Donald Trump is an American Monster

~ Matt Kincade ~ 5 Comments

In eastern spiritual traditions, a Tulpa is a thought-form, a physical manifestation of an individual’s will, of their thoughts and desires. A being created and made real through sheer willpower and mental discipline. According to legends, these creations have a way of taking on lives of their own, seeking their own goals, becoming more than their creators ever imagined or wanted.

While I don’t know if such things really exist, I do believe that thoughts have power. That our desires and our focus can affect the world around us, perhaps in ways that we never anticipated.

Which brings me back to Donald Trump. The Donald is our American Tulpa. He’s the monster we’ve been conjuring up all these years. Decades of bigotry, xenophobia, race-baiting, dog-whistle politics, politics of division and fear and hatred of convenient enemies.

For fifty years, American conservatives have been bending their willpower towards the creation of this creature, breathing life into it one hateful, bitter thought at a time. These damned Mexicans, stealing our jobs… ought to just build a wall…welfare queens…lazy immigrants…anchor babies…I don’t want any blacks in this neighborhood…it’s their fault, rather smoke crack and do drive-bys then go out and get a job…damned liberals…socialists…somebody ought to just get rid of them all somehow…

And maybe one by one, these ugly thoughts, released into the world, find each other. Infused with the bitterness and the fear of their creators they coalesce, drawing strength from each other, gaining substance, becoming visible, becoming alive. Until one day, these thoughts become something more than thoughts. They become aware. They become flesh. They become real. They become a living, breathing man with his own thoughts and his own desires and his own agenda.

Of course, in a realistic sense, this is all crazy talk. But on a spiritual level, it’s frighteningly true. I can hardly blame Donald Trump. He’s exactly what we’ve been asking for this whole time. He’s the genie’s wish granted, the one that makes you sorry you ever wished for it in the first place.

He’s our monster, America. He’s doing nothing more than holding up a mirror to our own ugliness. He’s exactly what we wished for. But there’s still time to put the genie back in the bottle. Please.

And if not, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Holy crap somebody actually left a (good) review of my book

~ Matt Kincade ~ 10 Comments

So, a year or two ago, I decided I’d like to publish something. Anything. Just for the sake of having something out there. Just for the sake of actually finishing something. I had a novella, We Only Come Out At Night, that I’d written years and years ago and never really done much with. I dusted it off and gave it a read. It wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered. So I polished it up, made a cover, and published it—with high hopes— on Amazon Kindle.

WeOnlyComeOutAtNight I didn’t know anything about promotion. About Search Engine Optimization. About Kindle algorithms or keywords or categories or advertising or any of that stuff. I just wanted to publish a book. And so I did. I sent my baby out into the world.

You can probably guess what happened next. Of course, my book quickly and unceremoniously sank to the bottom of the Kindle Sea, like a mobster wearing cement shoes. And there it stayed, drowned under millions and millions of slightly less unsuccessful books, while the giants of the sea, the Kings and Rowlings and Koontzes, swam by far overhead.

Through Kindle’s free promotions I managed to give away fifty or sixty copies; I even sold three or four. But nobody felt strongly enough about it to actually leave a review, good or bad. This left me feeling strangely neutral about my work. I mean, it’s not good enough for anybody to say good things, but at least it’s not bad enough for people to say bad things, right? After a few weeks of obsessively checking my Kindle reports, I sort of gave up and forgot about it. I moved on to other things.

I don’t think it’s a bad book, per se, or I wouldn’t have published it. But I never expected it to be a blockbuster. It doesn’t exactly fit neatly into a genre. It’s kind of a sad, tragic little story. Sort of Romeo and Juliet meets The Outsiders, but with vampires. It isn’t even 20,000 words. It’s kind of angsty teen vampire fiction, and isn’t really representative of where I’m at today as a writer. And yet, I’m pretty fond of it. It’s got a special little place in my heart. So I keep hoping that someday it’ll maybe get some traction, maybe someday I’ll find out that someone wasn’t angry that they spent ninety-nine cents to read it. Someday.

Imagine my surprise when I returned from vacation, and just for shits and giggles, took a look at my Amazon sales report. I sold a book! Not only that, but that person actually read the book! And they liked it! They liked it so much they left a good review! Oh, happy day.

Witty, adventurous, and heart-wrenching, this book hooked me and wouldn’t let go! The descriptive writing had me visualizing every pleasant and disturbing moment, and everything in between. Cant wait to see what else Kincade has in store!

Omg omg omg author boner.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, you sold one book. You got one good review. That’s not really much to get excited about. To you I say: Shut up. Don’t you fucking ruin this for me.

So hey, if Sydney Katzen enjoyed it, maybe you might too. It’s less than that cup of coffee you bought this morning, and you can probably read it in an afternoon. And maybe, just maybe, you might leave a review and make my day.

Of course this doesn’t apply just to me. All you aspiring authors out there probably already know this, but for the rest of you who buy ebooks, the single biggest factor that determines kindle rankings, that decides whether a book shows up in searches so people can buy it and the author can make the monies, or whether a book gets sent down to the depths of Kindle hell, is reader reviews. So if you like a book, the best thing you can do for that author is simply leave a review.

You can find We Only Come Out At Night on the Kindle Store

I’m back in the USA, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing

~ Matt Kincade ~ Leave a comment

The Cosmos: Hey Matt, remember that last blog post you wrote, where you said that all the tourists in Chiang Mai, Thailand were a bunch of jerks?

Me: Yes, I remember that.

The Cosmos: Well, guess what? I’m going to fill your vacation with so many friendly, awesome, really cool interesting people from every corner of the globe that you’re going to feel like a big giant stupid jerk for making such a gross generalization.

Me: Well…okay. I guess.

20160320_214632What can I say? I had a wonderful trip. Despite the somewhat melancholy tone of my last post, I had a great time. I met dozens of amazing people; Swedes and Scots and Brits and Poles and Germans and French and Hungarians. I got super drunk and had great conversations. I saw sights. I bathed elephants. It was excellent.

Although breaking into social circles remains something of a mystery to me. I’ve never been very good at it, and it always seems like magic when I manage to crack the ice and a group of strangers actually starts to treat me like a human being, and they go from seeming like standoffish dicks to being really great people. I suppose there’s a trick to it, but damned if I know what it is. It just happens sometimes.

Anyway, I’m not ready to be back. Every time I leave Chiang Mai, it gets a little bit harder. Picture me at the airport, trying not to cry in front of the taxi driver. It’s strange, how a place can get under your skin like this.

Goodbye, Chiang Mai. I’ll be back again.

20160322_110220

Greetings from Chiang Mai, Thailand

~ Matt Kincade ~ 6 Comments

So, yeah. Here I am in Thailand. Why? Sometimes, when a man gets round trip tickets to the other side of the world for less than $600, a man’s just gotta go, you know?

I’ve been here once before, two years ago. And now I’m back.

20160310_172800This place stinks. It smells like trash and durian and fetid tropical dumpsters. It’s too hot. It’s more humid than a sauna. The traffic is insane. It’s filthy. I fantasize about running rampant through the streets with a pressure washer. There are staggering levels of poverty on display. The pavement is uneven. Buildings are thrown together. Everything is falling apart.

The Thai people are wonderful, gracious human beings, but the tourists are the biggest bunch of assholes you’ll ever want to meet. Snobby douchebag backpackers in paisley parachute pants and dreadlocks, do you even yoga, bro? Annoying flocks of Chinese grandmothers. Subtly condescending European retirees on holiday. Bald, troll-like German expat whoremongers in tank-tops with hairy shoulders. Loud, stupid drunk Australian teenagers.

So why do I love this place? I don’t know.

20160311_011037There’s something about this crazy, ancient city that keeps me coming back.

As usual, when I travel, I am surprised at what a solitary endeavor it is for me. I’m too old and square for the backpackers. I’m too young for the retirees. I have too much dignity for the whoremongers. I’m too introverted for the party crowd. So why am I even here?

This place is hard to explain. It is so many extremes, so many contradictions. So organic. It’s like what a city might be if nobody were in charge, and yet, somehow, it all just worked. It’s chaos, all the self-organizing splendor of a flock of birds or an ant’s nest. I’ve never met a friendlier people. It boggles my mind, how these locals, after being inundated with hordes of brash, ignorant tourists (not excluding myself) for generations, can continue to be so damned nice.

20160311_172553And so, even if I’m usually keeping my own company, even if I’m just reading a book and drinking a cappuccino in one of the hundreds of little coffee shops and restaurants in the old city and watching the world move by, like a post in a stream, somehow I just enjoy being a part of it.

Cheap food, cheap beer, cheap coffee. Wonderful, gracious, welcoming locals. A beautiful, vibrant culture.Thai massage for ten dollars an hour. No, not that kind of massage. An ancient, living city that manages to somehow be completely frantic and completely laid-back at the same time.

I haven’t explained it half as well as I’d like to, but I’m hungry and I need to go get some pad see ew for the equivalent of three dollars American.

Matt Kincade

Chiang Mai, Thailand.

 

 

I’ll bet you didn’t know I was a poet

~ Matt Kincade ~ 7 Comments

Artist’s statement: Matt Kincade uses vivid imagery, rhythm, and rhyming words written on paper to embody his inability to take himself, or life, or anything, all that seriously.

IMG_0731

An Ode to Coffee, by Matt Kincade

Oh coffee, my lovely, my wonderful drug,

You’re beautiful steaming there inside my mug.

When, in the morning, I wish I was dead

The thought of you, baby, gets me out of bed.

So bitter and black

You’re my liquid crack

The welcome monkey on my back.

You exquisite thing, you beautiful bean,

Morning or evening or times in between.

True satisfaction is you in my cup

The only damned reason I even wake up.

You quicken my pulse, you sharpen my wits,

If I drink too much of you I get the shits.

 

 

Image credit: Matt Kincade, featuring his favorite tommy-gun mug.

Star Wars prequels, betrayal, and the power of forgiveness

~ Matt Kincade ~ 5 Comments

I remember my excitement, way back when I was in high school, when I found out they were making more Star Wars movies. Those were difficult times to be a Star Wars fan, in that long stretch of time after Return of the Jedi and before The Phantom Menace. It was a long, dry season. I had the original trilogy on VHS. I played X-Wing and Tie Fighter on the PC. I built the Millennium Falcon model kit that I ordered via snail mail directly from the Lucasarts company store, located in the back pages of the Lucasarts Adventurer magazine. I read the paperback novels. But still, the pickings were slim.

Then one day, I found out that George Lucas was going to be making a new trilogy.

XW3
My childhood.

For you youngsters out there, I suppose I should explain that at the time, George Lucas was a god. The Star Wars trilogy and Indiana Jones were, quite literally, my childhood. The greatest science fiction and fantasy movies ever made, all brought to us by one man: George Motherfucking Lucas. In addition to that, his game company, Lucasarts, were putting out some of the best games of the era. X-Wing. Tie Fighter. Dark Forces. Full Throttle. Day of the Tentacle. Sam and Max. And if that wasn’t enough, his special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, was a part of some of the best movies of the eighties and nineties. The man could do no wrong.

And so, when we all heard about the Star Wars prequels… well, I don’t think excitement really covers it. It was something closer to messianic fervor. The prophet has returned!

We waited for years, soaking up every bit of new information, poring over every new production still, marvelling at the new trailers. Ewan McGregor? Liam Neeson? Natalie Portman? Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson? We waited in line on opening day…

…and the movie was kind of a mess.

I mean, it was bad. It was more deeply bad, in more ways, than I care to explain. And I don’t have to, because the mad geniuses over at Red Letter Media made this series of Star Wars reviews that explains it better than I ever could. And they’re hilarious, and everyone should watch them.

I watched these reviews dozens of times, because they were just as obsessed as I with the question: What happened? How could something so good go so wrong?

And then Indiana Jones 4 happened. And I knew it had all been a lie.

The disappointment I felt, we all felt, was…it was more than disappointment. It was betrayal. It was the awareness that God makes bad things happen to good people. The discovery that Santa Claus isn’t real. The realization that The Wizard of Oz is just a man behind a curtain.

I suppose, at some point, all of our childhood idols must fall. But I have to admit I took it personally. I was angry at the man, at him personally, for ruining this thing that was such a big part of my life. That the originals were so good, and the prequels so bad, it made him a fake. A phony. A con-man.

In some weird way, the Red Letter Media Star Wars reviews helped me heal. To put it all in perspective. Those reviews were the anger stage of my grief, they helped me work through it so I could move on. Some of it was just time and maturity. But at some point, I realized that anger is a curved blade. The bitterness I was holding onto wasn’t serving me. I was only hurting myself. George Lucas is only a man. A flawed man like the rest of us.

GeorgeLucas
In retrospect, I can see how this sort of thing might warp a person’s self-perception.

As someone who now writes fiction, I understand just as well as anybody that sometimes you set out to create something great, and it doesn’t turn out that great. And sometimes you’re so blinded by your love for your creation that you just can’t see it. I’d imagine it doesn’t help to have millions of fans convincing you that you can excrete gold coins.

Did George Lucas fall into the classic Hollywood trap, believing his own hype, surrounding himself with yes men, avoiding those that might give him an honest critique, instead listening those who fawned at his boots? Probably. Did he try to do it all himself, as befits the genius prophet that we all convinced him that he had to be, rather than engaging in the creative collaboration that movies require? Yeah, it certainly looks that way. But maybe it all happened because he was trapped in the cage we created for him.

And let’s not forget, the man created Star Wars. And for that, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

And so to you, George Lucas, I’d like to apologize. I was angry. I was hurt. I thought some bad thoughts. I dwelt on it more than I probably should have. I said a lot of hurtful things about you, both in person and online. But I’m sorry. A few bad movies don’t justify any of that.

George Lucas, I would like to sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart, for bringing Star Wars into existence, for creating the universe that  brought me so much joy and entertainment over the years. Thank you for letting me play in your sandbox. I know, this marvellous universe being your baby, you must care about it more deeply than I, and I’m sure that your limitations as a father to that baby hurt you more than they ever hurt me. In light of Disney’s acquisition of the franchise, I would like to thank you for having the dignity and the wisdom to let your baby go out into the world.

Thank you for Star Wars. Thank you for Indiana Jones.

Thank you for my childhood.

Why I don’t play with Ouija boards anymore

~ Matt Kincade ~ 5 Comments

You’re probably going to think this story is fiction. But it happened.

It was a dark and stormy night.

That’s a pretty cliché way to start a story, I know. But in this case it actually was a dark and stormy night. I was living in a flimsy little house in the woods at the top of a hill, and there was a ripping rainstorm outside. The wind howled. The pine trees swayed. Rain lashed the windows.

So, me and Emily decided it would be a good night to try the Ouija board. Continue reading →