Gamelan (Music for a Shadow Play‪)‬

This is a story of a man who grew up in the fifties and went to Viet Nam. He came back to work for the CIA in South America during the 1970s and eventually became a contractor for Booze Allen. At some point he undergoes a change of conscious, steals his desk files, and turns them into stories that he sells while playing music on the street. The book predates the Oliver Stone film that touches on similar themes and predicts a Snowden type character months before he became public.
This book blends boundaries between prose and poetry; between short story and novel; and between fiction and historic reference. It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious where time is distorted in a circular maze. A disjointed language reflects the post traumatic disorder of its characters and bids welcome to their incoherent chaotic milieu. It creates worlds within worlds which at times touch the depths of the human psyche and invite the reader to engage in meaning.
Thanks to Al Filreis and his ModPo MOOC for providing a conceptual vocabulary that allowed me to review the project and decide to publish it. The book´s form is basically a collage. In some respect it is a continuation of Tristan Tzara´s and William Burroughs’ cut up brought into the 21st Century. The idea of writing through another writer is apparent with chapter headings giving an indication of some of the works used.
We have reached beyond post modernism and have entered the era of the hyperlinked mind. The process of fragmentation has begun to give way to an appearance of a more recognizable conventional narrative and opens a dialog that addresses fundamental issues of being a human confronting the horrors of its own shadow.