So that’s where all this came from…
The quirky gestation and historical background of Echoes of the Mystic Chords
J. Wes Ulm
Q: When did you start writing the novel and trilogy as a whole?
Wes: Echoes of the Mystic Chords essentially has two birthdays. My first stab kicked off in October 2007, beginning in fits and starts. I got more serious in early 2010, when the novel underwent a complete overhaul. Characters, overall setting, basic plot outline were mostly carried over, while mood, tone, atmospherics, and key elements of the mythology all saw a radical reboot. This “Version 2.0” became the nucleus for the published work.
Q: Why the overhaul and reboot?
A: I guess you could call it an object lesson in the meandering gestation of a creative effort like this. Echoes got off the ground in ‘07 while I was recovering from complications of a respiratory condition contracted on duty (docs unfortunately don’t get immunity from the microbial monsters we’re always doing battle with). It was in part a way to stay productive and mentally focused during an uneven convalescence, with a view toward a full recovery. But by early 2010 the condition had gone chronic on top of a hideous exacerbation from a terrible flu mini-epidemic. Think of it as the medical equivalent of, “Grape? Meet stomping foot.”
Q: And so you retooled everything with Echoes then?
Wes: I guess it was one of those weirdly mind-rousing scenarios people often talk about, where the dark place you’re stuck in somehow doubles as a tonic for unmoored, primal creativity. My lungs had already been battered before by a nasty “walking pneumonia” from years prior. (It was right in the middle of my Jeopardy Tournament of Champions of all things – it’s why I was so pale in that taping for those who recall, ironically while I was also doing on-the-spot doctoring for another contestant.). The additional double hit in 2010 sent everything crashing down. Career plans in limbo, hustling in a deep recession for work of any kind (no disability insurance when this thing hit me), my savings ebbing away, sore and sick as a dog – yeah, far better days I had seen. But it’s true what people say. Sometimes the dark depths outside force you to dig ever deeper inside. Echoes of the Mystic Chords, as it is now, emerged from that deep well.
Q: How exactly did it change in 2010?
Wes: Tonally it became much darker and even Lovecraftian in places, as you’d expect, but also more evocative, engrossing, visually rich, imaginative. The antagonists became more capable and dangerous, the characters in greater turmoil and conflict, which in turn drove the plot at a more intense clip; the story grips you and gets in your head. In retrospect, prose like that comes to you only when you toss off all the creative shackles and write fearlessly. Throwing yourself body and soul into the narrative, and all the scary twists and turns it takes you. I kinda wish there’d been a less torturous path to get there, but I guess you take what you can get.
Q: So it was a different story back in 2007 when it all got started?
Wes: Back in October of that year, Echoes began basically as an intriguing little side project; my writing at the time was largely technical rather than creative. In fact the 2007 genesis of Echoes was as an offshoot of some thoroughly egghead-worthy research questions I was probing, involving the logical (mathematical) modeling of human tissues to improve personalized therapies. Like a “story-based sandbox” to test out some wilder brainstorms. But some friends and associates liked the curious little web I was weaving, so I opted to flesh out the narrative into a much fuller story that, while inspired in its mythology by the original concepts, departed in a much more speculative, sci-fi, and suspense-filled direction.
Q: Where did you do most of the actual writing?
Wes: I was a nomad while composing and editing Echoes, grabbing work and teaming up on projects wherever I could (US or overseas when my lungs could tolerate it), but there were a few special places in particular. I composed more of the trilogy in LA’s Koreatown than any other single location, especially the stretch on Western Ave. with Mr. Coffee, I Love Boba, and the Iota Brew Café as well as a few other locales. They were open late, so I could grab a coffee or tea after work, well into the wee hours. Plus I always got a boost from the entrepreneurial vigor and spirit of the neighborhood. It’s why one of the two key protagonists, Zach Choi, and also the character I most closely identify with – the proverbial “in-narrative voice of the author” (in a few of his scenes) – is Korean-American. My geographical home base for composing Echoes was in Koreatown more-or-less. But it was in Taiwan that I actually kicked off Echoes in 2007.
Q: Taiwan? That’s where you started all this? How’d you wind up there?
Wes: Long story short: I’d become a master of the dark arts of bumming free airline tickets for overseas conferences while in med school, and in ’07 I had several “airpasses” (multi-site tickets, mostly for Asian destinations) that had to be redeemed before their expiry date. At the time the respiratory condition was touch-and-go and I had spates of at least modest improvement. In fact I was still under the impression (aka “forlorn hope”) that it was on a course to resolve soon, and figured I’d be right back on hospital duty within a few months tops. I had some old colleagues working on absorbing projects in Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, and so took advantage of an airpass to maybe collaborate in the meantime. On one of my Taiwan days a meeting at the main Taipei University hospital got cancelled, so after eating breakfast downtown with my girlfriend, I wandered off into a hardscrabble, run-down industrial zone. That’s where Echoes of the Mystic Chords was born.
Q: In an industrial zone?
Wes: Epiphanies hit you where you’d least expect them. The industrial district was in Zhonghe (中和區), a satellite city of Taipei, the capital. I was on my own in (what was for me) the middle of nowhere, with my lungs in decent enough shape – relatively speaking – that I could stroll about. I often used those “drifting days” to study and practice my Mandarin skills while in Taiwan. At one point I wound up crossing over into the old industrial block which struck me as oddly intriguing against the backdrop of the cloudy, stormy sky that was building. While there I got the munchies and made a pit-stop at an outdoor “food shed” that was selling some lunchtime items. I had some books and research articles related to the topic above – logical modeling of human tissues – and wound up spending the whole day there, taking notes and brainstorming in between snacks.
Q: What sorts of books? How did all this lead to a novel?
Wes: The prizes in my collection were works by the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, including Three Roads to Quantum Gravity and several of his articles on digital physics and physical information theory. Long story short: Physical information theory is a merger of physics with the logical concepts we associate with computation (originating from the work of Konrad Zuse, inventor of the modern computer, and by extension Gottfried Leibniz himself). Smolin used this fusion to conceive a relational, “background-independent” notion of the physical world comprised of interacting information elements (not unlike Leibniz’s monads). Smolin in fact consciously referenced Leibniz as did Gregory Chaitin, a computer scientist whose book on complexity I also had in my possession during that brainstorming session. Furthermore there was a book from Seth Lloyd in a similar vein, and a few companion articles with reference to the computational history book of Martin Davis, an invaluable source that I read later.
Q: Sounds pretty technical.
Wes: It was, as I’d hinted at above. But what struck me most prominently is how all the roads in this remarkable assemblage of big-thinking, high-concept books kept leading back to Gottfried Leibniz. Davis’s book was the one that made it clear why: Essentially what we think of as computer science today and binary logic (the core of a computer’s operations and software) began with Leibniz in the 1600s, along with an early form of computer hardware called the Stepped Reckoner (which Leibniz developed alongside independent efforts by Pascal and Schickard, also in the 17th century). When I read a bit more into Leibniz and his companion efforts leading to calculus and the functions and semiotics that underlie so much of modern science and engineering – well, I became curious about what was impelling the work of this universal genius.
Q: What was it exactly?
Wes: The details are in companion documents about the conceptual of Echoes of the Mystic Chords, but in a nutshell, Leibniz was working on a “grand formalism” or “universal language” to unite the sciences with human thought and even emotion. His concepts even today are astounding and highly thought-provoking. It was from this basis that I realized there was more than simply technical idea-fodder in Leibniz’s innovations – there were also the seeds of some fascinating fictional explorations. Truly epic ones, delving into ancient metaphysical and spiritual questions from a fresh and unprecedented perspective, with Leibniz as a guide. As I mentioned before, after 2010 I overlaid a substantial number of independent elements and other philosophical notions (especially from Proust, Teilhard de Chardin, Baudrillard, Kant, and the like) upon this foundation. But the core remains true to the original inspiration.
Q: In one of those companion documents, you state that you also incorporated elements from a wide variety of other literary inspirations, everything from Latin American Magical Realism to Gothic novels to Japanese manga and anime. How did those fit in?
Wes: As I progressed from an intriguing but unpolished tale to a more comprehensive opus, I made a concerted effort to unite several strands into a coherent narrative that would appeal to a diverse audience on many levels. As I worked and reworked the prose, I realized that these other contributions could weave their way in organically, naturally, rather than being engrafted or tacked on. Even now that creative voyage still fascinates me, the way that so many disparate elements could come together and congeal so seamlessly. It was that process which has led to Echoes of the Mystic Chords as a finished work and the trilogy as a whole.