This month, in order to try to improve the number of words I write in an hour, I told you about what Chris Fox says about writing 5,000 words per hour. I am still pretty far from that--I can't quite manage 1,000 words in 15 minutes, so I'm not even close to hitting 4,000 an hour, to say nothing of a loftier goal--but I also did what he recommended and that is to record how long I write and what my output is. To facilitate that, I created a spreadsheet.
This thing is pretty straightforward: it has a date column, a start and end time, and the total words for the activity. I've also included a column that is the type of writing I did. Look back over the month, I spent almost the entire time writing essays. One day was filled with thousands of words during the observations I mentioned before. A couple days had me writing in my novel. But, essentially, I wrote over 42,000 words of non-fiction this month. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it's nice to scratch the writing itch with these essays. I don't have to stress about plot holes, character development, or world building contradictions. On the other hand, I'm not "improving my craft" if my craft is fiction. I'm not saying that I'm doing a bad job by writing the essays, but a basketball player who wants to drain three-point shots can't practice layups and say, "Well, I'm still practicing basketball." If I really want to improve my fiction writing, I need to write more fiction. I do have some excuses/defenses/explanations, though. First of all, I've been plotting out NaNoWriMo for a couple weeks, generating note cards (which I should be doing now, as a matter of fact, but since it's Halloween tonight, I won't have time to do the essay then. Sigh) and other necessary things to make next month work better. While that's a type of writing, I don't know how to count that in a timely way, so I let my note card creation and plotting slide to one side. And maybe that's on me: What actually counts as writing? Unable to answer that question, I've chosen not to count the work I do elsewhere--which, if I'm being honest, is probably only a few hundred words anyway. Secondly, I've been putting a lot of time into planning for the horror novel I'm poking at. I've written quite a few chapters of that book, all from one character's point of view (which is an interesting approach for me, because this way the voice is more consistent between chapters). This process was focused on more in September, however. I only have two chapters that I wrote during the month that were on the book. That surprises me: I always thought that I was a fairly prolific writer, considering all the other demands on my time. Yet I've proven that I don't write a lot. (Okay, so some of my writer group might disagree, as I've written...well, a lot of books. And forced them to read a lot of books. And, comparatively, yeah, I have a greater output than they. But this isn't about them; it's about me. Narcissism at its finest.) I'm glad that I'm keeping track, because it's forcing me to realize that I'm using my writing time differently than I anticipated, and the result makes sense. You see, I'm a little frustrated with my creative writing right now. Part of it comes from the fact that the past few weeks have been really crazy and there aren't a lot of opportunities to sit down and write. Saturdays--my main writing day--are pretty hectic. And, since I spend time writing me essays when I should be writing chapters, I've managed to find a way to procrastinate while at the same time pretending I'm improving. Wow, I just played myself. Anyway, the schedule is nothing: If I really wanted to write more stories, I would write more stories. And, sure, there has to be balance in everything. But looking over the 42k words that I've generated this month, how much have I improved? How can I know? Short of rereading my own work (which, as I've said before, is one area of writing that I'm deplorable at), what's the big takeaway? Here's what I'm seeing in the graph (see below): I am committed to writing and writing more. I'm still lazy (hence prioritizing essays over stories) but I think I'm gaining important skills. I don't know if they're the skills that I really want, but they're strengthening anyway. That's the reason why practice doesn't make perfect--you only perfect what you've practiced. So I really need to step up my commitment to storytelling. Hence the reason that I'm going to do NaNoWriMo 2017. This will be my third year and I'm anxious to write as much as possible (to the point that I might even take a personal day off at some point in November) and tightly focus on storytelling as the art form I'm most interested in. I will be posting the chapters as I draft them in the 2017 section of my NaNoWriMo blog. You're welcome to read the train wreck that is a first draft as it's being made. Phew. Next month is going to be even crazier. When my family went off to Disneyland this summer, we stopped in St. George both going and coming. That is, the city is a perfect in-between place from where I live in Utah and the Happiest Place on Earth. In prior years, we stopped in St. George long enough to eat lunch and gas up, blasting through the Arizona/Nevada desert until arriving in Anaheim around seven or eight o'clock at night. They were horrible, horrible experiences. I don't know what it is that makes me dislike them so much, but the fact was, when we were planning our summer vacation, we decided that, for my mental health, we should break the trip into two. When I checked into the hotel in St. George on the way toward California, they asked if I had any pets. "Just three boys," I said. The attendants laughed. On the way back, we checked into the same hotel we'd visited just over a week before. "Any pets?" they asked. "Just three boys," I said. These (different) attendants laughed. Raising three boys is an interesting experience. I suppose raising children in general is an interesting experience, but having three boys is the one I'm going through. We love our kids a lot--they've been with us for ten, seven, and four years--and, despite a lot of friction and learning-on-the-job, we feel like we're raising some pretty good children, over all. My youngest son, Demetrius (no, that's not his name, I'm simply reluctant to share their names online) is something else. He's fiercely independent except for when he's feeling lazy, like when he's pooped and doesn't want to be bothered to wipe his own butt. He can wipe it, he just doesn't want to. So we have to do it. One of the ways that he shows he's different from his brothers is that he's decided to love the colors pink and yellow, in that order. His favorite Paw Patrol pup is Skye, mostly because Skye is the coolest Paw Patrol pup and because she's both pink and yellow. As a result, Demetrius wants everything to be pink, preferably with Skye on it somewhere. Once, he burst into tears because we hadn't bought him a Hello Kitty lunchbox some weeks earlier. His pajamas are pink (and he's growing out of them, which makes him very sad), and there are multiple pairs of pink Skye socks in his drawer. He has a "Girl Pup Power" hat (which he doesn't wear, because he doesn't like hats, but he wanted this one), and a bunch of other pink products. That leads me to The Princess in Black. See, in our house, we aren't terribly concerned with arbitrary (and stupid) genderings of color. We don't care what color our son likes, and if he's happy with a "girl" color, then good for him. Part of the reason that we have so many problems with sexism can be traced to extraordinarily rigid gender roles and -expectations, of which a strict reliance on color to indicate gender is but one small and persistent part. Pink is a color. Some girls like it. Some boys do. We needn't make this more complicated than that. But there's always an impulse in my older boys to tease Demetrius for his preference. We've squashed it pretty well, but I thought that it would be good for my boys to see a story in which a princess, who wears pink, protects her kingdom as an all-black-wearing superheroine. I picked up Shannon Hale's The Princess in Black and gave it to my son for his birthday (almost all of my gifts to my sons are books). We've read it a couple of times since then, and I read it again to him tonight. The book is pretty long for a nighttime story--it's fifteen chapters!--but it's such a fun, lighthearted story that shows how being polite can solve problems and protecting other people can inspire others to look out for those who are struggling and scared that it's hard to put down. Demetrius loves to have books read to him, and since the books on the lower shelves get read so much, it was a nice change to read a longer-form story that emphasizes the idea that we're trying to inculcate in our kids: Namely, that societal expectations ("Princesses don't wear black") can be subverted to the benefit of everyone. Okay, that's probably a little beyond what Demetrius is getting out of his storytime. I do know that he likes the book, took it to his own bed to look it over and enjoy the pictures one more time (before getting distracted and running off to cause whatever chaos he's currently sowing), and even asked for the next story in the series. Which, knowing me, I'll probably buy for him. That's all part of raising three pets. I mean, sons. The past week, I've watched two documentaries about religiously devout people who've left their flock. The first I saw was Holy Hell, a hard look at a cult that operated throughout the late eighties and nineties. I hadn't heard of it, but the narrator and director of the piece was himself a recovering member of the Buddhafield cult. It started off innocently enough, but it didn't take long before the creepy Master, a man called Michel, showed up and an eerie feeling (enhanced by the score of the film, of course) permeated the entire documentary. The stuff that sounded too good to last didn't, and the darker side that I assumed was happening came about as allegations of rape and sexual assault against some of the members came out. As they went, the former adherents explained that, despite being in a dangerous, violent place, they were still completely committed to Michel. It took a long time for them to finally part ways, and when they did, the painful process of rebuilding became the untold part of their story.
It was a difficult film to watch, not only because it had some unexpected images, but because I'm part of a religion that is often associated with being a cult. If one puts a lot of pressure on the definition that a cult is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object; a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister" (Google). While I usually try to avoid such a sophomoric move as quoting the dictionary (complete with parenthetical citation), understanding that a cult is both focused on a figure (usually the founder of the cult) and is considered "strange or sinister" by the outside world means that the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was definitely cultish. The continuation of the Church after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, however, exonerates the religion in my eyes--had it been a full-fledged cult, the Church would have dissolved at Joseph Smith's death and would never have gained so many converts. Insofar as any religion is fundamentally a cult, the Church is a cult--but I think that's disingenuous to assert. It's a religion, and I feel like that was a necessary part of my viewing of Holy Hell, to juxtapose my own beliefs with the behaviors, thoughts, and tenets of those on screen. The other film that I watched was One of Us, a story of three ex-Hasidic Jews as they tried to extricate themselves from their insular, highly religious upbringing, was also familiar and unsettling, though for different ways. One of Us interweaves the story of one woman, Etty, whose departure from the religion meant losing her seven children in the process of the divorce; a man named Luzer, who walked away from his wife and his two kids and is scraping by as an actor; and a young man named Ari whose departure led to him getting addicted to--and almost overdosing on--cocaine before he ends up in rehab and trying to clean up his life, though he can't keep himself away from his home and returns to New York. Since Hasidic Judaism is such a tightly-knit, communal based religion, I found more than passing comparisons. This was similar to my reading of The Ladies' Auxiliary, which I read back in college. One of the distressing things about seeing Hasidim on screen was that it evoked in me feelings of distress and even revulsion. I tried to parse out my feelings, especially as they seemed fundamentally bigoted and antisemitic, then realized that the reason I was so upset by seeing them on the screen wasn't because they were Jews, but because I only saw pictures of this version of the religion in my research into the Holocaust. In other words, my exposure was based upon the context of one of the greatest crimes in history, and these descendants of victims were, in my mind, inextricably tied into the sadness and stress of the Holocaust. Once I understood my feelings, I was able to recontextualize my viewing experience and not have to feel as upset. One thing, though, that is always difficult when looking at Jews in literature (or, in this case, film) is the tendency to feel as though the conflation of poor Jewish behavior is the same as antisemitism. That is, critiquing the behaviors as bad behaviors (which, I would argue, the way in which Etty was denied being a part in her children's life would be considered a bad behavior) and not as Jewish and, therefore, bad is the main way of avoiding this problem. But I'm bumping up against it in my reading of The Merchant of Venice, and I likely always will struggle with this complex problem. And, in the case of One of Us, there's a lot to criticize. The thing was, I saw a lot of my religion in theirs. Not in the manner or practice of worship--not doctrinally--but in the cultural parallels. I know plenty of emeritus Mormons, people who've left the Church and no longer associate with it. My wife mentioned something about people who weren't LDS anymore, and I had to figure out what she meant, as the records of the Church keep people on it for a long, long time. She didn't mean having a membership number, but instead identified and believed and practiced what the Church teaches. That definition works for me, and I think that fits in with what I've seen from my conversations about former Mormons. One of the things that they really struggle with is the loss of community (as did these ex-Hasidim) and being confronted by the devout and shamed by them. It's little wonder that most ex-Mormons head away from Utah, as it's hard to stand by your convictions when it feels as though everyone around you is pitying you. Watching these ex-Hasidim and ex-Buddhafield members on the screen, still emotionally connected yet unbelieving in the tenets of their faith was a moving experience for me. It's given me a lot to ponder and think about when I consider those who've wandered away from our shared faith. There's an honesty that I appreciate in their de-conversion, as it were, because they could no longer pretend to believe what they did not really believe. In something as important as one's eternal soul, I doubt that God awards those who "go through the motions" of belief. And if your religions teaches you that honesty matters (which wasn't part of the Buddhafield cult, but could be considered an important aspect of Judaism), then what else ought you to be than honest? After my personal research into why people have left the Church, I realize that there's a level of bravery that goes unappreciated within the faithful. I find it interesting that I understand that better having learned more about a cult and an ultra-orthodox branch of Judaism, two things that, if one wanted to press the point, probably have more in common with the roots of my own religion than could be apparent at a first glance. Learning about other religions--and those who left them--is always a worthwhile exercise. I'm trying to figure out what I want out of this blog/website. I'm obviously interested in writing--that should be pretty clear to anyone who has read a few of my essays--but I also have a tendency to check the stats of views on my previous day's work, too, as if the process of writing itself isn't enough for me to do for its own merits. Maybe it's because NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, but I'm feeling a little more self-conscious and desirous that more people read my essays. This is an interesting place to be in, since it's contradictory and paradoxical and yet it exists. I think that this kind of feeling comes from the fact that I both want approval of other people, yet I'm unable to process what that approval means. I've spoken about this before, but I struggle with understanding humility, which means that I tend to discount what others say about me that's positive. It isn't as though it's an allergy that I developed by not having a lot of positivity in my early life, either. I'm not now overreacting to praise because I was deprived it--or over-indulged with it either, if I'm being honest--and yet, despite my ability to understand the way I feel, I still don't know what to do with people's comments. I guess that a part of me is operating under the "They must be saying that because they are nice people, and nice people say nice things to others." Nowhere do I think this more often than when I'm with my wife. Many of you know that she's an incredible seamstress who loves to put in a lot of detailed work in all the stuff that she makes. I mean, she'll spend hundreds of hours on a costume that we'll wear four or five times. (Admittedly, we try to find excuses to wear the costumes more often than that, since she's put in so much work.) When we're out in public, it's kind of hard to miss us, actually. This year's costumes are based on the mythos of the vampire, but rather than it being a Dracula-era (that is, Victorian Era) inspired kind of vampires, we pushed the backstory to the reign of Henry VIII.* Using Tudor fashion as the inspiration, we have incredibly detailed costumes, filled with sparkling beads and what feels like miles of lace. (It's easily the best work that Gayle's done, and the only complaint I have is that the costume doesn't work unless I have makeup and colored contacts, neither of which are particularly enjoyable.) The point of this is less to extol the wonders of my wife's work--though it is doing that--and more trying to get to the way that she interacts with people. When we're in public, we really draw attention. While passing through the drive-through at Taco Bell tonight (while in costume, obviously), the worker who took our money geeked out a little and gushed about how much he liked our costumes. That sort of thing happens all of the time. We got stopped every few feet whilst at Comic Con this last September with people politely asking for pictures with (or of) us. For Gayle, that sort of attention--hitting its apex with the winning of the Comic Con cosplay contest in two different categories--really helps her feel better about the amount of effort she's put into the projects. And she appreciates the comments and photos and attention that her costumes get. That makes sense, and I'm glad that she gets the reinforcement that she hears from me and her family/friends, as that kind of encouragement is beneficial. But I was thinking about this today: What would I do if my "talent" were more visible? What am I trying to accomplish with these pitiful letters that I push around for sometimes hours at a time. I spend at least two hours writing the music video essays, but if I write something about being sad a lot, I'll get upwards of three times as many views. This isn't to say that I expect to go viral, or that I'm writing for anyone but myself, but there is always a little piece, floating in the back of my mind, telling me that I should write something more popular, more exciting. Few people read my essays about writing, but a lot will read about my politics. Should I change that? I don't think so, ultimately. I feel like I really do write these just for myself, and the process of publishing and sharing them is more to become comfortable with my "art" being out in the public and not just hidden on hard drives that makes it so worthwhile. Who's my audience? Just me, I guess. And that's okay. --- * I was thinking of writing the story of the Duke and Duchess of Blood (our character names) as a historical fantasy for this year's NaNoWriMo--almost like her costumes inspire my fiction on an annual basis. In the end, I decided to go with a different story--one that I've really thought about, rather than have occur to me a couple days before starting the writing, as I did with NaNoWriMo 2016. The last two essays have dealt with the trajectory of music in my life, including a bit about the largest influence on me learning the guitar, the Dave Matthews Band. So I think it's only fair to spend a little bit of time talking about DMB and exploring what's within the music that impresses me so much. Like all music, there's a strong subjective leaning to this analysis, and I definitely realize that Dave Matthews' brand of singing and meandering live shows may not be for everyone. Still, there's something that resonates in their work--particularly their early stuff--that still surprises me for its cohesion and sonic strength. In fact, I'm only going to be looking at the work they did in the nineties, as the turn of the millennium didn't particularly smile on the quintet, at least not musically speaking. Dave Matthews launched a solo album during 2003 or so, and the death of their founding member and saxophone player, LeRoi Moore, has changed the textures of the band's later sound. In other words, I'm going to go hipster on this and say "I liked them when they were good."
Looking just at the three major label releases (Under the Table and Dreaming, Crash, and Before These Crowded Streets), the Dave Matthews Band demonstrates a strength in blending heavy fingering of riffs and licks that are composed in circular patterns with an infusion of disparate instruments. The bass/guitar/drum/vocals combo is remarkable coming from each--the drummer, Carter Beauford, being an exceptional musician--and though Matthews' vocals are perhaps one of the largest causes for people to love/hate the band, his unique whisper/wailing/shrieking/crooning voice and melodies can generate enough counterpoints to the bass and guitar lines that he is indispensable in the band that bears his name. Stefan Lessard's basslines are often a deep undercurrent, working in tandem with the drums, but he often avoids the root-based bassline that's common in a lot of pop music. This is particularly evident in "Crush", but can be felt more than heard in a great many of the band's songs. Importantly, the band's two other members, Boyd Tinsley and LeRoi Moore on the violin and saxophone respectively, provide that additional sonic flare that helped the band retain its bluegrass, country flavor without diving into the more stereotypical honky-tonk twang of country music. Most importantly for their early work, the violin and saxophone contributions weren't ornamentation, tacked onto the song as a spice for the outro (as happened in their fourth major studio release, Everyday). When I listen to "Warehouse", the driving violin helps maintain the pressure of the lick as Matthews hammers through a complicated B minor fingering. It provides a soprano anchor, the starting point floating above the guitar, without which changes the impact of the song. (Having played that song to myself in my room more times than I could remember, I know this.) And the beautiful descant (I think?) of "Stay (Wasting Time)" as well as the bridge of the song are textured perfectly by Moore's saxophone work. Though Dave Matthews and his brother-in-arms Tim Reynolds have a Live at Luthor College CD of the two of them playing for a couple of hours, it's clear when comparing the acoustic versions to the live, full-band versions, that there each member adds an essential texture and component to the songs. Lyrically, Dave Matthews has more inspired songs and powerful combinations of ideas than not, though he certainly has some issues. "So Much To Say", for example, has an incredible, funky riff and through-line for the verse, but the song devolves into repeating the title for the latter third or so of the song, which gets tedious. (It's not quite as bad as Matthews' spiritual successor, John Mayer's, song, "Say What You Need To Say", and I also feel like the Foo Fighters relies on repetition a touch too much in some of their newer songs. But I digress.) That he ranges so many topics throughout the first three albums is also a testament to the breadth of experiences and issues that the band wishes to tackle. There's optimism tinged with fear about technology ("Satellite") and drug addiction ("Rhyme and Reason") to casual sex ("Jimi Thing") and humility in the face of evolution ("Proudest Monkey") to the carefree, relaxed, beach-crowned summer events of one's youth ("Tripping Billies") to the furious darkness within a person ("Halloween"). In other words, Matthews is interested in exploring a lot of different things, and though he lands on one night stands as his go-to for lyrical inspiration ("Lover Lay Down" and "Say Goodbye" being the most explicit, though "Crash Into Me" is not without it's blatant sexual overtones), he pursues plenty else, too. I've been able to attend three or four of their concerts over the years, to say nothing of how many times I watched their Listener Supported live concert (I had the VHS because it was the nineties). In fact, I not only had the VHS, I also bought the CD so I could listen to the live versions of some of their then-newer songs. The live show is a unique aspect to the Dave Matthews Band experience. Not only are they almost studio-quality in their execution (though I always laughed when I watched Dave sing "Rhyme and Reason" in Listener Supported, since he screws up the lyrics in the third verse--and you can see the moment he realizes his mistake), but they're infused with an energy that mingles consummate musicianship, coupled with energy and comfort with each other that allows the music to follow its own path. Their on-stage jam sessions--with some live songs running upwards of fifteen minutes--are always interesting from a musical point of view. There are times when the band gets lost in their own communal communication, but when the manage to improvise their way into a somber, quieted motif, then pull it out with a perfectly executed ending, there's something to be said for the joy of that journey. Of all their albums, Under the Table and Dreaming has a special place in my heart because it is what got me into the guitar in the first place. Crash is a fine album, with more than one track that I skip regularly, either because of its content or because it bores me, but on the whole a solid entry. But it's Before These Crowded Streets that is the heartbeat of my long-standing love of the Dave Matthews Band. As a kid, I didn't have a lot of discretionary cash (or so it felt), so one of my policies when thinking about buying a new album was to look at how many songs I was getting. If an album had twelve or more songs, that felt like a good choice. (There was one MxPx album that had somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty songs. I thought that was a steal of a deal, but most of them sounded the exact same and I never really liked the album. So, it wasn't a perfect system, I suppose.) If there were only nine or ten, then that was doubtful. Fewer than nine and I wouldn't bother. Not worth it, I assumed. So when a friend and I, both Dave Matthews Band fans, saw the then-new album Before These Crowded Streets had released, we were excited to pick it up. Then we saw it only had eleven songs. We put it back. Later--though what the timeline was like I couldn't say--I picked up the album anyway. The first track, "Pantala Naga Pampa" sounded cool, but I was disappointed to see it was only a minute or so long. What a disappointment. The next song, "Rapunzel", worked well for me, as did the rest of that album. Then I got to "Spoon", which I thought was funny, since that was the Tick's battle cry. The song, instead of being funny, is a contemplative thought at the nature of the world, including a line with background vocals by Alanis Morrissette, "Could Dad be God?" and, later, "Sinners sin, come now and play." Something about the eerie chord progression--longer and more complex than I was used to in the ska and punk music I typically played--and the masterful work of Bella Fleck on the banjo made me realize that the song was really exploring something different.* When I contrasted it to the radiant optimism of "Pig", part of me, I think, began to realize that there is both sadness and joy in life, love (as in "Crush") and hatred ("Don't Drink the Water"), fear ("The Last Stop" and "Halloween") and contentment ("Stay (Wasting Time)"). The expansiveness of the sounds--the Middle-Eastern inspired "The Last Stop" as opposed to the half-step-heavy "Rapunzel", to say nothing of the beautiful pick-work of "The Stone"--and the breadth of the themes all played into my appreciation of the music in a way that hasn't stopped. Suffice to say, I feel there's a lot of depth, thoughtfulness, and complexity to Dave Matthews Band's work. Sure, they're not for everyone, but I'm likely to be a DMB fan until long after they're gone. --- * I absolutely adore the snippets of songs--interludes, really--that intersperse a number of the tracks, almost like musical sketches of ideas that couldn't be sustained as a full-fledged song, yet too interesting to leave behind. These interludes are great fun to play and have the characteristic textures of their bigger brothers. And the outro interlude (outrolude?) of "Spoon", the last track on the album, is a return and expansion of the calming outro to "The Last Stop", which gives the entire album an interesting connection: The song about being "the last stop" is the third tack, but its musical exit acts as an expanded reprise at the actual end of the album, bidding farewell with hopeful overtones that pull the album together perfectly. I talked a bit about my musical journey and how I started being aware of the music that I liked--formulating my own opinions (which as often as not mirrored my friends' feelings), seeking out my own influences, and going through that experience that everyone, it seems, goes through.
One aspect that I only mentioned in passing was the influence of Dave Matthews Band. I know that not everyone likes him or his band--I have, after all, been an avid fan since the mid-nineties, so I've had plenty of time to encounter less enthusiastic listeners--but I still really enjoy his music. There's a staleness that nostalgia combats every time I go through my old library, of course: I know the music so well that it never fills me up in quite the same way it did when I first encountered it, but the emotional connection helps to overpower that dissonance. This is true with most any band, but it's particularly sharp for me with Dave Matthews Band because that's the music that got me into playing the guitar. I was sixteen and I was listening to Under the Table and Dreaming, their first major album with a big-time label. Almost every track on that album was something I adored (except "Pay for What You Get" and "Best of What's Around") when I got the impulse (maybe inspiration?) that I wanted to play the music and not just listen to it. It could have been a pride thing: My friend (and future sister-in-law) told me that her cousin was the biggest DMB fan because he could play almost all of the band's songs on the guitar. I inwardly bristled, thinking that, as I was the biggest fan, I should probably be able to do the same. I'm not confident that was the motivating factor, but I'm sure that's part of the impulse. Whatever the cause, I decided on this fateful day that, as I had some extra money and a driver's license, I should go down to MediaPlay and buy the songbook to Under the Table and Dreaming. At the time, I didn't even know what I was looking for, and I accidentally grabbed the book that was piano/vocal/guitar. There's nothing wrong with those books, but their guitar parts are only chord shapes, rather than any tablature. That may have been good, as tablature can becoming overwhelming, particularly for a neophyte. Anyway, I snagged the copy, took it home, and picked up an electric guitar that was lying around.* I don't fully remember the entire process of what it was like in those earliest guitar playing days, but I remember carrying around the book and poring over the chord shapes. Once, when we were at my grandma's house, I asked Dad what a particular type of chord would look like when I fretted it. He explained, and I was gratified to learn I was (almost) doing it right. That book ended up being my beginning guide to guitar music, which I kept working at steadily. I would spend a couple hours a day practicing, alternating between the D chord and the G chord as I sang (off-key is the only way I know how to sing) along to "Ants Marching", played on an electric guitar that wasn't plugged into the amp. Eventually, after breaking strings on his practice guitars, my dad let me borrow a Martin Dreadnought and I really fell in love with Dave Matthews Band. Now I could play it on an acoustic guitar! That poor instrument took a lot of abuse. Not because I wasn't careful with it; I was very enthusiastic about strumming. There are, to this day, groove marks inches below the pick guard that have scored the surface. And, to this day, it is one of the most beautiful sounding guitars I've ever played. There's a mellow roundness to the sound that is captivating. That Christmas, my dad gave me one of his spare guitars, bequeathing all the rights and privileges of guitar ownership on my shoulders. It's a golden Fernandez Sustaniac that I continue to play, though not nearly as much as I did in the past. I've had that instrument since 1999, only letting it go for the two years I was a missionary. When I came back, I picked it up and have never put it down. At one point--I want to say at the end of my junior year, but I might not be right on the timeline--I asked my mom if I could get an acoustic guitar with an amp jack, thus letting me plug it in. She said, "Sure. Once you've earned the money." So I went to Dad. "Can I get a black acoustic guitar with an amp jack?" I asked. "Sure. We'll go tomorrow!" We did. The drive around Salt Lake, looking for the right instrument, is a topic of a future post, but suffice to say that, despite mounting despair that I'd ever find what I wanted, we happened upon the perfect option. It was the right price, the right color, and all I wanted in an instrument. Dad pointed out some of the things that made it worth the cost and he bought it for me on the spot. When I got home, exultant, my mom reminded me I had to do my homework before I could play it. Plus, wash your hands, it's time for dinner. Moms are great. I didn't have a lot of job options at the time, so I ended up mowing the lawn for free for the better part of a year in order to pay off the guitar, during which time my dad allowed me to play it--it wasn't like it was on layaway or anything. When I finished the last mowing that I owed my dad, I went into his studio and told him. He thanked me and told me to enjoy my guitar. And, ever since then, I have. ---- * My dad is a professional guitarist, so when I say there were guitars lying around, it's only partially hyperbole: My dad has more guitars than most people have pairs of underwear, so there was always an abundance of the instrument in the house. But he also is really tidy and organized, so they were usually kept in the guitar closet. This one was his practice guitar, which he left out so that he could pick it up and play on a whim. I grew up in the nineties. The first band I ever really liked was Green Day (Dookie was the album, and there was a lot of swearing on it, so I skipped quite a few songs). That was in the summer between sixth and seventh grade, and I can kind of point to that as being when I started exploring my own musical tastes.
As middle school wound on (okay, it was junior high, but whatever), I grew my library via those old Columbia CD clubs. Do you remember those? You'd pay a few bucks up front for a windfall of albums, then you had to stay a part of the club for X amount of months for X amount of dollars. While you were subscribed, you'd get a new album or two every month. I did that once or twice, never sticking around long (I didn't have a lot of discretionary money as a kid...or as an adult, for that matter). Eventually (after I hit high school) I got to the point that I would pick up new albums at my own pace by buying them from MediaPlay during my weekly visits to that store. I don't know how I would have grown my musical interests with Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube possibilities. The piecemeal iTunes model never appealed to me, and I miss having physical copies of the music I listen to, but I could be holding onto the past a little too tightly. At any rate, I remember taking Discman players (some with anti-skip protection, some without) to school to listen to my tunes on some beat up old headphones. I had a friend who had one of those enormous CD wallets--I'm talking one that held, like, over a hundred discs--that he carted around in his backpack. I'm pretty sure that he never took a book or binder to class, since his CDs took up all the available space. The bazaar of CD swapping--with illegal copies questionably passed around, no one knowing for certain if the disc would work in any given CD player--was a Utah Valley high school equivalent to a black market, and some of the more rarefied selections were the different mix CDs. Some of the best cuts would end up on a genre specific mix--I had my Dave Matthews Band mix, my Live mix, my ska mix--and these would be used as a great way to expose friends to your favorite tracks without losing out on the album itself. It was also a way to get the punk songs that didn't have swearing onto an easy-to-listen format, because you didn't have to worry about Mom walking in during a bad part of a song. It was in this milieu that I first picked up the guitar with any interest--a story for a different day--and, through a lengthy process, got to play in a friend's band as back-up bassist (for when their regular bassist had to bail on them). Visiting dives, decrepit venues, and local cafes-turned-musical space were part of my later high school years. Thinking back to the bizarre flavors we concocted (there was one band called the Kindertones that my buddies and I really connected with, despite the immensely juvenile approach to music and stage aesthetic) and the entire punk/ska subculture we adopted, I'm kind of amazed that nothing bad ever happened to me or my friends. Like, I don't know how I'll be able to convince my wife to let my boys have similar experiences. And I wonder, too, how my boys will grow into music. They're currently on a Metallica fixation (and by "Metallica" I mean, almost exclusively, "Enter Sandman"), and before that, it was Hamilton. (Careful editing is a must with that one, too.) But these are musical impulses driven by their parents. How will they swap songs, borrow music, and share that experience when it's all digital? I know kids do that--I see them working their way through the digital musical landscape--but, by the time I see them, they've already begun to blossom in their musical vocabularies. I don't see the formative moments, the early introductions, the growing love of a band or a genre of music. Well, I'm sure they'll figure it out. Learning about music is one of the steps toward adulthood. Today was a bit of a stretch for me. It's kind of hard to explain why, so I'm throwing out these different experiences and thoughts as an attempt to Penseive my day, rather than force something coherent on my thoughts. This, then, is more of a collective clearing of the mental cobwebs. It involves the Garden of Eden, racism, and the publishing industry, but they aren't connected save that they are what I taught today.
Garden of Eden Since we're reading Paradise Lost in my sophomore classes, we got to the exciting part (just kidding; they're all exciting parts. Paradise Lost is bae) at the beginning of Book IV where Satan analyses his feelings about why he's a rebel angel. Because Milton is amazing, he's given us a Satan with very clear motive and flaw--wanting to be in charge of Everything and the pride to think he's capable of doing that--but pushes the fallen angel's thinking in many different directions. Discussing that aspect has me thinking of lots of different things, but nothing's really matured yet. Instead, we moved into the discussion of Adam and Eve and the first time they show up inside of the poem, as well as our first visit to the eponymous Paradise. Later in the day, as I was walking through Target, I saw a book called Dividing Eden, and I was sorely tempted to pick it up (again--I've glanced at it before) and consider if it's worth giving a go. I didn't yield to the temptation--which is less because I've internalized the lesson of Paradise Lost and more because my bank account is happier when I don't yield--but I definitely paused. I realized that I am instantly interested in anything to do with this story, even if it's only an allusive pass at the title. Now, since I don't buy a lot of books (compared to how many books I want to buy, mind you), I don't really explore a lot of these other ideas, but I'm always tuned in when Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden make an appearance. I reread the entire His Dark Materials trilogy (even though The Amber Spyglass is a massive disappointment) a couple years ago simply because it's a young adult retelling of Paradise Lost. If it says "Eden", I'm willing to at least glance at it. Is that healthy? I mean, I know that, no matter how good the thing will be, it can't touch the poem's grandeur. Even the biblical version from which Milton harvests so many important ideas is lacking when compared to Milton's work (mostly because they're trying to do very different things). I guess it's good that I'm so passionate, but honestly, I've been like that for all of my obsessions: Spider-Man, Shakespeare, Milton, dinosaurs. It's probably not good for me. But it's who I am. Publishing Industry I don't think that lectures are particularly fun for students--and by that I mean, attending lectures in classes. I've mentioned before, I think, that, as an adult, a well-delivered lecture is exciting for me. I can get behind it--that's what podcasts are, essentially, or books, for that matter--and I like to talk. As a teacher, it means that I'm out of touch with the student experience of having to sit through the lecture, plus I'm too enamored of my own words that I don't stop long enough to think about their experience. That's what happened today when I was talking about self-publishing. I've looked at the option* before, so I have plenty of knowledge about what's going on there. So I shared. And shared. And. Shared. I try to make it interesting, what with the funny joke I know, and some cutsie drawings that I cartoon on the whiteboard, but it's not really worthwhile. I don't know why I did it, save that I'm trying to give kids tools to understand what they'd be getting into if they want to be writers. Which is, like, three of them. The other ten kids politely drifted into sleep. Ugh. Racism Ugh again. In my Shakespeare class, I'm talking about Merchant of Venice, which is one of my favorite plays because it constantly reminds me that I have to live my religion, not merely profess it--that the so-called Christians of the play are as morally corrupted as the homicidal Shylock, and that it's their actions, not religion and race, that matter. Today we discussed the "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech from 3.1 and it was really hard for me to express my frustration at seeing the rampant racism and the real-life consequences of millennia of human hatred for others and the Other. The class is really quiet, which means that, though we be few, I have a lot to discuss and talk about and I have a lot of the heavy lifting to do. This isn't to say the students don't have thoughts, but they don't voice them. I don't know if it's because they're unsure about what to do with Shakespeare, if the lens of being an adult is too opaque for them, or the brutal honesty of the class is keeping them quiet, or maybe none of these, but I've felt like a pretty large failure for that class, broadly speaking. That being said, I love to teach it. It's Shakespeare and a (mostly) excited audience--you bet I'm there every day and doing my readings. It's too exciting not to. But in terms of me feeling as though I've done something worthwhile? Something that is making a difference? That it's a good class? I don't know. It's cloudy--like a room with too many cobwebs. --- * I don't self-publish for two reasons: 1) My dream is to be a traditionally published author, whose books are on shelves at bookstores that people can ignore as they head to buy the next James Patterson novel. Self-publishing experiences almost never do that, and if they did, it would--at best--be at the local B&N, not everywhere. That's not what I've dreamed. 2) My inner critic says, "If an agent isn't interested in the story, it's not good enough to get out there yet." That is, I don't have enough confidence that my books are ready for widespread reading--and I want the help a traditional publisher would provide to get my book there. After some vacillating between options, I decided to write my third consecutive NaNoWriMo book. It will be an attempt to use some of John Truby's advice on four-corner motivation, in which the protagonist is opposed by three different villains/opponents and that they have differing but similar motivations to the main character. The details can be found in Truby's book, but the thrust of it is that by carefully putting in the time to establish strong antagonists, I'll have a detailed psychological map of the characters from which the conflict will more easily arise. The hope is that I'll have a more satisfying first draft than my previous two attempts.
And this goes along with what I want to talk about today, because I cringe every time I think of my first two NaNoWriMo books. This isn't to say that they're bad, but that's because I'm trying not to be as pessimistic about my writing. The fact is, they're really rough-rough drafts and that means that they were pounded out over the course of a single month and relentlessly worked on when I didn't want to write. Like, at all. If you're a frequent reader, you may even remember that I didn't put out any new essays during NaNoWriMo, even though the 2016 election was going on, because I was 1) too emotionally stressed out by the election to want to write about it, and 2) I was writing the novel that I then gave to my wife as a Christmas gift. (In point of fact, she has not finished the book, despite reading it as it was being written during the first part of the exercise, and she has a copy of the book sitting on her shelf. She's embarrassed by it, but I don't blame her; it's not a particularly good book). Here's the thing that matters with regards to the NaNoWriMo approach: Getting a book done. I can write fairly fast (I've talked about it before, though i'm trying to improve the speed) and, given a solid week of cabin retreat writing, I could definitely put together a better draft of a book than I get in a month of NaNoWriMo work. The reason is pretty simple, actually: Writing in small, continuous chunks is less efficient for me than writing in long, large chunks of time. Since I normally only get the small, continuous chunks, I don't complain too much. But when I can really "be a writer", I can write a lot. Like, a gross amount. This isn't to brag (too much; it's like, the one thing that I feel good about myself for being able to do, though being prideful makes me feel bad, so I feel bad for the thing that I feel good about--being stuck in toxic shame cycles is rough), but more of an area that I feel in control of. I like the idea that, though I can't control what kids remember from my classes, I can't control what my own children remember to do (like brush their teeth without me going ballistic that I've had to ask them to do it seventeen times in the last three minutes), or any other gross thing that is going on in the world, I can control my writing. I can write a lot. That's a good thing. But last year's NaNoWriMo was rough because I decided at the spur of the moment to do what I was supposed to do beforehand, which was to prepare and plan--outline, get my notecards ready, set out the pacing of the story. Instead, I had a loose idea, ran after it, ran out of steam (pun: It was a steampunk story), and fumbled my way toward the desirable ending word count, rather than the natural ending of the story. I seriously have a physical reaction to the idea of reading the book, knowing how bad it is. The first year's isn't much better. It's good that I'm trying new thing, I know, but that one's plot was so clever in my head and so dull and dreary when I got there that I'm relucatant to think that nanomwer is a good thing for me. I may be diluting msyelf. As a result, despite my original plans to make this be my dinosaur book, I've decided that I'm going to take a different tack that still involves science fiction, but I'm skipping the dinosaurs. Not only would I spend too much (as if that's a thing) doing research over the smallest of details, but I also wouldn't be able to focus on what I want: Dinosaurs eating people. Like, that's always been my problem in outlining dinosaur books--there aren't enough dinosaurs there. And since I really want to write a dinosaur book, I can't put it into a NaNoWriMo that I don't want to ever read again. So I'm trying something new. In order to prepare for this, I've done a timed write on this essay (fifteen minutes only) and tried to get 1,000 words during the timing. This will give me time during the evening to work on my NaNoWriMo and, I hope, make the experience more enjoyable. As a slight aside, I've also tried to turn off my interior editor. The original draft of this was so full of spelling mistakes that it looked like the page was bleeding. (I had the word page spelled bpage, I kid you not.) So even though I wrote this for fifteen minutes only, I also spent almost seven minutes going through and editing the parts that I messed up with in my frantic sprint. I can't say that the essay is particularly good, which goes along with my complaints about my NaNoWriMo script, but it's good that I'm trying to improve. Right? Right? I sure hope so, because if not...well, that was a lot of work for absolutely nothing then. (15 minutes: 994 words) In class, I'm rereading Paradise Lost by John Milton. If you're not familiar with the story, you really should check out the poem. It's the absolute best Bible fanfic I've ever read, bar none. Milton, a seventeenth century polemicist and poet, reinvents the story of the loss of both Paradise (Eden, through the fall of Adam and Eve) and Paradise (Heaven, through the fall of Satan/Lucifer and his rebel angels). The poetry is exquisite, the imagery is expansive, and the power of it is unfailingly inspirational and thought provoking.
However, I'm thinking about Heaven today, and though that lines up more with Dante, I started with Milton because 1) I like Milton a lot more than Dante, and 2) these ideas have been floating around since I taught Dante back in August, but since I'm reading theological things again, it's brought my thinking around to this topic again. So here I am, thinking about God's dead and what we will do when we finish up here on Earth. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have received a lot of instruction on what happens after we die. This link provides only a little glimpse at the depth of eschatology that Mormonism embraces, and since I'm interested in the greater implications and nuances, I think I'll gloss over any explanations that I normally try to interweave into my essays and instead say this: Here are some resources on Mormon belief on life after death. Feel free to check them out if what's here is insufficient. As a broad rule, Mormons understand and believe in an objective reality that stimulates our senses, out of which we are able to perceive the world--we're naive realists. But we also assert that we can feel things that don't have a quantifiable or objective source; namely, we believe that spiritual promptings and communications between us and the unseen, heavenly world are not only possible, but required for a person to come to the truth. The continuation of that soul--and its eventual reunification with the decomposed body via the process of the resurrection, made possible through the sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus Christ--also leads to the idea that there are eternal elements within an individual that, according to Joseph Smith, are co-eternal with God. That is, there was an essential me long before I was created/born. And when one is speaking of eternity, it only makes sense that it can extend into the past as infinitely as it goes into the future--or else it's not truly eternal. The idea that I've been me and I'll continue to be me and will always have been me is tied up in the sense of Mormonic identity. I think this may be why the Church has such a difficult time with transgender members--among other reasons, I'm certain--because it means that somewhere along the line, the person's gender-based identity was changed. And it's completely unclear where that could've happened. That ambiguity leads to discomfort; hence, to unfortunate and unhelpful policies. When asked what we were doing before we were born, Mormons answer, "Waiting." We believe that spiritual souls are gifted the mortal body (and also helps contextualize the Church's stance on abortion), which is part of who we are, but only through a glass, darkly. That is, mortal bodies lack the eternal possibility that the soul has, and it's through the resurrection that this changes. So, before we're born, we were all hanging out in Heaven, awaiting our chance to gain a body. And we've been waiting an eternity to get here. Whilst on Earth, the basic answer for what we do is to "prepare to meet God", which means a lot of things that, much as the soul is only capable of certain realities, our mortal bodies are useful for doing. For example, a physical body is needed for saving ordinances, including baptism, confirmation into the Church, and temple covenants. Without a body, one can't have that work accomplished. (Mormons believe in vicarious work for the dead, fulfilling these ordinances via proxy, which allows God to extend mercy to other peace-departed souls who never had the chance to receive the Good Word.) But the point that I'm driving at here is that there's a lot of definition on what to do here and a lot less about what we're going to do there. There are different answers with different levels of official authority behind them. The safest one is that "We're with our loved ones again!" When I asked the question of what one does in Heaven, a student of mine--many years ago, now--answered that he'd be with his parents and grandparents. I asked him why, and he said because they loved him and that's why. "What about your great-grandparents?" I asked. "Um, yeah, I guess." "Great-great-grandparents?" "No, not them." "Why?" "I don't know them." "Wouldn't they want to be with their kids and grandkids?" He didn't have an answer to that, which I think is part of the lack of imagination when we're talking about Heaven, or whatever. In some Christian traditions, Heaven is defined as peace and adoration of God--that is, floating on clouds (I guess) whilst playing the harp (I've heard) for eternity (a long time, I daresay). But if that's the case, it sounds...mightily boring. (And there could be arguments about how we'll be changed into these new beings and that sort of thing will be pleasurable, but that sounds like sublimation at best and a distorting of scripture at worst.) So what does God do with His dead and resurrected? Mormonism insists that we'll inherit God's domain--that is, we'll be, like God, involved in the ever evolving process of creation, that we get what God has...namely, everything. And that certainly opens up more interesting avenues of purpose, and also helps gesture toward answers of profound and perennial theological consequence. How did God become God? Maybe through a process of practice, learning line upon line. With infinite time to become better, couldn't one eventually attain the level of Godhood? Orson Scott Card dismissed this idea in an article I can't find, essentially arguing that God is already infinitely "ahead" of us in terms of understanding, perfection, and experience. There's no amount of work that we can do that will "catch us up" to where He is. That makes sense on one level, though when we're dealing with a concept like infinity, it gets weird. In fact, I think I may disagree with Card (and not just because he's Orson Scott Card and I'm not a big fan of him and his writings--no, not even Ender's Game) in the idea that an infinite head-start is tantamount to a measurable head-start. As infinity is only a concept rather than a number, and infinity plus infinity is larger than infinity, I think there's enough elasticity in the comparison to break it down. Nevertheless, the idea of what one does in Heaven--being perpetually content, creating worlds, singing praises to God for eternity--are all strange when taken out of context. Being with those we love and those whom we love is a wonderful idea, but what if they don't want to be around us? What if it isn't Heaven for me if Shakespeare isn't there, but Shakespeare isn't interested in hanging out with me? That's a pretty sad thought, and I don't know how you can get out of it without fundamentally changing people--and I don't like the idea that God forces a change on us that undoes what we've established for ourselves whilst here. That seems like putting us on earth is a wasted effort. In the end, I don't know what God's dead do. But I'd like to think it's something beautiful. |
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