Don’t study writing or literature in school. It will take you years to get your teachers’ falsehoods out of your head and rediscover your real voice, which only emerges from the conversation with the living audience. You and your audience must find each other, and all the colleges in the world exist only to prevent that, so you will be a tame writer instead of a promethean storyteller. Never lose touch with reality — don’t waste your time associating with the needy and pretentious writers for whom being a writer is an end in itself. Shun the litterateurs. Maintain your friendships with blue-collar people, or those who work those nine-to-five white-collar jobs. Know children and teenagers, listen to them and talk to them. Get over your high school ideas of who’s cool and who’s not — as soon as you think someone is not worth knowing or hearing, that is the very person who has most to teach you as a writer, and whom you must take the time to become acquainted with. Biography and history will teach you more about storytelling in any form than will belletristic literature. And, above all, write and then put the story out into the marketplace, moving on at once to the next project.
Excerpted from an interview with Orson Scott Card here.
We shouldn’t be writing about Harry Potter as a way to get people to read more highbrow stuff — according to Harold Bloom, Potter is valuable only if it leads young people to reading Kipling’s racist 19th-century Jungle Book or Just So Stories. Anyway, we shouldn’t be writing about Potter as a gateway to high art, but what we ought to bedoing is combing every word of Rowling’s books to figure out where the magic is — how does it work? And then we ought to be figuring out how to create similar magic on our stages.
I come from a working class family. I read like a fiend when I was growing up, everything from The Executioner series (sort of James Bond for the Average Joe) to Taylor Caldwell to Thomas Tryon to whatever I could get my hands on. And then I went to college, where I was taught about high art, important art, and given all the tools and the words to value those things, and my brain was scrambled and rearranged. And now I can’t get back. Now I can’t open a mystery novel without getting turned off by the two-dimensional characters. Now I can’t get swept away in an inspiring film like Pay It Forward without some part of my educated brain going “Kind of maudlin, ain’t it? And isn’t it significant that the good kid had to die at the end?” We ruin kids with our insistence on things being difficult, and obscure, and morally ambiguous, and narratively complex. We take away the pleasure of art, and substitute some pale imitation called “intellectual stimulation.” And it is damaging. And now over at Parabasis poor Isaac is feeling puzzled and maybe a little bit guilty because he is too tired to get into Don DeLillo’s latest novel. He wonders whether he has failed DeLillo, or vice versa, because he experiences “a certain resistence when reading for pleasure to really embrace difficulty in prose styling.”
And I want to cry out: “It’s not too late, Isaac! Turn back! Your resistance to the work involved with deciphering DeLillo’s “prose styling” is a sign that you haven’t yet lost your heart, your ability to appreciate a good, rip-roaring tale well told! You don’t want to end up like me when you’re in your 40s — unable to read a novel just for the buzz of it without insisting on some sort of message, some sort of puzzle! Run down to your grocery store or wherever they only stock the top 20 bestsellers and buy the latest mystery and read it as fast as you can for plot only — hell, skip the description parts, just read the dialogue. But as Jacob Marley said to Scrooge on his deathbed, ‘Save…yourself!’ It’s not too late.”
Excerpted from the full article on the Theatre Ideas blog here.
There is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.
One of the ways to think about music is that it reflects the structure of basic thought—a process that synthesizes intellectual, emotional, and sensory experience. Inasmuch as music mirrors patterns of thought, it can serve as a kind of X-ray of our interior dialogue and illuminate ways in which we create meaning.
Harmony-based music, like classical or popular music, is built horizontally in sequences of tension to release, conflict to resolution, doubt to certainty. The music progresses like a narrative, through linear time, to a conclusion. Some music, like some storytelling, is more predictable because the grammar of the harmony is more familiar. And even when the harmony is alien we unconsciously process its meaning because of the nature of resolution and because of its progression through time.
On the other hand, rhythm-based music, like traditional African drum music, is not structured around resolution. It is built vertically in repeated patterns of rhythm and melody layered on top of each other with increasing complexity and tension to form an organic whole. It is sustained in a kind of continuous present and expresses a spiritual and sacred relationship to the natural world. The music doesn’t aim to resolve, does not drive to a conclusion. It doesn’t end. It just stops.
There is a woman in Kigali who pushes a bicycle up a mountain every day. She is barefoot in the rain, and on her bicycle, soaked and mud-scarred, a passenger carries a load of goods. She walks bent forward and unavailable. When she sees me drive by in a car, she averts her eyes. I see her very clearly, though, and her image lingers in my mind in a constant, irrepressible echo. Her task seems impossible to me—Sisyphean. I can’t imagine how she continues or what she is thinking. But gradually I realize that there are different modes of thought and perception, different experiences of life, and liken them to the differences in the structures of harmony- and rhythm-based music. I begin to understand that the relationship to time, to value, to purpose, to ourselves—our basic existential tooling—is not a god-given inheritance but is, like music, a cultural construction. And this leaves me profoundly confused, dangling between two great fictions of existence: mine, in which there is no meaning without resolution, and hers, in which the idea of resolution has no meaning.
Excerpted from The Walrus Magazine, May, 2007. The full article can be read online here
So I was sitting with P, pretending to be an artist after having spent the afternoon watching cartoons on the internet, when someone (it may have been me) announced the idea: Maybe faith and chocolate are not so far removed from each other as we might think. I know for a fact that the easter bunny is an artist (because who else could come up with such an idea!!!?). and that most artists are actually faith workers taken out of context. So I decided to photograph the evidence and give their listed names.
I found a loose cement slab outside the ice cream store,
tossed it aside and began to dig;
the earth was soft and full of worms
and soon I was in to my waist, size 36;
a crowd gathered but stepped back before my shots of mud and by the time the police came, I was in below my head frightening gophers, eels, and finding bits of golden inlaid skull
and they asked me, are you looking for oil, treasure,
gold, the end of China? are you looking for love, God,
a lost key chain? and little girls dripping ice cream
peered into my darkness, and a psychiatrist came
and a college professor and a movie actress in a bikini, and a Russian spy and a French spy and an English spy,
and a drama critic and a bill collector and an old
girl friend, and they all asked me, what are you
looking for? and soon it began to rain . . . atomic submarines
changed course, Tuesday Weld hid behind a newspaper,
Jean-Paul Sartre rolled in his sleep, and my hole
filled with water; I came out black as Africa, shooting
stars and epitaphs, my pockets full of lovely worms,
and they took me to their jail and gave me a shower
and a nice cell, rent-free, and even now the people
are picketing in my cause, and I have signed
contracts to appear of the stage and television,
to write a guest column for the local paper and
write a book and endorse some products, I have
enough money to last me several years at the best
hotels, but as soon as I get out of here, I’m gonna
find me another loose slab and begin to dig, dig,
and this time I’m not coming back . . . rain, shine,
or bikini, and the reporters keep asking, why did you
do it? but I just light my cigarette and smile . . .
Though I eat with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not cookies, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not cookies, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not cookies, it profiteth me nothing. Cookies suffereth long, and are kind; cookies envieth not; cookies vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, cookies, these three; but the greatest of these is cookies.
- re-adapted from George Orwell’s version of the Biblical text 1 Corinthians 13
Everything is possessed except the imagination. We have laboured through a theatre whose naturalism has consigned imagination to the same dustbin as fantasy. The task of the theatre is not to produce cohesion or the myth of solidarity but to return the individual to himself. Not ‘We must act!’ but ‘Are we thus?’.
It is a simple task to persuade an audience of a character’s evil. The important talk is to persuade the audience of its potential or actual participation in evil. A moral theatre is not one which seperates the sheep from the goats (the exploited, the exploiter) but accuses the exploited also.
Plays are much too short. The manager likes the short play, it fits his wage bills. The writer of short plays thinks ‘they will grow impatient with me!’ Because truth is complex, art is also complex. It cannot be smashed to fit the timetable of trains.
One day a play will be written for which men and women will miss a day’s work. It is likely this play itself will be experienced as work.
I think this is the sweetest thing I can remember being given. Words from a friend:
Stormchild,
you catalyse the sky
Thunder smile,
Bringer of change
Embracer of the strange
Embody yourself always
Though time may fly,
always try
to be you
Shedding truth
Beauty embodied
through lifes follies,
It’s all about you,
see the clues…
choices,
yours alway
Tender support
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
There are those rare occasions when somehow , someone that has spent some time around me , and tries to figure out why I am the way I am…… Treeplanting is one of those few places where people have actually listened to me , { they feel a commitment to their job security…. } So I have told a story about ‘ the flood ‘ . ………..+++= diversion # 1 … { This is not the fable about how when I was in grade six , a semi-albino big-nosed kid attending a Catholic school ,,, who did the stations of the cross ,…. and was stunned by man’s inhumanity …. and was given two bus tokens by a crossed - eyed { bless her soul } disciplinarian Nun named Sister Benedict , to travel to the concrete artifices of the National Film Board deep in the bowels of downtown Vancouver to retrieve moral entertainment , offsetted by a full confectionery, every Friday .. I had done this often , and whatever instinctive or exploited reasons she recognized that I was capable of the task, I was comfortable with it. One late Autumn day, my twelve year old mind was thinking about the Big Picture ….. { the greatest story ever told } … so I was not paying attention to reality. History , and the Canadian Meteorological records will show that in , and beyond October and early November , 1967 , it had rained steadily in the Lower Mainland…. 40 DAYS and 40 NIGHTS . I arrived successfully , and picked up the chosen film , and left the Government building to realize that Pender Street was two feet under water. Back then , filled with some simple trust, I waded through the two feet of rushing water , walked five blocks , and caught the # 14 home. The film was forgettable. …………. I have never told this story . But why the sounds of rain disturbs me….. I have. Five years ago , at our cabin in the Nambucca , it rained 734 ml in 5 days. 3/4 of a metre . Although our cabin is on a hill , it quickly became an island . At one point , as the surrounding forest was swept away . I become concerned for the vehicle I had moved to higher ground across the river , and I attempted to cross . Now this is usually a sweet , swimmable creek that offers solace on hot summer days . I stood before the raging torrent , and decided , slowly , to get a rope to secure myself in case I fell, and would be swept away. Tied to a huge eucalypti , I stood for awhile watching the incredible force of nature blast by….. waiting for the right moment to cross. Eventually I unhooked myself , and went to the cabin and lit the wood stove, . Life is hard . Then you die… a little rain will fall . But I will tell you ,…… I stayed there for 10 days and ate only oats and drank tea …. and when I hear a heavy rain on a tin roof , especially in Nambucca , I wonder what I will do next time I think I need to cross ………… and still Kim doesn’t understand why I am going back
I’m not sure how I ended up here at 6 am on a Tuesday morning…. but it’s alright.
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
What do I mean by a True Man? The True Man of ancient times did not rebel against want, did not grow proud in plenty, and did not plan his affairs. A man like this could commit an error and not regret it, could meet with success and make a show. A man like this could climb high places and not be frightened, could enter the water and not get wet, could enter the fire and not get burned. His knowledge was able to climb all the way up to the Way like this.
The True Man of ancient times slept without dreaming and woke without care; he ate without savouring and his breath came from deep inside. The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats. Crushed and bound down, they gasp their words as though they were retching. Deep in their passions and desires, they are shallow in their workings of Heaven.
