Craig Spector

WELCOME TO OUR PROGRAM, ALREADY IN PROGRESS...

Hi there -- I'm a bestselling novelist and screenwriter as well as a musician. Originally self-taught on guitar, I got into the Berklee College of Music at the age of 19 with no formal musical education, a six-song self-produced demo, and a lot of cajones. I completed the four year degree program in three years and graduated with honors. I had planned on spending my life as a professional musician -- writing, recording, performing, touring. In my final semester, I came up with an idea about a punk vampire in the subways of Manhattan; I finished school and moved to NYC, where I spent two years as a roller-skating street messenger: combat-skating midtown Manhattan by day, writing the book and playing in rock bands by night. With no agent and no experience, I ultimately delivered the book to the publisher disguised as a messenger run. It worked. The book, THE LIGHT AT THE END, became a NY Times bestseller. From there I went on to write more books, with millions of copies in print and reprints in nine languages... and then went on to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter for feature film and television. Like you do. Life is strange and unusual. Go figure. That was many moons ago. I've had some success but never got rich, but I always lived my life on my own terms, and I did the work I felt it important to do. I think I've lived an interesting life. *** On June 1, 2016, at the age of 57, I was diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer, metastisized to my bones. The last two years have been a journey. On June 4, 2016, at the age of 57, I had emergency spinal surgery to remove what I had thought was a pinched nerve in my back, but turned out to be a tumor on my T7 vertebrae. The tumor had bored through the bone and reached my spinal cord; when it constricted the nerves by a factor of 50% my legs gave out and stopped "legging" -- I couldn't walk or stand or even crawl. On Memorial Day, I woke up, stood up, and fell over. An ambulance ride, eleven hours in ER and then a transfer to Sentara Norfolk General, left me spending twelve days in the Trauma Ward. It was there that I learned that the reason why I had the tumor was that I had Stage Four Prostate Cancer, metastisized to my bones. No early symptoms, no warning signs, just boom. So now I know. And I fight. Now, two years later, I take my first steps on THE ART OF NOT DYING: Tales of Recovery on the Resurrection Road, a mixed media meta project in really real time. It's a new endeavor, still evolving from real life into something one might call, art? But it exists now, for entirely its own reasons... maybe because art imitates life imitating art; maybe because silence is death and some things just need to be said; maybe just because, why the hell not? But THE ART OF NOT DYING is about more than one man's struggle against a sneak attack from an insidious foe. It's about living: finding and creating the things, situations, and relationships that sustain you, doing the things that make your life meaningful. None of us know how long we have. We all die. But we're not there yet, so live. Appreciate every moment. Be who you really are. Make your dreams a reality. Take care of yourself, take care of your people, try to leave everything a little bit better than you found it. Love intensely and fiercely. Exercise radical kindness. Take no shit, and give none, either. Fight against evil in the world, starting first and foremost within yourself. Create light in the endless darkness. Find the art in every single thing. Elevate everything you do to an art form. Live courageously, unapologetically. And remember that so much of what we do seems thankless, because we forget to say thanks. And when the cynical say to you, how can you have hope when the world is so fucked? Tell them, because if I don't the world will still be fucked, but there will be no hope. So fight, like your life depended on it. Because it does. Which is where my new album, CRAIG SPECTOR: RESURRECTION ROAD, comes from. Songs from the dark edge of mortality and loss, yet threaded with light, and hope, and a fighting spirit. I started writing while still in the Trauma Ward -- the aptly named "Hospital Song" -- on the red Ibanez acoustic guitar my girlfriend Tess gave me for my birthday in 2014, before she became my wife Tess in 2015. Tess is Canadian, from the frosty tundra of Winnipeg. Coastal boy meets Prairie Girl; on paper we appear to make no sense. But as she aptly put it, I was her rock during a life tragedy in 2013, when we but barely knew each other, and she was going to be my rock now. Took her four days to make it down to me once I was hospitalized -- last minute flights, putting work and life on hold so the wheels wouldn't fall off -- but she never left my side for the remaining eight days (except for a few trips to Sentara guest services for a showering up, in a wing that was oddly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING. But that's another story...) That simple little song would lower my blood pressure and calm me down while on the 6th floor ward -- I tried to keep it quiet at 2 a.m. or so, but the night nurses said they could hear it all the way to the elevators, and they liked it. I kept writing and then recording once I was discharged, and all through the radiation, the chemo, the endless infusions and injections that are de rigeur for life now. I played all the instruments and sang all the parts on the album, and recorded it all on my home studio -- an iMac with Garageband, and a lot of IKM gear... iKeys, iRig, iLoud Micro Monitors, iEtc.. The 21st century is slightly awesome that way. In a strange way, Resurrection Road became a soundtrack for warriors and survivors all. And a way of demonstrating that not only is there life after cancer, there is life during cancer. So I hope you'll take a moment. Crank it up. Let it in. Welcome to my Resurrection Road...

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