Spanner R5 #amediting Update: The #amprocrastinating Is Almost Over

When FAWM came around this year, I decided to take a break from editing Spanner Book 1. That "break" lasted into the next month, making it two months I haven't done a single edit. Maybe a few notes, but no editing. I've decided to end the break soon, even though starting tomorrow I'm doing NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), which takes place the same month the now defunct Script Frenzy used to. It won't exactly be Script Frenzy, though considering how fast I script, I could easily write a full 100+ pages of Spanner TV series script (the basis for the final Revision 5) even while I write 30 poems.

Here's another way Script Frenzy, NaPoWriMo, and Spanner intersect in my mind: in the Final Revision, I'm writing all dream and vision sequences in the form of poems. I originally made the decision last year during the long and difficult Chapter 1 edit because I was bored with dream sequences that read like I plagiarized them out of self-help dream books and it struck me that the best way to apply the Rule of Cool to them was to rewrite them as surrealist poems (the Surrealists, remember, were big into dreams). NaPoWriMo will give me a lot more practice writing poems, and I intend to apply whatever I learn to Spanner wherever I can. However, that goes in the novelization; for the script version, I'm following Alfred Hitchcock's example and using avant-garde film techniques, or as close to them as you can put into a TV script (the director, cinematographer, and editor will of course have to help your humble showrunner do the rest).

And so while I'm writing 30+ poems for April (and incidentally practicing singing the 28 FAWM songs I write), I'll be doing a one-man Script Frenzy on the Spanner Series 1 script as well. Here goes...

2014 Projects: Finish the Spanner Edit, Write Book 0, and Get Published

The holiday season was my excuse to slack off from editing and writing at the end of 2013. The combination of a Blu-Ray player and a new widescreen TV didn't help. That's over now. I've had my year-end vacation. It's back to work. And the muse is obliging with the craziest story ideas I've had in a long time:

1. The entire plot to Spanner Book 0, complete with new title ("Banned in Japan"). Now it begins with a Yakuza-Triad war interrupted by a certain masked prankster and graffiti tagger who goes by the handle Spanner, and ends with a political crisis that may end in a devastating war between an increasingly fascist Japan and Chinese Communist Party (Holdings) Limited.
2. A new graphic novel idea incorporating the "Blake Island incident" repeatedly referred to in Spanner Book 1, and which takes up one night during the time period of Spanner Book 0. On the night of July 14 this year, Jennifer will kill 52 hitmen, mercenaries, and serial killers. Now I know how it begins: with her and some far more broken female former child soldiers robbing the Seattle Triad (under flashy young boss Ringo Wing) of money, sex slaves, and a snuff pornographer who resembles an infamous web cartoonist, as dozens of disposable gangsters die John Woo style (I ask myself the question: how would Lone Wolf and Cub artist Goseki Kojima do a "heroic bloodshed" shootout?). Because it's so action-oriented, it will not be called "The Jennifer Theory"; I'll have to find yet another new story to match that title.
3. Three final tweaks to Spanner Chapter 1 (Jennifer's "Red Baron name" changed from Blonde Phantom to White Phantom; Shira kicking Johnny-Johnny in "his nonexistent manhood" to begin a recurring motif linked to the Blake Island incident and ending in Chapter 11; and a rewrite of the fourth flashback) and such a complete overhaul of Chapter 2 R5 that I'm even switching the positions of 2.2 and 2.3 to avoid pointless time reversals.

Getting that graphic novel off the ground necessitates, of course, that I start drawing again and actually improve my skills so I can actually draw real comics. I decided I'll even throw in a "comic within a comic", of the bad-webcomic kind, which I'll draw in the inferior style I abandoned in 1999, when I stopped trying to ape Masamune Shirow (and failing) and began developing my more recent Clamp-influenced style, which I'm now modifying in a more Takeshi Obata direction that allows me to incorporate more of my "school of Alex Raymond" influences: Neal Adams, Ryoichi Ikegami, Tony Wong, and Raymond himself (with elements taken from Will Eisner and midperiod Frank Miller).

Meanwhile, I'm going to get one non-Spanner novel published this year. In March, during NaNoEdMo, I'm going to pick one previous NaNoWriMo novel and edit it to as close to publication quality as I can in one month. I have four options: Bad Company from 2007, Black Science from 2008, Dirty Pop from 2009, and Freefall from 2013. Once I feel it's ready for release, I'll publish it online. Thus, after 25 years of practice and planning, I will become a published author at last. Then in April, now that Script Frenzy is dead, I'll throw myself into NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) the way I do FAWM. To be a NaPoWriMo winner, you must write a poem a day for 30 days. I'll do my usual stuff inspired by the Surrealists and Beats, of course, but I'll also make my first attempts at traditional forms such as the sonnet, ode, and villanelle.

Above all, 2014 will be the year I complete the final edit of Spanner Book 1. Last year it took me 5 whole months to edit Chapter 1. One reason is that I completely changed certain older story elements (e.g. removing Hope and Karen and replacing them with Elle and new character Rico) and threw in new ones (e.g. the propaganda-video opening). I will not spend that much time on any later chapter, no matter how much I change it, not even Chapter 2 which I'm radically overhauling. Books 0, 1, and 2 are set this year, so I plan to get at least Book 1 published this year, Book 0 if I can squeeze it in.

And so it begins again...

Poem: Under the Devil Cross (Untergang)

(A Surrealist poet's take on Downfall. Or something like that. It grew out of the movie's German title, Der Untergang. Memetic mutation: I bet some people will mutate this poem to parody popular memes the same way they do Downfall. Note: The ethnic slurs are there simply for irony, not to mock tribalism and gangster movies like in Spanner; the apostrophes are missing because I read Cormac McCarthy.)

It used to be Hindu
It used to be Buddhist
It used to be Hermetic
It used to be Zoroastrian
It used to be theosophical
It used to be good luck
Till the evil prophet with the devil in his eyes
Consecrated it to Satan with the blood of six million Jews
And now its name is devil cross
Under the devil cross
He went wild hunting

The kikes are always to blame for everything said the evil kraut
Who killed six million of them
But couldnt shut them up they only got louder
Speaking in voices of artillery that split his bunker
With exploding words of Marx Mises Maimonides thou art the man
Accused six million voices he tried to silence with overdose
Of amphetamine and arsenic he chomped like candy fed to him by
His fat personal quack no kike science for this kraut but
Six million voices refusing to shut up only got louder
Under the devil cross
He went plumb insane

Driven by demons he tried to drag his nation down with him to hell
Grandpa what was Germany
Cub it was once a nation of poets and philosophers
Till Prussian aristocracy Dada economics world war drove them mad
And they made an evil Austrian with the devil in his eyes their god
Who fed them a subsistence diet of lies and six million Jews
And stabbed his nation to death with the devil cross
Stabbed it in the back dragged it down with him straight to hell
So now theres a black hole in the middle of Europe
Grandpa I dont see a black hole there
Well cub he killed all the poets and philosophers leaving only cynics
Under the devil cross
He wrecked his nation

Six million dead Jews wouldnt shut up kept getting louder
Voices of dead poets and philosophers the voice of reason
He hated reason kept rattling his rotting brains split his bunker
His head crammed with amphetamines arsenic hate lies occult piosity
Thought he could abolish reality by feeding the devil six million Jews
Reality laughed in his face got its revenge
His glorious millennium sacred empire of a thousand years lasted twelve
His apostles followed the example of the Dada poets by committing suicide
Or saved their now worthless lives by betraying him
Leaving him alone with the six million voices in his head
Six million dead Jews who refused to shut up but only got louder
Till he shut them up by putting a bullet in his head
Under the devil cross
He went under

Copyright © 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

Back to Spanner’s World...

Spanner: Double Poetic Prelude for Chapter 15 R4

Here’s the new double prelude I’ve just composed for the dedication page of the ebook edition of Spanner Chapter 15, that pivotal episode of Book 1:

Carne Levare

She wakes up from a dream into soft desiring flesh
Cool wind caresses kisses dark skin sensitive tender
Blood surges hot with electric intensity of passion
Conscious mind bathes in streams of thought and sensation
The wind brings summer birds’ gentle songs into her ears
Strong emotion burns her vision to intense clarity
She stretches out with pleasure the worries of the day before
And turns to the warm soft-eyed lover resting beside her
They surrender to each other with joyful savage kisses
And fuse inflamed bodies to raise their flesh to nirvana.

Carne Vale

The Ego longs to storm the ethereal sky
   Yet finds itself trapped in its fleshly tomb
Infernal powers oppress his exalted eye
   And carnal monsters drag his dust to doom
Fighting the world, he struggles to crucify
   His flesh and wills escape from the mortal gloom
To take new flesh divine his efforts bought
And reduce the dead material world to naught.

If Spanner is a sort of Carnival in political-thriller form, the two Latin origins of the name “Carnival” (carne levare = to raise the flesh; carne vale = farewell to the flesh) encapsulate the radical difference between carnal heroine Shira and unworldly archvillain Dr. Becket, who clash for the first time in Chapter 15.  I might not be taking part in NaPoWriMo this year, but its spirit has infected me. And now you’re reading it here first!

Copyright © 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

Fall of the Abomunist Party: Poem

Inspired by Bob Kaufman, author of “Abomunist Manifesto” (1958)
(with Ginsberg and Plath sneaking in)

San Francisco is no longer San Francisco
   not City but skyscraper suburb of Silicon Valley
   fossil entombed in amber Wall Street gold Beijing flytrap
   hedgerows of hedgefund hedgehogs
   Larry Jerry Steve and Zuck printing money
   notice posted by Abomunist Party on all bank doors
   the Beat is gone

Abomunist Party Central Committee
   traded their soul to the Man for stock options
   traded rapture for tenure
   traded boho for pomo
   traded holy chaos for mediocre jobsecure blah
   traded free love free speech free Mumia
   freedom to freedom of the

Abomunist Party Central Committee
   sold their soul to the company store for
   free tickets to the secret policemen’s ball
   trussed up for intellectual property violation
   send all hosannas kowtows asskisses to
   United States President Goldman Sachs & Company and
   Vice President Koch Industries Incorporated

Abomunist Party Central Committee
   betrayed the surrealist revolution
   coldly executed the ancient sexy poetry muse
   handed down sentence of death to the author
   handed down the rules the Party line decreed forthwith
   waterboard the author torture the text to death
   there is no text your tongue been plucked out

Abomunist Party Central Committee
   removed the dancer from the dance to the gulag
   no dancing allowed in their revolution
   no revolution allowed in their Party
   no party but the Party line decreed on high
   no parking on the dance floor baby
   the Party bombed

Abomunist Party Central Committee
   was a very dodgy year
   was a tonedeaf ear
   there is no more ear here
   you are ear be ear now
   tonedeaf tonguetied politburo can’t dance their empty suits
   trip over their two left feet

Fall Abomunist Party fall
   out of the ivory towers beheaded by lightning
   out of the partyline soundtrucks
   out of fashion
   tickytacky plastic colossus fall to splinters all fall down
   slam on the street we dance on their remains
   stop

(Note: not written for NaPoWriMo, but while procrastinating Script Frenzy.) [Second Edit: Stanza 4 line 2 now reads “betrayed the surrealist revolution” (the original manuscript read “put paid to the revolution”); I removed the “the” before “sentence” from line 4 because the new way sounds better. Third Edit 5/11/12: Stanza 6 line 4 changed from "hear here".]

Copyright © 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.