Today in 1933 Judge John Woolsey made a decision to allow James Joyces, then obscene novel “Ulysses” be published in the United States. That decision was also affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. According to Wiki-Pedial Woolsey “opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature, even when they used coarse language or involved sexual subjects.”

Free speech is essential to the health of any individual or society. Stifling it is the equivalent of putting a plastic bag over ones head. Eventually everyone needs to breathe.

To find out more about the novel and read the text itself visit this site. The issue of freedom of expression is one of importance and is often the subject of some novels themselves. Such is the case with Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. It is a foreboading depiction of censorship run amuck.

One recent case for free speech concerns the book Looking for Alaska by John Green. In 2008 Some Depew High School parents tried to ban the book for its depiction of sex and alcohol consumption despite the fact that the book shows the dangers associated with irresponsible sexual intimacy and irresponsible alcohol consumption. Green was called a pornographer. Eventually the Depew School Board made a wise call and kept the book Looking for Alaska in their school curriculum. These stories help create a dialouge about these topics between teenagers and their teachers, parents and each other that is vital to them learning how to approach sex and alcohol responsibly.

Here’s a Black Friday deal that the big-box retailers can’t beat.  Buy the new album from the up-and-coming indie band Ezra Furman and the Harpoons and you’ll get a personalized song thrown in, for no extra charge.  Just send them a letter with your life story (or a condensed version, perhaps), and they’ll churn out a folk-rock ditty with your name on it.

Moon Face: Bootlegs and Road Recordings 2006-2009

Since coming together at Tufts University, Ezra and his band mates have written so many songs and played so many live shows that there were plenty of cuts left off of their first two releases.  Those songs find a home on Moon Face: Bootlegs and Road Recordings 2006-2009 — alongside that unique, personalized track.  There have been more than 100 orders in the first weeks since the album’s release, which means the band will be busy writing odes to its fans during any downtime on its current tour.  (Ezra plays a solo Thanksgiving Eve show tonight at the Lincoln Park Whole Foods in Chicago).

Ezra (in the center of the frame) and the Harpoons

And speaking of harpoons, we’re serving whale for Thanksgiving this year in “Studio 360.”  You can hear all about the classic novel that Ezra’s band took as inspiration as we rebroadcast our Moby-Dick episode, the Peabody Award-winning installment in our “American Icons” series.  Guests include playwright Tony Kushner, artist Frank Stella, and science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.  Get hooked this weekend to find out if Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece still holds water. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

- Jordan Sayle

Well, good to see that everyone is looking for fun lists for holiday shopping! The “30 Books Every Writer Should Own” blog entry spiked my average reader count for this blog; it was the highest single-day total yet. I thank you all very much!

I’ve already received some wonderful comments, but this one leads to today’s blog: “What books were hardest for you to keep off the Top 30 list?”

Since I took 50 books that have touched me deeply in my writing career – or life – and pared them down to 30, I thought I’d run out the list of the 20 “Very Honorable Mentions.” Keep in mind: this list is incredibly subjective. All of these books belong on every writer’s short list of titles. They continue the theme of how I believe writers should read – roundly, fully, deeply, and interactively.

The Very Honorable Mentions (again, not in any particular order):

The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art, by Joyce Carol Oates: If you could mate pure, distilled wisdom and vision with the intimacy of a deep romance, this book would be the offspring. What a treasure, by one of the greatest writers on the planet.

The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself, by Susan Bell: For most writers, the hardest part of the process comes after you finish writing the draft – editing your work. In my opinion, this is the best book on editing. It contains tips, strategies, counsel from the greatest book editors of the past century, and interviews with top-selling authors. The author’s personal touch makes self-editing very inviting … and I invite you in, because these days, books need to go to publishers very well edited.

Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury: Zen connotes space, presence, serenity, succinctness. All of which you find in Bradbury’s prolific writing style. I was at a signing when science fiction’s greatest living writer toured this book 20 years ago … I’ll never forget his encouraging comments to me. This book remain a treasure.

On Being a Writer, Bill Strickland, ed: I kept this in the Top 30 list until the last moment. A great collection of conversations with our finest authors, who discuss voice, technique and process openly, in a way that every writer can absorb.

Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice, by Katherine Ransland: One of the most poignant biographies of a living literary figure. Ransland’s book itself is art. It also dives all the way into how tragedy, turmoil, deep suffering and vision created the author who did the impossible – rewrote the legacy of vampires.

The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell: We need to be in contact with the mythologies that formed the archetypes we use in our writing. We also need to know the art of myth-making as storytellers. This book, first published in conjunction with a PBS series in the late 1980s, brings myth into the present. Worthy companion: Mythology, by Edith Hamilton.

Keeping a Journal You Love, by Sheila Bender: A wonderful friend in the writing-teaching community, Sheila has dedicated the last 20 years of her life to helping writers improve their craft. She’s written several books, but this brings home the essence of what it takes to be a compelling writer: Going deep inside, taking your life experiences and world view with you, and percolating wisdom and compassion through journaling. This book erases writer’s block – fast.

The Poet and the Poem, by Judson Jerome: 35 years after its publication, this Writer’s Digest Book remains a landmark on the craft of poetry.

Writing Begins with the Breath, by Laraine Herring: This new release borrows from William Carlos Williams’ philosophy of poetry, which launched the Beat poets movement. Part Buddhism, part instructional … a fine book.

Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction, by Leonard Bishop: Another Writer’s Digest Book, this is one of the most thought-out breakdowns of the fiction writing technique and process.

The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida: A sociological book on how society, culture, education, timing and the ’60s conspired to form perhaps the most diverse and creative group of people in U.S. history – us. Invaluable reading for better understanding of the Boomers and Gen X – the core book-buying public.

The Literary Journalists, Norman O. Sims, ed.: Another book about the New Journalism movement, which launched the personal memoir and narrative non-fiction as we now know it.

The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson: A classic from its publication in 1979, this book breaks out the sociological network of community, technology, spiritual living and environmental consideration that are front-page news items today. I consider it a “must” because it reminds us of our responsibilities to society as creatives.

The Life of Poetry, by Muriel Rukeyser: A beautifully rendered part-memoir, part-instructional discussion of poetry by one of the greatest writers of the mid-20th century.

Journal of a Solitude, by May Sarton: As those who have been in my workshops know, I am BIG on journaling. This wonderful book is best read by a fire, with a cup of coffee or tea, quiet music … and a journal alongside. Because you will be sparked by the writings of the ever-wise May Sarton.

On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: I realize this classic is a very unusual choice, but let’s face it – the vast majority of novels include death, many of us touch the subject in our writing, and we all face it. Why on this list? Because, when I edit books and read end-of-life scenes, it is very easy to see who has experienced them with family or friends, and who has not. This book will bring greater authenticity to your writing. Plus, everyone should read this book.

The Art of the Personal Essay, Philip Lopate, ed.: This should be a staple in every aspiring and practicing essay writer’s home library – from ages 10 to 100. The variety of essays, and informative lead-ins, make this one of the best edited and selected writing anthologies ever.

The Best Writing on Writing, Jack Heffron, ed.: Jack is a former Writer’s Digest Books editor who occasionally teaches writing workshops. He also compiles very good anthologies. This annual release offers plenty of great pieces for writers looking for a tip or some inspiration.

The Alphabetic Labyrinth, by Johanna Drucker: Writing is conveyed by letters. This masterpiece shares the history of alphabets worldwide, how cultures intermingled to create new alphabets, and how the written word spread. The book is beautiful rendered and illustrated, and is one of several wonderful studies of language and the word by this author.

And finally, one of my own:
The Write Time: 366 Exercises to Fulfill Your Writing Life, by Robert Yehling: It’s very hard for me to include myself in any list, but I’m just sharing the vibe I’ve received from readers and reviewers since its publication in September. The exercises in this book are both stand-alone and mini-series pieces that cover every genre and leave plenty of opportunity for personal interpretation. You won’t find a more diverse writing exercise book.

Sereno Compares Dogcroc with Supercroc

Alligators and Crocodiles strike fear in people.  Can you imagine a 40 foot “SuperCroc?”    The Supercroc still holds the title as the largest known crocodile to roam the earth but who knows if there was a bigger one?   After all, University of Chicago palaeontologist Paul Sereno announced the discovery of the fossil remains of 5 ”new” species of crocodile that measure anywhere from 3 feet to 20 feet.  Today, crocodiles can reach as large as 20 feet but that still is but half of the size of the supercroc.  Some of these species are thought to have been able to eat other dinosaurs.    Another example of how mankind does not know everything and has a lot to learn and discover.  Remember that next time you hear of some scientific report that says something is “settled science” or there is a “consensus.”  That does not make it true.  One thing that is true is that at 9pm on Saturday November 21 the National Geographic Channel will be airing When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs as part of their Expedition Week.

A White Humpback Whale

Dano In The Right Stuff

The photo above is of course from the famous 1956 movie with Gregory Peck starring as Captain Ahab. It also has Richard Basehart and a cameo by Orson Welles as Father Maple. Another guy who shows up is Royal Dano who plays “Elijah” who was a drifter kinda guy who is pretty scary and prophesies to Basehart the the ship would be doomed by a great white whale. Later, Dano in the early 1980’s is the preacher in The Right Stuff who seems to represent death as he shows up at all of the funerals, test flights and space shots. One other interesting aspect of the movie: the screen play was written by Ray Bradbury and John Huston. Huston also directed.

Greenpeace in Battle

On a related note…on this day at this very moment, a small fleet of ships in a Japanese whaling expedition is on its way to the Arctic regions to hunt whales. They want to get 90 sperm whales among other specimens. I say specimens because whaling is banned world wide under an international treaty. But they can be hunted for research. The official mission of the fleet is for research. Yet, when they left port they left to great fanfare and people of small villages in northern Japan claiming they need to whaling so that they may carry on their thousands of years old culture. Greenpeace isn’t buying the scientific aspect and will attempt to thwart the harpooning of the great mammals. Perhaps Moby Dick will resurface and get a bit of revenge.

Tom Horn

On This Date in History: Tom Horn had worked as a US Army scout, deputy sherrif, and Pinkerton

Horn Looks A Little Heavier and Younger Here

Detective in the 19th Century. When General Nelson Miles had need of a “super-scout” to help track down Geronimo, he called on Tom Horn. It has been suggested that Horn even arranged for Geronimo’s surrender. Horn was no shrinking violet. While working for the Pinkerton Agency, he reported killed 17 men. His reputation was such that on one occasion he reportedly simply walked up to an accused robber and killer and announced that he had come for him. The man quietly surrendered rather than face Tom Horn. But, the detective business wasn’t exciting enough and Horn quit, saying, “It was too tame for me.”

In 1894 he was hired by the cattleman’s association in Wyoming to supposedly combat cattle rustlers but in reality was used as an enforcer against small ranchers and homesteaders who got in the way of the cattle barons. In effect, he was the law for the big shots and served as judge, jury and executioner receiving $300 to $600 for each man he took down. See, Horn didn’t see himself as murderer but instead believed that when men in authority, or even the law, hired him, he would be protected. It usually worked out that way. Horn said, “Killing is my specialty. I look at it as a business proposition and I think I have a corner on the market.” He usually lay in wait for his victim and then made his mark by placing a rock under the victim’s head.

Horn Making The Rope For His Own Gallows

But, the law caught up with Horn who was arrested in 1902 for the killing of a 14-year-old son of a settler the year before. In Cheyenne, the cattle barons paid for his defense and a sensational trial ensued with everyone thinking that he would be found not guilty. That was not to be the case. The prosecution had a legal reporter along with federal officer Joe LeFors and a deputy sheriff got a drunken Horn to supposedly confess to the killing. The “confession” was allowed in court and heard by a jury that was stacked with opponents of the cattlemen. Horn was convicted and on this date in 1903, Tom Horn went to the gallows after making the rope that was used in the hanging.

Steve McQueen’s 2nd to last movie was a biopic called Tom Horn with

McQueen Was a Great Tom Horn

Linda Evans, Slim Pickens and Richard Farnsworth. I guess the moral to the story is that no one is above the law and even if you get convicted of something you didn’t do, perhaps it is a justice of nature for all of the things that you did do but for which you were never caught. You may think that this held true for a certain Heismann Trophy, NFL Hall of Famer who is now in prison in Nevada.

A long bio of Horn. A shorter bio of Horn.

Weather Bottom Line:  Weekend looks great, but seasonably cool.

Ray Bradbury – The October Country (Four Square, 1963, 1964, 1965)

The Dwarf
The watchful Poker Chip of H.Matisse
Skeleton
The Jar
The Traveller
The Emissary
Touched with Fire
The Scythe
Uncle Einar
The Wind
There was an Old Woman
Homecoming
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone.

Blurb:
When Charlie brought home the Thing in the jar, he knew that its mystery would draw the neighbours to his lonely house — knew that it would arouse his wife’s jealousy. He was right, but he didn’t know what form his wife’s jealousy would take — nor what he would have to do to silence her for ever.
Ray Bradbury is a master of the macabre, and each of his stories is imbued with the sort of quiet horror which makes the skin clammy with apprehension. He writes about the dark corners of life — what exists on the other side of normality … the dwarf who took comfort from a distorting mirror . . . the man with the painted eye … the bone doctor with a taste for human marrow… strange … weird … flush with fantasy.

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! As if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone. The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings. – Ray Bradbury, There Will Come Soft Rains

La NASA y Microsoft abren este sitio de exploración

Esta simpático el site “Be a Martian”. Lo que no me gusta es tener que instalar el plug in Microsoft Silverlight (si ya tengo el Adobe) para poder usar/ver todo lo que ofrece este lugar.

nota periodística aquí

Golden Apples of the Sun

“I believe,” said the first lady, “that our souls are in our hands. For we do everything to the world with our hands. Sometimes I think we don’t use our hands half enough; it’s certain we don’t use our heads.”

They recounted to themselves the lids they had lifted, the doors they had opened and shut, the flowers they had picked, the dinners they had made, all with slow or quick fingers, as was their manner or custom. Looking back, you saw a flurry of hands, like a magician’s dream, doors popping wide, taps turned, brooms wielded, children spanked. The flutter of pink hands was the only sound; the rest was a dream without voices.

I have been making little films for almost a year now and I have come to the conclusion that  the parts that take a lot of time are excruciatingly boring and stupid.

I want the content to play at a really high quality using a freely available open source standard codec  but so far nothing really seems to work.   So i guess that just means each iteration of a film is essentially a new print as the codec used to compress the file can have a huge impact on the final product(There isn’t much talk about lossless video) and the available codec make HUGE files.

Actually I hear there are actually people out there that use pirated versions of popular media manipulation software which are easily attained THey essentially function as a further avenue of marketing , a way to get a large enough user base so your software can actually become a vital part of a working environment. An environment will include many companies that do buy the software.  But seriously Sony Vegas has a really nice multiple format drag and drop video audio mixing interface that is really easy.

I made two films which include some crudely rendered canon 7d footage the last one was 1.1 gigs yet it failed to upload to You Tube(2 gig,ten minute limit) I’ve tried 4 times so far..oh well.

In conclusion here is the first of aforementioned film followed by some notes

You may wonder how this related to the material but given the constraints of time I have decided to construct a longer more ruminated on piece of “film” and therefore certain aspects may only become concrete after a few episodes.
You may also question the style of the video and my only comment there is that time is what is needed.  Time and huge embracing screens or isolation tanks filled with salt and wired for video.

Words

“Some have asked if I did not feel lonesome”
“If there were anyone else”

Henry David Thoreau Walden
From the Librivox recording

“Leading A modest life in an Idyllic fake… ….staged to keep him satisfied.”

Text by As read by a computer(apparently).
It refers to the Phillip K. Dick Novel “Time Out Of Joint”
Which was a really neat book about this dude who does crosswords or some other mindless thing unawares that he is also somehow determining the launching trajectory of these missiles that are being fired at the moon.

“Classically in philosophy there was a distinction drawn between
Being with a capital B,
Which a philosophical way of writing the word God or Fundamental Entity
Being Big B.
and
being/entity
one among which is dasein
Heidegger, However,and I don’t want to mislead you because many readers have been mislead
Heidegger
is no humanist.”

Rick Roderick From his lecture series Titled””Self under Siege” lecture series”(I’ll note where it is next time i hear it)

Man-”It’s beautiful here
I can see the whole valley”

Woman-”yes and there’s our cottage down there
it’s time to go back isn’t it

Man-”Yes.

“but we’re not going to”   ” there is nothing there for us”.
“ah the town’s empty no ones going back”
“there’s no reason to…none at all…?

“Such odd
such ridiculous houses”

Woman- “such ugly people I’m glad their gone”

Man- “Gone?

Where did they go?”

Woman-”I don’t know?

Man-”We’ll go back to town maybe next year,
or the year after that”

Woman-
Or, maybe the year after that

Man- Maybe?

c’mon

let’s take a swim”

Ray Bradbury

From a later 20th century Production

of one of his short stories

that was on NPR(Yuck)

“Ognuno deve lasciarsi qualche cosa dietro quando muore, diceva sempre mio nonno: un bimbo o un quadro o una casa o un muro eretto con le proprie mani o un paio di scarpe cucite da noi. O un giardino piantato col nostro sudore. Qualche cosa insomma che la nostra mano abbia toccato, in modo che la nostra anima abbia dove andare quando moriamo, e quando la gente guarderà l’albero, o il fiore che abbiamo piantato, noi saremo là. Non ha importanza quello che si fa, diceva mio nonno, purché si cambi qualche cosa da ciò che era prima in qualcos’altro che porti poi la nostra impronta. La differenza tra l’uomo che si limita a tosare un prato e un vero giardiniere, sta nel tocco, diceva. Quello che sega il fieno poteva anche non esserci stato, sul quel prato; ma il vero giardiniere vi resterà per tutta una vita”.

Da Fahrenheit 451 di Ray Bradbury

“And he was right. With a feeling of cold water rushing through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.” …

“He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.

When I hit the atmosphere, I’ll burn like a meteor.

“I wonder,” he said, “if anyone’ll see me?”

The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed. “Look, Mom, look! A falling star!”

The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois. “Make a wish,” said his mother. “Make a wish.”

-Ray Bradbury, “Kaleidoscope”

Tonight, my wife of exactly 6 months and I stand in an open field not far from our house, whispering as I carefully unfold our two canvas chairs, hoping that we’ll be lucky enough to avoid the rolling-in clouds from Philadelphia and see a millisecond flash of green cut the black of emptiness, and exasperated, point in glee and whisper, “you see?”

Each year, for the rest of our lives, the newspapers or the internet or the popular media of the day will remind us that midway through November, if you look to the skies at just the right moment, under just the right conditions, you will see the leftover dust of comet junk that circled the sun 3 hundred or 4 hundred or 5 hundred years ago.  At the same time, I will remember the leftover memories that manage to leave a dusting of nostalgia, forever recalling the delicate teetering of fall and winter, half a year after marriage, dissolving into the night, hand in hand, with my wife in a field.

We both silently hope that we are not Hollis, not regretful that we’ve failed to live our dreams, if even just a sliver of them, a fleeting glimpse of fulfillment.  As we tumble towards our eventual end, hand in hand, we can always strive to be even just a flash of light in someone else’s life, inspiring optimism in the face of eventual demise.

Variety reports that Science Fiction God Ray Bradbury is developing a television miniseries based on six of his stories for White Oak films.  Bradbury and White Oak’s John Dayton will executive produce the miniseries, and Merrill Capps, Todd Klick, Cory Travalena and Dale Olson have been tapped to produce.  The series currently has no network commitment.

With all Science Fiction material on the big and small screen in recent years, it’s quite  a surprise how little of Bradbury there’s been.  This is could be a nice remedy for that.  We’d love to see a resurgence of interest in Bradbury’s work.  And this series could start such an avalanche.

Ray Bradbury

By James Hibberd – HollywoodReporter.com

Sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury is set to shop a six-hour miniseries to networks as part of a new production agreement with newly formed company White Oak Films.

The mini will feature six of Bradbury’s classic short stories directed by six different directors. The helmers will get to select their favorite titles.

Bradbury, 89, is the author of “Fahrenheit 451″ and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

White Oak partner John Dayton has a long association with Bradbury and will executive produce the project with the author.

“My partners and I see this series as an homage to a man who has inspired us all,” Dayton said.

Amazon Specials!

Space Oddity (first version).
Space Oddity (Feathers demo).
Space Oddity (single).
Space Oddity (first live TV performance, 1970).
Space Oddity (BBC, 1972).
Space Oddity (“1980 Floor Show” rehearsal, 1973).
Space Oddity (1979 remake).

“Space Oddity” is an officially sanctioned beginning: Bowie’s first single for Philips/Mercury; his first Top 10 hit (and, years later, his first UK #1); lead-off and title track of the subsequent LP; lead-off track of every greatest hits compilation from ChangesOneBowie on; lead-off track on his Sound and Vision career retrospective. When Bowie dies, the TV tributes will lead off with it.

So it’s “classic” Bowie, its now-iconic status won slowly and circuitously, but then “Space Oddity” has always seemed slightly out of time (its biggest chart placings, both in the US and the UK, came years after its first release). It began as a novelty song with a sell-by date (the first moon landing in July 1969), something like a grandiose, more dignified “Laughing Gnome,” and Tony Visconti, for one, refused to have anything to do with it, considering the song a cynical sell-out. Which it was. “Space Oddity” is close company to early Bee Gees hits like “New York Mining Disaster 1941” and Zager and Evans’ dire “In the Year 2525″: it’s a gimmicky folk song dressed up in extravagant clothes.

“Space Oddity” has come to define Bowie, perhaps because it’s as protean as its creator has tried to be. It’s a breakup song, an existential lullaby, consumer tie-in, product test, an alternate space program history, calculated career move, and a symbolic end to the counterculture dream—the “psychedelic astronaut” drifting off impotently into space (Camille Paglia suggested the last); it’s a kid’s song, drug song, death song, and it marks the birth of the first successful Bowie mythic character, one whose motives and fate are still unknown to us.

The major

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in London in May 1968 and played for months. As in many cities, its most frequent repeat viewers were the young and the altered. Visconti, in his autobiography, recounts a typical 2001 viewing—while high from drinking cannabis tea, Visconti had to talk down the tripping couple behind him who were terrified by the film’s “Star Gate” sequence. Bowie saw the film (stoned “off my gourd” he recalled) several times that summer and was especially struck by the final images of a “child” floating in space over the Earth.

So when at the end of 1968 Bowie’s manager asked him to write a new song for his Love You Till Tuesday promo film, Bowie had a scenario in mind. While 2001 was a primary influence, Bowie, an SF fan (e.g., “We Are Hungry Men“), may have raided other sources. One candidate is Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man story collection, which includes “The Rocket Man” (later used by Bernie Taupin), where an astronaut’s life is as dull and isolating as a traveling salesman’s; “Kaleidoscope,” where astronauts burn up in space, their dying embers seen as a shooting star on Earth; and, most of all, “No Particular Night or Morning,” where an astronaut in deep space doubts whether the Earth or even the stars are real and kills himself by going out the airlock:

Clemens blinked through the immense glass port, where there was a blur of stars and distant blackness. “He’s out there now?”

“Yes. A million miles behind us. We’d never find him. First time I knew he was outside the ship was when his helmet-radio came on on our control-room beam. I heard him talking to himself…Something like “no more space ship now. Never was any. No people. No people in all the universe. Never were any. No planets. No stars…Only space. Only space. Only the gap.”

And of course there was the ongoing Apollo moonshot program, which many hippies and New Left types detested for embodying the absurdities of “plastic America”: a made-for-TV waste of resources undertaken at a time of war, repression and political chaos. Bowie wrote “Space Oddity” around the time of Apollo 8 near Christmas 1968, the first manned rocket to the moon, which made two TV broadcasts during the flight (on Christmas Eve, the three astronauts read from the Book of Genesis, a performance immediately followed by a rocket-eye view of the Earth hanging cold and alone in space).

The disaster that befalls Major Tom (is it a disaster at all?) also reflects the general, if unspoken, fear at the time that the Apollo missions could go terribly wrong, with gruesome death or exile shown on live global television. Richard Nixon had on his desk a memorial speech in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon (its author, William Safire, had suggested that a clergyman should “adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea”).

The musician

When Bowie began writing the song, working with his then-partner John Hutchinson (who likely came up with a few of the chord sequences), he was at low ebb. His prospects as a pop singer had faded and his intense relationship with Hermione Farthingale was ending. (During 1968 Bowie also had “a flirtation with smack,” he admitted years later, and some have argued the icy majesty of “Space Oddity” suggests it’s really a heroin song, the “liftoff” section marking when the needle hits the vein.)

So it’s not surprising that Bowie created a character who’s been sent into orbit by Establishment figures, who monitor him, give him orders and want him to do his share of media promotion. The line “Now it’s time to leave the capsule—if you dare” suggests Major Tom could even be a contestant on a television show. Bowie made the first recording of the song the day after his final break with Farthingale, which has led biographers to speculate that Bowie’s state of mind at the time reflected Major Tom’s blissful sense of isolation, a desire to free himself entirely from human entanglements and just drift off into the void.

Yet while alienation is key to the song, it’s not a bleak or despairing track at all, as it has childlike qualities: the lyric at the start sounds like a game played by two boys on walkie-talkies; it has simple wordplay based on common sounds (the way “Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear” segues directly into “here am I floating round my tin can“) and as David Buckley notes, Bowie often uses a child’s word to replace an “official” one: so “spaceship” instead of “rocket,” “countdown” instead of “ignition sequence,” and even the name “Major Tom” seems that of a ’50s action hero rather than of a legitimate astronaut.

The composition

I’m always trying to find that special thing in pop music. For me, it started with Space Oddity by David Bowie—it has that semi-tone shift which fascinated me. I played it endlessly to my mum and it made me feel this yearning. It’s a kind of sweetness, and it can turn up in the strangest places.

Roddy Frame, 2002.

“Space Oddity” was the most intricate song Bowie had yet written, and you could consider it a neatly controlled collision of two forces—the often-simple lyric, with its memorable, childlike lines (“the stars look very different today“); and the density and complexity of the song’s structure.

In the span of five minutes, there’s an intro, two verses, two bridges, two four-bar acoustic guitar breaks, a “liftoff” sequence with guitar and strings, a 12-bar electric guitar solo, a third extended verse that’s partially a refrain (the “Can you hear me Major Tom?” bit) and a long outro which also contains a second guitar solo. There are something like 15 different chords used and the lyric at times seems synchronized to the changes (in the bridge, when Major Tom is floating alone in space “far above the world,” the first chords are Fmaj7 and Em7, the two chords that the ominous intro had moved between). Despite this complexity, the song has atmosphere and space; constantly in motion, it has a stillness at its center.

It was intended to be a duet: the opening verse was originally sung by Hutchinson (as you can hear in the demo), who had a lower range, while Bowie harmonized an octave higher. Hutchinson as “ground control” again opened the second verse until the big reveal: Major Tom speaks at last, with Bowie finally appearing in his most resonant tone. Hutchinson recalled that he and Bowie loved Bookends, and here Hutchinson keeps to the ground as “Simon” while Bowie wafts in as “Garfunkel.” Bowie’s skill as a singer had developed enough, however, that he could play all the roles when he recorded the song as a solo vocal a few months later.

The song is a series of neatly-designed stages, as though it was a rocket itself—the way the “countdown” verse (a descending number marking the start of each bar) is met by the eight-bar liftoff (something of a neatly-tailored version of the orchestral upward sweep in the Beatles “A Day in the Life”); the bridge that begins weightlessly and then slowly falls to earth in its last four bars; or the way Bowie’s sharp acoustic break (C-F-G-A-A, strumming hard on the last two chords) serves as stage-clearing, first to set up the dreamy electric guitar solo, then to prepare for the long outro.

The recordings

“Space Oddity”’s first recording, cut for the Love You Till Tuesday promo on 2 February 1969, sounds like a tentative full-band rehearsal. While it shows that most of the song structure was in place at an early stage, the rhythm’s not right, much of it sounds thin and reedy, and a few sections are just lousy (the flute squawk solo was thankfully replaced by electric guitar). By the time Bowie and Hutchinson re-recorded the song as a demo (as part of Bowie’s successful audition for Philips/Mercury) in March-April 1969, Bowie had introduced the Stylophone, which would become one of the track’s defining sounds.

The Stylophone, whose manufacturer had sent a promotional copy to Bowie’s manager, was a primitive portable synthesizer that had two settings, “normal” and “vibrato.” You played it by touching a stylus to a tiny keyboard, which closed a circuit and emitted a tone. Bowie toyed with it for a bit and figured out how to create a basic droning progression that would become the backbone of the song’s early verses. (It naturally gave the song some SF cred to have an “alien” computer noise in much of the mix.)

The Stylophone was just one facet of Gus Dudgeon’s production for the Philips/Mercury single (Visconti had turned Bowie down, saying he’d produce the LP but not the cheesy single), a session that Dudgeon plotted like a military operation, mapping the song’s progress out on paper—Dudgeon couldn’t write music, so he used colors (cellos were brown, for instance) and squiggly lines to indicate where various instruments came in. Paul Buckmaster had to translate it into charts for the players.

This past summer Bowie re-released “Space Oddity” as a digital EP, including, wonderfully, the original eight-track Dudgeon recording now broken into its separate tracks, revealing some of the production’s tricks—for example:

The signal: Bowie’s Stylophone and Mick Wayne’s electric guitar share the same track. In the opening, the two instruments seem an extension of each other, the drone of the Stylophone pricked, every two bars, by a plucked note on the guitar. It sounds like an interstellar radio transmission. The Stylophone is the defining instrument of the song: it plays only three tones in the opening verse, the highest setting held and “waggled” as the verse gives way to the liftoff sequence; it plays a repeated two-note pattern that sounds like a police siren whenever Bowie extends a line (for example, on “made the GRADE” or “most peculiar WAY”); it underpins the guitar solo with a single held note. And in the outro sequence, while the guitar spirals out a string of notes the Stylophone frantically taps away as if making an SOS call.

Strings, old and new: Much as the song is a balancing act between its lyric and its knotty chord structure, the recording contrasts traditional orchestral instrumentation (eight violins, two violas, two celli, two double basses and two flutes) and the synthesizer future. The synths serve as the primary colors (while the Stylophone appears in the first verse and extends through most of the song, the richer-sounding mellotron (played by Rick Wakeman) is held back until the bridge, then replaces the Stylophone for much of the third verse). The orchestral instruments are used more as sound effects (the note-by-note string buildup during the liftoff sequence, the darting flute and moaning celli and basses in the bridges) and backdrops.

The bottom: One revelation is the isolated track of Herbie Flowers’ bass and Terry Cox’s drums. This was Flowers’ first-ever session (he’d go on to craft the trademark bassline of “Walk on the Wild Side” and played on Bowie’s Diamond Dogs), and he’s a marvel—buried under the layers of “Space Oddity” is a bassline that goes from a stark single-note repetition to a jazzy fluid movement in the later verses to a full-on bass solo during the song’s outro. Cox’s drumming isn’t very funky—he was the drummer for Pentangle, after all—but it serves the material well, from the parade-ground snare warmups at the beginning, to the bolero pattern Cox develops in the first verse, to coming down hard on the third beat in the later verses.

The single

The Philips “Space Oddity,” recorded on 20 June 1969, debuted over the PA system at the Rolling Stones’ free Hyde Park concert on 5 July, which had become an impromptu funeral service for Brian Jones. The BBC did play “Space Oddity” during the moon launch (though they mainly used “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” which had become the official soundtrack of outer space thanks to 2001). It’s impossible to verify when or how often “Space Oddity” was played during the coverage, however, as the BBC later erased its recordings of the moon landing (along with scads of Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell Doctor Whos, performances by every British band of the ’60s, early appearances by pre-Python Michael Palin and John Cleese, etc., etc.).

“Space Oddity” didn’t chart upon release, however, and initially seemed yet another Bowie flop. Then (possibly due to Bowie’s manager Ken Pitt, who offered some payola) the single rebounded in the fall and finally hit the UK Top 10, reaching #5 in November 1969. Mercury had released the single in the U.S. to utter indifference, but when Bowie finally broke in America in 1972, his then-label RCA (which had purchased most of Bowie’s Mercury material) re-released “Space Oddity,” forcing an exhausted Bowie to make a Mick Rock promo film while in full Ziggy garb. This reissue hit #15 in the US in 1973.

And in 1975, a slack year for pop music, RCA boosted its back catalog in the UK with its “Maximillion” series, repackaging singles by Elvis and reissuing “Space Oddity” backed with “Changes” and “Velvet Goldmine.” Whether it was due to a lack of chart competition, or whether the record had gone from being the voice of an ominous future to the sad, reassuring sound of a lost past, “Space Oddity” at last hit #1 in the UK.

Epilogue

Space Oddity (Langley Schools Music Project version, 1976).

The record’s one real insight: “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do”—the idea that near-space exploration is not a frontier but instead the limit of human endeavour, revealing nothing so much as impotence.

Tom Ewing, Popular entry on “Space Oddity”.

Once during the mission I was asked by ground control what I could see. “What do I see?” I replied. “Half a world to the left, half a world to the right, I can see it all. The Earth is so small.”

Vitali Sevastyanov, USSR cosmonaut, Soyuz 9, Soyuz 18.

When I originally wrote about Major Tom, I was a very pragmatic and self-opinionated lad that thought he knew all about the great American dream and where it started and where it should stop. Here we had the great blast of American technological know-how shoving this guy up into space, but once he gets there he’s not quite sure why he’s there. And that’s where I left him.

David Bowie, interview with NME, 1980.

Bowie cut a new version of “Space Oddity” in late 1979, which he debuted on Kenny Everett’s New Years Eve Show; in it, he sheared the song down to its skin—just Bowie’s harrowed voice, acoustic guitar, basic accompaniment and, in place of the liftoff sequence, 12 seconds of silence. He performed the song with an intensity it had never had before, and soon afterward, he decided to exhume Major Tom and see what had become of him (but that’s a tale for later).

“Space Oddity” is forty years old, and listening to it now it seems prematurely but accurately mournful. Few at the time of its birth, not even its creator, could have imagined that after the moonshots, the American space program would decline into irrelevance, waste and pointlessness; that the year 2001 would not be marked by lunar bases and a Jupiter mission, but the barbaric destruction of NYC skyscrapers and fresh, endless war; that in 2009 mankind would have gone no further into space than it had when “Space Oddity” first charted.

Major Tom’s fate is a resignation of sorts to the cosmos—Bowie had intended it to be the technocratic American mind coming face to face with the unknown and blanking out—but the song wound up being a harbinger of our cultural resignation, predicting that we would eventually lose our nerve, give up on the dream, and sink back into the depths of the old world. Perhaps we aren’t built for transcendence, and the sky sadly is the limit. Or as the song goes, “planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.”

Photos (top to bottom): Neil Armstrong, en route to the moon, July 1969; Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) meets fate, and the last spacewalk of Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968; the original Philips single, BF 1801; Bowie’s 1969 self-titled LP, later renamed after its hit single; a spacesuit-clad Bowie demonstrates the Stylophone to the world; Dutch single, 1969.

I’m realizing now that Mr. Bradbury is more of a poet than anything else – or at least, this is the side he chooses to display in Now and Forever. The book is actually composed of two unrelated novellas, Somewhere a band is playing and Leviathan 99. To me, the most interesting part was actually “behind the scenes” – how Somewhere… was written after the author saw Katherine Hepburn’s Summertime in the 50s and how he kept working on the story, hoping that someday he’ll be able to give it to her and she’s turn it into a movie. Young Ms Hepburn would have been great as Nef, the mysterious, charismatic, ageless female character and I’m sure they would have found someone just as good to play Mr. Cardiff. But would this lyrically charged atmosphere have come alive? I don’t know. While this particular quality does not attract me in prose, I did enjoy the actual poem, mostly because of its repetitive musicality – I could almost hear it playing in my head:

Somewhere a bad is playing/Playing the strangest tunes,/Of sunflower seeds and sailors/Who tide with the strangest moons.

While Somewhere is more fantasy than sci-fi, Leviathan 99 is a sort of cosmic Moby Dick. It’s interesting -  Quell the green, mind reading alien is a pretty rounded character, the image conjured by the lost city in space is haunting, as is the idea of the ancient funeral music, but Ishmael comes across as weak, indecisive and ultimately uninteresting and the mad Captain…I would have liked to see him harsher, stronger. And because I didn’t connect with the characters, I was very uninvolved in the whole story. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t read Moby Dick so I probably missed out on a lot of the story – I do know it’s a classic, but sea adventures are just not my thing.

Overall, I’m a bit less enthused about Mr. Bradbury than I was after reading The Illustrated Man. But I still have at least Farenheit 451 to go through.

Now, for actual reviews – go to NYTimes or The Times.

“A Sound of Thunder” could be the worst science fiction film I have seen since “Battlefield Earth” and this time we can’t blame Travolta. Wanna know why?

“A Sound of Thunder” is based on a classic Ray Bradbury story that chronicles what happens when man steps back into the distant past and changes the smallest of things like killing the tiniest of insect, dropping a gum wrapper or picking a flower. One of these smallest changes could bring about the end of the world as we know it.

In the year 2055, TimeSafari is making a killing as it takes millionaires and other spoiled rich people back to the age of dinosaurs on the “greatest hunt man has ever known”. The brain behind this venture is Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley) who loves money more than common sense hence the reason he is now worth billions. Leading the safaris and trying to maintain an ethical look under Hatton’s shadow is Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) who one day wants to use TimeSafari’s technology to better mankind.

As all these kinds of stories go, something goes terribly wrong and 2055 begins to change from what Ryer and Hatton remember it being. Ryer teams up with a revolutionary scientist Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack) to uncover what went wrong on their last safari and to fix it if they can.

We have seen this kind of time-travel story before or is it just me that all time machine stories are basically the same. Anyways that is the least of the film’s problems.

Let us examine some of the obvious problems with the film.

One, the visual effects away are juvenile at best. Some of creature effects are passable and interesting but also utterly soulless and stiff in places.

It is almost like the studio forgot to finish some of the effects. Also, why did two of the major conversations in the film have to be staged in the middle of busy street that is filmed in front of horrendously bad blue screen?

The second is the implausibility of how things change when time is altered. The film says that time changes like ripples when a stone hits water thus the explanation for the film’s utterly stupid “time waves”. It doesn’t make sense then there is all the other sci-fi techno babble that is just so baffling.

Thirdly there is the production design from the goofy plastic helmets, toy laser rifles made from some bad plastic, the ridiculous “ape-tors” who hunt our heroes, and of course Ben Kingsley “jet-white” spiked hair. I do have to say the helmets and guns do look like they were stolen from the wardrobe of the classic Irwin Allen TV series, “Lost in Space”.

Fourth, the script is just so bad I had a hard time listening to any of these people and furthermore the acting was wooden and vacuous. Even Kingsley looked bored beyond all recognition.

I could go on and on about more ridiculous and awful things in this film but some you just have to see to believe. Like how about a love scene without even a single kiss? And, no, there was no time machine involved.

I like Edward Burns but would somebody get this man a real agent because his imaginary friend just isn’t doing the proper job. After this and “15 Minutes”, Edward Burns will be working on the Lifetime Network before he can say “cheese”. I often refer to the Lifetime Network as the network where good actors go to die.

I have liked a lot of director Peter Hyams films dating all the way back to 1978’s “Capricorn One”. Actually there have been a lot of his films which I would think would make good rentals including 1981’s “Outland”, 1984’s “2010: The Year We Make Contact”, 1986’s “Running Scared”, 1988’s “The Presidio”, 1992’s “Stay Tuned”, 1994’s “Timecop” and 1997’s “The Relic”. The man isn’t a genius behind the camera but he has done a lot of good B-movies and some memorable flicks.

But after this movie, 1999’s “End of Days” and 2001’s “The Musketeer”, Hyams needs to take a vacation and maybe one day soon he will bring back the fun B-films of yesterday that he was good at making.

This film’s only redeeming feature is probably the dusty, dated original short story written by Ray Bradbury.

1 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

By Savannah J. Foley

If you’re a writer, and I mean a Writer, then you are probably somewhat insane. Consider the following quotes for context:

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O’Brien

First, find out what your character wants. Then, just follow him. ~Ray Bradbury.

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

When I first began writing Antebellum (formerly known as Woman’s World), all I had was a premise: What would the world be like if women had been the dominant gender throughout the ages, not men? I wondered if there would be peace or war, slavery or freedom, what the government would look like, who would raise the children, would children even be important, and what would men’s roles be? I wanted to examine this world, our world, in a different light. Ultimately I decided men would be kept as slaves: menial workers and companions, both holding the nation and families together as caretakers and the working class, leaving women to pursue knowledge, science, and art.

I began with a female character about to take her first slave. I didn’t know her name, or his name, or anything about their society at all. But as the sentences began to pile on top of each other, it became clear that my characters knew everything I didn’t. I followed them as a tourist, stalking them through my keyboard, learning about their customs and responsibilities, their emotions and struggles. They wanted things, and would fight for what they wanted. I was enthralled.

I also thought I was a little crazy. In school I was taught that the writing process had definite steps; first there was a brainstorming session, then a rough draft, then three re-edits until you had a final copy. In elementary school, this was the way writing was done, and there was no room for negotiation. In fourth grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer, and loved the creativity of just going at it on paper, but hated this drafting/editing process and knew I would never be able to take being a writer if I had to do that nonsense all the time.

So, when I began writing Antebellum at the age of 14, I didn’t know anything about real writers or real writing, but I had found this magic world inside myself, this trance-like interaction between my imagination and my more logical self, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Other aspiring writers I met in school didn’t have this (they also lacked my natural instinct for grammar and plots not based on their favorite anime), and so I felt very alone, a little frustrated, and misunderstood. My teachers hadn’t any inkling what I was talking about, either.

Then, in 9th grade I picked up a book from my English teacher’s personal library: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. It was a quick, strange read, but at the end I found total gold: an interview with the author. That three-page or so interview completely changed my writing life. Bradbury revealed that he had the same, strange, magical process of writing. He likened his writing process to following his characters around with a notepad, writing down what they do.

I had found my people. There were others like me. I wasn’t strange or half-crazy, no, I was just a REAL writer! I was thrilled. I began calling myself a writer from that day on. It was who and what I was, and what I would always be, published or not.

Writing after that became far more enjoyable. I learned to listen to my subconscious pulling and give my creative side free range to make up anything it wanted to. Our brains are so smart once we stop analyzing what and how we’re actually thinking. My subconscious had whole plots worked out I wasn’t even aware of. These plans would emerge unexpectedly and surprise me.

For example (those who read the Antebellum series when it was available on Fictionpress will remember this), one day I was sitting at my desk, typing along on my second book, Apostasy, when suddenly one of my characters blurted out to another that she was pregnant.

I stopped, took my hands off the keyboard, and looked at the screen more closely. Had I really written that? That wasn’t in my conscious plan. I had no intention of making this character pregnant. Her pregnancy had nothing to do with the plot I was developing; in fact, it threatened to ruin what long-term plans I did have.

However, while my conscious self didn’t have a plan, my subconscious self certainly did. Later on in the third book this unexpected pregnancy twist surfaced again and revealed its surprising plan, throwing in a most-excellent plot-twist towards the end that intrigued and delighted readers.

It was a leap of faith to accept that unexpected turn of events, and I’m glad I did. That experience taught me a lot about the subconscious writing process and about the power of our minds. It was also useful for helping me trust myself in a similar situation years later, as I was working on my fifth book, Go Look There.

I had just graduated from high school, and my family unexpectedly moved to north Alabama. For a graduation present, my father bought me a laptop (which I type this article on now, two years later). We were stuck in corporate housing for what ended up being two months, and I had nothing to do except play on my laptop (without even the internet; too cruel!) and write. I had brought some of my current writing projects with me on CD, as my desktop was moved along with the rest of our stuff, and began toying with some short stories I had written. There was one in particular I was working on which featured a girl with a mental retardation that made her smell attractive to butterflies. At her 8th grade graduation outside, butterflies came and swarmed her, and the crowd’s reaction to both this girl and this miraculous event served as a pointed social critique.

This all sounded nice in theory, and the story had hints of what I ultimately wanted the reader to feel (magic, spookiness, etc.), but it was missing something. It didn’t have what I call ‘saturation,’ where every sentence is rich with meaning and/or description, and as soon as you read the first few lines of the story you feel as if you are living it.

I tried several variations of the story, but it still felt flat and unoriginal, so I decided (going with that subconscious instinct), to change the perspective from third person to first person. For the eyes and ears of the story I chose the school janitor, who had a special relationship with the children and the school that parents attending could not have. His name was Ephram Carson. A novel was born.

(You can read this chapter on my website here)

Ephram is the most strongly-defined character I’ve ever written (you can see his character analysis on my website, too), and he had stories to tell, only the first of which was this strange, haunting butterfly episode. In fact, it was this experience, along with another tragedy involving a child and butterflies, that created a stigma in the town that functioned as a sort of curse. Ephram wrote letters to the school psychiatrist, Angelica, recounting the strange, spooky, and often sad stories of the children of the town. I got to incorporate more of my short stories into the novel and add new ones, and the project turned itself into my favorite novel so far, Go Look There (never before shared on Fictionpress, unfortunately).

If I hadn’t have trusted my instincts and changed the perspective of the story, even though it meant a complete rewrite and working with an unfamiliar character (at first), I would never have arrived at the novel my subconscious had in store for me.

Now, whenever I can I try to enlighten other young writers to the subconscious effect, and reassure them they aren’t crazy; they’re just legitimate!

In writing, your mind is your most useful tool. Forget your computer, forget your keyboard, forget your typewriter or your notepad and pens. If you had nothing else in the world, not even your voice or hands, you could still make up stories. Your work doesn’t come from your tools, but your brain. Remember that.

Now get out there and make some magic.

PS: I’m guest-blogging tomorrow at the blog of Jess Granger, whose first book, Beyond the Rain, came out in August of this year (click the link for sexy/beautiful cover!)

~~~

Savannah J. Foley is the author of the Woman’s World (now known as Antebellum) series on Fictionpress. She has written five novels, owns her own freelance writing company, and is signed with the Bradford Literary Agency trying to sell Antebellum. Her website is www.savannahjfoley.com.

So every couple years I go on a Ray Bradbury kick – ever since I was 11 or so I’ve been sucked into his world at various intervals of my life.  And each time he inspires me to write something.  So I have a few documents hidden away on my harddrive that have blossomed from the Ray Bradbury Phases I’ve been through.  I haven’t been inspired to write anything this time around, but I stumbled upon something I wrote last phase and I thought it was quite intriguing (albeit melodramatic), so I’m posting that today instead of a customary update about the real world.

                It had been a while since I last wrote.  No, I had penned inky notes across my palm to remind myself of important appointments I had to keep, and I had jotted down notes with the whisper of a lead pencil in the middle of a class, but it had been many months – perhaps years – since I had sat down and really wrote.  Not the kind of writing that a student does, the kind where you force the words to come and – when they do eventually arrive – try to contain them within the perimeters given by an instructor, to capture them, fight them, sometimes, and mold them to the beck and call of someone else’s thoughts instead of your own.  Not that.  But the type of writing where you let the words loose, you let them slice through your mind and you don’t try to harness them, but instead let them harness you – gag you, lock you up in an attic with your hands bound…and then tell you what to write instead of you acting as their authority, twisting them, tearing them, murdering them.

                This felt like a new kind of writing for me.  My hands hadn’t hit the keys in the rhythm of a creator instead of a laborer in so long.  It felt new to me, yet old. 

                I stared at the patiently blinking cursor, chewing a thumbnail in silence.  That expanse of blinding white on my screen.  So empty.  The cursor, silently waiting for me to feed it each letter that formed each word that formed each paragraph winking slowly at me, hungrily. 

The page was starving. 

Starving for words, starving for ideas, starving for passion, creativity, life.  I had fed it nothing but facts and reminders for so long now that it was like a silent, stoic, motionless white beast so famished for imagination that it had wasted away, no longer supplied with words. 

And it drowned, unacknowledged by so many. 

As I keenly observed its silent anguish, I realized – with guilt – that it was not only the page that was dying, but also my mind.  I considered myself a moderately creative person, who did moderately creative things, but I often confined the expression of my ideas to only two mediums – more often one: music.  Music and images.  My ideas and thoughts fled from my mind easily through the doors of harmony and color, but I had yet to tackle the thunderstorm of words that circled round in my mind, waiting to be let free – waiting to begin life and feed the page which was still waiting ravenously before my eyes.

Words were harder.  How many people in this world think adjectives, adverbs and nouns instead of images?  Embarking upon the adventure of untangling the half-hidden, hard-to-get snarl of words in one’s mind is much harder than touching your fingers to the keys of a piano or stroking a canvas with paint.  When it comes to pictures, you can capture a photograph or a sketch of anything – anything at all – and someone, somewhere, will appreciate it no matter how twisted, juvenile or unorthodox it appears.  With music, you can play however many notes you want at whatever tempo you want with whatever instruments you want, and to someone it will sound like a soothing melody.

Not so with words.

Words have a higher standard.  There’s a structure for words.  Words can’t come in any order, pattern, size, shape or color like other mediums of art can.  More is expected of words.

So, those of us who are lazier don’t tend to deal with words all that much.  They aren’t easy, and oftentimes they don’t make sense to us and in order for them to make sense we would have to read more words from some other source and even then we might not understand…and the cycle goes on.

As I skittered the new letters across the page, they began to bloom and burst into sentences and paragraphs and thoughts – and soon the once-blank beast-canvas started to swell with emotion, drunk on the creativity I was nourishing it with.  Excited, I stopped typing, my hands hovering over the black keyboard, shining with the oil off of my fingers.  I had written a page.  A page of idea, a page of originality – a page that no other person in this world had ever seen before.  I had created something out of nothing but thought – pure thought.  I had tackled that tempest of words and ripped a hole in my mind just big enough for the letters to pour and pool onto the page, the inky-black liquid inspiration lapping around the edges of the vivid, stark-white page that was now not just a page, but a living, breathing thought.

So for a couple days there I had a religious dryspell.  I’m sick, so my head was full of fuzz and I couldn’t concentrate on praying, I really didn’t feel like reading my Bible and I was super lazy.  I just felt awful because all of the sickness and snot in my head was leaving little room for God and when something pushes God out of your thoughts, life feels pointless.  But last night, my sickness took a turn for the better and I’m on my way to recovering the crazy energy I had a few posts back. 

Life Updates (The good things, anyway):

1. Four more days until Mexico, and nothing life-threatening has happened yet.  Hopefully I’ll be better by Friday, but even if I’m not completely up to snuff I’ll have God to help me through it – going to Mexico slightly sick is better than not going at all.
2. Music cured me.  This is at least the third time that just laying in bed in the dark and listening to music helped me get well again.  I’m not sure how it works…perhaps it just distracts me, but it always works.
3. I discovered some good orange spice tea in the cabinet and I’m making cashew, white-chocolate, coconut cookies – today will be yummy.
4. Tasha’s here.  We went to Lee’s Sandwiches and ate delicious Vietnamese sandwiches and I had one of those drinks with weird gummy stuff floating in it (I didn’t finish it…I can’t really wrap my head around the idea of having something you have to chew in something that you’re drinking…) and I tried Vietnamese iced coffee for the first time.  The coffee was okay…a little too strong for me, but an interesting idea.
5. Charlotte is the cutest baby in the world.  Wasn’t that in my list of happy things last time?  Oh well, it’s gets more and more true every day.
6. I’m still reading Dandelion Wine – another good cure for sickness.  It kind of takes you to another world…well, I guess most of Ray Bradbury’s books do that, but this one in particular.

You know…I should really study some philosphy.  It would make my life so much more interesting than it is…I could look at everything through the eyes of obscure philosphers and wonder about what they thought of life.  Yes…today will consist of philosophy, Ray Bradbury, algebra, hermeneutics and…vacuuming. 

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Tonight was good…at Bible Study, all of us girls realized that we’ve had the same thing on our hearts for a while now.  I absolutely love it when that happens…one girl mentioned it and there was a landslide of surprised exclamations – “I’ve been praying about that, too!” or “Oh, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately!”  It brings such a feeling of unity to the group when God works like that.    So now we’re all praying about it and helping each other with it and that makes me so happy. 

When it comes to fiction, I think I’ve decided that Ray Bradbury is my favorite author.  He adds just the right twinge of uneasiness to make you uncomfortable, in that pleasant, bookish way, but he makes you curious, so you want to know more even though it might disturb you.  His descriptions are simply amazing…he twists old words to create new meanings that – although you never realized it – perfectly describe what he is trying to convey, and by doing so, he sucks you into an entirely different world.  I spent nearly three hours reading Dandelion Wine today, alone in my room and didn’t realize that time had passed.  His words are so delicious…