Don’t Let the Door Hit You, Guys…

It’s been six looooonnnnng years, hasn’t it?

Why I Write

I believe meaning is a spectrum, ranging from things with inherent meaning at one end, to the other end with things that only have the meaning that we give them. I think this spectrum is always changing. What we give meaning to changes moment by moment, and what has inherent meaning changes glacially slow, or perhaps not at all. As human beings, we are too changeable to see very far towards the inherent-meaning end of the spectrum; but we also crave stability, so living at the completely-mutable end is too uncomfortable for us, and feels like madness.

The range of possible meanings, for the countless number of things that every human being has ever perceived, is as close to infinite as most of us can comprehend. But why do some symbolisms, some labels, some interpretations stick, and others don’t?  I have always loved to ponder why things may have happened, what they could possibly cause to happen. And I’m fascinated with hearing why people believe what they do. Do they just accept what meanings and explanations they’re told?  Or is there another factor?

Literature isn’t just the “who, what, when, where, and how”, of course. And it’s not necessarily just the why, in terms of psychological motivation, societal influence, or upbringing. If those were the only variables human beings faced, we’d probably have it all under control, for better or worse. But there’s something else in us, some wayward thing that constantly surprises us. That’s what I’m interested in as a writer.

Stories have to mean something to matter. They have to have a point and a purpose, if only to please us with their language. But the best stories get us close to realizing something that we can’t quite put our finger on. They may not quite express the inexpressible, but they show us the direction where it lies.

I can’t say what the highest goals for a writer should be. They’ll be different depending on what meaning the writer ascribes to their work. But just as all art is religious art, in that it is an expression of what the artist believes in and finds significant; so storytelling is just about what the storyteller finds important, and a demonstration and exploration of the meanings it has. And writers are simply storytellers who feel their stories are important enough to share.

Key to a Shrine

I know I missed Britpop. I know I was not only merely sixteen in 1994, but also on the wrong continent. Where I was living in the mid-nineties, Blur was nothing more than the band that had released “Song #2″, tricking all the frat boys into buying what they thought would be a rock album, but which turned out to be cynically twee hangover-pop. Blur was my weird shame, Oasis my embarrassingly cocky proclivity, to be hidden from my friends as so much of my music was. But what was a “club kid” to me in 1994, except ads for odd clothes in the back of expensive music magazines? I was a grunge grrl. Pacifiers were for babies.

By the time I understood Cool Britannia, it was several years back in the blurry collective memory, and England herself was indeed hungover. But no matter. When in London, I threw myself into grimy streets that no longer gave any fuck about AbFab, or Noel Gallagher’s eyebrows, or translucent shark slices. Who knows where that headtrip went? Probably into the same dumpster where they tossed the silver windpants and chewed-up glowsticks after Y2K. Nevertheless, I chased it all over England, that lucid delirium. Finding it in the sparkle of a sunset on the Thames after a few Guinness and some Thornton’s chocolate, in the almost imperceptible movement of the lights on a closed London Eye at midnight, in the jolting, decrepit thrust of an accelerating Tube train—a flashing exuberance, a driving and mad exultation, the gloss on the decadence. Cool Britannia isn’t gone, it’s a mindset. It’s just the form that magic takes in London.

When everything around you is moving, the human tide breaking and swirling around the aggressively grand old architecture; the sense of history pulling like an undertow, just making our modern selves swim faster; til all is racket and motion and smell, and you can feel the web of tracks under your feet, and reach with ecstatic fingers towards the same grey sky the trees in Hyde Park have clawed for centuries…in clammy fog, in needle rain, in giddy sunshine, it’s always been there. Dip your head in that river.

Full Circle

Today I’m 27 on the 27th—tomorrow I’ll be 28 on the 28th.

Tomorrow is also my first day back at Florida State University, the college I started college at, back in the halcyon year of 1996. Anybody else remember 1996? The incoming freshman class tomorrow at FSU was eight years old, that hot August when I packed my shit up and moved from Pensacola, Florida, to Pensacola Street, Tallahassee. Eight years old. At least I’ve finally reached Junior status now, and can really get into my major. As soon as I finished my Associates degree in 2002, I went right into art and trying to get into (and endure) art school. Now I’m back in Creative Writing—the major I started out in, all those years ago.

So what will it be like? God, I can only hope I manage to avoid the sort of soul-sucking teachers that utterly turned me off to the entire art world. It would be nice to have some good luck, and get some praise, for once. But you know, I have a mighty good feeling about this whole crazy-ass endeavor. When things go in such obvious circles in my life, the present eclipsing and building on the past, I know I’m doing something right.

We’ll see.

Fuck You, Jack

(originally posted on pajiba.com)

***
Reading the reviews for “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″, it seems there are four camps: the haters of the whole idea of the movie, the people that loved everything about the movie, the people who were disappointed in the movie but liked the special effects, and the people, like me, who were disappointed in the movie for reasons that include the violent effects.

I know that, because of our society’s collective lust for disgusting, graphically rendered monsters, my opinion will always be in the minority; and probably not taken seriously.

I know I’ll come across as a wimp and a prude, even though I love “Evil Dead” and “Apocalypse Now”.

But I have to say it: I’m so utterly sick of CGI being used almost exclusively to horrify or disgust. I am sick to death of computer effects taking over every movie that’s made anymore, crowding out the human actors, distracting from the plot (such as it may be) and the genuinely interesting interactions of the characters. Especially when said effects seem to be nothing but a showcase of ugliness and horror and violence for their own sake, in a movie that I thought was going to be a lighthearted little summer romp. I realized anew why I almost never go to the movies anymore.

I sat through “The Crow” in the theater when I was 15, and I wasn’t shocked or nauseated then like I was today—because I knew I was at a horror film, and I expected it. Nasty, gruesome images like those in “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ have no business in a movie that markets itself as a harmless family film. Anyone who takes their child to see this is making a big mistake—eyeballs get viciously torn out by crows, animals get repeatedly shot, graphic body parts are everywhere, people get beaten by their own father, and there is a nasty, negative vibe hanging over the whole movie. It is nothing like the first. It’s like the cast of the first film wandered onto the set of a horror movie, and have no idea what they’re doing there.

Laugh and feel superior and hipster-cool if you want, but does everything have to be dark and gorily violent to be taken seriously or hold our attention anymore? Does everything have to be either mindless drivel, or ultraviolent nastiness? It feels like that’s all that comes out anymore. Are there no fun, smart alternatives?

I went to this movie expecting to see a funny, loopy, sunshiny picture about pirates and beaches and silly bad guys. What I endured was almost three hours of darkness and slime and horror and pointlessness. I want my goddamn Sunday back.

got a tat

“Nothing can be changed without undoing what was done. But even a stunted tree reaches towards the sunlight. Let the wound heal. Bear the scar with pride.”

–Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Scion

Life needs a lover.

It doesn’t want to be clung to, it doesn’t want to be manipulated and exploited. It wants to be caressed—gently, humorously, with curiosity and mischief. Can you blame it? All it ever hears is supplication and scorn.

We who love life are marked by it, one way or another. Raise your hand. Show yourself.

More Precious than Diamonds

Coming back from Islington on the bus tonight, we passed a Cartier shop on Sloane Street, going towards Sloane Square. I only checked myself when I noticed that my eyes glossed right over it. I suppose it’s part of the overall oversaturation that I fear I’m beginning to suffer. I feel like I have to force myself to pay attention to what I’m seeing, to really see it, rather than just letting my sight slide over it as though it were nothing but a bunch of random flat colors and shapes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen nice jewelry before, but there’s no sense in taking it for granted that, right now, I live right around the corner from such a place. It’s one thing to drink in sights and sounds with the intention of later analysis; it’s another thing entirely to let them wash over you in a meaningless wave. Have I truly grown so numb?

The closest business to my home in the U.S. is a gas station with a Burger King. The next time I drive ten minutes from my house to get there, will I remember how I gawped mindlessly at some of Europe’s finest sights? Will I remember how I sank into an exhausted haze and let the clock run out? Or will I fill up my tank and eat my hamburger cheerfully, content in the knowledge that I pushed myself, and really absorbed everything that this nine-month marathon threw my way?