Fulford Creative | Author Archives

This is Slappin’ the Bass

Posted on July 7, 2011 by fulfordcreative

Old soundie found on the Internet Archive of Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens. Stealing the show and showing us that even bass players can bang their heads is ‘hep-cat’ bassist Frank DeNunzio, Sr., of Hershey, Pennsylvania, who played his standup–slap bass almost until his death in February 2005.

Videos of the Week – Music Edition

Posted on June 24, 2011 by fulfordcreative

Talented yet undiscovered musicians are finding viral success by posting their videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Some artists are really good, others might have a career in comedy. Here are the best of the week:

Freddie25 and his clones do a GREAT Queen cover.

YouTube musicians stitched together playing a collaborative version of Radiohead’s Paranoid Android.

A fun trend in YouTube videos are “literal” translations of the action seen in the video. Like this one explaining the on-screen action of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Under the Bridge). Here we see a video game trailer made into a music video, with the action being narrated exactly as we see it.

Pro golfers form boy band, and rap badly.

And for your dancing pleasure, a gorilla at the Calgary Zoo throws down some sweet electric boogaloo.

What the heck is Flash Fiction?

Posted on June 23, 2011 by fulfordcreative

Hearing a lot about Flash Fiction these days. I’m picturing short little stories that briefly pull open their overcoat and expose themselves to a shocked and disgusted audience.

But it seems it’s getting more, um, exposure (decent or not). It’s now a commercial entity now that the internet has successfully squeezed the pulp out of our collective attention span. Editors at online publications are looking for shorter works to meet the demands of our wandering, unfocused, meandering, taking a stroll in the park, that one near the zoo, right downtown, yeah, the one in Chicago, right in the middle of the city, do you think the animals like being in a busy downtown environment, wait, what was I talking about?

Flash Fiction are tales on the small end, between 300 and 1,000 words. To compare, short stories in publications like the New Yorker or Esquire typically run 3,000 to 5,000 words. Flash Fiction can be an in the moment story or a rehashing of multiple events. It’s a compressed tale where the tiniest movement matters. It’s a sudden realization that needs to be told. It’s so short that there’s no margin for error. Every word is essential. Every letter must be in the exact rihgt place.

The most widely-accepted example of flash fiction is a short, short, really short story by Ernest Hemingway:

“For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Did you hear that? That was my imagination opening then slamming shut almost simultaneously.

I recently found a cool Sci Fi Flash Fiction site called 365 Tomorrows. I like sci fi, and I like short fiction. So I like the stories on this site. Here’s what these folks say about themselves.

“365 tomorrows is a collaborative project designed to present readers with a new piece of short science and speculative ‘flash’ fiction each day. Launched August 1st 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since.”

There are Flash Fiction contests, Flash FanFiction, Flash Non-Fiction, Flash Novels, you name it. Check out my own Flash Fiction attempt on my storytelling page here.

Joseph Campbell Snippets

Posted on June 16, 2011 by fulfordcreative

Quotes from Joseph Campbell:

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The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

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The goal of your quest for knowledge is to be found at that burning point in yourself, that becoming thing in yourself, which is innocent of the goods and evils of the world as already become, and therefore desireless and fearless. That is the condition of a warrior going into battle with perfect courage. That is life in movement.

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Myths and dreams are manifestations in image form (metaphors) of all of the energies of the body, moved by the organs, in conflict with each other.

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A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation:

“As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm.

Jump.

It’s not as wide as you think.”

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The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all.

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Nothing is routine, nothing is taken for granted. Everything is standing out on it’s own, because everything is a possibility, everything is a clue, everything is talking to you. It’s marvelous.

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I don’t think of God as up there. I think of God as right here in whatever I’m knowing and loving and serving.

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It’s very difficult to find in the outside world something that matches what the system inside of you is yearning for.

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(Han) Solo was a very practical guy, at least as he thought of himself, a materialist. But he was a compassionate human being at the same time and didn’t know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn’t known he possessed.

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MOYERS: What about this idea of good and evil in mythology, of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and light?

CAMPBELL: That is a Zoroastrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one is evil for the other. And you play your part, not withdrawing from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder: a mysterium tremendum et fascinans.