Despite nearly 30 years producing music together, or perhaps because of it, The Church, the band you know from “Under the Milky Way”, has just released one of the best albums of its career. Untitled #23, which released May 12 in the US, is a stunning achievement, an album that is a revelation from start to finish, an album that is undeniably the Church and yet is a product of their evolution as a band. It’s rare that I find an album where every song shines, and yet this is one. Without a proper title or even proper cover art, the album lets its songs speak for themselves, and they are relentless, they surround and invade at the same time. But it creates a kind of equilibrium, and you end up feeling like you’re floating. Sometimes in lush, ethereal skies, sometimes in the vast blackness of space, and still others in dense, multicolored seas.

It’s amazing to see a band of their longevity (at least 23 albums) in such top shape. Part of this comes from their proficiency, no doubt, part of it from the confidence that gives them. But I suspect it also has to do with their love of the music. The Church’s heyday (pun intended) was long ago, at least by the measure of their popular success, but they’ve continued to produce great albums and I think that by now they must have given up any real hope of recapturing the profile they once had and simply do it because they play well together. That musical chemistry is readily apparent in this album.

It’s also part of a prolific onslaught from the band. Within the last few months they’ve also released two EPs (Pangaea and Coffee Hounds, both superb) and these come on the heels of solo releases from both Steve Kilbey (Painkiller) and Marty Willlson-Piper (Nightjar). It’s a good time to be a Church fan, but also a good time to become one. All of the albums (though not the EPs) are available from online retailers such as Amazon.com, but also from Second Motion Records as CDs or digital downloads. They’re also on iTunes. I urge you to check them out – at the very least Untitled #23. It deserves a listen.

My thoughts on the Season Five Finale of Lost can be found here (at Tor.com).

It was a bit mindblowing, but I’m getting a few uncomfortable BSG vibes from the show now.

I feel like everyone I know has been to see Star Trek already. As usual, I am late to the party. I will rectify that tonight, however. In a way, though, I’m glad that some of the hype has been tempered by people having more critical opinions. I still haven’t seen too many people saying it wasn’t good, but I would rather go in expecting decent and not the best movie I’ve seen in recent times.

Tomorrow night is the Lost finale and it’s something I’m looking forward to more eagerly than I am Star Trek. I know Lost lost a lot of people a while back, but I have to say that it’s my favorite show on television. That title used to belong to Battlestar Galactica, but even in this past season, I found myself appreciating Lost more.

The Lost finale will also mark the end of cable television for me, for now at least. I’ve never been one to find that television was bad, or somehow lesser than other forms of media, but I do find that I spend too much time watching it lately. And I continue to stare at the books that line my bookshelves wondering when I’ll have the time to read them. So – no more television. Which isn’t to say that I won’t watch television shows – I will via downloads and DVD. I expect to watch more movies and actually take advantage of my Netflix subscription and the watch on demand service they offer. But I really want to read more and I figure this will help. I will also save some money in the deal.

Speaking of books, I finally finished Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun about a week ago and I’ve already started in on Urth of the New Sun, the sequel. I was originally going to wait, but I found that I couldn’t. I wanted a continuation of the story right away.

I’ll plan on writing a lengthier post on the books soon as I feel they deserve one. After this one, though, I intend to take a break and catch up on other reading.

More to come later…

Sorry, by the way, for the string of code at the beginning of recent entries, especially if you’re reading this on LJ or in a feed reader. Apparently that happens when I write a post in Word and then copy and paste it into the WordPress software. I’ll try to be more diligent about catching that in the future.

On Wednesday evening I trekked to Webster Hall in downtown Manhattan to see Chuck Palahniuk read and talk. Chuck was one of my instructors at Clarion West and he’s always entertaining, so I thought I would check it out.

It’s been ages since I’ve been to Webster Hall and the last time was basically to go clubbing with some friends. It was strange to be there for a reading, but Chuck packed them into the place, and all the seats filled early so that some people had to stand on the periphery.

Less of a reading and more of a comedy show, Chuck talked about some of his wacky experiences and read us some fairy tales written in the same vein as the main character from Pygmy. Amy Hempel was supposed to be there interviewing him, but she had a family emergency and couldn’t make it, which was disappointing but understandable. Instead his editor came out to pick up the slack, though really Chuck didn’t need it. His answers to the questions were interesting, but hardly the draw of the show. It was his off-the cuff comments and stories that sparked. At one point he answered a cell phone call that was supposed to be from Maya Angelou. It was a strange night. And enjoyable.

But it had one additional effect aside from just entertainment.

Lately I’ve been feeling disenchanted with the whole writing process. I continue to garner rejections and the last few came on stories I was proud of. The last one came so quickly that I assumed it must have gone over like a steaming turd. And I’m surrounded by gifted, talented people, all the time, who are achieving wonderful things. I don’t begrudge them their success, and they deserve all of that and more. I’m proud of my friends. But it makes me want what they have all the more. To stand tall in that company. Yet lately I seem to still be misfiring.

Where Chuck comes into this is one of his answers during the Q&A. The question was fairly standard, about how he sees himself in response to the community of mainstream literature, and the answer was even more standard, but it resonated for me. Chuck said that he writes for himself. He writes because it’s fun and he loves it and he doesn’t worry about whether people will like it and he doesn’t worry about pleasing an audience. Now whether that’s true or not, and it’s likely to be because he can afford to do that, one thing hit me from that – I forgot how enjoyable and how fulfilling the writing was. I was looking so far down the road, at where the story would end up, worrying whether it would be received well or be rejected, that I wasn’t appreciating the process of doing it. And that was a sobering realization. Because I do love doing it. And I can never really stop myself. And so I might as well just enjoy the process and focus on that. I’ll continue to send my stories out, but that’s not where my head should be all the time. My head should be in the writing along with everything else.

Simple, I know, but a potent reminder. Maybe I should get it tattooed on my arm…