In the Cherry Lane Music songbook for Before These Crowded Streets, "Rapunzel" ends with a small note, Segue to "The Last Stop". On the album, a cellphone chirps and a conversation begins briefly in a swirl of Middle Eastern-inspired (for lack of a better name) sounds that ends with a "Hello?" Then the third track of the album, "The Last Stop", hits like a wall. Wailing, horns, drums, bass, and twelve-string guitar launch into a heavy rhythm. From a guitarist's point of view, the first measure is a simple affair of an F sharp major chord, strummed in time. If "Rapunzel" was less concerned with chords, the opposite is true of "The Last Stop"--which makes it an interesting choice for the next song on the album. While "Rapunzel" ends with the band weaving, jamming, and eventually coalescing on a tight ending, "The Last Stop" picks up at that same place (albeit in a different key, both musically and thematically) and then rushes into a song that will, eventually, spiral free and fade away. But I'm getting ahead of myself. "The Last Stop" (the video on this one doesn't have a live performance that I wanted, so it's the audio only of the album version) has long been one of my favorite songs of the album, in part because it's a more aggressive guitar part (which always mattered a lot to me, being the spastic teenager I was when I first learned to play this song). It also has a distinctive vibe to it, one that is, as I implied before, wrapped in an Arabic scale. This proves the foundation of the song, not just for the riff of the guitar and the bass, but for the melodic interpretations as well. Dave Matthews was born and raised in South Africa--which helps explain the rhythm of "Don't Drink the Water"--and has a broad vocabulary of musical influences that come through as a result of that. This song (as well as a track from their early album, Remember Two Things, called "Minarets") uses this--dare I say?--exotic scale to create a musical texture that, I believe, anyway, is designed to underscore the antiwar point that the band is attempting to drive home. By invoking the nebulous concept of "The Middle East" (and, perhaps, alluding to the last stop of crusaders in arriving in Jerusalem), the disgust and disdain for war--for its motives and its costs--points at a more specific example than a three-chord antiwar song (though those can be effective, too). Without the lyrics, however, the song's energy dilutes. Here are the lyrics, then: Fire By invoking this strong sonic imagery and matching it with the terrors of the seemingly endless warfare of the Middle East, a frustration is voiced. Politics of the area aside, few can deny that we have seen a great deal of bloodshed in the area of the world where the great religions of peace--Judaism and Islam--continue to battle. Even the idea that "The fire grows from the east" adds to this deliberate attunement to the crimes committed (and, yes, I think war is itself a crime, but now's not the place to discuss that). "How is this/Hate so deep? /Lead us all so blindly killing, killing" clearly demarcates the mindlessness, the illogic of war.
But perhaps the most stirring lines would have to be "A mother's cry/Is hate so deep?/Must my baby's bones/This hungry fire feed?" Significantly, the studio version has Stefan Lessard, the bassist, give an additional staccato slap on the line leading into it ("Your sins are washed enough"), almost as though drawing attention to the important emotion that Matthews is conjuring here. Though Matthews doesn't always preoccupy himself with rhyming often, there is a slant rhyme in "deep" and "feed"; slant rhymes often convey a sense of wrongness, that something is incorrect that the poem is trying to draw attention to. (Consider, for example, the way that Wilfred Owen uses them to such stunning effect in "Arms and the Boy".) In the case of "The Last Stop", what could be more distressing and baffling than the mother's cry, demanding to know--in effect--why her sacrifice is the way that hatred is to receive its payment. This same stanza has one of my favorite lines of the whole song immediately after the mother's unanswered--or, perhaps, too-easily answered--question: "As smoke clouds roll in the symphony of death." Wow. I mean, what an incredible way of describing fighting: This song about war makes note of the music of a battle, taking the chaos of fighting and translating it from the concussive waves of shells to the heavy throb of a bass-kick, the firing of guns to the snap of the snare. There's orchestration in a symphony as there is (ostensibly) in war, yet the chaos of the music is also an indication that the music is not, actually, under as much control as the conductor may wish. The clashing cymbals clatter as the cry of the mother is washed away by the smoky clouds of war. There's the disdain in Matthew's "Ha!" when, in the pre-chorus, an assertion is made: "Right is wrong now." Then a rebellious, "Shut up, you big lie." The big lie, of course, is that "war [is] the only way to peace"--another idea that Matthews rejects ("I don't fall for that"). That killing (killing) and hatred being the pathways to peace seem ludicrous, and the frustration of that illogic--that lethal illogic--is the engine of the song. The religious allusions here are worth noting: "Oh no/Gracious even God/Blooded on the cross/Your sins are washed enough" and, later, the lines "And there you are nailing good to a tree/And then saying forgive me" (followed by the high-pitched shriek, "Why?" to draw attention to the tension of the hypocrisy here). Both are clearly invoking Christ--in fact, in one of his live shows*, he replaces "good" with "God", as if the connection isn't clear enough. Why do this? Matthews' views on religion probably aren't widespread (I remember one interview where he said something along the lines of, "If there is a God, he doesn't have a plan"), but he isn't ignorant of the Christian tradition.** In this case, he seems to be laying blame for war on Christianity, too, pointing out the not so-subtle-hypocrisy of believing in a Prince of Peace and killing people in His name. Thus with his music he pulls (perhaps) the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Christianity--vast swaths of the world--into an excoriation of warmongering and bloodlust. "Here, there's more than is showing up" is as good a way of pointing out that there is more to this song than what I've touched on here, but I think I'll leave off the lyrics and look at the music one last time. The song remains in F sharp throughout, as well as 4/4 time. There is one exception, and that is when Matthews switches to 6/4 upon singing "This is the last stop". The lyrics are five beats, which gives one beat to rest--a moment for the song to literally come to "the last stop". Even when moving into the bridge, where some more chords are introduced, Matthews keeps the key the same. For me (and I mean this interpretively, not intentionally on the band's part), this is symbolic of the idea that the arguments for war never really change, no matter how much we want to dress them up. Even the fact that the song is in F sharp major feels symbolic, as that particular key has six (!) sharps in it. It's like a knife drawer on a musical scale. The outro for "The Last Stop" takes the first song ("Pantala Naga Pampa") and combines it with the third. It does this by beginning a chord progression that will be reprised at the end of the album. So, the first song's themes (which are lyrically recapitulated at the end of "Spoon") and the third song's chord progression (airily introduced for a few measures whilst Bela Fleck's banjo arrangement weaves deftly through them) are both foreshadowed within these two tracks. Additionally, the outro spills and spins away, with the passion and energy fading into the background as the outro takes over, dissipating what has come before it and trying to push towards--perhaps--a peaceful resolution. Unfortunately for that idea, Matthews is not finished condemning hatred. Marching like a drummer of death, "Don't Drink the Water" comes next. --- * "Go away and dream" is the way he sometimes sings the chorus live, instead of "Go ahead and dream". The dismissal is even clearer in the live version, in my estimation. It's no longer permission but instead rejection. ** He wrote "A Christmas Song", after all. Dave Matthews Band's third studio release, Before These Crowded Streets, is--in my mind--the best of what's around. I mentioned before that DMB made a tangible difference in my life: Without it, I don't know if I would have picked up the guitar and had all of the various positive experiences that knowing the instrument has afforded me. As is often the case with me, when I start to enjoy something, I get rather obsessive about it. If it's music, I play it on repeat and learn it on the guitar. If it's a video game, I play it to the exclusion of almost all else. If it's a book, I figure out how It has changed my life. If it's a piece of history, I want to incorporate as many pieces of it into my teaching as I can. Before These Crowded Streets is no exception; in fact, it's a case study of that very thing. So I've decided to do a deep dive into Dave Matthews Band's third album for a couple of reasons: One, it has the fewest songs (only eleven, and the first one--as you'll see--is so short as to be more of an introduction); two, it's musically and tonally diverse; and three, it's my favorite. A couple of things: I've included lyrics of the songs, as well as a the YouTube video. This is done to orientate you sonically and lyrically, both of which, I think, are important to the band's work. Unlike the music video essays, though, I'm not interested in seeing how music videos can influence an interpretive reading. Though I will pick a music video when I can, it won't always be that particular medium. In today's case, I picked the beginning of the Listener Supported concert/album combo. Just like on the CD, the first and second track are connected by a sonic tendon which lends it from one musical thought to another. So, rather than trying to tease the two apart--that, and there isn't a video of just "Pantala Naga Pampa", it's always segued into "Rapunzel"--I'm tackling both of them here. Without further ado, here's what I think about… "Pantala Naga Pampa" According to some random website, the song's title was a phrase that was shouted at Dave Matthews when he and an Indian cook worked together. While Matthews seemed to think it meant "Welcome to our Home", it really (again, according to this site) meant "There's a cobra in my pants". Maybe. The idea of the title notwithstanding, "Pantala Naga Pampa" is a short ditty. It doesn't even run to a full minute. Nevertheless, it's packed with some interesting musical ideas. The first nine or so measures have a peppy, D major chord progression. I can't remember where I heard this, but I've tended to agree with the idea that the D major chord is the "happiest" of the major chords (with D minor being the "saddest"). I don't know how you would scientifically prove that; in this case, it works well. The peppy, bright notes, intermixed with the occasional toots from LeRoi Moore's soprano (?) saxophone give a playful feeling throughout the intro of this intro. Some springy bass notes bopping through with the smoothness of the violin all contribute to, as it were, a dawning sense of possibility and optimism. Then, like a distant thunder, the drums roll through and crash into an E minor 7. The effect of this is, in my mind, a reminder of the theme of the entire album--one of optimism despite sadness, of loss and recovery, of hope in the face of despair. As if to drive that sentiment home, Matthews begins his crooning style of singing here in the E minor 7 chord--the first minor chord of the song--with the invitational verse that comprises the entirety of the song's lyrics: Come and relax now The words are hospitable and welcoming (overlaid as they are against the minor voicing of the chord), beckoning the listener to sit down and relax, to appreciate what's to come. It's energetic and hopeful, made all the more potent because of its brevity: It doesn't overstay its presence, running into the next song with only a measure's breath before "Rapunzel" comes in. Additionally, it is the "warm" to the end of the album's "cool" outro, which will reprise the idea in its own way--and which I'll look at in due time. "Pantala Naga Pampa" closes on a vibrant, open D chord, thereby ending as it began. "Rapunzel" The first full track of the album, "Rapunzel" is one of many love songs in the Dave Matthews Band's repertoire, though it's more of the energetic, excited, infatuated sides of love than the more charismatic version we see in "Crush". It's first ear-catching motif is in its time signature: The beginning of the song is in 5/4 time, rather than the 4/4 time of "Pantala Naga Pampa". This extra beat gives the introduction an interesting syncopation that reminds me of the bouncy feeling of first having a relationship. (The fact that I met the woman who would one day become my wife while I was absorbed by this album is probably part of the reason I think this.) The song will settle into a more familiar 4/4 time for the verse--shifting back to 5/4 whenever the intro lick repeats, or 6/4 when necessary--and even find an 6/8 rhythm for the bridge. This gives "Rapunzel" the sort of impetuousness that mirrors the emotions that Matthews is trying to evoke. Musically, I personally find this an unexpected composition (though nothing quite like what the Everyday album has, particularly "When The World Ends"), as its D minor lick is single notes, most of them pounding on the D note. This fits in well with the ending of "Pantala Naga Pampa", creating that sonic tissue that binds the two songs together. Whereas the first track is in a major voicing, "Rapunzel" is in a D minor. Despite that minor voicing, the song is optimistic, in large part because the minor lick is offset by the simple chord progression of the verse. And that's part of what I really like about this song. Though I've played the entire album countless times, with or without the album playing along, "Rapunzel" never really sits comfortably in an acoustic-only version. The entire band's deliberate halting, jolting progress through the song--smoothed over as the music's theme builds on the simple skeleton of the chord progression--is necessary for the full flavor of the song to be felt. The doubling from the other instruments, the popcorn staccato of the drums, and the flat-heavy melody all combine in a way that makes this particular song a "band song", one that really derives its power from the entire ensemble. (This is in contrast to, say, songs like "Satellite" where the intricate cycle of guitar notes and melody can carry an entire acoustic rendition without issue.) Here are the lyrics: Ha, open wide, oh, so good I'll eat you, take me for a ride Matthews isn't being particularly delicate in what he's imagining here--though if you want to hear his argument for a one-night stand, you can listen to "Say Goodbye" to get a sense of how explicit he can get--though I stand by the idea that this is following after the early-relationship infatuations that are so charged with excitement and passion.
Perhaps, you could argue, the concept is one of easy access and hyperbolic expressions of romantic flattery. I won't deny that there's that possibility. However, the two bridges--which, again, switch to a slower 6/8 time--do a lot for the idea that Matthews is talking about a growing, potentially real sense of love. "I think the world of you/With all of my heart I do./This blood through my veins for you,/You alone have all of me./From you my strength is so full/To carry your burdens, too./I give my world to you." Again, sycophantic hyperbole to woe a woman into accepting him is certainly possible. But I think of my own experiences with love and I can't help but feel that this is true. I do give my heart to my wife, who alone has all of me. Her strength is what I rely on to help us through our bad times. And let's not kid ourselves: Being in love ought to be fun. It should be romantic and sexy and blasé and repetitious. Love is a lot of things. Energetic and happy are also parts of it. For what it's worth, I think Matthews gets that part of life right. Of course, the music is bouncing along with this theme until the dizzying saxophone solo by the late LeRoi Moore. It crashes and soars, squeaks and grooves along, giving time and space for the signature Dave Matthews Band jam-session feeling. As the song reaches its climax (which, yes, I think is a fitting description), the song drops away from its simple chord progression (in which it bounces from a C7 to an F9 to the C7 and then to a G, only to repeat the process for a dozen or more measures) and lands once more in the closing riff of the introduction, thereby tying off the musical and lyrical themes at the same time. Personal Thoughts While "Rapunzel" isn't my favorite of the album--probably for the aforementioned reason that it doesn't translate well to an acoustic-only version--I love its energy. The one-two punch of invitation and infatuation from "Pantala Naga Pampa" to "Rapunzel" is a joy, and the vibrancy of the emotion in those two songs provides one of the layers and textures that the album explores. Because Before These Crowded Streets explores the dual themes of lightness and darkness, it makes sense to have some songs, like this one, that revel in the joys of love, life, and hospitality. As the darkness of war ("The Last Stop"), grievous personal mistakes ("The Stone"), and existential dread ("Spoon") yet lurk in future songs, it's necessary, in some ways, for these two songs to open up the album. I'm working through another Mark Edmundson title. This one is Why Teach? and it's really good. I'll write up my thoughts about it later, so suffice to say that I'm enjoying it a lot and I am excited to also push through his slim volume Why Read? as soon as I can.
A couple of days ago, I came across one particular quote that stood out to me. He was talking about the two different types of college--the corporate one and the scholarly oasis one--and said that the leadership that's generated by the corporate one tends to be less of actual leadership and one more of enthusiastic regurgitation. He says, "What people usually mean by a leader now is someone who, in a very energetic, upbeat way, shares all of the values of the people who are in charge." That got me thinking. In education, we have some Twitter personalities that are sometimes called "thought leaders" and they'll be people who tweet faux-profound messages like, "Grades indicate an end of learning" or (and this one falls into Edmundson's quote quite aptly), "Principals, the likelihood of anyone else in your building having principal experience is slim to none. Be confident in your decisions, your process, and your shortcomings. Most recognize that they don’t fully understand your role and want to support you." The ideas typically aren't bad, per se, but they're an energetic, upbeat way of sharing the values of the people in charge. And isn't that very much what we want in a leader? My bosses are all on my wavelength--or I'm on theirs, perhaps?--and so I'm happy to go along with them. Though we bump into conflicts every once in a while, it is, for the most part, a pretty smooth experience going from one day to the next. So what about in my religion? This one is trickier, because there's an implicit (and sometimes not-so-implicit) gag order on criticisms, critiques, or questions about leadership decisions. I think back to my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Back then (early 2000s), the missionary program asked missionaries to memorize six different discussions about core principles of the gospel. By memorize, I mean to literally memorize, word for word, what was written in the discussion pamphlet. This was something that I saw some value in, as it helped me to gain a stronger (admittedly, gospel-centric) vocabulary in Spanish. But I rarely recited the charlas (the Spanish word for discussions) verbatim, despite having a couple of them fully committed to memory. Though there was personal benefit to the memorization process, it wasn't useful outside of the confines of my apartment. Despite it not being something that I utilized "correctly", my mission president*, a man whom I love and respect now as I did then, was constantly pushing the memorization process. He testified to its importance and explained why we, as missionaries, would only be remiss by letting the memorization process slacken. Part way through--not even a full year after I began, if I remember correctly--the Church reversed course on the memorization process. Instead, we were to use the charlas as a guide to outlining a custom-made discussion for our investigators. (The new thrust ended up being a stop-gap between the old discussions and the next phase, which is currently being used and is called Preach My Gospel.) As soon as the new outline-only format, with no more need to memorize, happened, my mission president immediately began testifying to the importance of outlines. He used personal experiences--just as he had with the memorization format--to explain and expound the value of such a teaching tool. From then on, in my mission, we outlined, feeling the support and leadership of my mission president. In the years since then, I've have cause to reflect on that. I don't say this to in any way diminish my mission president's leadership calling, his role, or his effectiveness. He led me through the very difficult process of a two year mission, far away from home. He helped shore me up and encourage me when I needed that support. So I'm not trying to say that he wasn't a leader, despite my quote by Edmundson at the top. What I can't quite get out of my mind is his firm resolve to say what the Church asked him to say. And maybe that's it: Maybe what's important here is to see my mission president's commitment to the Church, rather than any program or procedure. In a rapidly changing church environment**, trusting the leaders is to not trust the policies. The thinking, I suppose, is that the policies can change…but our leaders change, too. Widescale shifts in Church policies (how long we attend services on Sundays, how we minister to one another) are all welcome and interesting--but they didn't start happening until President Monson died. So obviously the leader does matter…and the leader also changes. Our ward was split last week--our first Sunday services under a new bishop (a new leader) is today. It will be interesting to see how my new leadership differs from the old…and whether I feel an Edmundsonian vibe coming from the new bishopric, or a sense of leadership in a less jaded, less cynical way. --- * If you're unfamiliar with how missions are set up in the Church, there's a man who serves for a number of years as the president of the mission. He's the one who decides who serves with whom and where, as well as other important decisions for how missionary work unfolds in the section of the world to which he's been assigned. He acts as a surrogate father for a lot of the missionaries, and though some people have really negative experiences with their mission presidents, mine were nothing but pleasures. ** I spoke about my own experiences in the field, but the Church recently made a large change in how often missionaries can talk to their families. Only a month ago, missionaries could only call home on Mother's Day and Christmas morning. Now, they can text and Facetime and communicate with parents on their preparation days--meaning weekly. Going from four times in a mission to weekly is a massive change. (It makes sense to me, as parents can be a great source of help and support to their missionaries, and there's little reason, I think, that a 21st century missionary needs to rely on 20th century policies.) There were good reasons for the old policy, and good reasons for the new. That it's changing so much is indicative of how much policy is being upended by the new First Presidency. Despite the fact that we live in a hyper-connected world, there are still things that slip through the cracks, only resurfacing via happenstance when the algorithmic gods mindlessly decree. In this particular case, I'm thinking about two things about dinosaurs that I learned this week: Utah has evidence of an intermediary tryannosaurid that helps fill in the story of how the Tyrannosaurus rex eventually became the tyrant reptile king, and the amber-preserved tail of a mid-Cretaceous dinosaur. The former was published on 22 February 2019…the latter, which I just found out about, was published 8 December…of 2016. So, even though there are two really cool updates to our understanding about dinosaurs that I learned about this week, only one of them happened this week. I'm feeling behind the curve, sadly. So, in an effort to make myself feel better about my inadvertent lapse (maybe I should set up a Google Alert for dinosaurs?), I wanted to write just a bit about my impressions about Moros intrepidus, this newly named beauty. On one hand, I'm pretty excited about it. The find, as the news article linked above points out, shows how the demise of Utah's state fossil, the Allosaurus, opened up a new niche that the tyrannosaurids were able to exploit. How did T. rex get so big? Well, there were ancestors to the King back when Allosaurus was chomping its way through Jurassic Utah. When the other reptile died off, Moros intrepidus was there, ready to take over the spot as top predator. Add in a few million years of evolutionary pressures, and you've a recipe for the Rex. On the other, this sort of thing, while exciting, feels a bit rushed. This is simply my take, as an armchair paleontologist: I wish we had a bit more of the skeleton before making the claims we have. If you check out the article in Nature, you'll see that the dinosaur is described because of some leg bones and a few teeth. One of the things that paleontologists and paleoartists have been criticized for is the way they tend to wrap bones in some pebbly skin and call it accurate. There's a lot of possibilities about what's going on in the shape and type of body that isn't fossilized. (Think, for example, how different your dog looks when shaved versus when she's still in her winter coat.) When it comes to describing a dinosaur, we almost never have a complete skeleton in a single place. Often, the understanding of the creature comes because we've found multiple pieces from sundry places and specimens. Together, we're able to cobble together a fuller picture. But just like the idea of what they looked like, we sometimes miss things. And I worry that there might be something crucial that Moros intrepidus has in the space between its legs and its front teeth that could change a lot of what we're assuming here. Consider the distinctive heads of a Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodicus. Their bodies are constructed differently, yes, but their overall shape and purpose is pretty similar. Without their heads intact, however, there's a potentially huge error in describing what their faces would have looked like. As a person who's really invested in being as precise as we can about these ancient creatures, I'm reluctant to make the kind of interpretive jumps that come by having so few bones. That being said, the deal with Moros intrepidus isn't new; most of our dinosaur species come from very fragmental sections of the animal. We do this all of the time. I just…kinda wish we didn't? I mean, I'm not trying to diminish the hard work of the paleontologists who made this discover--it's really cool, and it helps guide future work in the field toward a deer-sized tyrannosaurid (which, let's be honest, is freaking awesome). When I see the news article, I realize how little we know about it. The newspapers, however, make it sound much more certain it is. There's simply too little evidence about the creature to make more than vague, hazy guesses. Did it take advantage of the extinction of Allosaurus as the Cretaceous started up? Yes, that much is clear. Did it look as depicted above? No idea. Though it's doubtful, we could ask how the scientists know it doesn't have an impossibly cool crest like the Cryolophosaurus. And the answer is, they can't. Not until more is found. So it's less that we've a new tyrannosaurid and more the idea that we're making a lot of assumptions about its shape and appearance that's bothering me. But, hey, I'm usually behind the times on this sort of thing. By the time you read this, there could be something else entirely discovered that will set the whole thing on its head. And that's the great part about paleoscience; it, like the biology it describes, is evolving.
Wow. The ending of this play is brutal.
The Henry VI plays aren't often staged, but, having read/watched them all in the past year, I have to admit that's confusing to me. There's a whiff of "new Shakespeare", and 1 Henry VI is, honestly, pretty rough. But I don't see how people can be so in love with watching Richard III and skip his backstory in 3 Henry VI. Since synopses are easily available (or, better yet, the plays themselves, which can be watched/read with relatively little effort), I'm not going to belabor the plot of the play. Instead, I'm thinking more of the way that Shakespeare condenses multiple years of conflict into a two-and-a-half hour play. He gathers up the recurring characters and motifs from 2 Henry VI and then launches a recreation of the Wars of the Roses, a time of civil broil in the 15th century. There are factions and traitors, people who are with one house and then move on to the other house, only to return at the end. It's no secret that George R.R. Martin based A Song of Ice and Fire on the Wars of the Roses (with clear parallels, like the Red Wedding being a more violent version of what causes Warwick to turn against Edward IV, for example, or Tyrion Lannister acting as the parallel to the deformed Richard of Gloucester) as the story is replete with intrigue and action. It was a wise choice for Martin to use this moment in English history for many of the same reasons why Shakespeare picked it. The piece is ambitious--and perhaps that's the biggest flaw of the piece. Unlike in the rest of his history plays, Shakespeare doesn't let us have a central character in the three parts of Henry VI. You would think Henry VI would fit that bill, but he's too passive and uninteresting as a person (until his final scene, in 5.6, that is) to hold the attention of an audience for one play, let alone three. Other characters strive for dominance of the stage in the same way that they strive for the crown. The result is one of a lot happening and little focus. When Shakespeare gets past 1 Henry VI (which, though I disagree with Tina Packer that this is Shakespeare's "high school project" of a play, I would be content in putting it into the canon as the first of Shakespeare's attempts), he will shift his histories* more tightly toward a single character that will propel the plot. Hence the power of a scene of shattered dignity in Richard II making a much larger effect on the audience than it does in 3 Henry VI. Hal and Falstaff make the Henry IV plays memorable in ways that no one else in 3 Henry VI can. Even though I dislike Henry V, his play is focused on a charismatic and thought-provoking character. What do we have for 3 Henry VI? Queen Margaret, of course. But once her best foil (Richard Duke of York) is beheaded, her fangs are plucked by circumstances and the venom she wishes to spit rarely finds a target. Henry VI is lackluster--a historical accuracy, from what I can tell--and so we're left with little to commend the play from the vantage of other Shakespearean works. But that isn't my takeaway. Part of this is informed by the BBC's Hollow Crown series, but if you read 3 Henry VI as the origin story of Richard--the one who will go on to become Richard III in his own play--then 3 Henry VI turns into something else altogether interesting. See, it's difficult to see the Machiavellian Richard from his play in the early parts of this one. He's manipulative and ambitious, yes, but so are a host of other characters. As the play moves forward, however, you can see that Richard's intent was about getting his father into the throne. His own desires and bloodlusts are, early on, invisible--buried, perhaps, or maybe even non-existent. But when his little brother** dies, Richard takes a dark turn. Opportunities begin to open up to him, and he sees how his own violence and deformity are powers that he can wield over others--a reality that he will exploit later on. As the play progresses, Richard gains more and more confidence in the way he can hop-scotch his way to the crown. When he brutally murders and then, as it were, mutilates Henry VI's corpse at the end of the play, a transformation has occurred. The Richard from the beginning of 3 Henry VI is a very different, much darker version of what he was at the beginning. This turns Richard III into an analysis of what happens when a man has chosen to embrace his darkness--of one who sees his physical deformity as evidence of the deformity of his soul--is given free rein. If, for no other reason than that, I think more people should experience 3 Henry VI. --- * I can't remember King John well enough to say if it fits in with this thesis. We'll have to wait and see. ** This is one of the inaccuracies that makes sense to me: Rutland was older than Richard, but there's a lot more pathos in having him be the baby of the family and then brutally murdered. In The Hollow Crown version, Richard is watching the murder happen from a place of hiding, enhancing the idea that Richard's latent evil was, in part, induced by the trauma of seeing his younger brother butchered. With the middle of the month already almost upon us (for as lethargic and mind-numbingly slow as January moves, February always progresses at a pleasant--albeit frigid--clip, for which I am thankful), I thought I'd give a quick update about War Golem, my World War I-inspired fantasy novel about a combo team of soldier-and-golem who fight in the trenches. This year has seen a shift in what I'm trying to do with my reading and writing--an attempt to find a balance, as it were--and so I've spent less time generating new content (like this essay) and more time in editing what I've already written. In the case of War Golem, the book itself is 31 chapters long, meaning it would take me a month to edit the whole thing if I knock out a chapter a day.
Unsurprisingly, I have not finished this current draft of the book. However, I am close. I have six or seven chapters left to go as I've been slugging my way through my first book to ever have had this much effort put into it. What I've done differently than in the past* is fill in a spreadsheet with the information that I'm trying to keep track of in this edit. Continuity details, such as locations, timing between events, and even the color of the golem's eyes (which change, depending on her mood) have been documented. I include a notes section that's supposed to help me keep in mind some of the stuff that I'm thinking about, as well as a section that tracks what I begin and end each chapter with** to keep me from repeating myself. I also include a synopsis of the chapter--when I'm done, I can read through only a couple thousand words (max) to see the whole shape of the story--and a section for "on-page" characters and those mentioned in the course of the conversations. In other words, I'm trying to be more organized in my approach to the edits this time. I don't know if these tweaks are going to help me become a better writer, but at least--thanks to this spreadsheet--I know what's going on in my book. --- * I'm always tinkering with how I write a novel. I have some foundational pieces that I try to put into play, but every single book has come out slightly--and sometimes greatly--different than what came before it. I don't know if that's a sign of fiddling or grazing to find the right fit, or if it's a natural exigency of the process. However, I do want to note that I got the words grazing, fiddling, and exigency into the same sentence, which is not--I submit--a normal thing to see. ** I mentioned this a couple of years ago (almost exactly two, to be precise) that I've found satisfaction in concluding with how I began. I took this to War Golem, where I begin and end the chapters with a word or image that's the same. I haven't read the book qua a book, so I don't know how effective it is. I did, however, decide that, in its sequel, War Golems, I would take a phrase or word from the ending of the previous chapter to incorporate into the beginning of the current chapter, thereby threading the story together with similarities. I prefer the first style to the latter. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Yesterday, I finally finished one of the books that I've been reading for the better part of a month called Why Write? by Mark Edmundson. I've never read anything by Edmundson before--hadn't even heard of him--but I've purchased two other books by him since I started Why Write? (Why Read? and Why Teach? are both in my possession now.) He is a passionate reader, particularly of the transcendentalists (whom I've never had much taste for, though Edmundson almost persuades me to give them a try), and his ideas about why one should write are compelling, thought-provoking, and powerful. Indeed, Why Write? has become one of my favorite books--fresh on the top of my list of books that I will readily recommend to anyone who is interested in the topic.
What makes it so good? Well, there's a particular niche that Edmundson is filling in here: He's speaking to writers, so the audience (in this case, I) is treated to a focused, thoughtful approach to the theme. This isn't up my alley; it's in my living room, bedded down on the couch with shoes off and a cozy blanket wrapped about it. More than that, however, is that, despite its tagline, not a manual for how to write. It's not actually a "master's class" on the craft, but instead a love letter to the skill. Edmundson chews over the different ideas about writing and then places them all on the page with a gentle cadence that's simply a delight to read. And that's what I like about it: The book isn't talking about how I could write a better story, but instead echoing things I hadn't known I felt about why I bother to try. Admittedly, reading excellent prose and then turning to the limp sentences I leave on the page is a touch disheartening. And one of the concerns I have about my sudden influx of reading Edmundson is that I'm going to be copying his style, since I like it so much. It's hard not to--after all, he's saying what I wish I had had the wit and the experience and the skill to say. Like tracing the shape of comic book characters on a piece of paper to try to learn how to draw, there's a desire to emulate. It's a short-cut, of course: True artists are going to find the time and discipline to learn how to draw correctly through anatomical study, developing a style of their own, and dedicating themselves to their art--they aren't going to get good at tracing others' work and learning from them that way. Which isn't to say that one can't learn by tracing, but one also learns the errors and mistakes that the original incorporated. And working on copying a final project instead of seeing how all the pieces fit together is also one of the dangers of that kind of behavior. Still, I really appreciated reading this book--an unexpected gift from my friend, Dustin. I specifically enjoyed the part about revisions (or, as he calls it, the religion of revisionism), as I'm unsure about my own progress in that department. I don't really know what it means to revise or rewrite something--I don't know where it's appropriate or where it's a waste of time. My current project, War Golem, is continually growing every time I set about to edit it. Yet, according to most every author that I've read, they've all said to cut out 10% of the first draft. (Okay, so this is technically the fourth draft, I think, but it shouldn't be growing larger every day, right?) So when Edmundson says, yes, of course you need to knock off the burrs and the typos and the continuity errors, but let's not be hasty about it, I feel vindicated, if only a little bit. (Then I worry about having misread him and not really abiding by the spirit of what he was trying to say and thinking myself a better writer than I am and maybe it's just being arrogant on my part to think that I don't have to do a lot of work on my writing, and what does it even mean to "work" on writing, since, after all, Edmundson said earlier that you should be sweating when you finish, as if the process of writing on the page is of tantamount physical exertion to going to the gym, and I won't even go to the gym because it just seems sweaty and pointless…) The book isn't long, but if you're a writer--aspiring or casual--or you'd like some insight into the madness that writers perpetuate on themselves and those around them, then you could do a lot worse than picking up your own copy of Why Write? I say "your own copy" because I'm not going to share. Sorry. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Over the past couple of months, I've been watching the Sam Raimi versions of the Spider-Man movies with my three boys. (Don't worry; my five-year-old covers his eyes during the "scary" parts.) We finished Spider-Man 3 last night, which reminded me of how deeply flawed it is a film, and also showed some highlights that I had either not noticed before, or had forgotten. Of Raimi's three entries into the franchise, Spider-Man 3 is universally (and rightly) considered the weakest of the trilogy. For me, there are a lot of personal connections to all of the films: I saw Spider-Man with some friends at a casual midnight showing--the friends worked at the movie theater in May 2002, so we turned it on at midnight and had a private screening; this was before movie theaters realized people would pay money to go to highly-anticipated films--and I remember stumbling out of the theater in a dazed joy for what I'd finally been treated to. I went on my mission shortly thereafter, which meant that two years passed before I could watch it again. And, much to my enjoyment, Spider-Man 2 came out in the summer of 2004--perfect timing. I saw Spider-Man 2 in California, where my family was vacationing (a tradition for when one of the boys came home from their mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at the time, with my good childhood friend, Chris. My dad said, as we were walking out of the theater, that he felt like he was watching me and my fiancé (who is a redhead, too) the entire time. I remember being really satisfied with the film, and I watched it a lot. (I also go the video game which, up until the recent PS4 entry, was considered the best Spider-Man game of all time.) When Spider-Man 3 was on the horizon, however, things in my life had shifted a lot. I was recently graduated from college, unemployed, and spending a great deal of time in Primary Children's Medical Center, where our first born son, Puck, was being treated for a severe heart-defect. Gayle and I went to see Spider-Man 3 as a "date night", mostly because we were being kicked out of the hospital for an hour as the nurses changed shifts anyway, so we figured we could take an extra hour or so and watch a movie. Early on in the film, the bad guy, Sandman, climbs into the room of a little girl who was attached to a canula. The unexpected connection between my current plight (as Puck was on oxygen for much of his early life) made me instantly on the defensive against what might happen in the movie. As a result of that--and the overall strange narrative choices--it never really stuck with me as a film. There were the embarrassing moments (and, having seen it again, they're still quite awkward), of course, but some of the themes that it was trying to explore didn't really remain in my mind. This is the first time I've watched the film in over a decade, I'd guess, and I no longer think it's as bad as I remember. It's still not good, necessarily--the dance sequences are quite strange--but there's a lot more going for it…until Venom shows up. In fact, the whole third act isn't good at all. But the form of the movie--with everything going so well for Peter at the beginning, only to fall apart throughout--was a great decision. In Spider-Man, it starts off with Peter in a fairly neutral position; no, he didn't have the girlfriend that he wanted, but his aunt and uncle were alive and cared for him. That changes throughout the movie, so that his beginning position and ending position had shifted. Spider-Man 2 has him in a low-point at the beginning where he's lost his job, he's late for school, he's always tired--everything that could go wrong (even failing to get the hors d'oeuvres or margarita at the gala) does. So he starts low and only descends further. Then, throughout the course of the film, he learns important lessons and is able to climb up higher than he had been before. For Spider-Man 3, his starting position is at a height--things are going well and he starts to take his good luck for granted. Things unwind faster and faster and he turns to a parallel for substance abuse. The symbiote acts as a drug, something to block his pain and anger and channel it into what he thinks is cool or attractive. Part of the reason the dance moves and the finger-guns are so tacky and awkward is because we know it isn't cool, but Peter thinks it is. All of that subtext and nuance is great filmmaking, even if it is kind of hard to watch. Where the film stumbles is as soon as Venom comes on the scene. The team-up between Sandman and Venom doesn't make sense, and though the forgiveness that Peter renders Flint at the very end is impressive and necessary, the jumble of the ending makes it hard to be emotionally connected.
Everyone (who cares to, I suppose) knows that Spider-Man 3 is often held up as an example of studio meddling with the director's vision and getting a blemished product as a result. That is absolutely the case--but I don't think the error was in adding the symbiote. I think it was in adding Eddie Brock. Not only is Topher Grace a milquetoast actor (not bad, necessarily, but not the right choice here), but the character of Brock/Venom is not what the film needed. Because of what the symbiote does to Peter, the way it manipulates him and addicts him, is an excellent addition to the film. Peter defeating the symbiote in the church, where it dies (or, I guess, if it has to come back in a later film, that would be fine) so that he could focus on the Sandman issue would have made for a much stronger film. There are some moments of impressive CGI work, with a lot of great homages to the comics in it, and while it's almost completely broken at the end, I do think that, a dozen years down the line, Spider-Man 3 is a better film than I originally gave it credit for. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! When a person gets deeply entrenched in the individual, perpetual experiences of the day-to-day, it's easy to forget that others don't have the same familiarity with the process. An example of that would have to be the idea of substitute teachers.
I hate having to find a sub. It isn't that the process of actually finding another human to take care of my classes is difficult; most of that stuff is automated nowadays. (Come on; it's 2019.) No, it's the designing of a lesson plan that is not a waste of time. Drafting a substitute plan is, in a lot of ways, trying to distill one's value as a teacher into its least important parts and stretching that into a class period. Sometimes we watch documentaries or films in my class…why? What's there to discuss in the film? What information can I expand or enhance the experience with? These and other, similar questions are immaterial to a sub plan. What matters is the DVD player works correctly--and that's about it. Writing a sub plan reminds me that I'm either creating genuine value by being the full time teacher, or I'm the conman who has suckered the school into giving me a paying gig to do something that basically anyone (who has passed the requisite background checks and agreed to come into the classroom) can do. That can be a demoralizing thing either way I answer it. If I'm creating real value, then a substitute taking my class is, regardless of what the students do, a waste of time because I'm not there to turn the experience into the valuable purpose. If, on the other hand, I'm an over-paid (lol) babysitter, and really anyone can come in and accomplish what I've set out for the class to do, then…well, geez, do I really need to explain why that sucks? The amount of effort to make up for the lost time is also quite large. I have been fortunate that my body essentially rebels and falls sick only when there's a long weekend in front of me, so I have yet (knock on wood) to need to call in a sub for emergency sickness on my part. That said, I've had times where I was feeling gross and wanted to take the day off, but didn't. Often, the effort of cooking up a sub plan is greater than the effort to drag myself to school, even if I'm feeling lousy or sleep-deprived or whatever. Teaching is an exhausting and rewarding career. There are a lot of support systems in place to help a lot of teachers to do their jobs well, while at the same time allowing for a teacher to be a human, too. We also have--let's be honest--some really awesome benefits. A ten-week vacation each summer, plus holidays and weekends off, we never have to travel (but when we do, it's almost always awesome), and we get to hang out and work with some inspirational and fascinating people. Even the idea that if we're sick, someone will step in to help do our job is, on one level, pretty sweet. Doesn't mean that I'm ever excited to request a sub. And the funny thing (to me) is that a lot of non-teachers don't understand that. I can't speak for anything more than a broad feeling, but it goes back to what I was saying earlier: I'm so caught up in the minutiae of my day, stuff that's so familiar that it's unremarkable, that I fail to remember that some people don't realize this about a lot of teachers. So, yeah: Subs are a blessing and a curse, one that most teachers I know would rather not use, if at all possible. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! For the past fifteen or so months--maybe even longer?--I've been struggling to find my enthusiasm for writing fiction. I mentioned this last month. The problem hasn't really changed, and it still causes me worry. I have to practice my craft if I want to level up as a writer, but I also struggle to convince myself it's worth pushing through the intellectual malaise of narrative apathy when I've so few indications that it's going to make a difference at all. I remind myself of the difficulties of publishing; of the combination of hard work, preparation, and blind luck that gets most people in the door; of the vast quantities of books that did make it and are now sitting on the shelves at Barnes and Noble; of the fact that a great many writers didn't get into their writing career until they were older than I am now (whilst trying to ignore the fact that a great many writers already had double-digit books sold by the time they were my age); of the inescapable realities of being a full-time author that I don't really want. All of this pushes me to wonder if it's really something I want, or if I've only deluded myself for most of my life as to my storytelling capacity.
So it's exciting for me to be excited for the first stage of planning that I have been laying down since…oh, yesterday? That's not entirely true: I cottoned onto the idea back last autumn when I was listening to Shakespeare's Secret. The idea of having a story that relies on a knowledge of Shakespeare to be the fuel for the clues and puzzles has rattled around my brain ever since I wrote that post. Yesterday, I finally set about trying to figure out how that would work. Maps are often one of the ways that I enter into my fictional world--as I draw them out, I start to see where stories might have happened and I become more interested--and for this one, I decided to take a page from Resident Evil 2 and give my characters a mansion filled with puzzles and locked doors to grapple with. To accomplish this, I drew a first-floor plan for a mansion (that looks strikingly similar to the Racoon City Police Department from the game, which is surely little more than a coincidence) and then typed up a key for what each room was. After that was done, I explained to a fellow Bardolator with whom I share a classroom about the idea of the story and asked her if she thought some of my ideas made sense. She was enthusiastic about what I described and even gave me other ways of thinking about the story. Originally, I was planning on it being a middle-grade or young adult book, with teenaged protagonists. The problem with that, however, is the idea of a youngling who is as well-versed in Shakespeare as a character would need to be in order to solve the puzzles is…unlikely. I mean, I guess if we have stories with child geniuses, it's not too far a stretch, but for some reason a wunderkind with prodigious trigonometry skills seems plausible, but one who has read the entire Complete Works is a bridge too far. However, aging up the protagonists and putting, say, a handful of college kids who are house sitting this mansion and get pulled into the puzzle--well, that might be doable. So now I'm trying to figure out how to put all of these pieces together--not just the puzzles*, but also how to make the different components that are stirring about in my brain--and make it into some semblance of a story. It's kind of exciting to be excited about a book again, even if it is something different from what I normally write. --- * Here's an example of what I've brainstormed so far. I admit that I feel like it's pretty straightforward--low-hanging fruit, as it were--because it's so obvious to me. But to an audience with only a passing knowledge of Shakespeare? Maybe not? Not sure. Anyway, here it is:
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AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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