Short Stories | Narratives | Drawings | Poetry + Prose | Digital Art | Novels
Paintings | Commercial Art | Symbiosis | Kingdom | The 8 Laws of Excess | Complete Works
Xavier T Home | Cycling Stuff | FAQ | JSP Archives | Rubdown Archives | EmailXAVIER T : JSP ARCHIVE ---------------------------------------------- Begin Printed Page ----------------------------------------------
Brian (Der Vampir) Van Hise,
USA
eMail: maddogg1138@go.com
webpage: http://homepages.go.com/~maddogg1138/maddogg1138.html
Jim,
It seems as if many of your fans who are making contributions to this project are confident that they are unable to find the words to express their admiration towards you. Let me, then, be the one who has found the words.
The best way to describe my fascination towards your work is perhaps best described in how I feel when people ask what kind of music I listen to. "I'm a fan of Jim Steinman's work," I say, as if it is just as simple and recognizable as saying: "I like the Beatles." However, not one person has failed to retort with a simple, "Oh, who's he?" That's when I smile and realize that it's this moment when I love being a fan. It's this moment when someone is asking me about you, showing a naive curiosity in learning about a person who has greatly inspired my life. It's this moment when I know that anything I say about you will be accepted and trusted (which would not be possible with anyone who was well-known by name). So, what do I say to them? "He's a songwriter and he's brilliant." I leave them with this. I leave them wanting to ask more, wanting to know what songs you've written and why it is I think you're so brilliant. Sometimes they ask. Sometimes they don't. Either way, I have been given the great pleasure of introducing you to someone whose life is, likely, unfulfilled because they look to music for the "en masse" to give them a beat in their lives; never knowing that a person like you exists--thus, never being able to let out not just their emotions, but their excessive emotions. That's the ultimate satisfaction I feel in being a supporter of your work.
Sure, it goes beyond this. I've learned and played your music on piano, spending sometimes hours a day working fervorously on it--once not letting up even though my fingertips were bleeding.
Sure, it goes beyond this. I've listened to Bat II as loud as possible on the stereo while lying down in the dark--on the brink of sleep, where one starts to have foreign images and secret dreams, and I've gone to bed on such nights awaking in the morning with a feeling of intense and complete gratification.
Sure, it goes much more beyond all this, because that's what it's all about isn't it? Jim Steinman is the Lord of Excess, and I hope that this book for you is proof of that. Afterall, how can a true artist know what he has achieved, outside of his own perception, if his admirerers fail to tell him? What good is it to not know that your music has proved to be the soundtrack of many of our lives? Lord of Excess. The title itself is far from being self-contained. Not Excess of Music. Not Excess of Love. Not Excess of Pain. Not Excess of Joy. Nothing is self-contained, no emotion hasn't been erotically burned, when one speaks of your music. But, it is a Complete Excess, of all and of everything. And for this, I thank you.
I hope you enjoy this gift from your fans and I hope that you continue to write the music to our lives--so that we may have many more hot summer nights and that we may continue to find a channel in which to point our excessive urges. You keep writing the music and we'll keep revelling from within it.
God Speed, Jim Steinman. God Speed.
--Brian M. Van Hise
---------------------------------------------- End Printed Page ----------------------------------------------
Short Stories | Narratives | Drawings | Poetry + Prose | Digital Art | Novels
Paintings | Commercial Art | Symbiosis | Kingdom | The 8 Laws of Excess | Complete Works
Xavier T Home | Cycling Stuff | FAQ | JSP Archives | Rubdown Archives | EmailXAVIER T : JSP ARCHIVE
Copyright 2000
