Tag Archives: ideas

Riff: A bunch of stories to finish, eventually (maybe)

[Audio transcript from an updated/location undisclosed recording / Pasted, uncorrected]

Completely unrelated snapshot

Some of the projects I want to make over the next little while:

I want to write a collection of short stories that is just all wacky times, immediately leading up to or following quitting jobs.

Specifically, there is leaving Star Sand Beach Club very quickly and going to Palau and Yap, going directly to the airport and disappearing rather than going to the beach club (in retrospect, seems like the best job ever but for reasons, it just wasn’t.

There is the ATG drug testing, going to Belize incident.

There is the SS Neptune, leaving-to-be-a-schoolteacher-and-getting-karmically-bitten-in-the ass idea.

There is the leaving Kinko’s with a fax at six in the morning and going off to make a film story. That is a pretty good one.

There is the Wirthlin Group phone survey job that was such a nightmare and getting fired from that for not asking personal enough questions, then crashing the office party two days later and mooning the boss in front of everyone and pulling out while the cops pulled in the other way. That was a really good one.

There is Sharpey’s, but I didn’t quit that one, Well I quit but you know with noticing on good terms planning to go back to university of Utah which in retrospect was a colossal mistake. That one was a nice job. The stories aren’t as funny but they’re nice. Although, there was that good incident of getting my car crashed into and taking the insurance claim – this station is called Joyce Collinwood now – taking the insurance settlement money and parting with it and pulling out the dent with a coat hanger.

There is also the Pizza Beast and Pizza Feast incident, that one is a little harder of a story to tell.

There is also the real estate weekly route that me and brothers and I have, where all the papers went into the side yard to make a giant paper of file of pulpy wetness and that was pretty good.

There was also Bob’s story working for that jackass in White Rock that sits by the sea, going in there and me having to play some bodyguard for him. All we wanted was try to get his paycheck. That one wasn’t too bad although not great either, I suppose.

Then there was the job of delivering fliers for the travel company around the campuses in Utah. That one is not bad.

While at University of Utah, geez, I had three jobs there for awhile. “Cinema in your face”, that was a good one, where I delivered the newspapers and fliers to every bar in Salt Lake City – bars, bookshops, coffee shops, etc.

Then I worked for Bing Christensen Land Surveyor. We’d drive up in the hills in a jeep and stand out there in the middle of nowhere until he radios me and tells me that he got the shot and then I stumble down somewhere else.

Teaching WordPerfect classes while sleeping in my van. Well, not simultaneously. During that period, I lived in my van and I also taught the occasional WordPerfect 4.2 or 5.1 or something for DOS classes. But those jobs sort of faded away more than exploded.

Then of course the other really big one I should tell is the story of the job in Japan with the mushroom farm and leaving that day on Mike’s bike and that I have taken up in the trunk of the K car and running away from that horrible job up in the hills with the old ladies.

So if I could bust out ten stories of a thousand or two thousand words each, where it’s really just talking about quitting a job and going someplace rapidly, I think that would be beauty.

Continue reading Riff: A bunch of stories to finish, eventually (maybe)

Items: Forgotten / poetry cycles, overview + process thoughts

Items: Forgotten, backgrounder etc

Along the way, I produced a series of visual freeverse poetry called “Items: Forgotten in Drawers“ – part pirate treasure map, part meanderings stashed in a non-secret hiding place, part punk rock handbills.

+ Back Story
The poems started in an Ayurvedic clinic the Himalayas, a ship in Arabia, and ruins around Mediterranean, …then attached to vintage hotel letterhead (much acquired from a tiny Greek Monastery store in a heavily Hasidic neighbourhood Montréal neighbourhood), assembled in off-strip Las Vegas, shared in Utah canyons… and now distributed to points unknown. Further batches were assembled on in a camper truck in Olympic Peninsula, Wa, and later Sanur and Nusa Ceningan, Indonesia with scraps printed here and there.

+ Process
Sometimes, i don’t have a printers, other times no Internet, often no typewriter, so i make do with what i have: scissors, glue, paper… items i can pick up a dusty island shops and forgotten stationery stores.

When i write, (usually) starts as scribbles in notebooks and then gets hastily transcribed into a digital form and printed when opportunity strikes for editing – in this case, the editing leaves errors in typing and structure and instead cuts and pastes (like Burroughs to Bowie would do) and then reassembled in various ways.

+ Form
Each substrate (hotel letterhead, aerogramme, envelope) shown is uniquely augmented with stamps – both postal and ink – and other ephemera, carefully selected and then applied as though it wasn’t.

Sometimes, lettraset letters, fuzzy Lomo photos and bits of typewriter come along.

+ Themes
Overall, the pieces explore themes of wandering lost, losing self and others, scraping beneath the crust of culture and myth, remixing identity, connecting the history to the present in all it’s vagaries, and considering what becomes of our story when we vanish… naturally made with affection.

+ Next
What follows (and brings me here) is another series is queuing up – Vol. 6 “Circumnavigation” spanning cultures, geography, form and accruements.

The first dispatch in the series is a remixing of myself (originally written on 3 postcards and mailed to 3 different people) with insomniac observations about Yangtze River and Shanghai’s absurd skyline as seen from a ship.

(How to be a) Public Speaking Bad Ass – soliloquy on a trail, part 1

Dave Olson "Fuck Stats Make Art" - SXSW 2009
Dave Olson “Fuck Stats Make Art” – SXSW 2009 (photo by Kris Krug via Flickr)

Sharing stories to groups – whether for business, civics, or art – requires a certain amount of performance art in order to effectively educate, entertain and inspire.

Along a trail, Dave shares a stream of consciousness spiel with tips and tactics. learned from dozens of gigs at all sorts of audiences. Including: slides are not the talk; don’t depend on tech; have a uniform; give tweet-able snacks; don’t re-introduce yourself; go “Donahue”; plus, riffs about finding flow, establishing momentum, starting in situ, finally knowing your audience and treating with intelligence.

Unedited and spontaneous, transcription also available. Recorded April 2013.

Listen to: (How to be a) Public Speaking Bad Ass – a soliloquy on a trail, part 1 (22:35, 33MB, 192k mp3)

More: Transcribed version of “(How to be a) Public Speaking Bad Ass  {DRAFT}”

Writing Project Ideas – Feasthouse (2005)

Snacks from the Feasthouse- Writing Project Ideas

In my blitzkrieg of personal socialized publishing catchup, i came across a recording spontaneously spieled while riding the bus from North Van to Surrey in Oct. 2005 shortly after relocating to my beloved harbours, trees and parks. I talk about three big writing projects which are moving verrryyyy slowly but are moving (a couple of them anyhow).

Pencils ready for: DaveO Writing Project Ideas (.mp3, 12:17, 18MB)

Specifically the ideas are:

* a collection of short stories about quitting jobs (many) in rather creative ways and heading out on adventures – tentatively called “Quitting Jobs” – i often recollect new ones i had forgot about too …

* a novel “Elsewhere” being a first-person narrative about finding a place and meaning for a generation between the cracks in the early 90’s – (loosely based on notes and scribblings from a summer on Dead tour including a hostage incident in New Mexico)

* “The Diamond Merchant” – a (funny) screenplay about the double-life of a owner of a chain of mall jewelry stores and his dubious, international exploits running both ends against the middle – add hoodwinked Nigerian spammers and Russian roulette in Thailand (wait hasn’t that been used?) and chaos ensues.

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