Black Rider presents The Diamond and the Thief 23

Artwork my Matt Maust

…and now on to edition 23 of our minizine, with all the history of luminous motion.

In this edition Toby Fitch inspects the reach of living daylights, David Lynn Clucas reads back, and Levin A. Diatschenko descends down into the secret order of the gaol library.

Look homeward, angels!

Jeremy
The Black Rider

The Diamond & the Thief Edition 23

Kickin’ it with Levin A. Diatschenko

Hunched over little sewing tables in a cafe a while back, a friend said to me “There’s this guy up north – you gotta read his stuff, Balius. This guy is the real deal.”

He was talking about Levin A. Diatschenko. And I read his stuff. And he is the real deal.

I imagine Levin as this mystic journeyman way up north in the Territory, conjuring up these stories out of the ancient land and heat. I imagine him orchestrating little men made out of sticks and twine, dancing and shrieking around and around him. I imagine Levin looking up at the night sky and wonder what would reflect in his eyes.

We published My Soul Cried the Spaceman as an ebook (hit the link for the stores it’s at) and it’ll be out as a physical book in the near future.

It’s space, it’s mystic, it’s magical realist, it’s cool. It’s not for the squeamish, it’s not for the faint of heart (and not for kids!) and it doesn’t pull punches.

The Black Rider caught up to get down to the heart of the matter.

This is us kickin’ it.

Levin, when we first started discussing My Soul Cried the Spaceman our conversation filled with ideas stemming from esoteric systems, political thought, primal desires of man, spiritual matters and a range of other fields. I’d like to start here by asking about the concept of space drunkenness which I remember we spent quite a bit of time debating. What does it mean to be space drunk?

In the book space drunkenness is a condition that astronauts get from being in deep space too long. They usually get temporary amnesia, forgetting their own identities. Sometimes they awake from it as from a daydream, vaguely recalling uncharacteristic escapades they’d been on while in the trance. I wanted the spaceship and its actions to be metaphorical of mental activity. We all go on daydreams (perhaps of fights, arguments, sex, and so forth), and then snap out of these imaginative adventures. In the book I’ve made it physical; imagine if your body wandered like your mind does? You might snap out of it after doing something you regret. The astronauts open fire on cities, commit piracy, or just wander the universe lost in space drunkenness. Mastering control of the spaceship is therefore an astronaut’s equivalent of concentration or yoga.

Can you tell me a little bit more about this idea of accumulative or total human knowledge? I don’t think of this as omniscience, but rather, I see the last Thirteener character representing and being the summation of all experience of his people group. What role does this character fulfill in the story?

Borges said that on an eternal timeline all people would eventually do all things. I think this idea is very useful in terms of viewing humanity as a single being (or organ of the Earth being), as well as implying non-judgment. The idea with the last Thirteener, the last child of his race retaining all his ancestor’s memories in his head, is my experimentation with that concept. He is something of the Eternal Wanderer, or Adam Kadmon in Cabalistic philosophy. His appearance was the visible evidence of an abstract quality in the Earth Chain (the aspiration to unity) just as the appearance of the UN, say, is the visible manifestation of our desire for some kind of unity and cooperation in the world. The desire is there, and the existence of the UN is proof even though the ideal has not been accomplished yet.

Another layer to this concept is the spiritual idea about the external and internal worlds mirroring each other. Since this single being retains the memory of a whole human race, when he gives a speech in front of a huge crowd of people from another human race it seems to him that he is viewing the contents of his own head.

You’ve got themes of unity permeating through the book as you explore in multiple contexts. I’m thinking of the androids, the sect, the pilgrims seeking out the last Thirteener. Do you see your main characters in their lonely states seeking to belong to something?

Yes, the androids are seeking acceptance as sentient beings, so that it becomes a human rights issue: if they’re deemed alive, they should be entitled to rights as a new form of human (since they ‘evolved’ from humans). Professor Bleak switches the argument to say that we humans are also only artificially intelligent, reactionary, and mistaking complexity for consciousness. This puts humans on par with the AI either way.

The Hidden Moon Cult was founded by a native of Earth 13, the race which dies while passing their collected memories onto the next generation until there’s a single child left. This is a huge sacrifice of the many for the one (or whole). This woman did not want to give her own identity up and so had a struggle with that. The theme of sacrifice comes up throughout the book as linked with unity or unifying.

Which main character do you mean? The astronaut or the Child? both have their share of loneliness, since both are living lives unusual to the rest of humanity. They are therefore the closest things to peers to each other than any other characters in the book. These two are not seeking belonging in the usual sense, but more like those who aspire to greatness (the astronaut) or feel greatness has been thrust on them (The Child) and thus belong to the historically great among us.

Something I particularly like about the story is the repetition – it’s as if situations repeat themselves or become shadows of themselves with each reoccurance. What is happening to the astronaut amid this repetition?

The repetition has a few ideas behind it. One is that hypnotism and trance occur with repetition, and so these repeated scenarios add to the Space Drunk feel of the book. Another is the idea of writing prose like music, with repeated motifs. Motifs in symphonies or free jazz often repeat motifs with variations or in different keys and so forth. Russian fairy tales are actually written with this rhythm. There are lots of repeated phrases, endings, and occurrences. The result feels very poetic and rhythmic.

I also like the idea that repetition is a way of thinking non-linear. With each repetition something is different, as if these are the same moment revisited, spiting into two potential choices or realities. Imagine an editor’s view of reality: If someone keeps doing the exact same thing each day then all the days in between the first and last day would be deemed redundant. So the editor-god takes them out. Time becomes transcended like a wormhole from the first day to the last. We experience such a (subjective) loss of time when we do repetitive activities. We also lose our cars when we park in the same parking lot at the same supermarket year after year. This is because the incidents of parking there have become redundant or melded into each other.

What role does the Hidden Moon Cult play in the story. Does it exist?

The last Thirteener says that everyone has a Hidden Moon inside them. This place was his subconscious, with its extreme sexual traits and its reluctance to give up its last desires. The woman who founded it, Hegemony, is a Thirteener herself and the last to give herself up to the process which ended in unity. So, it was like the Child’s last temptation or Dweller of the Threshold (as some traditions put it).

It does exist but the question is whether it is an actual physical place or an astral or ghostly illusion. I think it had aspects of both since some people, such as Miss Glare, return in the flesh.

How does a Gleamer challenge humanity?

Gleamers challenge humanity firstly by their mere existence: it forces a clear definition of sentience, and there isn’t one. Professor Bleak  claims that they are merely very complex programs with a huge number of potential programed responses, and this tricks us into thinking them sentient. The problem is that this may well describe us humans. We live by programmed or learned responses to similar situations. So, if we deem them machines, we could deem ourselves that too, and if we deem them sentient then they have grounds for human rights. The humans do not want to grant this in the book.

The Gleamers themselves consider themselves the next evolutionary step from humans, and therefore our superiors.

Tell me about The Veil – what is it and how do people get their hands on it?

The Veil is a magazine (or zine, I’m not sure on the difference) that I produce and edit. It’s devoted to occultism, mysticism, obscure science, philosophy, Freemasony, comparative religion, and things like that. It’s designed by Nico Liengme and is about to release its fifth issue. We do small print runs of about 150 copies, and distribute it online too.

Here’s an example: http://issuu.com/pinkus/docs/theveil3_final_print

For a hard copy email aybrus@hotmail.com or go to Polyester books in Melbourne, and various cafes around Darwin.

What are you working on these days?

Right now I’m working more in theatre. We’re trying to tour my first play Darwin Vs. Matilda to venues around the country, and my second play Jehovah’s One Table Restaurant is going into production. As I said, issue 5 of The Veil is coming soon as well, and so is a book of Swagman’s fables.

Thanks Levin!!!

Coming soon: two books by JJ Deceglie

Levin A. Diatschenko’s ‘My Soul Cried the Spaceman’ is out now

Black Rider Press is proud to announce the release of the ebook novel My Soul Cried the Spaceman by Levin A. Diatschenko.

The small spacecraft Wanderjahre comes upon a coffin floating in space. Bringing it inside the ship, Captain Spendthrift discovers a Gleamer (the first type of robot deemed sentient) inside it. The captain follows the coffin’s trajectory back to a nearby Earth to find that its major cities are engaged in massive funerals processions with hundreds of coffin-bearers surging down the main streets. All the coffins are identical to the one Spendthrift had picked up.

There are many planet Earths, all linked across dimensions by the force called gravity. All known Earths share similar historical and political backgrounds (though with varying emphases) but Earth 13 stands out bizarrely. The men there die on consummation, and the women only weeks after childbirth. The children inherit the combined memories of both parents, while the population shrinks.

Millions of people from the other Earths flock to the funeral planet, and wait with bated breaths for what may be the last Thirteener – one person with the knowledge of an entire species.

The locals of Earth 13 employ Captain Spendthrift – member of the Astronaut’s Guild – to find the mythical moon rumoured to be revolving around Earth 13, and penetrate the infamous ‘hidden moon cult.’ This group of nuns, who also may or may not exist, have either discovered the secret of immortality or degraded over the years into predatory vampires. Either way, they may pose a threat to the last Child.

As with Diatschenko’s other novels, My Soul Cried the Spaceman discusses the metaphysical and psychological underpinnings of human culture. This is his fourth novel, a science fiction written in the vein of Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick.

You can pick it up around the traps generally for about 5 smackers from:

iTunes Bookstore
Amazon Kindle Store
Angus & Robertson
Sony Reader Store
Kobo Books

Levin A. Diatschenko

Levin A. Diatschenko was born in Sydney, and raised in Alice Springs. Though he has lived in most major cities in Australia, he resides in Darwin.

Arnold Zable called him ‘The Kafka of the Outback’.

Rak Razam called him ‘The suburban Borges’.

His work has been referred to variously as magical realism, hard-boiled Surrealism, and mystic fable.

Since 2004 Levin has published three novels: The Man Who Never Sleeps, Meta-Detective and The Rooftop Sutras, which was shortlisted for the ‘Northern Territory Book of The Year Award’ in 2010. Levin also produces and edits an independent magazine called The Veil, which is devoted to philosophy, theosophy, mysticism and occultism.

Levin has written one play, Darwin Vs. Matilda; The True History of Australia’s Northern Frontier, which featured in The Darwin Festival, and for a season at the Darwin Entertainment Center. Sometimes he plays guitar and sings for a band called Flugendorf.

JJ Deceglie’s ‘the sea is not yet full’ – out now

Black Rider Press is proud to announce the release of the sea is not yet full by JJ Deceglie, an ebook version of the novel previously published.

the sea is not yet full is the story of Sep, an Australian writer roaring through flickering life, love and despair. It’s the story of Fremantle, Western Australia, and its brilliance and squalor. It’s incandescent. It’s Beat. It’s a punch in the gut.

Thrown in with a listless generation, Sep doesn’t understand his life or his reasons. Where is all he once knew? Sep will risk it all for a spark. Loss. Lust. Literature. Love. Limbo.

JJ DeCeglie was born and bred in Fremantle, Western Australia, and writes from Melbourne, Victoria. His work includes the novella the sea is not yet full, the short story collection In The Same Streets You’ll Wander Endlessly, and the novels Damned Good, Ennui and Despair and Drawing Dead. His next novel, Princes Without a Kingdom, is forthcoming.

His works have been published in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

Find out more about JJ at www.jjdeceglie.com and www.damnedgood.com.au

Read into JJ’s words in conversation with Black Rider.

Cover art by Ryan Swearingen

What they’re saying

“Squalid and brilliant. It reads to me like James Joyce getting blind drunk with Bret Easton Ellis. I don’t recall a novel which has captured the breadth and depth of the city – from freeway to Fremantle, river to beach – with such scope and energy. It is a blooded, passionately despairing portrait, a testament not just to passion but to talent”. – Nathan Hobby

“…a transgressive fever dream, an intense assaultive descent into the horrors of self”. – Levi Asher

“..touches on human emotion like few have been capable of achieving. Nothing is censored and it is refreshingly authentic. There is so much about this book that is universal. It does something few authors have been able to do – move me to tears”. – Monique Rothstein

“There is a clash occurring in the sea is not yet full, between the world of twentieth century European and American literature and twenty-first century Western Australia, with its vacuousness and nihilism. This is an age after history is finished, Deceglie seems to be suggesting. It is a time when there’s nothing left to tell. And yet our small lives flicker on.” – Guy Salvidge

Now available

The ebook can be purchased from a range of online stores, including:

Amazon Kindle
Kobo Books
Borders Bookstore
Sony Bookstore
Barnes & Noble
with more stores coming soon.

 

Coming soon: ‘My Soul Cried the Spaceman’ by Levin A. Diatschenko

The small spacecraft Wanderjahre comes upon a coffin floating in space. Bringing it inside the ship, Captain Spendthrift discovers a Gleamer (the first type of robot deemed sentient) inside it. The captain follows the coffin’s trajectory back to a nearby Earth to find that its major cities are engaged in massive funerals processions with hundreds of coffin-bearers surging down the main streets. All the coffins are identical to the one Spendthrift had picked up!

There are many planet Earths, all linked across dimensions by the force called gravity. All known Earths share similar historical and political backgrounds (though with varying emphases) but Earth 13 stands out bizarrely. The men there die on consummation, and the women only weeks after childbirth. The children inherit the combined memories of both parents. And so on, while the population shrinks.

Millions of people from the other Earths flock to the funeral planet, and wait with bated breaths for what may be the last Thirteener – one person with the knowledge of an entire species.

The locals of Earth 13 employ Captain Spendthrift – member of the Astronaut’s Guild – to find the mythical moon rumoured to be revolving around Earth 13, and penetrate the infamous ‘hidden moon cult’. This group of nuns, who also may or may not exist, have either discovered the secret of immortality or degraded over the years into predatory vampires. Either way, they may pose a threat to the last Child.

As with Levin A. Diatschenko’s other novels, My Soul Cried the Spaceman discusses the metaphysical and psychological underpinnings of human culture. This is his fourth novel, a science fiction written in the vein of Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick.

Levin A. Diatschenko

Levin A. Diatschenko was born in Sydney, and raised in Alice Springs. Though he has lived in most major cities in Australia, he resides in Darwin.

Arnold Zable called him ‘The Kafka of the Outback’.

Rak Razam called him ‘The suburban Borges’.

His work has been referred to variously as magical realism, hard-boiled Surrealism, and mystic fable.

Since 2004 Levin has published three novels: The Man Who Never Sleeps, Meta-Detective and The Rooftop Sutras, which was shortlisted for the ‘Northern Territory Book of The Year Award’ in 2010. Levin also produces and edits an independent magazine called The Veil, which is devoted to philosophy, theosophy, mysticism and occultism.

Levin has written one play, Darwin Vs. Matilda; The True History of Australia’s Northern Frontier, which featured in The Darwin Festival, and for a season at the Darwin Entertainment Center. Sometimes he plays guitar and sings for a band called Flugendorf.

KSP reviews Black Rider

KSP posted some reviews in their April 2012 newsletter. Thanks Rose and Mardi – your kindness abounds.

Meet the Poet

By Rose van Son

On Monday, 12th March, 2012, KSP audience members were treated to a spellbinding session of performance poetry and discussion by Emerging Writer-in-Residence, Jeremy Balius. Although born in the US and spending much of his formative years in Germany and Los Angeles, Balius has lived in Fremantle for the past seven years. He is caretaker of Black Rider Press.

An excellent communicator, Balius held the audience in awe with his strong poetry, crystallised performance readings and insightful philosophies and perceptions of his poetry and what poetry could be. His connection with the audience and their questions was at once thoughtprovoking and confronting. His background information and incredible research for his poems were informative and humbling.

Balius’ passions for language and philosophy are evident in his poetry, his readings and his art. He understands the balance of words and symbols – where they go and what they do to excite, cast shadow, reveal. His poetry leaves much scope for the reader to add meaning and to wonder poetry’s power and resonance.

Balius’ publication wherein? he asks of memory by Knives Forks and Spoons Press, UK, is both an aural and visual feast. He is unafraid to use language, and not just the English language, bilaterally, to at once tie, separate and propel the text.

Balius will soon be published in the Fremantle Press Performance Poets series publication to be accompanied by a CD.

As he writes in a line from Of the fifth consideration: ‘Explanations are never sufficient’ – the audience that sultry Monday afternoon, was left, having gained so much, wanting more.

(Rose van Son’s collection of poetry (Labyrinth) has recently been published in Sandfire by Sunline Press, Jan, 2012)

 

The Power of Place

By Mardi May

Jeremy Balius, our Emerging Writer-in-Residence, knows the importance of place or setting in a story, and how this influences the lives of people and characters.

American by birth and raised in Germany, Jeremy met an Aussie girl and Fremantle has claimed him for the last seven years.

Currently working on a novel set in Fremantle, Jeremy is also a poet of some standing in the Perth poetry community. Influenced by the American experience and the expressiveness of the German language, his poetic style flows into the prose of his novel.

As our guest at Past Tense, he read excerpts from his current work and we discussed areas relevant to our own writing projects. In his demonstration of the power of performance, we learned much about presentation and will endeavour to convey this in our readings on Open Day.

Thank you, Jeremy, from Past Tense, for your generosity in sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Black Rider presents The Diamond and the Thief 22

Artwork by Ryan Michael Swearingen (www.myeyemachine.com)

…and now on to edition 22 of our minizine, with all the announcements of the Marquise of O.

In this edition Corey Wakeling looks to the deserts, Allison Browning hears the moment, JJ Deceglie descends to ascend and Kirk Marshall talks human theremin.

Look homeward, angels!

Jeremy
The Black Rider

Pre-order ‘Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories’

You can now pre-order Kirk Marshall’s fiction debut at Black Rider Press.

Just quietly – it’d be a good idea if you did.

Orders ship from Monday 21 November 2011.

Kirk will launch the book at Avid Reader in Brisbane on 17 November 2011. See the Avid Reader website for more information and to RSVP. You should go. It’ll be awesome.

Check out what these cats said about the book.

Get caught up with the preface and get the right perspective.

Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories – what they’re saying

Diabolically verbose, Carnivalesque: And, Other Stories is a joyous, demented orchestra of prose. Reading it is like being pulled into an intoxicating Japanese fug, and you’ll sometimes wonder whether Marshall has, indeed, drugged you. These aren’t stories for people with short attention spans (and you might not always understand what is happening), but pull the pages close: there is gold to be found in amongst this ensemble cast of misfits. — Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law

Kirk Marshall is a gifted wordsmith, a writer’s writer, and the Australian bearer of the tradition of the Beats. Like his forbear, Jack Kerouac, his prose lands like a flurry of punches, and you read him in a happy daze, words sparkling and fading like fireworks, jumping with vitality. Every story in this collection counts big. — Patrick Holland, Miles Franklin Award-longlisted author of The Mary Smokes Boys

Carnivalesque: And, Other Stories is a giddy, vertiginous whorl of comic absurdities embroidered in a baroque, Melvillean prose that pushes syntax to its very limits — a healthy dose of literary nitrous oxide that could only issue from Marshall’s delightfully warped, sesquipedalian talent. — Emmett Stinson, author of Known Unknowns

Donald Barthelme’s banter, Kenneth Patchen’s dialect, Alfred Jarry’s sense of occasion — all converging to track a lone surviving wolf dwelling in the vast forests of Hokkaido, a vastness only exceeded by the immensity of Marshall’s imagination. — David F. Hoenigman, author of Burn Your Belongings

Kirk Marshall has perfected “Carnie Fiction” with this offering of bold, sentimental, incendiary and comic prose. As we all line up outside the circus of new fiction, Kirk Marshall has cut to the front of the line. — Trevor Richardson, author of American Bastards

“Carnivalesque” is perhaps the perfect word to sum up Kirk Marshall’s writing. Like a fireworks display, it gives the impression of chaos and hypercolour, but is in fact instead a meticulously planned and executed feat of skillful timing and untethered imagination. It’s safe to say you’d have to traverse innumerate carnivals before you’ll find anything quite like this collection. A great work. — Christopher Currie, author of The Ottoman Motel

Reading Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories is more akin to witnessing astounding feats of live performance, in all their frenetic glory. Marshall uses language to craft his imagery with all the skill of an acrobatic contortionist. This collection is sheer literary bravado! — Amy Barker, author of Omega Park

Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories offers the reader pages of fine language surfeit with stark startles of description and a compelling obliquity of circumstance/setting. — Joshua Cohen, author of Witz