Connectivity

Frank believed that there was a worldwide conspiracy. He didn't know who was behind it, but he could see its tentacles stretching out across the globe. Everything was connected, that was the secret. Wars were connected by arms manufacturers, the same arms manufacturers who made the guns used in robberies, who made the guns used by crazy people in America when they went on the rampage in a shopping centre or hamburger restaurant. So already you had a connection between hamburgers and dictators. Start from there and the thing just grew and grew.

- Being Frank

Ian Rankin (1992)

I agree with Frank. About the connectivity thing.

Sitting in my Fathers House, north of Capricorn, layering sweat upon sweat in the the humidity with Indonesian geckos running around my feet, (not that I mind, they're better than flies). I pick up The Beat Goes On. It's a collection of short stories by Ian Rankin. My application for the ABC was finished and I'd re-read Hunter Thompson's Songs of the Doomed on the plane ride up.

Rankin was sitting on the coffee table, a bookmark halfway through, at the point Dad had gotten over the exercise of finishing it. Bored shitless, I realised I hadn't actively read crime fiction since my early twenties. It took me two days to finish it cover to cover. Somehow I found time between the 24 hour news feed informing me that Putin had maintained his grip on Russia, Xi had consolidated his hold on China and Trump decided to threaten his base with death because of all the opiates they're addicted to.

It was the Authors Note at the end of the collection that got me. This is where connectivity comes into it. Rankin talks about '"playing God", re-imagining my world and making it more exciting and evocative than the reality'. Here was someone that was speaking my language. I'd read Rankin as a child but we'll get to that later. He tells the the reader that this is 'what all writers do'. Justification, finally.

But this is where it gets proper creepy. Rankin explains how his parents weren't too interested in the written word so he has to drag his own arse around town to the various libraries in order to read '"adult titles", meaning books whose films I wasn't old enough to see at the cinema'.

Conversely I had my arse dragged to the library nearly every weekend. My mother was the librarian on Saturdays and whenever the full time bloke wanted to call in sick or take a holiday. It worked for me though. By the time I was ten I'd finished everything age appropriate and had started screwing around on the microfilm machine and reading whatever books my old man bought home.

I'm winning at this point, beat Ian by three years. Thanks to my parents taste in literature I knew about rape, murder and a raft of other nefarious acts long before I hit puberty. Rankin beats me out in the end though, he got his second book published in the mid 1980's, Granted I was still crapping my nappies at that point but he was younger then, than I am now. His first novel has never been published, which says something about perseverance and professional development.

So, it's a stiff backed dining room chair and beer that gets too warm too quickly while my fingers tap these letters out. But I'm in a funk. I know my work will be better than some pink cheeked undergrad with no understanding of the world outside the cloister of their private school, but they'll still get the job.

And I don't care.

I've been sitting on my own first novel Yellowskull for at least a year now. For all intents and purposes, the beast is done. It still needs a bit of a seeing to in the park down the road after school's finished, but the story is there.

Which brings me back to Frank and connectivity. The Beat Goes On was the only thing on the coffee table. A couple of reference books perched precariously on a stack of DVD's in the corner of the room but nothing else to read. Having submitted an essay on gun violence and control that will never be finished because the NRA won't die without a fight, coupled with Yellowskull having some sort of conniption and not printing properly I found myself with bugger all to do.

What was it then, the thing that The Universe wanted from me? The Old Man reads heaps when he has the time, but the bookshelves are lacking in his house. I found a few yesterday in the other spare room but at that moment it was only Rankin. At a similar stage in his career as I find myself now (occasionally listed, rarely published) it was his book with his Authors Note and nothing else to distract me from watching the news again. Why this book?

It's simple really. If you think about it. Understand the connectivity and nothing is inexplicable. The book was waiting for me. I doubt I would have read it if I'd slept on a friends couch while I waited for them to wake up and drive me home. But I had the time. A week more than I needed but as I said, I found a few more novels, so don't fret.

It's the bloody timing that gets me. I decided to air a family secret last year and then some twit shot up Pulse Nightclub in Florida. No problems, submission isn't due  for a couple of months, keep going. It won't happen again before you're done. Until another degenerate decides to break records on the Vegas Strip. Doesn't matter, the evidence from Florida is still thin on the ground. You didn't get that one, maybe Yankees don't like to be told when they're being stupid. Finish the damn article. It's harder now, ignoring two proper rampage killings but I edit the article, get it to limit and once again, the day before submission, a school gets itself shot up in Florida.

I am not making this shit up. Three submissions, three massacres a day or two after I start working on or finish the bloody thing. To top it off, some dipstick decided to get all bang bang today and ended himself up in a morgue. I'm not going to preach to Americans, they get too much of that already, but I'll stick to my don't travel to the most dangerous developed country in the world unless you fucking have to rule.

Which brings this little rant to a close. I'm going to upload the article that has plagued me since I started writing it. For more than one reason; if you're related to me on the NZ side you got this in your veins as well, I'm sick of submitting it in various forms and word lengths to different publications, it's the most recent article I've completed and it's bloody good. A dark subject matter, but you should get some movement to your upper lip if you're still breathing.

I have something to say about those kids in the US finally doing something about gun control but I'll leave enough time for you digest both this and Aramoana and the "American Disease" - Fear in The Land of The Brave". Pay attention to the not needing guns to kill people bit and why Kennedy shouldn't have died. There will be a quiz.