So I guess I had a pretty massive freakout over the past couple of days. It's chronicled on Twitter, more or less. To me it seemed to start with a horrible dream I had Monday morning. In this nightmare I was making a real effort to reconnect with my characters, but I'd gotten the wrong ones, which were more or less the Cure. (Anybody with half an eye can see the Cure's influence on Lost Souls, or so I assume.) They had all gone down to Shell Beach and commandeered barges, a tugboat, and some kind of tanker, with which they were planning a terrorist attack. Samuel L. Jackson was tearing down the Reggio highway in a furious attempt to stop them, but everybody knew it was my fault and hated me, including Chris, who promptly dumped my ass.

Some of my worst dreams are those in which I'm back with one of my exes. I remember Chris and feel the lack of him, but know I have to be with this once-beloved foe instead. It is the hollowest, loneliest feeling I've known in dream. Usually I wake up, become aware of him sleeping beside me, and feel tremendous relief. This time I woke up within the dream and knew I'd really done it, I'd finally fucked up bad enough to lose him (by putting the Cure on terrorist barges in Shell Beach, yes, I see the absurdity of this, but it didn't help at the time). I saw life without him, an endless featureless plain the color of a bruise. I cried and woke myself and him up saying "Chris. Chris. Chris" and babbling about wrong characters on barges, trying to explain this utter incoherence.

The ensuing day did not pass well. Even tranked to the gills, I couldn't seem to stop sobbing and panicking and doomsaying. I could not bathe. I could not even consider leaving the house (this has been a problem lately). I finally called my intermittent shrink and sobbed and babbled some more until she agreed to give me a few, VERY few, barbiturates to help me function over these next few days. I don't stress much about the holidays (we stopped doing gifts years ago, stocked up on stuff and unable to afford it), but my mom and a dear friend are coming to visit, and I would like to be able to act like something resembling a human being around them. Those who were reading back in the dark days of 2005 will remember my adventures with Dr. Jesus and the Great BUTALBITAL. Butalbital has come into my life again, with its idolatrous-sounding name and its extremely short-term help. Short-term because it's addictive as shit and not even slightly appropriate for treating long-term depression, but thank God she heard enough of the fraying in my voice to throw me a quick merciful lifeline (a scant 10 pills to be parceled out carefully over at least 4 days, worryworts) until I can go see her and figure out why my usual shit's not working anymore. Pharmaceuticals, you've nearly killed me and you've saved my life, both many times. Just like a goddamn lover, ain'tcha? ("Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?")

So today my Butalbital and I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the house, and baked a lovely chocolate chip-pecan pie. Tomorrow we'll greet our guests and try to absorb their love through the merciful haze that says so kindly, "No, that bruise color isn't filling your vision, you don't reek of rotting meat, these people love you, they're not counting the hours until they can get away or silently analyzing the stupidity of everything you say."

So that's the story of my big freakout. As ever, I tell it because of my determination to chronicle the life of one writer's journey through loss, depression, addiction, sorrow, joy, and sometimes redemption in the wake of the post-Katrina federal levee failure. I've written no fiction in three years now, so this is really all I have to offer, and I give it to you without shame. There's no reason for shame. I wasn't like this before August 29, 2005. I'd dealt with depression off and on since I was 17, but at the time of the levee failure I was on no psychiatric drugs, writing prolifically, and (I thought) fairly happy. Now I struggle most days just not to be a mess, and there are a hell of a lot of people who are a hell of a lot worse off than I am ... and a hell of a lot more people who survived the levee failure and its aftermath, but not the lives they tried to piece back together afterward. They gave themselves to the Great Subaudible. I tell you these things in part to keep myself from doing the same.

tags: federal levee failure, health, love

One of the ways Microsoft chose to distinguish their doodad from the iPod (and other players, but let's be serious) was via its "Social" metaphor. Years later, the metaphor has been extended to the Web, where things like that are much more likely to happen, which is to say "happen at all." But the idea itself isn't bad, or wrong, it is in fact good, but anyone who attempted to leverage this feature discovered something very quickly: that the ability to share, considered a core asset of the device, was wholly dependent on the publisher's say-so. Some files would share and others wouldn't, and you often didn't know which was which until you'd committed to sending one. The usage limitations on shared files were considered fairly draconian, but they weren't draconian enough for some rights holders, who believe the very notion of borrowing gnaws at the roots of their enterprise. So, too, with the Nook's LendMe feature - cool conceptually, it allows One Lend for a single Two Week Period, and even this crushing prison is considered too charitable for some. This came up when we were playing online the other night. I mentioned to Gabe that the LendMe feature didn't extend to all books, and he was surprised to learn this, as "lending" a book digitally removes it from your device. It is, in many ways, like lending a person a real book. I suggested to him that this was precisely what they didn't like - you have to warp your mind to perceive it, to understand why a publisher of books would hate the book as a concept, but there you have it. They don't like that books are immutable, transferable objects whose payload never degrades. A digital "book" - caged on a device, licensed, not purchased - is the sort of thing that greases their mandibles with digestive enzymes. Imagine what these people must think of libraries. The above is taken from penny arcade, and expouses the core problem I have with DRM when coupled with proprietary devices. I want to own books, own games, own movies, own my goddamned music cds. I do not want a license agreement that says I cant go "this is bitchin, read it/play it/listen to it/watch it.

I've just wasted the last hour notifying various file-sharing sites to remove illegally posted copies of my books. I'm not even going to say what I think about so-called fans who use these slimeball sites to steal work from writers, except this. I hate to give these sites any publicity at all, but I will say that other writers should check scribd.com and 4shared.com for stolen work.

A few days ago I tweeted the statement, "I think art about New Orleans, especially post-K, should be made by New Orleanians. #thereisaidit" I define New Orleanians as people living in the greater New Orleans area long-term as well as devoted exiles. I do NOT include jet-setters who own New Orleans homes that stand empty 90% of the time or those who left the city post-K and don't want to return.

But my Twitter statement still makes me antsy, because in general, I don't believe in using the word "should" around art at all. I've always been deeply suspicious of any statement beginning "Artists (writers, whatever) should..." that doesn't end "...do the best work they're capable of, full stop."

As well, I had made a hero's exception for Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: After the Deluge, and a friend e-mailed to ask why. My friend wrote, "I bought that damned book because I thought he was a New Orleanian. Boy was I pissed when I got it and found out he was a New Yorker. I think it's a good book but if I had known he was a New Yorker living in New York I never would have bought it, to be quite honest. If he's giving profits from the book to the people who need it most, I'll feel ok about it, but I feel kind of like a duped schmuck as it is!"

I replied, "Neufeld = honorary New Orleanian because he did major, major rescue work down here after the levees failed, Like, lifesaving work. He has also put together a great A.D. website with tons of Katrina info & resources; http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/ . I couldn't find any indication that he had donated proceeds to us, but I'm kinda OK with that. I know how much it costs to research & make a book, and graphic novels sell even worse than regular books. Most likely there are no 'proceeds.' He also financed his own book tour, & I noticed that many of his signing events were also benefits for Common Ground & other local charities, so that's good."

But I realized that if I believe Josh Neufeld could get it right, there must be other non-New Orleanians out there who can get it right too. And for me, at least these days, that's what is most important in art about New Orleans: getting it right. Even before the storm, so much of it didn't. And if you haven't lived or spent major chunks of time here since the levees failed, you do not know what it was like those first couple of years. You can't research it. You can't imagine it from the footage you saw on TV. You might think you can, your heart might break for us and you might try to tell people why we still matter and if so I thank you, but you don't know the stenches, the tears, the daily assaults on the mind and spirit. You can never know these things if you weren't here. And you should be glad.

So I'm trying to at least modify my "should." It's hard to come up with another pithy line, though. Art about New Orleans, especially post-K, is less likely to suck and be offensive if made by New Orleanians? Art about New Orleans, especially post-K, has virtually no chance of getting it right if not made by New Orleanians? I don't know. Artists will, and should, make art about the things that grab them by the throat and won't let go. So if what happened to us after the federal levees failed does that to you, then by all means, go with it. At least your heart will be in the right place, and that will show even if you don't know the Ninth Ward from the Lower Ninth Ward. But if you decide -- as many already seem to have done -- that "Hey! Post-Katrina New Orleans would be a really cool, edgy place to set this!", then may God have mercy on your soul, because New Orleans will not.

tags: federal levee failure, new orleans, writing