Columns for July, 2003
(more
archives here)
| YOU ARE IN MY VISION
July 2, 2003 Bad news: I have officially decided on a change to the update schedule. Details forthcoming. Good news: It means I'll be writing more fiction, at any rate. Good news: I now weigh less than 200 lbs for the first time in about
six years. Recommendation: Exhale heavily as you step on the scale, hold
until desired number appears. Healthy bodies write better, at least this
one does, especially in the summertime.
I was reading the latest Harry Potter this weekend, and it made me wonder: Let's say you're an actor playing one of the regulars in this series. How do you enjoy the novel? Seriously, is it even possible to enjoy the book on its own merits, or are you invariably paying closer attention to what happens to your character? This isn't the same thing as working on a television series like B5 or 24, where you get your script and that is what happens next, because this is a book you're trying to read, trying to enjoy. It is not (yet) your script, nor will it be if HP#3 tanks. On the other hand, this is one of the most faithfully-reproduced series in movie history, so it is not out of line to consider this your first draft of the final script. Can you imagine?
Warwick Davis: Actually, I really enjoyed the book. I think it's very positive the way some of the more shopworn characters are being used less, making way for the characters we always suspected were more interesting. Alan Rickman to his agent: Hello? Yes. Have you read it? Well, we're going to have to renegotiate, I think... Robbie Coltrane: HarryHarryHarry, yeswegetitcomeon - Ah! Hagrid's
Great Adventure. Promising chapter title. Hm hm hmm... Wot? There is
no
blinkin' way I am kissing Alan Rickman!
I had concerns about this book, wondering what effect having seen the
movies would have had on the author. It doesn't really look like there's
been any effect at all, really. Perhaps this is one of the advantages of
insisting on filmic veto: Nothing gets in that you didn't see as a possibility
in the first place. For example, nobody's clamouring for the Moaning Myrtle
solo novel, and there's no Dobby cult insisting he have a bigger part in
future books, so Rowling is free to use everyone however - and whenever
- she feels like it, without the kind of interference that might have come
up if the scripts had been more liberal in their adaptations.
Recently I ran into the trouble of not writing in a vacuum, with B12. Since the beginning I'd been hoping for a certain level of feedback, maybe ideas or wild guesses as to what was going on, but nothing really came back and so I simply wrote whatever it was I felt like writing. Then I got a couple of responses that were so positive, and worse still pointed out what it was that they liked best, that I was stuck for a bit trying to live up to the praise, which of course meant I was pretty solidly stuck. Then I remembered "This is what you wanted!" and just wrote the thing the way I always do, that is based on what I feel like writing, and I'm not sure I'm as happy with the results as I have been with other weeks, but at least I know that if it isn't as good this time out, I have already written something people haved liked, and I can do so again.
Announcement: In case you missed it above, the 'Show now publishes
three times a week: Monday Wednesday, and Friday, also known as Baker's
12 day. (Without further ado, this week in Baker's 12.)
Beginning today, the first in a series of columns describing my influences as a writer. And so we'll start, as with most beginnings, in childhood. I was raised by Jim Henson and Dr. Seuss. No disrespect to my parents, of course, they did a fabulous job and I have no cause to complain. They used to read to me before I went to bed, instilling in me almost immediately a lifelong interest in reading (and, when I was about five or six, a lifelong interest in music as well, but that's for another column), and it would not be long before I would begin insisting, not that they read to me, but that I read to them. And just who do you suppose
See that? Lousy meter. I have yet to read a single Dr. Seuss pastiche that did the man justice. Did I say above that I became interested in music when I was five or six? Hah! I have an excellent sense of meter, much to the chagrin of friends who have had their favourite instrumental pieces savaged by my improvised lyrics, and I got it from Dr. Seuss. Also my love of language, of what you can do when you put words together: Stop!
<Brevity, soul of wit, so forth. If you do not find the above quote funny, you will never understand my sense of humour.> Anything is possible in a Dr. Seuss book. And he made it look so easy. Then we have the Muppets. Along with Dr. Seuss, about the only children's entertainment I can think of that treats kids like what they are, which is to say people, albeit little ones. Seuss and the Muppets never, ever talked down to their audience. They made us feel like equals, which, without us really being aware of it until much later, made us feel special. You want to talk about weird senses of humour? Jim Henson got his start doing coffee commercials in which the puppet that didn't like the coffee got shot with a cannon. Sound like any Muppet Show classics? Under absolutely no circumstances am I going to ignore the rest of the
Muppeteers:
and of course, Frank Oz. There have been some great comedy duos, but consider Oz and Henson: - Bert and Ernie (some people say Ernie and Bert; I prefer the
former order)
I think that when three of the great comedy duos are actually the same comic duo, something pretty special is going on. Pause a moment. Cookie Monster. What kind of mind comes up with this sort of thing? To name a few more: Grover, his long-suffering restaurant customer, Sherlock Hemlock, Don Music, Guy Smiley, The Amazing Mumford. And that's just Sesame Street. The real magic was on The Muppet Show. It wasn't aimed at kids. At least one third of it was musical numbers. It was vaudeville, on the medium that killed vaudeville. For those who could still appreciate vaudeville. Adults. But their children knew the Muppets, so we watched Kermit in his night job, when he wasn't reporting for Muppet News. And we got show tunes. Stand up comedy. And awful, awful puns. Plus just about every other entertainment staple you can think of: Stuntmen, jugglers, science fiction, hospital drama, sportscasting, westerns, educational science films (?!), Grand Guignol, a piano man, a full orchestra, a modern rock band, even heckling for crying out loud, and all of it aimed over our heads like a boomerang fish. So what happened? We raised our heads. And we also developed an appreciation for and understanding of all of this stuff being presented. Take anybody between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five who wants vaudeville back, and I promise you that kid watched The Muppet Show, even if he doesn't remember it anymore. We were so lucky. We owe them so much.
I was reading a friend's online journal, one of the sort hosted by the group that has branded them, and the first thing I saw, at the top, the first thing that loaded, was the advertising. My first thought was satisfaction: "Hah! Am I glad my online journal does not contain advertising!" Then, of course, it occurred to me that this entire thing is an exercise in advertising. And here's why: "Ugh!"
This scene describes most of the people I know, that is to say the ones whose company I have sought out. We know what we're capable of, and we try to push that whenever we can, so anything less than our best, as we perceive it, is a disappointment. But less than our impossibly high standards of personal perfection is still good, often very good. I didn't learn this lesson in University, of course, because I was too busy living through it; I learned it while watching my sweetie go through the same thing a few years later. And I was right about the B+. But a few more years later, when I was taking a serious stab at "becoming a writer," I abandoned projects or decided not to market them because I didn't think they were good enough. (And all the while, I might add, I was reading and watching other stories that I thought were rather flawed.) This, furthermore, was after a study had been released which concluded that competent people devalue their abilities while incompetent people believe themselves skilled and capable. So what gives? Did I learn my lesson or didn't I? What was it going to take to convince me, once and for all, that my writing is worthy of notice? One of my mottoes, for over ten years, has been Know your strengths and your weaknesses, and never lie about either of them. I originally came up with this because friends of mine were hesitant to show pride in their accomplishments, and also because I wanted to avoid false modesty in myself. In other words, I adopted this motto to assist me in how I presented myself to others. And I never realised the other application of this: How I view myself. Imagine: I know I'm a good writer - fulfilling part one of the motto - but I decide that this story is not worthy of publication, thus failing part two. I have lied to myself. Indirectly, by not marketing the writing, I have lied to others by omission. You've got to take pride; you've got to tell people. Who else will? I don't really know when it happened, or how it happened, but finally I learned my lesson, sometime this year. You're reading the results. And if you read The Teddybear Sawdust Show regularly, chances are this column isn't just talking about myself, either.
I have recently discovered a wonderful means of therapy I call the Sensational Biography. The Sensational Biography is a natural progression of the I'm okay, you're okay school of self-help (also known as a visualisation), in which the subject performs a spell on himself such that through repetition of self-affirming sayings, the subject gains a more positive self-image and thereby also discovers himself projecting this self-image into greater exterior success. (Ten points if you just realised something interesting about The Teddybear Sawdust Show, twenty if this was merely confirmation.) That works wonders for the present, and the future. But as it is human nature to remember the embarrassing gym class incident in Grade Four rather than how cool that same week's field trip was, so too is it human nature to dwell on the past, and often in ways that are, ah, not self-affirming. So how do we apply self-affirmation to the past? I'm glad you asked, because one answer, of course, is the Sensational Biography. Sensational, of course, in its contemporary meaning of double-plus-good, but also owing much to the root word, sensation, as in the Ramones song She's A Sensation. <And now I digress. Sensation, presumably comes from sense, so (as I am in The Batcave and again without dictionary) I'm guessing its original usage may have been a shorter form of "something that has great impact upon the senses," the overall feeling being one of awe, or wonder. Feel free to correct me here; my mailbox has been lonely recently.> And so to create a Sensational Biography is to enact the Oscar Wilde quote about reading on the train. List your accomplishments, or write about them, in glowing terms. Imagine you are compiling this list for your posthumous biography, in which someone praises you to the heavens, since of course this biography will only be marketed to your legions of fans. You are therefore free to be shameless. You should quickly find this is not hard to do, "Hey, that was rather brilliant, wasn't it?" and also don't feel that any accomplishment is too small to be mentioned. You never know how this event will be reflected in your future accomplishments, and of course your fans will be intrigued to spot how it was hinted at early on in your life. Have fun; I am.
I am an artist. And so I can get away with doing things sane people cannot. Spoken by Rob Reiner in Bullets Over Broadway, "The artist creates his own moral universe," and that's the way it is. Creativity makes demands of people, and these demands are individual. Anthony (more on him in a sec) is fond of saying "I'm a drinker with a writing problem," pointing out one of the more common artistic derangements. Cigarettes, coffee, sex, all the other drugs as well. Then there are those less common: The Birthday Party apparently needed people to hate them, and once they developed appreciative fans they started having trouble tapping their creative veins. Speaking of, I have been known to say about certain artists that they should get back on the drugs. I am not kidding when I say these things. I am being selfish, though, because I'm lamenting the choice that these artists have made to give up whatever makes them creative in order to live a healthier life. They have my sympathy; I am grateful that my creativity/muse/god/loa does not require that kind of sacrifice/payoff in return for my gifts. Everything is action-reaction, and I hope that any artist who has made the choice to be healthier is able either to find another way to stimulate creativity, or to accept the decision made and move on. And forgive himself; if you require something "detrimental" or stigmatised in order to achieve peak creativity, that is not a character flaw: It is the hand you were dealt. Some people create when they're angry, others find it easier when they're at peace. I can't write stories when I'm angry, but I can write angry letters or articles, and I call that being put in The Correct Mood For Journalism (I almost typed Jerusalem). Usually I'm in the mood to write spy or crime stories. On those very rare occasions I feel like writing humour, I drop everything in order to do that. You do not fight the rarer impulses. What I need in order to write is freedom. I need to control my aural environment and my physical environment, although not so much my visual environment. (By physical I mean whether my body is comfy on the chair, and how claustrophobic I feel - I'm a pacer.) If I'm preoccupied with anything outside of my writing, that's an intrusion on my psychological freedom, and death to my creativity. That's the big one; I was trying to figure out how to define it for the purposes of this column, and I think freedom about sums it up. Sometimes, if I'm a little bit edgy, or physically I don't feel just right, a tiny drink can go a long way. Not too much, because then I get tired, and consequently frustrated because tiredness, of course, limits my concentration and hence my interior freedom. I hate trying to write in a limited time; if I don't have at least an hour free I won't even sit down at the computer. So you see the artist's gotta do what the artist's gotta do. Without apology. Or self-doubt. With the understanding that it's either that or no creation. Bringing me to self-esteem, which is kinda the theme for this week's 'Show. Low self-esteem is one of those preoccupations that hampers my writing. This is why I'm trying to murder low self-esteem wherever I find it. And engaging in acts of vanity, like this poem I wrote a few months ago (although this is less a case of vanity than being put in the correct mood for journalism). Baker's 12 is easy to write, because I'm not shopping it to a publisher. Concern for the publisher's response is one of those nasty little preoccupations I'm trying to eradicate. I'll be compiling B12 eventually, and then shopping it around, and then we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, you get to read the latest. And a final writing goodie for you, another form of Sensational Biography: The false history. You should try writing one for yourself; it is so much fun. But first the backstory: Anthony (who you may not remember by now, but he was in the third paragraph) is a dead friend of mine (okay, typo, I meant dear, but such a fun typo I left it) with whom I have done several radio dramas, including one in front of an audience and one live on television. Our collaborations hearken back to the Victorian era, with flowery prose and high melodrama, the kind of stuff our post-ironic culture rarely gets any more. (Get as in receive, understand, and give birth to.) We watch Vincent Price and Hammer Films together. Once or twice we have been asked (live) how we met, and the honest answer is not terribly thrilling. (Basically, he was desperate.) I don't like the question, because I'm thinking of the audience and this question only works if the idea is interesting, which, as I've said, it ain't. So I wrote a better answer. Every member of Alice Cooper came up with a story for how they got their name. This created confusion and added to the mystery. Also, their fans (like me!) must have thought it was loads of fun to compare the stories and try to figure out which one was real. And why not? When in show business, show off. This did not happen. But it really could have. When I present it live I'll downplay the condemnation of contemporary theatre. The story has been designed so that, if you hear it right after one of our performances, the magic of your experience will stay with you. I'll probably use this once and then come up with another, equally as fun. I'll be returning to discussing my influences next week, so one last thing about self-esteem. Tuesday I presented one of my personally-created mottoes; here's another: Never argue with an appreciative audience. WE HAVE A TECHNICAL July 13, 2003 Due to computer failure, there will be no updates until Friday. If you check the 'Show irregularly, have a look around; maybe there's a column you haven't read. WE HAVE A TECHNICAL
Sunday, July 13th: My computer develops a problem. I anticipate this will occupy much of my week. Monday: My computer stops booting. I have no backups. All my writing files, all my notes, inaccessible. I feel a sense of liberation. I decide yesterday's prediction about time devoted to this problem may have been optimistic. Tuesday: Because I am certifiable, I begin a new serial. (Also because I'm in a serial and swashbuckling kinda mood.) Friday: Trying to write B12; things interfere. Like trying to figure out how to compose and publish without my ordie. So, only halfway through B12. It will be up Sunday, if I can figure out how to publish new pages. Monday, July 21st: For those of you who think that decimals indicate
milestones, Baker's 12 Week 20 is now available! (And for anybody else,
too.)
Tuesday: There will be a new column here on Friday. I will not let this setback interfere with disseminating my genius. Saturday: And so another setback was added. AUGUST TENTH is after
I come back from vacation, so check here then and you will see Baker's
12, Week 21, plus the next installment of my new swashbuckling serial,
and a new column, about...
<there are interesting things in the archives, so check those!> |
back to The Teddybear Sawdust Show!