Ever watch a fat soprano shatter a wine glass with her voice?

It’s called resonant frequency – the pitch at which something vibrates. Everything has it – the table I’m typing on, the car keys hanging from my carribeaner and the engine block on my car that, judging by the smell of burning rubber, may or may not need a check up.

Friggin’ serpentine belts…

Vocal chords vibrate a column of air to its resonant frequency, allowing the sound to fill your mouth with song and then enter the world by leaving your sound hole. I wonder if musical mothers ever use that phrase in vain? “Shut your sound hole!” If the frequency exiting your sound hole matches the exact resonant frequency of, say, a glass? BUM-CHINSH go shards and wine all over your table.

The glass says “that sounds like me” and explodes in an emotional encounter. Protagonists are the songs we writers sing, the notes that resonate deep in the caverns of our readership’s soul. Each of us is a glass begging to find something that “sounds like me.”

Protagonists come good or bad, evil or righteous, living right or dead wrong. They can be rich or poor, powerful or weak, accepted or rejected. Regardless of looks, they must resonate. They must sound like us often enough that when their story finds the breaking point at climax, we too shatter. Analysts dub that phenomenon “catharsis” – our human desire to discharge emotion in one satisfying purge.

I offer four solid words to describe protagonists: volition, ambition, predisposition, qualification, and fortune.

VOLITION

Does your protagonist have a say in the matter? Does she get another option? Will he have a shot? Do they see two roads diverging in the yellow cliche? Can he find at least one other path illuminated by something, anything – candles even?

Conflict will enter your character’s world if you have good antagonism and when it does, your protagonist faces a long series of limbos. Can they choose their own way? Their choices MUST affect their world or they will not affect your audience. Will-less protagonists ensure the pettiness and frivolity of every scene.

Give yours volition instead.

AMBITION

We know what they want.

Ethan Hunt in MI3, after the inciting incident, wants the safety of his pupil and his wife. Frodo, learning of the ring, wants to get the it as far away from the Shire as possible. Scout wants to learn about Atticus. Noah wants… well… Allie.

Without an ambition, dream, wish, hope, aim, without a cyclopean hankering your audience holds few reasons to cheer them on. Make your character want something obvious.

PREDISPOSITION

Their predispositions, however, might hide.

Many protagonists feel shallow because their authors chose to make their impulses THE EXACT SAME as their desire. Subconscious and Conscious always in agreement?

Really?

The characters we love most are predisposed to something contradictory to their ambition. They want to lose weight, but they’re predisposed to Ghirardelli chocolate. They hope to downgrade America’s debt and earn a killing in stock swings, but feel this impulse to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor. They’ve got a hankerin’ for piracy, but deep down they want a life that matters.

The audience may or may not recognize the subconscious predisposition of your protagonist, but they will by the time the story’s told. Is Luke good or bad? Will Harry do what’s right or what’s easy? Does Daniel Plainview pull himself together? Their choices show what they’re predisposed to do, and whether they will stick with that predisposition or change.

QUALIFICATION

In Stranger Than Fiction, we want Harold Crick to find his author and tell her off. Conflict: the receptionist at the friggin’ publishing house thinks Harold’s crazy and refuses to give him information. Harold’s in limbo. What can he do?

His options are:

(A) quit and accept his fate or
(2) find a way to contact his author.

Pause.

What does Harold do for a living?

If you answered “audit people for the IRS,” you win. Harold has little available to him. His handful of skills lounge deep inside the giant white hall of filing cabinets. Here’s his choice: risk going to jail for fraud or risk dying. Both end negative for him, which makes a great dilemma, and therefore a great turning point.

BUT that whole scene could never happen if Harold had zero resources at his disposal to track down that chain-smoking hermit. With the right qualifications, Harold at least has the ability to chase after the thing he wants. He might fail miserably and get hit by a bus, but at least he can try.

Why?

Because he’s qualified.

FORTUNE

Fortune smiles on all of us at least once. I don’t mean something like “luck” or even “chance” but more like “opportunity.” Even if but for one shining ecstatic moment we see our window open, we all get a chance.

We can always botch it.

Miss our shot.

“Do not miss ya chance ta blow, this opportunity…” Okay, sorry. First and last time I quote Eminem on here. The whole movie, novel, comic or oral tradition could be a complicated series of opportunities or one blistering solitary moment of chance, but your protagonist needs the good fortune of an opening. A window. A turn to play her cards.

There you have it: volition, ambition, potential predisposition, qualification and fortune. I could have said will, desire, impulse, skill and chance, but I would have missed my one blistering moment to use Latin-influenced words.

“It was felling…”

Stop.

When ripped from mommy-context’s grasp, this creates double entendre, piggybacking on what came before. We could say, “A man waiting to die was felling.” Lumberjacks fell trees, but a felling is the amount of wood they fell in a given season. If double entendre, then he used “fell” verbally – to chop down. “The broken tree” is one meaning of the Ademic Maedre, Kvothe’s other name.

“It was felling night…” could mean “nightfall,” glancing backward to the heavy-handed Nigreddo prologue. By “heavy-handed” I mean both references of night, both mentions of darkness, both tributes to autumn and other words like hollow, trouble, heavy, sullen, rough, black stone hearth, mahogany, oh and all four mentions of death: autumn’s ending, cut-flower, dead fire and the explicit “man who is waiting to die.”

But we receive the intro in ALL CAPS leaving mere context clues for upfront meaning.

“IT WAS FELLING NIGHT and the usual crowd had gathered at the Waystone Inn.”

Sounds like a normal day of the week: “it was Thursday night and the usual…” A few years passed since most read Name o/t Wind, so here’s the days of the span:

1. Luten
2. Shuden
3. Theden
4. Feochen
5. Orden
6. Hepten
7. Chaen
8. Felling
9. Reaving
10. Cendling
11. Mourning

The Goodreads thread on the days of the span notes that a lot of these come from the religious mythology of the world – the span for days where Tehlu pursues Encanis. From Trapis’ mouth:

Encanis was now hard pressed and bent his whole thought on escape. But on the eighth day Tehlu did not pause to sleep or eat. And thus it was that at the end of Felling Tehlu caught Encanis. He leaped on the demon and struck him with his forge hammer. Encanis fell like a stone, but Tehlu’s hammer shattered and lay in the dust of the road.

Felling was so named for the felling of the demon (and maybe even the hammer fall or that night fell when Tehlu caught Encanis). We now have nightfall, felling trees or felling demons. What’s sawdust and cosmic warfare to do with alchemy?

The truncated tree symbolizes the dismemberment phase of the Nigreddo dissolution. Translation: if you hear something yell “TIMBER!” in the book, it might point to someone getting his arms chopped off – the symbol of turning solid things liquid. Kvothe has a hard exterior. We meet a jaded, tired, world-wary Kvothe that must break free of his body and release his spirit. Solve et coagula from the Greek manuscript Maria Prophetissa became one of the great sayings of their alchemists: dissolve and coagulate. In other words, give the spirit a body and the body a spirit. Let man become unlike beasts (soulless and hardened) and unlike demons (bodiless and ethereal), but instead become human. Kvothe’s hard. He needs a wake up call, a good swift kick in the… trunk, the truncated tree trunk – parallel to lopping off his arms and legs.

Mylius’s Bascilica Philosophical shows the felling of a huge tree by an axe. Splendor Solis by Trismosin has two images of the truncated tree alongside its fifth treatise. Often in these texts, the dissolving of the philosopher’s stone (the vessel or protagonist) looks like a rotting oak, a “broken tree.” Consistent with the pattern of torture found early on in alchemy books, the fallen tree joins a growing list of symbols of brokenness and shattering during the black work. These include chopping off the paws of the lion, eviscerating the bird and tormenting Mercurius.

The tree, however, most often looks like the philosophical tree. Representing the whole opus alchemicum, the philosophical tree often sprouts the growth of gold and matures the philosopher’s stone (the protagonist). Growth and substance go with the tree as it develops the raw stuff into the good stuff – common lead into holy gold.

Types of trees include a tiny plant, ancient oaks, world trees, the arbor inversia, Atlanta fugiens, the tree growing inside earth’s crust, the tree of sun and moon (second most popular), and of course the cross on which Jesus died – cursed be anyone who hangs on a tree.

Whatever the case, that we start on Felling night of all nights shows them there demons’re needin’ stilled, dross needs purged and a hard exterior needs softened. Bloodshed and lamentation will soon arrive and there’s s good chance the philosopher’s stone, the protagonist vessel named Kvothe, will have scars before we’re through…

PS> Read the disclaimer before you chop down the trees in my yard.

Sources: Lyndy Abraham‘s truncated tree, philosophical tree, dissolution, and Nigreddo entries.

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1. Rothfuss mentioned in his bio that he dabbles with Alchemy in his basement. That means one of three things. He could mean that he often attempts to turn Pb into Au through metallurgy. If so, he’s avoiding the question – much like the witty “I stand exactly 10,000 feet tall” – as the grammar of chemistry does not translate into the grammar of Alchemy.

He could also mean he practices neo-gnostic esoteric alchemy in hopes to purify his soul and reach enlightenment. Though that crops up in cities like Seattle and New Orleans, I doubt Rothfuss cares much since he’s a staunch ethical relativist, inconsistent as that may seem with his more-than-relative stances and statements.

The third “dabble in Alchemy” nods toward literary alchemy. I say “nods” because, like many other PoMo writers, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. If he mentions his alchemy dabbling literarily, then alchemical symbols do not hide under ever rock and draccus cave. I write with that assumption FOR EVERY SINGLE POST. I have no clue which symbols he intended, but the beauty of writing shows up when author exposes a theme and reader applies insight in myriad ways. Interpretation looks neither like reader’s response or author’s intent, but a dance between their telepathic bond. That said, we’re searching for alchemical potentials and their potential implications, nothing more, nothing less.

2. Literary Alchemy boasts a rich history across religious and existential borders, but the majority of texts in the alchemical cannon come from Christian tradition. I do not think this gives us just cause to assume that Stephanie Meyer or Susanne Collins were talking about Jesus. We need honesty on both sides of my readership and dialog about Kingkiller. Yes, alchemy has a rich history from writers who tried to follow Jesus. No, that does not mean every writer using alchemy cares about that. To get at meaning, I will look to rich Alchemical history, but Rothfuss cannot mean all of it. If you don’t notice his appeal to the Knights Templar, the crusades, and the need to get away from giant, institutional religious systems then you’re not paying attention.

3. I apologize beforehand to my consistent readership. I hate it when careless people spoil things for me, and hate spoiling things for others. I know from past surveys that you enjoy full posts in your email subscriptions that eventually condense on my home page. Unfortunately for some of these, the “continue reading” tab is the only way to protect Kingkiller virgins. (How’s that for a novel name, eh? KINGKILLER VIRGINS).

4. I encourage you to reread the series along with me. You guys will notice everything I miss.

5. Reread the Kingkiller Alchemy post to get a brief overview.

6. I could arrange and pace this reread several ways, but I will track word-by-word. When, in the middle of the reading, I come across a potential alchemical symbol, I will stop and break down that word. This slow meandering helps because it airs out every potential, but hurts because, as I said, alchemical symbolism cannot be found through every door of stone. He could mean all or none or some of it.

7. Please comment. Dialog and discussion is the best way to reform thought, and I am most certainly wrong on many points. Acquiring the right position isn’t learning. Learning is a posture of observation that notices how often you were mistaken. That’s the biggest problem with internet hypothesis – there’s neither the time, space, or readership for copious footnotes.

There’s no room for certainty in academia, let alone on a blog. I start this reread assuming I know nothing. If I make a definitive statement, it’s because I forgot to phrase my answer in the form of a question.

This is Jeopardy, in other words, not Wheel of Fortune. There will be no fill-in-the-blank.

See you all at 5pm EST, 4pm CST tomorrow for the first Kingkiller “Fantastic Point of Ignorance.”

Take Hecataeus:

He’s missing a couple two or three continents. His world is all he sees.

Then there’s the holy land maps where East is up, thanks to the rising of the sun and the placement of the sea:

There’s the Jerusalem at center:

or at the top:

Pre-Columbus, when they thought that no one lived outside of Eurasia:

The 1650s, killing indigenous people:

(I tried to look up a map from the perspective of Native Americans, but couldn’t turn one up, perhaps because they didn’t need a map to tell them who they were, where they were from, what bits of the map to fill in).

1900s (even more of the same) with Chicago bursting:

And for some reason we keep dividing off the world anyway, drawing imaginary lines over the shapes of landmasses that really do connect. North and South America connect. Africa, Europe, Asia – they connect.

In spite of that, here’s the cold war:

USA Military Presence:

The first stepping stone of “the Final Frontier”:

The classroom-friendly “political borders” map (which continues to change):

People thought having America on the left and Britain in the middle was ethnocentric, so they made an Asia-left map:

Which is stupid because loads of people on that side of the map read right-to-left. If you want Asia (or China) center, make Asia (or China) center:

Of course Americans reacted to that (and to Brits saying “Britain’s at the center of all your maps”) :

The kiwi’s might be responsible for the south-up map:

And we continue to show how we think about the world, to paint our pictures of us:

With that in mind, here’s one map of the fantasy world, Gergia. I’ll have a novel out some day in the future that takes place in Gergia. You pronounce both G’s like the d-j combo in the word “adjective.” Djerdjia – a soft soft soft J+G on both sides:

So next time you look at maps, ask yourself:

1. What’s center?
2. Are there borders? If so, where?
3. Where are the time zones?
4. What’s missing?
5. What’s written on it?
6. Are there pictures?And most importantly:
7. Why?

Our maps seldom show us where things are as much as they show us who we are.

Hard chairs seldom occupy our living rooms and dens. They hide out in libraries, coffee shops, and offices. In the hard chair, we dig through slush piles of info, hoping to find diamonds in the rough. In the hard chair, we prep for the soft chairs.

Here’s the thing: I used to believe in writer’s block. Then Rothfuss said, “Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block,” and I started to think, “Well yeah, but…”

Aspiring writers say, “I have nothing to write about.” Maxwell recounts how people come up to him declaring their aspirations to write. He asks them what they’ve written and they typically answer, “nothing yet, but I’ve got a lot of ideas.” Maxwell’s response?

Writers write. Painters paint. Leaders lead. You want to be a writer? Then write.

Yeah, but what about? Whether from fear of jump-starting a career or from “writer’s block,” writers eventually have nothing to write about. They have nothing to say. Research heals that festering wound. Three worlds give us material and we’ve got to travel to all three to get good research. We have to hit the books, dream it up and reminisce.

The World Out There

Hit the books.

In textbooks, novels, historical picture books, antique stories, the lives of tradesmen, and Wikipedia (among many other things), untold worlds and countless crafts sit like orphans in a foster home waiting for you to adopt them. Marinate in the minds of the greats, immerse in their potage of postulation, let different worlds of different people wash over you – specifically those that intersect with your novel. Reading engages the writer’s mind with the minds of others.

When I’m home for the holidays, I always eat at least once at Gary’s Drive in. Gary’s is the typical small-town greasefest that justifies blood work, aspirin and Tums after every visit. They make a sandwich called the Wimpy – you know, the burger-addict from Popeye? Two patties, three slices of cheese, pickle, mustard, mayo if you want it, onions, lettuce, tomato, a small enough bun to fly under the Atkins police radar AND enough grease to disintegrate the brown paper bag and let it all fall out the bottom. That bag is our writer’s block. That Wimpy is our work. The grease? The grease is our research, BUCKETS of literary and conversational research that dissolves our writer’s block, permeates every part of us and breaks our writing free.

For instance: I wanted to write about a character who killed, skinned and cooked a doe. I’ve only witnessed the shooting and tracking parts once in my life. I was blocked without this skinning experience, and nearly turned off my typewriter. Then I remembered my old copy of Country Wisdom and Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live off the Land. Surprise surprise! There’s an article in there on how to kill, skin and cook a deer! Not just that but boar, bear, cougar, rabbits, etc. Add the vegetarian girl into the scene and ACTION!

The World In There

Dream it up.

In terms of thinking, there’s two major groups of people: leapers and steppers. A stepper will say, “I need eggs – so I’ll grab my keys, drive your car, pick them up from May’s, pay for them out of what’s left in the grocery envelope, drive by Doug’s, pick up a couple of DVDs, the mail, and come back at around six thirty.”

Leapers say, “I need eggs and to get Dr. Strangelove.”

To which the Stepper asks, “Who’s Dr. Strangelove?”

“Dr. Strangelove or How I stopped worrying and loved the bomb,” says Leaper, “the movie.”

“What does a movie have to do with the eggs?” asks Stepper.

“I just thought we could watch one,” says Leaper and he traces back his thought pattern from sunny-side-up to Strangelove.

Here’s the myth: only certain people are creative. I’m exposing my philosophical bias, but I believe we were intelligently designed by a creator. Because of that, we’re a part of creation – the part that creates things. This might show up as architecture, technology, painting or prose – but we all make crap and make crap up. If you can fog a mirror, you’re creative.

Imagination reorders the physical world of a writer according to their intuitive willpower. Imagination and creativity are physical. Whether by paint, wood or acorns there’s always a medium for imagination and creativity.

However, creativity takes more effort for some than others. That’s why there’s three realms of research. Hitting the books – finishing books – makes me want to sniff lavender until I’m infertile. For others, dreaming stuff up might make a screwdriver to the temple look pleasant. We need both – the pleasure and the pain of research. I get warm fuzzies from seeing things in a different light. Tax returns worked for Harold Crick.

But don’t think that means he wasn’t creative. I appeal to his “I brought you flours” line.

The World Back Then

Reminisce.

Though tempted to quote the lyrics from the animated Robin Hood, I will refrain. Memory captivates me. Did you know in the Middle Ages they thought memory came from the realm of magic alongside love, faith and the elixir of life? Maybe that’s why Rowling invented the pensive. She is, after all, a medievalist.

From our memories we erect cathedrals, castles and cupcakes. Our memories offer source material for emotions. They catalog moments of rapture or rupture, times of trial and fights or ecstasy and bliss. That’s why people love Anne Lamott’s grade-school lunches prompt. We’ve been there, inside the politics and emotions of trading sandwiches or eating alone.

There’s this scene in my book where a drunk walks in. At first, I thought I had to cut it. It felt disingenuous, but I thought back through my life anyway. Had anyone close to me been consistently, painfully drunk? Do I remember what that feels like? Why yes, several extended-extended family members come to mind. The following emerged:

At that moment, I smelled it on him. I smelled it in him. I smelled it going into him. I smelled it in the air around him before it went in. He had spent years steeping, spent hours that morning bathing in its brine, in its antithesis to saline, as if de-aerating his skin by submerging his insides in it, a potted topsoil plant left to soak beneath it in the dingy depths of a gunmetal sink. In it came, down it went, until his guts were drunk in it, until they traded it for blood, feeding what brawn he had left with it, and the flesh that covered brawn, until even his sweat glands, market-saturated, were forced to cease trade of their customary saltwater and transition to trade with it instead. I will never forget the smell of it. I’d met drunks in the alleyways, but I’d never been tutored by a drunk, his instruction perfuming my clothes with every fetid breath.

Whether I keep even half of that purple prose is irrelevant. The point is investigation and experimentation unstuck me. Research unclogs writer’s block and kicks first-time writers out of the plane.

It’s storyssential.

PS> The #amreading widget shows me sauntering through McKee’s Story. Though I might borrow from him, much of my story essentials come from whatever simmers in the crock pot of my mind. If at the end you’re tempted to say, “what a load of crock,” never fear.

You’re probably right.

Therefore, as a peace offering, here’s something fun:

As a kid, I ingested Houdini biographies like most kids ingest chocolate. As a kid, Houdini snatched up Robert Houdin biographies like most kids snatched up wallets. I found myself taunting my brother to handcuff, shackle and hog tie me to my own bedposts and lock the door just so I could escape through the bedroom window and go wash dishes until he found me again. Houdini contorted himself as often as the manager at The Welsh Circus allowed him to. I practiced card magic, he practiced card magic. In my youthful ignorance, I delved into spiritualism & communicating with the dead. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like… well… you get the picture.

“But Lance, you’re not Houdini! Get over yourself.”

No crap, Sherlock. (You might that joke in a moment). I recount my childhood superhero to show the deep, intimate connection I have with the whole of Eric Weiss’s life, from Hungarian Eric to Harry Houdini. Every bit of this book taught me about myself while it taught me about him. Beyond the straightjackets, metamorphoses and lock picks sits a melancholy choleric pensive who struggled between arrogance and honest ambition, service and secret service all his life. That’s me in a cracked nutshell.

Kalush and Sloman chisel away chunks of historical farces to hew a statue of Houdini both mysterious and masterful – one enlisted as a secret service agent and assassinated by spiritualists. They show Houdini making friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and then unfriending him just as fast. They show his consistent connections with the military, the secret service and the birth of aviation – Harry was, after all, the first to fly in Australia. They argue all of this in hypothetical non-stance that, rather than seeming passive, strengthens their argument. They leave the reader to decide the truth as well as to double check their COPIOUS footnotes for themselves. No wonder there’s a Secret Life of Houdini planned for the silver screen.

I think this marks the first book review on here I didn’t crack the book to write. It just came out. Yes the book’s big – as in 568 single-spaced biography pages big. Yes, sections dragged for me. Didn’t even care. Loved every second of it – even the handful of boring parts.

Five out of Five.

Last week, we grabbed ahold of the hair on Nolan’s career and dragged the whole thing through the filter of film Noir. This week we’ll hypothesize if he’s saying anything about his career through the noir genre. Two quickies:

1. I’m assuming you’ve seen Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception before I start this. I will unapologetically refer to any part of any of those films. Consider yourself alerted
2. Nolan may or may not intend these meanings and we may or may not be able to infer them. I never assume I know all or even most of the answers – only questions, potentialities, hypotheses. At best, we can always wonder.

The first question people ask now is “Why Bane? Why choose Bane of all the villains for the third Batman? Wasn’t Bane like a side-character?”

Yes to the last question. Bane helped out the Penguin. To the second and first questions, we must assume it involves the Nolan’s noir-bias. Granted, Gotham points to noir. Every Batman villain fits the genre, but why Bane for crying out loud?

Well before I can attempt to answer “why Bane?” I must point out that it’s not just Bane. It’s Cat Woman. Talk about femme-fatale! This girl gets Batman into more trouble than she’s worth. Assuming Cat Woman gets him into the trouble, getting him toward Bane, what can we unearth?

Let’s look at the old Dark Knight trailer:

Notice anything?

We meet Harvey Dent, but we see none of his face scars, his insanity, his subplot that drives the last half of the movie. This is a great trailer –enough to stir our hunger but leaving stuff out for the actual show. Harvey didn’t die, did he? It’s been awhile, but I’m thinking he didn’t. Technically, the Joker didn’t either. So they might use Two-Face again…

Forget the subjunctives, what matters is Nolan kept a villain in his back pocket. Why? Because he loves noir and noir never shows us the real face of the real bad guy up front. It shows us in layers, in steps. There’s always something deeper. My guess? There’s something he’s hiding. Either that, or there’s a disappointment ahead for some fans, but I doubt it. It would be his first flop in a currently stunning career.

As for The Prestige, the key line says, “You don’t want to know the secret. You want to be fooled.” If Nolan’s talking about his films, as some assume, then he’s either referring to his fascination with the noir genre or the theme of The Prestige. I lean toward noir, since Borden talks so frequently about making your life the trick. Yes, I’m aware that this one’s based on a novel, but the Nolan brothers picked it and adapted it. They said, “yes” to the film – to taking on the magical apparatus of a story about two twin brothers that switch who goes into the box to set up the trick and who comes out to the applause of audiences. It’s much more fun to watch it over and over than to know he’s pulling from noir tropes to make his trick good. For any good noir is just that: a great trick. You don’t want to know that Angier’s morally ambiguous and will lose himself searching for the answer to the secret. Knowing the secret isn’t the point. You want to be fooled – like Borden the fool. With his last breath before the noose one Borden whispers, “Abracadabra,” and in the next breath, another Borden resurrects. You could say of Nolan “his life is the trick,” the noir trick, that is.

Inception sows the idea that noir changes our mind. Noir helps us deal with regret. The genre faces the hard, merciless facts of life and helps us wind through the labyrinth – an Ariadne that creates and perceives as it goes as we fill in the details. When we reach the cathartic moment – not just in noir but in screenplays in general – we learn the truth about the world and accept (most often) whatever the storyteller gives us, for good or bad. Then we leave the theatre and return to reality changed by the idea. For Nolan, the way to do that is to break down layers upon layers of protection inside an audience member. Christopher and Jonathan choose noir over other genres since it already has layers built in, with paradox and backtracking, cons and confusion. We build our walls up, but they tear them down by taking us into limbo – the absurd irony of most noir endings.

For the Nolan brothers it looks like an amnesiac who’s forcing himself to forget, a magician that has no secret – he’s just a warlock or doppelgänger in disguise, a vigilante good-guy turned bad guy or an extractor practicing inception. Like many noir films, they confuse reality and fantasy at the end, leaving the decision up to the audience.

Based on Chris’ frustration with people thinking the kids were different and based on the absence of Cob’s wedding ring, I believe the ending of Inception to show us Cob’s reality.

However, as a writer I appreciate their choices in an ambiguously absurd finale. They force you to think about their films long after you leave. You can force yourself to forget, you can try to find the secret, you can put up all your defenses, but at the end of the day, you want to be fooled. You want their ideas to change you.

Thoughts?

Their stories moved us because they were theirs.

I refer to the terminus of Mark Scott’s seminar on Self-Disclosure. At that point, Dr. Scott invited us to share our stories – the ones that mattered. Mark received his DMin in the self-disclosure of sermonizers. He calls it “the collective lean-in” – that moment where the audience realizes that the speaker’s sharing something personal, something immanent, something that happened to them. “I was on my way to Vegas. . .” and the audience sets aside their doodles to listen.

But unmitigated disclosure does more harm than good, according to Mark. Things like, “share your scars, not open wounds,” taught us how to leave our current struggles off the stage. Mark compelled us to unbosom our scars, citing ancient texts. One black book under his arm betrays the fruit of his study, its yellow highlights accenting characters who spill the beans.

Psychotherapists listen. People need to share their heart more than they need advice, so counselors help people by letting others feel heard. Sharing, in this context, is caring – especially letting others share.

But disclosure reaches a threshold. Too much disclosure leads to mistrust or even bitterness. Guest speakers make the mistake of laying bare too much on the stage. They sound like arrogant fools or whiny teenagers procuring public self-therapy.

At that point in the seminar, Mark looked out at us and referenced our generation’s disclosure, how we crave it, how often we indulge. With no robust ideology to take the topic further, he said, “I’m dependent on you to teach me. People get online and share everything on blogs, dumping their whole life into status updates. How much is too much in a social networking world?”

He looked at me, and added, “I’m counting on you to teach me.”

Now he probably spaced out to remember prescriptions or groceries. I doubt that he meant Lance Schaubert needed to fill in his gap. Come to think of it, he might have looked at the guy behind me…

I don’t presume to teach Mark Scott anything, teachable as he is. However, I carried his question into my soul and ruminated.

He’s right.

We are in a new age of self-disclosure. . .

Mark Zuckerburg declared in a recent press conference that humanity will double the amount of things they disclose every year from here on out. They call it “Zuckerburg’s Law.” People share more every year. Whether by repins, reddits, reblogs, status updates, hashtags, stumbles or +1’s – people broadcast more and more. Beyond this, more people sign up for clusters of like-minded neighbors we call “social networks.” I find it as simpler to search through my Google Reader than Google itself. All of Google is moving that way. Tumbler and Pinterest orient their layout around visual consumption: people reuse, recycle and never reduce the visual information shared. On Horders, an old lady refuses to throw away napkin notes or artwork from deceased children of random acquaintances. She’s worried that her ideas and information might disappear.

Where to?

Who knows? The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, perhaps? In cyberspace, people share and share and share more, saving previously useless or nonexistent information like blurry outtakes from their sixth family christmas photo-shoot, the recipes regurgitated from a thousand different tweeters and the digital cousin of expired coupon clippings.

Last year Assange released that cablegate of thousands of top-secret documents on WikiLeaks. Initially, he exposed terrible things inside world embassies. In the end, cablegate amounted to little more than watching small children argue back and forth “I know you are, but what am I?” The American government fretted over her mildest offenses, since the cables earned classified and TOP SECRET stamps.

In reality, these sensitive documents had little or nothing to do with time-sensitive incursions or polically-sensitive ubieties and everything to do with over-sensitivity. Our self-conscious society applied makeup indiscriminately, hiding nonexistant blemishes. Think Photoshop.

Under Top Secret’s belly lurk bottom secrets – details that crawl onto Facebook feeds and YouTube playlists. Social security numbers and bank accounts create one kind of concern, but what about poor Charlie who has to grow up in a world that knows he bit his brother hard enough that it really hurt?

Trivial and funny, maybe, but not for Rebekah Black who, in youthful creativity, broadcasted her song about Friday, and by Monday morning discovered thousands of hateful comments and death threats. Hyper-political tweets by pastors (who should be aggressively non-partisan) hurt people during the debt ceiling debate, and in only 140 characters. We find it in the status version of suicide notes, embarrassing photos and the “I wish I’d never’ve said that” comment debates. I might point fingers at the hilarious (and disturbing) DYAC or Failbook, but in the same moment I’d reach across the table to text something my bride said, and she asks, “Please don’t tweet that,” while I say (like a fool), “Take another picture of me!” and “Yes, you can quote me on that.”

Should it surprise us that social network execs believe my sister’s will be the first generation to legally change their names after college just to land a job? We confuse success and greatness, forget heroes and worship celebrities – those bizarre creatures who don’t know a life away from the lens. We streamline regret and not-so-secrets for bottom feeders to comment on and share with their friends-of-friends. Where uncensored umbosoming concerns us, perhaps we aptly title our phenomena as “viral.”

As brother Scott taught, not all disclosure is created equal. There’s harmless disclosure like my tweet on October the 13th, 2011:

About the time I had to power wash the mold out of my crockpot, I realized I had slacked off in my dishwashing oath. #3months

But this crap fills the gaps between our automated updates and instigatory locutions so often that end doing what we do best: cushion our meaning in frivolous language. This questionable disclosure goes out to everyone creating a market either for circles by Google+ and Facebook smart lists or for humor sites like Failbook and DYAC  in hopes to weed out (or exploit) digital peeping Toms. On the other side of that curtain sits George Orwell’s warning, a character from Mark Twain and a list of men and women convicted of capital crime through posts on their Facebook walls.

Mark Scott called these “open wounds.” These tidbits of brutal honesty that catch our humanity shaking red hands with a suffering world. These tidbits trump help with hurt when we share them with 1,133 Facebook friends, 172 Pinterest followers, 294 Twitter followers and 41 blog subscribers. Whatever goodness social networks acheive in revolution, mass group therapy isn’t one.

Awhile ago I wrote about Sherman Alexie’s Facebook Sonnet. There’s this line: “let fame and shame intertwine.” That’s my point in a pithy, linguistic time capsule. Welcome to the new self-disclosure: where top-secret means nothing, celebrity gossip drowns out soul-stirring tales of heroes and the secrets that do thrive, cloy bottom feeders in the end.

of Rodney Skinner’s library:

and of Lord Grantham’s study:

So in the spirit of all of that, I started repinning trinkets like these:

I was wrong.

I misrepresented Inception’s symbolism. Since that post, two bloggers now hold similar views, if they didn’t altogether borrow from me. After my second taste, I think Dante’s Inferno should take a back seat in the interpretation

Nolan’s emphasis on kicks clued me in. That part of the Nolan’s Inferno post stands. In almost every scene, someone changes their mind or tries to change someone else’s mind. In koine Greek, metanoia “change mind” is often translated “repent.” That’s the film: face your inner demons to face your outer demons. Twelve levels compose Cob’s subconscious – twelve memories of regret. That makes twelve things to change, histories to rewrite, regrets to repent from in the deepest parts of his mind.

Architects of dreams in Inception world create and perceive simultaneously. Let’s go with one of the other interpretations: Inception symbolizes all film. “Inception” injects the theme of the movie into the mind of the audience. That’s what stories do. Plato once called for the immediate ejection of all storytellers in Athens out of fear and not boredom. He knew stories threatened his philosophy with alternative ideas. Every storyteller hold an idea they believe and hope to prove unequivocally to you, the audience member. For the sake of argument, call it inception. This question might follow: what’s Inception’s theme? If all storytellers practice inception, then what’s Nolan saying?

Life conquers death when we change our mind about our own regret, even in our old age.

Repentance over our regret takes work, hard work, even dying to ourselves. Most often in the film when people wake up to reality, they’re dying or doing something that could also function as dying. Cob’s first kick immerses him in a bathtub. The whole group could have drowned in the communal baptism via van bridge jump. A building explodes. A knife buries deep into a sternum. A bullet sears through a subconscious. Everytime someone wakes up, there’s death involved, even with Cob. In fact, my original thoughts about Ariadne came close – she leads Cob out of the labyrinth of his own regret. Moll takes on Satanic quality in those moments, especially the “throw yourself down and you will be rescued” scene. Part Judas, part Lucifer, Mal terrified me. Here’s the irony: Cob needed to die to himself to wake up to reality. So did Mal, but she let regret win out and actually died to embody  Cob’s own regret – all twelve floors of it.

I could get into the symbolism of “twelve,” of the freight train, of “the foolish man build his house on sand” scene – towers on the beach and all – but there’s a more important question: if Inferno influences the film in some secondary or subconscious way, why the layers?

Let’s take a look at Nolan’s first work, Doodlebug:

Notice anything? Here’s my checklist:

• Black and white
• 1940’s phone
• 1940’s clock
• time ticking away
• someone calling, we never find out who
• drowning the outside world
• stomp out a “roach”
• layers upon layers of Russian-doll men
• bizarre twilight-zone feel

Why are these important?

Because every single film the Nolans have made feels similar. This short film borrows from classic film noir tropes. We can place all of his work either the neo-noir or the noir category. Film noir typically involves a convoluted plot, some morally ambiguous character (detective or self-made detective), often an amnesiac, caught between corrupt law enforcement and criminals who got into crime as a product of environment. This detectivish character often walks the line between cops and criminals under the influence of some femme-fatale, a dangerous seductress dating back to the fae who made men insane via pleasure and sirens who sang to sailors until their ships dashed against the rocks. The femme-fatale may or may not end up good, but she gets the “detective” into trouble. White and black show up in alternating patterns, most often in that venetian blinds cliché that blocks incoming light to look like prison bars. The worlds of noir paint pessimistic portraits of life or at least show the desperation involved in attaining idealism. Layers show up often, as in the Doodlebug short, since there’s always another deeper, darker layer of paint on the old underbelly of society. Odds stack against the protagonist, beating the living snot out of him or her.

Common characters: hardboiled/morally questionable detective, jealous husbands, claim adjusters, down-and-out writers, anyone smoking

Common settings: urban, labyrinth, bars, lounges, nightclubs, gambling dens, opium dens, visually complex/industrial sets for the climax

Common plots: crime investigation by concerned amateur, murder, greed, jealousy, false accusations, betrayal, double-crosses, conspiracy, amnesia (last three lists via Wikipedia)

Now drag his career through some of those filters:

All of them appear dark with stark shades of white.

Femme Fatale:

• Natalie (Memento)
• Rachelle Dawes (Batman Begins)
• Olivia Wenscombe (Prestige)
• Rachelle Dawes (Dark Knight)
• Mal (Inception)

Detective-like Protag:

• Lenny, a claim-adjuster “detective” with anterograde memory loss (Memento)
• Batman, hardboiled “detective” (Batman Begins)
• Robert Angier, a morally flawed & hardboiled magician-detective (Prestige)
• Batman again (Dark Knight)
• Cobb, an alienated & down-and-out “extractor” aka “detective” (Inception)

Sets:

• Urban, drug-deal sites, bars, nightclubs, crappy hotels (Memento)
• Urban, nightclubs, gambling/drug dens, industrial, factories (Batman Begins)
• Urban, bars, lounges, visually complex climax/industrial (Prestige)
• Urban, gambling dens, lounges, etc. (Dark Knight)
• Urban, LABYRINTH, lounges, visually COMPLEX (Inception)

Plots:

• Investigation by amateur, “amnesia,” murder, false accusation (Memento)
• Crime investigation by “amateur,” greed, betrayal, conspiracy (Batman Begins)
• Investigation by amateur, murder, greed, jealousy, double-crosses like the plague (Prestige)
• Conspiracy, jealousy, murder, false accusation, con game (Dark Knight)
• Murder, greed, jealousy, false accusation, betrayal, conspiracy, amnesia (Inception)

I excluded Insomnia and The Following to cut down on word count. Two quick thoughts:

1. I’ll follow up next week on how this helps us interpret his films
2. This works well with Batman, but unless you rewrite Superman mythology, it clashes with his character. Burrows and Wallace from Gotham:

A later Batman editor perspicaciously noted, Gotham is New York’s nourish side—‘Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at 3 a.m., November 28 in a cold year’—whereas Superman’s Metropolis presents New York’s cheerier face, ‘Manhattan between Fourteenth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets on the brightest, sunniest July day of the year.’

No wonder they filmed the Batmans in Chicago. I wish luck to them for Superman and to the creators of the new Spiderman. At best, those films will be difficult.

Thoughts? Questions? Libelous allegations?