Maya Star Mores Tammy Mores Tsuneo Matsuura Doug TolfABOUT "TIDES AND MOONBEAMS" Tides and Moonbeams is one of several writing projects Jeff is continuously developing. It's biographical in a sense, as it involves the most influential people in Jeff's life. But rather than focusing on telling the story by way of traditional methods, Jeff focuses on developing scenes and characters through a blurred form of poetry.
The story flashes back and forth on a number of occasions and is developed in a way that encourages the reader to make sense of it as he or she would sort through an abstract painting. Rather than analyzing the meaning of every paragraph and line, the readers is encouraged to simply go with the feeling brought out through the words to develope his or her own unique scene.
"Tides and Moonbeams" is an attempt to lure the reader inside the unique mind and vision of an abstract artist. To take the experiment one step further, Jeff is writing some sections of this book to the beat of a predetermined soundtrack of music that relates to each character and moment recounted in the story.
"I'm interested in ignoring the standard rules and limitations of writing. I've always wanted to write in much the same way an abstract painter attacks a canvas. I want the story to have those eyes. I'm going for that kind of pulse. If I could find a way to allow the words I write in this story to unanchor themselves from the page and float freely in whatever order or pattern they may, I will have accomplished my ultimate goal as a writer." -Jeff Mores
This is the first chapter of "Tides and Moonbeams"
Walking
walking
walking
static
walking
understated dreams
sign language to passing characters
faces in a red glow
candles and painted pockets
in saxophone corners
green with red laughter
shadows I'm not certain of
passing characters in golden hysteria
walking
walking
the lost horizon is vanilla
tangled spheres
and shining lights
blinded
walking
walking
resting
the table has eyes and rivers
and saline heartbeats
walking
crowds gather on high railings
midnight showings through giant ears
sounds moving vertically
under skies
beating
beating
walking
overhangs wearing blankets
amazement is breathing
walking
following safely with orange hands
a meal for passing motorists
there's something around this corner
my stone wall, I'm placing bets on crazy voices
corner to corner
a repeat of seven wobbly days
making sounds of color
smoke is rising
red to orange
orange flashing outside my right eye
blind lips feeling for morning
through amazing love
walking.
A clock above the transit station on Hennepin Avenue reads shortly after midnight. It's another Friday evening or Saturday morning or whatever significance you might want to place on another day in this floating continuum. The night glows with red and orange and anything else that mixes flashes of brilliance with abstract minds and surprises around every corner, known and unknown. Everything smells of air and a breeze from the passing sky and buses and pedestrians, talking and flashing signs and billboards and the Radiohead that's still playing in my world of nighttime wandering. Day and night blend together with changing backdrops and dreams of wild parties and meditative disintegration. Everything is the same, moving in the direction of mystery. Beat and static under red glow in the shadow of Laundromats and restaurants and the collage of mirrors reflecting on bus stations, happy automobiles, foreign films and dancing people on this Uptown street in Minneapolis, MN.
Twenty-three hours later and the Girard alleyway is dark and pulsating with the constant hum of the flickering BBQ sign overhead. Yellow and blue and some shade of red and bright white. I look to the sky and breath deep with a happiness I can't explain in that particular moment, unsure whether time has found its way over the parking garage in front of me. I feel as though I'm floating in some kind of peaceful void. The movies are letting out and I can see the heartbeat continuing one block south.
Phones ringing and stopping, and ringing again. Breaking into a space of silence. My eyes are closed and darkness spills out of the next room. People wobbling down sidewalks, some in heaven and others in hell and still others indifferent to it all. The breeze passes through my arms and across the crowded high-top table through the joining doorway. And there they sit. The people. The people I'm wondering about. The people who own a share of the madness inside my head and pass by in the night with the breeze.
How am I here? How did I get here? How did anything happen? Sitting on a cement stoop outside a BBQ and Blues club in south Minneapolis. I'm staring out into the flickering lights and motion of night unique to a place that never existed, at least in the first 24 years of my life. And now I'm here. I have been for seven years - a complete surprise and mystery that has become me. It was waiting for me, even though it doesn't know it. Theater signs with flashing pictures and abstract turns through rising buildings and peaceful neighborhoods and bending branches. And through it all, there are these few people, shining in such different ways.
Thoughts of insanity have crossed my mind, but even that is insane. And I've decided that thinking is the only madness. There is a very peaceful side to insanity. It flows beautifully through paint and above the programmed minds of the world. And somehow the peaceful side of insanity has found me.
I've always wondered why I see what I see. Dancing grasses roadside as I drive along the highway. Fresh rains have left a symphony of wheat and grass and wild flowers cutting through dirt ruts on roadside shoulders. And the grass is a masterful musician, screaming like Miles Davis' trumpet, Dana Colley's saxophone and the notes flying out from under Brian Eno's fingers - each finding its next breath from the energy of the deafening silence between each sound. And the silence is a sound.
As I lean backward, bracing myself with my elbows in the darkness of the BBQ alley, I stare into the pulse of the adjoining room once again. There sits Blake Johnson, Sean Satter, Tim McKenna, Vinny Derasmi, Nate Uzong and a gathering of others. A little more than an hour until my shift is over and until all of them wander out onto the streets and neighborhoods under the red and orange glow of every evening.
Where they all fall in and out of this abstract journey that I've found myself and quite enjoy meandering through unpredictably, I have no idea. And that, I've decided, is the appeal of it all. But one thing I am certain about is these five individuals matter a great deal in the continued disintegration of structure in the shared sky. Going about their lives as only they can, the multicolored painting in front of me has been drinking and blowing life into the wind. I catch myself wondering why in the world the written word should have to remain anchored to a piece of paper. Footsteps and words and life must become lost and wild once again.
NOTE: From this point forward, the story flashes back to events involving the four main characters of the book, Maya Star Mores, Tammy Mores, Tsuneo Matsuura and Doug Tolf. The story flashes in and out of abstract and traditional form, including several isolated events that significantly influenced the unique and sometimes bizarre eyes through which the author sees the world. These characters and events fill out the body of the story, which eventually flashes forward to present time, placing the reader back into the opening abstract scene on the streets of Minneapolis for a conclusion that is intended to plant a seed of influence that changes the way the reader views everything. The entire story was inspired by the individuals it describes as well as by Radiohead's song, "Everything in it's right place."
