I wrote the intro to my new book Species Regret in an overly academic way. It’s hard to understand, but it sounds cool. Here, I paraphrase the introduction to the book―explaining how and why I relate to this world that I gave forged from the ashes of history in this book, but more… and somehow less.
So…
How were you made?
Or better yet, how did you make yourself?
There’s a strain of psychology called “object relations study”, which is a big part of psychoanalysis, which says that experiences that happen to us help shape who and how we are. The tricky part, though, is that we are actually the ones that shape who exactly “we” are. We look at aspects of culture and we relate to them, creating our inner and outer selves. When we see something or someone that we think is cool or smart or beautiful, we create a sense of inner desire and we try to either become that thing or person, or at least bring aspects of it into our personalities―our selves. We imitate the things we admire, creating an idealized ‘other’ that we hope we could someday be, while at the same time, we renounce aspects of who we truly are.
I was exposed to two books of mythology when I was a child, books that held me far more than the ‘Big Book' of mythology that I was supposed to have been studying and learning from. These were books of Norse and Greek mythology. They were tall books, not too thick, and they had lots of cool pictures. The book I was supposed to be studying was insanely thick, written like an asshole had written it, though it was supposedly written by a bunch of people over time, but it just seemed like a bunch of assholes had written it, and then another asshole named King James had some squires or monks or other assholes go through it and try to make it vaguely intelligible. Which it wasn’t.
I was way more interested in the book with pictures.
And when I was 9 years old―a movie came out called “Clash of the Titans” which used a bunch of my favorite stories from my Greek mythology book. And it was awesome. There was Pegasus, the horse with wings. And swords. And giant stop-motion scorpions. And oiled-up buff dudes. And ladies with cleavage and too much eyeshadow. And Medusa, the snake monster lady.
I fucking loved that movie. It just cemented all the stuff that I loved about mythology―the power of the gods that had no sway over the culture of New York State, yet whose stories trumped every inch of the Bible. I knew that I didn’t believe in the Christian God from age 9, but I definitely believed in the ideas behind the Greek and Norse gods. They only shit on people when people were shitty to them. Or they were horny. Or they were fighting amongst each other.
They were, in short, like children. And I was very much a child. My life didn’t have a lot of meaning. I had a family. I hated school. I was smarter than most of the other kids around me and finished my homework before everyone else. I liked jumping dirt bikes, but I was afraid of the pain that being too adventurous would incur.
One day building a tree fort, I literally stepped on nails that went through my feet and later pounded a nail through my hand. After a gnarly tetanus shot in the middle of the night, I felt like I ‘got’ what Jesus went through in the crucifixion, and while terrible, I definitely couldn’t relate to that dude.
More than anything, I liked reading.
I liked narratives.
In reading about these other, older gods and their children, often called “heroes”, I began shaping how I view the world. Reading these stories helped shape my own morality and ideologies―my life felt empty, and the narratives in these stories about men with bulls’ heads, revenge, desire, battle, chaos, glory and woe had meaning. So, I started swapping my life―who I am―for stories.
I did what many people do―I became a dreamer, and in just a few scant years, I started putting dreams to paper―and it was then, at the age of 14, that I became a writer. Those old gods were lurking―they helped give order and meaning to the worlds of the past and by imitating them, I gave order to my own world.
In short, I ordered the chaos. But when you’re molding yourself and your values from the material of pre-Modernity, pre-Christianity, you fall out of step with the present. On your own terms. You’ve created a rupture between what is socially permissible and what is personally permissible.
And before you know it, you’ve gone and created a ‘historical present’. The agency―the power and self-activation with which gods and heroes of ancient Norway and Greece lived―is now yours, and motherfucker, you feel alive.
What I’m saying, if I am saying anything is this: I was born into a world without gods. Only “God”. And that god is boring. That god never said, “Wow, look at that quadruped. That’s a really hot quadruped. That’s a wildly fuckable quadruped,” and then turned himself into an equally hot quadruped to go fuck that hot quadruped.
That is a wildly interesting god. That’s the kind of god I could get behind, if I believed in God. Or gods. Which I don’t. I’m too busy with my iPhone, just like you. I have found other objects of worship, but I have used these objects to create stories wrought from my past―borne from my childhood―for you.
If gods did walk the earth today, they’d be fucked-up. Nobody would be worshipping them. They’d have power, but nobody would care. Unless they were really hot physically, which some of them were, but most people wouldn’t give a shit, because there is always someone hotter, someone stronger, someone with a hotter body and a bigger IQ and a better social network and a better-paying job and is grasping for the future in a way that you are not.
We hate ourselves―us, contemporary society―we are horny and dumb and surface-oriented and live our waking moments with dread. If gods existed today, they’d feel the same, but the lack of people believing in them would amplify those feelings a thousandfold.
And that’s why I wrote these stories. These gods are human, in exactly the way that the God that pervades the culture I am from is not.
*****
The first edition of Species Regret is available from Wordshape now. Each is signed and numbered. http://wordshape.com
