eleven years ago I effectively snuffed myself. this isn't an NDE story but I do have a couple of those coming. some of you are familiar I imagine. not sure really who this site will appeal to. kind of a smallish darkish oddball group I reckon. the folks out there who have told me they read kiss me, judas twenty or thirty times. fifty times. fuck me. spins my head I mean every time I flip open the big poe book I find myself slapping it shut just as quick. because there's madness in there. beauty and truth too and young cocksure bright eyed nihilistic fuckery as well. but still. the idea of reading that book more than once is crazy cool and comforting too.

what then of the folks who have lines from one of the books inked on their skin. I'd protect those people with my life if the time came. the first time I heard that was a poet from the old velvet she has a line from penny dreadful on her back they move like shadows joined they must be lovers I'm probably misquoting my own damn self there but upon hearing that had the dizzy shivery shadow feel of the uncle ben speech buzzing under my own skin and like I said I don't even know her in the real but we're friends in the ether and now she's a kickass poet in her own right and when the zombies come I'd protect her with my life.

and fuck I get it too. in another timeline I might have the sky is the color of dead television inked forever on my shoulder. I surely read neuromancer fifty times. same with the stranger. catcher in the rye. scanner darkly. deliverance. to kill a mockingbird. the outsiders. the postman always rings twice. the talented mister ripley. johnny got his gun. naked lunch. the big sleep. hmm scrolling back through that list probably could have saved every therapist I ever tortured for one two maybe three visits before disappearing could have saved them a spot of bother.

anyway who else. besides one of my kids twenty or thirty years forward when they're trying to decipher what craziness pop pop is jabbering about.

the velvet faithful. at this point the velvet has become an abstract like the yellow. what is the velvet. what was it. the velvet is sleep that plays at death. the velvet is black and red in my mind my memory it was a soothing place to visit. at the time it was unlike anything else. well of course it was a punk kid brother shadow little sister of the cult. the community that rose up around palahniuk and fight club. I never met chuck and only read the book after seeing fincher's movie but I feel him if you know what I mean. yeah I feel for him because kiss me judas came out in the fall of '98 and the same names were tossed around as possible directors. fincher and danny boyle and chris nolan after memento came out then when the KMJ script was floating around LA in 2001 a month before 9.11 somebody was pushing for kathryn bigelow aka director of hurt locker and point break. a female director would be the shit. somebody like sofia coppola I'd love to see what she did with Jude and it has hit me more than once that if the universe had zigged rather than zag here and there I might be running into phineas poe and Jude memes every time I ventured online same as tyler durden and patrick bateman and would I even want that how would it fuck with my head and where was I going with this

if you hang out here you will see and hear the internal adhd side loops. oh yeah. snuffed myself from the internet in 2011 mainly because I'd gone to work a psych ward and the primary bit of advice given on the way in was be careful with personal info you don't want one of these folk getting obsessed with you stalking you on the net then finding you in the real.

fair enough. I had two stalkers circa 1999 that I was aware of. the obsessed fans trope. keep in mind this was before cell phones. the internet was still a slow as fuck nerd circle jerk. anyway a stalker back then meant a whole different thing. not just somebody analyzing every move you make on instagram but somebody who sits outside your house. calls you on your landline out of the blue. calls your ex-wife. the dental hygienist in san francisco she told me she called every baer in the california phone books davis SF and los angeles before spooking the fuck out of me with a midnight call identifying herself as Jude.

the velvet was a safe haven for lost souls noir lovers up and coming writers yeah but also freaks geeks poets dreamers junkies goth kids the internally tortured the cutters and self harmers the loveless and the damned and everyone in between. I admit it overwhelmed me felt like it might consume me literally eat me. partly because that's how I do everything. like I'm locked in a motel room with an eightball of coke fifth of jack cigarettes knives laptop and no contact with the real other than the clock radio.

the coolest thing that came out of the velvet was the warm & bound anthology. I say let's do a few more of those. let's start a production company called religiously cold. the one thing I'm for sure gonna do with this site besides let you guys inside the underbelly the undercarriage of my head is spin up a weekly or monthly writer's workshop that will run exactly like one of my old classes at evergreen or the college of art.

when I was 25 was fucking lost until I found my way to the mfa program at naropa not just the program but the killer class the other writers and poets were my family and it hits me sometimes how many young punk writers are out there lost ghosting the badlands of the internet and never found a family like that or just can't afford tuition which probably costs more than buying a goddamn house now.

I don't know how to make the screen black and red here. the built in spell checker refuses to fuck off. I'm working on it. and let's be honest the first time I visited the locals site was yesterday. if any of you guys have knowledge or experience with this place and have any tips about how to shape it bend it to our liking please holler.

welcome to the velvet howl. the only way it shall breathe and grow and function properly will be a communal project.

if you were around for the analog velvet tell me what you remember. the thing I was getting at with the ghosts of myspace is this. the velvet is presumably a dead link now but it's still out there in the ether and we can bring it back raise it from the dead reimagine with in the age of newfangled apps or just leave it be and move on we can breathe life into a new lovely monster of our own making.

if that sparkles.