K.A. Laity's Blog, page 145

Mandrake Anthrax

You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Usually some annoying bit of fluff that you wouldn't really choose to hear, but maybe heard from some passing car or in a store while shopping, but it worms its way into your ear and persists. I get that with phrases, too, and it can be just as maddening. I recall the relief I experienced when I realised this happened to other folks, too -- writers especially; I was reading a Henry Miller novel and his doppelgänger had an idiotic advertising phrase stuck in his head while he was trying to occupy himself otherwise (if you know Miller, you can guess how he was occupying himself).



So let me follow one of these little obsessive moments from the weekend and see what became of it. You know my obsession with Mark E. Smith and the Fall (yes, yes, I can see your eyes roll)? Okay, so I spend most of my time lately on Twitter (why? because last night while Tripoli was falling to rebel forces CNN was covering some celebrity's car accident or something, but folks on Twitter forwarded real time coverage). A friend posted a link to a blogpost on MES which I read and clicked on a related post which quoted the lyrics from "Tempo House" which resonated oddly in my head just then.



A serious man

In need of a definitive job

He had drunk too much

Mandrake anthrax



Of course, the latter phrase started ringing in my head like a well-struck bell. I posted the lyrics on Twitter, which provoked some comments, including a reminder from Zouch Magazine (soon to feature a poem[!] by me) that their 140 word story contest was still going on and wasn't I going to enter? This got me thinking. While it's fun to write the things that just spring out of your head with no restrictions of any kind (which reminds me, I ought to have good news to share later this week about Owl Stretching, my alternative history/science fiction/urban fantasy/shamanic retelling of the Descent of Inanna/Great American road trip novel ;-) it's actually fun to have restrictions to force your mind in new directions. Just as rules in sport -- keep within the markers, aim for the goal, don't touch the ball with your hands -- make you focus on specific skills, a narrow focus for writing can do the same. I'm currently working on a story set in someone else's universe and finding that a fun sort of puzzle to play with as well (more on that soon).



So, yeah, "Mandrake Anthrax" became a 140 word story that I sent off to Zouch for the contest and may well become a longer story, too. The lyrics also made it as a comment on a friend's status on Facebook (entirely fittingly, I should add and not at all gratuitously... mostly) and as my own status, provoking further responses that fed my idea stream even more. So, one magnetic MES phrase results in a story, lots of tweets and a couple of Facebook conversations and may not be done yet. I sure can get a lot of mileage out of two words! What will I be able to do with Joy Division Oven Gloves?! (thanks, Terry).



All of which gets me no closer to being packed and ready to go (sigh!). All this folderol was in place of actual packing, discarding and organising of courses. Back to the mantra: somehow it will all get done, somehow...

BitchBuzz: Writers as Content Providers

I tried to sneak a random Fall reference into my column today, but my editor generally nixes my loopy titles in favour of those that actually convey the subject of the piece. Go fig. Kudos to the fabulous Nancy Holzner for providing this week's content (see, talk to me and you'll end up in a column and/or blog post):

Writers vs Content Providers By K. A. Laity

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith

At a writer's conference this past weekend, my astute pal Nancy Holzner (author of Deadtown and Hellforged) said she reckoned everything had changed once writing became "content" and writers became "content providers."

She's both a novelist and tech writer, so she's seen these changes from a lot of angles. I immediately remembered a student a few years back saying that the allure had gone out of the term "writer" because blogging had made everyone a writer. The magic—if it was ever there—has gone.

The big publishing news like the explosion of ebooks and the implosion of bookstores gets most of the headlines; less visible is the slow erosion of writers' pay. As Nancy said, we got used to the dismissal of people calling writers "a dime a dozen" but we never actually thought it might become the pay scale...

As usual, read the rest at BBHQ and feel free to comment, repost, tweet or like it on Facebook (show me the love!). This will be my last column until I get over to Galway; just too much madness going on.



Don't ask me about the packing: it's a nightmare. I can't go to sleep and then I wake up at ungodly early hours and yet seem to be making little progress. Somehow, somehow...

Mary of Nijmeghen

Mary -- or Mariken van Nieumeghen as it is in the original -- is a play that shows up in the early sixteenth century. My students read it this week and (among other things) we talked about how one might adapt it to a modern movie and came up with a really good plan. They're convinced I just use the class to brainstorm writing projects.



Who? Me?!



But they did enjoy learning a lot of new curses (eg. "profligate strumpet"). It's a Faustian tale -- although it predates the "original" Faust -- in which a young woman sells her soul to the devil in a moment of weakness and confusion. He doesn't tempt her with life everlasting, love or riches, but with learning.

The Devil: If you would give your love to me, I would teach you the arts as no one else could: the seven liberal arts, rhetoric, music, logic, grammar, geometry, arithmetic and alchemy [<--substitutes a false one here, it should be astronomy], all of which are most important arts. There is no woman upon earth so proficient in them as I shall make you.

The seven disciplines were the backbone of the original university as founded in the Middle Ages. I like to remind my female students that they would not have been welcome there. Fascinating that this is the temptation for her, though wealth and riches come eventually. She finally repents when she sees a play (how po-mo) but it's a delight to see the joy and frustration of the writer (believed to be Anna Bijns) come through in the scene in which drunken revelers demand a demonstration of Mary's rhetorical skill:

O rhetoric, o true and lovely art, I who have always esteemed thee above all, I lament with grief that there are those who hate you and despise you. This is a grief to those who love you. Fie upon those who count you merely folly. Fie upon them who do so, for I wholly despise them. But for those who support you, life is full of hurt and sorrow. Ignorant men are the destruction of art.



They say in the proverb that through art grows the heart, but I say that it is a lying fable, for should some great artist appear, those who are unskilled and know not the first thing about art will make their opinion prevail everywhere, and artists will be reduced to beggary. Always it is the flatterer who is preferred, and always artists suffer such harm, and ignorant men are the destruction of art.



Fie upon all crude, coarse common minds, trying to measure art by your standards: everyone should pay honour to pure art, art which is the ruler of many a pleasant land. Honour be to all who are the promoters of art, fie upon the ignorant who reject art, for this is why I proclaim the rule that ignorant men are the destruction of art.



Prince, I will devote myself to art, and do everything in my power to acquire it. But it is to all lovers of art a sorrow that ignorant men pay so little honour to art.

Clearly it will always be so, but it's comforting to know that despite the efforts of ignorant men, art continues to thrive even in the midst of our suffering. Translation by Eric Colledge in this excellent collection.

Weekend Wrap Up

It was a good weekend in Philadelphia -- it was just annoying getting there and even more so, getting back. If you follow me on Twitter you got my irritated suggestions for new New Jersey state mottos ("New Jersey, it leaves a lot to be desired") as I sat in the seemingly endless traffic jams on the turnpike.

So I got there late and had to sneak into roomie Sue Hanniford Crowley's panel to get the room key and jettison my things before rushing off to meet with an agent (more on that depending on whether anything comes of it) before rushing off to my first panel on blogging. We caught up with our other roomie Mason and had a late lunch. I managed to catch pal Nancy Holzner -- she of the kick ass heroine and creator of Deadtown -- to grab a brew at the Perch, a fairly good brew pub across the street from the hotel. It was on the second visit that we finally noticed these fab octopus door handles on the restaurant downstairs from the pub's winding wooden staircase. Fantastic to be able to spend some time with Nancy: as a former medievalist, she knows a lot of things I don't have to explain (hey, she studied with Rick Russom!).

Panels, mayhem, madness -- I got to blather on about this and that. Sometimes there was even an audience >_< but the best part was yakking with friends. In fact I had lunch with Alex on Saturday (Korean BBQ!) and convinced her to come back for dinner with Nancy and Todd. We had planned for Belgian, but Monk's was overbooked and had an hour wait, so noooooo! we went off to the Nodding Head pub but we walked in the wrong door and went to the Oyster House instead which was just as well as it was quiet. I ate octopus: I think it was some kind of subliminal advertising. We went to the pub after, just because, but it was full of college students shouting their heads off singing along with A-ha's "Take On Me" (O_o) and some other 80s crap music. Phil Collins made them run off, however, so we finished our drinks in quiet and headed back to the hotel, where we hung around and ran into more people and what not (which is the brief way of saying it's all too much fun to write up).

But I'm back and there's a million and one things to do yet and so very little time in which to do them. Ay yi yi. Somehow it will all get done -- or at the very least, somehow I will be in Eyre Square on September 5th and all this will be behind me.

Tip o' the captain's hat for the Pirate Pub Propper of the Bar and Pirate Therapist @MrTumshie's playlist and for my introduction to the band I clearly have been needing to meet for years, Half Man Half Biscuit.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Tales from Moomin Valley

Known and loved around the rest of the world, Tove Jansson's Moomin books seldom get exposure beyond the Finnish-American communities in this country. I suppose it's because Moomintroll himself often presents a rather melancholy figure, who feels sad without everybody around him demanding that he cheer up.



Shock!



When you look at the aggressively happy face of so much of American children's books (in contrast to the gritty, dark nature of so much YA reading) I suppose the Moomin tales stand out. Loosely based on Jansson's own upbringing in a bohemian family of artists, all the characters are eccentric and allowed to remain so. They range from the Moomins themselves to the nervous Sniff, the anarchic rebel Little My (after whom I named one of my five-string kanteles) and of course, my favourite, Snufkin -- to say nothing of Hattifatteners, Hemulens and of course, Fillyjonks.



Tales from Moomin Valley collects short tales that happen around the longer books. One of the underlying themes is that people who worry too much generally find they're wasting their time. Peace and a mutual respect are the only real requirements. In "The Invisible Child" (who's become invisible because she's too timid) there's a wonderful moment where Jansson writes of the family, "They continued their work in peaceful silence." People seldom know what they would really enjoy: the "Hemulen Who Loved Silence" finds out that maybe it would be more fun in his park if people could laugh and "possibly even hum."



The first story is a Snufkin: he's my role model -- especially now. When Moomin and Sniff meet Snufkin for the first time in Comet in Moominland he tells them, "I'm a tramp and I live all over the place...I wander about and when I find a place that I like I put up my tent and play my mouth organ." When asked if he might be a painter or a poet, Snufkin says, "I am everything!" He finds the memory of things far superior to having the things themselves (hence my role model) and hates all kinds of authority, especially those who wield power for its own sake. Thus he hates the Park Keeper who continually puts up signs forbidding things: "All his life, Snufkin had longed to pull down notices that asked him not to do things he liked to do."



In "The Spring Tune" Snufkin wanders along, a tune just about ready to be born from his head. I love the way Jansson talks about the process of creation, finding that just-right moment to make something manifest, too soon and it gets stuck, too late and it escapes all together. When he thinks of how Moomintroll will like the song, he suddenly starts to feel annoyed with the idea that his friend is waiting for his return. Nothing a traveler likes less than being expected. When a strange little creature treats him with something like hero-worship, Snufkin warns, "You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much."



These stories are just wonderful: get all of Jansson's books, including the fantastic and fun comics collections from D&Q.





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As always, check with Patti Abbott's blog for the full list of overlooked treasures.

BitchBuzz: Butterfly World Project

I'm heading off to Philadelphia for Authors After Dark with Kit Marlowe this morning; doubtless I'll have stories to share from there. Hope to see Todd and Alex while I'm in town. My column today features a lovely place that I can't wait to see first hand. I learned about it from the fabulous photographer of the Pirate Pub.

The Butterfly World ProjectBy K.A. Laity

Chances are you've spent the last few days desperately defending your small shop from local thugs, wearing your fingers out texting your thug pals for the next riot hotspot, or sobbing quietly as the world seemed to be melting into a fiery ball before your stunned eyes.



When the latest round of cynical politicians trying to capitalise on tragedy for gains in the polls or just to sabotage their rivals gets you down, you need something to restore the will to live.



Just outside London in the rolling green of Hertfordshire you will find the Butterfly World Project, an oasis of beauty and peace that will provide the antidote to fire, police sirens and screams of horror. This £27 million project was conceived by Clive Farrell, a butterfly fanatic and lepidopterist whose dream was to create a tribute to the butterfly and a dedicated centre of learning for the preservation of this fragile and beautiful species. The project is now in Phase III and by the winter of 2012, should be the biggest butterfly experience in the world...

Read the rest at BBHQ!

Authors After Dark

There's a wonderful exchange near the beginning of Clare Boothe Luce's The Women (1939) that I've always enjoyed although it kinds of stabs me in the heart, too. If you don't know this film, you need to see it at once:



Edith Potter: Weren't you going to Africa to shoot, Nancy?



Nancy Blake: As soon as my book's out.



Sylvia Fowler: I don't blame you, I'd rather face a tiger any day than the sort of things the critics said about your last book.



Peggy Day: Oh, I wish I could make a little money writing the way you do!



Nancy Blake: If you wrote the way I do that's just what you'd make.



Sylvia Fowler: You're not a very popular author, are you dear?



Nancy Blake: Not with you.





Feeling like a very unpopular writer, I am heading off to Authors After Dark tomorrow morning in an attempt to ameliorate that -- at least for my alter ego, as Kit Marlowe will be flogging The Mangrove Legacy  there. On Twitter Marc Nash just sent me a tweet saying how his flash fiction averages about 300 hits a day, while his post on the riots received over 3600. Newsworthy topics help. Bloggers who make a habit of posting incendiary opinions likewise tend to get more hits.



The idiosyncratic ramblings including jokes only three people will get? Not so much.



I recently read an Anita Blake novel that was in my gift bag at Alt.Fiction. I read mostly non-fiction, so it's helpful to remind myself what popular fiction that actually sells looks like. I realise once again that all my writing habits undermine any chance to write popular fiction. Nuance, allusions (literary or mythic), drolleries: these have no place in the lean beast that is a page-turner. Of course I want to write what I want to write -- and I always will -- but I also would like to write books that sell more. Not necessarily a bestseller, just a better seller. It's an interesting problem to grapple with, although at present I really need to be doing other things. Like packing, discarding and yes,  if all else fails, setting fire to things.



Metaphorically, of course. It's not a riot.

Tuesday's Overlooked Films: The School for Scoundrels

Heartsick watching the events in London -- and seeing them spread across the country. I hope things are better today. I cannot remain transfixed by the news on Twitter, as I must try to get some work done. So here's a mood lightener, the classic comedy The School for Scoundrels (1960) with Terry-Thomas playing his best cad ever and Ian Carmichael as the most put-upon nice guy around. Don't worry, nice guys win in the end, of course. Fantastic supporting cast including Irene Handl, Alastair Sim, Dennis Price and John Le Mesurier. Hard cheese!







As always, see Sweet Freedom for a round-up of other overlooked A/V.

Voyage to Connecticut

 I met the fabulous Queen of Everything for breakfast at Cafémantic in Willimantic. Quite lovely -- never had been there before; it was delightful.



 Then we headed over to WECS to heckle Marko throughout the Punk Rock Jukebox -- I mean, to help promote the Salacious Art show that features some of the QoE's fine work (as is that poster). I got to give a shout out to my Mark up in Scotland, but I couldn't quite convince Marko to play all of Extricate (Extra Kate?). Then we headed off to the Willi Pub and had burgers and beer and more giggles.



 Next it was off to Elena's where the puppies were all happy to greet me, especially if I was eating something, eh Shaq?



 We had some wine and watched frighteningly bad films, The Godmonster of Indian Flats and a little bit of Swamp Girl (which had one amazing theme song O_o).



 On Saturday, Rod and Elena took me to Stew Leonard's, which they'd always talked about but I'd never been to. It's like Whole Foods, except it has all these wacky animatronic displays. Quite an experience. Must work it into a story.







Elena and I hashed out some of the next stage of Jane Quiet , our comic, while -- as I noticed much later -- mosquitoes made a meal of my feet. I headed back to Albany in time to run into the fierce rain, which of course let up once I arrived. Had a nice dinner with Debi (congratulations on finishing that first draft of your novel!) and then it was back to facing the huge pile of things that must be done. Sigh.

BitchBuzz: Your Tweets are Under Surveillance

In the midst of news that Rupert "I outsourced Satan" Murdoch, who has done his best to undermine democracy here and human decency everywhere else, has been using drones to covertly spy upon Americans, I find that our own Department of Defence has decided to join the social media revolution. Does that officially make Twitter uncool?!

Your Tweets are Under Surveillance By K.A. Laity

The Defense Department has announced a new project to follow you in cyberspace. No, they're not friending you on Facebook or plus-one-ing you on Google+ (is anyone bothering to do that still?), but they might be following you on Twitter.



Look for the new follower @janejones or @samsmith in your tweetstream.



This new initiative, Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC), which will cost around $42 million will attempt to follow memes and trends, apparently mostly on Twitter. The DoD wants to keep tabs on your passing whims in case they might reveal a threat to security. Their fourfold plan includes:



1. Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.



Will they follow the latest fake celebrity-has-died rumour in case it has more sinister implications? Will they be able to stop a meme from happening or a trend from sprouting? Will they be able to put an end to Owling?!...

Read the rest over at BBHQ as usual.



Making a mad dash to Connecticut tomorrow; finishing up the first week of the three-week summer intensive. We watched The Lion in Winter yesterday, which is always a treat. today Marie de France and Hildegard of Bingen. So many fascinating women!