So the latest (and likely greatest) issue of Red Fez is online. This is a big issue for me largely because it's the first issue where I really had nothing to do with it! I provided support to the new team of authors, who I think did a great job, largely showing them how to work the 'backend' (yes, a source for endless jokes), massaging the process, fixing bugs but, otherwise, largely staying out of the way!

It's been interesting. Largely I'm super happy that I didn't have to do it. I think we've got a great team running the site now, and considering it was all their first time, it went surprisingly smoothly! There are a few kinks to work out, and I don't think all the editors see eye to eye, but that's good, in my opinion. Creates diversity, which Red Fez is supposed to be about. Indeed, the editorial board made some decisions and posting things I wouldn't have, but I also think that's good.

After 5 years Red Fez needs to take on new and exciting directions. I plan on staying on in a support role, largely adding features to the site that I've always wanted to implement. These take time, but they're one-offs, so they have beginnings and ends, and the end result is that people's lives get easier. But beyond that, I've started a number of projects since I first began Red Fez back in 2002 (during an extended year of unemployment), and I'd like to devote more time to those. Additionally, my attitude and perspective on the literary industry has changed drastically, several times, since I first started this project. To a large degree I owe any sort of success I've had in the 'outsider' scene (or any literary scene!) to Red Fez. I also owe my broadened perspective and (though ultimately disappointed) opinion on literature in general. But you live, you try stuff, you grow, you move on.

I don't suspect I'll pull away from the lit scene entirely. I've put too much time into it already, but I need to devote more time to what works for me. When I originally started the site, my plan was to run it for 5 years and see where it went. If the new wonderful team of Red Fez hadn't come aboard, I would have probably shut it down in the next year. I just don't have the time to run it anymore.

But as this is a big changing point for me - this project has been a rather big part of my life for the past 5 years - I thought it might be a good time for reflection, and I hope, time willing, to update this blog with an overall reflection on the history of Red Fez over the next few weeks. But before I get into the story, I'd just like to take a moment to announce the new editors and thank them for all their hard work and (hopefully!) continued support of this project.

Michele McDannold: the new 'boss' editor of Red Fez. A decently well known poet within the outsider scene, she's a little bit crazy (which makes her perfect!) and had lots of wild and great ideas for the Fez. I think she has strengths in areas I don't, so I see Red Fez' reach broadening a lot under her helm.

Rob Taylor: Red Fez poetry editor and Canadian poet extraordinaire. Both Michele and Rob I met as contributors to Red Fez and I admire Rob's writing a lot. Not only is he knowledgeable and connected and has his shit incredibly well together for an artist (he's got like 5 other projects he works on beside this!), but I generally share his taste in poetry. I'm quite happy he decided to be a part of this kooky project.

Nobius Black: fills a completely new role within Red Fez. It's so new it doesn't even have a name yet! Let's call him the pointman. Not only is he all around helpful and tasked with helping Michele uncover new directions and audiences for Red Fez (as well as helping put the issues together) but he runs his own lit establishment: Calliope Nerve. I think Red Fez could really use someone who's job is just to think about the Fez and new places it can go, so I'm excited to see what Nobius can bring.

Chris Deal: Our fiction editor. I have to say, I don't know too much about him yet, but I was impressed with the four pieces of fiction selected for the latest issue and hope to get to know him better as things go on. Though we don't get a lot of fiction at Red Fez, I think we've always published good stuff, so I'm glad we have someone dedicated to this now.

This post is pretty long, so I'll save the first section of A Brief History of Red Fez for next week. In the mean time, enjoy the new issue!

I have a picture of him on my wall.

He will never change.
All the things he was
All the things he thought
have been written
The book is closed
The photo a snapshot
of finality
fading into the distance.

Peace is unchanging
and perhaps boring
but my heart churns when
I remember you
like a blood hot tsunami
under stormy clouds of vague meaning.
Here life throbs wildly
but memories of you are a beacon of white light
upon the unreachable horizon
a guiding mark
where only the thin line at the end
of the world stands still
when the boat rocks without mercy.
and my gut churns endlessly

So long Papa
You sail on in my heart and soul.

It's an extravaganza update! Life's been busy, busy, busy, but I've had adding some more content (besides the weekly updates of Bad Attitude) to this site on my To Do list for months. And finally I got to it! Yay me!

But first, content that isn't on this site at all! Recently I had the pleasure of being published in Cerebral Catalyst. They kindly put up Just the Handshake on their site last week. Check it out and forward it on to ten other people or your next ten years will be filled with horrible poetry. 3 nameless people did it, and they got a lifetime supply of Charles Bukowski books. One yahoo didn't and his browser got stuck on poetry.com forever!

I've also added a bunch of new stuff to the Fiction, etc... page. First, a never before seen poem, the Sand. Along with that I've put up some old favourites, Albertans on Ontario TV (not new, but you've probably never read it before), and Art is Dead, which has been floating around Red Fez for a while.

BUT WAIT! There's more! I've also added my two video poems, Huzzah and A letter to a friend far, far away for those of you who may not have seen them.

Yes, Christmas comes early for the Internet this year! And you too, if you forward that poem. If not? This.

Sometimes things go alright. They probably won't be setting aside rooms at the Westin for me to talk about how sending books by old, dead, white foreigners to prime ministers is activism for Canadian literature... any time soon, and most potential readers seem scared by the very nature of one of the best things I've written, but sometimes I also get published in some damn fine zines!

In which a poem of mine, Overachievers, is published and, more importantly, a poem of a friend of mine and the new poetry editor/advisor(?) of Red Fez is published! (being published together...kinda feels like we met or something!) Also, I got paid for this one! WTF?

In which an interview with a good friend about a great book is published!

I can honestly say that I'm really proud to be in both these, as they are both really impressive publications that somehow avoid the reek that dominates the 'established' sections of the literary landscape. 4 years ago, when I largely started on my literary tirades stuff like this was pretty nonexistant. (or at least in my own experience which was, granted, very limited.) I get in trouble with a lot of folk (literary establishment and non) for openly pointing out all the stuff I think is crap, but it's how I feel and it feels nice to be included in stuff that's really nice and also non-crappish!

Also, this is one of the coolest things anybody has ever said about me!

The subtleties and nuances of Zen Nihilism as a philosophy have yet to be fully explored. As far as I can tell, I have yet to see this worldview expressed, discussed or denoted anywhere else. While Zen Nihilism could easily be dismissed or encapsulated as a form of nihilism, I think it is much more interesting and important a progression from its predecessor. It would be like saying post-modernism is merely a form of modernism.

I did not set out to write Bad Attitude to embody or explain this philosophy. I certainly didn't have this theory when I started writing, and I'm not even sure I was a 'zen nihilist' as I began writing the book. Typically I start with a mood or feeling and then have to craft a plot, story arc, or whatever is needed to keep the story moving from the beginning, through the middle, and to the end. This wasn't too difficult for Bad Attitude, where the attitude seemed to carry the novel wherever it needs to go. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, the novel wrote itself, and it seemed to burble up from sort of deep, dark, as yet uncovered and unexplored part of my personality. In a lot of ways this book was quite transformative for me. I both uncovered a new attitude and worldview within myself, but both expressed and finally named it. Nothing else I've ever written felt so much like it came from within me, but also changed me as I wrote it. Forgive me if this comes off as arrogant or uniformed, but while I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this attitude (in fact, publishing the book has confirmed it), I felt like I was truly uncovering and exploring a way of looking at things that I hadn't seen looked at anywhere else. (Perhaps Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is the book that comes closes to look at this, and, to a very light degree, some sections of the earlier work of Douglas Coupland.)

Ultimately, the irony of Bad Attitude is that Jesse Durnell, the main character, actually has a GOOD attitude. He has an extremely good attitude about how shitty life is, how shitty work is. He revels in it, lives it and milks it for all it is worth. That is the key tenet of Zen Nihilism. Something I've been referring to as Optimistic Pessimism. Optimistic Pessimism isn't a worldview, or overarching theory like Zen Nihilism. It can be applied in a case by case basis. For example: hopefully enough people will die in tragic car accidents that the world will learn to stop driving them (meaning no more people killed in tragic car accidents.) Zen Nihilism takes this to an almost religious conclusion, as Jesse does in the book, where pointlessness IS the point, where pain is the humour and the ultimate reward is the ultimate loss.

To break it down to a catch phrase, or liken it to a goofy bumpersticker (which is where I think most people really first encounter and encapsulate philosophical ideas) a nihilist's car would have this bumpersticker:

Life's a bitch and then you die.

Whereas a Zen Nihilist would have this:

Life's a bitch, but it's OK because eventually we'll all be dead.

Zen Nihilism, in my mind, is the 'answer' to the seemingly unanswerless question of nihilism. While nihilism asks what is the point of pointlessnes, Zen Nihilism answers (or chooses to answer) that pointlessness is the answer to pointlessness. Unlike everyday nihilism, Zen Nihilism makes a choice.

Now, taken to its logical conclusion, nihilism suggests we should just sit around and just let ourselves die, because what's the point. Of course, one could take Zen Nihilism to be suggesting that instead of sitting around waiting to die, we should actively pick up a gun and grin while we blow our brains out. I guess that's the choice of the individual, but I think Zen Nihilism argues that life is great because it is pointless, not that you should end it because it is pointless. In fact, you should revel in the pointlessness. Enjoy and milk it for what it's worth. Zen Nihilism believes that it will be oh so much greater if you die later, so much sweeter the more pointlessness you have enjoyed and accumulated. Like nega-points, the pointlessness experience will be tallied up in the afterlife for laughs.

By some twist of fate I seem to be getting published rather regularly lately. In true cynical style, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in the meantime I suppose I should revel in it!

Feathertale is putting out their second yearly review magazine and will have having a launch in Toronto on the 24th. Anyway, apparently some of my poetry appears in the book (Which also includes work by Margaret Atwood? Really? Is there nothing she won't appear in? I hope this doesn't affect my indie cred...) Even more apparently, apparently my poem was selected as best of the year, or one of the best of the year or something like that. Which is weird, because I don't think I've ever won a best of everything ever. Because of that I'm highly skeptical of best of everythings. I mean, how do you determine something as the best? I just wrapped my worldview around how not-being-the-best is really better than being the best and they lay this on me. Life is cruel. I'm sure I just got second best or tenth best or something... Maybe it was a pity best of everything. Yeah, that's probably it. But I digress.

Anyway, Feathertale is a great little lit site devoted to (shocking in the lit world, believe me,) HUMOUR!, and the magazine they are putting out looks kick ass. I mean, that cover is awesome! I'm gonna bronze my contributor copy in lead and hang it over dishwasher. That's one cool cover.

Anyway, apparently anyway, I won't be able to attend, unfortunately, apparently, but that doesn't mean that YOU shouldn't anyway, if you're in that part of town. There will be food and drink, I understand. Yeah, there will be poets too, unfortunately, but did I mention the food and the wine and the cool cover?

Ok, that's all I have to say for now. Go about your non poetry business.