Becoming The Overman

I've made my first album, originally released in 2012 and sold only at live performances, available for download on iTunes and Spotify! The release date is March 19, 2013, so click the link below to pre-order now!










Track List:

1. When I Find You
2. Virginia
3. Southbound Train
4. Hello, Hello
5. Olivia's Waltz
6. The Lord's Daughter
7. Christi in the Morning (feat. Ray Walker)

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

A historical essay by C. Nicholas Walker

After a trip to Iran, it’s hard to imagine vast empires of complex infrastructures, progressive agricultures and architecture, and powerful dynasties lasting hundreds of years. Many of the great cities have toppled, retracting back into the earth like a decomposing body. The dried sands of the Middle East tell a story, if you’re willing to listen. They tell about the rise of the Persians, one of the most powerful empires in human history, and about their eventual fall back into the land. What made the Persian Empire different from those city-states and kingdoms that came before was its aggressive, responsible focus on growth and conquering brought about by the ambitious natures of Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and, finally, the shortsighted rule of Xerxes.

City-states were born from necessity. As groups gathered in a new place, particularly if their migrations were the result of poor agriculture or dried lands, they would develop to protect themselves as groups. The Sumerian city-states dominated public affairs for nearly a millennium . They sponsored building and irrigation, but a majority of their supplies and developments were based in the defense of the cities.

Even the earliest empires shared this defensive attitude. Sargon of Akkad was the result of a coup against the king of Kish; Sargon’s only real developments in fifty-five years were the seizing of trade routes and natural resources in defense against rebels. The Assyrians built large cities and defensive armies, but died out quickly due to rebellions as well. Even the New Babylonian Empire only lasted from 600-550 B.C.E. The Egyptians were very abiding, extraordinarily prosperous, but were also inevitably unable to gain new territories, eventually becoming the victims of several foreign conquests after the sixth century B.C.E.

The Persian Empire was a breath of fresh air. In a history of unsuccessful defensive postures in the region, as well as the failed outward growth of contenders like Sargon or the Egyptians, the Persians tackled the arena with ease. Cyrus the Achaemenid, an outsider who earned the moniker “the Shepherd”, became king of the Persian tribes in 558 B.C.E. and, within ten years, had all of modern-day Iran in his control. His son, Cambyses, continued that successful period of growth until they controlled from India to the Egyptian borders. Darius took control in 521 B.C.E., during the peak of the Achaemenid Empire, and used his skills as an administrator to forge a unity and diversity the older empires had lacked. Due to these sequential leaders all having a strong common vision and goal, the formation of Satrapies was allowed to take place, as well as a form of checks and balances between governing powers. The standardization of coins and the building of the Royal Road both allowed communications to increase for all the people within the empire.

Without a common sense of vision, however, the Persian Empire was destined to fall. When Xerxes took power in 486 B.C.E., he abandoned cultural tolerance and completely unraveled all the hard administrative work of Darius. This caused rebellions in Mesopotamia and Egypt, leading to a revolt of the Ionian Greeks that lasted for 150 years. When Alexander of Macedon invaded in 334 B.C.E., there was little Persia could do to defend itself. The capitol of Persepolis that Darius built nearly 200 years earlier was burned to the ground after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C.E. The Persian Empire was no more.

Although the empires of Sargon, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Egyptians were powerful in their own respect, their inability to forge a common unity with their people -- coupled with a lack of professional competence in growing their empires -- led to their quick downfalls. For as long as the Persians relied on the techniques of outward motion with inward loyalty, their empire grew without limits. It was only during the rule of Xerxes, a man who in hindsight seemed more interested in his own legacy than the legacy of the people, that one of the greatest empires the world has known fell into the ground forever.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

Prologue: The Isle of Treva

None of the children Miss Tighe watched over had been born in or had ever even lived in Treva, a small town which rested in the center of a small island, east of London and north of Canterbury, covered in woods and fields.

Floating off the eastern coast of the Isle of Sheppey, it could be said, as a matter of fact, that no one had ever lived in Treva; you could ride a carriage from shore to shore, from the long sweeping stretch of water known as The Swale—that which wrapped its way all around the Isle of Sheppey—to the Warden Bay that peered out deep into the Southend-on-sea, which itself peered into the North Atlantic, and be done with the trip in an afternoon. With the luxury of an automobile the expedition could be taken, both there and back, in just under an hour. For this reason, there were no homes in Treva...or the entire island for which it was named. No houses, new or old. No apartments. No family shelters. The horizon of the island—as one saw it patiently rising over the curve of the earth from an approaching ferry—was marked mostly with greenery, with the exception of the Leysdown Lighthouse that jutted up from the treetops on the southern edge of the island in a foamy red color.

Here and there, and only with the most trained of eyes, one could possibly make out half a dozen jetties sneaking out into the pale blue yonder, like small pricks of thorns stabbing into the water. They waited unwearyingly for the slow influx of ferries, convoys and tiny commuter boats that would come from Sheppey throughout the day, and they would fill, ever so slowly, until the whole of the shore was overflowing with ships of all shapes and sizes, all costs and all colors. And it would be a well-known fact where each and every one of them had come from, so much so that old Ferryman O’Connor, even with all his spare time nowadays, rarely checked the serial numbers stamped onto the sides of the sterns anymore. "What’s the use?" he mutters to himself. "They all come from Sheppey."

Ill-formed, spiny rocks surrounded Treva on the northern, eastern and southern sides, and so it had been since the island’s first page of history had been written. The docks—those which, at first, had seemed like small, sharp barbs of irritation—were in fact pressing out into the only saving grace the island was fortuned with the dozens of millennia ago that it was first formed; the safe waters of the western shore, born from countless hundreds of thousands of years of rock attrition from the slow, relentless beating of The Swale. Besides those small piers of wooden poles and planks extending off towards her sister island to the west, there was no other way to reach safe harbor on the Isle of Treva.

Of course, this information has not halted all of Treva’s visitors over the years—the rocky shores that look out at the Southend-on-sea are littered with the wreckage of nearly half a dozen ships, most of them very old, that have tried to break the fortitude born from those great teeth of stone that gripped her shallow waters. A pirate here, a brigadier general there, it seemed as if the Wide Blue was completely unbiased as to who it took under. And, as was the running consensus in Sheppey, the water was not to blame for their misfortunes—only a fool with not the thought of living inside him anymore would dare brave those deadly shores.

And yet they did, and for what? That was the real question. What was on the Isle of Treva that so taunted these men over the generations? Miles and miles of woods and fields, cared for only every couple miles by a small cottage where one could find all the necessary tools for monthly chores and the usual keep-up?

No, it was the same thing that taunts every man who has possessed at least some level of power over the years, that burning motivation to rule and to conquer. The only reason the pirates and the generals wanted to hold those shores was because they could not hold those shores, and there is nothing more tormenting to a conqueror than to be told he cannot conquer anymore.

Once you got past the thick line of trees running the perimeter of the island, past the fields so large in number that they seemed to teeter off endlessly into the horizon like patches of dry clothe from a homemade quilt, you could make out the first few buildings of Treva, low and flat and hard to notice. It was the nucleus of the island, forming itself the greatest mass by far in manmade structures on the whole island. Treva was dull and unremarkable, and yet very old, like a man who had once been amazing in his youth but only dribbles away nonsense in old age.
As all people well know, residential housing on Treva failed the day after it was founded. The remnants of a small project of homes and cottages sat just on the northern outskirts of town like the unused graveyard of a town long forgotten (sometimes the local children would leave their parents’ sides as they shopped in town to wander valiantly through that eerie place, eerie because most of the villas had been completely furnished for modeling when the London banks decided the investment was naught in profit, leaving an aftermath that looked as if civilization had been turned to dust one fine, sunny afternoon—which was not very far from the truth).

After that, shops and cafés filled the remainder of the city like a warm, welcoming virus. During the months of the year when those establishments began to fail, the proprietors quickly built tourist attractions until, by the late 1890’s, the City of Treva was nothing more than an old, underused beltline of nostalgic stores and gift shops.

The only exception came in the spring of 1905, when the Isle of Treva was declared the official vacationing spot for the King and Queen of Scotland. In commemoration of the special honor, the townspeople—consisting entirely of shop owners and café managers—began building a great mansion that was finished only three months later...just in time for the summer season. It was named after the first mayor of Treva, and subsequently the founder of the island itself as a part of Great Britain, Sir John Pennyworth III. The Pennyworth Estate remained the official vacationing spot for the King and Queen of Scotland for just under five years, as their term ended in the Queen’s sudden death, followed shortly by the King’s.

For the longest time it had remained empty, and was the only unoccupied building on the Isle of Treva. Even with such a beautiful property in their midst, begging for someone to fill its spaces, no one could find a reason to live on the little island. Then, in 1917, in response to the hundreds of thousands of men and women lost to the Great War, the estate was re-baptized as the Pennyworth Orphanage for War-Torn Children. Only a slight remodel allowed for the shelter of over 150 young boys and girls who had lost one or both of their parents to that terrible, worldwide tragedy. Its success yielded what was to become a new age for Treva. The Pennyworth Estate now gave a familiar, congenial face to the community of shop owners that made up Treva’s residents, and with it came the repopulation of the Western Docks.

Once again the docks were filled every hour of every day with countless boats and ferries, both private and public, filled to the brim with shoppers and tourists to the Isle of Sheppey, who in turn experienced their own peak in visitors from the rise of the orphanage.

With the influx of daily visitors—thusly so, they came and went everyday, for there were no hotels on the entire island and therefore no way to spend the night—there also came an influx of teachers and governesses who were very willing to have their start with the world famous Pennyworth Orphanage.

They would come by the dozens, the fledgling teachers, all of them attractive young women fresh out of Bachelor’s college with degrees in hand, still hot from the presses. The ferries seemed to be filled with young ladies in muted dresses running the length of their calves, buns in their hair and glasses set firmly atop their noses. It was almost as if a caucus was being held on Treva as to who had read the longest book at the youngest age and still managed to become a woman before twenty-five.

The image was so resolutely fixed with Treva that a very popular postcard featured on its front side an image of one of these ferries, viewed from the side, sailing off across The Swale. There in front, leaning across the railings of its bow, marked by the light of an orange and purple sunset swirling behind her, is a young teacher with her face pressed against the wind, glasses held loosely in her right fingertips, as several strands of dark brown hair are swept out of her bun and trail aimlessly behind her head. Printed on the bottom in big, golden letters was: Isle of Treva, Home of the Pennyworth Estate. The shop owners successfully sold one to every person that walked through their doors. Life, as old Ferryman O’Connor would say, was good again.

This, however, is not the story of those women.

This is not the story, even, of Treva itself, or of the Pennyworth Estate for that matter, though they are integral pieces of the story nonetheless, both the former and the latter.

No, this is the story of the children—three, to be exact—and an adventure they took, once upon a time, when the summer breeze had just begun to whistle its merry little tune through the hay grass and the sun was on its closest pathway to Earth in decades; an adventure through the thick woods behind the Pennyworth Estate. They saw things, those three children, in the summer of 1951 that no one has seen since—things that, for some of them, they would never like to see again, and for others, well, they would think of nothing else, no more than to go back to their childhood some odd years ago, back to the Pennyworth Orphanage with their friends, and back, most importantly, to the ladder in the backyard.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 2:25 AM | Permalink | Comments

For Deputy Jeff DeGrow

He wears his old blue hat and a belt upon his hip
He's got his heart on his chest and the word of God on his lips
He thought he'd seen it all, from fire down to rain
Take your plans and ball 'em up, ain't it funny how they change

Now he's a hometown hero, fighting for the bottom line
Some people say what happened that day was a sign
He's a hometown hero, protecting you and me
Like us all he was blind, but now he sees
He's a hometown hero, though he don't believe
He's a hometown hero for you and me

There was a time when we was all a man could be
But the earth shakes, the window breaks, you find it hard to breathe
But faith ain't nothing till it's all you have, and all you care
Is that all your friends come home to you, let the faith fill the air

Now he's a hometown hero, fighting for the bottom line
Some people say what happened that day was a sign
He's a hometown hero, protecting you and me
Like us all he was blind, but now he sees
He's a hometown hero, though he don't believe
He's a hometown hero for you and me

In a plant in Ohio's where that gun was forged
And God made that gun, so he could see what his life was for

Now he's a hometown hero, fighting for the bottom line
Some people say what happened that day was a sign
He's a hometown hero, though he don't believe
He's a hometown hero for you and me

-From Demography

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments

EM3 Walker, C.N. (xxx-xx-2790)


I am respectfully requesting admission into the finest community I believe exists in the world, that of the United States Naval Officers. Every path I have taken in my life, every leap made forward, has merely been another stepping stone toward becoming a Naval Officer. I was raised by hardworking parents who taught me the core values of life that I see transcended to a higher level by the Navy. This means that honor, courage, and commitment have always been a part of my life, even if by other names. My sense of devotion to the Navy, my overwhelming reliance on integrity and moral accountability, and my talents as a leader and a follower make me a necessary addition to the Nuclear Officer program.

One of my core beliefs is that you don't change your goals to match your output, you change your output to match your goals. In high school I formed a petition to offer an Astronomy class as a credited elective. I found interested students, convinced them of the importance of the subject and why they would enjoy it, and persuaded a science teacher to instruct the class. After presenting my case, the school not only agreed, but -- after some convincing -- supplied us with a telescope. At graduation I was presented with an award in Astronomy for my work in the class, and have since been back as a guest speaker for science courses. During my senior year, because my high school had just been built, I helped organized the first school newspaper, found a printing company willing to produce it, and put out several issues as its editor.

After high school, I applied to a local community college, but I was disinterested in the programs available. I attended for several semesters, but felt directionless because I didn't know what I wanted to make out of my life. There came a day when I could have signed up for another semester and didn't. Instead I walked into a Navy recruiting office. Since then, my life has changed. I found myself greeted at every turn by leaders constantly demanding more of me, constantly stretching my abilities. The concepts of honor, courage and commitment I saw so sorely lacking in the civilian world were shouted every morning with pride. I found an undeniable sense of respect for the Navy and my passion for being a greater part of it deepened. Because of this, I earned leadership positions in bootcamp and again in A-School as Class Leader. I say the Sailor's Creed with the same sense of satisfaction a veteran says the Pledge of Allegiance because the Navy hasn't just given me a roof over my head and three meals a day. The Navy has given me direction, purpose in who I am and what I can be.

For the past 200 years, Naval Officers have served the United States by exemplifying the best in what the Navy has to offer. My ability to lead large groups of diverse people by identifying their personal attributes and utilizing each of them to the best of their resources has allowed me to excel before. My ability to set goals and effectively meet them has taken me further here. But most importantly, my overwhelming enthusiasm in the Navy and gratitude for all that it has done for my life gives me an instinctive desire to give back. Some people are unfortunate enough to not know what they were meant for. In this way I am extraordinarily lucky. I am here to be a United States Nuclear Naval Officer. There is nothing else I was meant to do.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 6:22 AM | Permalink | Comments