I’m collecting footage for the video element of my audiobook and that required a trip back to Deep Ellum to try and capture some of the places and feel of the setting of the book. I bitch and moan that nothing ever goes my way but I was gifted a timely thunderstorm that perfectly matches the landscape in my mind’s eye. I got some really pleasing footage. Deep Ellum is lit up like a neon hooker and if you throw water all over her, she really shines. I don’t know what it is but the sight of the clouds devouring the top half of all of the skyscrapers across the Goode-Latimer divide still gets me high the same way it did when I originally conceived (or began to conceive of) the idea of the book. Originally, it was a gullywasher from the west that I watched while high on mushrooms in my little hovel at the whorehouse on Walton. The place is still there, altered, but the same. Who knows if Karen is still the manager? Who knows if Karen is still Compos Mentis? I didn’t hear any dachshunds so that may not bode well for her. It’s all the same but changed for the time. The rain looks the same. The secret places still hold their mysteries. I wouldn’t say it’s a place that welcomes me but I can make my way there. Maybe she will appreciate the book someday. Maybe she will recognize the same cracks on her that I do.
Oh, and I saw Ric Flair on Main Street. Woo!