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Feb
7
2010
AsherNet By Asher | No comments yet

Constructs

The Art of Building

A construct is a constructed space. For example, any building is a construct.

Buildings are built on certain dimensions, defined by a certain architecture, and consist of certain rules, which are the basic mathematics of their existence.

Some constructs are merely physical places. Others are any combination of physical, temporal, virtual, intellectual, emotional, volitional, social, personal, consensual, mythic, literary, and artistic places.

The Tavern, for instance, is obviously a virtual space, since it exists here on the web. It is also a social space, since it exists in certain social interactions, some of which are virtual and some of which are not. Written in a story or painting, it might also be an artistic space, involving an interaction between artist, art, and audience. It might, at the same time, if an actual building were purchased for it (e.g. The Office), be a physical space. It is, however, already physical in that you can find it physically on the web, or see it in physical interactions, or find it in physical art, or find it contained within a person.

A construct is a consensual reality, requiring one or more persons to create or identify it. Constructs, then, are necessarily personal.

Constructs are given reality by their builders; they are created by the decision to build and treat them as real. They have the same kinds of impact upon persons as any other reality. They affect the mind, will, emotions, and body, just as the local coffee shop might. Constructs, then, are the intersection of what is commonly called reality and what is usually called perception. Again, they have the same kinds of effects (and usually some additional ones) on a person as anything else they take as real.

Feb
7
2010
Sightings By Asher Black | No comments yet

Fan Products

hatCreated by devoted Asherians:

Feb
7
2010
Sightings By Asher Black | No comments yet

Mytholog

MYTHOLOG CoverAsher Black was seen putting the finishing touches on five years at MYTHOLOG. Asher is now focusing on his own writing under various nommes de plume.

Feb
7
2010
Sightings By Asher Black | No comments yet

Taggings

Tagged Wall

This wall must have been tagged by a devoted Asherling, Asherite, or Asherian!

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Concerning Black Asher

From a Haunt Resident:

Asher Black is rumored to have an alter ego.

Black Asher has the voice of a smoker. Not dry, but a little rough. But his voice is also like the bitterest and smoothest of chocolate, the kind one takes in small bits and toasts over the flame of candle late at night. One sinks slightly into that voice whenever he speaks, without quite being aware of it until one must move to extricate oneself afterward.

He has been called “persuasive”, “resourceful”, “ingenious”, “impetuous” and something of a “miscreant”, but he has a penchant for conspiracy. He has a tendency to teach, even when he doesn’t mean to. His style in everything has the flair of the passionate romantic. He is moody, ranging from delirious comedy to fits of dark brooding.

He is tall, very dark haired, limber, always wears all black, down to his exquisite socks and lacy black wingtips or calf-length black boots. Favors trenchcoats, sometimes but rarely wears a “sam spade” hat. Smokes a pipe – generally black sandblast briar.

He will not say where he is from, and is capable of a variety of strange or foreign accents, and bits of language. His parents, he says, are long dead, and he has no family. It is rumored that he has a secret love. He is also a heretic of several churches.

Familiar with the knife, suggesting a rough background, yet his tastes run to fastidious refinery. He cooks, usually Italian, favors certain wines and liquors but is never drunk, prefers a blend of tobacco that is moist pitch black but not overly sweet laced with spicy turkish and pungent American indian varieties. He tends to look angry or unhappy when he is only thinking, which is most of the time.

Black Asher has certain unusual capabilities or tendencies.

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

From the First Haunt

Asher, like Count Dracula, thought it best to make the way to his Haunt arduous, the path dangerous, and the distance formidable, so that those who actually arrive are those who are capable of … well… shall we say… withstanding certain rigours….

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Old GMR Bio

Asher Black began reading, writing, and getting into trouble when he was very young. His first science fiction story – a satire on one of the young peers who’d been taunting him – received a summary “F” from his teacher and doomed him to be interested in literature from that time forward. Tossing him Tolkien’s books only encouraged him and he was eventually discovered in the library after hours studying Robert’s Graves’ The White Goddess and other such obviously subversive material.

In the couple of decades since then, he’s published poems, articles, editorials, reviews, edited a few minor publications of a similarly “unsavory” nature, and is currently writing short stories.

Any wishing to consort with his ilk can contact him here

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Anti-bio

[This bio is compiled from various negative reviews of Asher]

  • I don’t like Asher very much.
  • For one thing, he’s unpatriotic. He thinks we live in an aggressor nation that kills innocent people or something. He seems to like other countries better than ours. He’s always talking about someplace else, when he’s not knocking this country.
  • He doesn’t accept authority. He acts like he doesn’t have to answer to anyone. One of these days, someone’s going to shut him down.
  • He’s judgemental. Everyone has to earn his respect. He has no respect for the average person. He thinks he’s smarter or better than most people. I once asked Asher if he thought he was better than other people, and he said, “Better at what?”
  • He thinks very highly of himself, like he’s special. He acts like he’s above most people. He’s so aloof.
  • He thinks that knowing a lot of words and facts is very important. He never stops thinking, he’s always reading some book, and he always has something to say.
  • He doesn’t concern himself with the results of his ideas before deciding to accept them.
  • He doesn’t weigh the consensus of others against his own opinion before deciding what to believe. He’s opinionated. He almost never agrees with anything other people think, say, or believe. He has to be different.
  • He constantly wounds people’s pride, almost automatically, without trying. He’d be the first to be tossed out of an overcrowded lifeboat. I told him that once, and he said, “The fact that anyone would be tossed, makes me the necessary as well as logical choice.”
  • He’s into all kinds of weird, extreme, alternative things. If it’s unusual, he has to know about it or be involved in it.
  • He has all kinds of unusual theories about how the world works, what people do, and so on. He’s always reading some book about it.
  • He thinks he’s some kind of artist. I don’t understand his writing. He can’t just have a normal job, and that’s probably why he has to write.
  • Probably nobody should like him, but he has weird friends who he’s fooled into actually liking him for all of these things.
  • What a woman could see in him makes no sense. You’d think no woman would ever want him, but he either fools women into liking him or they’re weirdos, too.
Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Contributed by a Haunt Resident

Asher Black is an enigma, but observation *will* reveal certain things about him. For example, on the most basic, surface level, it is evident that mine host is a talker first, and a writer second. In fact, he is currently exploring technology that will turn spoken words into written ones, enabling him to conflate talking and writing. Anyone who has spent any time with him at all knows that he loves to hold forth, and discuss, and discurse, and argue, and incite, and bewilder, and instruct, and persuade, and cajole, both in person and in print. And that he does these things most brilliantly after midnight.

Observed a bit more attentively, Asher reveals further a tendency toward devious thought, and an inclination to the heretical. Moreover, he rather likes these qualities about himself. The latter trait arises, perhaps, from the fact that he will listen as intently as he will hold forth, and if he perceives himself to have been wrong about something, he changes his position immediately to be right. (This, however, is a more speculative observation, and so let us return to the traits of Asher’s that pure attention reveals.) He is unafraid of the dark, can think about and act upon several ideas simultaneously, and smokes, not absent-mindedly or efficiently, but ritually (and please put your Freud away. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. Now, cigars, on the other hand…definitely Freudian. Just think about it.).

Asher was heard to remark recently, “I like my food like most things: delicate yet hearty.” This remark is germaine here because it points to another trait of Asher’s which it is impossible not to observe: he is an epicure of the old school, or at least an assiduous student thereof. In tobacco, food, clothing, and so on and so on, Asher knows what he likes, and what he likes are fine things.

Asher demonstrates an unmistakeable facility in writing, with a tendency toward the Romantic (heretical?). He has written editorials, poems, stories, and other, less easily classified works, some of which he has displayed for the delectation of Haunt residents. A far wider audience is indicated, in the opinion of this humble scrivener.

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

From the Second Haunt

Asher Black has lived in many places, been and done many things, worn and still simultaneously wears many hats. Asher has also, at times, quite drastically changed his appearance, and (in keeping with his motto) changed organizations, beliefs, and relationships. Certain things, however, have remained constant. Asher is currently:

  • Writer
  • Publisher/Editor
  • Teacher/Speaker

These things seem unlikely to change, since Asher can’t help but do them wherever he goes, in whatever capacity he works or lives, and however he appears. And if one looks closely, Asher has always written, published, or taught, in part, to persuade. So naturally, he has been many times a salesman, business owner, founder and/or leader of enterprises and organizations, and has appeared (on occasion, in one shape or another) before a microphone, in the lens of a camera, and under a public spotlight.

He has sometimes been told to turn off his mind or keep quiet (which, for Asher, are the same thing). But one day, he looked at himself and said (along with Happy Harry Hardon), “So be it.” He has sometimes been called arrogant or foolish for not taking the advice, but Asher long ago found himself unable to be ashamed (again, very much like the Eat me, Beat me Lady). One could even refer to this web site as though it were a nude portrait — “Asher Unashamed”.

Jan
18
2009
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Notes on Asher

Asher is often called prideful, because of his self-awareness, arrogant when he is unselfconscious and amazing, and pompous, when he’s assertive and self-confident. He is sometimes thought to be impatient (and sometimes it’s true) but, sometimes, it’s just that he’s moving at a different speed.

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