Nate Briggs's Blog, page 3
May 16, 2015
Toward a Simple Structure of Character in Society
Christian theology has given us the idea of the Individual Soul - in relation to a concerned God - and, from that, we have leveraged Rugged Individualism: which is nothing more than the plain recognition that “I” am nothing like anyone else, and am unique in Human History: with no duplicate in the past, or the future.
All the same, it has struck me that people do fall into recognizable social categories—and those categories can be useful when you’re considering character dynamics. As usual, if you get too analytical about this, your friends will stop speaking to you, and your dog will think you’re a stranger. So...not something to be taken too seriously—but fun to apply to the work of other writers. In this case, I’m going to apply my General Categories to “The Great Gatsby”, still possibly the greatest novel written in English.
The Categories roughly follow the alphabet:
A — SuperAlpha, Hard Alpha, Soft Alpha. Everyone wants to be Alpha. That’s the state we all think about when we think about living a satisfying life.
D — Desperately Desiring. What do they Desire? They want to be Alpha. Most fiction is written about the ambitions of these people to get to a higher Category.
E — Expendable. The people whose dreams will never come true, because they’ve stopped having them. They contradict the Christian position of unique value in every human soul—but there are still millions of Expendable People. If you’re in a hotel, one of them made your bed this morning. One of them made the iPad you’re reading this on. They’re everywhere. Dickens knew a lot of them.
F — Forgotten. The men who built the pyramids...the soldiers of Genghis Khan...the servants of the Byzantine Emperors. Who were they? We don’t know...and we will never know.
So: when we look at “Gatsby”, here are the categories that suggest themselves:
Super Alpha — This Category describes someone with far-reaching power (Adolf Hitler, Simon Bolivar, Henry VIII, Ramses II). This is a “society” book and doesn’t include anyone like that.
Hard Alpha — Tom Buchanan. You write a lot of Hard Alpha if you’re writing for men because this is the kind of male character a lot of men are drawn to: decisiveness, possessive, unapologetic, unwilling to admit to positive emotions, but willing to embrace violence and deceit. Hard Alpha is scorched earth...“my way or the highway”...“no regrets”...“hands against the wall and spread’em!” Lots of cops are Hard Alpha, if you hadn’t noticed.
Soft Alpha — Nick, Daisy, Jordan. These are people with full spectrums of emotion, and yet are served by others. They are satisfied, in themselves, and ready to admit that “this is just the way life is”—so their emotions are more muted. They are generally happy with the way things are because they’re resting at the top of the heap.
Desiring — Jay Gatsby. The whole book is driven by his desire to be at the top: Desperately Desiring (like Scott Fitzgerald himself). He invents a personality...becomes a criminal...even changes the way he talks...trying to become the “something else” that will put him at the same level as Daisy. But it’s all for nothing. And we know, even at the beginning of the story, that it will be for nothing, because Hard Alpha generally wins. That's the heartache at the center of the book.
Expendable — Myrtle and George Wilson. All of Gatsby’s many servants (never named). The people Jordan plays golf with, the Buchanan servants, Nick's landlord, the jazz bands, the partygoers, everybody else. George Wilson has an important role, but everyone else just is seen, and then gone.
My apologies...this post obviously went on a lot longer than I thought it would. But I hope you find it useful.
Later....
All the same, it has struck me that people do fall into recognizable social categories—and those categories can be useful when you’re considering character dynamics. As usual, if you get too analytical about this, your friends will stop speaking to you, and your dog will think you’re a stranger. So...not something to be taken too seriously—but fun to apply to the work of other writers. In this case, I’m going to apply my General Categories to “The Great Gatsby”, still possibly the greatest novel written in English.
The Categories roughly follow the alphabet:
A — SuperAlpha, Hard Alpha, Soft Alpha. Everyone wants to be Alpha. That’s the state we all think about when we think about living a satisfying life.
D — Desperately Desiring. What do they Desire? They want to be Alpha. Most fiction is written about the ambitions of these people to get to a higher Category.
E — Expendable. The people whose dreams will never come true, because they’ve stopped having them. They contradict the Christian position of unique value in every human soul—but there are still millions of Expendable People. If you’re in a hotel, one of them made your bed this morning. One of them made the iPad you’re reading this on. They’re everywhere. Dickens knew a lot of them.
F — Forgotten. The men who built the pyramids...the soldiers of Genghis Khan...the servants of the Byzantine Emperors. Who were they? We don’t know...and we will never know.
So: when we look at “Gatsby”, here are the categories that suggest themselves:
Super Alpha — This Category describes someone with far-reaching power (Adolf Hitler, Simon Bolivar, Henry VIII, Ramses II). This is a “society” book and doesn’t include anyone like that.
Hard Alpha — Tom Buchanan. You write a lot of Hard Alpha if you’re writing for men because this is the kind of male character a lot of men are drawn to: decisiveness, possessive, unapologetic, unwilling to admit to positive emotions, but willing to embrace violence and deceit. Hard Alpha is scorched earth...“my way or the highway”...“no regrets”...“hands against the wall and spread’em!” Lots of cops are Hard Alpha, if you hadn’t noticed.
Soft Alpha — Nick, Daisy, Jordan. These are people with full spectrums of emotion, and yet are served by others. They are satisfied, in themselves, and ready to admit that “this is just the way life is”—so their emotions are more muted. They are generally happy with the way things are because they’re resting at the top of the heap.
Desiring — Jay Gatsby. The whole book is driven by his desire to be at the top: Desperately Desiring (like Scott Fitzgerald himself). He invents a personality...becomes a criminal...even changes the way he talks...trying to become the “something else” that will put him at the same level as Daisy. But it’s all for nothing. And we know, even at the beginning of the story, that it will be for nothing, because Hard Alpha generally wins. That's the heartache at the center of the book.
Expendable — Myrtle and George Wilson. All of Gatsby’s many servants (never named). The people Jordan plays golf with, the Buchanan servants, Nick's landlord, the jazz bands, the partygoers, everybody else. George Wilson has an important role, but everyone else just is seen, and then gone.
My apologies...this post obviously went on a lot longer than I thought it would. But I hope you find it useful.
Later....
February 11, 2015
The Spirit of Rock (Why Your Parents Should Always Hate the Music You Love)
I knew that they went to bed early, every night, as Godly people should (they’d explained this to me several times). So it didn’t demand a huge effort of self-discipline for me to stay awake until I was reasonably sure they were asleep.
Rain seemed to be a feature of every afternoon in the ‘Springs. But — as it got later that night — the rain stuck around: so I had the sight and sound of it to help me pass the time during my vigil of 45 minutes or so.
My insurgent device was still in its package — which was a stupid thing to do. Opening it was noise that I could have avoided if I’d thought ahead. And, of course, I couldn’t show a light to pick the plastic open. The glow of the streetlight had to do.
Once my Instrument of Satan got unpacked and unfurled, it didn’t seem all that sinful. Wire is wire: and it was mostly wire: the plastic body controlled by a small spindle, which was its only moving part. Otherwise, one wire terminated in an alligator clip, and the other in a generic earphone (suitable for either ear).
As the package said: it was “powered by the forces of Nature” — so there was nothing else in the bag. No battery. No power cord. It was powered by the forces of Nature, by virtue of all that wire — although I couldn’t harness the forces of Nature until I figured out what to attach it to.
I was hoping that there would be a little more information in the instructions. But those seemed to assume that I had prior knowledge of how to work the thing, so I moved around the room: trying one thing, and another: looking to unleash the forces of Nature.
It was my grandmother’s sewing machine that did it. Old-fashioned, solid metal. Solidly grounded. Once the alligator clip bit the edge of the machine the primitive crystal set began picking up the invisible AM radio waves that were raining down on my grandparents’ house: and a roar of static started pouring out of the earphone.
It worked. It really worked.
Once the thing came to life, all that was left was to move the tuner spindle so I could figure out where the frequencies were. There were markings on the tuner “dial” — but they were pretty vague. The DJs had to help me: giving me their call signs as I made my way toward the pure pop powerhouse, KOMA , beaming at all hours of the day and night from Oklahoma City.
Once I had my musical connection, the crystal set supplied enough wire to allow me to climb back into bed: where I secretly savored the dominating signal that covered most of America west of the Mississippi in the middle 60’s, reconnecting with the Spirit of Rock.
It had been only a little over a year since The Beatles had dropped into my life. But, by this time, rock-and-roll was woven into the fabric of how I thought, and lived: to the point that my affection for it was concerning the “authorities”.
With no other important commitments, I had been sent to the ‘Springs to spend two weeks with my evangelical, fundamentalist, Bible-waving grandparents. A visit advertised as their opportunity to “set me straight”: weaning me away from the New, the Modern, the Reckless, the Grubby, the British.
I had been sent to their house to be irradiated with the Gospel, so the tumor of popular culture that had infected me would shrivel and disappear.
The fact that I had a radio, however primitive, meant that I was already edging my way toward Hell: since it allowed me to hear signals from a world I wasn’t supposed to know anything about. If discovered, wire contraption would have been taken away — never to be returned — followed by a sequence of Bible verses intended to remind me that God didn’t put us here on Earth to enjoy ourselves.
What I remember about this period was that it was “music” — or what I kept insisting was “music” — at the center of so many of my struggles with the Bible World. Unlike some, my parents did not consider television to be a Tool of Satan: they tuned in, and tended to enjoy it. As long as the Hollywood Production Code was there to protect us, they were happy to take us to drive-in double features.
It was music that they didn’t “get”: since what I called “music” must have sounded scratchy, loud, crude, lustful, and wildly irresponsible. Civilization slammed into Reverse. And certainly of the Devil: smelling of Global Communism, riddled with drugs, and insisting that there might be something good about sex.
Opportunity here for a short interlude with my Mom, whose recollections — these days — are a lot less vehement than they used to be.
“Oh yes … yes … the Beatles … there were four of them, right?”
“Right, Mom. Four.”
“Whatever happened to them?”
“I guess you could say they did pretty well … all things considered. Only two of them alive, now.”
“Did the others die of drugs?”
“No. One of them had cancer. And the other one was shot.”
“A drug deal gone bad?”
“No. It was a deranged fan.”
“I’m not surprised. That music always seemed so … out there. All those women screaming.”
“Well … it wasn’t a woman who shot him exactly….”
Because the KOMA signal filled up the Midwest, and because I was going straight to Hell for listening to a station like that, it became my “home” for several years: even though, in my humble opinion, they weren’t playing enough Beatles cuts. (And didn’t play the Beatles at all after Lennon remarked that the boys were “more popular than Jesus”. You can’t say something like that in Oklahoma and get away with it.)
Ignoring all Biblical insight from my grandparents, I laid in bed that night — hearing the rain with one ear — putting up with I Got You, Babe twice an hour and enduring tired, repetitive commercials because what was being offered over the radio was helping me define my identity as someone who was Not My Parents.
Which is the important part of music when you’re a kid.
Breaking the parent-child bond — especially the one between mother and daughter — is an operation that generates a lot of noise, dust, and smoke. Often it requires a hammer and chisel, and (occasionally) demands a diamond-tipped blade.
Music that parents hate is that diamond-tipped implement. It plunges ruthlessly into the granite of the parent-child relationship to the point where the younger piece just has to break off. It’s the fierce sounds that tell you it’s working.
Tattoos, piercings, strange clothes, and strange friends are all tools that adolescents use to make the point: I’m not them! I’m not my parents, and I never will be!
Yet we come back to music. Music as the primal means of separation: because there's something so visceral about it. Reaching, as it does, into our secret hearts: reminding, inspiring, identifying, unifying, dividing.
I can assure you that nothing would have complicated my life more, at that time of my life, than to discover that my parents liked the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, or the Beach Boys.
It’s a staggering thought, even now: since it would have pushed everything I loved right out of reach. Hearing my mother doing her version of Please, Please Me in the kitchen would have been a dark and disturbing moment for me: forcing me into a complete re-examination of my life’s meaning.
Driving me, relentlessly, to show tunes perhaps (my God!), or … (I can barely bring myself to type it) ... classic opera.
Rain seemed to be a feature of every afternoon in the ‘Springs. But — as it got later that night — the rain stuck around: so I had the sight and sound of it to help me pass the time during my vigil of 45 minutes or so.
My insurgent device was still in its package — which was a stupid thing to do. Opening it was noise that I could have avoided if I’d thought ahead. And, of course, I couldn’t show a light to pick the plastic open. The glow of the streetlight had to do.
Once my Instrument of Satan got unpacked and unfurled, it didn’t seem all that sinful. Wire is wire: and it was mostly wire: the plastic body controlled by a small spindle, which was its only moving part. Otherwise, one wire terminated in an alligator clip, and the other in a generic earphone (suitable for either ear).
As the package said: it was “powered by the forces of Nature” — so there was nothing else in the bag. No battery. No power cord. It was powered by the forces of Nature, by virtue of all that wire — although I couldn’t harness the forces of Nature until I figured out what to attach it to.
I was hoping that there would be a little more information in the instructions. But those seemed to assume that I had prior knowledge of how to work the thing, so I moved around the room: trying one thing, and another: looking to unleash the forces of Nature.
It was my grandmother’s sewing machine that did it. Old-fashioned, solid metal. Solidly grounded. Once the alligator clip bit the edge of the machine the primitive crystal set began picking up the invisible AM radio waves that were raining down on my grandparents’ house: and a roar of static started pouring out of the earphone.
It worked. It really worked.
Once the thing came to life, all that was left was to move the tuner spindle so I could figure out where the frequencies were. There were markings on the tuner “dial” — but they were pretty vague. The DJs had to help me: giving me their call signs as I made my way toward the pure pop powerhouse, KOMA , beaming at all hours of the day and night from Oklahoma City.
Once I had my musical connection, the crystal set supplied enough wire to allow me to climb back into bed: where I secretly savored the dominating signal that covered most of America west of the Mississippi in the middle 60’s, reconnecting with the Spirit of Rock.
It had been only a little over a year since The Beatles had dropped into my life. But, by this time, rock-and-roll was woven into the fabric of how I thought, and lived: to the point that my affection for it was concerning the “authorities”.
With no other important commitments, I had been sent to the ‘Springs to spend two weeks with my evangelical, fundamentalist, Bible-waving grandparents. A visit advertised as their opportunity to “set me straight”: weaning me away from the New, the Modern, the Reckless, the Grubby, the British.
I had been sent to their house to be irradiated with the Gospel, so the tumor of popular culture that had infected me would shrivel and disappear.
The fact that I had a radio, however primitive, meant that I was already edging my way toward Hell: since it allowed me to hear signals from a world I wasn’t supposed to know anything about. If discovered, wire contraption would have been taken away — never to be returned — followed by a sequence of Bible verses intended to remind me that God didn’t put us here on Earth to enjoy ourselves.
What I remember about this period was that it was “music” — or what I kept insisting was “music” — at the center of so many of my struggles with the Bible World. Unlike some, my parents did not consider television to be a Tool of Satan: they tuned in, and tended to enjoy it. As long as the Hollywood Production Code was there to protect us, they were happy to take us to drive-in double features.
It was music that they didn’t “get”: since what I called “music” must have sounded scratchy, loud, crude, lustful, and wildly irresponsible. Civilization slammed into Reverse. And certainly of the Devil: smelling of Global Communism, riddled with drugs, and insisting that there might be something good about sex.
Opportunity here for a short interlude with my Mom, whose recollections — these days — are a lot less vehement than they used to be.
“Oh yes … yes … the Beatles … there were four of them, right?”
“Right, Mom. Four.”
“Whatever happened to them?”
“I guess you could say they did pretty well … all things considered. Only two of them alive, now.”
“Did the others die of drugs?”
“No. One of them had cancer. And the other one was shot.”
“A drug deal gone bad?”
“No. It was a deranged fan.”
“I’m not surprised. That music always seemed so … out there. All those women screaming.”
“Well … it wasn’t a woman who shot him exactly….”
Because the KOMA signal filled up the Midwest, and because I was going straight to Hell for listening to a station like that, it became my “home” for several years: even though, in my humble opinion, they weren’t playing enough Beatles cuts. (And didn’t play the Beatles at all after Lennon remarked that the boys were “more popular than Jesus”. You can’t say something like that in Oklahoma and get away with it.)
Ignoring all Biblical insight from my grandparents, I laid in bed that night — hearing the rain with one ear — putting up with I Got You, Babe twice an hour and enduring tired, repetitive commercials because what was being offered over the radio was helping me define my identity as someone who was Not My Parents.
Which is the important part of music when you’re a kid.
Breaking the parent-child bond — especially the one between mother and daughter — is an operation that generates a lot of noise, dust, and smoke. Often it requires a hammer and chisel, and (occasionally) demands a diamond-tipped blade.
Music that parents hate is that diamond-tipped implement. It plunges ruthlessly into the granite of the parent-child relationship to the point where the younger piece just has to break off. It’s the fierce sounds that tell you it’s working.
Tattoos, piercings, strange clothes, and strange friends are all tools that adolescents use to make the point: I’m not them! I’m not my parents, and I never will be!
Yet we come back to music. Music as the primal means of separation: because there's something so visceral about it. Reaching, as it does, into our secret hearts: reminding, inspiring, identifying, unifying, dividing.
I can assure you that nothing would have complicated my life more, at that time of my life, than to discover that my parents liked the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, or the Beach Boys.
It’s a staggering thought, even now: since it would have pushed everything I loved right out of reach. Hearing my mother doing her version of Please, Please Me in the kitchen would have been a dark and disturbing moment for me: forcing me into a complete re-examination of my life’s meaning.
Driving me, relentlessly, to show tunes perhaps (my God!), or … (I can barely bring myself to type it) ... classic opera.
February 5, 2015
I Lost Everything in the British Invasion (1)
Ed Sullivan, and the End of Calvinism
It’s impossible to remember the exact weather conditions on that important night in February, 1964, but — according to the childhood memories that linger in my mind — I probably could have gone outside to relieve myself and watched my piss freeze in mid-air. A tiny arc of golden hailstones dropping to the ground in a town remarkable for being unremarkable, in a quiet corner of Nebraska.
Inside the house, though, we would have been quite cozy, despite the cold. Nine of us in the living room — several of us sitting on the floor — as we watched Ed Sullivan introduce the next act.
We were a religious family: not the least bit sophisticated. But even we understood the running joke of such a stiff and uncomfortable man being host of one of the most popular shows on network television. The heavy hitter of Sunday night. To this day, my brother does an impersonation of Sullivan that's right on the money.
(Keeping in mind that, for his impersonation to really work, he needs an audience of a certain age — Ed Sullivan’s “shew” was a loooong time agoooo).
Moving in his restless way, Sullivan had arrived onstage to introduce the latest “sensations” from England. We couldn’t see the colors of the stage set the show had put together for the Fab Four. Our TV only had black-and-white. Nor were we getting the greatest sound (just the one speaker).
But all of that hardly mattered.
Having just turned twelve, the month before, I was as prepared to be impressionable, then, as I am prepared to be analytical now. That young self was like a machine for measuring the weight of snow — while my strict Calvinist training reminded me (every day) that the worst thing I could ever do would be to show how I really felt.
So … a paradox. As I witnessed the beginning of the end of Calvinism — along with my own “great awakening” — it was impossible for me (under the eyes of my parents) to bounce, or dance, or sing. I couldn’t react in any way: other than to comment, to no one in particular, about the screaming.
Along with everything else I heard on that occasion, there was the screaming: starting the moment that Sullivan stepped onstage.
It was a mystery to me then — the screaming. But a symbol to me, now.
A scream is the expression of a desire so profound that there are no words to express it. Screaming is a sacrament of desire, and — as human desire is boundless — it’s no surprise that eventually the Beatles were forced to stop playing live performances when the screaming from the audience became so emphatic that the band couldn’t even hear the sounds coming out of their own instruments. Of course, that was later: after the dam had broken.
In 1964, it was the present tense: the dam breaking. The beginning of the end of part of the Calvinist dogma that had held our culture motionless during the ultra-prosperous 1950s.
For hundreds of years, Protestant thought had dismissed sex as an unpleasant necessity. It was required to create children, but — on the whole — life was better spent laboring, scheming, and denying oneself for the sake of accumulating the great possible amount of money.
“The righteous are rich — and the rich, by virtue of their riches, must therefore be righteous”. Calvinism taught us to believe this. That power, possessions, and wealth (none of which Jesus had) were the best measure of how a man stood before Almighty God.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because much of this point of view is still woven into our culture. The Calvinist worship of money endures — and dominates.
But, beginning in 1964, the disgusted dismissal of Sex started to be shouted down.
Even if Calvin, himself, had been barking prophecies of damnation in Ed Sullivan’s audience, no one would have been able to hear him.
As for me, sitting next to my father’s recliner in my Nebraska living room, (and not screaming) I was puzzled as much as I was entranced. Remembering my first look: it strikes me that it wasn’t so much what the Fab Four “were” … as what they “were not”.
Money was always scarce around my house. We weren’t able to afford many records, so we depended a lot on the radio (“radio” still exists, by the way, for those of you who might be wondering). Local radio was a continuous presence in our house, and my mother’s satisfaction was most evident when the crooners came on.
Pat Boone. Johnny Mathis. Andy Williams. And, especially, Nat King Cole. The musical equivalent of comfort food. Pancakes and syrup. Macaroni and cheese. Peas and meatloaf.
Never mind that the re-assuring mood they were trying to set might be just the thing for someone wanting to reach around, discreetly, and unhook a bra. The music my mother loved (my father has no use for any of this) came on soft. Wheedling: “Baby/it’s cold outside….” And mildly Victorian: “I get misty/Just holding your hand….”
That was our domestic problem with Elvis. He was just too vehement. We didn’t like to be pushed around like that.
Then along came the boys from Liverpool, and their sound — their voice — their look — seemed exactly right. Not manic. But urgent. Ironic. But not distant.
The exact rhythms, and melodies, and lyrics I had been waiting for. Without even knowing what I had been waiting for.
That particular night, the lyrics had an imperative tone: “Shake it up, baby!”; “I wanna hold your hand!”; “Please, please me!/The way I please you!” (it would be ages before I fully understood the sexual dimension of that simple lyric).
Yet the demeanor of the four men on stage didn’t suggest that they were heavily invested in the event.
The Beatle on the right — he would enter into our iconography as “John” — who had his feet planted on either side of the microphone stand, as though resisting a high wind, wasn’t crooning at all. He was growling (“Shake it up, baby!”): while looking around with a visible air of bemusement: Thanks for coming … but who the hell are you people?
On the other side of the stage, at least one of the guitar players was left-handed (like me): which would always dispose me to like him better than the others. I didn’t know it at the time, but the big-nosed guy on the drums was also left-handed. Compared with the population as a whole, the Beatles were a festival of southpaws.
Reinforcing John’s air of detachment, the guys on the left didn’t seem to be taking the situation too seriously, either. Although they had to be aware that they were being watched by millions of people.
Those two guitarists were sharing a microphone: occasionally doing a bobblehead kind of move that never failed to draw screams of what sounded like agony from the unseen girls in the unseen audience.
In reaction to this: the guys on the left just smiled each other, as though sharing some sort of secret joke.
The music was compelling. I’ve never heard anything before — or since — that sounded so much like something I wanted to hear again and again. Their first album (in the U.S.) was the first album I bought with my own money: listening to it again and again and again.
There was that album. And all the albums after that. According to the often-used cliché, that began the soundtrack of my life.
But they also gave me — and many others — another way to be “cool”. Not Elvis-cool: since not many of us could replicate that sullen look, the molasses drawl, the sweaty animal drive. It was also not given to many of us to whisper in the footsteps of Nat King Cole: “Unforgettable/That’s what you are….”
But John, Paul, George, and Ringo? That look of airy dismissal. That willingness to find humor in just about anything?
As an earnest little baby boomer — filled up with Bible verses — I thought I could replicate that. Let my hair grow out and face the future with a smile and a shrug. The Beatles-type irony that I would spend years of my life perfecting: That’s right … we wrote this song ourselves … kind of catchy, isn’t it? … no need to scream though….
Like millions of others, I had been waiting for these Liverpool boys: without knowing when, or where, they would show up. I didn’t find them. They found me, as the sharp winds of February brushed through our small town in the middle of nowhere.
It’s impossible to remember the exact weather conditions on that important night in February, 1964, but — according to the childhood memories that linger in my mind — I probably could have gone outside to relieve myself and watched my piss freeze in mid-air. A tiny arc of golden hailstones dropping to the ground in a town remarkable for being unremarkable, in a quiet corner of Nebraska.
Inside the house, though, we would have been quite cozy, despite the cold. Nine of us in the living room — several of us sitting on the floor — as we watched Ed Sullivan introduce the next act.
We were a religious family: not the least bit sophisticated. But even we understood the running joke of such a stiff and uncomfortable man being host of one of the most popular shows on network television. The heavy hitter of Sunday night. To this day, my brother does an impersonation of Sullivan that's right on the money.
(Keeping in mind that, for his impersonation to really work, he needs an audience of a certain age — Ed Sullivan’s “shew” was a loooong time agoooo).
Moving in his restless way, Sullivan had arrived onstage to introduce the latest “sensations” from England. We couldn’t see the colors of the stage set the show had put together for the Fab Four. Our TV only had black-and-white. Nor were we getting the greatest sound (just the one speaker).
But all of that hardly mattered.
Having just turned twelve, the month before, I was as prepared to be impressionable, then, as I am prepared to be analytical now. That young self was like a machine for measuring the weight of snow — while my strict Calvinist training reminded me (every day) that the worst thing I could ever do would be to show how I really felt.
So … a paradox. As I witnessed the beginning of the end of Calvinism — along with my own “great awakening” — it was impossible for me (under the eyes of my parents) to bounce, or dance, or sing. I couldn’t react in any way: other than to comment, to no one in particular, about the screaming.
Along with everything else I heard on that occasion, there was the screaming: starting the moment that Sullivan stepped onstage.
It was a mystery to me then — the screaming. But a symbol to me, now.
A scream is the expression of a desire so profound that there are no words to express it. Screaming is a sacrament of desire, and — as human desire is boundless — it’s no surprise that eventually the Beatles were forced to stop playing live performances when the screaming from the audience became so emphatic that the band couldn’t even hear the sounds coming out of their own instruments. Of course, that was later: after the dam had broken.
In 1964, it was the present tense: the dam breaking. The beginning of the end of part of the Calvinist dogma that had held our culture motionless during the ultra-prosperous 1950s.
For hundreds of years, Protestant thought had dismissed sex as an unpleasant necessity. It was required to create children, but — on the whole — life was better spent laboring, scheming, and denying oneself for the sake of accumulating the great possible amount of money.
“The righteous are rich — and the rich, by virtue of their riches, must therefore be righteous”. Calvinism taught us to believe this. That power, possessions, and wealth (none of which Jesus had) were the best measure of how a man stood before Almighty God.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because much of this point of view is still woven into our culture. The Calvinist worship of money endures — and dominates.
But, beginning in 1964, the disgusted dismissal of Sex started to be shouted down.
Even if Calvin, himself, had been barking prophecies of damnation in Ed Sullivan’s audience, no one would have been able to hear him.
As for me, sitting next to my father’s recliner in my Nebraska living room, (and not screaming) I was puzzled as much as I was entranced. Remembering my first look: it strikes me that it wasn’t so much what the Fab Four “were” … as what they “were not”.
Money was always scarce around my house. We weren’t able to afford many records, so we depended a lot on the radio (“radio” still exists, by the way, for those of you who might be wondering). Local radio was a continuous presence in our house, and my mother’s satisfaction was most evident when the crooners came on.
Pat Boone. Johnny Mathis. Andy Williams. And, especially, Nat King Cole. The musical equivalent of comfort food. Pancakes and syrup. Macaroni and cheese. Peas and meatloaf.
Never mind that the re-assuring mood they were trying to set might be just the thing for someone wanting to reach around, discreetly, and unhook a bra. The music my mother loved (my father has no use for any of this) came on soft. Wheedling: “Baby/it’s cold outside….” And mildly Victorian: “I get misty/Just holding your hand….”
That was our domestic problem with Elvis. He was just too vehement. We didn’t like to be pushed around like that.
Then along came the boys from Liverpool, and their sound — their voice — their look — seemed exactly right. Not manic. But urgent. Ironic. But not distant.
The exact rhythms, and melodies, and lyrics I had been waiting for. Without even knowing what I had been waiting for.
That particular night, the lyrics had an imperative tone: “Shake it up, baby!”; “I wanna hold your hand!”; “Please, please me!/The way I please you!” (it would be ages before I fully understood the sexual dimension of that simple lyric).
Yet the demeanor of the four men on stage didn’t suggest that they were heavily invested in the event.
The Beatle on the right — he would enter into our iconography as “John” — who had his feet planted on either side of the microphone stand, as though resisting a high wind, wasn’t crooning at all. He was growling (“Shake it up, baby!”): while looking around with a visible air of bemusement: Thanks for coming … but who the hell are you people?
On the other side of the stage, at least one of the guitar players was left-handed (like me): which would always dispose me to like him better than the others. I didn’t know it at the time, but the big-nosed guy on the drums was also left-handed. Compared with the population as a whole, the Beatles were a festival of southpaws.
Reinforcing John’s air of detachment, the guys on the left didn’t seem to be taking the situation too seriously, either. Although they had to be aware that they were being watched by millions of people.
Those two guitarists were sharing a microphone: occasionally doing a bobblehead kind of move that never failed to draw screams of what sounded like agony from the unseen girls in the unseen audience.
In reaction to this: the guys on the left just smiled each other, as though sharing some sort of secret joke.
The music was compelling. I’ve never heard anything before — or since — that sounded so much like something I wanted to hear again and again. Their first album (in the U.S.) was the first album I bought with my own money: listening to it again and again and again.
There was that album. And all the albums after that. According to the often-used cliché, that began the soundtrack of my life.
But they also gave me — and many others — another way to be “cool”. Not Elvis-cool: since not many of us could replicate that sullen look, the molasses drawl, the sweaty animal drive. It was also not given to many of us to whisper in the footsteps of Nat King Cole: “Unforgettable/That’s what you are….”
But John, Paul, George, and Ringo? That look of airy dismissal. That willingness to find humor in just about anything?
As an earnest little baby boomer — filled up with Bible verses — I thought I could replicate that. Let my hair grow out and face the future with a smile and a shrug. The Beatles-type irony that I would spend years of my life perfecting: That’s right … we wrote this song ourselves … kind of catchy, isn’t it? … no need to scream though….
Like millions of others, I had been waiting for these Liverpool boys: without knowing when, or where, they would show up. I didn’t find them. They found me, as the sharp winds of February brushed through our small town in the middle of nowhere.
December 11, 2014
Resistance Is Futile
Many of you may be acquainted with the "Star Trek: franchise: whose boldly going ships occasionally encounter cube-shaped vehicles that carry something called The Borg: a kind of hive-mind species who don't seem to get enough sun.
The Borg's intention is to subdue just about everybody: repeating a very confident catchphrase in toneless voices, "Resistance is futile ... you will be assimilated...."
I mention this since I'm having very threatened feelings as I read about promoting my books as a self-published author. Edmund Kean famously said "Dying is easy ... comedy is hard". I would change that to "Writing is easy ... selling is hard."
One of the solutions most commonly offered to me, of course, is coming A Brand.
My "day job" is in corporate life, so I am very brand aware. The Theory of Brands is the one thing you should talk about if you ever find yourself stuck in an elevator with an MBA. He (or she) will bite into that topic and not let go until the repair people arrive.
All the same, I'm uncomfortable with stepping aboard the Brand Borg.
I would have to become a Twit: sharing trivial events in short bursts of retwitable text: "I wouldn't have stepped on that dead mouse if I'd seen it! LOL". I have to become unavoidable - like Buick, or Maybelline, or Google - even though I've never liked being the center of attention.
I'd have to beat my drum. Run contests. And beg. I'd have to beg. (And who likes begging?)
Making a Brand out of Me seems so contrary to how I usually operate in the world. And yet resistance seems futile, so I might be assimilated. Because - at about the time that I'm getting ready to reject the Brand Borg - I get a subspace question: "Hey! You want to sell books, don't you?"
I do want to sell books. I do want to be more like Buick.
So resistance is futile. And I should probably twit (tweet?) that information so it can ripple out through the galaxy.
The Borg's intention is to subdue just about everybody: repeating a very confident catchphrase in toneless voices, "Resistance is futile ... you will be assimilated...."
I mention this since I'm having very threatened feelings as I read about promoting my books as a self-published author. Edmund Kean famously said "Dying is easy ... comedy is hard". I would change that to "Writing is easy ... selling is hard."
One of the solutions most commonly offered to me, of course, is coming A Brand.
My "day job" is in corporate life, so I am very brand aware. The Theory of Brands is the one thing you should talk about if you ever find yourself stuck in an elevator with an MBA. He (or she) will bite into that topic and not let go until the repair people arrive.
All the same, I'm uncomfortable with stepping aboard the Brand Borg.
I would have to become a Twit: sharing trivial events in short bursts of retwitable text: "I wouldn't have stepped on that dead mouse if I'd seen it! LOL". I have to become unavoidable - like Buick, or Maybelline, or Google - even though I've never liked being the center of attention.
I'd have to beat my drum. Run contests. And beg. I'd have to beg. (And who likes begging?)
Making a Brand out of Me seems so contrary to how I usually operate in the world. And yet resistance seems futile, so I might be assimilated. Because - at about the time that I'm getting ready to reject the Brand Borg - I get a subspace question: "Hey! You want to sell books, don't you?"
I do want to sell books. I do want to be more like Buick.
So resistance is futile. And I should probably twit (tweet?) that information so it can ripple out through the galaxy.
December 7, 2014
5 Signs That You Were Born to Write
1) Walking through a neighborhood, you see an unusual house: perhaps of an unusual design, set back from the street, or hemmed in by trees. The instant you see it, you start wondering who lived there. Were they happy? Were they in love? Were they frightened? Did they live a long time?
Normal people don't wonder about these things.
2) You see someone crying on the train, and think about it the rest of the day. What had happened? Who were those people she was with? Did she feel better later? What was going through the minds of the rest of the people in the car?
Normal people don't think about something like this the rest of the day.
3) You look at a photograph from 100 years ago and a face in it makes an impression on you. Who was that person? How did they get into the picture? What happened before the picture? What happened after? Were they happy in their lives? Did they die young?
Normal people don't wonder about strangers long dead.
4) You get busy with a manuscript and don't remember you've got something cooking until you smell the pan burning and the smoke detector goes off.
Normally we call these people absent minded, but this happens to writers all the time.
5) You bounce urgently out of bed, looking for pencil and paper, because - in 5 seconds - you're going to forget how that sentence should go and the perfect way it's expressed (in your mind) will be lost forever.
Normal people just roll over and go back to sleep
Normal people don't wonder about these things.
2) You see someone crying on the train, and think about it the rest of the day. What had happened? Who were those people she was with? Did she feel better later? What was going through the minds of the rest of the people in the car?
Normal people don't think about something like this the rest of the day.
3) You look at a photograph from 100 years ago and a face in it makes an impression on you. Who was that person? How did they get into the picture? What happened before the picture? What happened after? Were they happy in their lives? Did they die young?
Normal people don't wonder about strangers long dead.
4) You get busy with a manuscript and don't remember you've got something cooking until you smell the pan burning and the smoke detector goes off.
Normally we call these people absent minded, but this happens to writers all the time.
5) You bounce urgently out of bed, looking for pencil and paper, because - in 5 seconds - you're going to forget how that sentence should go and the perfect way it's expressed (in your mind) will be lost forever.
Normal people just roll over and go back to sleep
November 29, 2014
Is It a Prologue? Really?
Coming off a discussion of what a "prologue" is, I'm concerned, again, about the confusion that seems to be hovering around the concept of it.
Many beginning authors seem to think that it's like the TV Guide description — only longer.
What they're actually providing is a "synopsis" — a summary of the book (up to a point) that typically appears on on the dust jacket, and is one kind of sales tool to get a buyer to take the book to the register and become that book's owner.
A "synopsis" is a mistake when it explains Every Single Thing a Book Is Trying to Do. And I've even seen some that give away the story's ending (disaster).
A "prologue" is "bait in the water" and a far more useful tool for selling an e-book: since it naturally appears in the book sample. The best "prologues" generate a "read" decision in the reader: as in "wow ... I need to read this".
Startling is better. Short is better. And, in many cases, no prologue at all is the best option.
Many beginning authors seem to think that it's like the TV Guide description — only longer.
What they're actually providing is a "synopsis" — a summary of the book (up to a point) that typically appears on on the dust jacket, and is one kind of sales tool to get a buyer to take the book to the register and become that book's owner.
A "synopsis" is a mistake when it explains Every Single Thing a Book Is Trying to Do. And I've even seen some that give away the story's ending (disaster).
A "prologue" is "bait in the water" and a far more useful tool for selling an e-book: since it naturally appears in the book sample. The best "prologues" generate a "read" decision in the reader: as in "wow ... I need to read this".
Startling is better. Short is better. And, in many cases, no prologue at all is the best option.
April 6, 2014
Baseball Has Begun
This is the preface to the stage play "Giants". A play originally written in 2006.
***
It may be a mandate of human nature that the kind of wistfulness associated with the phrase “a slower, gentler time” applies strictly to years that we just barely remember — or eras that need to be reported to us, because we have no memory of them at all.
Perhaps that phrase will always summarize the essential difference between the Living — who have all kinds of urgencies forced upon them — and the Dead, who are much more relaxed, and are not in a position to argue about any attributes we might give them.
When it comes to baseball, Nostalgia is central to the Game, and Nostalgia has its very own temple on a leafy street in upstate New York: in Cooperstown.
But, in the case of the “dead ball” era, Nostalgia can only take us so far. As anyone who takes the time to read the old newspaper reports will quickly discover, and — as this play takes some time to point out — the game back then was a much leaner, much meaner, much faster, much nastier version of what happens on the baseball diamond now.
It was a game, intended to be played by children, played by men. They were not exactly the dregs of society. But they were, obviously, men with nothing better to do with themselves. It was a serious, industrial, ambitious culture in America — and to give up serious life and a serious career to be a ball player....
Well, it could drive a mother to tears to know that one of her boys had thoughts like that.
And these men — many of them raised on farms, many of them functionally illiterate, and most of them seeing baseball as the best job that they would ever have — brought their hardscrabble, hard-nosed attitudes to the ball park with them every day that they played.
For me, a simple thing like the time of play summarizes the difference between old and new most effectively. Interestingly, the differential between old and new works out to be almost even.
There were two games played between the Phillies and the Giants on September 2, 1915. Both games were played in natural sunlight: late enough in the day so that working men could slip away from their employment and catch the games on the way home. The doubleheader began at three o’clock in the afternoon, and ended a little after six in the evening. The game described in this script, itself — a full regulation game, with 27 outs counted for each side — lasted one hour, thirty-five minutes.
A typical televised game from our modern era comes in at around three hours. So the ratio is very close to two-to-one.
Depending on how you look at it, the “old” was played at twice the speed of the “new”.
Or the “new” is being played at half the speed of the “old”. (This is the way I tend to look at it.)
I think many modern fans would be disconcerted by the daring and recklessness of the old game.
Players had jobs to protect, and there were no “million dollar” arms or legs to be factored in. Even though the baseball used in 1915 was the first in the long series of “rabbit” balls, with tighter winding, the game of that time was a display of speed and opportunism.
A home run was an unusual event and the majority of the hitters were still using heavy bats and a kind of short, chopping motion: just trying to get the ball through the infield. Once on base, they couldn’t wait there for a “dinger”. The first thought was how to advance: by stealing, hit-and-run, or some other device.
The pitcher, the focus of the defense, was king of the game — and many of the astonishing records for pitching were set during that era. Students of the sport can argue, justifiably, that the two pitchers featured here — Alexander and Mathewson — were not even the best of the breed.
Walter Johnson and Cy Young won many more games than either of these two.
But, in taking these men, and looking at the game they played in the early au-tumn of 1915, I hoped to look at differences in character.
Distinctions between two people: where they came from, what they were like, how they arrived at the place they did, and what finally happened to each one.
They met, they talked, they pitched, and then they moved on. Mathewson to his tragic early death. Alexander to a lonely boarding house in the heartland. The game mixed young and old, smart and dull, large and small, rich and poor.
That it did not mix black and white is known to everyone, and the opportunity that was missed — to see the best players, of whatever shade of skin, on the field together, matching their skills — is something that we all have to regret.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to have a corner of the old game where Nostalgia does not prevail.
It would be wonderful to say that this play was written in close communication with the spirits of Ancient Baseball, amid the graceful streets of Cooperstown: the modern Valhalla where so many heroes of the Old Game rest in a state of grace.
It would be nice to say that.
But, having been on the receiving end of so many of these tales of vacations disguised as work, I’ll be brutally honest and confess that this play was, mostly, the fruit of about an hour and half bumping around on the Internet.
That was to research the team rosters, which contain several players — Bobby Schang comes to mind — who played the game for a brief period, and then left it, or were left behind.
Even had I been physically present in Cooperstown, not everyone who played September 2, 1915 has a place in the Hall, and — without the Internet to assist me — it would probably have taken months to track down the information about these little-known players that I was able to gather in one night sitting in front of the computer.
In researching the game, I will also be permanently in the debt of the Philadelphia Phillies organization: who responded to my initial e-mail request with a list of the four documented games where the two Hall-of-Famers, Mathewson and Alexander, appeared opposite one another.
And appreciation is due to the staff of the Philadelphia Free Library, who — for the modest sum of one dollar — dived into their microfilm archives and pulled up the line scores, printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer of September 3, 1915, for the double-header against the Giants played at the Polo Grounds the previous day.
The box score for the game was recreated from the line score, and — although the game might not have gone exactly as the pitchers describe it — I’ll be content with the play-by-play until someone who was actually there tells me where I went wrong.
For anyone interested in learning more about the “dead ball” era, my reading list is mercifully short. There are a lot of general baseball histories: where the bunt-and-steal game seems to simply be awaiting the Coming of the Babe. But, for the true flavor of baseball before World War I, a book called The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence Ritter) can’t be beat.
These are the men of the “dead ball” era in their own words, and I think Mr. Ritter has done baseball fans everywhere a tremendous service in gathering their recollections before they were lost.
***
It may be a mandate of human nature that the kind of wistfulness associated with the phrase “a slower, gentler time” applies strictly to years that we just barely remember — or eras that need to be reported to us, because we have no memory of them at all.
Perhaps that phrase will always summarize the essential difference between the Living — who have all kinds of urgencies forced upon them — and the Dead, who are much more relaxed, and are not in a position to argue about any attributes we might give them.
When it comes to baseball, Nostalgia is central to the Game, and Nostalgia has its very own temple on a leafy street in upstate New York: in Cooperstown.
But, in the case of the “dead ball” era, Nostalgia can only take us so far. As anyone who takes the time to read the old newspaper reports will quickly discover, and — as this play takes some time to point out — the game back then was a much leaner, much meaner, much faster, much nastier version of what happens on the baseball diamond now.
It was a game, intended to be played by children, played by men. They were not exactly the dregs of society. But they were, obviously, men with nothing better to do with themselves. It was a serious, industrial, ambitious culture in America — and to give up serious life and a serious career to be a ball player....
Well, it could drive a mother to tears to know that one of her boys had thoughts like that.
And these men — many of them raised on farms, many of them functionally illiterate, and most of them seeing baseball as the best job that they would ever have — brought their hardscrabble, hard-nosed attitudes to the ball park with them every day that they played.
For me, a simple thing like the time of play summarizes the difference between old and new most effectively. Interestingly, the differential between old and new works out to be almost even.
There were two games played between the Phillies and the Giants on September 2, 1915. Both games were played in natural sunlight: late enough in the day so that working men could slip away from their employment and catch the games on the way home. The doubleheader began at three o’clock in the afternoon, and ended a little after six in the evening. The game described in this script, itself — a full regulation game, with 27 outs counted for each side — lasted one hour, thirty-five minutes.
A typical televised game from our modern era comes in at around three hours. So the ratio is very close to two-to-one.
Depending on how you look at it, the “old” was played at twice the speed of the “new”.
Or the “new” is being played at half the speed of the “old”. (This is the way I tend to look at it.)
I think many modern fans would be disconcerted by the daring and recklessness of the old game.
Players had jobs to protect, and there were no “million dollar” arms or legs to be factored in. Even though the baseball used in 1915 was the first in the long series of “rabbit” balls, with tighter winding, the game of that time was a display of speed and opportunism.
A home run was an unusual event and the majority of the hitters were still using heavy bats and a kind of short, chopping motion: just trying to get the ball through the infield. Once on base, they couldn’t wait there for a “dinger”. The first thought was how to advance: by stealing, hit-and-run, or some other device.
The pitcher, the focus of the defense, was king of the game — and many of the astonishing records for pitching were set during that era. Students of the sport can argue, justifiably, that the two pitchers featured here — Alexander and Mathewson — were not even the best of the breed.
Walter Johnson and Cy Young won many more games than either of these two.
But, in taking these men, and looking at the game they played in the early au-tumn of 1915, I hoped to look at differences in character.
Distinctions between two people: where they came from, what they were like, how they arrived at the place they did, and what finally happened to each one.
They met, they talked, they pitched, and then they moved on. Mathewson to his tragic early death. Alexander to a lonely boarding house in the heartland. The game mixed young and old, smart and dull, large and small, rich and poor.
That it did not mix black and white is known to everyone, and the opportunity that was missed — to see the best players, of whatever shade of skin, on the field together, matching their skills — is something that we all have to regret.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to have a corner of the old game where Nostalgia does not prevail.
It would be wonderful to say that this play was written in close communication with the spirits of Ancient Baseball, amid the graceful streets of Cooperstown: the modern Valhalla where so many heroes of the Old Game rest in a state of grace.
It would be nice to say that.
But, having been on the receiving end of so many of these tales of vacations disguised as work, I’ll be brutally honest and confess that this play was, mostly, the fruit of about an hour and half bumping around on the Internet.
That was to research the team rosters, which contain several players — Bobby Schang comes to mind — who played the game for a brief period, and then left it, or were left behind.
Even had I been physically present in Cooperstown, not everyone who played September 2, 1915 has a place in the Hall, and — without the Internet to assist me — it would probably have taken months to track down the information about these little-known players that I was able to gather in one night sitting in front of the computer.
In researching the game, I will also be permanently in the debt of the Philadelphia Phillies organization: who responded to my initial e-mail request with a list of the four documented games where the two Hall-of-Famers, Mathewson and Alexander, appeared opposite one another.
And appreciation is due to the staff of the Philadelphia Free Library, who — for the modest sum of one dollar — dived into their microfilm archives and pulled up the line scores, printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer of September 3, 1915, for the double-header against the Giants played at the Polo Grounds the previous day.
The box score for the game was recreated from the line score, and — although the game might not have gone exactly as the pitchers describe it — I’ll be content with the play-by-play until someone who was actually there tells me where I went wrong.
For anyone interested in learning more about the “dead ball” era, my reading list is mercifully short. There are a lot of general baseball histories: where the bunt-and-steal game seems to simply be awaiting the Coming of the Babe. But, for the true flavor of baseball before World War I, a book called The Glory of Their Times (Lawrence Ritter) can’t be beat.
These are the men of the “dead ball” era in their own words, and I think Mr. Ritter has done baseball fans everywhere a tremendous service in gathering their recollections before they were lost.
