Threads that Bind the Tempest Afterword/Explanation (+ Recording!)
Here we are again. This time with the afterword-thing for Threads that Bind the Tempest. This is probably the most disjointed one of the lot, but it makes sense given what Threads that Bind the Tempest is. I could have put this before or after the book, but I put it after. I don't know. It made sense there.
Of course, I recorded myself reading it.
A Paradoxical Tapestry
‘Threads’ was always a part of the title. Threads that Bind was a running title I had for awhile but I needed to work something related to air or wind into the title. That was to keep with the clear elemental motif I had going on. Fire, water, then, this one, air. Earth would follow, but for then it was all wind and air.
So I threw in ‘the Tempest’. I had a title that rolled in a way with all those ‘t’s, was similar to my envisioning of the title and incorporated air.
I had a title that didn’t make much sense. Threads that bind the tempest. What does that mean, concretely? That didn’t really matter. Beyond all notion of sense, it worked. It worked as a taste of what it contained; it worked as a part of the whole; and it worked in context of when the title was put together.
When the entire book was put together and given form in words, there was much chaos around. It was a shining beacon of mad coherency amidst a veritable mess.
It was a intense mess where everything was at stake yet was in limbo in the same sense. I was on the edge and over at. Everything was tumbling apart and also forming. The future was shattered and pieced together again by me trying to carve out something for myself that I actually wanted.
I did. The pieces came together in the way I had deemed, but still, as the pieces of Threads that Bind the Tempest, all its threads, were being made, I was in a state of much raw possibility.
In this state, my mind had the opportunity to see it all without distraction. The entire breadth of my world was available to me. I had the power to weave a finely woven tapestry that was beyond basic comprehension.
Of course, the tapestry that resulted from that experience was Threads that Bind the Tempest.
Unlike all the other books in this set of four, Threads that Bind the Tempest was new. New as in there was no beating heart already in place. I knew where I needed to go in the big picture, things that needed to be laid down as groundwork for future stories, but not the form that would all take in this third novel. Third book. Three. A holy number. That meaning echoed within me as I tried to do it all justice.
I had something I did not have with the other numbers. Freedom of plot. There was that freedom with Threads and there was something so blindingly new to it. The words on the page were describing something that was happening then and then. It all happened naturally.
It was only apt that at a time when nothing made sense and I was going a little bit crazy that I wrote something truly mad and paradoxical. Its essence something so beyond this reality came about because of it.
The idea of Threads that Bind the Tempest, the unspooling of reality, was a concept that was near maddening to plan out as a story and as a thematic structure. I wanted to create this feeling of intense unease, claustrophobia, and confusion through it. Nothing was making sense—that was where I was. And yet it does. It goes on. But yet—it doesn’t make sense. It’s a paradox that I wrought with a feverish fervor. It all makes sense in that mad way.
Madness begets madness, as like does to like.
Because it was me who wrote it and it was itself, the core found its way into being. Once I knew what it was about, of reality being modified and stitched in a certain way, there was one particular chapter that kept me spinning. I had to do it justice. Writing it was an experience. It was like a stream of mad consciousness put down into words. I knew when I wrote it that I had to do it justice and if I did, it would be one of the best chapters I had ever written.
That chapter was ‘Storm Break’. I could go on and on about it, but it was like a melding between so many scattered bits I had known for some point. It was a necessity that was stumbled upon. Its being mirrored its creation and what came after was foretold by itself.
Threads that Bind the Tempest, when I truly appreciate it, is divine in what it did. Three is the holiest of numbers. Threads that Bind the Tempest is not holy in the traditional sense. It is an exultation of this reality. With Threads that Bind the Tempest, I broke the thought that I would fail. It was not something foretold but it was somehow. I needed it as much as it needed to be written. Reality conspired to make it real.
It came into being because it had to.
It all doesn’t have to make sense. But it does.
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