We interrupt this program kind of
to talk about my unhinged youthful relationship to Alan Moore
It’s not a total disruption: one could argue that I became obsessed with shapeshifting when I was 22 because I felt that a disability didn’t represent my spirit or my capabilities and I felt confident in the magical properties of transforming into a body that did. One could argue this: I don’t know if I’m arguing this. It’s a bit beside the point.
The point, such as it is, has been inspired by the gleeful end-of-the-world virtual bash that is twitter in the anticipated wake of a spectacular collaspe at the hands of a person so hilariously clueless about what twitter is for that it begs too many questions to name. Everything’s gotten so loopy and unpredictable that a lot of people are wondering what the chances are of MySpace reclaiming its brief but potent role in culture, and that got me thinking about my MySpace page, which was titled BecomeTheParadox, and contained a few scandalous pictures but was “known” in my small but eager circles for its far more scandalous blog. Said blog had a few hidden messages to a couple of people who didn’t admit to reading it, but it was mostly an outlet for my feelings for Alan Moore. That feels incredibly weird to say.
It started like this: I woke up on March 9, 2006 in the throes of an epiphany about the way love works, not necessarily romantic love, just love in general. This epiphany, to cut right to the chase, unlikely as it all may seem, cured the depression I had no idea would be soon tested with my father’s sudden death and other obstacles. At that time, on that day, I thought this sudden oneness with whatever-the-fuck was going to be life forever, I thought I’d never be depressed again, and I write glibly about that now, but it wa hell of a drug (and it wasn’t a drug, though several people asked me if I was on ecstasy that summer, a drug I’ve never done). I tripped a lot of people out in Iowa City between March 9th and that fateful July day when my father died. I found out that a lot of people in authority were more comfortable when I was on the edge of sucidal depression than when I was truly satisfied in my own skin, and this made me angry, so I became, by the average Midwesterner’s estimation, a Very Angry Person. I wore a lot of red, and smoked a fair amount of loose tobacco, but I couldn’t roll my own cigarettes, so my actor friend, who was a bartender, would do it, after I barked such diplomatic commands as MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL! in greeting. (I still can’t believe that…worked. I’d end up with a roll of perfectly hand-rolled cigarettes and a couple of suprise unsolicited joints, because some Midwesterners actually like it when you stop being polite.)
I understood, from the positive attention I got that counteracted the theatrically negative attention I got, that there was something coursing through me I knew how to heed but didn’t fully understand and I became convinced that thing was magic. No one in Iowa City knew what I meant by this, but luckily I come from New Orleans where, at that time, people still did. My dad sent me a bar of handmade soap from a respected voudou shop in the French Quarter and on the package they encouraged customers to call with any questions, so I did. I ended up in a long and invigorating conversation with one of the knowledgable workers there, talking about magic of all kinds. (When I told my dad about the conversation later, he said, “I knew you’d call them.”)
I met various others I could discuss the ineffable and the sublime with, but they were all at my level, it seemed, and I needed someone who knew more than I did, who had experienced what I wouldn’t even know how to imagine. I think it was around that time that my dear friend Merrick suggested I read Promethea. I don’t know what I’d make of the comic now, but then, I felt so like I’d just found what and who I needed that I couldn’t even sit still and read the thing. I would sit down, read a few pages, and have to take a walk as fast as I could around the modest circumfrence of downtown Iowa City before I could sit down and read more. This wasn’t a book, it was a spell. Because Alan Moore wasn’t—
he was—
I didn’t not think he was human, but I did believe he could shapeshift. Merrick hooked me up with some in-depth spoken word recordings where Moore talked about magic and I was convinced that was a wolf talking. I figured if I could meet him he could teach me how to do it, how to turn into a wolf, I mean. I really believed it was that simple. It was enjoyable, living life as someone who believed that wholeheartedly. But how was I going to meet him? I knew he lived in England and was pretty sure he lived in a hidden castle below the depths of the sea or in a cave shrouded by the Mists of Avalon or something, hard to get to. But thankfully, I did not believe there was a single damn thing that words couldn’t do, so after informing the MySpace masses in far too much detail about what kind of mentor/”student” relationship I was envisioning and all the heavy restraints involved (it was MySpace, it was summer, I was 22 and uncontainable in a hypercontained little town), I sat down with a notebook and put myself in — I was convinced — a space where I could actually communicate with Alan Moore. Such practices, I believed, were intuitive and effortless, if you understood how they worked, and at that time I believed that I understood everything.
I filled the book with all of it, even more seductive-grisly details of how I’d hope to learn these things from someone so superior. Writing it all out felt like a weird, slippery high, as though colors were overtaking my thoughts that I knew didn’t exist outside of my head but nevertheless felt vivid and real. I showed the book to Merrick, I think he’s the only one who ever saw it, and he said, “I’m trying to imagine being Alan Moore and getting this.”
I sat with it for a day or two after that, and I don’t quote anything here not out of a sudden sense of embarrassment or propriety but because I honestly don’t remember how I worded any of it. But it was simple enough to call his publisher, then Top Shelf, and explain it in worksafe terms: Alan Moore is a huge inspiration and influences and I have a book I’d like to give him that just details my thanks.
I don’t remember the name of the man I spoke to on the phone but I remember how kind he was, how genuine and warm. “Send us the book,” he said. “We’ll make sure it gets to him.”
I never got any confirmation from any werewolf magicians, Alan Moore or otherwise, that the book did arrive, but then, what would I expect him to say? I knew he was married, and I incorperated his wife into these consciousness-breaking scenerios as much as I could (I’m considerate that way) but would that have actually made it less awkward, or moreso? No way to know. And no way to know if I saw what I thought I saw or if Alan Moore is just a weird-kind-of-talented writer with a deep voice and an impressive beard. After my dad’s death, nothing ever felt straightforward again, and in recent years everything has just become an even more complex fractal. I have no idea if I still believe that anyone can do the things I was once convinced Alan Moore could do.
I missed a lot of points when I was 22 but one of them was this: we’re never going to get anywhere with this Lone Magician idea. This thing we call magic, transformation at an atomic level that can affect how things actually externally look as well as how they’re percieved, is collective. By design we’re meant to come together and make it happen, that’s why we’ve got such long cross-cultural traditions of sitting in circles doing things. If disability played into my youthful vision of myself as an aspiring enchantress and hopeful alcolyte of a British werewolf magician, it did so in this way: I saw it as a kind of untapped power. It’s why I started calling crutches “staffs.” A child asked me what they’re for and I said, “Parting the seas. And helping me walk.” It was easy to talk mythically back then.
It’s harder now, to say the least, because the Old Stories that people like me thought would “save us” clearly got us nowhere, and we’re attempting to live amidst the collapse of our climate and aggressive denial of decay in most of not all of our fundamental institutions and if there’s any story I can think of that sums up a moment like this, it would be that of the Maitreya Buddha, who, some say, will come to our rescue when the teachings of the Dharma have been wholly forgotten. At the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, there’s a statue of Maitreya Buddha looking around with an expression that clearly reads, “Well we’ve got our work cut out for us here, don’t we?” For the year I lived in Boston I worked near the museum and had free admission as a perk, and I’d go see that statue every chance I got, hoping peace was on the horizon, somewhere.
It must be.