Most of the news we read, and most of the movies we see, have only passing value. Poetry often amounts to a nebulous cry of personal frustration. Songs tend to socialize our biological urges but less often speak of true love. Many of the situation comedies we see on TV tell us when to laugh only by the use of canned laughter. The editor pushes a button that plays a recording. We know we are supposed to laugh. Likewise we give the appropriate Pavlovian response to Madison Avenue, whose writers deliver endless copy redefining culture. And the masses follow. Many people go out and purchase whatever is said to be cool in order to find the safety of membership. Thus, it was true in the Denver real estate market when a new condo was named the Jack Kerouac Lofts. And so, I have a saying. "It all ends up in K-Mart." But real culture comes from real writers, artists, orators, thinkers and rebels. Madison Avenue and Hollywood mostly just follow and distort. Don't get me wrong. Writers everywhere are struggling to get it right. But good writers never write for a market. They write for an audience. They want to reach hearts and minds even if there's no pay.

Good writers condition their awareness to penetrate the mundacity of everything. Banality is everywhere today, because we exist to eat. We must live instead to create something with a deeper meaning. I aspire to be your pundit, prophet, poet, essayist, philosopher, and rebel screenwriter. I want to break your ribs with laughter and make you wail rivers of tears. And when I write horror, I want to be your wanted terrorist armed with an unlicensed typewriter.

"True artists and creative writers are never poor. We feel rich and blessed to have incessant visions amidst oceans of the blindfolded."

Some Background
I was born in the early 1950s. I wrote my first song when I was sixteen in 1967. Like most youths, I wrote a few poems by the age of 19. And I wrote an occasional byline article in a small college paper in my twenties. But writing did not become a deliberate habit for me until the early-mid 1980s when I was in my thirties. It was mostly songwriting. By the 1990s I had gathered momentum and found my identity in the way that I write.

A wide crossover of good music inspired me to begin writing songs in earnest by the 1980s. I found Patti Smith, David Bowie and Bob Dylan hugely influential. But I had wanted to be a singer since the age of six (circa 1957) when I was caught with lyrics from the radio and was actually punished for it. If I came out of the 1980s loving one song more than any other, it was probably Midnight Summer Dream by the Stranglers. It's a simple song that embodies a style and content that my own songwriting and poetry emulates. My taste in music has gone to songs like Both Sides the Tweed by Mary Black. I also like a small segment of goth music such as Emilia Autumn. And I enjoy listening to the recordings of William Burroughs and Sylvia Plath. But if I had just one musical artist I could take with me into eternity, it would be Leonard Cohen. Specifically, the album Songs of Love and Hate and the final cut Joan of Arc. That one song is an exquisite example of soul-wrenching metaphor. Other cuts on the album are powerful as well. I used to play Cohen's songs on the jukebox in Larry's Bar by the Ohio State University campus in Columbus at age 18 in 1970. Between him and Dylan, I could see a deeper truth in the turmoil of my era.

All through the 1990s, my creative writing became a mess of computer files, stacks of scribble and thousands of index cards. This is normal for people who make writing their passion. My biggest problem was not writer's block or lack of motivation. I have a tendency to take on too many projects. I lose time and focus. I have spent years developing arts directories on the Internet. That is called publishing, not so much writing. The creative writing in my life strives toward a confluence of artistic genres from poetics to art films that I will no doubt be making soon. Many of my songs are suitable for theater.

I made a living as an entrepeneur in the counter-culture postcard business in the 1980s. By 1996 I was doing web design. And today I am blessed with a change of fate. I decline to spell it out. But I expect that I will be making trips to New York with increasing frequency. I've been studying the New York creative scene intensely since at least 1998. I file a million things about New York from from the New York Times and assorted magazines. I regard New York as the world center for the arts. But I am also interested in Paris and Los Angeles and Amsterdam and parts of Spain. I hope to be making my first trip to Paris very soon. I have family roots in France. My mother was born there. And I have entertained a long itnerest in French luminaries including photographers, writers , surrealists and film pioneers.

Creative photography has long been a huge part of my life. I've developed a strongly unique style. I expect that I might make the transition to making art films and shorts soon. During all the years that I was penniless, I took Tom Edison's advice. I hustled while I waited. I wrote down hundreds of ideas for film. I develop strategies for my own creative process. I have unique ideas about where to put a camera and how to aim it. I have concepts for the manipulation of sound. I plan to develop a sound bank for my films. I want to incorporate my poetry and songs into my films. I will probably work with studio musicians and attempt to produce recorded songs. If this works, the songs will become content for my films.

I regard myself as a poet songwriter. I rarely write a song that does not fit into a poetic perspective. A poet is commonly thought of as a master of verbosity. But I tend to think that a poet is more defined by the pause between his words. The tragic phenomenon known as poetry slams has only turned up the volume without improving the content. But a real poet is someone who gives fluid expression to feelings that can pass into the hearts and minds of other people. Journalism deals with hard facts and opinions. But the poet spits out poetry as a transcendal device to move the listener as needed. Likewise the literary genre is also an art form.

Most of my film concepts will not be linear stories. They will be art pieces and dreamscapes. One example would be my bloated Moons of Dracula project. At first it was linear. But it slowly evolved into a nonlinear dreamscape without being dominated by a plot. I've been socking away additions to that story since about 1996. Unlike most vampire stories, Moons of Dracula promises to be an intense psychological thriller and a surreal and beautiful dark comedy. By all means it will be a visual and cerebral art work. But given the enormous expense of casting and set production, I decided that Moons will be a literary project first, then maybe a stage or screenplay. I've written a good number of mischievous songs for the story.

I don't even know if I will ever get around to actual theater productions or plays. I think theater requires endless orchestration and rehearsal. But I have little doubt that I will make some inroads into art films.

The Beats
For a brief period of my youth, I was acquainted with a few Beat poets in Boulder, Colorado. where I lived from age 19 in 1971 to age 29. That's kind of neat because this town was named after a rock, which can be a metaphor for hard life although life was easy for most Boulderites. And the town was full of "rolling stones" coming from and going to all parts of the world.

Long before I came to Colorado or met any Beat poets, my background was purely beat in the most harsh and spiritual terms. This came about through a shattered family, severe and early child abuse in a folster home, five years of delinquency and pranksterism in an orphanage, runaway journeys, street life, juvenile reform school, crime, drugs and dangerous journeys, all of which deeply inspired me to a bottomless reservoir of vision. That is my beaten core, the endless list of bummers that I treasure for reasons that the protected classes will never understand. And rather than accepting pity, I came to discover myself abundantly blessed with visions resulting from pain. Thus would be my own "beat" experience in the true Herbert Huncke terminology.

In the mid-1970s I was a guest resident for two years at a fab institution that had once been a partly-built ruins obscurely called the Lefferdink Hotel. Its location was at 6th and Canyon, right about where the high plains meets the first range of mountains. Periodically, there was a gathering of resident poets, hosted by a visiting group from Naropa University. These included Bonnie Schulman, Anne Waldman, many Boulder poets and, on at least one occasion, Allen Ginsberg. I knew Bonnie briefly both inside and outside the "hotel", met Waldman many times and met Allen just once although that encounter was profoundly life-changing. In truth, I would not connect or grasp the movement's definition of "beat" until years later when I would take up study of the Beats through books by the likes of William Burroughs and occasional films. What happened then was that these poets from my youth suddenly made sense, and became what is now a core of my inspiration. I therefore thank them all.

The Beats were never a ready-made product that I consumed from the outside. At heart, they were fundamentally identical to my own experience. And they would consume all my faith in them as I slowly discovered the binding symetry of their experiences and my own. The Beats who I was exposed to, planted in me a seed that remained largely dormant in youth but came alive in later years as I slowly put more faith into writing poetry. And though today they are a scattered and splintered movement, a revered and idolized institution, I will know them only as humanist outlaws of divine substance. I would have it no other way.

Surrelaism
Surrealism is a vehicle that describes much of my mental perspective in life. I don't care much about ordinary reality or typical human perspective because reality is no less bizarre than a dream. The dream state is everything. Poets and surrealists deal with the dream state. All liberation comes from the opening of the inner mind and heart. The mundane mind is cheaper than a watermellon rind.

What I like about surrealism in all genres of art is that it goes directly to the beauty within the psyche.... if you do it well.

I love the stage. And I love to sing. But I am more of a writer and a visual person with surface faults. I have no tolerance for long road trips to decrepit saloons nor the corporate music industry. My songs belong in film and theater. They are created with a cult audience in mind.

Outside in the Rain
Much of my work as a songwriter, poet, and photographer could be called an example of outsider art. Years ago, I was quite surprised to discover that "outsider art" is an actual genre and a movement. Lord forbid that you cannot find your niche here. Then you are down the toilet with Antonin Artaud or "Art Turd" as I call him. I think it's great that a movement recognizes total outsiders like the late Chicago janitor Henry Darger and his prolific writing. But everything becomes an institution. So in the tradition of "off off Broadway", let me herewith coin the new term "outside outsider art" (effective 2005 August 19 Thursday). And all further non-antidisestablishmentarian art movement labels are herewith unnecessary.

I write what the mind sees
I like surrealism because it is very psychological and usually visual. It blurs the line between reality and the dream state. Intellectual writing tends to get bogged down in banalities and scholastic review. But surrealism in art, film, photography and writing lends an opportunity for manipulation of otherwise incongruous elements such as narrative, sequence, vivid color, camera tricks and amateur actors. You can create a surrealist film in a subway or a bathtub. It can involve romance or crime or anything you choose. But what I like about surrealism in all genres of art is that it goes directly to the beauty within the psyche.... if you do it well. You can even recite poetry in a surrealist film, which in turn can give a vignette or scene a sense of emotional connection.

I am planning to launch a global arts organization for "art bums." The organization will provide a membership card to those who "waste" their whole lives in pursuit of artistic vision often while surviving on pasta and potatoes. This is my central working concept of the artist including writers. True artists and creative writers are never poor. We feel rich and blessed to have incessant visions amidst oceans of the blindfolded.

- Vincent B. Rain

(edited 2006 January 05 Thursday)