Friday, December 31, 2010

Swans

I'm looking out across a sea of placated faces,
wondering how much damage time really erases.
Can I open a window in the room to vent some of this gloom,
the built up ambient noise, a home devoid of little joys.
Your silence is more telling than anything you really say
you walked away, never come again to stay, maybe to play, but not today.
But I want my shadow back, somebody to walk beside me
somebody to help me pick up the slack.
push our toes threw the sand on a beach in the promised land.
This auditorium my last stand,
won't you sit down there and keep your eyes on me?
the last desperate act of a guilty man tryin' a be free.
A bird in cage is always aware of its clipped wings,
a picture's worth a thousand different things,
it's just some guy on a cross, three days for the loss,
angel man in the cave's the boss.
Tellin' you why the rock was rolled back,
turn around to the see their tracks.
Can catch up to 'em too, just need to count to twelve,
in the library of the soul pulling tears off the shelves.
Always on my feet, I'm quick like a cat,
but if I had nine lives, why did I use 'em like that.
I'm in the middle of my own civil war, new streets but I've been here before.
Take the fork in the road, a needle in the weather vain
there's no shame in coming clean out of the shower.
Get my back for an hour, just let me fall
asleep in your gaze,
just got up and told 'em my name,
there's no praise to give because it won't be true.
And I could die in this bed lookin' back up to see you.
There's my life and my name and I'm waring 'em out,
Somethin' deep inside's finding its way to the door,
I managed to find from the floor.
Lemme have just five minutes more.
Got me a list of names who've been good to my bad,
time to fix it by sending sorries out into the dark night.
In any light, this wasn't right,
feed me tomorrow and I won't bite.
Just want you to know that I mean it,
so you can just sit back and glean it from my smile
that I smile when I'm looking at you,
from the rays of light from my brain when I'm thinkin' bout you.
Just one more chance to make it right, just sit tight,
28 days and a couple of nights.
The past is gory, got no glory,
featured voice in a broken toy storey.
Gotta get down off this wall, walk threw the mall.
Just a clear window between you and your dreams, it seems.
I placed a bet on the high of my lowest regret,
it fell on red but my wager was security set.
Walk me out to the street, call me a cab,
the last stab,
in the guts with this shaky microphone,
Are there anybody's lights on at home?
where I return alone.









Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Knowledge & Expression

A question was posed to me recently, and I answered what I thought was a good answer, but the substance of it began to fester. The question was, "Which do you think is life's ultimate pursuit: knowledge, or expression?" I ignored the fact that my options were so strictly limited in this sort of black and white sense, and thought about it for a while.

I answered, both, but my answer was not a product of indecision. I couldn't decide between knowledge or expression for the simple reason that they are linked in principle. It's knowing what to say and how to say it. The who, where, when questions add personality, reason, and objective to what we say and are made significant by how we say it.

The interconnection between knowledge and expression is particularly telling in writing. A writer's quest to find their own "voice" is a combination of knowledge acquired and expression learned. To stand out in a world filled with writers takes various paths of self-exploration, experimentation, if you like, and practice to find the modes of expression that does justice to an individuals experience with the world.

In this sense, the more you find out about yourself - the thoughts you're willing to write down, the areas of society you're willing to explore - the more knowledge you acquire. Taking the time to think about them and allowing for the time to practice writing allows a writer to access their truest voice, or style of expression.






Monday, December 20, 2010

Artists Inspire Artists: A note on the Paris Review Interviews

Once upon a day a few years ago, I was walking through my local bookstore with no particular destination in mind when I stumbled past a section of anthologies. There were short story collections, books of literary criticism, essay collections by John Updike and Susan Orlean, and books about theory and why writers write. I stood in front of the shelf for several minutes judging the books by their covers. Then I saw a book with the title The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. I, written across its bright yellow cover.

Taking the book off of the shelf and turning it over, I noticed a quote from Ernest Hemingway that read, "I have all the copies of The Paris Review and like the interviews very much. They will make a good book when collected and that will be very good for the Review." There were also included, quotes from several other established literary bright lights such as Margaret Atwood, John Ashbery and Salmon Rushdie. Each praised the Review for it's famous and thorough interviews.

Flipping to the table of contents, I began reading names like Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, and several others, each interviewed by the Review for their insights into the arts of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry and drama.

Needless to say, I bought the book and quickly became engrossed by its content. Each interview began with a short description of the setting of the interview: sometimes an office, a living room, hotel room, or restaurant, all describing the creative environment of the artists.

Reading these interviews provides one with a look into the creative engines that drive these artists, and the idiosyncrasies that keep them on track. And their methods are as diverse as the writers themselves.

For example, while Hemingway liked to write standing up, Truman Capote liked to lie down. While Annie Proulx begins composing in long-hand, she moves to the computer midway through; and Gay Talese uses shirt cards from the dry cleaners for taking notes on his subjects.
Kurt Vonnegut recounted how film adaptations (in his case for Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night) were a welcome source of financial stability to the writer. Capote, recounted the abandonment of several short stories and even an entire novel because he didn't believe they would sell. Winner of six Oscars and recipient of the 1987 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, Billy Wilder, shared his thoughts on failure, by stating that:

"Sure, I've made blunders, for God's sake. Sometimes you lay an egg, and people will say, It was too early. Audiences weren't ready for it. Bullshit. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. The tragedy of the picture maker, as opposed to the playwright, is that for the playwright the play debuts in Bedford, Massachusetts, and then you take it to Pittsburgh. If it stinks you bury it. If you examine the credits of Moss Hart or George Kaufman, no one ever brings up the play that bombed in the provinces and was buried after four shows.

"With a picture that doesn't work, no matter how stupid and how bad, they're still going to try to squeeze every single penny out of it. You go home one night and turn on the TV and suddenly, there on television, staring back at you, on prime time, that lousy picture, that thing, is back! We don't bury our dead; we keep them around smelling badly."

However funny or odd the interviews (and sometimes the interviewees) seem, a common point with all is the hard work ethic needed to create, and the discipline it takes to reach the visions of their perfection. Again, I turn to Hemingway (I'll admit a bias for his interview, as he is one of my favourite writers), who admitted to writing the last page of his classic A Farewell To Arms, a staggering 39 times, before he was satisfied. With each of the interviews, there is included a page of manuscript, of one form or another, by the writer, where one gets a flavour for their editing style. (As a person who grew up typing, I also get a kick out of seeing the fine examples of remarkable penmanship.) Kurt Vonnegut's example even came from an unpublished novel of his called Spit and Image. Since the author's recent death and publication of other previously unreleased material, might fans be treated with this unknown work in the future?

Whoever you decide to highlight, reading The Paris Review Interviews gives book lovers a window into the composition of those classic works we love. The interviews are a place where a fan might also discover habits in common with their favourite author.

Inspiration takes many and all forms. But I think a great source of excitement lies in reading the thoughts and views of the people who have helped shape literary hunger in this world.

An interviewee once told me that "art inspires art". And I couldn't agree more. But I would extend this by saying also that artists inspire artists.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Reading the Dictionary

During university I had a political philosophy professor who stood before the class one day and asked, "Have you ever read the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from cover to cover?"

It was a strange question because, as I thought anyway, aren't dictionaries something to be looked at when we forget how to spell something? Yeah, how do spell...look it up. The same with a Thesaurus. What's another word for....look it up. But then you put down the OED and never look at it again.

The professor's recommendation to us that day was simply that, "You should, it's remarkably interesting and entertaining!"

The interesting, I could see. Dictionaries, in a way, are the diary of languages, the way we track its past, present and ever-changing future. When somebody does something great (greatly evil, as you will find Hitler, Stalin and Pinochet's names; or just plain great like Tolstoy, Diana, Princess of Wales, et-cetera), their names are added to the OED.

In recent years this has been extended to consumer culture. Canadians will be pleased to know that if they are confused about what a "double-double" is, they can look it up in the Canadian OED. I'm sure in some American addition, one can find the hallmark of the original fast-food meal, the Big Mac.

When film and books began to be popularized by mass market PR strategies, making them available to global audiences, the word "blockbuster" was inserted and is defined informally as "a film or book with great commercial success." This was also extended to describe a person behind such great success, by calling them "superstars", and defining the term as "an extremely famous and successful performer or sports star." (Even animal noises are given a name and defined. Take for example, the "bleat" which is first defined as "a sheep or goat's weak or wavering cry.")

There are any number of examples where the changing nature of the English language has added to the content of the OED.

The entertaining, I can also understand, for the simple reason that some words or names are hilarious and given even funnier definitions. Take for example the "walrus moustache", a noun that describes a "long, thick, drooping moustache." (Along the lines of facial hair, maybe the term "Movember" might find its way in some day.)

How about "yippee", describing an "expression of wild excitement or delight." Canadians always love to point out the British influences on their lives, so in that spirit, consider the "yob" which is a British informal word describing a "rude or aggressive young man", or a "yobbo", which refers to a "yob".

The list goes on and on.

While the professor characterized the OED as an interesting and fascinating read, perhaps it is also a necessary read. How many times have you seen the wrong "your" or "you're", or "its" and "it's" or "they're", "their", and "there" used incorrectly? If you must, their definitions rather simply spell out their appropriate use, and they're found in the OED.

How many times have you had a conversation over Twitter or Facebook, and employed the letters "LMAO" or "LOL" to describe that you're "laughing your ass off" or that you just "laughed out loud"? How many times have you seen the aforementioned "your" simply written as "ur"?

Whether you view the OED as simply a reference tool, a vital reminder of the roots of the English language, as a source of entertaining and amusing words and definitions, or as a log meant to track the evolution of words and phrases, I would say that it is all of these things.

And definitely worth a read!





Friday, December 17, 2010

What I learned while writing a novel

This past fall, after years of kicking around mere fragments of ideas in my head, I sat down in front of an old Smith/Corona typewriter and hunted and pecked and miss-typed my way to two hundred pages of manuscript. The typewriter had been bought at the Glebe Garage sale (an immensely popular annual purging of basements and crawl-spaces in one of Ottawa's oldest neighbourhoods) for $10 dollars, and given to me as a gift.

As writers know, there are as many ways and methods to approach writing a novel as there are novelists. And if you're honest with yourself, it is a process that you don't necessarily prefect, as methods of expression can change with age, as one acquires new perspectives. In any case, I began my journey baring two rules in mind: (1) write every day, whether one paragraph, an entire chapter, story arc, character introduction; and (2) finish each day knowing where to begin the next. Let's be honest, these two principles are very basic (and I stole the second rule from Hemingway! Paris Review interview lovers may note his 1958 sit-down with George Plimpton).

I chose to focus on these rules for the simple reason that they seem easy to follow, even when writing each day seems like a serious challenge. Allowing myself to be satisfied with whatever I had written on a particular day seemed to take the pressure off of trying to perform some Kerouacian feat of marathon spontaneity. It also allowed me to completely envision the world I was trying to describe before I approached the typewriter, if only one place at a time, one character at at time.

As this project was my first attempt at composing a novel, I also learned not only how to manage a creative schedule, but I also learned to pay close attention to the stuff of novels: people, places, objects, time of day, sounds, noise, the way people walk, the way people talk, how they hold their coffee cups or pens, and probably a million other things. I have always been a social person, but writing this novel heightened my awareness as to how much personal interaction goes a long way in creating moulds of character.

For me this meant turning off the iPod, turning off the BlackBerry, and opening my senses to the things going on around me, the smells in the air, sitting on the bus and not drowning out the ambient noise with the damn rap music, et-cetera. Letting go of various digital distractions through the writing process was vital in capturing the essence of place, setting, character. These may not be the things that drive a novel, but they are the blood and muscle that layers the skeleton of plot.

In the end it is about simplicity. For myself (and I didn't write this to sound like a garden Buddha passing out fortune cookie wisdom), ignoring the complexities of the world around me and paying more attention to the "little things", allowed me to find places where my characters could exist, and allowed me to give them traits that were relatable to others.