I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, under the cover of
clouds, which is like a pewter lid for our city--or on the better
days like the ceiling of a blanket fort. I've been a
fiction-writer, a song-maker, a servant in restaurants, and a
sleeper in offices (sleep while you type!). A farm-boy, a
street-kid, an early-morning meditator, and a very freaky
late-night dancer. A meticulous reader and a creator of marginalia.
I mix the past and present together in these lists, because I am a
mixture of my past and my present.
A dichotomy of cerebral fiction and black American dance music has ruled my life. There is one novelist named Ishmael Reed who brings both of these together, and one musician, George Clinton, who took Reed's mythos and translated it to music, but I hardly take in either these days, as age and saturation has made them both seem a bit cartoonish. (Update: the interzone of funk and fiction may now be occupied by Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude" and MF Doom's entire oeuvre.)
I read a lot European writers who let their sentences wander over the page like possessed elderly dogs (dogs on their death walks, who somehow find their way through the fence, across town, to die in the arms of the rain).
I am short and neurotic (in a charming, Woody Allenesque sort of way, if you find Woody charming and not terrifying), though never so much that I forget about my body and its desire to wiggle and shake. Prince is my other major diminutive role-model. Folks who are not short whom I also want to emulate also would include: Harpo Marx, Spock, Peaches, and Bill Withers. Actually I kind of want to marry Bill Withers.
Here's what a French friend had to say about me. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I think she called me a cowboy:
"On peut dire que Daniel n'a pas les pieds sur terre, qu'il vit dans les nuages, qu'il est reveur, romanesque, illumine, chimerique -oui, surement moi je trouve que c'est un cow-boy, un grand cow-boy moderne qui danse le (french) rock and roll divinement"—Geraldine
A dichotomy of cerebral fiction and black American dance music has ruled my life. There is one novelist named Ishmael Reed who brings both of these together, and one musician, George Clinton, who took Reed's mythos and translated it to music, but I hardly take in either these days, as age and saturation has made them both seem a bit cartoonish. (Update: the interzone of funk and fiction may now be occupied by Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude" and MF Doom's entire oeuvre.)
I read a lot European writers who let their sentences wander over the page like possessed elderly dogs (dogs on their death walks, who somehow find their way through the fence, across town, to die in the arms of the rain).
I am short and neurotic (in a charming, Woody Allenesque sort of way, if you find Woody charming and not terrifying), though never so much that I forget about my body and its desire to wiggle and shake. Prince is my other major diminutive role-model. Folks who are not short whom I also want to emulate also would include: Harpo Marx, Spock, Peaches, and Bill Withers. Actually I kind of want to marry Bill Withers.
Here's what a French friend had to say about me. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I think she called me a cowboy:
"On peut dire que Daniel n'a pas les pieds sur terre, qu'il vit dans les nuages, qu'il est reveur, romanesque, illumine, chimerique -oui, surement moi je trouve que c'est un cow-boy, un grand cow-boy moderne qui danse le (french) rock and roll divinement"—Geraldine
