Kurtz, Ahab, Blood Meridian, and all things in between
I’m not sharing these updates to publish chapters, completed works, or even drafts of my WIP. What I’ll share here are thoughts and impressions that will foreshadow the final form of content that will be included, in one way or another, in Art is War.
Instead of a sample chapter, you should think of this as more akin to The Retreat Diaries by William S. Burroughs. Not the thing itself, but impressions of it as it forms. A waking dream journal of thoughts and impressions as I attract and coalesce AiW.
If life is the theater of Maya, a dream we exist within, so to speak, our goal should be to lucid dream within that state.
So, it’s 1979, and 17-year-old me is looking for a movie to watch at my local theater, which is on the verge of death. The theater in question is the Commodore, on Irving Park Road.
Although I didn’t know it then, the Commodore would close for good in about 2 more years. But in 1979, you could see 3 (count ‘em!) matinees on a Saturday for 75¢. Thanks to the low price and the lax enforcement of the age limit for R-rated movies in the 70s, I could see all kinds of films on a 17-year-old’s budget.
I saw kung-fu films, including all of Bruce Lee’s films at the Commodore, as well as a bevy of B horror films. The Commodore was the perfect combo of affordable prices and an owner who seemed to love arty schlock.
Side note: The Commodore was one block away from the weird and infamous Red Egg Inc., an odd storefront in my northwest Chicago neighborhood.
My gang of friends and I speculated a lot about this storefront, and it also caught the attention of comic artist Dan Clowes. It was weird and mysterious, and I often walked down after a movie and stared inside, trying to figure out WTH was going on in there.
I would have asked someone inside, but there never seemed to be anyone on site. It was deserted, oddly named, and mysterious. Perfect for a young man’s imagination.
Back to the Commodore. One fine Saturday afternoon, I saw 3 movies for the requisite 75¢. One of the films left an indelible impression, and I remember walking into the daylight thinking, “That’s the kind of art I want to make someday.”
That film was Apocalypse Now, which, in my opinion, is THE greatest film ever made.
I also had a thought that haunts me to this day. “What happened to the manuscript that Kurtz (Brando) was working on and that Willard (Sheen) took with him after he hacked Kurtz ot death?
If you’re going to watch it, I highly recommend the 3-hour version.
If you read COMPLEAT or watched a recent interview like The Why Files appearance I did earlier this year, you know I have a knack for attracting weird synchronicities around critical life events; Apocalypse Now is no exception.
Years later, in the 90s, I found myself working as an art director on a film which cycled through a series of names, finally settling on My Neighbor’s Daughter.
The movie starred Sam Bottoms, who had starred as “Lance the Surfer” in Apocalypse Now. Sam was very easygoing and approachable, and we hit it off.
We spent time during shots that didn’t require our attention, sharing a spliff, swapping stories, and surfing tips. Yes, he surfed in real life.
Sam shared a lot of behind-the-scenes stories about the legendary insanity that was the infamous Apocalypse Now shoot. As you can imagine, I was in heaven, hearing firsthand stories about the work of art that set me on the path to becoming the artist I am today.
Fast forward- in keeping with the series of synchronicities that is my life, I again ran into Sam in 2004, living in Santa Barbara at the same time I had moved there to work with the SBIFF and a tech start-up.
We rekindled our friendship and hung out until Sam’s passing in 2008.
Maybe I’ll talk about this in a separate post, but from 2004 to 2006, I had some pleasant collaborations with American Zoetrope and Coppola. We’ll save that story for another time.
Suffice it to say, I know I’m onto a fruitful topic when the synchronicities start piling up, and this project has a long history of synchronistic entanglements.
So, here I am now in 2026, exploring that thought that occurred to me that fateful day in 1979, in front of the Commodore Theater. “What was in that manuscript? Do the books Kurtz was reading give us a clue?”
Full circle.
In other news :
I was recently notified that there will be a chapter about my work in the following academic publication:
Publication: NEW GAME ART – The Aesthetics of Play and Worldbuilding
BNN, Inc., November 2026
Language Japanese
More info as I receive it.
Author John Wisniewski, who used to write for us over at Greylodge, interviews Ru Marshall about his new book, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda, which covers a subject I’ve been fascinated with for years. (As can be witnessed in my comments on this article over at RAWIllumination.net)
Anyway, go read it at the source and find links to John’s other work.
LINK: http://www.rawillumination.net/2026/09/ru-marshall-on-their-new-carlos.html
How Extinction Entered the AI Debate
AI researchers are warning that the technology they’re creating could kill us all. On this week’s On the Media, unpacking the feverish debate over the dangers of artificial intelligence. Plus, why people find AI chatbots more convincing than their fellow humans.
[01:00] Brooke Gladstone interviews Joshua Rothman, staff writer at The New Yorker, about the competing narratives around AI, which maximize its power on the one hand and minimize it on the other, and how both sides risk misunderstanding the technology and what to do about it.
[21:38] Micah Loewinger speaks with Jason Koebler, investigative reporter and co-founder of 404 Media, about the A.I. marketing tactic that’s bombarded Reddit, and why AEO, not SEO, is changing our the internet’s future.
[36:05] Micah Loewinger chats with Kai Kupferschmidt, contributing writer for Science, about the growing body of research showing that chatbots can be as, if not more, persuasive than people.
LINK: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/how-extinction-entered-the-ai-debate
The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby
I took a few books with me in 2014 when I retreated to the Big Sur forest for a reset. That trip inspired Xen: The Zen of the Other.
One of those books was this one. I think I may have to re-read it soon, but in the meantime, here’s a recommendation. This one hits a lot of the notes that make a book memorable for me.
Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the lost generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby’s pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.
Black Sun is novelist and master biographer Geoffrey Wolff’s subtle and striking picture of a man who killed himself to make his life a work of art.
LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254007.Black_Sun
Also: Geoffrey Wolff discusses his book about Harry Crosby
Terkel interviews author Geoffrey Wolff about his latest book. It's titled “Black Sun,” a biography of Harry Crosby.
From the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.
LINK: https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/geoffrey-wolff-discusses-his-book-about-harry-crosby
The Blindboy Podcast
Jon Ronson on Conspiracy, Masculinity and Writing
Jon Ronson has written some of my favorite books. The Men Who Stare at Goats was one of my favorite books of 2004. I was also disappointed when the movie came out. Chalk up another L for Hollywood.
Anyway, this is a great conversation between Jon and Blindboy that touches on a lot of subjects I'm personally interested in.
Season 1, Ep. 475
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
I chat with Jon Ronson, who is a bestselling author, journalist, documentary maker, and podcaster. A master of immersive nonfiction. His work has consistently been ahead of the curve, exploring extremism, conspiracy, public shaming, and the culture wars long before they became mainstream concerns.
LINK: https://shows.acast.com/blindboy/episodes/jon-ronson
when ppl asks me why I do love USA so much, I show your stuffs.