Reality in Art

There are only a few great films. Very few movies are worth seeing for more than time-killing, and very few of those are worth seeing more than once. That’s why it’s inspiring to see a film that’s truly a work of art. On the big ya hoida ‘em scale, for my money it’s the Coen brothers, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan and about every third Tarantino film. Performances by Daniel Day Lewis, Judy Dench, Gary Oldman, Ed Norton, Emma Thompson.

A great film—say Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds—can be watched in non-chronological segments. You can soak in the film without bothering with the narrative. Film is so much more than narrative. True, I’m too much a lover of the traditional and I have to watch things in single sittings—can’t count the number of times I’ve seen Barton Fink—but good to know that the option exists.

Great film rarely makes any attempt at imitating reality. It’s noteworthy when we see something that reminds us of our own world on film. Great film has to be unreal, that’s why it’s art—but it’s taken for granted as an art form; this is because it presents so much less for the viewer to have to fill in—as media like writing and painting require.

Does fiction suffer the same downfall? Can it never capture reality?

An interest of mine is writing dialogue in fiction. Consider: dialogue is a writer quoting supposed speakers. It’s a lie right off the bat. Is it possible to depict conversation—real conversation with us interrupting each other and talking at the same time and having ten minute conversations that say little and do nothing to advance the plot—without describing what’s happening, to just show it?  

Is fiction a different kind of art, allowing for more reality than film, painting or photography? There are supposed “real” forms of all of the above. Documentary films—and I’ve seen some brilliant ones—are still created, because they’re pieced together. Editing is a more important step in creation than the genesis of an idea. Portrait and landscape painting capture an image as the artist sees it. The photographer assumes the viewer will fill in what is around, behind, before and after an image—all created. So, what is “reality” at all? Is it just as much a loaded and useless a term as “normal”?

Does fiction transcend the rules? Is it more capable of presenting reality because it can leave more out? This calls for creativity on the part of the reader, but readers will—usually, I assume—fill in the bits they don’t know with what they know would exist in reality. Which is, again, a form of creativity.

Can art capture reality? Should it? Or is it meant just to reflect features of reality in a cohesive, creative form?

Life

Recently, I spoke at a high school graduation and tried to be uplifting. I think it’s a regrettable habit of the old to be a bit cynical when imposing our wisdom upon the young—we want to remind them that life doesn’t always turn out as you plan. This often strikes me as veiled excusing for a pathetic life.

Life doesn’t turn out as you plan. Accept it. Life is not the car, it’s the road. You aren’t in control, you can only navigate to the best of your ability.

I’ve been thinking about life a lot lately, because in the past dozen days I’ve experienced the birth of a son and the death of a friend. I have learned some things about this enigmatic existence, and most of them tell me that what I don’t know is often what’s best.

I have two sons. Every day I question how I’m measuring up as a father. My wife and I look at our boys and say, “Wow, we made those? Really? Hard to believe we’re capable of such wonder.”

The world moves faster as you age because it’s smaller. You want to find peace, excitement and grandeur in the world again? Study it with a child. Lying on your belly watching an ant carry a dandelion seed across a patio stone is nirvana.

When you have kids, you learn what in the rest of your life actually matters. Very little you do can justify taking time from your kids. I read a lot less, write only once a day, play with my band rarely, and I haven’t spent any quality time with my computer since 2008.

There is nothing more glorious than napping with a sleeping baby on your chest.

. . . Unless it’s a toddler saying, “Daddy, I yove you.”

I have heard that some men aren’t as attracted to their wives after seeing them give birth. Asinine. Nothing can make you fall deeper in love like watching your wife mother your children.

You can have all kinds of highfalutin philosophies about proper parenting before you have kids; ideas on soothers and nap-times and circumcision and Baby Einstein and discipline will be completely rethought once you’re on the job.

The littler the arms, the better the hug.

If you don’t care about making the world a better place once you’ve seen what it means to the innocent, you don’t have a soul. They say you should be the person your dog thinks you are. I propose we make the world the place our children think it is.

Kid + pen + paper = art. Always. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on your power bill or your wedding certificate or your final exams or your novel manuscript. Art.

We were convinced our second son was actually going to be a girl, we even sort of started planning her future. The moment your kid is born, you’re so in love with him that all preconceptions go poof and you can’t imagine anyone but this one.

I’m not telling experienced parents anything they don't know. I’m sharing my joy not my wisdom. I’ve had a couple of conflicting weeks, it’s a cliché to call it a roller coaster but it’s sure as hell felt that way.

Four days before Father’s Day I earned my right to celebrate that day a second time. I’m good at many things, but I was born to be a dad.

My life hasn’t turned out how I thought it would. Mostly, it’s been better. Yes, really. For I have learned that the greatest experiences are the unexpected ones.

Death

            I experienced a shocking tragedy recently, made worse by its familiarity. A man my age, a dear friend, someone involved in enough of my seminal moments that he’ll forever be a touchstone, is dead.

            The third peer I’ve had to mourn in my life. The third close friend. He was thirty-one, the other two hadn’t yet reached twenty-five. It’s a sad commonality for the old to learn, daily, of the deaths of their peers. But there’s never a time where the loss of the young gets to be routine. It always cries out against logic.

            When people this close to you die, several things occur. A piece of you goes forever—we’re selfish beings so we’ll always bring this back to ourselves. You examine your own mortality. You swear you’ve learned to take greater joy in life—at what cost? And you over-think everything.

            Consider that last point; every coincidence pops like a whack-a-mole game, and you convince yourself that you’ve dodged a bullet in a cosmic plan that's out to get you. Nonsense, but that’s where the guilt of relief comes from. Guilt at being the one still alive.

            In 2002, I was living in Taiwan. Two of my Norwegian friends, Magnus and Thor, came to see me. Magnus and I spent the summers of 2000-2002 together, on three different continents. Thor had become a friend of mine through Magnus. They left in August, and in December, still in Taiwan, I learned that one of my best friends, Mike, had been killed in a car accident back in Canada. In March of 2003, Magnus was the one to email me that Thor had been killed in a freak accident. Earlier this week I learned of Magnus’ death.

            Three friends, three deaths, all connected to me, all connected to Taiwan in my head. You over-think this stuff.

            It horrifies me that of the three of us—Magnus, Thor and myself—who went clubbing in Taipei and slept on the beaches of Kenting, I am the only one still alive, not yet thirty-three years old.

            I learned of each death through email, formatted exactly the same way. A loved one (Mike’s brother, Magnus, Magnus’ father) began the note with the abrupt “______ is dead.” Seems harsh, right? But then how do you start an email which serves the singular purpose of delivering a tragedy? You just want to be relieved of it, washed clean.

            You’ll go crazy dwelling on this stuff. You have to find a way to deal with it, to mourn.

            But nobody ever told me how to mourn three friends in one lifetime.

            I haven’t gone a day in seven and a half years without thinking about Mike. I can still hear his voice. Magnus’ death is so fresh that I don’t think I’ve even processed it yet. Some nights lately I wake up crying, and some days I can go for hours without thinking about it—guilty every time I laugh or enjoy any sensation.

            The hardest thing about it is this: I will continue to age. Mike will be twenty-four forever. He’ll never marry, as I have, become a father, or buy a house. Thor will never look back on those crazy summers from the comfort of the “rest of our lives.” And Magnus will never ever again hold his beer to me for a toast with a wry smile, cigarette dangling saying, in that thick Norse sing-song, “Cheers, Paul.”

            There is no sense to death. It’s always just there and sometimes it comes early, sometimes too often. Feeling persecuted by fate will just make you feel crazy. Sadness is natural, guilt is natural, joy of life is natural.

            Today I just want to say this: I am sad and I miss my friends.

The Gardener and the Fire-Starter

            Let me tell you about two kinds of people. Both are fabulously intelligent, but limited at the same time. Let’s call them the gardener and the fire-starter.

            The gardener is a genius. Just ask her. She has studied and studied and read and read and discussed and discussed with like-minded—but always less-informed—people until she has built up a beautiful body of rhetoric that destroys anyone’s counter-attacks. Discourse it ain’t. There’s no learning to be had, just the winning of arguments. The gardener is a sophist.

             The gardener won’t talk about topics she hasn’t studied more than you. She’ll roll her eyes and yawns, because the topics of your expertise are beneath her. She doesn’t function all that well in regular society. Y’see, the gardener doesn’t finish anything, for there are risks to be taken and to risk is to flirt with failure, or at least anything but complete success. She can’t handle that, her reputation can’t handle that. So she instead fortifies herself in the glory of past deeds, she buttresses this fortress with admiring sycophants who feel smarter just by speaking to her. She talks a mean game but in the end she tills her little patch of land uselessly.

            The fire-starter is more interesting, and he stresses me out. For him, purpose is everything. He is driven, revolutionary, brilliant, active. He is ever on the move, ever digesting information, drawing from it what he needs to fuel is never-ending attack on the norm. I respect the fire-starter much more than the gardener.

            His scepticism, though, is his greatest strength and his fatal flaw. He’s a cynic. Nothing is good enough, nothing is to be credited. Everything must be attacked. Anything you love or enjoy must be subverted. The fire-starter sucks a lot of the joy out of life.

            I’ve known many gardeners and fire-starters. They make us question ourselves because the gardener mocks you for risking and the fire-starter shames you for not risking enough.

            If you consider yourself an intelligent person, other intelligent people will have influence upon your thinking. This is right and fair. But, my oh my, what good is there in being influenced by cynics? You enter a spiral of second-guessing and measuring-up and you fail yourself because you’re not true to yourself.

            Purpose.

            Why do we create?

            When brainstorming this with other writers—those I work with or those I teach—we come up with lists. Entertainment, self-expression, to relieve stress, to make money, to describe the human condition, because I can’t paint, because it keeps me from killing all of you people . . . Lots of reasons, all sound, many clichéd.

            And that’s okay.

            But, as for purpose. In On Writing, Stephen King confessed that he’d spent a great deal of his early career feeling guilty about what he wrote, because it was popular horror fiction, it made him money, it wasn’t “literature.” I think there are a lot of writers who must feel the same way.

            Critics abound in this world. It’s much easier to criticize than to create. You just have to sound smart, sound like you’re an expert on a topic, sound like you have a right to say what you’re saying, and then rip somebody’s work to shreds. It’s much easier than hanging yourself out there and exposing a sliver of your soul, hoping that someone will look at it, interact with it, admire its beauty. Critics, in their jealousy, need to trash you because in doing that they can bring you down to their own level, the level at which one cannot create, only dissect.

            I admire Stephen King because there’s a writer who has made it in popular fiction. Do anything popular and people will find a way to vandalize your reputation, because appealing to the masses means sacrificing your integrity. But King has never compromised—he’s not writing for the lowest common denominator, he’s writing for himself.

            And the ability to ignore the gardener and the fire-starter is an admirable one indeed.

Screw the Muse: Some Creative Scaffolding

I don’t believe in the muse, never have. I’m a creative person but I was raised with a farmer’s work ethic. It’s affected my writing thus: I believe you need to write every day whether an idea has descended upon you or not; I believe that some days what you’re going to produce is likely going to be crap; I believe writing is work, a process.

But sometimes, the ideas just won’t come.

These days, I still write, I still work, but I’m not as happy with what I produce. I might change the piece I’m working on, or scribble in my journal, or blog. Changing it up often yields the break I need to get back in there and start at it again.

But then there are the days where that doesn’t happen.

These are the really frustrating days. But recently I discovered a new way to force the muse.

I was camping with one of my best friends, and we were walking in the woods with his dog. He’s a photographer, and one of the more creative people I know. Very often we’ll use each other to sound out our creative ideas—even though neither of us works in the same medium. It’s been valuable in the past, and this time I was having a bit of a crisis.

I told him about one story I was writing about two brothers and a fairly mundane situation I had turned on its ear. I expressed my frustration at what I thought was a great idea not coming together.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

So I laid it all out, and he listened. Then he told me that the second brother, the one I had sort of set up as the foil, was the one that mattered in the way I was telling it. He didn’t tell me to swap points of view, but I got the idea from what he said. And it worked.

“Speaking of brothers,” he said as we continued walking, “what if Abel was the evil one?”

Insert thunderclap here. The whole thing unfolded in my head within a half hour. I needed to get home and make some notes. In the morning I re-read that part of Genesis to refresh myself, came up with a plan of attack, and then in one sitting fired off one of the better short stories I’ve ever produced.

He’s not my muse, he’s just a concise voice outside of myself. I value the people who can approach our thoughts in an uncompromising manner and say something we can never think of in our own muddled minds. But when it is said to us, it makes so much sense. It’s like having your ideas streamlined by someone else’s mind.

I'm lucky enough to have a few creative people in my life who can inspire me in this way. I'm thankful for them. I say screw the muse, what really works is being around other artists.

Generation Lost

Oh sure, there have been dozens of "lost" generations, but how many were so-titled on purpose?

Getting lost is good. I'm from a pretty weird generation. We’re the tail end of Generation X. Let’s see: our grandparents were the Greatest Generation because they survived the Depression and fought World War 2; our parents are the Boomers, whose sheer numbers mean that our culture is always defined by how old they are; we’re this forgotten generation that offers nothing but Doc Martins and flannel as a fashion statement. Generation Y is the multi-tasking, tech savvy, ADHD and utterly selfish crew. We sorta slip through the cracks. We’re lost. But we’re avid students of the world. One feature I’ve noticed is we go to places with no particular plan, we often just let things happen. Sometimes the greatest thrill is ending up in a strange place with no sense of direction. Some of life’s greatest lessons are learned when you take that wrong left.

I like my undead evil, thanks.

I like monsters—that doesn't make me unique. I like vampires, werewolves and zombies. That makes me a cliché. But I'm a purist, a traditionalist, I like my monsters evil, bloodthirsty and loaded with metaphor and satire, just as their creators intended. I don't like pretty, sensitive vampires with sculpted abs that confuse how to use their mouths on their victims. Zombies are slow, shuffling and mindless. Werewolves are cursed beast-men. Upshut with that "lycan" bull. Monsters are meant to reflect the fears of their times, and though I don't mind taking an old theme and applying it to your own era (after all, that's where these guys came from in the first place), you have to maintain some sense of what these threats are supposed to be about.

Two weeks ago, the University of Hertfordshire hosted a conference on vampires. It was in an attempt preserve the integrity of the classic, Stoker-inspired literary vampire, obviously in reaction to the new sissy-vampires found in Twilight and its thousand and one rip-offs. I know, intellectuals often have a bit too much time to split hairs on the heads of perceived crises.

Bram Stoker took a continental folk legend and developed the most famous of all counts—a being of pure evil with a much more interesting toolbox of horrors than Edward or even Lestat possesses. Dracula was created in protest—a reaction to the stifling atmosphere of Victoria’s Britain. This creature charmed, hypnotized, overcame and then penetrated and sucked, taking the life source of his victims—their innocence and purity—making them as twisted as himself. In a time where it was naughty to write about kissing, Dracula was pornography.

Werewolves are our bestial side, a symbol of our struggle against Nature. Don’t feed me that crap about a man who can change into a wolf at will and maintain all of his faculties. A werewolf is man out of control, cursed; he is primal, raging and lethal. He isn’t cutesy. This is the abusive husband or father, the dude with road-rage. This is man at his worst, giving in to a desire to go back on evolution and behave like an animal. Lunacy—thus the link to the moon.

Zombies are death. They are the certainty of our own mortality, always coming, persistent. They move slowly because they’re unstoppable. You can avoid and avoid but there is no escape. The shuffle and moan and they will eventually get you. I got so annoyed when I saw the new version of Dawn of the Dead because the zombies were sprinting after their prey. NO! They’re the living dead. George Romero, who, like Stoker, took a folk tradition—in this case voodoo—and used it as a satire of his own society, has been applying zombies to mock us for nearly fifty years. Dawn is his most brilliant, a commentary on consumerism, but he’s used the brain-eaters steadily for decades; recently he took a stab at our narcissistic Youtubing/blogging nature with Diary of the Dead.

I have neither read nor seen Twilight, and though they hold no interest for me, I’m not going to bear an uninformed opinion. My worry is that these classic monsters are not being used properly, as societal foils. Anne Rice—who wrote some good books, just missed the point—and the thousands of other monster fan fiction writers need to understand that the monster is a machine. It serves a purpose. It creeps us out because it also reveals truth, it exposes what is under the rocks of our consciousness—it tells us what we know is true but what we don’t want to hear.

When you take the monster and you make it cutesy, or you make it merely a source of entertainment, you lose the essence.