Music to guide the way

It has been so long since I regularly practiced this craft I (allegedly?)love that I no longer have music to write by. It's been so long, in fact, I cannot recall any selections which I once fancied. One maybe, "Silver Spring" by Fleetwood Mac, but even that I think came later, during a different period in my life. No, the time when writing consumed the greatest time in my life was around the turn of the century millennium, before I even had an iPod. These were mix discs created from my compact disc library. Jump ahead a few years, when still regularly putting finger to keyboard, songs downloaded from services of questionable legality.

Now my service of choice is Spotify. The playlist I am employing right now, "Songs for A Dark Room," is the closest to what I think a new writing playlist might resemble. After all, I am in a dark room, my son asleep next to me.

The original concept of this playlist actually started in my mind a couple years ago as "Songs for A Dark Road." The idea was these songs would accompany and guide me as I traveled east on a dark northern Colorado county road with only my headlights and the cosmos lighting the way. It was mostly an intellectual exercise, maybe even a romantic one. I never truly thought I would ever put the playlist to the test. At the time, the playlist was only about four or five songs deep.

Over the past year or so as the idea has found its way home from a dark road to a dark room, the number of tracks has increased, but still only to 11. They are all songs I love in the light as well, but there's something in them, a hidden magic, that is released in the dark. Take a song like "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" for instance. Already a fantastic song. But now turn off the lights and play it.

See what I mean?

I suppose the oddest entry is "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. It's a Dylan song and is perhaps not as sonically dynamic as some of the other selections, but it works for me. Maybe because it fits the original idea of the list, to be played on a dark road. In the case of this particular song, a dark road taking someone away from a life chapter just ended.

Anyway, the list seems to be working for this little endeavor. This is the most I have written in quite some time. I cannot see myself ever growing tired of these songs, so if I can use writing a little here and there as an excuse to actually visit these songs in a dark room as I intended, with only the glow of the screen lighting the way, I'll take it. And perhaps as the list grows, so will my output.

"Where Will I Be" is playing right now. Fitting I suppose as I wrap this up.

It has begun...again

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so too has The Hokey Pokey. Sadly, the technology (as far as I know) does not yet exist that would allow fire to shoot from whatever device you are reading this on. The picture will have to do. But quite a picture, huh? I like that the phoenix appears to be being played by the peacock, which let's face it, is already pretty flaming.

I know what you're thinking - what brought me back? I had the great fortune to be able to get together with an old friend recently, and she pretty bluntly asked why the hell I wasn't blogging anymore. When I first started The Hokey Pokey, she was one of the very first to start following it, so it really meant something when she brought it up. I told her I would start again and finish a post by the end of the month. Nothing like saving it till the end, but she lives in California so technically I have an extra hour.

The answer of course is laziness. Sure I could say that since my last post I've had two children and my life is too busy, but that's utter bull honky. I'm typing this on my iPhone, so access is not a problem. No, it's laziness. With two small children I should theoretically have more I can write about than before.

Tonight the subject will not be the children. 

I told my friend I was contemplating writing about a somewhat obscure movie actor who played primarily in the 80's. That actor is Keith Gordon. I kept coming across Dressed to Kill on TV, and seeing him in that of course made me think about his roles in Back to School and The Legend of Billie Jean,two of my favorite movies from the era. But that was about the extent of the idea, and that only took one paragraph!

Then, last week in the car I heard a couple songs back to back that fit into the 80's movie characters theme. The first song was "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds and the next was "St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)" by John Parr. The first is obviously featured in The Breakfast Club and the second in, perhaps more obviously, St. Elmo's Fire. So the first thing that struck me, besides both songs having parenthetical titles(!), was they share three cast members: Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy. Now, these titles are arguably the two quintessential "Brat Pack" films, so I suppose it shouldn't have struck me as it did, but that's what popped in my head driving to Ft. Collins that morning.

I plan to start posting more regularly, and hopefully not only about 80's movie cast crossover. Although thinking about it, I bet I could easily give you 1000 words/week on the subject. As always, I welcome requests.

The Mongrelization of the Races

The title speaks to nothing this post is actually about - I just thought it was catchy.

But wait, as I think about it, I am an active proponent of, and with my soon-to-be-born child, practitioner of mongrelization. As you all know, I am white and my wife is Asian. While in the past the scariest forms of mongrelization were between black and white people and (for some odd reason) white and Jewish people, I'm sure the union and procreation of whites and Asians was not far down the list. Aren't we all happy we now live in a world where we don't have to worry about such prejudices!?

Oh wait, that's right...Um, awkward.

The title actually came to me from the film Field of Dreams of all places. With spring training in session, I guess I have baseball on the brain. But not even the greatest sport of baseball is the focus of this post.

No, the reason I have entered the fray once again is to announce my latest fiction writing exercise. I know I have promised such endeavors in the past and have failed to deliver. This one will be different. It is different because it is a bit narrower in scope and still interesting enough to hold my interest.

I am still discovering myself a writer. Unfortunately, I never stuck with it enough after school to really give myself a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I have found recently I seem to be better at writing scenes. This may be because it eliminates the pressure of coming up with a beginning or ending, or really a story arc of any kind. I have not forgotten the importance of beginnings, endings, and arcs, but I want to try and focus on what I can do well, and maybe from there those other elements will develop and manifest themselves.

The rules of the exercise? Like Thunderdome, there aren't any. That's not exactly true.

It builds upon my extremely short-lived exercise of using randomly generated letters to come up with a first sentence. The difference is, with this exercise, there will be 26 installments, each beginning with a different letter of the english alphabet. I am pretty sure each first sentence will be six words, but they may vary. I am hoping to complete a couple installments per week, but I will guarantee, with Gozer as my witness, I will complete at least one every week, beginning with this one. Get ready.

Here's to a light brown world.

The rumors of my death have greatly exagerrated...again

I bought a peach today the size of a softball.

But that is not what this is about.

Or maybe it is, I don't know. This may not be about anything. Of course that's not true. The very fact there is something on this page, er, screen, is something. It might be nothing more than an exercise to get my fingers comfortable with tap-tap-tappin' on this keyboard again, but it most definitely is something. Something most likely not resembling greatness, but hopefully, at least, resembling English.

I've been reading lately, and I have found the more I read, the more I want to write. Don't get me wrong, I have always been a reader. Those who know me know there is nothing I am more snobbish about than the books I
(and others) read. My cousin, who shall remain nameless, reads nothing but non-fiction. I don't know how she does it. What truth can possibly be found in such works?

I have a stack of novels I have been catching up on. I eased back into things with Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This is a book I have already read, so I thought it might be good to start with. You know, learn how to read literature again. Cormac McCarthy is probably my favorite living American writer. It is rumored to be an upcoming movie, but I have difficulty imagining an adaptation because in case you haven't read it, Blood Meridian is a hyper-violent novel.

The second novel recently completed is The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. Excellent.

The novel I am involved with right now is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. So far so good. Next up is Cloud Atlas.

There is no reason you need to know what I'm reading, but I needed to fill space. I couldn't have my first post in almost six months be two paragraphs. Bad form.

I have a beer resting on a treadmill with Californication on the television because I love Hank Moody, and this show also makes me want to write.

The beer on the treadmill has nothing to do with me writing.

I should clarify. I always want to write, but these pop culture inspirations make we want to put fingers to plastic. At least I think they're plastic.

Are they plastic?

Beginning exercise #1 - "Naflk"

I think many of the forthcoming posts are going to be fiction-centric - at least in the short term. I have been playing around with an exercise I learned to get started. I have a program generate five random letters, and then I form a first sentence from the sequence and see where it goes. Some may go no further than a paragraph, like the one below, but one may lead to something big. Anyway, I would like to share what I come up with, even if it's short. As always, I welcome comments. And since this is fiction, the more honest the better. Cheers.
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"Naflk"

Noon, and Frank laughed krazily. That’s right, krazily. With a k. Krazy spelled with a k takes things up a level, raises the stakes. Krazy has an element of the absurd, it carries with it a whimsical, unpredictable nature. Crazy, while crazy, is not krazy. Crazy has a method to its madness. With krazy, all bets are off.

Frank laughed krazily.

But this isn't about Frank. In fact, Frank may not even be that guys name. It was noon, though. And that guy did laugh krazily.

It’s not the who we should be concerned with, but the what. What could cause a man to laugh krazily?

Fiction's fictions

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated…


Here’s the thing about fiction: it’s fake. Profound, I know, but true nonetheless.

This is one of the things I have been struggling with over the past few years, and why I think my output has been, well, slim. I love reading fiction. I prefer it to nonfiction by quite a bit. But I have a problem with developing a strategy to write it.

The central reason for this is I can’t fully embrace any of the points of view one can choose from to tell a story. The three most popular are first person, third person omniscient, and third person limited. I have been out of school for almost ten years, so I apologize if this discussion comes across as amateurish, but I need to get this out.

First person is odd for me. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything in first person. I have inserted myself in stories, but that is not really the “I” of first person. The “I” of first person is not really the author, but rather a character the author is playing. I know this gives the author the opportunity to tell a story from a narrow point of view and with a unique voice, but I question what makes an author want to do this. Perhaps it is a vehicle for the author to imagine themselves as another person, some sort of fantasy. Or perhaps it is so the author can say things they would not usually say. Either way, it doesn’t sit quite right with me.

Third person omniscient is an artifice. There is nothing like it that exists outside of literature. This could be why it is so popular - it gives the author the chance to act as the supreme puppet master, and gives him/her greater control over the direction of the story. It is, of course, an essential construct for literary pursuits, and one that for the most part exists only in fiction. It is useful for storytellers for the narrator to know what all the characters’ thoughts and motivations are. There are non-fiction instances when an author, through outside research, has been able to glean what interested parties were thinking in particular settings, and recount all of them in one scene, but it is always after-the-fact. A person of normal means cannot walk into a room and know what everyone is thinking.

Third person limited makes for the most interesting stories, but is maybe the least real for fiction. I love stories where the reader doesn’t necessarily know what is going on in any of the characters’ heads. Or maybe they know about just a couple. I am particularly fond of unreliable narrators. But there it is, right? While the narrator may be unreliable, the author is not. The unreliability of the narrator is itself a construct of the author. This is why I find it the least real in a fictional setting. The author knows the motivations of all the characters even if the narrator does not. This is why the narrator must always be considered a character in the story,

I have this huge idea in my head I have been thinking about for a couple years that takes the idea of a narrator to its absurd end. I have no idea how to execute it yet, but I can’t shake it.

I have some ideas about tense as well, but that’s for another post. I feel I am overthinking all of these things, and I just need to put my thing down. All encouragement is welcome.

2010: The year I make contact

My thanks to Arthur C. Clarke, who allowed me to come up with such a snappy title. And my apologies to my readers who have been without a new entry in over a month. When the holidays rolled around, it seemed time got tighter and tighter. This entry is going to be a short one. I really just needed something to get me back into the swing of things again.

The title refers to my main goal this year. I would like to keep in touch with my friends and family better than I have to this point. Never before in history has it been so easy to reach out to people, and yet I find myself feeling like I speak to very few people on a regular basis.

When I say I want to keep in touch, I mean beyond posting comments on Facebook pages. The three methods I would like to utilize more are phone calls, emails, and actual in person meetings. Yes I said it. I would actually like to meet with people. In particular with my family members. All but one of my cousins on the paternal side of my family live in Colorado, and it seems the only time I see them is at special occasions. I would like this to change. Of course, this holds true for my local friends as well. My plan is to try and reach out to no fewer than three people a week over the next month or so. We’ll see what happens, but I hope at least a few of those stick and turn into something consistent.

I hope I can accomplish my goal. I will put my plan into action this week since a goal without a plan is just a dream. No man is an island, but if I must be, I want to be a big island like Australia, with room for lots of people.