Mixing pop and politics
he asks me what the use is.
I offer him embarrassment
and my usual excuses
Quote taken from Billy Bragg's great song, "Waiting For the Great Leap Forward."
I've been a fan of Bragg's music since the early nineties. He writes the most amazing love songs with lines like these:
I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care
and
If you want to talk about it
you know where the phone is
Don't come 'round reminding me again
how brittle bone is
and
I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint
It's lines like that that first got me listening to his music. But I quickly discovered that he has a very strong, very leftist, political streak to his music as well.
So you bought it all, the best your money could buy
And I watched you sell your soul for their bright shining lie
Where are the principles of the friend I thought I knew
I guess you let them fade from red to blue
In my last post I wrote about how I want to get more intentional about my writing (fiction). And though I didn't share it in that post, I've always wondered what part my writing plays in the grand scheme of the Kingdom of God.
And I think I have a clue.
A few weeks ago on my pastor's blog he put up an entry about Burma. Then earlier this week I saw a report on the situation in Burma on the Frontline World website.
That's when it hit me. Like Bragg, I can intermingle pop and politics, lighter stories about love and life mixed with weightier stories about injustices in the world.
One of my favorite writers comes to mind, the incomparable T. Coraghessan Boyle. His short stories cover a wide range of topics and that tells me that it's more than possible for me to aim wide and to be generous in scope.
There is a danger though. Some of the worst writing emerges when one tries to drape fiction over an agenda. What results is often a clunky, tedious narrative weighed down by its own ideology.
In fiction, the story always comes first. It's been my experience that every time I've started a story thinking I knew where it was going to end up, one of two things would happen. Either I make the story go where I want and it ends up being a worthless rant or I follow the story where it leads and in the best of cases, I end up somewhere I never would have come up with on my own.
One last bit about writing.
I used to think that writing was like a bird who finds a worm sticking its head out of the ground. The bird has to swoop down quickly before the worm can duck his head back into the mud and once it has him in its beak, it has to pull until either it or the worm is spent. What I mean is, I thought writing was a matter of finding inspiration and then tugging on it until I get the whole worm (story) out or I get too tired to continue writing.
I have a new metaphor for the writing process. It's like fishing on the lake of the collective unconscious. You cast out your line and you troll the waters, hoping to land a big one. Sometimes you'll come up empty, but the only way to be there for the big bite is to keep casting that lure out there. In this way, writing is a discipline. The ideas are out there under the water and the only way to fish them out is to be out there every day, luring them out and fighting like mad to land the sucker once inspiration does strike.
I gues I've gone from being a bird to being a fisherman. That's progress, no?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
259. a new year's resolution...in March
Well, better late than never, no?
Back in blog 257, I shared about some brewing discontent. On the MySpace version of my blog (try this link), someone left a comment asking about my job, about how I've referred to it as a brainless job (see blog 234). She wondered how someone like me (she used the word, "intellectual," but I'm far too modest (and unknowledgable) to claim that title for myself) can find satisfaction at a brainless job and how I should instead be trying to find work more closely aligned to the gifts that God has given me.
And that got me thinking.
Now the first priority in my life right now is the band. However, if rock stardom doesn't happen for us, I really only have one very vague plan B and unfortunately, it's just as risky as the band venture. Plan B is to try to make it as a writer. To be more specific, a short story writer.
With this, and the aforementioned blog comment, in mind, I made a decision. I need to get more serious about my writing.
One of the things I've heard working writers talk about is how one needs a sense of discipline. I, however, have always been a writer who works on inspiration. I wait for the muse to speak and then I try to get it all down before she disappears again. Now if the muse was a regular visitor to my doorstep, this wouldn't be a problem but she hasn't come around lately and I know her to take extended leaves of absence.
Fact is, it sucks to write when uninspired. It's like trying to force yourself to be in love. But it's necessary. All the writers I admire talk about a strict writing regimen. And so, I've decided to take the advice my reader left me and start working at a job that's meaningful to me. To this end, I've decided to make a new year's resolution to write for at least thirty minutes a day, every day. I intend to up this to one hour of writing six months from now (September).
Now I know thirty minutes is pretty small potatoes in the world of writing but one of the things I've learned about setting goals is to start by setting attainable goals. I know I could go all gung ho and resolve to write for at least four hours every day but I know myself and I'd be able to stick to that kind of resolution for about, well, thirty minutes and then I'd give up on it all together. Instead, I'm going to start with thirty minutes work up from there.
This is my third night since making this resolution and while the writing has been rather mediocre (and even that's being generous), it's more fiction than I've written this whole year. I know I've written a bunch of blog entries but they don't count for this. The thirty minutes are to be devoted to writing fiction and while my life does seem surreal at times, my blog entries are not what I want to publish.
Unfortunately, thirty minute writing sessions do not pay very well so I'll have to keep the brainless job in order to pay the bills. Fortunately, one of the reasons I chose the brainless job was so that I'd have enough creative energy leftover after work to do some writing or to make music with my band. Unfortunately, this means I should have no excuse to not write.
Back in blog 257, I shared about some brewing discontent. On the MySpace version of my blog (try this link), someone left a comment asking about my job, about how I've referred to it as a brainless job (see blog 234). She wondered how someone like me (she used the word, "intellectual," but I'm far too modest (and unknowledgable) to claim that title for myself) can find satisfaction at a brainless job and how I should instead be trying to find work more closely aligned to the gifts that God has given me.
And that got me thinking.
Now the first priority in my life right now is the band. However, if rock stardom doesn't happen for us, I really only have one very vague plan B and unfortunately, it's just as risky as the band venture. Plan B is to try to make it as a writer. To be more specific, a short story writer.
With this, and the aforementioned blog comment, in mind, I made a decision. I need to get more serious about my writing.
One of the things I've heard working writers talk about is how one needs a sense of discipline. I, however, have always been a writer who works on inspiration. I wait for the muse to speak and then I try to get it all down before she disappears again. Now if the muse was a regular visitor to my doorstep, this wouldn't be a problem but she hasn't come around lately and I know her to take extended leaves of absence.
Fact is, it sucks to write when uninspired. It's like trying to force yourself to be in love. But it's necessary. All the writers I admire talk about a strict writing regimen. And so, I've decided to take the advice my reader left me and start working at a job that's meaningful to me. To this end, I've decided to make a new year's resolution to write for at least thirty minutes a day, every day. I intend to up this to one hour of writing six months from now (September).
Now I know thirty minutes is pretty small potatoes in the world of writing but one of the things I've learned about setting goals is to start by setting attainable goals. I know I could go all gung ho and resolve to write for at least four hours every day but I know myself and I'd be able to stick to that kind of resolution for about, well, thirty minutes and then I'd give up on it all together. Instead, I'm going to start with thirty minutes work up from there.
This is my third night since making this resolution and while the writing has been rather mediocre (and even that's being generous), it's more fiction than I've written this whole year. I know I've written a bunch of blog entries but they don't count for this. The thirty minutes are to be devoted to writing fiction and while my life does seem surreal at times, my blog entries are not what I want to publish.
Unfortunately, thirty minute writing sessions do not pay very well so I'll have to keep the brainless job in order to pay the bills. Fortunately, one of the reasons I chose the brainless job was so that I'd have enough creative energy leftover after work to do some writing or to make music with my band. Unfortunately, this means I should have no excuse to not write.
Monday, March 19, 2007
258. miscelaneous bits
I'm going to use this post to catch up on some small things that I want to share about - things that are too small to warrant an entire entry of their own.
1. Two summers ago, I traveled down the west coast for a week with my band. We landed in Seattle and during the course of the week we drove down to San Francisco and then to LA. That was a lot of driving and we tried all kinds of different road games and discussions to keep ourselves from going absolutely stir crazy.
I remember one of the things we talked about was concerts. We asked each other, if we could see any band in concert, who would it be. I think I probably answered with the bands Rush, Sheryl Crow, and The Police. Out of the three, the one band I wanted to see most was The Police because their drummer, Stewart Copeland is one of my mostest favoritest drummers of all time. I can't stress how much his playing has taught me about manipulating time on the drum set while still maintaining the pulse and drive that rock music demands.
At the time, I said that even though The Police is the band I wanted to see the most, it's also the band that had the smallest chance of getting back together. At the time, Sting's career was still going reasonably well and I always knew that as long as Sting was doing well by himself that he wouldn't be a part of any kind of Police reunion.
What a difference two years makes. When's the last time you heard of Sting? Was it, perhaps, when the announcement went out that The Police were getting back together for a freaking REUNION TOUR!
Tickets went fast for the show. I think I logged on about two hours after tickets went on sale online and couldn't find a ticket at any price. I was stunned and heartbroken. I checked ebay and discovered that tickets were in the thousand dollar range. I was kicking myself because I thought I had lost my chance to see them in concert.
On a whim, I logged onto Ticket Master again that night and I guess earlier that day the servers were just jammed because I didn't have any trouble at all finding seats. I mean, they weren't the best seats by any means, but there were seats. I ended up taking a chance and buying seats behind the stage. I'm hoping that I'll have a bird's eye view of Stewart Copeland and that I'll be able to watch him do his thing...and maybe even cop a few new licks for myself.
2. Spring is just around the corner and let me tell you, it's a beautiful sight. There are blossoms on the trees and their bursts of color are like fireworks tethered to the ground by bark and branch. It makes me feel giddy.
You know, I just had a thought. It's stupid to have Valentine's during the heart of winter. Spring is the time for love. Someone should start a crusade and have Valentine's Day moved to April, maybe a week after taxes are due as a way to unwind.
3. My band got to play our first show in Seattle. We actually played a couple shows up in Everett at a place called Jimmy Z's, but the other night, we got to play at The Central Saloon in the heart of Pioneer Square which is supposed to be where a lot of live music goes down. We had the midnight slot on a Sunday night so the place wasn't exactly packed with people but I think we put on a kick ass show anyway. I know I had a blast.
Oh and speaking of the band, we have a new bass player. His name is Drew. He's only nineteen but he acts and plays like someone older and wiser. With Drew being nineteen, we actually have a sixteen year span of ages in the band; this in addition to the fact that we have an African-American, two Asian-Americans and now a white guy in the band. We used to joke that if (when) we ever go on tour, we're going to call it the Affirmative Action Tour because we'll sue any club that doesn't let us play for discrimination. We're itching to play and we'll bust out the race card if we have to.
Let's see, was there anything else?
Ah yes.
4. To the guy who borrowed my DVD of Punch Drunk Love back in Hawaii, I hope you know that you've robbed me of one of my favorite movies. I'll probably be buying myself a new copy soon because it's one of those that I never get tired of watching.
Just to make sure of this, I rented a copy from Netflix and sure enough, the movie brought back the same wild and quirky high that it did when I first saw it. And I didn't realize it until I saw the movie again but a lot of my favorite movies have to do with two odd misfits finding one another. Movies like Secretary and Amelie. And I suppose it's because I see myself in these movies. I don't think I'm like most people and I'm not just looking for a pretty girl to go out with. I want to find someone who also feels a bit like a square peg in a round world.
There's this great scene in Punch Drunk where Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) and Lena Leonard (played by the oh, so lovely Emily Watson) are in bed whispering to one another about how much they love the other, and they do so in a way that is bizarre but sweet in a twisted, Hannibal Lecter kind of way:
Lena: You're face is so adorable, your skin and your cheek. I want to bite it. I want to bite your cheek and chew on it, it's so fucking cute.
Barry: I'm looking at your face and I just want to smash it. I just want to fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it, you're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them, chew on them, and suck on them.
Barry: Okay. This is funny.
Lena: Yeah.
Barry: This is nice.
What I find so striking about this scene is how Lena and Barry are able to be their true, strange, slightly bent selves with one another. Not only that, but even though they're saying these outlandish things to one another, they're actually speaking terms of endearment, only they're doing so in a way that is unique to them.
Do you see how beautiful that is? That these two people can say things to one another that most people would misunderstand as horrifying and repulsive but in their minds, these are complements of the highest order. And they get it. They don't hear violence in those words, they hear love but even more important than that, they've found someone who speaks the same skewed language and sees the world through the same skewed lens. They were cut from the same piece of cloth.
Now I'm not about to start talking to women about sledgehammers and eyeballs but I do want to end up with someone with whom I can be my true, not safe for public consumption self. I don't want to have to worry about acting like everyone else. And I want her to be herself as well. I want to meet someone with a few dents and dings, someone a bit off center. I want to let her know it's okay for her to be her oddball self around me.
That's what I see happening in Punch Drunk Love and in Secretary and in Amelie. Oh, and also in American Beauty - the way Jane Burnham (Thora Birch) and Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, the kid who was always videotaping stuff) are two misfits who are misunderstood until they find each other.
5. Okay, I think that's all.
Geeze, I thought this was going to be a short, simple post. Here I am three hours later still at it. I better post this sucker before I think of something else to write about.
1. Two summers ago, I traveled down the west coast for a week with my band. We landed in Seattle and during the course of the week we drove down to San Francisco and then to LA. That was a lot of driving and we tried all kinds of different road games and discussions to keep ourselves from going absolutely stir crazy.
I remember one of the things we talked about was concerts. We asked each other, if we could see any band in concert, who would it be. I think I probably answered with the bands Rush, Sheryl Crow, and The Police. Out of the three, the one band I wanted to see most was The Police because their drummer, Stewart Copeland is one of my mostest favoritest drummers of all time. I can't stress how much his playing has taught me about manipulating time on the drum set while still maintaining the pulse and drive that rock music demands.
At the time, I said that even though The Police is the band I wanted to see the most, it's also the band that had the smallest chance of getting back together. At the time, Sting's career was still going reasonably well and I always knew that as long as Sting was doing well by himself that he wouldn't be a part of any kind of Police reunion.
What a difference two years makes. When's the last time you heard of Sting? Was it, perhaps, when the announcement went out that The Police were getting back together for a freaking REUNION TOUR!
Tickets went fast for the show. I think I logged on about two hours after tickets went on sale online and couldn't find a ticket at any price. I was stunned and heartbroken. I checked ebay and discovered that tickets were in the thousand dollar range. I was kicking myself because I thought I had lost my chance to see them in concert.
On a whim, I logged onto Ticket Master again that night and I guess earlier that day the servers were just jammed because I didn't have any trouble at all finding seats. I mean, they weren't the best seats by any means, but there were seats. I ended up taking a chance and buying seats behind the stage. I'm hoping that I'll have a bird's eye view of Stewart Copeland and that I'll be able to watch him do his thing...and maybe even cop a few new licks for myself.
2. Spring is just around the corner and let me tell you, it's a beautiful sight. There are blossoms on the trees and their bursts of color are like fireworks tethered to the ground by bark and branch. It makes me feel giddy.
You know, I just had a thought. It's stupid to have Valentine's during the heart of winter. Spring is the time for love. Someone should start a crusade and have Valentine's Day moved to April, maybe a week after taxes are due as a way to unwind.
3. My band got to play our first show in Seattle. We actually played a couple shows up in Everett at a place called Jimmy Z's, but the other night, we got to play at The Central Saloon in the heart of Pioneer Square which is supposed to be where a lot of live music goes down. We had the midnight slot on a Sunday night so the place wasn't exactly packed with people but I think we put on a kick ass show anyway. I know I had a blast.
Oh and speaking of the band, we have a new bass player. His name is Drew. He's only nineteen but he acts and plays like someone older and wiser. With Drew being nineteen, we actually have a sixteen year span of ages in the band; this in addition to the fact that we have an African-American, two Asian-Americans and now a white guy in the band. We used to joke that if (when) we ever go on tour, we're going to call it the Affirmative Action Tour because we'll sue any club that doesn't let us play for discrimination. We're itching to play and we'll bust out the race card if we have to.
Let's see, was there anything else?
Ah yes.
4. To the guy who borrowed my DVD of Punch Drunk Love back in Hawaii, I hope you know that you've robbed me of one of my favorite movies. I'll probably be buying myself a new copy soon because it's one of those that I never get tired of watching.
Just to make sure of this, I rented a copy from Netflix and sure enough, the movie brought back the same wild and quirky high that it did when I first saw it. And I didn't realize it until I saw the movie again but a lot of my favorite movies have to do with two odd misfits finding one another. Movies like Secretary and Amelie. And I suppose it's because I see myself in these movies. I don't think I'm like most people and I'm not just looking for a pretty girl to go out with. I want to find someone who also feels a bit like a square peg in a round world.
There's this great scene in Punch Drunk where Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) and Lena Leonard (played by the oh, so lovely Emily Watson) are in bed whispering to one another about how much they love the other, and they do so in a way that is bizarre but sweet in a twisted, Hannibal Lecter kind of way:
Lena: You're face is so adorable, your skin and your cheek. I want to bite it. I want to bite your cheek and chew on it, it's so fucking cute.
Barry: I'm looking at your face and I just want to smash it. I just want to fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it, you're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them, chew on them, and suck on them.
Barry: Okay. This is funny.
Lena: Yeah.
Barry: This is nice.
What I find so striking about this scene is how Lena and Barry are able to be their true, strange, slightly bent selves with one another. Not only that, but even though they're saying these outlandish things to one another, they're actually speaking terms of endearment, only they're doing so in a way that is unique to them.
Do you see how beautiful that is? That these two people can say things to one another that most people would misunderstand as horrifying and repulsive but in their minds, these are complements of the highest order. And they get it. They don't hear violence in those words, they hear love but even more important than that, they've found someone who speaks the same skewed language and sees the world through the same skewed lens. They were cut from the same piece of cloth.
Now I'm not about to start talking to women about sledgehammers and eyeballs but I do want to end up with someone with whom I can be my true, not safe for public consumption self. I don't want to have to worry about acting like everyone else. And I want her to be herself as well. I want to meet someone with a few dents and dings, someone a bit off center. I want to let her know it's okay for her to be her oddball self around me.
That's what I see happening in Punch Drunk Love and in Secretary and in Amelie. Oh, and also in American Beauty - the way Jane Burnham (Thora Birch) and Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, the kid who was always videotaping stuff) are two misfits who are misunderstood until they find each other.
5. Okay, I think that's all.
Geeze, I thought this was going to be a short, simple post. Here I am three hours later still at it. I better post this sucker before I think of something else to write about.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
257. loneliness and a $11,000 cup of coffee
It's been almost six months since I've made the move to Seattle. And I don't know if it's the seasonal affective disorder syndrome or if it's just taken me this long to get settled enough to feel it, but lately I've been noticing a mild sort of lonely melancholy affecting me from time to time. It's not regular enough to detect any kind of pattern, but it seems to set in around Thursday and Friday - as the weekend approaches.
I suppose this has to do with not having as many friends available for weekend fun, but I've always been one who's been fine with hanging out by myself so that doesn't account for all of it. The bigger, deeper part of it has to do with what I can only describe as a lack of intellectual stimulation.
Now that sounds terribly elitist so let me refine that a bit to say that what I think I'm lacking is access to a circle of friends who share the same taste in books and movies.
But that's not it either.
Maybe it is as simple as a minor case of homesickness.
But I don't think that's it exactly because the only thing I really miss from Hawaii is the food. Although I've found a couple local (Hawaiian) style restaurants, there's nothing like a Sanoya Rahmen (or any other rahmen shops) or Rainbow Drive Inn or even Zippy's.
Maybe it's just a plain ol' spell of the blues.
But you know what I'm afraid of?
What if...
What if my respite from the angst of singleness is over?
For the past year or so, I've been one hundred percent content as a single person. This was a new experience for me because prior to that, the ache and want of singleness weighed on me from waking to waning. It tainted every moment, kept me up at night and made me want to stay in bed in the morning. There was a vacuum, a void within me as if there were a hole where one of my lungs should have been.
But then 2006 rolled around and somehow the emptiness wasn't there anymore. It's not that the old emptiness was filled with some new endeavor or sense of meaning, it just up and disappeared without fanfare or fuss. And it was nice to feel free from the cloud over my head.
I always thought it odd that the loneliness that used to so saturate me just went away. I wondered where it went, what sent it away, would it be back or was it gone for good?
And now I'm wondering it's come out of remission. A few months ago, I wrote an entry where I wrote about a girl who I began referring to as Quest Girl. I titled that entry "oh no, not again" because I suspected that crushing on a girl again might be just the thing that would trigger a loneliness relapse. And maybe that's exactly what happened.
Luckily, even though I'm writing about how some of the old loneliness and longing is back, it's nowhere near as debilitating as it used to be. I hope I never end up as bent and lost as I was at the worst of it (which honestly was almost all the time back then) but honestly, it's odd but it's nice to be feeling something because sometimes the numb of not feeling alone was, well, numbing (sorry, words are utterly failing me here).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in a way it's nice to be feeling something, muted as it is, rather than the featureless grey of nothing. Does that make any sense?
Maybe my trouble with words has to do with the fact that I've got too much caffeine running through my system right now. See earlier today I read about a new, state of the art coffee brewing machine called the Clover. It retails for $11,000 and it's supposed to bring the precise, repeatable control of the best espresso machines to the brewed coffee process. Now while I enjoy a good cup of coffee (black please - cream and sugar are for deserts recipes), I'm no coffee snob but I just had to see what an $11,000 cup of coffee tasted like so I found a coffee shop nearby that uses the machine and I've been sipping away at it while writing this entry (like most coffee joints in Seattle, Zoka has free Wi-Fi). Actually it only cost me about $4 for 16oz of brew and while it was tasty and nice, it wasn't earth-shattering.
Turns out, I may have just ordered the wrong bean. While walking by, the barista asked me about how I liked the coffee and when I told her I thought it was pretty mild tasting, she suggested I try the Sumatra Lake Tawar next time instead of the Hacienda Alsacia Peaberry that I was drinking. Turns out the Hacienda is their mildest coffee whereas the Sumatra is the boldest and most popular among those who order from the Clover-brewed menu. I probably should have asked her about the choices before I ordered, but I'd always wanted to try a peaberry coffee so I went straight for that one. She actually offered to brew me a free cup of Sumatra since it was slow but I told her I had too much of a caffeine buzz going already.
Seattle is such a cool city.
Don't tell my parents, but a part of me's thinking I might stay up here even if the band thing doesn't work out.
I suppose this has to do with not having as many friends available for weekend fun, but I've always been one who's been fine with hanging out by myself so that doesn't account for all of it. The bigger, deeper part of it has to do with what I can only describe as a lack of intellectual stimulation.
Now that sounds terribly elitist so let me refine that a bit to say that what I think I'm lacking is access to a circle of friends who share the same taste in books and movies.
But that's not it either.
Maybe it is as simple as a minor case of homesickness.
But I don't think that's it exactly because the only thing I really miss from Hawaii is the food. Although I've found a couple local (Hawaiian) style restaurants, there's nothing like a Sanoya Rahmen (or any other rahmen shops) or Rainbow Drive Inn or even Zippy's.
Maybe it's just a plain ol' spell of the blues.
But you know what I'm afraid of?
What if...
What if my respite from the angst of singleness is over?
For the past year or so, I've been one hundred percent content as a single person. This was a new experience for me because prior to that, the ache and want of singleness weighed on me from waking to waning. It tainted every moment, kept me up at night and made me want to stay in bed in the morning. There was a vacuum, a void within me as if there were a hole where one of my lungs should have been.
But then 2006 rolled around and somehow the emptiness wasn't there anymore. It's not that the old emptiness was filled with some new endeavor or sense of meaning, it just up and disappeared without fanfare or fuss. And it was nice to feel free from the cloud over my head.
I always thought it odd that the loneliness that used to so saturate me just went away. I wondered where it went, what sent it away, would it be back or was it gone for good?
And now I'm wondering it's come out of remission. A few months ago, I wrote an entry where I wrote about a girl who I began referring to as Quest Girl. I titled that entry "oh no, not again" because I suspected that crushing on a girl again might be just the thing that would trigger a loneliness relapse. And maybe that's exactly what happened.
Luckily, even though I'm writing about how some of the old loneliness and longing is back, it's nowhere near as debilitating as it used to be. I hope I never end up as bent and lost as I was at the worst of it (which honestly was almost all the time back then) but honestly, it's odd but it's nice to be feeling something because sometimes the numb of not feeling alone was, well, numbing (sorry, words are utterly failing me here).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in a way it's nice to be feeling something, muted as it is, rather than the featureless grey of nothing. Does that make any sense?
Maybe my trouble with words has to do with the fact that I've got too much caffeine running through my system right now. See earlier today I read about a new, state of the art coffee brewing machine called the Clover. It retails for $11,000 and it's supposed to bring the precise, repeatable control of the best espresso machines to the brewed coffee process. Now while I enjoy a good cup of coffee (black please - cream and sugar are for deserts recipes), I'm no coffee snob but I just had to see what an $11,000 cup of coffee tasted like so I found a coffee shop nearby that uses the machine and I've been sipping away at it while writing this entry (like most coffee joints in Seattle, Zoka has free Wi-Fi). Actually it only cost me about $4 for 16oz of brew and while it was tasty and nice, it wasn't earth-shattering.
Turns out, I may have just ordered the wrong bean. While walking by, the barista asked me about how I liked the coffee and when I told her I thought it was pretty mild tasting, she suggested I try the Sumatra Lake Tawar next time instead of the Hacienda Alsacia Peaberry that I was drinking. Turns out the Hacienda is their mildest coffee whereas the Sumatra is the boldest and most popular among those who order from the Clover-brewed menu. I probably should have asked her about the choices before I ordered, but I'd always wanted to try a peaberry coffee so I went straight for that one. She actually offered to brew me a free cup of Sumatra since it was slow but I told her I had too much of a caffeine buzz going already.
Seattle is such a cool city.
Don't tell my parents, but a part of me's thinking I might stay up here even if the band thing doesn't work out.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
256. on swearing
Anyone remotely familiar with my blog knows that I make frequent reference to previous entries. The main reason I do this is so I don't have to restate or explain something that I've already written about.
Funny thing though, when linking to older blogs, particularly those written before 2006, I'm a bit embarrassed because I used to swear a lot back then (see blog 30 for a particularly egregious example). I remember when I decided to stop swearing so much. It was one of the new year's resolutions I made back in the beginning of '06 (see blog 141) and I've stuck to that resolution pretty well.
But you know, even though I'm glad that I've cleaned up my language, I don't regret writing the way I did back then. See, I really believe that every artist needs to have a generous amount of creative freedom if they are to truly find their voice or their style, and I don't think I'd be the writer I am today if I hadn't allowed myself to swear the way I did back then. I mean even though I don't swear very much anymore, it was an avenue I needed to run down in order to be where I am today.
And it's not the swearing itself that did this, it's the freedom I allowed myself to swear that made room for my development or at least expedited my development. What I mean is, if I hadn't allowed myself to swear, my writing would be tethered to a rule (don't swear) and because of this, the scope of my writing would have been constrained. In fact, now that I think of it, I don't know if I could have adequately voiced the issues and frustrations I was working through. Some might argue that I could have done so using softer language but I think the freedom I felt to express the frustrations I was feeling was directly tied to the freedom I felt to use whatever words necessary.
Let me frame this another way. Someone told me (or maybe I read it somewhere) that a good writer shouldn't have to swear, that they should be able to convey an idea or feeling without resorting to gutter language. I don't think I buy that, but even if it's true, one becomes a good writer only after being a bad writer and maybe the fact that I don't swear much in my blog shows that I've progressed somewhat. But again, I don't think I could have ended up at this point without the freedom to write using more coarse, unrefined language.
For most writers, the swearing thing isn't an issue but for a Christian writer, it's not so simple. A lot of Christians would say that it's wrong for a believer to swear in their writing and for the most part, Christian publishers won't print anything containing the f-bomb or the s-word. But this presents a problem for Christian writers who want to depict the world as it is.
I remember reading a book in high school called This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. It's a fictional book about the unseen spiritual side of life. In this book, Peretti describes angels and demons warring among us and one thing that struck me as particularly odd was the fact that demons never swore when they spoke. Now I don't know if there are little invisible imps and devils toying with us the way Peretti described them, but if there were, I'm sure they would use words and language that would make a dirty, swearing sailor sound like Mister Rogers. But not in Peretti's world and that makes for demons that aren't quite believable.
Perhaps that's a bad example. Here's a better one.
Back in 2001, David Cunningham (son of YWAM founder, Loren Cunningham) came out with a movie called To End All Wars about Allied prisoners of war who ended up building a railway through the Burmese jungle. In part, it's also a movie about forgiveness. The prisoners endure humiliating and unjust hardships yet they turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.
Both the director, Cunningham, and the screenwriter, Brian Godawa, are Christians and because some of the characters in the movie swear (soldiers in a POW camp swearing, imagine that), Cunningham and Godawa had to explain their word choices to many in the Christian press. It's been a long time so I can't remember exactly what they said in their interviews but basically, they explained that, being a movie about forgiveness, the only way to show the true subversive power and beauty of forgiveness is to show the true depravity and ugliness of what's being forgiven.
An essential component of storytelling is verisimilitude - believability, the sense that a story is set in the real world, not some sanitized or unrealistically utopian one. To place limits on the language that Christian writers/directors/poets/etc. can use is to handicap them, to limit the range of situations they can accurately depict. Not being able to use swear words might be fine if your story is set in an Amish community, but if it's set in a modern urban environment or in a suburb or a rural area - anywhere real people behave like real people - good luck getting anyone to buy into your story.
Of course I'm not saying that swearing is a prerequisite for a believable story, using four-letter words just for shock value or just because one can is almost as bad as not using them for fear of the Christian community's backlash (and yes, I do believe the latter is worse). That said, I truly believe that Christians have the freedom to use whatever language they deem appropriate for their story or screenplay or any other creative work.
One final thought (I have more, but I'll save them for another post), every writer will one day have to account for the way they used their gifts and talents. The writer who failed to reach his/her potential because they limited the scope of their language for fear of the church's reproach is just as guilty of sin as one who recklessly abuses their freedom by spraying profanity where it is unnecessary.
Funny thing though, when linking to older blogs, particularly those written before 2006, I'm a bit embarrassed because I used to swear a lot back then (see blog 30 for a particularly egregious example). I remember when I decided to stop swearing so much. It was one of the new year's resolutions I made back in the beginning of '06 (see blog 141) and I've stuck to that resolution pretty well.
But you know, even though I'm glad that I've cleaned up my language, I don't regret writing the way I did back then. See, I really believe that every artist needs to have a generous amount of creative freedom if they are to truly find their voice or their style, and I don't think I'd be the writer I am today if I hadn't allowed myself to swear the way I did back then. I mean even though I don't swear very much anymore, it was an avenue I needed to run down in order to be where I am today.
And it's not the swearing itself that did this, it's the freedom I allowed myself to swear that made room for my development or at least expedited my development. What I mean is, if I hadn't allowed myself to swear, my writing would be tethered to a rule (don't swear) and because of this, the scope of my writing would have been constrained. In fact, now that I think of it, I don't know if I could have adequately voiced the issues and frustrations I was working through. Some might argue that I could have done so using softer language but I think the freedom I felt to express the frustrations I was feeling was directly tied to the freedom I felt to use whatever words necessary.
Let me frame this another way. Someone told me (or maybe I read it somewhere) that a good writer shouldn't have to swear, that they should be able to convey an idea or feeling without resorting to gutter language. I don't think I buy that, but even if it's true, one becomes a good writer only after being a bad writer and maybe the fact that I don't swear much in my blog shows that I've progressed somewhat. But again, I don't think I could have ended up at this point without the freedom to write using more coarse, unrefined language.
For most writers, the swearing thing isn't an issue but for a Christian writer, it's not so simple. A lot of Christians would say that it's wrong for a believer to swear in their writing and for the most part, Christian publishers won't print anything containing the f-bomb or the s-word. But this presents a problem for Christian writers who want to depict the world as it is.
I remember reading a book in high school called This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. It's a fictional book about the unseen spiritual side of life. In this book, Peretti describes angels and demons warring among us and one thing that struck me as particularly odd was the fact that demons never swore when they spoke. Now I don't know if there are little invisible imps and devils toying with us the way Peretti described them, but if there were, I'm sure they would use words and language that would make a dirty, swearing sailor sound like Mister Rogers. But not in Peretti's world and that makes for demons that aren't quite believable.
Perhaps that's a bad example. Here's a better one.
Back in 2001, David Cunningham (son of YWAM founder, Loren Cunningham) came out with a movie called To End All Wars about Allied prisoners of war who ended up building a railway through the Burmese jungle. In part, it's also a movie about forgiveness. The prisoners endure humiliating and unjust hardships yet they turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.
Both the director, Cunningham, and the screenwriter, Brian Godawa, are Christians and because some of the characters in the movie swear (soldiers in a POW camp swearing, imagine that), Cunningham and Godawa had to explain their word choices to many in the Christian press. It's been a long time so I can't remember exactly what they said in their interviews but basically, they explained that, being a movie about forgiveness, the only way to show the true subversive power and beauty of forgiveness is to show the true depravity and ugliness of what's being forgiven.
An essential component of storytelling is verisimilitude - believability, the sense that a story is set in the real world, not some sanitized or unrealistically utopian one. To place limits on the language that Christian writers/directors/poets/etc. can use is to handicap them, to limit the range of situations they can accurately depict. Not being able to use swear words might be fine if your story is set in an Amish community, but if it's set in a modern urban environment or in a suburb or a rural area - anywhere real people behave like real people - good luck getting anyone to buy into your story.
Of course I'm not saying that swearing is a prerequisite for a believable story, using four-letter words just for shock value or just because one can is almost as bad as not using them for fear of the Christian community's backlash (and yes, I do believe the latter is worse). That said, I truly believe that Christians have the freedom to use whatever language they deem appropriate for their story or screenplay or any other creative work.
One final thought (I have more, but I'll save them for another post), every writer will one day have to account for the way they used their gifts and talents. The writer who failed to reach his/her potential because they limited the scope of their language for fear of the church's reproach is just as guilty of sin as one who recklessly abuses their freedom by spraying profanity where it is unnecessary.
Monday, March 05, 2007
255. out of my hands
I want to thank everyone who read my little story. I'd like to especially thank those who gave suggestions large and small.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, I had a post up last week that I've since deleted. In it, I shared a short story I'd written that I intended to submit to a short story contest called Daily Sacrament, a short story contest, run by Relief Journal. I've since taken down that post but you can find the original version of the story I submitted here.
Well, I'm finally done tweaking over words and commas and dialogue. I still think parts of it could be better but I found myself making and unmaking edits so often I figured it was time to upload the damn thing and see if it's got wings.
So it's out of my hands now.
Wish me (and the story) luck.
Thanks again for reading.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, I had a post up last week that I've since deleted. In it, I shared a short story I'd written that I intended to submit to a short story contest called Daily Sacrament, a short story contest, run by Relief Journal. I've since taken down that post but you can find the original version of the story I submitted here.
Well, I'm finally done tweaking over words and commas and dialogue. I still think parts of it could be better but I found myself making and unmaking edits so often I figured it was time to upload the damn thing and see if it's got wings.
So it's out of my hands now.
Wish me (and the story) luck.
Thanks again for reading.
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