Some News 2014

Oh. I suck at communicating with the world. 

If you don't know my name is Frank Hinton. 

Here are some things that have happened:

1. Two of my favourite stories were translated into Spanish and published in Interzona's ALT LIT compilation.

Read the English stories

Listen to Marcus Speh read one of the stories (in English)

2. An excerpt from my 2nd novel "Eternal Freedom from Social and Natural Programming" was published in CCM's 40 Likely to Die Before 40 Alt Lit anthology.

Buy the book

3. Dazed Digital and Dennis Cooper will be publishing a short story from my novel later this month.

Updated: Short Stories & My Writing

I have added some stories I wrote this year:

Illuminati Girl Gang-  Aww shit this is all sold out. But do you know why? Because it was dope as fuck. Melissa Broder makes my mind melt.

Alt Lit Cityscapes - Great project hoping to trace something of my personal city

Parlor- Woven poetry

I am a God: Anxiety, Writing and Spiritual Enlightenment

Language is really not any kind of means with which to treat a mental disorder. The mind, thoughts, the way we interact with life and nature are all so intangible. Whenever you try to express some truth or experience, no matter how eloquent the language, something will always be missing.

When I sit at breakfast, staring out over my eggs and my coffee and my kitchen, there are a thousand small things going on, some I am conscious of, some I am not, some I am sub-textually conscious of but ignoring. To try and explain the simple things drifting through my mind in a single moment is exhausting: I am worried about the fat content of the eggs, the way the black coffee will stain my teeth, the garbage being full, the overcast weather. I am thinking about my current physical state, and my mental state, calculating and re-calculating my sleep habits/hours, assessing potential caloric intake, thinking about my relationship status, mourning the ant I just killed as its legs scramble meaninglessly about its now crippled thorax. I could keep going with this paragraph, but the symbols I am using to detail the experience are really a distracting from the actual experience itself.


What should be clear from my example is that I suffer from social anxiety disorder as well as panic attacks. I have suffered with these problems since I was in Grade 6, and despite once believing they would leave me, they haven't and won't.

Going back to my original sentence "Language is really not any kind of means to treat a mental disorder",  I also am going to have to (despite feeling egotistical and lame for some reason) call myself a writer. And in truth, I try to use language in part to entertain and be read, but probably more truthfully I write as a form therapy.

I hate the word therapy. In truth, I'm having mild anxiety from just typing this blog.

I just deleted like, 600 words from above.

Back to the point, sometimes I curse creation for making me suffer from both anxiety and a love of language because it is just that chattiness, the wordiness of my mind, the endless barrage of thought-speak that makes me boil over in fits of panic.

My mind is my enemy and words are its weapon.

I joined online support groups and went to therapists and read a bunch of shitty books and talked to my friends and family and all that shit, but really nothing every seemed to glean hope.

Except for one thing:

Some 10-12 years ago I happened to befriend a doctor who instead of giving me a lollipop after a checkup handed me a small book on Zen Buddhism.

"This shuts up the mind," he said when he handed me the book. I was 18.

It was a  bit presumptuous seeing as I live in the heart of Christian-Canada, but I took the bait because he said the magic words: I could get rid of the words in my head. 

(I should insert a gong .mp3 here)

Through this doctor, I began at first a small fan of Eastern Philosophy into becoming a full blown addict of any ideas related to Alan Watts, Osho , D.T Suzuki, Lao Tsu, the Vedas, Buddhist sutras, Tantra, Yoga, Taoism, Zen, Esoteric Christianity, Sufism, Hinduism, Jainism, you name it.

Everything seemed philosophically connected and pointing to one great idea: That there was a state of being one could attain, wherein the human personality became non-existent, and one lived wholly present and accepting of the moment, they lived the moment, as most things without chattering minds in nature lived, at peace.

Maybe this seems like bullshit, but having meditated somewhat regularly for the past ten years, I can say (albeit with personality and ego) that there have been times when, through the use of mantras or kundalini or breathing or smoking or sound, I have been able to achieve a state of near-thoughtlessness. In this state I have felt everything slow down to the point that moments exist as if all important. Everything feels and seems beautiful, even the bad stuff. The world is like, glossy. In these moments I feel cured, I feel awake.

Eventually though, life pervades back in. Bills come back, family comes back, responsibilities come back and then you're shaken from your state of meditative peace, but once you have a taste of it, all you think about is going back there.

So, in a kind of perversion of this idea, instead of working on attaining this state of peace, I am working on a novel, which will be released by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2014 that attempts to recreate the struggle I have had balancing anxiety, word-love, and the need for enlightenment. I am finding that as I write, sometimes I am opening myself up in such a way that I feel anxiety and panic more readily than normal. Just this morning for example I sat outside of a Tim Horton's for 8 minutes listening to top 40 music in my car, paralyzed about the fact that I might see someone I know in the coffee shop, that my hair was messy, that I looked overweight, that I looked tired, that I might have to have a conversation, that I actually am tired, that I might be highly tempted to order a chemical cocktail "Iced-Cap".. that anything. This wouldn't have happened had I not spent the entire morning writing about a time in my past when I was paralyzed about going into a different coffee shop. I basically recreated a past-anxiety fit via writing into real life.

Contrariwise though, I have also felt moments of meditative bliss while writing this novel. It's given me the incentive to practice new meditation and yoga techniques, part as research but also in part to help me write better about the experience. Just last week you could have spotted my silhouette posed in vipassana against a pink sunset. It was fucking poetic.

The thing is, I don't know where I will end up as I close in on the final bits of this manuscript. I may end up more neurotic and anxious than ever, or I could turn some kind of corner and find a new depth of spirituality. Every day seems less stable than the rest, an hour of anxiety here, a moment of peace there...Also, the book could suck. I mean, it could be shit and not make sense to anyone. God knows it doesn't really make sense to me at the moment.

Eeeee.

The real problem I'm going to have now though is whether I decide to push that publish button on this post or just delete the whole thing.

my 2nd novel is coming out in 2014

Title: rap game eternal freedom from social and natural programming

My novel is about meditation.

It is about the struggle to find enlightenment.

My novel is about the fact that North American lifestyle is inconsistent with the fundamentals of eastern spirituality

My novel is about how culture/society fucks with the ability to attain peace

My novel is about two people who have holes in them they are trying to fill. 

My novel is about the wall you come up against, over and over when trying to meditate. 

My novel is about someone dying and the feeling of emptiness you feel when they are gone. 

My novel is about living a privileged lifestyle.

My novel is about what sex is to men and women these days. 

My novel is about the internal monologue that regularly works to disrupt the process of watching/relaxing/letting go during meditation. 

 My novel is about being raised on SNES games and 90s movies. 

My first novel was about two people wriggling through life using drugs as a substance of fulfilment. My second novel is about two people wriggling through life using meditation and spirituality as a form of fulfilment. 

My novel is set in the present day and reference top 40 songs. 

My novel is about the importance of siblings, the strange relationship one has with a sister. It is about being parentless. 

My novel is about aloneness which is positive and loneliness which is negative. 

My novel is about the fact that a person living a life using tools like facebook, google, driving cars, working, making money, partying, that this lifestyle is wholly inconsistent with the kind of lifestyle one needs to live in order to achieve a state of satori; which is a state of enlightenment I fully believe to exist as I have in certain times of meditativeness touched upon it, rubbed it’s membrane, felt and experienced something of it, however ephemerally, and want to fully attain but feel I cannot attain it in this present world. 

****

Excerpt:

The storm then, a drink sharp, Frank sips then gulps, watching the Katies, watching his friends, eyes rolling socket, he thinks of what best to do, to move outward or hold back in his present state. His whiskey gets seemingly warmer, and he takes more into himself, commixing his internals with that distilled warmth, his blood takes it, people laugh and he laughs. Everyone seems larger than themselves, as if this is Mario 3, World 4: the giant world. Frank imagines himself staring up at bobble headed friends, he’s sweating, shrinking, someone mentions the thunderstorms and Frank hears them, someone hands him a plastic glass explaining it’s a ‘foreign drink’ and Frank takes it in, his belly filling, bladder itching, every surface and line alters itself into a blur, like a shakily taken photo, like a Rutenberg all violent with color and shapelessness and this then is the dark of his life, so far from that beach and those stars, he smiles and turns to someone, tells them he loves them. He sees rain streaked across his windows, thunder shaking small objects. He stares at his sister’s room, its door closed firmly. Everyone has disappeared soon, the geometry is four dimensional: this space, this body, his own dark mind, therein Frank loses himself, his centeredness and in misery he grabs one of the Katie’s asses, she lets him, takes her red hair into his mouth, falls away with her while people cheer, or he thinks they cheer. He cannot hold his liquor, he is a cheap drunk, he loses himself completely but knowingly, like a thunderstorm, like a survivor. 

***

Walking drunkenly throughout the crowded, touristy streets of downtown Munich, Frank imagined herself as a single cell travelling without logic through a bodily system, searching its function. The fairytale, baroque structures rising at the edges of her vision, the cobbled streets, the festivities of Bavaria wove together, like the anatomy of some deep sea creature, odd in form to human eyes but beautiful and Frank felt a part of this pattern, not that she was happy here or even belonged, but that she was supposed to be here, within it. People smiled at her, everything felt warm and distantly, as if watching both herself and her mind from a meditative place beyond physical presence, she noted that close-by was her true state, moksha or bodhi or satori or whatever, enlightenment, a state that was there, would always be there and all she needed to do was liberate herself from the exclusive identification of herself as her personality, to rise up like city steam from the social/physical structures of man and simply realize, attain that condition of being in which one was identical with the universe, was the universe. Like a dot within the city, she felt something greater than herself subsuming, as when the ocean accepts a raindrop, pressing through the edges of her physical being. Yearningly she walked forward into the darkening night, through the bustling Marienplatz, toward a space she felt may offer a new spiritual vibe, some not so far off grove within which to transcend, maybe. 

Best Christmas Ever: I finally got an email from peterbd

so just who is frank hinton? what a stupid question. frank hinton is jennifer lopez. frank hinton is jennifer lopez and we've all been duped. jennifer lopez aka frank hinton released her first album in 1999. this album was entitled 'on the 6.' frank hinton aka jlo tried to convince the general public that this title dealt with her taking the 6th train from the bronx to manhattan on her quests to become a flygirl. this is not the truth. 'on the 6' really refers to 666 as in the number of the beast as in the number that just about everyone online is associated with as in the number steve roggenbuck recites whenever a camera is near him (frank gets illuminati residuals anytime steve says 666 in his inspirational videos). anyways, frank 'jlo' hinton entitled her album 'on the 6' so she could gain entry into the the illuminati which everyone knows is led by shawn 'jay z' carter. 'on the 6' was a multi platinum selling album (because of frank's association with the illuminati) which opened the doors to her having a long and successful career. frank hinton, aka jennifer lynn lopez, is now heading her illuminati website (alt lit gossip), had a successful illuminati endorsed #1 single ('on the floor' produced by redone who is the producer of illuminati 'it' girl, lady gaga) and uses her illuminati connections (jay z, tao lin, beyonce, paul mccartney) to convince internet users to purchase her chapbooks and spread her iluminati messages on facebook and twitter. smdh if you haven't noticed any of this.

  
conversation 

"are you frank hinton?"
"no" says frank hinton 
"i think you're frank hinton"
"i am not frank hinton" says frank hinton
"are you sure?"
"yes" says frank hinton 
"but you look just like frank hinton"
"i am not frank hinton" says frank hinton 
"but you talk just like frank hinton" 
"i am not frank hinton" says frank hinton 
"but you smell just like frank hinton and walk just like frank hinton and have the same fucking face as frank hinton"
"i am not frank hinton" says frank hinton 
"why don't you just reveal yourself? i mean, what's the point of being an anonymous writer? don't you want to reap the benefits of everything you've done? don't you want your face plastered across billboards? don't you want to fuck every attractive person who gives you likes on facebook?
"nah, not really" says frank hinton 
"ugh, i hate this"
"where were you born?"
"a place" says frank hinton
"what do you do for a living?"
"i work" says frank hinton 
"where do you work"
"a place" says frank hinton 
"i can't take this shit anymore"
"then gtfoh" says frank hinton 
"no. i refuse to gtfoh. how old are you?" 
"an age" says frank hinton 
"are you dating anyone" 
"i have the ability to do that" says frank hinton 
"what is your favorite type of music"
"the one that is my favorite" says frank hinton 
"i hate this"
"i am indifferent" says frank hinton 
"what kind of food do you like to eat the most" 
"so many" says frank hinton 
"do you have a degree"
"a college degree or twerk team degree?" says frank hinton
"college degree"
"perhaps" says frank hinton
"cool. now we're getting somewhere. if you went to college, where did you attend school"
"a place" says frank hinton 
"i sincerely hate you"
"don't sweat the small stuff" says frank hinton


backstory 

frank hinton died in the 20s. he died a very rich man. he was the head of his own brewery that he opened in 1886 and was a very successful business man. he had a wife named mary, a daughter name sue, and a son named jim. when prohibition became a 'thing', this did not stop frank hinton's successful business. he moved his brewery from omaha, nebraska to salvador, brazil. this brought him even more fortune and adulation from millions of brazilians due to frank helping their economy. frank hinton contracted polio in 1923. his wife was upset. his daughter was sad. his son was beside himself. frank hinton died on july 9, 1924. his funeral in brazil drew thousands. florianopolis, brazil is named after one of frank's famous brews. he was really loved by brazil. one day, while frank's wife was cleaning out his walk in closet, she found hundreds upon hundreds of stuff that was written by him. frank's wife couldn't believe it. the only thing frank seemed interested in when he was alive was beer and beating his wife at water polo. mary read frank's stories for hours until she read all of them. frank described how he didn't want his writings to go unnoticed and how he wanted to inspire future generations of anonymous writers since he was really into writers being anonymous. he told his wife, in written form, that she would have to get his work out there in the name of anonymity. he basically told her she'd have to be frank hinton until she died. 'damn, i guess i'm frank hinton now' mary said. so that's how it happened. frank hinton was the head of a brewery who was secretly a writer of indie literature who died of polio and passed the anonymity baton to his wife who passed it on to sue who also died of polio so she passed it on to jim who passed it on to his child who passed it on to their child who is the current version of frank hinton that now resides in halifax, nova scotia. hope this was a helpful explanation


20 rules from the official league of frank hinton rule book

1. please refrain from revealing your identity (ever)
2. if you are appointed to be frank hinton for a certain period of time, do not abuse this power by acting like a fucking imbecile 
3. always carry yourself with grace and elegance when interacting with internet individuals 
4. you may sleep with internet individuals, but if you reveal yourself as frank hinton then you will immediately be stripped of your frank hinton title and will never be asked to be frank hinton for the rest of your life 
5. always write things that are good
6. never write things that are bad 
7. do not be an asshole 
8. do not take a day off as being frank hinton no matter how sick you are 
9. do not be a fucking asshole 
10. you can tell at least one person you are frank hinton, but must make them swear to never tell a soul 
11. look at yourself in the mirror and say 'i am frank hinton and i am a fucking beautiful' at least twice daily 
12. be humble 
13. volunteer at your local soup kitchen at least three times a week 
14. if you followed through with #10 then you have been stripped of your frank hinton duties for all of eternity. see rule #1 if you have any questions as to why this has happened to you 
15. do not listen to maroon 5 or eat fast food 
16. when someone inevitably asks you if you are frank hinton, smile and say 'i am not frank hinton.' if this person does not take your word for it then it is ok to punch them in their face 
17. do not sleep 
18. consider yourself blessed that you hold this title and carry this power 
19. if you listen to a maroon 5 song by mistake or unknowingly eat a mcdonalds quarter pounder with cheese, you must immediately give yourself 100 back lashings while chanting 'i am sorry for tarnishing frank hinton's brand by listening to shitty music and eating foods that affect my cholesterol in detrimental ways.' here is a whip that is perfect for self mutilation. it can be purchased online http://www.aussiewhipmaker.com/cow_slap.htm 
20. go out there and get inspired. you are frank hinton and need inspiration for fuel 

possibility 

it is likely that frank hinton is your relative. this is very likely 

understanding

do you remember when you were asked if you were frank hinton? well i do. it was on august 15, 2011. somebody was like 'hey, are you frank hinton?' and i was like 'no.' one day you will be asked if you are frank hinton and you will have to say no too. or maybe you will have to say yes because you are frank hinton. this is all very confusing yet very simple at the same time. you will be on gchat one day and someone will ask you if you are frank hinton. please do not panic. this has happened to a good number of us. just take a deep breath and type 'no' when asked. don't be ashamed for typing 'no.' we've all had to type 'no' in response to someone asking us if we are frank hinton. we have all felt worried that we might be frank hinton and that someone was on the verge of figuring out our identity. does this make any sense? frank hinton is frank hinton and you are you. it's kinda like if you see a police car behind you and you start getting nervous and think the policeman will arrest you even though you've done nothing wrong. when one asks you if you're frank hinton, you'll feel the urge to say yes out of nervousness. so when things like this occur just play it cool. just keep your composure 


dude makes a frank hinton confession
mason johnson:
Yes. I am Frank Hinton.
How'd you find out?


frank hinton

amy winehouse's debut album is entitled 'frank.' is this title referring to frank hinton? maybe. maybe not. many think frank hinton is a man. brad listi thinks frank hinton is male. this may or may not be true. i mean, who gives a fuck? frank hinton is a man. frank hinton is a woman. frank hinton is a hermaphrodite. frank hinton is a ghost. frank hinton is an alien. frank hinton is a cartoon character. frank hinton is in prison so he/she cannot reveal their identity. frank hinton is you. frank hinton is me. frank hinton is all of us. frank hinton, frank hinton, frank hinton. what will 2013 bring for this entity known as frank hinton? maybe frank hinton will write another book. maybe frank hinton will create a new interactive website. maybe frank hinton will stop doing this all together. that would make some people angry because they invest alot into frank hinton.  they appreciate frank hinton's point of view. they enjoy frank hinton's presence online. they like reading the stuff that frank hinton writes. people really seem to relate to what frank hinton says. look at any year end list, and 'action, figure' will be on it. i mean, frank hinton might be an anon but frank hinton is very accessible. you wouldn't be able to talk to sylvia plath on ghcat. you wouldn't be able to send edgar allan poe a direct message on twitter. johnathan franzen will never hold a spreecast and you will never be able to ask johnathan franzen questions on spreecast. frank hinton is what is going on now. frank hinton is this thing. this thing is open for interpretation but frank hinton is a big part of this thing. you can't talk about this thing without talking about frank hinton. anonymous frank hinton. frank hinton who runs altlitgossip. frank hinton who pisses people off because of some of the stuff that's on altlitgossip. frank hinton who cares alot about this thing. frank hinton who doesn't mean to offend anyone but will continue to speak his/her/their mind regardless because that's what frank hinton does. frank hinton has a fucking purpose and it will be served. we are here and frank is here and this is the way things are. if this thing gets bigger, you won't be able to discuss it without discussing frank hinton. that's pretty amazing if you think about it. but most importantly, was amy winehouse's first album about frank hinton? seems likely

CITYSCAPES PROJECT

I have a new piece in Jacob Steinberg's 'ALT LIT CITYSCAPES' ebook.

Here's a review of my story from THIS IS FOR YOU

"Frank Hinton's writing is in excellent shape here, hands down the best I've read from her and in a different style from her pieces I've seen in the past. This short story is down right terrifying: she depicts a descent into hell, a movement from the sterile comfort of the city to a hedonistic confused rural scene from which the narrator does not emerge unscathed. No punches are pulled and she avoids over-dramatizing the events that occur. "

There is an aloneness to the way I live, there are great people I would love to sit or smoke or cuddle with that I will never meet.

Jacob Steinberg is just this incredibly kind and poignant spirit, I saw him on a Spencer Madsen livestream one day modelling new clothes and reading poetry in Spanish and I felt very enamoured with his energy/spirit whatever.

Anyways, he created this beautiful Cityscapes project aiming to capture something of the efficacy between writer and city.

In his words...

It is well known that people ascribe different cities with their own identities; our urban landscapes most certainly have their own unique way in which they are represented in culture, film, and writing. But what interested me for this project was how those identities are so often transplanted onto their inhabitants. And while dispute continues over terminology to define contemporary literature, there is an undeniable shared quality in how we write, publish, and take in literature in the internet era. 

Anyways, check it out.  There is a lot of beautiful stuff in there.

im just going to use this as a notepad from now on