The Free Radical

What is The New Millenium Muse?

A work in progress. A life in progress. The Muse Trilogy is personally a tool that I use to explore who or what I am, and to determine what the hell I’m doing here. And then how that relates to everyone else— what the hell they’re doing here, individually and collectively. I’m asking the Cosmos out on a first date. Then if I decide that this is a relationship I want to pursue, I’ll have to figure out a good balance between the things which I wish for myself and what the rest of the Cosmos desires for itself. I’m just working it out on paper… and you’re peeking over my shoulder.

As you write it, I might add. Didn’t you begin by distributing the chapters one-by-one as they were written?

Yeah, when I began writing, I didn’t initially envision it as a book, let alone a trilogy. I was just issuing a periodical, every three weeks, a collection of stories, poems, conversations and other musings, went out to about forty “subscribers”. As I got into the project I quickly realized that the bits of this-and-that had a natural tendency to overlap, intertwine… to integrate. It’s cosmological scrapbooking. Once I conceded that I was indeed writing a novel, it completely took over and wrote itself… and re-wrote me along with it. We are the unfinished trilogy…

What genre do you write in? How would you categorize it?

I like to call it Imaginative Non-Fiction. It’s totally obvious that it’s all made up, but it’s equally true too.

Is it didactic? Are you preachy?

Preachy… no. Pretentious… perhaps. Didactic? Show don’t tell… Show and tell… How ‘bout I just tell you exactly what I’ve been showing you? Sometimes I’m a bit too obvious maybe, and other times I’m totally obtuse. I’m just a curious guy looking at things from unique angles. If you don’t see it, fine. Just don’t try to convince me that I don’t see it either.

You’ve spoken before of the first book, The Thousand-Petalled Lotus, as an extended metaphor for human consciousness… hence the title…Can you explain the analogy briefly?

A friend of mine once remarked, upon completion of the book, that he liked how I used “plot” as a literary device as opposed to a structural foundation of storytelling. The plot in Book One emerges… as long as you pay attention. It just arises from the noise of the novel— much like our identities arise within our minds from the clutter of our life experiences. We don’t specifically go about structuring our identities, yet everything we do structures our identities. Hapless and clueless we emerge. I am nothing more than a thread connecting a group of experiences with a unique perspective. Am I sewn into a larger tapestry? Yes, because books are wall hangings too; we just use shelves to hold them up.