Tag: expat life

Music Is At The Heart Of This Novel



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m listening to a lot of soundtracks of serious, dark thrillers these days, hoping that some of it will rub off of me as I develop this novel. I simply don’t take myself all that seriously, so I need to get into that vibe as I develop the novel.

At the center of this story (two novels, one story) is music. I’ve come up with a rather unique way to use music in this novel. I only use titles of songs because, well, the medium is the message and all that. But I’m hoping people like me who like the type of music I like will dig it, as they say.

One of the layers of this novel is me reminiscing about those few, brief — but extremely exciting — months in Seoul in late 2006, early 2007. I simply can not tell what really happened in a way that anyone would want to read because it’s a tragedy with a forgone conclusion.

But I can, essentially, hide that story inside another story.

As such, I’ve spent a lot — A LOT — of time figuring out how to re-create the dynamic in my personal life during late 2006, early 2007 when I was publishing a magazine and DJing at a expat bar. Pretty much the entire novel, by accident, is simply an excuse for me to remember how cool I briefly was a long time ago.

I’m going to try to work music into every aspect of the novel. This, of course, hopefully, will make it easier to adapt into a movie should somehow I manage to sell this thing after all is said and done.

We’ll see.

My life in Seoul, 2006-2007.

‘Spooky’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I was living in Seoul, I occasionally would get a weird feeling that someone I was interacting with was….a bit…spooky. Whenever you suspect you’re dealing with spooks, you come off sounding like an crazy person because typically the average person doesn’t run into them.

But the thing about Seoul when I was there was there was a huge military base in the middle of the city. So, every once in a while when I was DJing at Nori in Sinchon, I saw older guys in the audience who just did not fit in. I have an extremely active imagination and so I would stand there, behind the bar, and wonder…are those guys spooks?

The only reason why I even bring this up is I’m listening to the “Wind of Change” podcast and it seems to fit very much in how I view the world in general — “normal” people are way too quick to assume that that just because someone is a kook that they couldn’t possibly have anything of merit to contribute. I am finding a lot of inspiration from the podcast as to how to come up with some out-of-the-box ideas for the novel I’m writing.

It’s this tendency that really bugs the shit out of me about successful Twitter liberals who look down their nose at me because I’m a bit “touched.” I often up come up with rather fantastical ideas. But at the same time, I occasionally do actually figure things out correctly — COVID19 being a prime example. I know why they do this — they have a vested interest in doing things “the right way” and if you don’t fit that metric, then, well, fuck you.

Anyway, I generally have a positive view of spooks these days because, well, we have a mad, tyrannical American Caligula hell-bent on destroying the nation I love and it seems as those if there really was a Deep State, they would be the good guys. Trump is actively trying to replace these good guys with traitors and sycophants, so who knows where things will end up.

Idle Rambling About #Seoul #Expatlife & #Writing A #Novel

Some rambling.