I am very proud to announce that James LaFond's interview with Kevin Michael Grace is live at Grace & Steel. Click through to listen on SoundCloud or YouTube and check out Kevin Steel's extensive show notes.
Listeners should know that James faced quite a few technical hurdles and persevered in his characteristic way to complete the process. Let us know what you think and who else you'd like to hear James speak with, we will try to make it happen.
Alienation Nation is a Harm City book, published in November 2014, prior to the Freddie Gray riots and purge, painting a "before" picture of Baltimore that is bleak yet instructive. James offers a philosophy to aid his fellow seekers in staying off the radar of the Machine that owns us all.
LL: James, this is the first complete Harm City book I have read, though I think I have read everything you have published from the riots forward. I think this book makes clear the advanced state of the dehumanization of interpersonal behavior in even pre-purge Baltimore. Now, more than two years later, has there been any recovery?
JL: The Purge is still on. As far as I can tell there is only a tiny cadre of BLM advisors in Baltimore, but black men in bands of 3-5 continue to cruise out of West Baltimore, hunting whites on foot by night, resulting in a very barren nightscape, except for the weird and the insane.
This past Saturday night I walked by the closed pizzeria at Eastern Boulevard and Hawthorne Road in Middle River, and between two small cars, saw a small, thin, white woman in her early 20s performing oral sex on two older black teens as they stood with their backs to the cars. I did not want to see this, but before I could avert my eyes they all gave me hostile looks before she went back to it.
The situation in Baltimore City and Baltimore County has continued to deteriorate, with more black on white and black on black killings and mob attacks, fewer police, slower police responses and almost all violent crime being re-characterized as non-violent or less-violent in police and news reports or not being reported at all. Fewer victims report crimes causing a cascade of silence. There is now no relationship between reported aggression and actual aggression in Baltimore City and County, other than in the category of homicide.
LL: Early in the book, you set out part of the philosophy that you develop in this book: "1. No decent man seeks power over his fellows... I believe that every politician is evil, that every law officer is therefore the servant of evil...," you also criticize the War on Drugs. You come dangerously close to libertarianism here. I think this material would do a lot of Libertarians a lot of good. Have you considered sending review copies to the autists at Reason?
JL: The autists! I don’t have any time to do promotional emails let alone mailings. But you may do so if you wish—or any of the six other people who have purchased the book.
Libertarianism is a state of moral delusion that believes in no-violence, that violence, or aggression is evil. However, as a realist, I understand that aggression is a tool which can be used for good or evil. Let me be clear that if I am attacked by a knife wielding man tonight, I would not characterize this as evil, for he is assuming risk and will be disemboweled in any case. However, the politician who gets elected is doing so in order to send police after me to make me comply with his will. He is evil for he takes no physical risk. The cop is evil for he takes no moral risk. The black men who seek to murder me and other whites as an expression of their racial hatred are not evil, but are merely pawns without agency, like the guns of the police. Those back thugs serve the same masters as the blue-uniformed police terrorists, the two pincers of the jaws of the Beast.
LL: James, the title of this book tells us the theme, alienation, and it is a painful one. The bystanders and witnesses here tend towards victim blaming, but you reject that, even as you have devised a behavior pattern for yourself that has kept you out of the victim column. I found this book a bit of a slower read than others of yours, because of the way you portray the victims with such pathos. Does honoring the victims through your writing help you stay sane?
JL: I have re-imagined myself as a target. I am a legitimate target for aggression to any person or persons able to do me in. When I walk out the front door down stairs I become a defensive combatant in the war to eradicate humanity waged by thugs and cops.
As far as maintaining my sanity goes, it is more selfish than that. I write to maintain my sanity or peace of mind. The victims are nothing but my material, rendering them in human terms is my art—I am arranging maimed souls like some heathen herald stacking skulls for the khan’s viewing pleasure.
LL: Throughout your Harm City writing, you offer the sound legal advice that when you are attacked by a group and mount an effective defense, any attacker who escapes injury will turn into an innocent witness against you. How did you come by this knowledge, I don't know of anyone else who teaches this?
JL: It happened to me in first grade. It happened to me as a man. The entire key to the Soul Eating Construct we call Civilization is to marshal the voices of the myriad soulless meat-puppets to drown out the true expression of the human few. Our legal system is designed for exactly this outcome. American legal doctrine is based on the evil precepts of English and Roman law, two entirely slave-based societies. I would expect nothing else.
The fact is, we live within the deviously woven fabric of a vast lie of unsavory depth. Those who are most wedded to the lie are politicians, police and the black criminal slaves of the Mammy State. All of these types will lie as a first reflex in any stressful situation. Therefore, by defending yourself against a group according to the karate douche bag method of KOing the biggest one and letting the rest learn from his fate, you are placing yourself over an injured body, for which only your word [worse than useless, as it is an aspect of the truth and is therefore easily twisted in the hands of The Lie] can serve as evidence that he attacked you. You have also placed yourself between two packs of liars, the thugs and the pigs, who will all lie on reflex just to make their day easy. This shall all occur in the Realm of the Lie [America] and be adjudicated in the Temple of the Lie [Court.]
Good luck, Captain Karate.
LL: You include here a list of the most common categories of aggressors and their effectiveness. The last one you describe is the "car-mobile, cell-phone informed, group of three to four black men in their twenties, usually unarmed." How has this group changed since the Purge?
JL: This group was rare in 2014 and is not the second most common type in the city and the most common type in the suburbs, and is more likely to number 4 aggressors than 3, which is a real break from traditional patterns of aggression.
LL: Your description of the teenagers who stake out the ATM by the church reads like something out of Buffalo Bill's Wild West scouting stories. If Harm City went fully Wild West, as it did briefly during the Purge, how long would it take for a new order to be established?
JL: As soon as knuckleheads like Big Ron and I caved in a few sacred martyr skulls, the National Guard and military contractors [which I encountered at the outset of the Purge] would be sent in to protect black aggressors from white defenders.
The best case scenario is total social collapse due to natural disaster dollar implosion, EMP blast, etc. In which case, the criminals would quickly be driven from the streets by the tens of thousands of able-bodied men who are currently prevented from defending their body, their family, their property and their community from the government-sponsored thugs, who number in their mere high 100s. This happens every time there is a snow storm and the thugs know that the police will not show in time to rescue them from the men, so stay in doors with their mommy.
For instance, those five kids elected not to attack me even after I flashed my cash and walked into a dark street mouth. In a lawless situation I could take a sword or hammer or stick and wipe them out. The hardest part would be acting like I was sick and hurt so that I could get them to corner themselves in the alley behind the Church. This could be solved by recruiting Mescaline and Ron or like minded souls and breaking all their legs.
LL: You tell the story of Daryl and his pizza, and he closes the interaction by inviting you to stop by his house sometime to say hi. This struck me as a small bit of resistance against the alienation. Is he still your neighbor, do you say hi?
JL: They took him out of the halfway house on a stretcher with a sheet over his head about six months later. I had waved hello a few times as I walked by. He had given up on leaving the house. That house coughs up a body twice a year. I have declined to befriend the old fellows who have moved in since, simply wave and say hello.
LL: When you cover predation and the four priorities that attackers follow, you close with the comment that you have never found a children's book describing this. I have thought about suggesting you write a children's book, have you ever considered it?
JL: Jack and Jill went up into Cherry Hill to score some pills… I am writing Why Grownups Suck. I’ll put a self defense section in there as well as methods for killing abusive parents in their sleep.
LL: We get some Ghetto Grocer action in this book, as well as some Snowpocalypse stories, and learn more about your friend Oliver. There is a story that hinges on the old single-date welfare distribution scheme. What impact has the staggered welfare distribution dates had on Harm City?
JL: This has spread crime out evenly across the month, has helped supermarkets staff more effectively, but has also sent criminals in their doors looking to steal in a constant stream as opposed to bottle necking at the end of the month. The reason for spreading the befits across the month is to make future unrest less likely and less intense, which will work until there are NO benefits, then the bag of hoodrats will burst open and Hell will be in seething session.
LL: James, there is much more here, a description of the self regulating mechanisms of black neighborhoods in the middle of the last century, an insightful graduation address, Craig's story (I shed a few tears) and some closing advice on how we might all create a little sanctuary of crackpottery in our lives. The topic of alienation is important to the series on suicides which you have recently started. You cover this concept so well, I think, because you walk the line of purposely alienating yourself for survival, but maintaining that connection with others that serves your writing. Thanks for doing it, James, I know it can't be easy.
A Sickness of the Heart is James LaFond's retelling of Francisco Hernando de Cordoba's expedition to explore the Yucatan Peninsula during the Conquistador Period. See Part 1 of James and Lynn's Q&A.
LL: Last time, you mentioned the 100% casualty rate of the Spaniards on this Entrada, due largely to the arrows used by the Mayans and the poor performance of the Spaniard's mail against them. In addition to these wounds, the Spaniards suffered 30% fatalities and were constantly short of fresh water. You write in response to these circumstances: "Any unit that maintains mobile cohesion after sustaining 100% casualties is either highly trained and seasoned--which this unit was not--or is made up of men of exceptional spirit." What else can you tell us about this spirit? Is this something that can be forged in the battle itself? Is it a product of upbringing, or their Catholic faith? What hope do we have that men will display this spirit in some coming apocalypse?
JL: Modern units are typically rotated out of enemy contact when they hit 30% casualties. Their success I attribute primarily to Cordoba’s heroism. He was not cruel to his men or the enemy and led from the front. He was one of the “good” conquistadors in a crowd where few could be found. This is why I titled the second volume Our Captain, as Diaz, as much as he admired Cortez for his brilliant mind, he loved Cordoba and it shows through in his own rough words.
For this reason, the love of a leader, American—and modernist in general—corporate culture, places the CEO as a sacrificial king at the top of a pyramid and across various industries it is taboo for the management to get their hands dirty leading by example, such as Stevens and Teddy Roosevelt did in spearheading the Panama Canal project. There is no room for leadership in a managed situation in a debt-based society, as every man is a slave.
Lynn, I want you, the readers, to think of their workplace and imagine that every member of the company was somehow stranded on a pirate-infested island during a company cruise. I guarantee you that no member of management of any large company would retain his seat. In fact, the hierarchy would immediately flip.
LL: You mentioned in Part 1, and in the book, that Florida was a disaster zone for the Spanish. The coastal natives were ferocious and the interior is and was an uninhabitable swamp. Have you written anything on this topic that we can look for?
JL: This will be covered in Yellow Negroes and White Indians. Only Soto survived Florida in the Conquistador Age and he had the equivalent of a Marine Expeditionary force, an actual main force battle unit by European standards that could have taken its place in the lineup 100 years later in the 30 Years War and done well. And again, Soto, evil though he was, was a hero, a man who led from the front.
LL: The Governor of Cassavaland includes some notes on the use of cassava as a food staple. This is not a question, I just want to brag that I can make the tasty cheese bread that is common in some parts of South America. The main ingredient is tapioca starch, which comes from cassava. It is only really good fresh, otherwise I would mail you some.
JL: I’ll eat it stale, Lynn, so mail it. Soto’s men ate stale cassava bread in North America.
LL: I'll quote from your review of Buddy Levy's Conquistador in the Appendices: "There has never been a question in my mind that the meeting of Europeans and Native Americans after a 14,000 year separation is about as close as we have gotten on this planet to an alien invasion." James, I have thought a lot about this as well, and I have come to view it as Mother Nature's sickest long form practical joke (I have a cynical view of nature and the environment, like others have towards organized religion). This joke did not merely target Homo Sapiens, I have learned recently that North America is being colonized by an Asian ladybug, very difficult to tell from a North American ladybug, that bites! One of the sweetest, most harmless insects of our childhoods is being out-competed by its more ruthless Asian cousin. This holds across animal species and plants as well, when Asian or European counterparts show up, the clock starts ticking for the American version.
Ok, that wasn't a question either. The Appendices are an extensive part of this book, they comprise James's reviews of sources and relevant references used in A Sickness of the Heart and will surely add a volume or two to everyone's ever expanding reading lists. James, you mention the Spaniards use of dogs to hunt men with, and even the use of other men as human blood hounds. You made good use of these ideas in Reverent Chandler. Have you used these elements in any of your other fiction works?
JL: In the Sunset Saga, there is a Character named Bruco, a Canary Islander from the Isle of Gomera. He is named after a real Gomeran chief. The Gomeran’s were used to defeat the natives on the Island of Palms, Fire Island and Grand Island. The two easy lowland islands fell to the French, Italians and Spanish, but nobody could break the tribesmen on the big islands. You actually had big men with sticks beating the shit out of knights and musketeers for a century.
Living across 20 miles of deep ocean from Fire Island was Exile Island, Gomera, where outcast men were made to swim to with their tongues slit so they could not speak. This is the root of the whistling system they used. This was a real bad idea and put natural selection into play in a karmic way as these guys swam back and forth abducting wives and then towing the women 20 miles through open ocean—this is a channel, not a lagoon.
They swam this channel and came back with a babe:
(Image from travel site orangesmile.com of La Gomera.)
The Spanish were trading with the Gomerans for water rights when they found out that these super, super-warriors wanted to get to their enemies and it was all downhill from there. This is how the Spaniards learned how to hunt men, with Gomeran scouts, modifying a breed of mastiff for this purpose. Although there are no records of Gomerans taking ship for America, every fleet took on water there. I had Bruco get on DaVilla’s Entrada, as some Gomerans, or at least Canary Island veterans, were on the expedition.
What happened was the Spanish took the women while their men were away and when they objected, the Spanish wiped them out. There is hardly any paternal DNA left among aboriginal Gomeran descendents.
Bruco has his own lead role in God’s Picture Maker, one of the few Sunset Saga novels I had professionally edited. You want the Dark Eyed Girl version.
LL: Thanks, James, for indulging me on this Part 2, please include any final thoughts you have. Readers, if you would like us to cover a particular book next, please let us know in the comments!
JL: Lynn, I’m glad you took an interest in this. I was loathe to give up the project, but I had no choice, as the only English translation available omitted large tracts of Diaz’s manuscript, much of it pertaining to military equipment.
Let's take a break from talking about Sickness of the Heart and take a look at Modern Agonistics. This book is a highly readable account of your eponymous collaboration with Chuck Goetz, encompassing every kind of brutal combat you could think of, and most astonishingly, involving other characters who willingly participate in this practice.
My first question has nothing to do with all that. How do you keep records? As you know, I am a big fan of spreadsheets, but I have learned that you are unfamiliar with this marvelous technology. Yet you recount here information from thousands of encounters. How do you do it?
JL: We used small spiral memo pads and recorded our bouts, the first few years we did everything on a 5-point system. You start with five points and call yourself out when you take five points. A blunt hit was 1, a slash or non vital stab 2, and a vital slash or stab 3. So if you slash me once and I stab you twice, you call yourself out, scoring a 0 on defense and a 2 on offense, where I record a 3 on defense and a 5 on offense. We were trying to workout what worked, what happened when two guys just went at it with weapons. After a while, when more people were involved, we only used this for testing and I retired from keeping track of anyone’s record but my own, really as an experiment. I wanted to hit 1,000 stick-fights so that the math would be self-evident and match this up with my injuries, in order to determine how safe it was.
LL: James, the motto of Modern Agonistics is "As real as you want it." It seems like a core value of this endeavor is genuine, full contact, competitive combat. How do you find people to do this with? When you are training a fighter how soon can you tell if he will be willing to go the distance in this way?
JL: Chuck came up with that motto and he was my first recruit. I asked athletes, martial artists and assorted weirdos if they would like to try it. Roughly 90% of the martial artists recoiled in horror, perhaps 70% of the athletes did the same, and about half of the strange eggs, said, “Why not?” I found hockey and lacrosse players most amicable to fighting with weapons.
LL: One aspect I enjoyed, particularly through Evolutions 1.3 - 1.5 and beyond, is that you experienced a form of arms race, almost as though you worked your way through the development of weapons and armor through history, including crafting weapons and armor yourselves, as you and your training partners advanced and gained experience and skill. How much of this was a conscious decision to expand your armory, versus a natural progression?
JL: We wanted to try different weapons. It was gross act of morbid curiosity in many cases. The evolutionary aspect was just that, not planned. At first we added armor, then we took it away as we got better and narrowed the weapon set. If you are only dealing with one type of weapon you can minimize your armor, unless it is a pole axe or some other crushing extension weapon. We eventually settled for what most primitive warriors have settled with, using a round flexible stick to train, spar and compete with, as this generalizes to many other skills. We did not start out looking at it from an escrima point of view, but did end up using an escrima weapon set, stick and knife with limited machete.
LL: How did you come up with the idea to chain the opponent's weapons together? Has this ever been tried by anyone else?
JL: We didn’t chain the weapons together but held the chain between us, which gives the option to quit, by dropping it and keeps the encounter tense for spectators and does not allow resting. This was Hollywood inspired, I am afraid to say. I don’t have any historical basis for this. Gladiators were forced into close contact by a lanista armed with a prodding weapon. The chain was a way to replicate that forced proximity without getting extra people involved. We had enough trouble getting fighters, let alone officials. Besides, if there are officials for a new sport it can come under fire from the state athletic commission. Realizing this, we decided that taking responsibility for your safety and your opponent’s safety—by breaking off when the other guy is in trouble—was realistic practice for defending oneself on the street. This jived with the fact that more and more of our participants saw this as a type of reality based survival practice.
LL: This book has a lot of informative pictures, particularly in a yellow-walled, red-carpeted dungeon of punishment, as well as detailed instructions on stick fighting drills and techniques. Anyone who enjoyed Sean's recent videos (featuring James LaFond in a red t-shirt, and Sean Glass occasionally sans shirt) will get a lot out of Modern Agonistics, the book. How much do you think a fighter can advance through books and video?
JL: The “dungeon of punishment” was Sifu Edgar Livingston’s Tai-Chi school. He was aligned with Saint Jude’s Children’s hospital, the only honest charity we were able to find. We even got ripped off by the Maryland Diabetes Associate, who refused to credit us with the $260 donation we made because they said they only filled out paperwork on $1000 or more and the meathead I sent down with the money believed the thieves in their office.
Book learning combat depends on the person. In order to learn from books you need relevant experience and a partner. You cannot use a book alone unless you are an experienced fighter with some self-coaching ability. Realistically, books that I write as instructionals are reference works for trainers and coaches and for people who are being or have been trained and coached in similar activities.
Videos, on the other hand, are almost identical to the instruction had in the martial arts setting, which is a fair learning environment. The gym setting is better than learning via the ‘monkey see, monkey do” martial arts method. In boxing your goal is to be able to verbally coach a fighter who is looking at the guy that he is fighting while listening to you. In this sense the boxing and stick fighting books are much more useful for the coach than for the fighter. The videos are better for the fighter, especially the novice. Some fighters, with a governor on their ego and an ability to conduct an analysis of their body mechanics, have successfully become formidable combatants through books and videos. One of the ways this self-critique and self-coaching ability can be cultivated is by retooling your skill set in slow motion while you are injured.
LL: James, you cover scoring quite a bit here, including the importance of self scoring and the rationale behind determining when a fighter has been eliminated from competition. How does this fit in with your gaming writing? Do you have any active gaming projects right now?
JL: Once, when I was fighting Don Plot in 2006, with 10-inch polypropylene dagas I had him dialed in with the knife. He was just a stick-fighter and every time he advanced I stabbed him in the throat or face and the four corner judges saw no point. He looks at me, and says, “You better do it again.”
We move around and I stick him again and he chuckled. “I guess you’ll have to rip my head off before they notice.”
What I did was lifted my foot for the next stab and made a theatrical kill and they called the point. This points up the ridiculousness of judges scoring any fight with blades. I am the most experienced knife and machete fighter in the United States [though certainly not the best] and I cannot watch two guys that I have trained go at it and know what happened. In many cases a fighter does not know that he hit another fighter, especially when they are amped up. Calling yourself out is the only way. This was essentially how bare knuckle boxing worked.
I used my role playing game designing projects to bridge the reality fiction gap for others. I did three, with none of them, including the last, being playable by video game paced minds. In order to accurately pursue a combat simulation on paper it needs to be conducted at a pace that is at least 100 times slower than the action being simulated. What I used these role playing designs for Tribes, Fights and Triumph for was transferring my combat experience into a form that made a combat scenario builder for writing fiction. Although I don’t write that way—I don’t plot fights—someone else who does plot action scenes could use it like that.
I have yet to convert my 200 page Tribes sourcebook into fiction. I am in possession of over 20 excellent illustrations for the World of Oth and, as soon as I finish Drink Deep of Night, Seven Moons Deep, The Spiral Case and Yusef of the Dusk, I intend to begin publishing pocket-sized paperback novelettes of about 700-800 words, with Richard and Joseph’s fine art work as covers.
LL: Readers, this book has a ton of highly amusing anecdotes, pictures of men trying to hurt each other while wearing gladiator gear, valuable and detailed instructions and more. We know from Winter of a Fighting Life what this book cost James to write. I think there is nothing out there like Modern Agonistics, and strongly encourage you to pick up a hard copy or Kindle edition.
JL: One final word, Lynn. When I was promoting events for charity, I made sure that I stocked the front row with a few blood-thirsty babes, to whom I gave free tickets to and it worked like charm—with those meatheads fighting like savages for female approval. Thanks, Lynn, for reminding me of the good old days. I hope some young guys out there have some of their own to look forward to.
PS: Don't miss this video of James and Damien (a prominent figure in Modern Agonistics) fighting. James is using a sword and shield, and Damien is using a pole flail. More videos are available at James's main site, under the Modern Agonistics link.
A Sickness of the Heart, by James LaFond, is a retelling of the expedition of Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba to explore the Yucatan Peninsula in the Conquistador Period.
LL: James, what do you call this type of book, which I believe is similar to the approach you are taking with Sold, where you form a dramatic narrative around historical documents? In the case of Sold, I think the genre would be historical fiction, since there are explicitly fictional characters included in your story, is that the case here, with A Sickness of the Heart?
JL: In A Sickness of the Heart, I had no intention of doing any fictional-style narrative, until I reached the end of the Diaz account and felt the yawning sense that came from the fact that even though this was a complete tale of an Entrada, that it had been written as the first of two prologues to the tale of the Cortez Entrada. The Governor of Cassava Land epilogue felt right after I composed it, which convinced me that I should finish the account of the next expedition published in Our Captain, in the same fashion.
LL: I did not know until reading this, that the new world had woven fabric and used cotton for armor in pre-Colombian times. Do you have any experience with cotton armor through Agonistics?
JL: I have fought against men wearing modern versions of this same armor in the form of the WEKAF arnis jacket, which, when worn, makes one look like across between a transformer and a samurai. The quilting feature, along vertical and horizontal lines increases protection against slashes, as most slashes strike long a diagonal plain. The chief value of the cotton armor, which was also quilted, was against stone tipped wooden sword slashes and piercing missiles, which got through Spanish mail to the point where just about every soldier had numerous shallow punctures.
LL: Topical to another offline discussion we have had, which will soon be published I will quote the following from A Sickness of the Heart:
Ironically, the Catholic obsession with divine blood and the record of biblical sacrifice going back to Abraham through Jesus enabled the Spaniards to easily understand the bloody sacrificial rites of the Central American and Mexican priesthoods they were to encounter, even as they recoiled from the practice.
James, what do you know about Far Eastern spiritual practices, such as Confucianism and Shintoism. To my knowledge they focus on ancestor worship and filial piety. Is there a blood sacrifice element to these practices? Does this point to an early European influence in the New World? Or do you view blood sacrifice as an Abrahamic concept imported to Europe through Christianity, and only incidentally arising in the New World?
JL: On Confucianism and Shintoism I can’t speak. As for new world sacrificial cults, they seem to arise from the same well of primal human beliefs in the blood as a river of ancestral force connected to the supernatural realm. Blood is often seen as the male force coursing through the flesh which is often associated with the female, just as male sky gods are associated with lifegiving rain and sunlight and the earth goddesses with life-harboring earth-the flesh of the world. Reay Tannahill in Flesh and Blood, a History of the Cannibal Complex traces human sacrifice around the word into prehistory. In Campbell’s work he distinguishes between The Way of the Animal Powers, which is a form of sacrifice of a sympathetic creature and the Way of the Seeded Earth, which is focused on sacrifice of men and domestic animals, reflected in the Old Testament. The Judaic root of Christianity can be seen as an amalgamation of herding sacrifice, descending from the hunt, and an agrarian servitude [sacrifice by toil] descending from the feminine gathering root. The Epic of Gilgamesh demonstrates this process with Enkidu being the primal echo-brother of Gilgamesh. The sacrificial aspects of Christianity are enhanced far beyond the Judaic root through Egyptian Gnosticism [a Hellenic-Egyptian syncretism] and the sacrifice of a young god and the Hellenic sacrifice of the virgin mother impregnated by a god. There are three ancient boxers who were supposed to be the product of a virgin birth. The sacrifice of Socrates [body-taker] to the lie in standing for the truth is also woven into this. Catholicism developed with multiple sacrificial roots and was easily spread through pagan Europe by its ability to interact in a syncretic way with existing sacrificial practices, which made Catholicism perfect for Amerindian conquest propaganda. In contrast, the more rational Puritans could never convert the mass of any Indian nation to their forgiving faith, whereas the Spanish priests converted the sons of the Aztec priests in mass. The best reflection of this I have seen, other than the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, is the candle dedicated to Saint Mars, who is described as being a pagan god who came over to Christ and now fights for the savior against the enemies of God! He is even depicted in Roman armor! This is how the conquistadors saw themselves. The novels of crusading adventure from this period are so bloody it is almost mind boggling.
LL: You provide a great deal of detail in the drubbings these Spaniards took, as they sailed the coast of the Yucatan, facing large groups of well armed and armored Mayans, while they themselves were weakened by lack of water (due to faulty equipment). Conquering the New World wasn't such a walk in the park after all. I doubt it would be of any consolation to today's competitively aggrieved minority groups that their ancestors fought valiantly and effectively half a millennium ago.
JL: The conquistadors were uniquely suited, in psychological terms, to such a conflict. You will find that most of the key men came from Estremadura, the West Virginia of Spain, or the Portuguese border. They perfected manhunting in the Canary Islands, with lessons learned against the Moors. The cultures they clashed with in America were recently empowered invaders, with the Aztec and Incan empires both a mere century or so old, and the Mayans basically in a post apocalyptic stage. The very interesting aspect is the conquest of Darien, current Panama, where island conquest methods were modified to coastal operations and then entradas. Many of these failed. Soto was involved in a disaster in the Orinoco watershed. All of the Florida expeditions ended in disaster. The native descendants should be proud and the mixed-race descendants doubly proud of their martial heritage.
LL: James, I have more questions about this book. It is a short, but densely presented combination of primary material, informed commentary, dramatic history and has an extensive epilogue of reviews of source books. If you don't mind I'd like to do a Part 2 of this Q&A.
JL: I will wax late medieval Spanish here and act in deference to the maternal while promising to remain brutally paternal.
Organa is a fast paced science fiction novella set in the distant, dystopic and eerily plausible future. In this, only one of LaFond's many future worlds, humans are corporate property from birth, outfitted with permanent mechanical augmentation and equipped with artificial companions that provide comic relief and color commentary. Our protagonist, Tray Sorenson, starts life as a simple but lovable specimen who gains dimension and complexity as he rises in his career as a Security Tech.
LL: James, you have constructed this novella with several distinct phases. You show us how humanity might become fully consumed by globalist-corporate culture, with individuals designed and owned by corporations from birth to fill various roles, and with consumer culture having supplanted or invaded all aspects of life. Some people in your fictional world have considerably more material comfort than others, but they all seem equally disposed to oppression of the spirit, or to seek the means of escaping that oppression. Is this something you have observed in your own life?
JL: Absolutely. The most dismayed and despairing souls I have met have been in the underclass and the over-class—not in the middle. the only thing I have noticed as universal among poor, middle and upper class and among both criminals and patriots is a deep desire to be misled as to the actual context of their plight. This led me to develop the avatars as a way of implanting social narrative.
LL: Forgive my nerdy schoolgirl tendencies, but I learned in a high school English class that the main character of a story is the one that undergoes a change. Tray experiences an episode of uncontrolled violence followed by sexual initiation. How do these experiences contribute to his decisions later in the story, when he is moved to take extreme actions in the service of love and beauty?
JL: Men don’t really feel powerful until they have sex. This is more important than latent physical ability. Tray is a physical titan, designed to toss around mobs of traditionalists like those pesky Amish whining about breeding rights. But he lacks agency. Sex gives a healthy man a taste of that. That is why Tray was not permitted to have consensual sex until age 25—yes, it means the person on preexisting sexual probation may be raped—I am predicting that the ancient premanuptials are going to return at the hands of a corporate class of Clintonian perverts.
Oh, by the way, this future world is the same future world in the Sunset Saga, the place where the two time hunters, Bracken and Sensky were built.
LL: A major theme in this work is sexual exploitation, primarily of the title character, but I think that the erotic scene between Tyra and Tray is also somewhat exploitative. It is easy to laugh off sexual aggression when it is directed by women towards men. Does the fact that a man must usually be willing in some measure cause us to discount the harm that may come when women take advantage of this congenital weakness in men? [I want to read and discuss the Samson story together, if you think that is a good idea, but I want to read Taboo You first.]
JL: Great idea. I’ve wanted to look again at Samson after doing the Gilgamesh book. Okay, the murderous bitch that seduces Tray, is one of four sisters, a pod of purpose built, killer lesbian quadruplets designed to protect, control and kill CEOs and secondarily—and as part of this function—to wrangle security and paramilitary meatheads. This is why the military techs are monogamous homosexual males, to make them immune to their wiles. They basically kill during sex. Most of their sexual conduct is supposed to be with the female CEOs, to facilitate control. Any guy they do twice just has to die—no third time around with these whores. Yes, before you ask these women are a composite of women I have been involved with.
LL: Another major theme is that characters willingly take their lives in their hands, whether it be to protect another, or to seek their own freedom. Do you think that it is possible to separate the sacrifice from the freedom, or are they the same thing?
JL: According to Robert E. Howard, the ultimate freedom of the hero was to commit self-sacrifice, which shows through in about ten of his stories as a yearning for a suicidal escape from the dull reality of servitude. I know from experience that the only time I’ve ever really enjoyed myself was when I thought I was throwing my life away.
But in Organa, since Tray is still a man—with most males having been prevented, neutered or emasculated by psychological means—he comes into contact with something he doesn’t understand, the biological imperative to save a woman. This is something he was designed and indoctrinated against—one of his jobs is killing pregnant women, which I omitted as I actually had plans on selling this story—but, when he becomes the Usher he meets the first organic woman in his life—which is a problem. I might as well give this away because I buried it too deeply in the subtext for most readers to pick up. Security operatives who excel are assigned as the Usher guarding these various celebrity organic persons, primarily because being too good at their work makes them a potential danger. The usher detail is their last assignment before they’re terminated.
LL: Thank you, James, for sharing this haunting story with me. Organa can be purchased as a stand-alone novella in paperback or Kindle, an earlier version of the story is available as a pdf at the JL store, and versions are also included Darklyand Motherworld.
Winter of a Fighting Life is James's "kinetic memoir," a walk, at times a shuffle, down through the memories of his relentlessly tested and injured earthly coil. The book includes several pictures of the rarely seen author. Readers with a medical background may take interest in the photos as well.
LL: James, this book starts out as a humorous medical diary and reminiscence. How do you stay so sanguine about the damage you have suffered and the ongoing pain you deal with?
JL: The pain of a man’s damaged tendons, ligaments and nerves are nothing compared to the pain of being a soft little boy unable to preserve even a shred of autonomy in the face of a bullying world of sadistic teens and adults. I can only imagine how much more it would hurt to be a soft, helpless man and that cures me of second guessing my combative pursuits.
LL: I can't detect any trace of self pity in the telling of these injuries, especially notable in the cases where you weren't asking for it (when you were attacked at work or injured in the course of your work). How does the ability to recount your struggles without a tone of complaint fit into the masculine virtues?
JL: The discipline of accepting the outcome of combat is ancient and is pursued by me in my writing as a means of self-teaching. The writing helps relieve the nagging doubts. Placing myself in perspective as an idiot kid who didn’t see it coming helps round out the experience which becomes part of the evolving self.
LL: I want to explore the nature of different masculine relationships, which are mostly hidden from me, but which I find fascinating and without which a man's life would surely be missing something of great value.
There were many passages that struck me as meaningful, particularly those with your brother, your BB gun battles, Lions and Tigers, and of course your one great fight with him. You emerged from that fight with a lifelong truce and friendship.
You have also written many times about the Banno family, and this passage about a match with Dante illustrates the relationship between youth and respected elder so beautifully:
Dante said, from the not so cozy confines of our bloody clinch, “What are you doin’ Mister Jim? You’re fouling me.”
I growled, “And when I’m done thumbin’ yah I’m tossin’ yer ass down the stairwell!”
“Why Mister Jim?”
“Because yer killin’ me kid!”
Dante then broke the clinch and said to the gathered witnesses, “I quit; I’m done—draw. Anybody else wanna go?”
Has your combat practice brought you deeper into these relationships than might otherwise have been, especially given your Taboo nature?
JL: This past weekend I met two emasculated young men who fairly winced at my presence as if the testosterone wafting off of my heavy brow ridge and back hair might poison them. In this and many work and social situations I come off and feel like a relative badass. But among fighting men, men who were trained and born to fight, I am a fourth rate physical specimen. The only area, as a fighter, in which I rate as formidable is the psychological one. This has been ingrained in my through competing and training with real “studs” like Dante, and has shown me my place, as a fringe character, an adviser, an interloper, a coach, a trainer, a scout, a writer. I’m enough of a man that the truly bad men respect me, but not so caught up in physicality and ego that I can’t bridge the emasculation gap to the drones of the Dark Mother. I am also better at adapting than more formidable men because I’m used to working from a poor leverage position. The fighting arts have taken me from castoff and tormented nerd to alienated whack-job young man to crackpot old man. The prerequisite of being a taboo man is lethality. I have developed that. The prime requisite is alienation which God gifted me with when he set me apart and beneath the rest of my kind.
LL: I want to tie this in to your recent writings on The Vile Root. Without spoiling the book for readers, I want to ask you if some validation or support from your family might have changed the course of your fighting career? Would it be reasonable to wonder if they had taken an interest in your pursuits, that you might have been satisfied sooner, and changed course to seek other activities? Or were you destined to live this Fighting Life?
JL: What my family was drove me to the fighting path. Their support may have resulted in me going to college and becoming some repellent cipher or a scholar. I am lucky that my family swallowed the Great Lie with such gusto that it repelled me and set me on my way. Physically, I never possessed a pro quality body, which meant that I would accomplish less and stay in it longer, which is a not unremarkable pattern. Few coaches excelled at a pro level and few pros excel at coaching. Also, where the accomplished elite fighter shies away from humiliating himself by showcasing his diminished ability, the mediocre fighter often gets better as he ages since his entire game is skill and learning, so he is tempted to hang around, knowing he’s better than he was when he was young.
LL: Thank you, James.
There are three ways you can own "Winter of a Fighting Life," as a PDF directly from the author, in paperback or Kindle edition:
