Postmodernism is nonsense. Here’s the pop version of it: Through the lens of pomo (what the “cool” people call it), a given thing only has the meaning an individual ascribes to it. That’s it. You just read a book. What does it mean? What does the author say it means? What do the words on …
I found her at the top of the hill, near the ice-skating rink by a pile of snow. Snow in September? The kindly old man playing with his grandson informed me that the Zambonis dumped the ice they shaved from the top of the surface out here. Okay then. How did she, my daughter, get …
It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. Robert W. Service I am getting older. Sometimes I resent getting older. I resent the loss of youth, of beauty, of vitality, of untapped possibilities and the very real feeling like I was on the verge of something …
Today, I present an interview with a person I think you’ll really like hearing from: me. Alexander Hellene: Alex—may I call you Alex? Alexander Hellene: Yeah, sure. Just not Al. AH: Okay, not Al, got it. Alex, how long have we known each other? AH: Shoot, how long’s it been? Forty, almost 41 years? Something …
Take a good, long look at this person. Read what they have to say. Truly understand that the hoary cliché from the right that these people are death cultists who can never create and only destroy rings true: “Oh, not the whole, ‘They just wear a preexisting IP like a skinsuit and parade around like …
Our music is something that comes naturally to us. When we are writing, we don’t listen to what is popular at the moment. We write from our feelings and that is something very natural. So said Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson in a 1987 interview with Dutch music magazine Sym Info. As happens very often, I …
Look, I like video games. I grew up as a gamer. Being born in 1981, video games were unavoidable. Whether it was my maternal grandmother’s Atari (yes, she was a gamer) or the adventure games I played on my paternal grandfather’s old Leading Edge monochromatic P.C. (yes, he was a gamer too) or the NES …
I’ve been semi-obsessed with the band Black Midi lately. Black Midi is a trio of British lads barely out of high school who released their third album, Hellfire, in July of this year. Their music can be described as exactly the kind of music I wanted to make when I, too, was in my twenties, …
The writer was called to the table. “You do understand the, um, the importance of why you’re here, right?” said the editor. A square-jawed woman who tried to look like a kindly grandmother but couldn’t enliven the deadness behind her dark eyes. Her smile was not convincing. “I do,” said the writer. Flop sweat pooled …
“Give the people what they want.” The phrase is used both as a command and a sarcastic warning. One school of thought holds that a producer of anything to be marketed and sold really needs to provide customers exactly what they’re asking for. Another holds that people don’t know what they want until someone with …
Alexander Hellene is either a dilettante or a Renaissance man, depending on whom you ask. A musician, athlete, artist, and law school graduate, Alexander has always been attracted to fantastical tales, since they tend to do a better job of explaining how the world works than just about anything else. He lives in New England with his wife and children.
The exciting conclusion to Alexander Hellene’s sword-and-planet trilogy, The Swordbringer!