Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Laughing All the Way

by 6 Comments

[Classic moment from Young Frankenstein]

From whiskey river:

Hiding in a Drop of Water

It is early morning, and death has forgotten us for
a while. Darkness owns the house, but I am alive.
I am ready to praise all the great musicians.
Whatever happens to me will also happen to you.
Surely you must have realized this from hearing
the way the strings cry out no matter who hits them.
From the great oak trees in the yard in October,
leaves fall for hours each day. Every night
a thousand wrinkled faces look up at the stars.
Still we know that at any second the soul can stand
up and start across the desert, as when Rabia ended up
riding on a resurrected donkey toward the Meeting.
It is this reaching toward the Kaaba that keeps us glad.
It is this way of hiding inside a drop of water
that lets the hidden face become visible to everyone.
Gautama said that when the Great Ferris Wheel
stops turning, you will still be way up
there, swinging in your seat and laughing.

(Robert Bly, from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems)

…and:

It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

(C.S. Lewis)

[Read more…]

Apostrophizing the Enemy

by 6 Comments

[Image at right from the Celestial
Heavens/Might and Magic site]

In a comment the other day over at the Querulous Squirrel’s treetop lair, I ad-libbed a suggestion for people facing what are commonly called “nervous breakdowns”: name them. Please forgive the self-citation (which feels to me like a breach of Interweb etiquette):

Every “nervous breakdown” should have its own term, because every one is different from every other — and its, um, its significance is too great to let it go unnamed.

Somewhere, no doubt, someone has collected the names of all the demons and imps of Hell. Maybe every one of us who’s had a “nervous breakdown” should consider assigning it the name of a demon…

I did some looking around and found just such a (brief) collection. It’s here. As I described it in the rest of that comment:

…names and descriptions to fit many moods and ways of regarding a breakdown, from the scary to the wry. There’s even a Leonard. “When I first met Leonard, he scared the living crap out of me. Now I know he’s just the biggest jerk I ever met.”

Then today I encountered, at Colleen Wainwright’s communicatrix blog, a post about (in part) remembering trying times gone by. In that post, Colleen referred to someone she called “The Resistor.” As you can see for yourself in her post, The Resistor is/was not one of her best friends. His or her story — what The Resistor had done to Colleen in the past — just sounded too interesting to ignore. I had to learn about that “that rat bastard” for myself, so followed the link she’d conveniently provided… and discovered that The Resistor wasn’t a person. The Resistor was (is?) a feature of Colleen’s own internal landscape.

I’ll turn the mike over to her for a moment:

The Resistor needs no one and nothing — except something to push against, and everyone else does a damned fine job of providing fodder. The Resistor is very well developed, very smart and very, very strong…

It is indifferent to pain, although it seems to find it interesting or even amusing. But it doesn’t derive pleasure from causing pain. Far from it. It enjoys pushing back, period. Hence, the Resistor’s particular gift at shape-shifting (and, perhaps, a wee bit of pride in its highly refined abilities in this area.)

…[My hypnotherapist] tried every way he knew of to bring the Resistor to the side of Light, much to the amusement of the Resistor, who patiently, if a little condescendingly, kept insisting that was not a possibility.

Can I possibly tell you how much I love this picture of The Resistor?

(While you’re there, by the way, be sure to visit via her generous linkage her posts on the other denizens of her self, as revealed through hypnotherapy: Monkey Brain, The Edge, and the rest.)

[Read more…]

LitFic: Online Resources

by 3 Comments

The other day, Moonrat replied to a question about the acceptability of collections of “linked” short stories: stories united by a common theme, cast of characters, whatever. Along the way, she wondered what the state of short fiction in general might be, in these days when writers seem so focused on books.*

(The comments surprised her, and me too, by implying there are a lot of short-story readers out there. On the other hand, the readers tend to be writers of short stories, too — which implies a certain… goal orientation, let’s say.)

One gauge of continued interest in short stories (and poetry, and “creative non-fiction” as they call essays these days) is the health of the literary-fiction markets. Eileen, a/k/a Speak Coffee to Me, points us to a post at the Third Coast** blog — a “linkbucket” of online resources:

There’s much more to revolution and innovation in literature than the Kindle. To find some, all you have to do is open your browser.

I knew of the DuoTrope directory of magazines (both print and online); it’s been linked to for months over at the right, in the the “Writer’s Biz Resources” category. (I didn’t know, though, about its submission-tracking feature.) And including general links to Twitter and Facebook — not to specific resources there, just to the services’ home pages — seems, er, a little… obvious?

But whether you’re a writer or reader of literary fiction, you could build a pretty respectable list of browser bookmarks from nosing around the links the post provides: consider it a “Start Here” post on the subject.

________________

* Hey, you can be a writer of short stories, but we all want to be authors — which means books, right?

** If you’re imagining the “Third Coast” to be along the Gulf of Mexico, er, not. Try the Great Lakes.

Paying Attention to Voice

by 5 Comments

I may never have to master anything more difficult than thinking, and thinking convincingly, like multiple characters. It’s not just a matter of the word choices and rhythms of their dialogue (although it includes that). And it’s not just a matter of the outward manifestations of their natures — gender, style of dress, and so on (although it includes that, too). It’s a matter of looking at the world in a way shared by no other characters in the same scene and/or book.

This makes sense, right? People born at different times, to different families, subject to different economic pressures, attending different schools — all that: they can’t possibly regard and respond to a given event in exactly the same way, from events small (a single question, even a single word like Why?) to enormous (the impending end of the universe).

All these considerations — not just the way someone talks but his/her psychological/emotional stance in relationship to events and other characters — constitute what I think of when I think of voice. And it’s damned hard for me to understand, let alone work with.

So when I set out on the work-in-progress now called Seems to Fit, well, naturally I’d give it a half-dozen main characters and a gaggle of lesser ones. (Ha. Joke’s on me, isn’t it?)

[Read more…]

Trouble Hearing

by 10 Comments

[Image: Toothpaste for Dinner, June 3, 2007]

From whiskey river:

People write letters
to me from heaven, but I’m not listening.
The hermit said: “Because the world is mad,
the only way through the world is to learn
the arts and double the madness.” Are you listening?

(Robert Bly, “Listening”1)

…and (italicized portion):

We like to think that we are finely evolved creatures, in suit-and-tie or pantyhose-and-chemise, who live many millennia and mental detours away from the cave, but that’s not something our bodies are convinced of. We may have the luxury of being at the top of the food chain, but our adrenaline still rushes when we encounter real or imaginary predators. We even restage that primal fright by going to monster movies. We still stake out or mark our territories, though sometimes now it is with the sound of radios. We still jockey for position and power. We still create works of art to enhance our senses and add even more sensations to the brimming world, so that we can utterly luxuriate in the spectacles of life. We still ache fiercely with love, lust, loyalty, and passion. And we still perceive the world, in all its gushing beauty and terror, right on our pulses. There is no other way. To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses — how they evolved, how they can be extended, what their limits are, to which ones we have attached taboos, and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.

(Diane Ackerman, from A Natural History of the Senses)

[Read more…]

Real-Life Dialogue (EDT Edition)

by 12 Comments

[The scene: a suburban home situated somewhere in the (US) Eastern time zone. It is a mild, sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-March, and He and She are seated at their respective computers on opposite sides of a low wall, enjoying the sunshine when they remember to look out a window.]

She: [From her side of wall.] John?

He: Hmm?

She: What do you think about dinner tonight? Feel like grilling something?

He: Hmm? Oh, sure, yeah. What you have in mind?

She: I don’t know. Let me think about it.

He: Okay, let me know. I’ve gotta return the movies and pick up some other groceries, so I can grab something to grill, too.

[Time passes.]

She: What time is it?

[He consults his watch.]

He: A little before 2.

She: But… Oh, that’s right — I must’ve never adjusted this clock over here the last time we changed. Did you remember to change your alarm clock last night?

He: Yeah.

She: Good.

[Time passes. At various times, one or the other of them goes downstairs, heats up water for another cup of coffee or tea, messes with dog for a few minutes, and returns to his or her computer. Silence for a while, and then…:]

She: Omigod, look at the time! Weren’t you going to go to the store?

He: C’mon for crissake, will you relax, it’s only quarter to five!

She: Then how come my computer’s time says quarter to six?!?

He: [Frowning and rolling eyes, safely on his side of the wall.] Oh, for… don’t you see? It’s stupid damn Windows! If you’d let me switch you to Linux like I—

[Momentary silence.]

She: Well, what?

He: Crap crap crap. My computer’s clock says quarter to six, too.

She: But I thought you said—

He: Yeah, I set the alarm right. But I never adjusted my damn watch.

[Muffled explosions of breath from far side of wall.]

She: So now it’s too late to grill, isn’t it?

He: Uh, yeah, I guess so. Yeah… sorry.

She: So what are we gonna do about dinner?

He: I don’t know. Let me think about it.

Unfinished Business

by 7 Comments

From whiskey river:

A Way to Look at Things

We have not yet made shoes that fit like sand
Nor clothes that fit like water
Nor thoughts that fit like air.
There is much to be done —
Works of nature are abstract.
They do not lean on other things for meanings.
The sea-gull is not like the sea
Nor the sun like the moon.
The sun draws water from the sea.
The clouds are not like either one —
They do not keep one form forever.
That the mountainside looks like a face is accidental.

(Arthur Dove [source])

[Read more…]

“I Can’t Market My Art!”
Oh, Yes You Can

by 19 Comments

In a recent blog post, loyal friend of RAMH Froog dredged up a name I hadn’t seen or heard for years: “cartoonist” Hugh MacLeod.*

I no longer have any idea where I first encountered MacLeod and his interesting work. At the time, though, he was struggling to forge some sort of business from his creative output while still suffocating in a day job. He’d started up an e-newsletter, and in each issue he included — free of charge — a sample of one of his special projects. That special project was the creation of drawings (“cartoons”? eeehhhh… maybe) which he’d doodled on the backs of business cards. Some of the drawings were quite dark in tone; some were laugh-out-loud funny; some just made me uncomfortable with how much they made me think.

Ultimately, I unsubscribed from the Gaping Void newsletter, as MacLeod called it. Not because it had ceased to be interesting, even valuable or important. No, simply because I was saving every single issue, with all the others, in a separate GapingVoid email folder. The computer I had at the time had begun to wheeze with overload and I started to throw things overboard: MP3s, images, software… Gaping Void.

And then I forgot all about it. Until yesterday, when I read Froog’s post, and shortly learned that MacLeod is making  a living doing what he wants to do. Crazy, huh?

If you want, feel free (of course!) to explore what is now MacLeod’s Gaping Void blog. But by all means (as Froog suggested) do stop over at the Lateral Action site for a terrific brief interview with MacLeod, in part on the topic of getting your art — dare I say writing? — in front of people who will want it for themselves.

Excerpt:

“Artists cannot market” is complete crap. Warhol was GREAT at marketing. As was Picasso and countless other “Blue Chips”. Of course, they’d often take the “anti-marketing” stance as a form of marketing themselves. And their patrons lapped it up.

The way artists market themselves is by having a great story, by having a “Myth”. Telling anecdotal stories about Warhol, Pollack, Basquiat, Van Gogh is both (A) fun and (B) has a mythical dimension… if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have had movies made about them. The art feeds the myth. The myth feeds the art.

The worst thing an artist can do is see marketing as “The Other”, i.e. something outside of themselves. It’s not.

So: what’s your myth — your “great story” about your story?
_______________________

* The “cartoonist” is MacLeod’s preferred term, rather than “artist.”

What’s in a Song: Fever (2)

by 8 Comments

[This is the second of two posts about the popular song “Fever.” Part 1 was a couple days ago, here.]

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this “Fever” mini-series, the song’s lyrics and pulsing rhythm (and reputation!) seem to lead immature and/or lazy performers down sexual pathways they haven’t really earned the privilege  of traveling. When a singer purrs the words “Never know how much I love you/Never know how much I care” while humping a microphone stand — well, it’s hard to imagine wanting to jump that performer’s bones. I just want to laugh.

So when you set out to post a handful of covers of “Fever,” from among the gazillion available, you’ve got to exercise some judgment, some restraint:

Say you’re sort of squinting as you run your thumb over the corner of the flip-card animation. Say you stop at random. And say you’ve landed on an MP3 of, I don’t know… say you’ve stopped at the Pussycat Dolls‘ cover. If you just state the obvious — Oooh, pretty girls! — you’re headed for disappointment to then conclude: “I bet they’ll do it justice!”

So anyway, those covers don’t count for me. What’s left ranges from the overly respectful — almost note-for-note, beat-by-beat respectful — to the out-there: covers which take the basic melody and bass line and flip them inside-out, making the song almost (almost) unrecognizable in the process.

[Read more…]

Verified by MonsterInsights