Coffee: What You Care About

Fireworks. Magic. Cosmic battle. Midgets and Giants. Demons and Angels. Ancient mythology. Modern poetry. All this and more greets us at the front door of Milton’s Paradise Lost. For those of you who enjoy modern poetry, you’ll find some of it old-fashioned. For those who enjoy old-fashioned poetry, you’ll find Milton hates rhymey-dimey verse. Any of you fantasy nerds, if you can get past the iambic-ness of the telling, will love this. And, of course, so will those of you who try to follow Jesus or at least appreciate the O.T.

[jump in]

Appetizer: What I Care About

My assignment for the M.I.T. course on PL involves 2,400 words (or more) journaling my experience through the epic and interacting over it.

Milton says, in his introduction, that the form is English Heroic Verse without rime. He claims to be following the intentions of people like Homer (in the Greek), Virgil (in the Latin), Dante (in the Italian) and Beowulf (in Old English). Rime seems to be the last thing of importance concerning good verse, according to Milton, his priorities looking more like [1] Matter, [2] Meter, [3] Metaphor. That’s just good poetry. Period.

Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime not have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a think of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings–a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.

[jump in]

From here, I’ll make one more note. Pandaemonium, the place of “all demons,” seems to be Milton’s parallel to the pantheon, the place of “all gods.” Aside from being brilliant, we’ve grown to use the same word for chaos in general, for saying “all hell broke loose.” Apparently, that’s exactly what happens in book four–”came not all hell broke loose.” Of course, I’m not there yet. From here I’ll take quotes, assuming you have your copy of Paradise Lost handy.

“Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song…” Milton calls us upon the muse like the great epic poem writers before him, but he defines the muse as a different one, as the Holy Spirit himself who inspired Moses on Sinai and who wrote the Torah. Brilliant way to begin if you ask me.

“Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit
of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
That with no middle flight… 

The middle flight certainly evokes imagery of Apollo’s son who would scorch the earth if he flew too low or rouse the monsters of the over world if he flew too high, either way risking death. But the middle way, the way of the sun across the course of the sky, brings life to the world and rhythm to the heavens. I’d also mention Icarus who flew too high and melted his wings. This imagery Milton applies to Torah, to the way, the path of the people of God.

[jump in]

“Assert eternal providence/and justify the ways of God to men.”

“Fall off from their Creator…”

“His doom reserved him for more wrath…”

As in the feeling of torture? I’m reminded of the scene where Captain Malcolm Reynolds is being tortured and the Russian-like villain says, “I don’t like it when you die. If you die, I can’t hurt you anymore and I want at least three days with you.” Eeesh. No thanks.

“No light, but rather darkness visible.”

“Courage to never submit or yield”

“To wage by force or guile eternal war.”

In the excess of joy sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven.

Put this one in quote blocks because of how it hit me. Joy as tyranny. It’s the foulest creature that would twist such a thing, that would manipulate it at all. To think of joy in those terms reworks the pecking order of virtue into something wholly vice. Those who would write off Milton’s philosophy and theology must reconcile themselves with their own desire not only to be happy, but to experience the flavor and quality of happiness rooted not in temporal salves of the moment, nor in passing pleasure, but in the infinite depth of something beyond the our very selves, of happiness tethered to another otherworldly source. To take that hope, the hope of unending pleasure, and call it tyranny is to immediately villanize yourself against yourself.

“The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

“To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

“Made them to transform / Oft to the image of a brute, adorned / With gay religions full of pomp and gold, / and devils to adore for deities;”

The concept that pagan deities are really demons in disguise is an idea seen everywhere, and not just everywhere in theology. We get that impression with mythological studies and stories like Sandman, Kingkiller and a Song of Ice and Fire. Of course I would diverge at that point and talk about God as separate, dissecting, non-localized, over all. Several things set the biblical narrative apart from mythology–sepcifically the resurrection texts, but I also think Milton’s onto something here of Devils to adore for deities. I’ve seen the places of barter where Faustian deals go down all over the planet, where people sell their souls for treats and participate in acts they try to pass off as worship. I suppose it is, but their prayers do not lift up as you might expect. They descend to the depths. Of these Milton lists out Moloch, Chemos, Baalim, Ashtaroth, the male & female and transgender forms the demonic take, of Astoreth, Thammur, Dago, Rimmon, Osiris, Isis, Orus, Belial, Ionian gods, gods “yet to be confessed later than heaven and earth,” their boasted parent ‘Titan,’ his firstborn Saturn, Jove, Azazel on Lucifer’s right, Mammon, Belus, Seraps, Mulciber, etc…

“Their glory withered as with heaven’s fire / hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.”

“A summer’s day and with the setting sun / dropt from the zenith, like a falling star.”

“They but now who seemed / in bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons, / now less than smallest dwarves.”

Main Course: What They Care About

After watching this:

I learned several things from John Rogers and disagreed with him at points. Before I critique, I’d like to say that I’m grateful to Yale for posting these lectures for free online. I’ve never met John so I’ll try to employ the sort of academic courtesy that I expect from my readers here.

Things I learned from the lecture:

• “protestation of delay” - Milton was long-chosing and beginning late. Late because it’s too late in history (and life) for this to be a political epic like Virgil. It’s too late as well for epic poems. Milton defends lateness by going back as far as he can, by pushing a first-ness that breaks his iambic form, his heritage of Beowulf, Dante, Homer and Virgil as well as the record of Scripture itself–of what came before “In the beginning…” John calls this “poetic disobedience,” a strategy of “retrospective anticipation.” In other words, Milton in subject and form forces us to wait for the fall, to wait even for the fall of demons as he unfolds the story.
• introduction of enjambment and double-syntax – Milton broke the forms of his day not only by eliminating rhyme but by forcing the lines to blend into one another. Three out of Five lines are enjambed in Paradise Lost, creating long flowing sentences broken up into several lines. “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree…” Does fruit read like a figurative thing, “the fruit of disobedience,” or like a literal thing, “the fruit of that forbidden tree” ? Both. This double-syntax forces us to resist forward progression in the story. Milton forbids us from thinking the story will turn out the way it did, incorporating free choice into a predestined ending.

Things I disagreed with in the lecture:

• Milton calls God a hermaphrodite – This is anachronistic for one, but it’s just bad literary interp. Milton came from a long tradition of theologians since the inception of the church who held that creators are above their creation. Because God created gender (male and female), he sits above gender. God is not both genders but neither genders and therefore we learn about him through both the motherly and the fatherly, attempting to “get at” God. I would not tether this to but rather contrast this with the Baalim and Ashteroth who have transgender and hermaphroditic tendencies. Because of this, Milton was not promoting radical theology but orthodoxy — that God is not a sex, but above sex because he created it.
• Milton, because of his hermaphroditic view of God, is an animist – Again, this depends on a flawed assumption that depends on a flawed assumption.
• God is portrayed as having sex with himself – Again, I would say that God is not polysexual but asexual in the purist sense–he created sex, why would he need sex to create?

[jump in]

After all of that rambling, I’m exhausted. Doberman–you were right. This will take some time to digest…

For twenty-six years Senya lived in Russia. “I grew up in Moscow,” he said, “and it’s a huge city. I was born in the Soviet Union.” He remembers enormous lines for loaves of bread, bone-bare shelves in shops and waiting necessities. “You’d come to a shop and one shelf, there would be like… chicken. And on another shelf, there would happen to be soda. So everyone would be buying soda and stand in line for it. Your neighbor would come home and say, ‘Hey! There’s fish today!’ And you would rush to the shop and try to get the fish before all the other people.”

Senya, like many internationals, found himself overwhelmed with the American idea of choice. I mentioned how our brain shuts down for a moment when confronted with excess choices. This didn’t surprise him. “You can buy anything here. I was surprised, but you can buy egg-crackers, potato-eyers, avocado-peelers, apple-core-extractors, there’s a tool for everything, as if you couldn’t use a spoon or a knife. There’s a turkey-baster, but back then we didn’t have basic needs. You had to always ask, ‘Where are they selling chicken? Where are they selling fish? Is it fresh?’”

I quoted Stephen King: “My generation could have changed the world, but we opted for the Home Shopping Network.”

Senya chuckled. “One cannot live without a banana-hanger. Where would you put your bananas?”

In Moscow, they had no supermarkets, no businesses. Everything was state-owned—there was nowhere to take a date. The cinema ran Soviet films. A few were good, but most were terrible. Senya did speak with pride about the real theaters and their plays. But in spite of the theater, he remembers a gray Moscow, never renovated and lathered with dust. Dust cakes his memory, a gray, hollow town. Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles came up, of life after extinction on Mars and the humans who stumbled upon the ruins of civilization—that’s how Senya remembers the Soviet Union. “You were not supposed to look attractive. You were supposed to wear standard, dusty gray like a functional cell of this huge society. Your purpose was to be obedient and efficient, not original or interactive.”

Propaganda covered everything, but Senya also remembers an underground culture, people who listened to The Beatles, hippies who wore jeans and grew long hair, who protested their oppressors. Had he been a teenager, Senya thinks he would have joined them. This reminded me of the movie Pirate Radio with Philip Seymour Hoffman where Britain banned pop music. People bought ships and broadcasted radio into Britain from international waters. “In the Soviet Union, there was a radio called ‘Freedom,’ where you could get all of the jazz and rock and Beatles and Rolling Stones.” Sometimes Hollywood gives the impression that the Russians only just discovered rock-n-roll.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, freedom came too hard, too fast. Underground movements flourished, but so did mob bosses who became something like the Fat Cats of the 1920s—rich men manipulating government to make money. Famine followed. Profiteers rather than public servants controlled Russia. People would buy up cheap goods in Europe and resell them in Russia, much like China and America today.

After that, Putin came to power and cast out tycoons. Some fled, some went to prison, some submitted. Ten years later, everything is controlled by a system similar to the former Soviet Union. Russia appears free, but under the façade sits a hungry oppressor. During current Occupy Moscow protests, Putin organized anti-protests, bribing supporters.

When he came to America, Senya expected certain things. His first visit in 2007 cast a positive image on the United States. He liked the people, the way the cities thrived. “I thought I could feel this freedom and diversity. This civilized way of organizing society. It looked to me like an ideal place.” He cared little for politics then. The consequences of 9/11 had yet to hit him. His impression was that of a world free of prejudice and state control. In Russia, people appear to be recovering from severe trauma. “[Russia] feels like an ailing society, an ill society. Here I saw something completely different. A freedom. People seemed to be living the lives they chose.”

In Russia, many people are passive about their lives. “Do you love your wife? Not really. Will you spend the rest of your life with her? Yeah. Why? I dunno. It just happened. Because everybody does it. That’s the way a lot of things are in Russia, at least how I perceive them. It’s a land of people to whom things happen. They don’t make them happen. And then they complain.” Here he had found something entirely different.

A few years later, Senya awoke to the political situation, of how America interfered in the Middle East, “this aggressive lifestyle of imposing your values and trying to pass it off as helping people.” He saw a film on human trafficking and heard this phrase: We have spent for instance fifty dollars on every Iraqi citizen to make them free and happy. The film used this as a plea to redirect finances. “The idea that the whole thing was about helping people in Iraq is ridiculous. In politics, things never happen because someone wants to help. It’s about control, power, profits. When you try to gain control of something and gain a profit, and then try and make out like you did it for the happiness of those people you took control of, that’s hypocrisy.” That aggression made him wary for his second visit.

In this same vein, he mentioned the film Wag the Dog where a media mogul, after an order from the White House, invents an imaginary war to distract people from politicians. A bright marketing agent diverts attention from Washington to this imaginary war.

In Russia, every time Putin becomes unpopular and needs to boost his image, there will be a terrorist attack all of the sudden and he will be on top of it, fighting terrorist, keeping orders [sic]. People who study politics say that his ratings rise after every attack. Right now he’s not very popular. Are we going to have another terrorist attack? Are we going to have terrorists from Georgia or Armenia this time?

There was a bombing of the metro system in Moscow. A lot of people died. I’m still afraid of going somewhere by Metro. In the news, they said it was a terrorist attack, but nobody ever got any… Terrorists want to make it known, to claim it. No one received a video. There were no messages from the terrorists and no terrorists were found. No one knows what happened. I’m not saying special services organized that, but it’s quite possible.

People here want democracy exported to Iraq. Senya finds this absurd. The Soviets exported their doctrine on surrounding countries. When he first came to the United States, he had no idea how aggressively America tries to export their culture. “Now that I see it is going on, it’s similar to what the Soviet Union was trying to do. They were trying to export communism. They were trying to export atheism. Their actual aim was not to help people but to gain control of as much as they can.”

A few days ago he saw a job offer for a Russian to work for the American embassy in Ukraine. The job was seasonal because of Ukraine’s upcoming election. The American embassy is promoting one of the parties—they openly admitted this in the offer. They hire Russians to work Ukraine, to influence public opinion. Senya qualified for this job.

“Fulbright—what is that about? Their actual aim is to impress us, to show us how wonderful the country is and they want us to go back to our countries—Russians, Chinese, Europeans, South Americans—to tell how wonderful America is.” When he first came to the States, they told him his mission was to expose Americans to his culture and then export American culture. He’s supposed to go back to Russia and tell his friends how in America, everyone is free. In America, everyone is equal and it’s justice for all. He experienced something different. They’ve asked him to stay in touch with the embassy and offer him jobs like the one in Ukraine. He’s now “privileged” because he’s “one of the Fulbrights.” They intend on using him as an asset. “I know the president of Chili is a Fulbright scholar,” he said.

A few weeks ago, he walked into a classroom. “It was a flashback to the Soviet Union. For children and adolescents, they had special youth groups they had to belong to. These groups brainwashed them and forced them to praise Stalin and Lenin.” If you refused, you would be put into a concentration camp. The school in Joplin reminded him of that. He walked in and they were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. “I asked the teacher, ‘Is it alright if someone doesn’t want to recite The Pledge?’ And she said, ‘Why would not someone want to recited the pledge?!’”

Most countries use oppression and propaganda, countries where the political situation is worse. Here, Senya found hypocrisy. The government tries to make out “as if there’s justice and freedom and liberty for all and everybody’s equal. That’s what they told us at Fulbright—‘You are the chosen ones. You have this opportunity to come to the land of democracy and freedom. You have a mission: you are going to represent your country in the best country in the world.’” He finds it stranger that people support horrible medical, education and political systems, comparing the support to brainwashing in China. His friend in Kansas City had cancer and had to pay for it out of pocket—but people support that system. “They’re okay paying tax to support the military, but won’t pay for universal healthcare? For education for all?”

One of the things that impressed him here was that the rights of certain people are protected. He’s still impressed by the way disabled people are treated. Disabled people in Russia terrify him. People here get decent pensions. People are not afraid of retiring here. If you’re disabled in Russia, you have no life at all. More than this, he loves how certain people defend their rights.

In addition, he met great friends and started building deeper friendships. And maybe that’s where goodness, honesty and integrity starts anyway.

for Doberman
and, as always, for Kiddo

I

“We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price…

We get our bread at the risk of our lives
because of the sword in the desert…

Our skin is hot as an oven,
feverish from hunger…

Young men toil at the millstones;
boys stagger under loads of wood.
The elders are gone from the city gate;
the young men have stopped their music.”

                                    – Jeremiah, 6^th Century B.C.

One: The Invocation

Fill up my lungs this one last time to tell
of what we lost, of what weak life we choose
when we invest in ads despite my tale—
make full my heart from heaven, holy muse.
Same muse who there on Sinai, Olive’s mount,
through him on Patmos, then your Bread Street kid,
infused a picture of the world in mint
condition (notwithstanding kings and cads).

I see a planet not so far from now
whose agriculture grows in tiny crocks.
Amerigo’s land of honey, woodland boughs,
becomes a land of soot and dust and rocks.

There in that time, that place without a tiller,
Walks alone a grimy Storyteller…

“What’s your name?”

“Fletch.”

“What’s your full name?”

“Fletcher.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Irwin.”

“What?”

“Irwin Fletcher. People call me Fletch.”

“Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars, go away, and never tell anyone we talked.”

“Is it criminal?”

“Of course.”

“Fair enough. For a thousand dollars I can listen. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to murder me.”

Fletch said, “Sure.”

That’s how Gregory McDonald kicked off the pitch-perfect dialog in his novel Fletch back in 1974. Fletch is a jerk, an absolute pain to everyone he meets because he only cares about the story. He’s not a detective, he’s an investigative journalist and he’ll sacrifice anything–two marriages, relationships with employees, even a rich man’s life–for the sake of his column. 

While reading Fletch, I started my trek through dreamland (at Logan K’s recommendation). I’ve followed Lord Morpheus now through Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll’s House and Dream Country. Here’s the thing, it’s not at all what I expected and that’s a very, very good thing. Had it been, I would not have made as many trips to the library last week. Gaiman seems to be toying with me, playing with his prey like some expert swordsman or panther. Unlike many authors that jump off the blocks toward whatever conclusion they seek, Gaiman keeps playing with the idea of the keeper of dreams and nightmares. How does that concept play out for death? For serial killers? For writers? For little girls? What would happen if… and he takes me down another winding trail into ancient England or  another plane of existence.

See I expect offensive banter between Fletch and his feminine coworkers, I expect to laugh. With Morpheus, I don’t know what to expect. Anything anything could come out of the land of dreams. Fletch deals his conflict through dialog, typically without even the courteous attribution of he said or she said. The Lord of Dream takes on Lucifer, serial killers and incarnate raw Desire. Fletch grounds me in the reality of a character that I believe, even now, exists somewhere. The Sandman? He pulls me into an unreality where I’m certain of few things, a place where, like cupid, he asks for another arrow (or bag of sand) to aim at my heart and I fletch one for him. He pulls and lets loose and I find myself pierced.

Looking forward to more of Gaiman and McDonald. One trillion stars out of five. I can recommend the first (Sandman) to any nerd that loves ethically ambiguous fantasy and doesn’t judge a book by its less-than-savory pictures. Keep out of reach of children. I can recommend the second (Fletch) to any adult who loves mystery or witty banter. No theme analysis today, but I’ll toy around with any questions if any of you have read any of those…

Since May 22^nd last year, everyone from Time to the Times, from ASPCA to FEMA, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street has said something about the events surrounding the tornado. Most of the people talking about the events got here a few days too late. The way my professor taught it, investigative journalism is supposed to… y’know… investigate what really happened. Though I’m no journalist, I’d like to tell you the truth about how our city set the pace for fast recovery.

By “fast recovery” I mean our people hopped to work long before any aid agency set up shop in Jasper County. Those of us able to fog a mirror and flex a bicep tossed rubble out of the way, dug out the trapped, the injured and the deceased.

Groups of like-minded or like-skilled individuals roamed the city with the tools of their various trades. I saw a chainsaw army (chainsarmy?), a group of techs and student nurses, groups of men on ATVs and farmers wielding what appeared to be machines of war but turned out to be these old things called “tractors.” Rain didn’t stop us. Neither did the demonic lightning that burned down several houses and killed a poor police officer that was directing traffic. In some places, the public workers were still in shock and refused to let us through. In other places, they knew our working relationship with the city, how every year we band together to serve Joplin, clean up her streets, visit her nursing homes, paint her dilapidated houses and otherwise tend to her wounds. Who’s the ‘we’ ?

People of faith.

Before you hit ctrl-W and close out the window, let me explain. I know some who read this blog became anarchists because some religious wingnut blasted a bullhorn in your face. Others are atheists because of the harsh words and violent discipline of a hard father. Still others abhor the systemic evil of those who enable perverted religious leaders. Some hate the church, others tolerate her for extended family but privately think the concept thing a social construct. I could go on and on, but the point is nearly everyone reading this has been wounded by some religious person, often by the church. Me too. I understand, I sympathize and I’m sorry for whoever hurt you. Truly sorry. You’ve no idea how sorry I am…

As the Bard said, therein lies the rub: I’d be lying if I said the majority of the help came from somewhere else. I’d be lying if I said, “we couldn’t have done it without [insert name of governmental or humanitarian organization].” We could have managed. Don’t get me wrong, I think all of the humanitarian non-profits lent guidance, experience and administration to our rag-tag team of volunteers. We’re all grateful for that, our gratitude continues even into this next year. But I think, for once, we all see one city that could have managed.

This doesn’t surprise me. I have friends from Joplin serving in Haiti before, during and still long after the earthquake. I have other friends serving in Japan before, during and still long after the tsunami. Others served in New York before, during and still long after 9/11. Still others served in Afghanistan before, during and still long after the death of Bin Laden. The list goes on. None of these people are military personnel. None of them work for humanitarian organizations. They are simple people of faith who pick up their neighbor’s sticks when the wind blows them down. Why? Because they believe greater things are still to be done in whatever city they find themselves in.

I once rode south along with the white vans, first to New Orleans after Katrina and then to Galvaston. Countless stories of these disaster road trips exist, but in some ways Joplin works like a hub for such activity. Joplin remains one of the great secrets of the Middle West neither for its size nor attractions but for its network and heart. You could explain the flurry of activity last May by saying the tornado smashed a beehive where disaster volunteers live or send kids to school.

I need to define “church” and “people of faith.” Days after the tornado, some publication posted a list of church services. We joke about how some intersections in Joplin host worship centers on three out of four corners. Yes, that’s excessive, but it illustrates the displacement when the tornado wiped out a dozen church buildings. A Baptist church met with the Catholics. A Presbyterian church met with the Pentecostals. A Methodist church met in Ozark Christian College’s chapel. The list went on ad nauseam of people united over simple faith and a common antagonist. In Joplin, lines and schisms faded. In Joplin, people banded together on an idea their ancestors united around long ago: resurrection. They continue to work together, continue to unite themselves under a common banner of faith.

And I do mean unity, not uniformity. I have friends of faith here who started the Occupy Joplin group and friends who hope to vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Some voted for Obama, others cheered on Bush during the last administration. Still others, like me, refuse to register to vote. Some worship with liturgy, some with a capella singing, some with rock, hipster folk, bluegrass and (occasionally) jazz. Carthage (a city next to Joplin) enjoys the presence of thousands of Vietnamese Anglicans every year for some pilgrimage. Why Carthage? Your guess is as good as mine, but those Vietnamese Anglicans pitched in too.

One man called Joplin “a miracle of the human spirit,” but that’s not the way my parents told the tale at bedtime. Whether from the Fae or Narnia or Middle Earth, they always reminded me that miracles come not from humans, but from somewhere or someone else. The miracle that happened in Joplin despite catastrophe was nothing short of divine.

That’s what I saw. The man who denies what he sees with his own eyes has gone insane. Truth is, Joplin showed the world that in some places, people of the faith are neither as divided nor as apathetic as everyone once thought. Ghandi said he’d become a Christian if it weren’t for all the Christians. Nietzsche said he’d believe in the redeemer if his followers lived redeemed lives.

I wish they both could have seen what I saw last year.

Recent Work Miscellany

• “To Prevail or ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flak’” in Hollywood and Vine (article, May/June 2012)
• “Poker in the Pokey” in Poker Pro (article, June 2012)*
• “Stamping the Name” in Encounter (article, May 2012)
• “Choices Make the Man” in Encounter (article, Spring, 2013)
• “The List” in Encounter (article, Spring 2013)
• “Remember My Death” in Encounter (article, Spring 2013)
• for older stuff, see published works and projects under the Writer tab

Also the following recent gigs:

• Line Edits for phenomenal stories by a young fantasy/literary writer (odd combination). He’s afraid of submitting them, I think, but if he does, look out!
• Line Edits on a 17,000-word short (is that still a short?) that a post-apocalyptic writer submitted to Writer’s of the Future.
• Screenplay Story Consult for a guy writing a full-length drama

But my favorite:

• Writing the intro, chapter headings and captions for a photo book with 9art studio. More to develop on that. For now a sampling of 9art’s work:

Go check him out. Seriously.

PS> What are you working on?

PPS> That title’s a Chesterton quote.

Midnight in Paris follows a family who travels to the capital of France for business. One’s a screenwriter who wants to turn novelist. The other’s a brat-princess-daughter of some jerk Tea Party capitalist tycoon. Screenwriter and brat are engaged. Brat wants to do lame tourist things. Screenwriter wants to get in touch with his inner self and the city, as if to accommodate him, changes at Midnight into Paris of another era.

To get it out of the way, I liked the film. Maybe even loved it, I don’t know. I’ll have to see it a second time for that. Some of the imagery struck me, the poetry of filmmakers. At the opening scene, we alternate between shots of the oldest portions of the city and the newest, the ancient street lamps and the Eiffel Tower along switch places with new trees and buildings. Every shot includes something tall and slender, something like a phalanx. Shot-by-shot, the sun sets until, of course, it’s Midnight and we’ve gotten a flavor for Paris, almost a timeless Paris, Paris old and new, Paris as an ideal.

For those that haven’t seen the movie, I won’t ruin where it goes, but I will say there’s a bit of time travel involved and it’s used tactfully, not as some hokey plot device. The main theme they explore is Gilded Ages, which of course I loved since I have spent so much time researching the American “Gilded Age,” 1860-1910. Allen keeps asking the question, is there a Gilded Age? If so, when? If not, what does that mean for us in the present?

The film features writers like Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, painters like Picasso and Dalí, and other artists like Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Luis Brunel, etc. All of them are characterized exactly as we read about them, but watching them interact as regular, everyday people with those character quirks brings them out of isolated history and into the present, forcing us to challenge our own assumptions about masculinity and sex (thus the opening phalanxes) as well as the concept of the past being greater or better or somehow more artistic and purer than the present (thus his alternating shots).

Allen also uses group shots that separate the main character Gil and his fiancé to opposite sides of the screen the few times they share it. At the same time, Allen draws Paul–this know-it-all connoisseur of culture–and Gil’s fiancé together shot-by-shot. This accomplishes more than mere plot points, it helps us to see how out-of-touch with the present Gil really is.

At one point, Gil, the main character says “Screenplays are so much easier than novels.” There’s Allen again, tongue-in-cheek, exposing the pain of his labor. Thanks to the Huckabays for the recommendation.

Anyone else see it?

Hey gang,

Think of this like a love letter from me to you, only less romantic. I save the romance for Kiddo (ask her about the hope chest some time).

Every once in awhile, I host a survey to tweak and hone your experience. This time, I want to hear your voices–all ninety four of them.[i] Or at least as many as we can reasonably summon together. You all follow for different reasons, but which posts strike you? Which ones move you toward conversation? Why do you follow and interact here?

Though this site is first for my business, blogs are not about the author but about the readers. I want to make an enjoyable, dare I say communal, experience here. What do you want more of? What things should we talk about for production? What debates should we have? What’ll you think of next?

Hugs and Kisses,

No, that’s not a typo. Thanks to Logan K. Stewart’s suggestion, I’m now going to take on M.I.T. at the same time as my Harvard Classics readings. Basically, there’s a list of classes:

What I mean is I have inched toward this post without warning of its approach for years. In Southern Illinois, as is the case in other parts of the world where they don’t junk cars but “let ‘em rust down,” high school morons hill hop. Hill hopping fits onto the roster of hick track and field, those games that need “don’t try this at home” stickers. Young sixteen-year old men (and women on the coasts) rev up their car engines and catapult over hilltops on country roads, daring other cars to meet them head-on. Thing is, not all other cars are chicken–some just play chicken. Another dozen teens will die this year meeting unseen cars while hopping hills.

Somewhere between hill hopping and unicorns lies this post. No one can catch a unicorn. Unicorns find you. No one expects to die hopping a hill in a Pontiac, but it happens. I’m blindsided by this post because for the last seven years, in the midst of all of my other writing, I have worked on my world of Gergia. No other novel existed–only Gergian books and notes and maps. If Rowling and Rothfuss can work on one series, win a writer’s contest and instantly publish a best seller, anyone can, right? That’s what I thought anyway, and so I pushed off all other projects — twenty novel ideas, dozens of short story ideas, screenplays, journalistic things — for THE SERIES.

The last few weeks, my writing slowed and stalled. I… Was… Crawling… Through… Sentences. It was block in the proper sense of the word–my discipline was trying to force words like water through a clogged toilet. I stalled at the 52,000th word. I would rework scenes, attack the story from another angle and stop at the same place. Another angle, more resistance. It was like trying to chop down a cherry tree with a brand new axe WHILE circling the tree like a foe from some spaghetti western. Only the tree was no bringer of cherries. It was this colossal inbred monster of its cedar mother and redwood father. My axe also turned out to be a cheap camp hatchet.

Something happened this weekend that changed all of that. This week I was armed with an axe and a maul…

In college, I prided myself on being able to pack up everything I owned in the trunk of my Ford Escort ZX2 and leave. Part of this was immature flightiness that knew nothing about sitting and staying in relationships. Part of this was a healthy, eremitic love for all things simple. Simplicity, more than any other thing, heals my soul. A week away in the woods, a retreat on the rock banks of current river with a sleeping bag and nothing but a tarp to keep off the rain or a road trip–OH THE ROAD TRIPS– with my best friend all clear my head.

Then I became an adult which meant I traded depression for anxiety, wonder for worry and simplicity for overcomplicating and burdening everything under excessive subtext. I made THE SERIES the heart of my career. I made THE SERIES this ambiguous goal–maybe if I published it the naysayers of my dream would grovel in submission and respect me. Thing is, disrespectful people always wait on the sidelines to drag you into the dregs of their own unfulfilled lives.

Why live to impress unimpressive souls?

Because of those gigantic expectations on myself, I continued to put deadlines out into the future for my impressive beta readers. Some have never seen anything. Others have read various versions of various volumes of THE SERIES. I think of all of their faces when I write yet another draft.

Hundreds of thousands of words and chapters and story events later, Kiddo and I quit Facebook again. This time was different because we added “no TV” to the list. I also picked up a couple more pen pals in the process. Then we heard a good friend give a talk on overpacking and on adaptation and simplicity. My mind drifted back…

I’m nineteen and riding in my best friend’s car to U of I. He shares Denison Witmer, Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Andrew Bird and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with me. I think deep thoughts. We take pictures and manipulate them with Photoshop. We make cd’s of with a bunch of amateurs, wielding acoustic guitars and ukes and banjos to raise money for charity. Some guy is brewing his own beer. Philosophy debates ensue. I discover Indian Curry and those cremated trees called “books.”

Flashforward to May 13th. I chose to pack light and leave my copies of Night Watch, Drawing of the Three, Danse Macabre, Dune, Letters to Malcolm at home. I packed my journal and Paradise Lost and headed to St. Louis. I had read the intro to Gunslinger the prior week, about how King was nineteen but wasn’t ready to write The Dark Tower. Then I read an interview with Brandon Sanderson about how he wasn’t ready to write his books. Then Rothfuss’ continual reprimand of anyone trying to use him as a role model. Then Gaiman’s campaign to get writers to fill out a will. Then Martin’s comparison of ASOIAF to tackling a gorilla. Then an interview with Felicia Day about how creating a solid character covers a multitude of authorial sins. A friend reminded me of Tolkien’s sedentary career, another suggested i back up 10,000 words, another continually told me how I will write ten novels before one gets published–I scoffed at all three and moved on.

Then, like an archetypical coup de grace, I read Gaiman’s interview of King and come across this thing King said:

I never thought of myself as a horror writer. That’s what other people think. And I never said jack sh*t about it. Tabby came from nothing, I came from nothing, we were terrified that they would take this thing away from us. So if the people wanted to say “You’re this”, as long as the books sold, that was fine. I thought, I am going to zip my lip and write what I wanted to write…

I was down here in the supermarket, and this old woman comes around the corner this old woman – obviously one of the kind of women who says whatever is on her brain. She said, ‘I know who you are, you are the horror writer. I don’t read anything that you do, but I respect your right to do it. I just like things more genuine, like that Shawshank Redemption.’

“And I said, ‘I wrote that’. And she said, ‘No you didn’t’. And she walked off and went on her way.”

King keeps writing whatever he wants, whatever challenges and scares him and gets his heart going. He does this so bravely and broadly that few realize he wrote stories like The Green Mile or Shawshank. Last week, I put the finishing touches on the longest short story I have ever written–10,700 words. My first novel was 83,000 for comparison. Is the story good? I don’t know. I’ve got a hundred rejection letters speared to my baby blue wall upstairs with a standard three-inch pinning nail that says this story is better than the last couple dozen. What matters is this one felt good and I have missed that feeling–the feeling that I was creating something unique and special, something that implies things about life through story themes, things that would not be said if I never put ink to paper.

Pause. Before we go any further in this video game, I need to type in a cheat code. Actually, it’s more like a style code. Cheat codes are things that make you invincible or invisible and give you an edge. Style codes turn on paintball mode for Goldeneye–you can still shoot people, but blotches of Technicolor paint fill the walls rather than bullet holes. In King’s world and in Lee’s and even the fictional Forrester’s, a writer could type up the only copy of their manuscript on their Smith Corona and ship it off to the publisher. Few knew King’s face until that American Express commercial. Once in print, they could hide from the world and write a book every two years or so. That world died with the birth of the Internets. I own four Smith-Coronas, but everyone makes fun of me for using them. Now agents and editors push dumb crap like Klout scores and twitter followers and other rubbish (I use that word in lieu of a rougher word) that mean great things for advertisement and nothing for art. I occupy the rare space where I enjoy blogging now, enjoy interacting with you regulars about reflection, production and debate. However, I know many budding writers who hate this expectation of public presence, writers who prefer a life of obscurity. Online word-of-mouth forces us to have audiences before we deliver, to be public long before we perform. Frankly, that terrifies and annoys me at once. I fear letting you few early followers down. It also annoys me that some of my close friends assume I enjoy having my twenty-five-year-old name in a URL. Don’t get me wrong, I like the stage, but never on that level. In fact, my life will be a success if everyone forgets my name but remembers the story of my life. Premature publicity fits into this game like paintball mode–forcing me to announce my presence to all of the other game players even if I’m merely checking the nuances of my weapon, the rate of fire or just marking my trail to get a feel for the lay of the level. It’s one of the few cheat codes that actually works against you. Unpause.

All of this culminated in a cup of coffee. My body over-reacts to substances forcing me into stricter temperance than most. As I overdo most things, you might my expect hyper-sensitivity to things like energy drinks. All of these unrelated thoughts on simplicity and career and publicity and story collided after being galvanized with a dark cup of Dunkin Donuts joe. I looked up from my seat on the sectional at my in-laws house and whispered to myself: I’m too immature to tackle THE SERIES.

From here, I have no clue where to turn. I assume I will tinker with Gergia as I go, but I have this freeing sense that I could write anything, *ANYTHING* And I will. To my beta readers, thanks for your patience these seven years. You are great friends, and one day there will be a book to prove the fruit of your readings.

In life, like in role playing games, some classes level up slower than others. Football players, like barbs, level up fast and furious (literally) only to peak out around the twenties. Some survive long enough to make it to the NFL, but their career ends with an injury or death or a prismatic wall. Writers, however, are like wizards. They have one trick for the first few levels, blasting that magic missile whenever their party needs a well-timed hail Mary. But then something happens around level ten and they start to call comets down from the heavens. I’m not there, but I feel like I just leveled up and got one more use of magic missile per day. I’ll keep riding this one trick pony until one day in the distant future, I call Hale Bopp down on all your faces.

Ding.

PS> Anyone else level up recently?