a separate blog Josh made a while back dedicated entirely to the comic. That blog can be accessed in my list of links to the right. There's not much there right now but a badass logo and a bunch of preliminary templates that Josh made. The concept has taken a near 180-degree turn since then, so I'll try to fill you in on the basics of what Josh and I have been cooking up recently.

So. Where the hell to begin?

"Fiends of Nashville" is the story of Joshua Danton, and I suppose there's no better way to introduce the comic than to begin with him. Joshua is a pretty interesting guy. For starters, he's a little rough around the edges. He's got a complicated, mostly estranged relationship with both his brother and father, who are each living exemplary pictures of the classic American hero. They worked hard and earned their stations in life; Joshua is a taker. He split home at a young age and carved out his own life first as a biker, then as a gangster. In the eighties he took a wife, settled down, had a kid. Lived the American dream.

In 1989 he died.

That's where "Fiends of Nashville" gets a little complicated. Because that's where it starts.

Not in 1989, in the shallow bayou out back behind a Louisiana motorcycle bar where he was beaten to death by the Cowboy Boot Man. Not even in 2009 when a fully-conscious Joshua Danton "wakes up" in a hospital bed in a young man's body.

And I guess it doesn't really begin in purgatory, either, where Joshua Danton spends an entire eternity, since the concept of "eternity" implies a place without time, implies a scenario where stories cannot take place in a chronological fashion. No, the story of "Fiends of Nashville" doesn't properly begin anywhere, but it takes place largely in the life beyond this one, theoretically anyway.

By now you're utterly confused. Don't worry about it.

"Fiends" is basically about consciousness. Well, it's about a lot of things right now, a clusterfuck of ideas and themes inspired by a semester of western film studies, long late-night talks about heaven, hell, and Dante's Inferno, shared accounts of broken relationships, the eighties, and George Carlin. Did I say it was about consciousness? I guess I was referring to the fact that it's about what life after death would be like. Not just shooting-the-shit philosophically, but scientifically. What if your consciousness could be "saved" after your physical body dies? What if it could be encoded digitally? Stored as 0's and 1's on some huge server? Could that data still be considered a person? What if that data was moved into the dormant body of a new individual? A vegetative coma patient, say? Well, that's essentially the question "Fiends" examines, but it goes deeper than that. What does your consciousness experience in the state between bodies? What kind of dreams take place in this electronic purgatory, so to speak?

That's where the western element comes in. "Fiends" is also about the American frontier. What is it? Has it vanished? And where has it gone?

At the heart of Joshua's character, he is simply a man without fear. He has no fear because in his mind is the frontier of the old American west. He goes where he likes, he does what he wants, and the only one who can stop him is the man who's a faster draw. He chooses not to acknowledge the boundaries and restrictions that would threaten to hinder him from living his life the way he decides. The western frontier doesn't just exist in his head and in his dreams; he acknowledges it all around him. And if some pissant little guy with a uniform and a superiority complex tries to get in his way, Joshua tells him plainly to fuck off.

So "Fiends of Nashville" is a western. It's about what would happen if a kick-ass-the-old-fashioned-way American hero with a bad attitude and a bad mouth were to be plucked out of the west and dropped into bleeding-heart-liberal, politically-correct, paranoid 2009. It's about the clash of two different Americas, the old and the new. The reality and the myth. It's about fear. A man with none surrounded by a society with too much. The conflict between a man who lives life the way he wants to, and those for whom life isn't real, for whom life takes place only on the other side of a television or computer screen, the consequences of which are dealt to imaginary characters or digital avatars. It's about a lot of the problems I struggle with as an individual and it's about everything I think is fucked up about my generation and this great society we live in.

I realize I've been talking a lot and painting only a broad picture of this comic. Probably because my mind has been caged without a proper outlet for way too long now, cause if you know me in person you know I don't talk a lot. The only time I rant is when I write. And I'm finally coming back to writing after too long an absence.

Bear with me.

So what kind of fears does a man without fear have? Joshua may be unhindered, unchecked, and unfazed by the systems that keep us locked down in a state of fear on a day-to-day basis, but underneath all that ruggedness lurks more than a fair share of demons. Joshua takes what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. But why?

He's afraid of death. He's afraid of age, and he's afraid of time. He's afraid of working hard to attain so little. He's afraid of being a slave. (This thought process, and a lot of this idea in general, was born two summers ago when I was working ten-hour days under the hot sun, pitching tents for a rental company called Grand Rental Station. Long days of pure physical labor afforded me plenty of time to think about cool story ideas. I remember heaving huge iron stakes out of the hard ground with a sledgehammer, literally drenched with sweat, and seeing a vision of a character trapped in hell, doing the same thing, taking a brief repose to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and look up to regard the thousands of stakes sticking up at odd angles for miles of desert scrubland all around, then returning back to work, robbed of the mental faculty that might have allowed him to reason with this reality, conscious only of his own heat exhaustion.)

But these fears only explain the kind of person Joshua is before he "dies"--depending on what your perception of consciousness, or a soul, is. What happens when this person goes through purgatory--eternity--itself? What happens when this person is suddenly confronted with a world of people who take no responsibility for their actions, who think they're entitled to cheap and easy rewards, to money without honest work? With an society that believes every child is a winner? With an America that is swift to medicate its problems instead of dealing with them head-on?

Joshua is a crusader against BULLSHIT.

Against pretentiousness, cockiness, hipness to the mainstream. Against bureacracy, false idols, and the illusion of safety.

Oh yeah, and did I mention he listens to Genesis? Don't complain if he switches the radio to eighties pop, or he'll crack you in the face.

There's a lot of other cool stuff at work in "Fiends of Nashville," and I haven't even managed to get around to the plot yet, but I'm running out of steam. Consider this a teaser, with a promise of more once I've shocked myself into a new mode of awareness. I'm getting tired, so I'll sign off here, but I'll be back. Tomorrow I'm going to write up Issue #1. Or is it Issue #0 in the comics business? I don't know.

Peace out.

Apocalypse

This is a series I'm working on now. I got the idea driving around the main drag of my town, and noticing all the places I used to eat/shop at, etc. that have closed their doors in the wake of the recession. I thought, what a feeling of pure desolation these places give me, and then I thought, why not do a photo series on them and call it "Apocalypse"? So here's the first few to trickle in:

"The Flat"

Right, I know the title sucks, but it's a working one. Anyway, I got this idea for a feature script around last October I believe, in fact I can pinpoint the exact night: Halloween, and I was walking back to the Buckingham along Wabash barefoot, well in socks anyway, clad in a Batman, form-of: Adam West costume. It was that night that propelled me onto the train of thought that would become this script idea, because somebody at Zac's party mentioned something about how they never had any time to get anything done anymore, time seemed to be flying by so fast now, and something about that really clicked with me. Reason being that I felt exactly the same way; I was a 22-year old graduating college student who couldn't--still can't--manage time and could only watch helplessly as it slipped fleetingly through my fingers as if it were something tangible like sand. The days and nights were blending together and it was becoming much more difficult to square away even a couple of hours to write. I realized I was subconsciously re-evaluating my values in life and spending time in new, ultimately fruitless ways. The "time" wasn't going anywhere but out of my own scope of awareness. I was just wasting it, plain and simple. Willingly. I realized that my perception of time was constantly changing as I grew older. Each unit of time that I lived became a smaller percentage of the grand total, out of all the units I had spent and was spending on this earth.

So naturally, I decided to channel this thought process into something useful, my next creative endeavor.

That was 8 months ago. Jesus. Anyway, 8 months, one birthday, one semester, several failed writing projects, and a whole shitload of needless drama later, here I am. I still have the idea.

And part of the reason I'm excited to get to work on it now is because of a flurry of inspiration that came last night when I blinked back at the following facebook status:

"(Name) rushes toward the center of time, where the moment is frozen forever."

Apparently it's from "Einstein's Dreams," where the following quotes exist:

"At the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go."

"Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time, there is no life."

"Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case."

Needless to say, I really dug this stuff. It got me thinking again, about my idea and what I could do with it. It's about our perception of time, how we perceive that invisible force that pushes us along, changes us, erodes us, kills us. What is time, anyway? Does time exist? If there is no passage of time, can sensation, and consciousness, even occur?

What if you found a room where if you entered it, time froze on the outside? Your physical body would not age and only your consciousness could perceive the passage of time? You could theoretically remain in this room for days, years, lifetimes, and complete entire bodies of work, while your consciousness aged but everything else froze still. What if your consciousness could age independently of your external reality?

This setup, while simple, brought up a bunch of other inquiries. Story possibilities. What, then, if your consciousness started losing its ability to detect the passage of time while within the room? you would be unable to determine for how long you stayed inside. A day could be a hundred years could be one second, and you wouldn't know the difference. Could you even leave the room? Would you be trapped forever in eternity? In one frozen moment forever? Does the inside of the room even exist in space?

I realize I am implying the existence of a soul. If your body does not age inside the room, and your consciousness is merely electrical signals and chemical processes in your brain, then how else could consciousness even be possible?

If no time passes inside the room except for your consciousness, how is physical work/the creation of art/etc possible? To do anything physical, to make any imprint on reality, requires the passage of time. If time does not exist, then nothing outside your consciousness can happen. Your physical body cannot move, because doing so, moving from point A to point B in three-dimensional space, requires the passage of time, the fourth dimension. Your consciousness, in this scenario, would be trapped inside the room forever.

Obviously more deliberation on this is necessary. In any case, the concept of a room with special temporal properties is still one that interests me. And maybe the title "Flat," as it refers to a scenario in which the fourth dimension, time, is removed, causing physical reality to be frozen, applies after all.

So here goes.
I kind of intend this to be a place for me to post news in the world of Josh Medcalf, upcoming projects, that kind of thing. Though I wouldn't be opposed to seasoning that coverage with a candid thought or window into my mind every now and then.