Influences For Uncivil X

With any work, whether writing, music, painting or other art forms there are outside cultural influences that inspire or shape it or the person creating it. This is about acknowledging the places, artists and works that inspired me in the period written about during Uncivil X and still do today.

Listed below are some of the artists, works, figures, events and places mentioned in Uncivil X or had an influence on me and it.  The list is very much a mixture of high, pop and underground culture.

This is written in a way that it does not give away any of the plot.

Nirvana

Nirvana

I will begin with the obvious choice.  The rise of Nevermind in the fall of 1991 was so unexpected and overwhelming. It came out of nowhere and changed the rock musical landscape. They were my favorite band at the time. I related to Cobain's lyrics. Lithium and Come As You Are were my two favorite songs. Their music was a life changer for me.

 

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud

French poet in the mid to late 1800s that died at age 37. His life story and writing were a huge influence on me. I begin the book with a selection from After The Flood. His influence resides throughout this book and I also mention his poem The Stolen Heart and the story behind it.

 

Death In Venice

The book and film were a part of my life from the time I was a little boy. I lived a similar scenario with a person known as English Stan in the 1990s.

Also from that film, is the inspiration of Gustav Mahler's Symphony 5, Adagietto. Leonard Bernstein's conducting is mentioned in the book. He conducted Adagietto at the funeral in New York for Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
Mahler was also an inspiration on me for his life in exile.

 

River Phoenix

River in My Own Private Idaho

Aside from being adorably handsome, River Phoenix was the best young actor of Generation X at the time. I had first noticed him in the 1985 film Explorers. His best roles were in Running On Empty and My Own Private Idaho. His death in 1993 was more shocking to me than Cobain's.

Resonant Frequency

Resonant Frequency is an aspect of the novel for those doing a close reading. The main character vibrates at certain points and that behavior is based on resonant frequency.

A Boy's Own Story

This is my copy of the book from the period of Uncivil X.

It is the classic gay, coming of age story. It was the first gay book of any kind that I read. I read it two or three times. Also mentioned in the book is Edmund White's, The Beautiful Room is Empty. I was not brave enough to buy gay books in person and they were not available in Paulding County, so I ordered through the Barnes & Noble catalog.

 

Doing Time On Maple Drive

Doing Time on Maple Drive cast. Yes, that's Jim Carrey.

Growing up I had seen many gay movies on cable television. My all-time favorite would be Parting Glances from 1986. In 1992 there was a made for television movie on Fox that was much more relatable called Doing Time On Maple Drive. It featured a gay male character that was the same age as I was that grew up in a dysfunctional household. The character was deeply into the closet and attempts suicide. His relationship with the character Kyle was heartbreaking. I taped that movie and watched it many times in the early 90s. 

 

Egon Schiele

Schiele self portrait.

Some of his trees.

The first time I ever saw any of his work, I fell in love with it. I explain why in Uncivil X. He was an Austrian painter that died at the age of twenty-eight.
There are other painters mentioned in Uncivil X: Kandinsky (my favorite), Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly.

Tacheles

Tacheles. Courtesy Wikipedia

 

Tacheles was a legendary Berlin squat and artist collective in the former East German side of the city. Berlin was known for its long history of squats in abandoned buildings. I have been fascinated by Berlin, the GDR and the Berlin Wall since I was a small child. After German reunification in 1990, Berlin was a popular place for Americans my age looking for an adventure.

The Goat Farm Atlanta. Photo by me.

The closest similar place that existed in Atlanta in the 90s was the Goat Farm. The Goat Farm appeared in the 1989 video for the Indigo Girls' Closer to Fine and has since appeared in movies. That video is a wonderful time capsule of Atlanta's decay in the late 80s and early 90s that I loved. Some of the other spots are the Bankhead Bridge to nowhere (which was still in use at that time), outside what is now the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Boulevard tunnel and too many other places to mention. How Atlanta is portrayed in modern pop culture and media, is not what it really is or was, but that is a topic for another day.

The Unanswered Question

 
Music from Charles Ives that made me think about life. Leonard Bernstein explains it.

 

Red Hot + Blue

 

 
Red Hot is an organization that was popular in the early 90s for its fundraising, campaigning and fight against AIDS. It was mostly known for putting out compilation albums composed of popular artists such as George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, Seal and many others. Their campaigns featured the art work of gay artist Keith Haring, who died of AIDS; among others.

Chess

The feud between Karpov and Korchnoi. Their story is a fascinating one.

The Red Balloon

 

The Red Balloon is a 1950s French short film about a boy chasing a red balloon through the streets of Paris. This was shown in school when I was growing up and I likely saw it again on public television. This film has stayed with me throughout my life and I am very fond of it. 

Zines

A 90s gay zine.

Zines were not something you could find in Paulding County and so you either found them in Atlanta or ordered them,as most did, through the mail. Zines were small, independent magazines often run by one person made on a photocopier. They were at their peak in cultural relevance in the 1990s. Zine creators often wrote about everything and anything imaginable. I knew a person in Atlanta that had a zine and I sometimes read other zines.

 

Ford Factory 

Photo courtesy Georgia State University.

This is the former factory where I lived in Atlanta with my loft circled in red. Most of Uncivil X is set in Paulding County, but the last few chapters are more Atlanta oriented and some of it is set in the factory.

I actually had two lofts there, but I simplified it to one for Uncivil X. The above photo is from 1988 before the Murder Kroger was built next door and the abandoned factory was converted into living space. When I lived there parts of the building were abandoned and decaying. We would sneak into those areas and up on the roof.

Today, that is the gentrified Ponce City Market next door in the background. When I lived there it was City Hall East and the neighborhood was FAR from gentrified in the 90s. The Masquerade was behind us on North Avenue and it made for a lively scene between that and the general sleaze that made Ponce so interesting.

Model-T factory from another vantage point. Photo by me.

The building in 2013 from the bridge over Ponce which now carries the Beltline. When I lived there that was a sometimes active rail line. Otherwise those tracks were a shortcut to Piedmont Park and people would engage in sex on the tracks between our building and City Hall East.

I had a large rainbow flag for all of Ponce to see. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

I had a great view of the Clermont. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

I wish I still had those metal candle holders. They were so heavy and well made. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

 

Living there, along with the stone house at Rhodes Hill, was the catalyst for my love of architecture and old buildings. I already loved antiques and unfortunately one of the stories that had to be cut from Uncivil X for word count reasons; was about the time my father and I bought an entire house of Art Deco antiques when we redecorated the house at Aviary Hill in the early 90s.

Totally Fucked Up

This film was my introduction to Gregg Araki films and independent, gay underground cinema. Aside from Totally Fucked Up, I very much enjoyed The Living End. I mention the opening scene and other parts of the movie in Uncivil X.

 

Barnsley Gardens

Barnsley Manor. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Though Uncivil X is approximately 98% true, sometimes I had to change minor details to make for a better story or to avoid some other type of issue. Barnsley Gardens is the inspiration for Addison Manor in the book. I wanted to change parts of the history of the house to tell my story in a more effective way. It is true that I visited Barnsley with those particular characters on a drizzly, lonely late fall day in the early 90s. The place was also very different from what it is today. There was no resort and it was only the ruins of the manor house.

Visetown & Vise Landing, Tennessee - Decatur County

Video still from a VHS of mine in the mid 1990s looking toward the Tennessee River.

 

 

A newspaper mention of Visetown.

A newspaper mention, among many, of Visetown from 1939.

Rhodes Hill in Decatur County is very much based on a real place and has appeared in all three of my books. It is a place that barely exists today on any map; known as Visetown in the family and by map makers as Vise Landing. The stone house, mercantile, other buildings, barns and farm are very real and built by my ancestors. The stone house at Visetown was one of my favorite places in the world and has inspired me many times over. 

Though I spent a lot of time in Decatur County in the 90s, very little of it is in Uncivil X as I wrote about it so much in Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake.

The area around Visetown has changed some over the decades with a country club and marina now located where we swam as kids in the Tennessee River.

 

Me at Lost Creek in the mid 80s.

 

The Beech River at Lost Creek 2004. Photo by me.

Another location in Decatur County, Lost Creek, is also a very real place and the stories from there are true. The real name is Lost Creek and my family maintained a presence there well into the 2000s. Along with my grandparents and my grandmother's second husband's properties; my father also owned a house there. My father in the 2000s simultaneously owned a house at Lost Creek, in Parsons and a house with a lot of acreage in neighboring Perry County.

Vise Pharmacy, Decaturville, Tn. Photo by me 2004.

Some random Vise presence in Decatur County. Having such an uncommon name where I grew up in Georgia, it was always strange to see my last name on so many businesses in Decatur County. That never got old.

Aviary Hill

Aviary Hill in 1990 when the house became white. Photo by me.

Of course, there is no way to neglect the house and hill that I grew up, as it is the most common location in all of my books to this point. The house is located in New Hope, Georgia. It was the single most important place in my life and shaped me in countless ways.

Blackout Log would be to the right and behind me in that photo, fifty yards away.

The photo above is a foot bridge my father and I built over the creek behind my house. The land influenced me as much as the house and I loved growing up there. I would not have wanted to have grown up anywhere else.

Photo by me mid 1980s. Photo by me.

Newcomers to Paulding County in the last twenty to thirty years can not grasp how rural it once was. Paulding County was well known for moonshine through the 1960s and 1970s. The moonshine still above was one that was on our property. There were probably a dozen behind my house as you went deeper into the woods towards Elsberry Mountain, though none of them were in use.

Elsberry Mountain

Looking toward Atlanta from the top of Elsberry Mountain in the late 1980s. Photo by me.

Elsberry Mountain. Photo by me late 80s.

Though Elsberry Mountain is only casually mentioned in Uncivil X, it was a common location in my other previous books and I thought I would include it. It is located maybe a mile behind Aviary Hill. It was a regular place I walked or rode my ATV growing up, probably once a week or more. I knew every inch of that mountain on every face. 

 

Legendary Georgia Tech football coach, Bobby Dodd, had a compound at the base of the mountain. I never knew who he was until much later in life. I met him once when I was about twelve years old. I was walking the dirt road with my dog and came across this elderly man, it was a strange sight as I never ran into people out there as it was so isolated. He introduced himself and asked who I was. He told me to be careful.

Reader Questions & Comments Fall 2021

My favorite season. November 2021.

I have been collecting questions and comments from readers over the past few months and have chosen to share some here. These questions are about the characters of Robin, Peter, my parents, Oliver, Rowe and other topics.

Questions may be edited for clarity, content and contain spoilers. If you have a question then you may contact me at chrisvise at gmail.com. I enjoy reader questions and reply to them privately and may also share it on my blog. I attempt to reply in a timely manner, but with the upcoming holidays and home renovations I may be a little slower than normal.

Thank you for reading.

 

Is the "deep water" in Terminal Wake meant to represent fear?

It is written as an abstract idea and I wanted readers to come up with their own solution as to what it meant to them. For me, it symbolized many things. It was the future at the first part of the book and by the end it was both the future and the past. You are correct in thinking that it represented fear, but it was also my own heart and mind and my mother's.

What do you think about "Robin" now and will he be in your next book?

I'll answer the second question first: in some manner he will be present though not as significantly as in Dweller or Terminal.
My feelings about him are complex. There is no black and white emotion that dominates my thoughts about him. I cannot hate him, nor do I love him anymore. I have no regrets about what happened between us and at the same time I am not making excuses for his or my own behavior. If I could change what happened I would only change his moving away. I wish him all the best and though at times I considered contacting him for his perspective I felt that it would be too disruptive to his life and I am not strong enough to see those eyes again. I have seen photos of him that are from the last year and he still has a power over me. Readers can hate or dislike him if they wish, but I hope they do not. He meant the world to me as a kid and I did love him as much as I loved my mother.

How is your relationship with your father and mother?

I tried for many years to maintain a relationship with my father until ultimately I could no longer. I had returned from South Florida, made a special visit to his house in another state and our relationship came to an abrupt and shocking end. We have not spoken since 2016 and there is no desire on my part to speak or see him again. I interviewed him for thirteen years for his memories as he was aware that I would write a book and he encouraged me to do that. We fished together, toured old stomping grounds in Tennessee and another state and saw each other often. When our relationship ended it had nothing to do with my writing a book. I know through family channels that he is aware that I did publish at least one book, I did not ask about his reaction.
My relationship with my mother remained close until her untimely death several years ago.

Are you in contact with or friends with any of the characters from your books?

Yes, I am friends or in contact with a small number of the people behind some of the characters. Unfortunately many of the characters have since died or I lost touch with many of the real people over the decades. I do not foresee any reunions with some people anytime in the future, but I wish them well. 

What became of "Oliver" and did you ever see him again?

I will answer that question in a later book.

(I have been asked numerous times a variation of the following question.) Why didn't you tell someone what happened to you as a child?

I had no one to tell. I trusted no one enough to be able to do that. It was embarrassing and I blamed myself then for all that went wrong. I could not tell my mother as I never wanted to cause her a problem and I do not believe she would have been able to cope with it. I never told her before she died. I did tell an aunt after my mother died and she was the first person I ever told. That aunt has read the book, but no longer speaks with me. The truth is uncomfortable for some people.

How's your chess? Still losing?
Hahaha. I played chess into the 1990s and then suddenly stopped. I will explain why in a later novel. I did not begin playing again until a couple of years ago and I still am an average player. I wish I had the time to play more than I do.

Are locations from the books like your house on Aviary Hill, the tree, Elsberry Mountain, New Hope still the same?

My house on Aviary Hill is still standing and the hill remains largely the same, though the barn was razed in the early 2000s. My family no longer owns the property and I have not been back there in near twenty years. I assume you mean the tree at the end of Dweller On The Boundary? I have not personally seen the tree since some time in the 1990s, but judging from satellite imagery it still grows. Elsberry Mountain has not washed away, but has new owners since the time of the books. It is private property and I do not suggest visiting. Development has creeped very close to the mountain, but not up its slopes yet. I wish Paulding County would set it aside as a public park, but I suspect there is little chance of that. New Hope is nothing like it was when I was a kid. The roads have been reconfigured, shopping centers erected, houses built and Atlanta did swallow it. My elementary school building is there but it is no longer a county school.

Some of Visetown, Tennessee a.k.a "Rhodes Hill" circa late 1980s. Photo by me.

Decatur County, Tennessee is largely unchanged except in the area that I called Rhodes Hill which in reality was known as Visetown and Vise Landing.

How much of your stories are true?

My stock answer is that 90% of both books are true as events happened, 8% is based on the truth but altered in some fashion and 2% is fiction.

The boys from Blackout Log, did they cause you further problems?

 
Yes, they did. "Rowe" and I had more interaction than what I have written about in the two books. One of the other boys, "Cyril", also caused me further trouble, but not as much as Rowe. I will not elaborate further about them, but I do know where two of three are today and I still consider them dangerous.

In Dweller On The Boundary when you were separated from "Peter" you gave him a letter. You never said what you wrote to him. Why and what did you write?

Great question and good catch. Thank you for noticing that I never disclosed what I wrote in my letter to Peter. While I thought some might find that to be an oversight, it was intentional. I was and am still not ready to disclose what is in that letter. Maybe in a future book I will.
Side note: I have had fewer questions about the character of Peter than most other characters which has surprised me. He was one of my favorite characters in Dweller and one of my favorite friends growing up because he risked his own reputation to be friends with me. He was a very sweet and genuine person with more to him than most people knew. I was sent a group photo of him by a reader that did not know Peter was in the photo. It was great to see him in a photo that I had not seen before. It brought a smile to my face, especially when it reminded me of something that he liked to wear. I had to go listen to Purple Rain a couple of times.

One reader and former classmate expressed frustration about feeling like they never knew me growing up. They thought I had led a charmed existence.

I understand that, but at the same time you need to remember how cruel children and teenagers can be. Do not forget what it was like to be a kid and how anything that made you different could easily make you an outcast. I trusted a small circle of people and lived a highly compartmentalized childhood since I was seven years old. Not one person knew enough or everything to connect the dots and frankly most of my friends or family did not care enough to look at what went on underneath their noses. If you think I enjoyed hiding or lying then you fail to see why I hated myself so much then, saw no future and wanted to die. What frame of reference you had for me in the past was probably accurate, but it only was what I trusted enough to show you. My general personality did not change between people or groups, but a few knew me at my best. No one except myself knew me at my worst. If you felt cheated then there is nothing I can do about that except apologize, I had to survive the best I could at the time. Life and society in 1991 for better or worse was nothing close to life today. The nice car and clothes and my joking around with you in high school was only the surface. You should have scratched deeper.

Another reader was upset with me that I said that I did not care at the end of Terminal Wake what any of my classmates thought of me by graduation.

By graduation I very much felt that way. I was an abandoned island in the middle of the sea. Some of those classmates I had known since kindergarten and I was hurt, angry and disappointed in many of them by 1991. There was a huge betrayal and I had nothing and no one. I do not necessarily feel the same today, but I did then. I was tired of life, tired of school and tired of myself. It should have been an incredible year and day, but it was anything but that. Some of that was my fault and much of it was not. I hold no ill feelings towards my friends from childhood and I am glad that many of them lead rewarding lives today.

I'm a big Police fan and I loved all the 80s music references. What is your favorite Police song if you have one?
Thank you. I am fond of Wrapped Around Your Finger for obvious reasons (just listen to the lyrics), but King Of Pain is me to my core. I will always be the king of pain with the world turning circles around my brain. There is a great live version you may not be familiar with that was recorded here in Atlanta at the Omni in the fall of 1983, of all years. Maybe Robin was in the audience.

Thank you for reading. My next novel will be out in 2022.

Up At The River

The Tennessee River near Perryville, Tennessee. Photo by me January 2003.

In the mid 80s I was staying with my grandparents part of a summer up in middle Tennessee at the river. I say at the river because they had a cabin on the Beech River and not far off from the much bigger Tennessee River. It was common in our family to say, "up at the river," for anything that took place or involved where my father was born in Decatur County, Tennessee.

 My family history goes well back into the 1800s in Decatur and Perry County, Tennessee. They were and some still are big land owners, farmers and involved in the transportation of goods along the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers. My grandfather was the exception, after leaving the Navy he took a job with Lockheed in Marietta, Georgia and he and his family left Tennessee. My father though born also in Decatur County was raised in Georgia and that's how I would become a Georgia native. Upon my grandfather's retirement in the 1980s he and my grandmother moved back home to Decatur County, Tennessee. Incidentally my father would also for work Lockheed his entire career, retire and then move back home to the river just like his father.

My grandmother once back home became a social butterfly. She wasn't one to want to stay home and tried to be involved in as many community activities as possible. She loved to go to these Saturday night country dances mostly so she could gossip with the locals and she would drag my grandfather along not that he much cared for it. My grandmother was the biggest gossip in the county and she loved to hear herself endlessly talk. The dances would take place in nearby Lexington.

Being up at the river for the summer with my brother and a few cousins probably cut into her social time, though she did still manage her weekly trips to the beauty parlor, but one time she took all of us to the dance. There was a singer performing a concert and for the life of me I couldn't remember who it was for thirty years, I could only remember he had a beard and kind of looked like my father. 

After his show he was signing autographs if you bought his glossy photo that he already had printed up. You had the choice of his picture in color or black and white, well I was cheap so I bought a black and white one. I have no idea why I bought one because he wasn't famous, obviously because if he had been he wouldn't have been performing at these dances in small town Tennessee. It's not like this place was on the circuit and it was a couple hours west of Nashville. You couldn't be much further into the middle of nowhere than Decatur County.

Then out of nowhere it hit me that it was Tom Grant (my elephant like memory finally kicked in).

Apparently he had two top 40 country hits and went on to work for the legendary Ralph Emery. He had a nice voice in that late 70s & 80s country kind of way. Sail On, better known by the Commodores, was one of his hits.