CRYPTOLIPS Volume 3

About Richard Evans Actor, writer, artist, filmmaker Richard Evans' many credits pursue him on his journey through Cryptolips, a three-volume series of prose, poetry, lacerated lyrics, false identities and memorable monologues. As with his memoir FAZKILS and Cryptolips - Volumes 1 and 2, the reader will climb aboard for a wild ride through Evans' Artificial City of the Mind. Evans still lives on an island. The woodpeckers have surrendered. It took a prolonged battle with neck and throat cancer to pull me away from my other obsessions and punch away half-blind at my computer. For the readers who waded through FAZKILS, I think you should know that my neck and throat cancer were successfully treated. But after what we thought was a done deal, an earlier bout with prostate cancer has returned and the report reads terminal. Writing this book (and the others that predate it) has kept me alive, even though it's been a bit like swimming in a child's wading pool-at times too deep at the shallow end; too shallow when I try for a deep and lasting backstroke. Whether in factual fiction or fictional fact, and all that lies between, I've been a long time seeking the elusive truths that swim beneath the surface of words. Interior thoughts are difficult to follow. Even more taxing is nailing down a process to reveal them. Matters of time, place, and point of view fight like crazy when confined to the written page. No matter how unlimited the elasticity in the mind of the reader, it's the writer who can't throw the book down. He or she is stuck with it to the bitter end. Whether through my attempts at conventional prose, traditional story-telling, or manic poetry drawn from a mind on fire with chemicals and radiation, I've tried to locate and pursue the truth buried in behavior, my own and that of others. I've sought to illuminate the importance of that which we all share. Whether it's film, theatre, actors, writers, builders, bakers or neighbors with hammers and nails, the glue that holds these endeavors together comes from pretty much the same pot: the love of doing and the good fortune to be able. Richard Evans - 2019