I'm so tired of hearing about it. Look, every God damned day is a historical day. Every God damned day the world changes forever. I know there's some pretty cool stuff going on, what with a president whose dad was from the country I called home in my childhood and all that. Plus he has a Klingon name. Good. Fine. OK. I GET IT.
Enough.
Phew.
ANYWAY, I'm still setting up World Domination Tour '09 (my book tour) and looking for venues. Right now I have some potential gigs in Portland and in Saskatoon probably in late April thru late May. It would be nice to fill in some stuff between in Seattle, Vancouver BC and anywhere else up there in the Northwest. So if anybody's got any ideas, please write me at spoozilla@gmail.com.
If anyone knows a booking agent that would be nice to have.
One of the things I keep getting asked lately is, "What's your new book about?" I always have trouble answering this one. When you ask anyone who makes some work of art what it's about or what genre it falls into they have a hard time answering. Everyone knows the old cliche of the band with three lead guitars, a giant fire breathing skull prop and a bank of Marshall amps who claim they're not heavy metal. Same with me.
It's a Zen book, I guess. That's where it'll be filed anyway. Although I was very gratified when Book Soup in Los Angeles filed Sit Down And Shut Up in the music section just after its release. They later moved it to "spiritual," which bummed me out. Such is life, though. It's about my mom dying, my grandma dying, my job ending and my marriage falling apart. It's also as much as this about the Dharma and how that worked into all of these things. I got fed up with Zen books that ignore real life and pretend we're all just sitting on mountain tops being beautiful. That's a lousy fantasy and it needed kicking in the teeth. Nobody was doing it, so I had to.
The other day I watched the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. In this episode, Cpt. Kirk is split into two halves, one "good" and the other "evil." The "good" Kirk is easier to deal with, but he can't make any decisions and gradually begins to lose command. As Mr. Spock explains it, "What is it that makes one man an exceptional leader? We see here indications that it is his negative side that makes him strong, that his 'evil' side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength."
There's another scene in which they're debating whether to tell the crew what has happened. Spock says (and this is from memory, Star Trek geeks feel free to correct me), "You are the captain of this ship. You haven't the luxury to be seen as anything less than perfect. If the crew sees you as less than perfect they lose faith and you lose command."
This also figures into the nature of the book. I think a lot of spiritual (forgive the use of that term) teachers believe this. They believe that they have to put on a front, to be seen as perfect, that if they are seen as anything less their followers will lose faith in what they teach. This, I think, is the basis of a lot of what goes on in the world of religion.
Of course, none of these teachers really are perfect and when word gets out about their imperfections, sure enough their followers lose faith and all heck breaks lose. If anyone wants to know how this has worked in the Zen world read Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center
or The Great Failure: My Unexpected Path to Truth
. I won't rehash those stories here. Basically they're about what happens when folks who see Zen teachers as perfect beings find out they're not.I've already had problems with people whose mental projections of me don't match what I really am or what they believe I ought to be and who experience tremendous disappointment and anger as a result. Some of this is in the new book. I've watched this same stuff happen with my own teachers as well. It seems almost a rite of passage.
I don't know if Mr. Spock is right about captains of Starships. Perhaps he is. I don't think this logic applies to Zen teachers, though. It's vital that we present ourselves realistically. It is impossible to present yourself completely in any book and I haven't tried. But what I have tried is to present the bare facts. I decided that if someone was going to write a Shoes Outside The Door or Great Failure type book about me, it was damned well gonna be me who did it first. I've dug up dirt on myself I guarantee nobody else could possibly have found. And hopefully I've also dug up some deeper truths than they could have discovered either.
I don't know how the book will be received. I imagine a great many readers will hold on to their fantasies. They'll read my account and think, "Well Brad isn't the superman I was looking for, maybe someone else is." They will be wrong. But they'll have to find that out themselves. And that will be much more painful.
