Every new venture—whether a novel, colonoscopy, world conquest, beauty school exam or briefest of introductions—begins with a first sentence.  It could be dramatic, comedic, timeless or tasteless (in the last case, sometimes so tasteless that it demands to be made into a song as “a commentary the decline of Western Civilization.”)  It could be unbearably clichéd, pickled purple, adjectiverbally obese, or absolutely unintelligibornksloonilousalaitaquitoracuckooless.  But in the best of moments, when humanity transcends its meanness to brush against the Divine, it may become that most prized of qualities: self-referential.  You have just experienced one of these moments.  Pause to savor the feeling.  Whatever its flavor, howeverly, the sentence unites writers across time in its unique challenge: It’s a BITCH to write.  But once you’ve downed your whole bottle of Placebocet,  tapped along to the Fosse tape from that aunt who REALLY understood the pain of your inability to tan, and done whatever weirdoperverted shit you have to do to coax inspiration from the lovecave between your muse’s legs, within weeks the sentence is finished, and you can finally start talking about shit.  So let’s talk. about. shit. 

DISCLAIMER: The preceding paragraph contains an arcane legal stipulation that, by reading or pretending to read it, you have irrevocably agreed to act as my personal therapist for as long as I’m able to egest blather across the Web.  At this moment I will remind you, also, that a therapist is someone who patiently listens and never contradicts.  And judges as he farts: silently.  That said, back to the masterpiece, you ungrateful whore.

Yakka yakka yakka aloha dogbless!  Congratulations, and please accept this virtual lei made of invasive species flowers and rubies and rabies and all that carp—for you’ve chanced upon the inception of an Adventure.  Or, rather, the accounting thereof.  Er, more accurately, the briefest of introductions thereto.  Like an historical document from the future, found in wrapped around a dumpster baby on prom night, writing itself in placenta and curdling noodles.  (Neld Life Lesson #147:  Whenever people ask you, “Are you from the future?” always respond in the affirmative—there’s simply no downside.  If you’re asked on the street, someone may offer you money out of pity or worship; if in a psychiatric institution, a kind nurse may offer/force upon you something that will let you sleep 23 hours a day and have your ass wiped for you.  Live the dream.) The most exciting part is that neither you nor I know exactly what form or flavor this Adventure will assume—more on that later.  Now let’s talk about Love.  No, wait.  Let’s talk about you instead.

Who are you how are you are you fascinating and exotic do you wear perfume what do you think of Beyond Paradise have you heard my version of Love Tried to Welcome Me what about Nils’s band Sternfall but ooh ooh ooh before any of that let me inquire of you the highest-priority question: How did you stumble upon our li’l kingdom of sparklitude on the Web—the site presently beaming electrons across your optic nerve into your brain in this Web-optimized palette?

Oh, my.  How shameful of me.  I have done got all up someone’s grille again.

Do be kind and forgive my impetuosity—it was brazen of me to presume I could assault you with all manner of personal questions, as if I were Google or a Russian princess consummately disguised as a subway dweller.  But since I can’t hear any response from you through the computertubes anyway, I’ll answer my question myself: The coolest person of all the coolest people you’ve ever known accidentally sent you the URL.  You read about it in an obscure underground zine in Rio or Berlin or Tel Aviv, one still untainted by corporate coolhunters.  A passion for Art or inspiration or a brighter Swedish winter brought you here.  You are overloaded with hormones and googled some sick, disgusting fetish only to find your search terms improbably dispensing you here.  (Thanks God!  It probably saved your life!)  I suppose the number of scenarios which could result in your arrival is limitless.  …Or maybe, as they say in animated Christmas specials and the real America, the reason is something far simpler.  The Destiny Stork, herself second cousin-by-marriage to the Holy Ghost, cradled you gratuitous use of the word bosom and delivered you to our virtual doorstep.  Thanks God Jesus and the Holy Stork.  We saved your life.

Because isn’t it incredible, miraculous even, that in a world where alcoholic blackouts, soap-operatic amnesia, glue-sniffing neuronicide, trendy-again waterboarding and memory-erasing drugs have all become managed, quotidian and even passé, you can still, just by typing a particular set of keystrokes into an Interwebs browser, suddenly find yourself swirled disorientationally into a locale of queerness and wonder?  And that, like a staged erotic kidnapping, the experience leaves you electrified?? Fully alive, like when you tried caffeine pills at 12 years old, a rebellious, illicit thrill in a world where Hellen Keller jokes and cinnamon sticks were the most treacherous temptresses around?  (This may be a good time to both clarify something and do a weird “prequel” thing for the next paragraph.  I regularly soak my word soufflés with a special seasoning I like to call “literary license,” a highfalutin way of saying I can squawk a lotta jenkemjuice and still be lauded for talking all profound and shit.  As in the preceding example. OF COURSE no Web site, not even one that can pick your nose and allow you to sleep 23 hours a day while wiping your butt, could match the rush of guzzling three Vivarin before sixth grade basketball practice—that’s the kind of experience only a Wagner-penned 3D musical theater piece featuring Mariah “Intoxication’s not my middle name, but right now I can’t remember it” Carey as a mystery-solving half-bionic dolphin assassin could approach in intensity.  Hellz yeah.)

And now comes the part where you indulge me an aside (embrace these; they figure prominently in everything that comes out of me—ask my Honda-brand stool monitor).  This one will detail many of the many ways I am a terrible writer and person.  It’s the kind of thing that builds cred for literary license, like snorting toner ink off Maya Angelou’s melons while Gore Vidal is getting top-dollared by James Frey in the reception area of the New Yorker.  One of my hallmarks is a certain *unevenness* in mood, style, spelling, hair, and just about everything, save my love for sleeping and having my butt whipped—opps, I meant wiped.  Furthermore, I have a grammatically unpopular penchant for long parenthetical excursions, which beget more excursions, and more and more and more more more more until my paragraphs get more tangled than seven contortionist octopi wrestling in a giant squrimhole boggling with pasta and rubber bands.  All this after multiple strongly-brewed cups of verbosity. To tempt overstatement, I’ll warn you that my prose might, just might possibly maybe, get a bit hard to follow at times.  Should this you come to find, all I can recommend is to forge dauntlessly ahead, with or without understanding.  Because these journeys into the tangential tend to contain treasures dipped in riches, encrusted with gems and deep-fried in superorgasmic ecstasy.  As an unmet friend of mine used to quote in a particular haircolor commercial from a more innocent time, “You’re worth it.”  [For the university reader, I am proud to announce that award-winning research from the Karlainska Instistut has proven that people who are able to comprehend my yammering can officially be declared, you know, like, hella-smart ‘n stuff.  In fact, I already have degrees ready to send to anyone able to pass a test measuring Ed Shepp comprehension.  Just mail me a self-addressed stamped bottle of Chanel’s Cuir de Russie, and I’ll make sure you pass send you the exam.]  Lastly: some old, ugly, trifling, hoe-ass, cockamamie, Lita Ford-impersonating backhanded backtalking pigboonatches with chips on their shoulders bigger than anything seen in Dynasty have even dared to characterize me as “unlikeable.”  There are only two plausible reasons one would claim such a thing: 1) they’re jealous and 2) it’s sorta true.  SORTA!!!!  Alas, but you know what they say about “L’Enfère…” (C’est les autres!) That said, should this website ejaculate onto the global face and you meet me at a TV movie premier or intergalactic coronation or Pussycat Dolls tribute band concert, you have my permission to boast to all your friends, “Well, he was really dazzling and beautiful and charismatic and extraordinary and used the word “and” a lot, but I think he’s best experienced in small doses.”

Ok, aside-time over.  Metaphor time!  (I hope you have your metaphor-time pants at hand.  Conveniently, they’re identical to Hammer-time pants.  Trouser evolution since 1986 has suffered seriously from Dutch Elm Disease.  And even if fashion has abandoned me in that arena, I’ll KEEP my Hammetaphor-pants and WEAR them too, tack s’MYCKET!)  So back to the mystery that just won’t unravel in less than 3,000 words: What exactly IS this glittering sprinklebucket of cybersnazzle that Destiny decided you need to see?  And why?  Well, why is something that you can only discover in your own adventure, so I’ll leave that up to you.  As for what, let’s hop into my beautiful balloon and float up into the metasphere for an aerial view.  (See—don’t these pants feel great with the wind whipping through them? Yeah? Yeah????)  As you can see from up here, there doesn’t seem to be much of a HERE here yet—it looks much like a strawberry jam swamp bubbling with concepts and promise and words-Mom-told-you-never-to-say.  Let’s go higher.  There.  Now the swamp resembles a swimming pool the size of an enormous bay.  It’s teeming with countless life rafts, some of which you can barely make out, most beyond visibility.  Some seem to be floating in purposeful direction; others lay still; some appear incongruous; some float above each other and absorb them.  Since we can’t discern the individual rafts well, we can only guess how they interact and what could happen next.  They may speed across the pool, turn and twist, invent and jettison patterns; vanish or multiply.  The pool is large enough to have multiple weather systems that change faster than Christian Bale’s moods; it feels like it should be governed by some laws of nature or something, but you sense that it’s not; it exists beyond   the known world’s limits.  The conglomeration of rafts swirls faster, optically erratic like a hallucination. Eventually you forfeit any attempt to understand it, because it’s too unfamiliar.  It resembles an alien creature’s dream more than anything like the everyday “reality” we know.

Do you understand?  [Nes.]  [Yo.]

Good.  I think you’re ready.  And, admittedly, that was a tortured metaphor, smelling not unlike the most recent Calvin Klein perfume, which I believe was called Pointless.  (Or was it Unnecessary—it’s so hard to distinguish between the CK fragrances that have launched since 1995.  What was I saying again?)

I’d like to briefestly introduce you to Project 34065EN, code name Neld.  Neld is a blog, a memoir, an Art Project, a reality show, a self-indulgent substitute for  therapy, a mesmerizing spectacle of sound and image, and a gift to anyone courageous enough to accept sincerity.  It chronicles a year in the life of a couple of two rare and precious beings, Ed Shepp and Nils Harning.  “Neld,” if you will.  And, like the fairy, uh, “drugstore” haircolor, it is multifaceted, with a generous reserve of story arcs, which I like to call Neldologies.  Let’s talk a little about those.

Neldology N^o1 explores geography: Nils comes to America and fulfills a dream.  I go to Sweden and too fulfill a dream.  So N^o1 considers not only literal geography, but the geography of dreams.  And perhaps more importantly, the intersection of dreams and “real life.”  If you’ve ever yearned to live somewhere else and be someone else, then maybe you get it.  If you haven’t, then explaining the impulse to you would be like describing expensive chocolate to a very intelligent salamander: it would take forever, but you’d never be sure if anything you said made it behind those glassy eyes, which seemed to follow the fly buzzing around the room more closely than your lecture.  For now let’s just suffice to say that an opportunity to live in another culture is priceless and irresistible.  It’s the ultimate perspective-changer, the most vigorous spark for neurogenesis, and the most vivid way to acquire an appreciation of where you come from.  And how that makes you who you are.  And who you could be.  Hmm, that odor of haughty dismissal I’m detecting must only mean one thing: one of you out there is reading this and thinking you’re too old for all this utopian poopycock. Well, sir or madam, to you I can propose a much more pragmatic benefit to giving the expatriate experience a whirl: it would put fireworks into your obituary.

N^o2 tells the story of a relationship, which, for the culturally oblivious, is referenced in the name, “Neld.” [Nils+Ed=Neld.]  [DUH.]  It may not flow off the tongue with the butterscotch musicality of Brangelina, but I feel it represents me (not so sure about Nils) well, as it sounds kinda like “beep” (an Ed Shepp trademark) or another nonsense syllable (something I have a known historical affection for).  Now stop that right now, that faggy rolling your eyes—I say “story of a relationship,” and suddenly you’re imagining long premenstrual posts about this most insipid inanities, scenes too maudlin for even Bridget Jones Diary and Sex and the City.  Nej, tack.  Nothing like that, just an accounting of some of the challenges we face as a couple (not a “Gay Couple;” just a couple), i.e., two people trying to build a life together.  Two individuals with unorthodox temperaments and tastes, one of whom has never had a serious relationship (and whose favorite book, incidentally, is titled Against Love: A Polemic) and one of whom is as hopelessly romantic as could be possible in someone from Sweden.  So what I’m saying is that I didn’t begin with the intention of describing, for example, “the cutest thing that Nils did today,” but rather the bewildering, inspiring, scary, unpredictable experience it is to belong to someone who motivates me to be a better Ed and devote myself, absolutely, to forge a new life with.  But alas, this paragraph seems to have oddly morphed into some weird audition letter for The Tyra Banks Show instead of a briefest of introductions.  So onward to N^o3.

A story about Art.  Yes, “Art,” with all its pretentiousness, ridiculousness, depravity, passion, criticism, unfettered expression and fluidity.  How is this a story about Art?  In that I define it as such, for several reasons:  To invent a purpose for “yet another site” for the inevitable doubting dolt or frenemy.  To immerse with significance what could be so far the most important year of my so-called life.  To force myself to create again, and to care about something with the fervor and tenacity that I’ve managed to evade for longer than I can remember.  Or perhaps at the most basic level, to use the year as an excuse to transform myself in some way.  So that twelve months from now I will be able to say without hesitation or shame that I’m not some office drone or perfume nerd or “guy who makes sounds” or whatever other abstrusity I can conjure up at the time… but an Artist.  The pre-corporate, pre-“realist,” pre-detoured-by-life Eddie Shepp, author of Wafica (ask my Mom—she loves telling people about that), who unwaveringly answered the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” formality with two words “An artist.”

There’s one more Neldology left to mention, and it flows neatly from the idea of Art. I’ve always been intrigued by something I considered the rather crackpot notion of “making your life into a work of Art.”  I loved the melody of the phrase, but never could understand if it meant anything (much like a Björk song before—and sometimes after—reading the lyric sheet).  But even if it was just so much New Age twaddle invented to sell candles or crystals or crystal candles, I’ve always felt like it could mean something, something that I wanted, if possible, to realize in my life.  And if I could, could I help others do the same?  A word that may recur in this oddyssey is “reinvention,” one which unfortunately has developed as strong a connotation with idiocy as the Glade (rhymes with Raid) logo has with “cheap smelly crap.”  Undeniably, I relish the comedic potential inherent in the idea, but secretly, when I’m alone in my blanket fort, I like tinkering with the notion in my mind, seeing if I can get a firm grip on any of its evanescent ingenuity.  Consider the present season—the melancholic chasm between the gilded holidays and Sping’s first blooms—when hanging a new calendar invites fantasies about living a new life (and usually taking a trip to Mexico or somewhere where the sun feels stronger than a light bulb whose filament just isn’t what it used to be)—“I’ll change everything this year! It will all come out different! I’ll stick to my diet/plan/workout regime/whateverwhateverwhatever  and emerge a better person this time next January!”  I think we all feel this, but after enough cycles around the sun, you start to perceive this notion of possibility as a frivolous relic of childhood, like ringing noisemakers on New Year’s Eve or blowing out candles on a birthday (cup)cake.  You feel like an idiot, and you resolve to not resolve anything, because the chances of anything extraordinary happening feel as dim as the January sun.  Fair enough, but let’s view it from another angle: Isn’t it the striving toward (im)possibility, rather than the resignation to drab “reality,” that has incited the world’s most wondrous inventions and ideas?

This is the spirit behind the slogan I’ve coined for this year: “2010: Everything must change.”  It’s the oath I’ve sworn to myself: Use this year, for once focus my energies completely, even when it feels like everything is collapsing around me, even when I’m existentially exhausted from the crushing pandelerium that is New York City, even when I feel like a fool Pollyanna retard fraud, and even when I feel like my heart will NOT go on, into doing everything I can to create a new existence by next year, one centered around my life with Nils and guided by the drive to find a place in the world worthy of us and what we can uniquely offer.  It’s an impossible dream; so it should be.  The world has left me and so many of my generation nothing, and therefore the impossible, and yes, even the most grandest of impossibilities, is all that’s left to dream about anymore.  Reach for anything less, and embrace an osteoporosis of the soul, until soon(er than you think) you’re only able to reach for less and less.  Until finally, after the drudgeries, humiliations, defeats, antidepressants, booze…  Before you know it there’s not even anything left to settle for, and the dust of the person you once hoped to be flickers into the forgotten like dead Christmas lights.

So that’s here we are, right here, right now.  Let’s turn back to you.  Since I’m thinking and talking with such grandiosity, I’ll offer you a formal invitation.  I, Ed Shepp and we, Neld, cordially invite you to join us in our 2010 adventure—making our lives into new works of Art.  Make this the year that you reach for the impossible.  It’s (arguably) a new decade—there will never be a better time than now.  Be inspired, because inspiration is never wasted.  It breeds hope.  Accept this invitation, and tear a new asshole out of 2010.  You may achieve something you always thought impossible.  And you may just change everything.

Gott nytt år!

—Ed Shepp

POSTSCRIPT: You may have noticed that I wove a little manipulation into this entry.  First for myself: the bigger I talk, the more I have to live up to.  That’s obvious.  Second, the higher you set your sights, the farther you fall if you fail, which in my mind makes the whole story more heroic.  If you face impossible odds, it ennobles your fight.  No one would blink if I resolved to “lose 20 pounds” and didn’t.  If I end up on the losing end of this adventure, however, it will imbue it with more poignancy, and arguably make it more memorable.  So someone may mock me—they’re still paying attention.  Even if I lose, I still win.  We win.

POSTSCRIPT PART TVÅ: If I’ve learned anything in the 17 months it took to write this, it’s that ANY of it could change.  At any moment.  I don’t have lots of drama and shit planned—who does?—but you know what they say about shit: it happens.  Just sayin’ is all.  Watch over me, Oprah.  Watch over me.