Saturday, December 7, 2013

In (yet another) creative lull - not sure what to call it/them

Not "blocked" really since that implies - to me at least - sitting down to write and being unable to. In other words making the effort to make the effort but generating no product. My "stuck" seems to take the form of not sitting down to try - not as a conscious decision, not as a result of circumstance, simply as a result of me. I did well for a couple of years, produced a lot of text (for me) much of it fodder for later rewrite/revise sessions when I progress that far. So I'm happy with progress, but stuck again, though with a different attitude since now I'm pretty sure I can actually produce more than wee snippets grasped from thin air and leading nowhere. in particular. Need a renewal of the discipline, need to stop the internal grumbling about not being able to devote full time to it, as planned all these years.

Odd little sequences of dreamlets in the segments between eruptions of the snooze alarm; none recordable, but they're really odd. How can I know that without knowing what they were?

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Well yesterday was George's 102nd birthday, so I guess it's safe to say

he'd have died quite some time ago even if he hadn't died in '68. And I myself have, as of today, realized that I'm almost old enough to be inappropriate with impunity.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Well I've just finished reading my first piece of Stephen King's fiction, and

I liked it. It was not a horror story. It was The Colorado Kid a short(ish) piece, perhaps for SK a novella; too long for a short story at just under 200 pages according to amazon, but I read it on the Kindle which doesn't do page numbers, so who's to know?

It's a mystery story. But it's not a "detective" story, there's no detective involved, and there's no resolution - no scene in the library of the country house (or courtroom) where some brilliant Sherlock rolls out the clues and what they mean and finalizes the whole thing by wheeling on the culprit and shrieking "But it was YOU...."

The only available spoiler is that in The Colorado Kid you will not only not find out whodunit, you won't find out what there was to be done, nor why.

King very cleverly sets up a frame story around a completely "told" mystery plot - we never meet ANY of the characters involved in the actual mystery - that whole story is "told" by two old downeast geezers, to their young midwestern associate. The true cleverness King displays is in getting us fascinated by the "mystery" that the old farts relate to the young woman, as a means of grabbing & holding our interest in the three "real time" characters, whom he portrays very cleanly & economically.

King's handling of "voice" is brilliant, especially in his handling of downeast dialect. Dialect, as most writers will tell you, is very dangerous territory (in fact I think SK mentions it himself in "On Writing") - an attempt to render any extended passage in accurate representation of any regional or ethnic accent practically dooms the dialog thus attempted. But King manages to suggest to the reader how these folks sound, then judiciously (and sparingly) reinforces it with occasional phonetic renderings, and the magic is done - every time Vince and Dave speak, I hear the down Maine twang as clearly (cle-ah-ly) as if I was listening to the geezers myself, somewhere up (down?) the coast, perhaps in the vicinity of Wiscasset.

I enjoyed The Colorado Kid immensely, and I recommend it for anyone who likes a tale well told, but who doesn't require resolutions to their mysteries (like real life).

Thursday, August 29, 2013

What does anyone think of these notions?

(Assuming anyone's reading, which may be a totally unwarranted assumption). I seem to be forming better defined principles with which to approach my new-found "life's work" (i.e. writing fiction).

It is art. I am almost to the point where I can say that without blushing and feeling pompous. (Almost, it still feels pompous and self-aggrandizing, but it's what I've secretly (almost guiltily, I don't know why) believed for a long time - I am an artist, or at least an artist-in-training).

The point of art (in my opinion only, this is a hugely contentious assertion, I'm aware, but it works for me) is to observe, examine, contemplate, and report on "what it means to be a human being." Whether any of the many art forms that are apparently unaware of the human race beyond the artist are therefore "not art" or are "bad art" I don't know and I don't care. I'm only concerned with my own notions here (it's MY blog after all). Let's say "The point of MY art is to observe, examine, contemplate, and report on WIMTBAHB." Any "self-expression" on the part of the artist that is not employed in this, is superfluous. It's perfectly fine of course if an artist uses his own feelings in a particular situation to communicate some generalities that apply to "What it means" and more importantly to make me feel what he's feeling in pursuit of identifying with the generality of la condition humaine. (Or whatever). But unconnected, incoherent blurts, whether visual, verbal, or aural seem not to do this.

Fiction is Truth unconstrained by Fact. More ruminations and cogitations on this later, but it's a phrase I came up with some time ago and have been turning over in my mind for the past 3 years or so that I've been pursuing this fiction-writing endeavor seriously. The capitalizations in that phrase are intentional and significant, BTW.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

I was disappointed by "Quartet" and haven't finished watching it yet. I may not.

The first half hour is fun, how could it not be with Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly being all rascally and scatty? (Not in that order of course). Michael Gambon in his patented "irascible old goat" routine and Tom Courtenay being sensitive and pensive all over the place. So far s'ok. But just about 30-40 minutes in it begins to sag; and the second time Connolly pees into the bushes to tittering effect (and believe me, at my age I do understand the thematic point of his micturitive distress), I bailed out. It became clear to me what was going on: these absolutely marvelous actors had been placed in cardboard suits patterned after characterizations for which they've become (justly) famous, wound up like little clockwork figures, and set in motion to totter across the frame like little wind-ups: "Billy Connolly doing his randy old bandit of a Scot" and "Maggie Smith doing her Jean Brodie Way Past Her Prime shtick" and so on. Well it's not their fault, it sits squarely on the director's shoulders. I had very high hopes for Dustin Hoffman's directorial maiden voyage - very fine actors frequently make very fine directors (and he might, I hope he takes another crack at it soon). But I have the feeling that in an overflow of (deserved) respect for his cast, Hoffman indulged them with one too many "Just give me something of yours, never mind the script" and they fell into their set modes and set pieces instead of coming up with new people.

I'll pick it up again soon, but unless it begins to move in a more original direction I doubt I'll make it through the remaining hour. Sad too, I was really looking forward to it, I love the work these people have done. (Andrew Sachs, BTW, seems to have been entirely overlooked and he's pretty much wasted as wallpaper. Too bad, the guy has huge talent.)

Monday, August 19, 2013

Well damn, July slipped by unblogged.

It was hot hereabouts, and much spare energy got sucked up by chores and projects. C'est la vie I guess. Early August has been consumed mostly by illness and recovery therefrom. I'll use that as an excuse for letting the 13th slide by unmarked. I usually have some little thing to say on 13 August, mostly amounting to "Hey look at that one of the few remarkable days in my life." It was on 13 August 1969 (longtime followers of this blog - if such exist - will know this) that Yours Truly became Second Lieutenant Yours Truly, USAF, at the Medina Annex (AKA "USAFOTS") of Lackland Military Training Center in San Antone Texas. It was a sunny day, and hot, and we marched around a big-ass parade ground, and some bigshots (relatively speaking) blathered on and we threw out hats in the air, and shortly thereafter got our first salutes. Mine was from TSgt Jack Adams, who had been my TI in Basic Training (oh yes, I was double blessed, most folks only have to do one or the other, Basic or OTS - I got to do both; long story) and was a hell of a good guy, Smoky Bear hat and stogie meeting about 8 inches in front of his face at a nearly 90 degree angle.
Why we remember such occasions - epsecially guys, and especially military-related stuff - so long is an interesting phenomenon, and I'm convinced it has to do with things surrounding the notion that being in the military, for guys, especially, is a big developmental marker along the road - "here's where I put away the kid stuff." (Though that's pretty much bullshit, as we learn over the ensuing decades, but the notion sticks.)

Saturday, June 29, 2013

On recommendation of one of the members of the "new writing group" I got a copy of

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Having shaken the notion embedded in me brain that it was an autobiography of Charlie Parker, and figured out that it was another one of those "writers on writing" books, of which so far my repertoire consists of Stephen King's On Writing (which I heartily recommend, it's the only thing of King's I've read). I like her style, it's breezy if a trifle adolescent in its studied flippancy, and so far it appears to be an affectation to hide the fact that there's serious cogitation underlying the verbal vaudeville. All of which is a perfect fit for me, it's what I'm trying to perfect. The introduction fit my 30-minute treadmill workout perfectly; it's on the kindle and will be my workout accompaniment for as long as it lasts.

Friday, June 28, 2013

So the second meeting of the new group* last night; first "critique" meeting, where

four of us actually put "skin in the game" to use one of my favorite phrases. Of the eight of us, two were entirely new faces, six had been at the "organizational meeting" two weeks ago. After heroic efforts on the part of the Organizer failed to find a completely appropriate venue (library, for example) we met at a local Panera, who seemed not to mind us sitting there for two hours for the price of a couple of coffees. As long as there were no paying customers standing waiting I guess it's ok - works to their advantage to be seen to have groups of people using the place. It ain't Deux Magots, but I guess ya takes whatcha can get. An interesting, disparate bunch of folks, with some interestingly divergent views on writing (the process as well as the product). A promising endeavor, so far. So watch this space...

* This is Writing Group number 3 for me, number two in terms of active groups; the previous "number two" fizzled out, though one or two of the folks from it have shown up in this new one. When I mentioned to a pal that I had joined another writing group, he asked, "What's wrong with the other one?" Well, nothing or course, but if one is good, two will be twice as good. I guess I should have asked why he bothers to play golf at more than one club.

Monday, June 24, 2013

There's got to be a trick, a knack to this discipline stuff, this

making one's self sit down every day and work at the thing we want to do (to have done?) more than anything, but which eludes us and engenders no end of excuses. And even as we mouth the excuses we (I) know they're bullshit and the real answer is buried somewhere in the murk of the mind, possibly, probably out of reach of the waking search. Fortunately, I have convinced myself that it is real, and it is the right thing to be doing, and it is a worthwhile - indeed perhaps THE worthwhile - endeavor of a lifetime, else why would it be so persistent and not have gone away after all these years of neglect and diversion? "Perhaps you're just not a writer" someone said to me once. I sincerely tried to follow through on that notion, and several times got on the wagon, ignoring things I'd written up to that point, and trying to be comfortable with not writing anything more except in conjunction with business - tech writing, emails, etc. Well it didn't work, and it sort of felt like I imagine it would have felt like in the old days, being left-handed and suffering the corrections of a culture that saw fit to make left-handed people into inept and uncomfortable right-handed people. So the past few years have been a bit of a struggle but I persevere and sooner rather than later now (though it's already too late for it to be really "sooner rather than later") the pile of stuff produced will be a respectable corpus.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Dream Journal 6/4/2013 - So it's been since April I haven't posted. Shame on me.

Twice in the past week or so I've had a similar dream, or sequence of dreams. I'm on some sort of campus, with many buildings of differing ages and architectures, and apparently differing functions. There are lots of other people around but they do not seem to be aware of me, or at least not concerned with my existence. They also don't seem to be engaged in any communal or concerted effort - they all seem to be to-ing and fro-ing on their own individual agendas (what's the Latin plural for a plural?). The thing about this "campus" - a word I choose solely because it describes a plot of land with a clump or cluster of related buildings, not because I think the nature of the place was academic, though it might well have been, I never did really identify the place to myself - the thing about it was that the buildings seemed to have been sort of strewn higgledy-piggledy around the landscape of the place, with little or no attention to connections between and among the buildings. And their relative positions kept changing, or else (worse yet) the buildings themselves kept changing, and when I left one and passed by others, then had to return to the one I'd left, there was no way to find it. Neat quadrangles (there's that academia connection) turned into rock-strewn paths through the woods; then the rock-strewn paths turned into steep downhill paths, still among rocky outcrops. Buildings were placed randomly among seemingly derelict patches of woods and trees. In no case could I return to where I'd started, and someone was waiting there for me; not sure who nor what for, but it was important to my dreaming self, and it was the driver of the dream - getting back. And it couldn't be done, "back" seemed either no longer to exist, or else it had moved, or else it had shifted shape so as to be unrecognizable.

There wasn't any water in this dream though. But it was disconcerting to my dreaming self.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I'm dithering a bit, pondering all the this-and-thats, and

all the hems-and-haws and shill-I-shall-I, that (for me at least) are conspiring to keep me hesitating to pull the trigger on an e-publication. Having said that, I don't know what-all is really holding me back. I have a wee collection of stories, more or less concocted precisely for the purpose of putting out as a "loss leader" - something to put on the shelf, more as a means of having a "real" tangibility to deal with in the toe-dipping trial phase of looking up the details of a new venture.

The whole notion of e-publication is exciting: I really want to participate in the "democratization" of publishing. I really would like to get my writing out for a taste of what the greater public's response (or not, which will be telling too) will be. And I've also pretty much convinced myself that at this stage of my life I don't have what it takes to pursue the "conventional" avenues of sending query letters to agents, or magazines (in the case of short stories) of any of that bullshit. If I'm going to do that, then I'm right back in the mode of "doing stuff I don't want to do for some purpose other than the joy of the actual work at hand." My "work at hand" needs to be writing, for the next (last) five, ten, fifteen, twenty or however many more lucid years I'm blessed with. All that other crap is diversionary bullshit - I'm not contemplating a joyful entry into the book publishing business. I don't need to make a living at writing, but it would be very nice to generate some attention, some buzz, and a few bucks here and there are a means of keeping score, I guess.

It appears to me that between them, B&N and Amazon are doing their damnedest to make it irresistible for an independent, unknown writer to publish his or her own works, and widely, and at no real risk or expense. I'm trying very hard to find a downside, and if I don't come up with one soon, I'm a goner, and will be a published ("e-published" I guess, I'm still antsy about "self-published") author.

"Somebody stop me!"

Friday, April 12, 2013

A propos of nothing in particular


In 1960 or ’61, I was in the eighth grade, stuck out in a little whitebread suburb of Boston, perfectly happy & content listening to Elvis and The Kingston Trio. Then Charley moved to town. Charley was from East Boston, but unlike most all of the other people from East Boston (or “East-a Bost”) who moved into town, he was not of Italian origin, but Greek though Charley had a bit of the wise guy (and “Wiseguy”) about him, and hadn’t shed his big city attitude. But he had a good sense of humor, and a pretty good heart, so he found his way into our small town junior high circle fairly painlessly. He brought some interesting expressions, and mannerisms, and a few dirty pictures that he’d copped from somewhere in his childhood and managed to secrete from his parents, but more importantly, he brought Ray Charles to us. It was the beginning of Ray Charles’s career, and he was news to us entirely, and “What’d I Say” was electrifying in the same way that “Tutti Frutti” and “Great Balls of Fire” had been a couple of years earlier. You sit up and say “What’s THIS then?” when you hear one of these guys for the first time – whether the Killer or Janis Joplin or Dylan – there’s usually a shudder of unrecognition when someone outside the box comes along. Charley had a party, early in the 8th grade term, to sort of introduce himself around etc. At that party we heard Ray Charles, and a few of us WASPy types were puzzled and a few were too good to be bothered with it, but most of us ate it up.

A couple of years later (late ninth grade), I fell, for the first time, arse-over-teakettle in lust with an adorable little blonde named Susie (Susie M. if you must know more details). It was at a dance of some kind, in the parish hall of the Congo church. Susie and I danced a few times together, mostly slow tunes of course, not because I couldn’t dance fast but because for me the point of dancing was body contact with one’s partner. Then on came a brand new release – “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” Ray Charles first significant departure from the R&B/Soul stuff he’d mastered then reinvented. And now here he was reinventing Country, taking this old Don Gibson chestnut and breathing something into it that no country singer could. And Susie and I danced to that record, and when it was over we held onto each other for dear life, and we were in love, and ICSLY was our song, and it’s our song to this day, though I’ve no idea in the world where she might be or what she might be doing, but she’s forever in my arms, thirteen years old, smelling like a garden in paradise, and Ray Charles is singing … “I’ve made up my mind….”

Monday, April 8, 2013

The world turns in odd & interesting ways sometimes

So within a few days of each other, Roger Ebert and Maggie Thatcher clock out. I don't propose to put them on any kind of equal footing; I don't think they're at all comparable, it would be like comparing Dr. Johnson with Pitt (either one). I don't have a whole lot of thought or feeling one way or the other about The Baroness, I suspect one would really have to be a subject of HM Betty (or perhaps a citizen of one of the myriad erstwhile colonies other than our own) for Maggie to have impacted your life a whole lot, at least directly. I don't think I was paying a great deal of attention to UK politics twenty-odd years ago. I knew she was great pals with Ronnie Reagan, which all by itself erodes her esteem in my book, practically down to a nub.

Roger Ebert, on the other hand, I've admired for many years, since the Siskel & Ebert days of "Sneak Previews" and in more recent years for his continued writings about film, and his more general writings about life and culture. In the last few years I've come to think a great deal of his intellect (not to mention his verbal acuity) and his great taste (and luck) in women. I will miss Ebert's ongoing contribution to our times; Maggie, enh, not so much.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Looking at the squib below, it occurs to me that "I fell off the Rock of Gibraltar"

scans perfectly with "My Bonnie lies over the ocean."

A propos de rien.

Dream Journal 3/30/13

An odd snippet this, in the little piece of sleep grabbed occasionally between the 0400 dog-tending rise, and a more sensible (0500) time to engage with waking life. It involved a farm conveyance of some kind, with a flat bed and a steering wheel mounted ahead of the bed, with a hand throttle and brakes that made the front wheels turn hard left. We (a wife was present, and though I don't remember getting a good look at her, I'm pretty sure she was my real wife) were promised a gleaning opportunity in some farmer's cornfield. We started out in the whatever-kind-of-wagon-it-was, confident that we knew where the cornfield of interest was. In the first leg of the trip out, I rode on the flatbed and the wagon seemed to propel and guide itself. Then I discovered the controls, down and in front, so I mounted down there and drove. I turned it down a dirt road and realized I had no idea where we needed to be going. The road was through woods and we came upon a group of kids - adolescents and pre-adolescents, say between 10 and 14 - I don't know how many of them; mixed boys and girls, perhaps a dozen of them but again not sure because I don't remember actually seeing them in the dream, more overhearing their conversation. Then I saw a car, perhaps a 1950s or 60s station-wagon but not identifiable as to make or year, with a large treelimb on it, roof caved in, windshield broken. I'm driving this wagon/tractor conveyance and I hear one of the boys saying to one of the girls something about "I'm a full-grown adult male and I don't need..."

It was at this point that my dreaming self started getting a little lucid and realized that whatever was going on in this dream, it wasn't going to wind up pleasantly. Then the five o'clock alarm went off, and rather than hit the snooze, I was glad to be rescued from that particular dream.

How odd that I felt that way; nothing bad or threatening had happened, really, but the dreamed components of that particular setting and circumstances made my dreaming self uneasy, and I was glad to be out of there.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

I'm told by Wikipedia today

that there's a cave on the Rock of Gibraltar that's named after a guy who discovered it after he "fell off the Rock." Fell off the Rock of Gibraltar.

Imagine...


Friday, January 18, 2013

I do, from time to time, get on genre kicks on my Netflix queue

     Recently I've watched "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (the original with Kevin McCarthy - terrific flick, really, if you can put yourself back into your 1950s self; that's true of all of these titles and no doubt explains tons). The other night I watched "It Came From Outer Space." Last night "It Came From Beneath The Sea" and tonight "Beast From 20,000 Fathoms."

     "Beast" and "Outer Space" share a Ray Bradbury connection, and I'm looking forward to savoring Ray Harryhausen's work in "Beast." I'm contemplating  the 1953 "Invaders From Mars" which scared the bejeezus out of me at about 7 years old (when it was new) and might even revisit "Them" just to see all the later-famous/now-dead TV stars (Fess Parker, Jim Arness, James Whitmore, and Leonard Nimoy is even rumored to have an uncredited role, but of course he's not dead yet, is he?)

     I saw these movies when they were new, and of course I've seen them on TV a zillion times since, and corny an crude and primitive as many of them are (I've only mentioned the cream of the crop, but I include all the really low-level stuff like "The Mole People" and maybe even "Plan 9 ... ") they never cease to entertain, probably because they never cease to return me to Saturday afternoon at the Bing Theater, anytime between 1952 or so, and 1955, my earliest memories that don't directly involve my parents, my earliest memories being "out & about" with pals (always with one or two older pals, my brother being five years older which is why we were allowed to walk up to Sumner Ave to the Bing, or to the Phillips at The X).