12/16/2014 1 Comment New Project Launch on Kickstarter.com!Today I started a funding project for In a Candlelight Palace on Kickstarter.com. The purpose of this is to hopefully fund marketing strategies, purchase book copies for signings and giveaways, and possibly employ professional marketers. Please check out the link, and if possible, I would greatly appreciate any pledge or donation. The link is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toniscales/in-a-candlelight-palace-a-funeral-home-poetry-coll. Thank you to everyone for your continued support!
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12/15/2014 2 Comments Unsure.4 a.m. I awaken gasping from a nightmare I cannot remember. A sick feeling of warning in my stomach; I know sadness is around the corner, panting, waiting. There's a scene from the movie 1408, one of my favorite films, that has always stayed with me, the one where John Cusack's character is in the post office, having escaped the Kafkaesque hotel room. All is fine until the construction workers begin tearing apart the walls and one can see he is still within the room, that he had never truly escaped.
I have known no greater metaphor for depression than this. I can feel that unbidden, illogical sorrow licking at the edges and I am doing everything I can to flee from it, keeping busy, filling my life with events to hold its specter at bay. I am still very nervous about having published a book of poems concerning funeral home experience. As I stated in the introduction, I wished to hurt or offend no one with these poems. But I can't deny that many of them are offensive; still I know if I wrote them again they would surely emerge the same as they did before. They marked the only time in my life when I did not think at all about what I wrote (as opposed to my "regular" writing, morbidly hacked and slashed and pieced together countless times). Those pieces simply poured out of me of their own volition, "writing themselves." I have tried to publish these countless times before, without success. I always assumed, naturally, that this was due either to the taboo, possibly "tasteless" nature of the subject and / or simply that my technique was inferior. I presumed the best target audience would be those with more gothic sensibilities like myself. But strangely enough I cannot seem to locate this audience as I thought I could so easily. Truly accessible venues seem scattered and few, for the subculture still has its roots in that somewhat haughty obscurity that used to bother me greatly about being a part of it. Many have said I should obviously try to market the book to funeral service professionals. But I am also worried because it reveals much of the grim realities of the business, and in many instances casts a negative light upon those who work in that capacity (of which this is still unintentional, for ninety-nine percent of those I met within the field were exceptionally competent and caring in what they did). In many ways, I believe the book is not just about the mortuary arena but something so much more. There is some subterranean current of experience and emotion I long to communicate that I cannot quite put my finger on, something which goes far deeper than simple bereavement, as if bereavement could ever be simple. But I know I worry too much, obsessively so. I must wrap myself around the concept that I cannot please everyone, that I must be true to myself. I can safely say I have lived a life attempting to be genuine, empathetic, and humane. Hopefully this translates in some way. One last thought (I have been quite vociferous today). It always seems so strange, that seemingly from my experience I should be better equipped to deal with death than before. I think instead it has made me less equipped to do so. Ironically I have experienced very little death within my own life, and I think of my beloved family, imagining what it would be like, and I cannot fathom it, my brain shuts down at the possibility, I do not feel as if I could survive such sorrow. I feel badly for being such an intensely brooding person, but it's hard to escape who I truly am, especially here. Off into the day, then, chocked full of errands, the monotonous tasks of daily life. All the while this acute yearning in me, always within me, simmering, waiting to be appropriated. 12/14/2014 0 Comments Sunday.A day where I shimmer with loneliness but am hard at work. This slow stretch of hours with what is perhaps a severe lack of something to do has me fevered. What sates me is creation. For the blog's artwork I am using pieces of the digital images I used to edit, those animated poems I created seemingly long ago. Terrible, rhyming poetry, but cathartic nonetheless, which I had wished to be redolent of early ladies' magazines, perhaps a dark Kate Greenaway. Her pictures and words haunted me as a child.
I am in love with urban and southern gothicism. I worship the modern poet Kristy Bowen, who has created, in my opinion, the embodiment of these modes. I carried The Fever Almanac with me for years, my poetic bible. It's obvious I'm very influenced by her work. It's like reading my own insides. The veneer of the sweet and right encasing the dark secret, that other realm, the inevitable searing kiss of the wrong. Perhaps not the best interpretation, but I can only feel in the dark for the correct words. It's so hit and miss. The Lost Girl Suite is my own version of the genres, pieced together from endless notes of lines and objects, childhood memories, those impressions I had as a little girl of the world being too big to find a proper space to fit into. I worry about it, though, still. It is a hodgepodge of work I was fortunate enough to have published, along with work I cannot publish. I am a writer who has not been hard at the craft all my life; I rather caught onto it later in life and was lucky enough to publish maybe once a year. I have eased off the submission process, as it is very draining, and somewhat painful for me. Endless rejection is understandably daunting. Instead of relying on external validation I am attempting to create my own self-sustaining world, at least for a while, because it provides solace and stability. 12/13/2014 0 Comments Christmastime.The season has brought with it its usual melancholia. It is a difficult time for me, the air laden with silver and gold blurs, dripping with charms and colored lights and promises while a strange emptiness settles in my bones. I ache to return to photographing dolls again, whose presences appear constantly in my poetry. One of my first self-made chapbooks, the predecessor to The Lost Girl Suite, featured a doll image with each poem. I remember lace hemlines, diminutive hands, the shadows of tiny eyelashes, all seen from behind a purposefully hazy veil. I am possessed by dolls in black Mary Jane's. My mother has one as such, the feet so very delicate, fragile-seeming.
I must be candid in saying I have sold few copies of the books thus far. Writing them was a natural high; when I am working in this capacity nothing bothers me, my usually morbidly sensitive nature grows a thicker skin, and I am filled. It is the marketing that is so difficult, and in this phase I have crashed, spiritually and emotionally. Yet I cannot desist in my determination and desire to be heard. I shall keep working at all costs, and attempt to begin my third book. For this strange yearning burns in me and I can do no less. I am still trying to find my own ultimate voice. I emulate certain modern poets whom I admire so greatly, and I do this rather unconsciously, without thinking. A friend of mine once said something akin to that good writers steal. I am unsure as to whether this is true or not, but I know ultimately I need to find my own language of expression. This is a definite goal of 2015. This marks the first official post of my blog dedicated to the two poetry collections I have written so far--In a Candlelight Palace and The Lost Girl Suite--along with what will become errant entries like this... I said this once in a group forum, but I'd like to repeat it as I believe it suits me well. For me, poetry is a map of the passion within, which I have always felt to be too great for my body to contain. It must find its release somewhere. Poetry is that location. I appreciate all who read my blog. May you be blessed with joy and prosperity this holiday season. |
AuthorToni Scales is currently lost in childhood reverie. Archives
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