"The Apocalypse Town Collection” is a limited edition hand-crafted collection of short stories, true facts, music, and images representing the culmination of five years of work. There's much more about the content below. Of the original edition of 30 books, only 5 remain. We are selling the final five copies of "The Apocalypse Town Collection” for $50.00 apiece. If you are interested in purchasing one of these, please send an email to apocalypsetown AT gmail. Please enter “Apocalypse Town Collection” in the subject line of your email.
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In Kosovo I started writing like crazy. I did it compulsively, to fill up the time and to make some sense out of certain things that would never be anything but senseless. I made up sense and imposed it, and put certain lies on top of other lies, and even though songwriting had always been important to me it had never been like this writing. In Kosovo, I felt I needed to write nearly all the time.
In the early years, Charlie Scott helped me a lot regarding what writing actually was. More recently, Lindsay Kayser helped focus the scope of these other stories into this book. These two people were good to have on my side, because they are among the handful of writers I know personally whose writing I admire and whose writing has influenced mine. It was Charlie who made sure I honestly reported it all. It was Lindsay who recognized and called this what it is: not a book, glossary, or travelogue, but the notebooks that fostered the performance.
This collection contains some element from every stage in this process. It contains more than the following: 1) the album of songs around which Apocalypse Town is based; 2) the stories behind those songs, which were the footnotes to Apocalypse Town, and which make up an alternate storyline to that performance; 3) the stories behind those stories, in which I met (or tried to meet) as many of those original composers, songwriters, and performers as possible; 4) stories about certain other musical things that I experienced there; 5) a completely Other Album, including a few alternate versions of those original songs, as well as secret songs I wrote just for this collection, never to be performed elsewhere; 6) stories about my everyday experiences in Kosovo; 7) certain secret diagrams, photographs, and illustrations relevant to the project; and 8) an alternate history of myself and the region. It's the culmination of five years of writing, recording, photographing, drawing, footnoting, reporting, and lying. It is the best way I have to tell you about everything I know about Kosovo.
"The Apocalypse Town Collection" was created by Lindsay Kayser from my source material. She designed the silk screen, embossed the booklet covers, proofed the lines, elicited the aid, traced the route, and―I feel lucky to say―made it her own. It was a lot of work, for both of us. There are copies of this limited edition work of art. They were sometimes hand drawn, sometimes hand notated, and hand numbered too. When they were finished I felt glad, because it was then that I felt that I had really said all I could on this matter: the matter of Kosovo, what it is, whether or not it's real, how we made it, how it made itself, what will happen to all of us, and whether or not I believe any of it.
