So that is what my Blog entries are like with graphics in them. I’m actually of a few minds when I look at what I’m starting to do now.
I like the fact that when I put an image in my posts, it actually becomes the default icon for the entry when I post it somewhere else. It makes it look more elegant and perhaps more “professional and serious”: certainly it beats seeing WordPress’ “W” as the icon every time.
On the other hand, it does take more work to find these images: and these are just for my reviews or articles on established things. To be fair, for this past while I’ve been posting almost nothing but reviews and adding the graphics into them for emphasis. It has been fun in some ways and I can see just how necessary it is. Human beings are very visual creatures and something needs to be attention-grabbing in order to get someone to look at your work: be it an image, a very strong starting sentence, or even a turn of phrase. Or all of the above.
I’d also like to mention that adding graphics into my works–for all I’ve mentioned writing comics scripts–is very different for me. I’ve done it before, but not very often because my medium is prose or sometimes poetry. Adding pictures into writing does change things. It is something that one would find in a respectable or popular journal, magazine, or newspaper.
As for me, sometimes I feel like I’m just stating my opinion, or writing a few stories from time to time: and not as many stories as I’d like. This change in format–I guess–makes me think differently and wonder how the focus of my Blog may or may not be changing.
It might sound strange that I’m thinking about this with the mere addition of pictures to the mix, but I’m wondering now what exactly it is I’m making here. What am I trying to say? What is Mythic Bios? Is it me trying to show you–as a creator–what the world around us actually looks like to me: what it is and what I want it to be? That would be a nice thought.
What I do know that this shouldn’t be just a collection of reviews. I know that it still needs further organization and that its aesthetic will continue to evolve. I’ve also been thinking about something else: of which I’ll have to see if I still want to follow through with because it would be more commitment time and concentration and technology-wise.
Because after all, human beings aren’t just visual creatures: they are aural ones as well. We like to actually hear things and I like to actually read things out loud. I’ve been thinking about doing a Vlog for a while: maybe reading some writings of mine aloud or even just voicing some opinions like I like to do. I could really get all of this to be a multimedia tool of expression for me and–who knows–it might make some good practice for when I start making more serious things.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep posting some stories in my Stories and Things section here and also keep writing in my Mythic Bios notebook: which I am really glad I still do. Even though it is excellent to make your writing public, it is always good to keep something to yourself as well for future uses: or not.
Now to find a graphic for this non-review post: summarizing all of this writing into one image. Take care, my friends.
Now, I haven’t tried to make any of these yet–not seriously anyway–but I have been thinking about how to make one a lot. Consider this a follow-up to my “Horror as a Universal Power: The Function of a Creepypasta” only with more emphasis on how to potentially write an effective creepypasta.
Since I wrote my last post on that matter, I’ve been reading a lot more of these stories and coming to a few of my own conclusions. Honestly, some of them are … just not that good. I mean, some of the writing is just awkward and some of it really contrived. At worst, I’ve been confused by a lot of the stuff: with their events and details. In this case, writing something as if it is an urban legend or word of mouth situation–as though it’s the product of a distorted broken telephone–takes away from the story’s readability or worse: eliminates even some of a fun suspension of disbelief.
Then you have the other hand. If you write the story too well, then that suspension of disbelief is all but gone. What I mean by that is if you have precise sentence and even images that you can just tell a writer created, and everything is nice and orderly than you have an excellent story but not always a believable one.
Even as I write this, I’m trying to wrap my head around the entire issue: which is a hilarious image given that these stories are being called “creepypastas.” But like some pastas, there is a certain hollowness inside them as well: a darkness and mystery that can’t always be revealed or it will become something else. Of course, you can say that about the horror genre in general.
So I have been thinking of how I can make one of these. I have a few options actually. One of them is that I bastardize something from my childhood, or use enough elements from to make something reminiscent of Candle Cove. Another option is to do something with a video game: to make a game where actions in it actually have consequences like a few of the stories I’ve already read. I can actually play with a place I actually know–a restaurant in the dark–for another one and make something new from it. Then there is just that perception of something watching you from the side of your vision, or behind you, or hidden in the back of your laptop and one night having the ill-fortune to see the actual thing looking right at you all misshapen and horrible. I could do something with that.
I could even be a total smart-ass and write a story where Jeff the Killer and the Slender Man are playing haunted Pokemon games or talking to Ben online (I can imagine him saying, “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” when one of them loses a game) while Candle Cove and the Dead Bart Simpson episode are playing in the background on the television and computer respectively. And one of them, maybe Jeff, eats a My Little Pony Cupcake. If you type some of these on Creepypasta Wiki, you will know what I’m talking about: including the cupcake. But beware: they will be disturbing … especially the cupcake.
I am not responsible for what you might find. Remember the age-old at least Lovecraftian saying: “Do not call up that which you cannot put down.” You have been warned.
As such the thing is, in my mind, there are two kinds of creepypastas. The first is one that is clearly a story and simply there for one’s enjoyment. The second is a meme that goes around and places doubt as to whether or not this happened or someone thinks it did. Of course there is a third type where an idea just keeps getting passed around and changed by several people.
But I would definitely love to make at least some of the first two types: send them out and see if they would catch on somehow. It will be a project to put in the far corner of the dark back-burner.
So remember, if you take nothing else from these musings, “the uncanny” is the centre of a creepypasta … or a My Little Pony confection: though really that would actually be just a whole lot of “disturbing” filling.
It’s amazing–to me–that I forgot to talk about this at all in my review of Hermann Hesse’s The Glass-Bead Game. I was originally going to write this as an addendum to the piece, but then I realized that the issue I want to address actually covers some much broader ground.
One that that is always stressed in Hesse’s novel by the Castalian Order that developed the Game is that it is not their role to create new things. Castalians are not supposed to be artists, but scholars of a spiritual bent and–according to them–anything that comes from the Game is simply to be contemplated and there is great discouragement against changing the rules that create and make up the Game proper. Basically, the Game itself seems to have been developed from pre-existing knowledge and there is usually great resistance from the Order itself in altering any of the rules or guidelines that were made to create it.
However, it is not only this. As I said before, creativity apparently is discouraged in Castalians in general: but that is simply not true. At one point in his studies, Joseph Knecht is encouraged–like other developing students in his Order–to write creative pieces about what they could have been in their lives. Also, he makes many changes to the rules of the Game even before he is Magister Ludi and they are accepted. Knecht could–of course–be the exception due to his gifted nature and not the rule–but it goes further than that.
To combine different disciplines together to create different patterns of expression is creation. There is analysis and study involved, but there is a synthesis of the parts into something new. Therefore, even during Knecht’s time before his reforms and his demise, the Glass-Bead Game–a contemplation exercise of intellectuals and academics–is a creative venture.
It reminds me of why I chose to pursue the Humanities at my University and why I pursued them in the way that I did. I learned about a great many things to do with literature, philosophy, history, social theory, and even to an extent art and expression. My program was by its nature very interdisciplinary and it looked not only at how certain philosophies and conventions work, but what forces make them and why.
Humanities also encourages scholars or humanists (as they are apparently called) to apply a plurality of “lenses” or “frames of reference” to a particular subject. For instance, when looking at a book we would look at the history of the culture that it was written in, the philosophical movements that existed then, the potential other sources that might have influenced its creation, the writer’s life, and how that book influenced other books and other cultures even and what the implications of what that book says might mean and how it might have meant different things to different people. So instead of looking at it from one view or lens, the theory was that we were to look at a thing with different mental tools or perspectives. We are even encouraged to look at how those tools and “lenses” were created: and why they exist the way they currently are.
All of that can be really difficult to articulate and sum up into a few sentences. Indeed, when people asked me what my Major was and I told them it was Humanities, more often than not they didn’t know what I was talking about: or they had a very different understanding as to what the Humanities actually is. For instance, the University of Toronto’s Humanities is different from York University’s: in that the former has certain divisions of Humanities, while the latter has an entire program that combines all those elements together: or tries to.
The fact is, for me, it often seemed like my Program–and maybe even Humanities as I know it–seeks to justify its existence by trying to be a discipline like Science or English. Sometimes even I feel it is just a “jack-of-all-trades while mastering none” perspective or that I personally just possess a whole lot of “party-cocktail trivia” and nothing more compared to the specialists of different fields. Personally, to make a gaming digression, I think of it as multi-classing and spreading certain dots or numbers of Experience Points out that–while it may take a while–will eventually pay off a very well-rounded character.
My role-playing game analogy and tangent aside, sometimes I felt like–just with the Glass-Bead Game of Castalia, the Humanities is very stringent on its guidelines of scholarship and what scholarship is because it is a “relatively young” discipline as we understand it and it wants legitimacy. The thing is I think both are already legitimate and allowing for flexibility in what scholarship and academia can be–by allowing for change–they distinguish themselves. I know sometimes I really wanted to say that I shouldn’t have felt like I had to apologize for my choice of Program and–more specifically–the Humanities shouldn’t have to apologize for what it is.
As an interesting side-note, apology originally was derived from the concept of defense: defending your perspective through logical debate known as argument. I also think there are many other ways to make your point instead of being defensive or not testing what your discipline–or your medium–can do. Film and comics were very similar to that regard in that both wanted to “fit in” and be accepted but they are different. I know I’m making a lot of very potentially bad analogies here in equating disciplines with media, but in my mind they are very similar if not one and the same.
What I love about the Humanities is that it let me put so many things together–it let me be analytic and synthetic–and I think I had more opportunity to do so in that discipline than anywhere else. I got to look at my favourite authors and writings. I got to analyze some of my own stories in a final paper. I even wrote a comic book script as a final assignment in another course: using my knowledge of the course material and comics media. I know York has an Interdisciplinary Studies Program as well where students are encouraged to do independent work and even create art as their final project.
As you can see, I feel very passionately about this. I think that gathering and critiquing knowledge is important, but that once you try to look at the why of something–to contemplate it and its application to yourself … to look at the human in it–creating something can be just as important. I like that my Program allowed me that freedom, for the most part, and it’s just amazing how The Glass-Bead Game applies to so many of these issues that I’d been thinking about for a very long time now.
I firmly believe that when you make a work of any kind, you create knowledge: and that viewpoint challenges not only what scholarship is, but what art is as well. There was a time in history when apparently there was no division between what was art and what was science. They were all apparently unified under Philosophy along with a whole other lot of disciplines we separate and specialize now. I’m obviously not saying that other disciplines are not as important or that their distinctions should be eliminated: specializations can be very important because they focus on a particular subject or task quite efficiently and with necessary detail.
But I like the differences in the discipline I chose and that potential for growth that I always felt there. It certainly feels like it fit my mindset: at least at the time. The best part is that even when school is out, you still keep learning about the Humanities. You can still keep making things. The Game doesn’t end after you graduate college or university. It doesn’t end when you leave Castalia for the unknown. You keep playing and, you know, I think that is a very good thing.
It seems I’ve been writing more reviews than creative insights lately: which is fine. The fact of the matter is that everything I review on here inspires me–or informs me–in some way to become a better writer. I keep building from that.
But when all that’s all said and done, it’s always good to sit back and look at exactly what it is I’m trying to do.
There have been two or three things on my mind lately to that regard. The first is that I finished writing another Miracleman/Marvelman fanfic tribute, but I don’t quite like how it came out. There were a lot of things I wanted to say in it–as well as display with a very neat and clean narrative perspective–but it didn’t quite get there. I got all my ideas down and some really good lines but I feel like the overall story is a little blurred.
It is frustrating to have a story stuck in your head for a while and then–when you finally get it out to free up your mind for other works–it isn’t quite as clear or “as good” as you wanted it to be. Of course, the natural solution to this would be for me to type it out and rewrite it. They say that a large part of writing is rewriting and that is true even when you write it out right the first time around.
I also wrote out an original story that I had in my head almost as long as the other one: one I wrote a great many notes for. Of course, one of the pieces of paper where I wrote out this really beautiful quote–in my own opinion anyway–got lost. Yet the story still wanted to be written down. You see, unlike that TED Lecture where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about a genius-spirit flowing through you, I think that I create my works not unlike Victor Frankenstein in a hopefully more intelligent way: I get the genius in me, but it comes in pieces sometimes and then I have to grow these “organic pieces” into something whole. Sometimes they do it almost on their own and it can be a wonderful, smooth ride, but other times I have to guide and manipulate them.
Sometimes the spark or the current is easy to translate into words on paper, or on a screen, while other times I have to do my research and add and take things away as I go. So yes, I guess in a way I fulfilled my childhood dream of being a mad scientist.
I guess that’s a nice analogy because this Blog was started as–and is still–one great experiment for me. I can see the cuttings of the things that I say and write continuing to coalesce into an overarching creature. Aside from the different energies and perspectives I put into creative works, or journal entries I make them more or less the same way.
In other news, I am still continuing this Blog experiment. I have smartened up a bit and I am now scheduling some posts in advance: just so that if I run out of things to say or think about I will have something on here for everyone to read while I figure things out or do something else in the meantime. I was told that I should pace myself out and that it is good advice and that is exactly what I am going to do.
Also, I did end up–as the title above suggests–affiliating myself with Amazon Associates. I haven’t put up any banners as of yet, but I have been linking to products being sold by Amazon. The fact is, and I will be honest, I could use the money (don’t we all): so if you want to buy one of the books or things I talk about in some of those reviews, or even want to get something else I would appreciate you getting something through one of these links. Perhaps at some point, I can even change this Blog into matthewkirshenblatt.com this way or even one day sell a book I create through Amazon. So whatever help you can give me I would greatly appreciate.
Lastly, I believe I will be part of a new creative collaboration soon. Do not be surprised if you see samples of said collaboration at some point in the future or–as I said elsewhere–I might be making Art again: sooner than you think.
A little while ago–most likely in my article “The Onus of Creativity,” I made reference to the age-old question of where writers get their inspiration from. Or what specifically is the nature of the energy that powers a creator to make a work of any kind, and can you actually sense that energy?
I believe you can sense that energy behind someone’s act of creation. As to where I get my inspiration from and what the nature of that energy is for me, the answer is really one and the same. In X-Men: First Class, Professor Xavier is attempting to guide Magneto into–not only to using but–mastering his powers. He tells Magneto to envision moments of greatest joy and the most horrendous pain. By combining these feelings, by drawing from the well of passion and clarity that they both come from, Magneto is able–for the first time in his life–to consciously and concisely access the full range of his powers.
The point is: the place that Magneto draws from is love and hate; joy and sadness; serenity and power. One of my Creative Writing teachers once said to us that when we write, we should always write from a place of calm and detachment but–while I agree with a lot of that in principle–that is just not how humanity nature, or its art works: at least not in their entirety.
One way you can look at it if you’d like is that emotion and sentiment–even interest–begins the impetus for, and the creation of structure and clarity. Viewing emotions in a calmer retrospect has its advantages. Yet art is also about expressing yourself: even with violent splashes of paint across a canvass. I believe that there is that “knife’s edge,” that X-Men: First Class, among other creative places makes reference to: that tenuous ground between elements and emotions that is a whole other mindset in itself.
It is also not a precise science. Sometimes you feel more than you think, or you are more sad than angry, or more angry than happy. There are different mixtures of all emotions, impulses and thoughts: known more kindly, again, as human nature. People always tell you when you feel conflicted to “express it” or to even “write it down.” Sometimes the process is calming, other times cathartic, removed, continuous and nagging, and whole other kinds of varieties thereof. And that knife’s edge can slip from one direction to another: or even become a sundial whose shadow is determined by the outer world and the place you choose to find yourself situated on.
But whatever it is, it is unique and not the ultimate thing. Those energies will always be there by virtue of what you are as a person, but it is the vessel that matters more. It is the thing to maintain and focus so that you can use those energies to make whatever you want or need. That vessel, of course, is you and it is a task that is easier said than done.
Going to the Steam on Queen Fair on Saturday made me think about some things. And despite the adage that if there aren’t photos it didn’t happen, I was there. There were booths with various things: including a squid-headed cane (which I still insist was Cthulhu without his batwings), a decoration of a spider made out of metal parts, some vintage-looking ray guns, and so on.
What really got me–though–were the costumes. Some people really got into the spirit of the thing in an insane way: with women in elaborate bodice-dresses, hats and coiffed hair, men in suits, and people even wearing turn of the twentieth century summer dresses, bowler hats and suits that looked more at home in the Prince Edward Island of Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea than twenty-first century Toronto. Add some clock-work props and Steampunk aesthetics and you pretty much see what you get. It was like going into a time-warp.
The event took place at the Campbell House off Osgoode Station and it was like being in a shady verdant bubble of alternate Steam Age reality while being surrounded by a busy and summery contemporary world. The inside of the house had various Steampunk exhibits: one drawing room looking like a makeshift Victorian workshop and laboratory while outside were singers and even a bawdy dance or two. But one group of people that really caught my interest were two women sitting on a blanket in the grass dressed as though they came from Avonlea: The Lost Ladies of Zion Schoolhouse.
These lovely and adorable ladies–having found themselves lost from 1910–are on a quest to find their way back to it again. They also represent the Gibson House Museum and Zion Schoolhouse which hosts birthdays, historic dinners and special theatre events using said “costumed” interpreters to immerse people into a Victorian-Edwardian frame of mind.
But after going to this Fair, I started thinking about Steampunk: as well as more pesky considerations of how to view a medium’s growing complexity. Steampunk is a science-fictional genre–with consequent costume aesthetics–that generally operates from an alternate nineteenth to early twentieth century that utilizes the power of Steam in its day-to-day technology. Yet I have always felt it was more than that. I always believed that Steampunk hearkens back to that old Victorian utopian mindset of Science being a power of benevolence and constant progress. You can see it in a lot of Victorian literature and media of that time. Yes, in the genre there are people who use Science and Steam Age technology for evil, but they are always countered by “the good guys.” There is swashbuckling, an ideal of honour, and a lot of anachronistic versions of modern technology powered by steam and sometimes–if it is very special–there is still magic and the supernatural coexisting alongside all of this as well.
It seems a sunnier world, doesn’t it, or at least the conception I’m talking about. I have a friend who thinks Steampunk is all about the costumes now and a certain kind of elitism: which I think is hilarious seeing where it derives itself from historically and culturally. But on Saturday, all I saw was people having fun and one can never get tired of seeing that. I also think that Steampunk is our time’s way of creating a genre–a sort of retroactive genre–of an alternate form of progress where Science and Adventure are still seen as these great forces with good intentions.
Because of course you have Steampunk’s alternate: Cyberpunk. If Steampunk is an attempt at utopian fiction, Cyberpunk is dystopian. It is a world where generally technology and science have invaded the lives of its people to an insane degree. These worlds are generally polluted and corruption is everywhere and no one of authority can be trusted. There generally aren’t “good guys” in the traditional sense, but there are definitely survivors. I think that for a time we leaned more towards Cyberpunk because it was exemplifying just what our world was turning into. I also think Steampunk was a reaction to that dark mindset: because while Cyberpunk seems to talk about where we are heading, Steampunk seems to be a deceptively nostalgic genre that talks about what could have been … and yet by doing so, it encourages what could be too.
These are both obviously generalizations. It is tempting to get caught up in them. For instance, there are some historians that say that the Western world’s general optimism about Science and progress was ultimately destroyed at the advent of World War I: when that same knowledge that should have helped people was used to destroy and degrade them instead. It is tempting–at least for me–to wonder if there would have been a World War in an alternate Steam Age. Of course, there could have been: just with different tools because human beings do not change that much with different technology.
But I sometimes wonder what our world would have been like without World War I. What would have happened if those generations of young soldiers hadn’t died? Or what would have happened if the Holocaust had never occurred? Who would they have become? What would our world have been like?
You see how tempting those lines of thought are. I guess you could say: “Okay Matthew, maybe you should write a book or story about that or something instead making these suppositions,” and I’d say sure: when I am more qualified or there is an angle that catches my mind and I can build on with the knowledge that I have.
I’m also tempted to talk about Dieselpunk: about a genre (some say a sub-genre of Cyberpunk) that has 1950s technology and a 1920s or 30s culture. You can definitely find influences from Steampunk and Cyberpunk: save that it is a genre that centres around the internal combustion engine, diesel fuel, and the discovery of nuclear power while computers and the Internet are not quite there yet. I believe it is still a contested or developing genre and subgenre and I find it amazing just what can actually be classified under it. It is a genre I am really interested in and I think I can relate to a lot more because it is closer to our world and time-line in a less nostalgic way. Of course, there are a lot of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon moments in this genre as well: as exemplified by Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Hell, you can even say that Captain America and the Hulk are some examples of Dieselpunk superheroes if you’d like: with the retro-50s aesthetics, science-fiction serial feel, mentality as well.
And here I go on a tangent again. As I was thinking about all of this, I started thinking back to what I said about video games–about how mediums can turn into genres–and I began to ask myself this question: what does it mean when a medium can turn into a genre? What does that mean? And I think that if I had to give a one-word answer, it would be choice.
I think that when you can choose to go beyond the technical and ideological aspects of a medium–of what you can materially and creatively do–then you can create a genre or something that defies genre entirely. When you have the options, or make the options to do something different with a familiar convention, when can choose to do so, that is the moment when everything changes and variances can be made. It’s about there being an option and therefore being able to make a creative choice.
Because, in the end, that is what being creative is about. It’s about making choices and knowing that we can always do so: whether you want to dress like a grease-monkey, wear a soldier’s uniform with a clock-work eye, look like a hacker, draw it, or write about all of it.
I think I’m going to let the “Lost Ladies” end this entry off. Though I imagine it to be somewhat frightfully inconvenient to become lost from your own time period, there is just something encouraging to see them making do with their picnic basket and afternoon tea. If only getting lost in time were that convenient and pleasant. Say your hellos, ladies and gentlemen.
So despite what it looks like, this story was not inspired by my “The Tragedy of Kishuna” entry: or at least not directly. I will admit it is convenient that way though and I do think that there is some kind of theme forming and uniting this entire Writing Blog as I keep going at it.
A night or so before I wrote “Unnameable,” I had an idea about Frankenstein’s creature and how–because he had his creator’s Journal–he had the potential to make more of his own kind. To be honest, aside from that thought I didn’t give the matter much more thought beyond that and went on to other things. Then the next morning I found myself compelled for the first time in a while to write the story down in my actual Mythic Bios notebook and as I was writing it more chains of ideas continued to form. It’s funny how a half-awake, tired state can influence the creative process. Then I realized that my story was not completely about Frankenstein’s creature at all and went even further.
So there were two twists of the plot-knife as it were followed by a moment of attempted profoundity at the very end of the piece. I could almost make that into a formula in its own right and I have to say that I’ve also always been good at creating parodies of my own work. I parody myself well: though I’m always still learning more.
That said, I’m not sure if the ending works well. I did want to make something of a transcendent moment or even a catchy statement. I always thought that Victor Frankenstein was an irresponsible, dysfunctional, and stupid parent for making something and then abandoning it when it quite inevitably did not fulfill his unrealistic aesthetic expectations. Seriously, man, don’t expect something made out of dead body-parts to smell like roses after just a bit of galvanization!
And he’s an idiot too for not looking at the details, but I digress. I think in some ways this story and its end was also my response to something I read once which said that there was “no way” Mary Shelley could have written Frankenstein: that it was really her husband the poet Percy Shelley that did so. Well, I think I would be understating my response if I said I think that is total bullshit.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. The end. Did she have critical and editorial help from her husband? I’m sure. Did she have access to her father’s library growing up, his tutelage, and then her own even without a university or college education? I’m also sure of that. Did she participate in intimate Victorian writing circles of friends and develop her craft? What do you think? And whose mother was Mary Wollenstonecraft: feminist writer and creator of A Vindication of the Rights of Women? Whose writing Percy Shelley even said he admired? Yes, that’s right and even if Mary Shelley hadn’t read her mother’s work, her influence was there.
So I guess in some creative way some of my opinions got in there, though that’s obviously not what my story is about. It’s really just a story about something that interests me. I also always wondered what the creature’s bride would have looked like if she had been completed: aside from the Hollywood image of the hysterical woman with the frizzy dark hair with the white streak that we all have of her now.
I’m also really fascinated with stories about how people try–and sometimes succeed–in creating life in an artificial way, and what that means. I know that I have and I will return to this theme in various ways. In any case, I notice I got somewhat ranty this time around, so I will just go back to rambling in my next post if that’s all the same to you. I make no promises though. 😉 I never do.
I figured that this would be an appropriate place to put this. It is a little creative monologue sketch or vignette I made a year ago that reflects a lot on the nature of creativity. It is, fittingly enough, entitled “Creativity.” I hope you’ll enjoy it. I have one more old work to post on here–where more people can see it–before I move on. See you soon.
Creativity
“Sometimes I have to wonder about what people say about human genius,” he says, before leaning more heavily against the wall.
“Take Mozart for instance. Many claim that the composer wrote compositions completely free of error, blot and correction. He created his music ready-made and fully formed like Athene plunging right out of the temple of Zeus. If so, what a Metis he and others must have swallowed beforehand, if you will pardon the mythological digression.”
He chuckles, and then sighs, “It would sound wonderful to have this ability, wouldn’t it? If it existed, I mean. To be able to create perfection out of your own two hands, out of your very mind itself …” he pauses, “Or would it be so wonderful?
“For instance, imagine everything they said about Mozart was true. Think about making something everyday without making any mistakes in it whatsoever. Consider that you will have done this not just every day, but every year that you’ve been alive and first conscious of your gift. Then put the drive into consideration. Imagine feeling outside pressure and your own inner drive wanting you to make something better than the last time you created something. You always have to be better no matter what.
“But let’s just say you can tolerate — or perhaps even thrive — under these circumstances. You accomplish everything you set out to do and you finally approach the end of your life. Imagine slightly before this happens, you think about everything you’ve done up until this point. You have your old works and manuscripts in front of you and look through them to try and catch just a hint of the glimpse of that place you were in when you first made them so long ago. I don’t know about you, but as good as I would be, I wouldn’t be able to find it again.
“Instead I think that if Mozart really made all his works straight and unblemished from his mind, all he would see in front of him are the mistakes he never made or learned from, the absence of the rough drafts that could have made him wince with chagrin and sentiment, the non-existence of any chronicle of his progress and growth, and the lack of any seed that germinated his very ideas. If any of this is true, what he would have realized at that moment was that the only thing that ever made him worth anything was something outside and despite himself: something crystalline perfect and utterly sterile. And if this were the case, wouldn’t he have realized this much earlier than just at the end of his life?
“What would that have meant? Would there have been any meaning in it for him at all?”
He stares at the wall for a little while before considering his next words, “I would like to believe that this isn’t true at all. I’d like to think that not only is human genius potential in varying degrees, but that it is something that always has room to learn and change. Therefore, I do think Mozart had one or two corrections on his note sheets from time to time, or changed nuances to his music as he performed them for each audience he came in contact with.
“Of course, it’s also very possible that I’m wrong. Maybe he did make perfection and still learned anyway. Maybe there are people who are capable of this and better themselves only in making different and more complex works. But then where does that perfection ultimately come from?
“Maybe, in the end, it was no accident that I mentioned Athene in the head of Zeus. Daimons. Muses. After all, genius was once considered a spirit that made a human its vessel for a time. And if that’s true, just how much — if any — creative responsibility belongs to its creator? Perhaps nothing Mozart ever made was ever original or his own. Maybe nothing we make belongs to us in any capacity. But would that provide a sobering blow to the human ego? Or tremendous sense of relief?
“I don’t know,” he finally shrugs, “As for me, I’ll take my good moments, my mistakes, a drink of whiskey and a listening to of Mozart’s Requiem any day.”
First, let me again thank all of my new readers for reading as well as “Liking” my posts and “Following” my Blog. I very much appreciate it and it encourages me to keep writing on here: influencing me to believe I have things that are worth saying about what I do.
A question that writers almost always get asked at some point or another–so I’m told–is where do you get your inspiration from?
It’s a similar question to the infamous where do you get your ideas from, and I might get into that as this Blog entry unfolds a bit more. I can be a real smart-ass and say that I get my inspiration and my ideas from inside of the strange, convoluted thing that is my mind. I can even be literal and say that I get them from reading, from watching movies and television, from my time at school, from long walks talking to myself, and from basically experiencing life. I even say as much in this Blog: which was founded on those very principles.
There was a TED Lecture created by the writer Elizabeth Gilbert called On Genius in which she discusses the Western view of what an artist and a creator is. Specifically, Gilbert looks at the symbol of the tormented artist: of the person or “genius” who is the sole producer of all the art and knowledge and expression that comes to them. She contests the view that it is somehow “natural” for a creator to suffer from depression, alcoholism, to be genuinely unhappy a good portion of their lives.
Even though she tries to debunk this, there is something very … seductive about the idea. I mean, look at the very nature of a piece of literature for instance. There is no novel, or short story that doesn’t have a conflict of some kind inherent in the plot or the theme of the thing. Without conflict, there is no story. Not really. Utopias get very boring to talk about after a while, but we love to hear about how they go wrong. Just like nightmares can seem more compelling to write and read about than dreams. So if these traits existence in the makeup of fiction, why shouldn’t they be in the nature of its creators?
Sometimes unhappiness, or tremendous passions fuels a writer. And in some of my darker moments, I believe that true joy is finite, while unhappiness is limitless. Sometimes, I don’t even believe I’m wrong and it is no secret I tend to write about some dark, violent, and sad things. Imagine writing about a world around you that was perfect and always full of joy. Imagine just how hard that would be to hold anyone’s interest for longer than a few minutes. Neil Gaiman managed to do something like this in his run of Marvelman/Miracleman, but even then he had to bring human nature and its inherently conflictive nature towards a paradise that was imposed on it.
When I’m feeling really negative, I feel like my negativity is what makes my writing immensely powerful: hence my above statement. I also know it is not always the case. Passion and conflict are not necessarily inherently unhappy, but necessary things. If anything I’d venture to say that stasis is also a tremendous unhappiness because nothing grows in it. That can be a form of struggle itself for a writer: the struggle against stasis.
In her TED lecture, Gilbert attempts to look at how earlier cultures dealt with the concept of human genius. She talks about how the Greeks believed that each person occasionally meets a daimon–a spirit or muse–that gives them ideas outside of themselves. The Romans also adopted this notion and called this spirit a genius. It’s all a conceptual framework. If anything, I understand that one advantage to this paradigm is that it takes the personal onus or burden of creativity from inside the individual and places on something “outside” of them. Alan Moore, in his Voice of the Fire, even states that he placed the building of said novel on the town of Northampton which he was writing about in a mythological way.
I think that it is a question of cultural and personal attitude towards the creative process and your own life too. I know that I also have a responsibility to write and express myself, but my experiences and knowledge also informs that. Sometimes I do feel a strange energy in me when I write something. Even when I write something with personal emotion, it overlays a kind of calm as well as I feel myself “getting the job done.”
I will tell you now: I almost didn’t post this here because I thought it would potentially be too personal and I want to just make this about writing. At the same time, my writing is powered by my emotions and experiences. It is a dichotomy I have to navigate a lot.
I’d like to finish off this post by quoting from the last eight lines of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s “Dark Pines Under Water,” in which she states:
Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.
But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper In an elementary world; There is something down there and you want it told.
Despite what happened to Gwendolyn in her own life, and towards the end of her life these wise words are a gentle admonition to remember and I have to remember them everyday. If you haven’t, you should definitely check out Gilbert’s TED Lecture and the other TED Creativity Lectures as well. I hope that you can all find what suits and works for you as well.
These past two days and Sarah Howell have been very kind to this Blog. In these past two days I’ve had a lot of traffic, new Followers, and a whole lot of “Likes” for my “Onus of Creativity” and “Ice-Nine Days and Vonnegut Nights” posts. I want to thank you–all of you–once again for finding what I have to say interesting.
This Blog is evolving in ways I didn’t actually anticipate. Like I keep saying, it was supposed to be a Writing or Writer’s Blog with more stories than criticism and opinion. But you know, I really like my opinions. I like taking my experiences and knowledge and making new shapes with them: strange, weird little baubles that really just reveal what I think. Really, my Blog seems random–kind of like me–but I’d like to say there’s some underlying pattern that’s still in the process of making itself known here.
And you know, while I’d really like to think that at least I bring a writer’s sensitivities or sensibilities to my opinions here, in the end I just like to state them no matter what they might be.
There is one thing I’ve been thinking about lately. If you read my “Onus” entry, you’ll know that I referenced a TED Lecture by a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert called “On Genius” or “On Nurturing Creativity” in which she talks about the ancient Mediterranean conception of genius as being a spirit that passes through someone: that may or may not give them inspiration. Gilbert talks about treating modern genius like this: that–as opposed to purely being centred within a particular tormented individual–it can be a force that you can accept or reject on your terms to make your life more balanced.
Yet here is a question that has been plaguing me: what happens when you get the wrong genius?
Let me explain. A few times in my life, but one time in particular, I was asleep and dreaming. And within that dream I heard music. Now, I tend to write my dreams down whenever I’m not lazy enough and it was a very compelling, detailed dream. But here is the thing. I am not a musician. I was not trained as a musician. I do not have many–if any–of the tools to record, pattern, or create music.
So why did I get this sound? I tried copying it down in terms of rhythm. I will admit that I had some background playing the drums in elementary school and I even learned how to sing in a religious capacity. My family is a family of singers too. I also tend to listen to a lot of epic music: Classical, modern, Electric Body Music, video game soundtrack and just very eclectic things. So it doesn’t surprise me that some music has rubbed off in my head. I also admit that I am inspired by music and I collect certain tunes I like on Youtube.
But if we go by the hypothesis of the genius, why would it choose me–a non-musician–to make music in? I mean, seriously, the closest I can get is lyrical poetry which, while not completely removed, is really not ideal for its preservation. So do I tell it to go away when it happens? Do I adapt it somehow?
Today on the subway, I was continuing to plod through Lesley Chamberlain’s book Nietzsche in Turin. At one point she goes into some length about Nietzeche’s influence from Wagner: particularly how his form of opera informed the structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. From what I understand, Chamberlain seems to argue that Zarathustra is a philosophical opera in written poetic form. Nietzsche also had musical background and attempted to write music and–I believe–librettos as well. Wagner even called him a “failed musician.” I personally think that Nietzsche was one of the most irreverent but paradoxically serious artistic philosophers that we have in the Western tradition.
But did Nietzsche make something new? Did his attention to archetypes, to written leitmotifs and human cycles, and lyrical turns of phrase and conventions make what some have called “bad poetry disguised as philosophy” or did he make something else entirely: something unique in the nineteenth century? Did he make some kind of prototypical medium just as Wagner changed the operatic one: that branches out over several mediums to make something else entirely?
I suppose that is one way to interpret how a genius of music can influence a writer, but I don’t know. Maybe it was the wrong genius. But then I feel music inside of me too. I think it’s in all of us. ln fact, I think one of the most beautiful things about Musicals is that they are art forms that bring to the surfaces the rhythms and sounds that we hear and feel inside of us. They are tonal equivalents of words or brush strokes that can use to mimic our external and internal environments: and only a few people can capture and manipulate these tones well. I am not one of these: unless you count poetry which I don’t do often.
Still … music, by it’s very name is associated with the muses, the daimon, the genius. Music is also structured by symbols: by written notes that are very eerily similar to how mathematic symbols are structured. They are said to have a very similar rhythm. While I have considerable difficulty with math, at the same time I know that it is a construction of ancient symbolic logic and understanding while music utilizes it but has great intuitive and creative aspects.
I guess I really don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it was my left-brain trying to tell me something in my sleep, or my right and left brain-parts trying to tell me a story in a slightly different way. Or maybe I should have more musician friends who can record down something that I can at least hum before I forget it. It’s just really fascinating and I hope that if that genius didn’t find what it needed from me, it went on to someone else he could … or maybe, it did find what it was looking for. I’ll never really know, but maybe I have yet to see.
Mythic Bios 