20 August 2003: Teenage Dream

Cover designed by Sherpa, made by me.

There's more work to be done on the book over the next three weeks, but we've done a lot.  Those illustrations I did way back in late 1999, back when Sherpa was working on the first draft, aren't going to be used after all.  Sherpa decided to go for the atmospheric touch of illustrating the book entirely with bizarre engravings lifted from old alchemical texts and the like (of which the coolest is the one we used on the cover).  But now the book will include a four-page essay by me, "On Being Slippery," a memoir of my experience in the Crux lab that I wrote up this past weekend. 

To me, having my writing in the book is much better than having my drawing in the book, because my writing is more important to me than my visual art skills.  Visual art is fun, and I produce a fair number of pieces I'm pleased with these days, but writing is where I express myself most deeply and most effectively.

But of course, the big thrill here is the fanboy thrill.  The book's got an afterword by Robert Anton Wilson.  The Robert Anton Wilson.  Author of the Illuminatus! trilogy, Cosmic Trigger, and Prometheus Rising.  Author of that article on Kabbalah in High Times magazine, more than two decades ago, in which I first encountered the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.  Yep, I'm a starstruck fanboy.  I admit it.  Now I know how Jump felt the first time he got to play onstage with Roger Daltrey.  Having my writing appear in the same book as Robert Anton Wilson's is the equivalent, for me.  It may seem pretty minor league, compared to being a rock star or winning the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer or something, but this is one of my teenage dreams come true.

More entries soon, I hope.  Meanwhile, check out the latest addition to my Pack page, Echidna's Erratica site.

Woot!