An Amazing Discussion Between the Two Living Writers Who Have Most Influenced Me
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff hosts epic novelist Alan Moore on "Team Human" for an extraordinary 80 minute conversation.
As is perhaps apparent to our regular readers, I have struggled to write the last few months.
May was only a series of livestreams.
In April, I managed to offer two pieces, which I at least remain proud of and hope you please do check out if you missed them:
The answer for this is perhaps unsurprising: the Thanksgiving miscarriage.
I am deeply depressed.
This was not just a miscarriage. This was Miscarriage Seven. This was Miscarriage Final. We knew from when we got engaged that an adolescent injury had diminished Sally’s chance of carrying a child, but we did not know for certain. Now at this point we do.
Everything is harder now.
Trying to focus to write is an ordeal. Just trying to figure out what to write is an ordeal.
Going to the grocery store remains a trial every time, a marathon race of sensory overload amidst the specters of young, happy familes.
I can’t remember the last time I was able to really lose myself in a book for extended periods. I can read a bit here and there, but that sustained feeling of focus and concentration—just gone. I’ve had piles of books that I had intended to plow through and it’s just not happening at anywhere near the pace I had planned. Some days are worse than others. There are times when I can focus and work well. But those days seem fewer and fewer now.
And it’s become much the same thing with films and YouTube videos. I just can’t take very much for very long. I haven’t watched a film from beginning to end since last year. It’s all too much!
Depression Kills Confidence And That Kills the Ability to Create
Yes, let’s put that big and bold. That’s what’s going on here with me now. And I’m sure it’s going on with plenty of other people too. Probably many of you reading this.
I have been so excited to write about and pick apart the wonderful interview above Douglas Rushkoff conducted with Alan Moore, the legendary creator of Watchmen, From Hell, and V for Vendetta who has now retired from comic book writing and reinvented himself over the last decade as an extraordinary literary author. A year and a half ago I published this laying out some of the key writing techniques Moore has deployed over the course of his career:
This followed what I regard as the most important essay I’ve published on Substack, which explains one of the key reasons why I’ve grown so ecstatic about studying Moore’s writing techniques and incorporating his methods into my own:
I tend to now see The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, which Moore co-wrote with his late friend Steven Moore (no relation), as not just a graphic novel and practical grimoir, but a quasi-sacred text in the lineage of the Corpus Hermeticum, Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law, and Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati. I’m not talking Bible-level of divine inspiration here, but tucking away in a neo-apocrypha seems appropriate.
It’s my favorite book so far this century. Perhaps now I’ll have to return to it again to try and overcome this sadness that has descended since Thanksgiving.
For my birthday this year, I finally treated myself to something I’ve been wanting for a while: a subscription to BBC Maestro which includes a 6-hour-long course from Moore on storytelling.
And, oh, is it awesome. Moore lays out his methods, approach, and philosophy. And we as writers need to take it all in, just as we do his collected works.
In trying to figure out what from Moore and Rushkoff’s interview to highlight and emphasize the realization that really dawned on me was bigger:
I could not think of any still-living writers I regarded as a bigger influence on my worldview and writing approach.
The Alan Moore creative writing methods and the Douglas Rushkoff media systems analysis methods had simply become part of my mental operating system now.
Much of the root of this is not too difficult to determine: Moore and Rushkoff both embraced and celebrated Robert Anton Wilson.
They have each now become the Wilson of their Boomer and Xer generations, except taking his Neo-Hermetic approach into their own mediums of comic books, literary novels, documentaries, podcasts, and innovative media theory.
Wilson was a career model for me when I discovered his work 23 years ago. Today, it’s Moore and Rushkoff. You should embrace this creative approach too. It doesn’t matter what field or medium you have chosen. The Wilson-Moore-Rushkoff paradigm can be applied to your life too. Begin engaging with their works and you will find out how soon enough.
And the easiest way to start is simply by subscribing to Team Human and following Rushkoff’s regular monologues. His one from yesterday was on fire: