Those who know me, know that I that I have quite an eclectic musical taste. From classic rock into metal and goth, skipping over to electronic and pop and moving into rap and hip hop. It is of the last type that I wish to write of here and it is of a most underrated artist: Canibus (see Wikipedia entry here).
More important than the man, is what he has created. Meet some of his music:
Now, that is just a few… My advice: listen to the rest.
The Watchman
The Crossroads
The Glass Giants
“I am the darkness between my eyelids,” he said,
And she smiled, “No, only the soft twilight instead.”
And the world kept spinning never noticing the two:
Days came, night slipped gently into morning dew,
Rains fell and left as oceans swallowed them all up,
Women danced and many a man drank from a full cup.
And still the world never noticed the two.
He cast his gaze up, “Hollow gods wrought the night!”
“So that we may lie in peace,” she whispered so slight,
And the oblivious machinery of man roared on…
Summers beamed down as winters crept upon,
Darkness fell as sure as the morning caressed the sky,
And mountain tops danced with the land’s idle lie.
And still the world never noticed the two.
The Sun itself burnt its last day upon a barren space,
When the very crows of war donned battle’s lace,
And the metals tore down the last standing man,
And all the world was left an empty quiet land…
“What conclusion can I give,” he sighed inside,
She smiled as she told him that he had already died.
While I am busy building albums (with theme songs) in Picasa 3, I have decided to pop a couple of my more unique photos up in this post.
Hope you like them!
Purple Haze
Across the Road
Look to the Sky
Of Buildings and Man
A Bitter Sweet Melody
Thanks to chats with a number of people, including Simon Brown, I have decided to start messing around with photography. I’ve played in a range of artistic mediums before, but this is a new one to me and I appreciate that I’ve got a lot to learn.
That said, it’s not problem. Rather an exciting journey of discovery!
Below is a series of three picture taken from a photography session in a park in Jozi and I call it “Beneath Nature”:
In the Shadow
Under Ancient Skies
All Below the Same Sky
The second of three books in “The Fractayle” series has been published on Amazon: The Cobweb Way.
“The world ended and there was a great and long silence.
The Ancients that survived Red’s virus have crept below ground to sleep the centuries away in chambers of light and darkness wrapped in their beds of dust and metal. They must wait until the numbers of men are great enough to accommodate their existences and so they dream of their Three-faced Queen and her palace across the stars.
In this Great Silence, Unit Two was left by them to guard them while they slept. He was to guard the Entrance and protect the Ancients. He is the Guardian. And then one day one of the humans seeks his help…
The second installation of the mind-blowing high technology science fiction series, “The Fractayle”, this tale builds a unique perspective of the world of men and their monsters, where religion comes from and why, and how everything fits together.
“The Cobweb Way” also sets the scene for the climatic third and final book in the series “The Lights in the Sky”. Who is Bobby Chase? Who is Jason Ash Winters? Did Red survive the Great Silence? What is the Fractayle? What is the End Point? And why is a dark and deep cave in dusty mountain in a strangely familiar desert so important?”
Also see the first book in the series, “The Long Life of the Candle Man“
* Sneak Peak at my new novel's cover
I just finished my first draft of the sequel to “The Long Life of the Candle Man“, which I’ve decided to call “The Cobweb Way”. The first draft has just been sent to my Editor and, hopefully, will go smoothly onto Amazon’s eBookstore within the month.
That said, I have already decided on a cover (i.e. I just finished designing it) and thought I’d drop it here as a sneak peak at the second in a series of three novels (“The Fractayle”).
Also, as a matter of interest, I like opening each of my novels with a poem of some significance. Below is “The Cobweb Way” opening poem:
“By ancient hands of brimstone,
Lying within spider webs so
Complex, if they were shown,
Their strands reaching from below,
Would cast a net so wide and far,
Angels’ feathers would certain stray,
Into tales lacking a guiding star,
And beyond the light of any day.
Tell me those secrets you’ve never told,
Even unto yourself at night,
And walk with me to where the lands hold,
All things between wrong and right.
Ancient hands stir the dark pools,
In old motions oddly familiar,
That they still deceive the fools,
Into becoming something similar;
But no one dreams of the dreams,
That are never dreamt by those,
Which walk in the paths unseen,
Wearing the red soft silk clothes.
Tell me those secrets you’ve never told,
Even unto yourself at night,
And walk with me to where the lands hold,
All things between wrong and right.
Winds of change carry us so,
From dark beginnings begun,
Through yesterday’s old shadow,
Into tomorrow’s raging Sun;
And when blood was blood afire,
Old devil deeds done so long ago,
Split the lands asunder with ire,
And still echo in the chambers below.
Take me to all the places you’ve seen,
And I will take you to all those that you haven’t.”
* Just as a matter of interest, if you are interested in reading this book, I strongly recommend that you read the first in the series first (i.e. The Candle Man). Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle software for free on your computer over here.
I publish select poems through the Facebook platform in the form that I call the “House of Falling Leaves“.
Probably some of my favourite poems in the collection are:
The second (of two) novels I wrote during 2010 was “The Long Life of the Candle Man” and, while the former was a whimsical zen tale, the latter was a hardcore science fiction.
The setting of The Candle Man is one where the very Web has been uploaded into our collective consciousness. Think about it, what is the difference between telepathy and emailing your thoughts to another?
As man has spread amongst the furthest reaches of the galaxies, a greater and more subtle evil is growing in his very thoughts. A great bureaucracy, the Lunar Government, turns its brutal machines across the world of men as the evil grows inside the very system upon which mankind believes it is reliant.
And, amidst this vast and decaying society, a young man stumbles across his fate.
The Candle Man lives again.
You will not understand, until you understand.
P.S. This is a complete book with a complete tale in it, but I do intend writing and publishing another two in the series (‘The Fractayle’) with their titles being “The Cobweb Way” and “The Lights in the Sky”…
I have always been fascinated with the written word, be it poetry or its longer cousin, books. In 2010 I had a goal: write a full length novel and publish it.
So I wrote two.
And then, thanks to Amazon’s Kindle ebook format, published them.
The long and awkwardly titled “Trichotomy of Non-existence, Non-meaning & Nowhere” was my first attempt at a novel and draws on my interests in zen, taoism and factoids from our diverse world. It is a tale of three parts with three distinct characters that end up intertwined in each others fate for no apparent reason.
I have tried to summarize this tale, but with so many twists and seemingly random turns, eventually the summaries become the tale itself. So, rather than any short form, I would rather you read The Trichotomy for yourself.