The Less Said ...

I just ran across this on Twitter:

@TIMECulture: J. K. Rowling's new revelations about "Harry Potter" make the books look worse in retrospect http://wp.me/p5HMd-fgiN 

The piece it links to (spoiler ... I think) says, in short, that as Rowling explains and reveals various details in the backstory to the Harry Potter universe, all she does is show how much material she left out and should have included, or perhaps that she is simply spinning out a lot of stuff that is just irrelevant.  Which got me to thinking about a couple of things on creative work.

One is the story of a Dadaist artist (IIRC), who when questioned about the meaning of one of his pieces, answered by reciting the alphabet. What he meant, I was told, was that it wasn't his job to impose meaning on the work, but that the viewer was meant to take his own meaning.  The art, in other words, meant whatever it meant for the viewer.

In another moment I remember from school, we were assigned to work on scripts for an English class.  The teacher explained at one point that one should be careful of adding too many instructions behind the spoken lines.  What would remain for the actor or director to interpret if every word comes with descriptions of how to deliver it?  (eg: Jack: (angrily) "I won't do it!")  As a matter of fact, the teacher said, look at Shakespeare's plays.  Aside from instructions to enter or exit ("exeunt" -- always loved that) and the occasional clamour in distance, there are virtually no instructions at all.  The writing itself should carry the meaning.

By corollary, Stephen King in his excellent little book, On Writing, wages war on adverbs, snatching away and murdering them, then burying the bodies without a trace on nearly every page.  And visually, there is a rule of thumb in television news that a well-shot and edited story can be presented with only hard cuts between each shot -- no dissolves or other fancy transitions to cover jarring changes of scene or jump cuts.  And if this is done right, the piece will move smoothly from one shot to the next.

So good art: make your point, present what you want.  Just do it and walk away.  It should speak for itself.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Accidental Art

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.

 - "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel

I was reminded when a clip of "Mrs. Robinson" played on the radio of how impressed I am with the lyricism of Paul Simon's work.  This first occurred to me when "Graceland" came out in 1986.  It's not that I was unfamiliar with his stuff before (How could anyone who lived in the 60s and 70s not be?) but that I first noticed how finely built the words in his songs were.

It's not that they are musical, or even poetic.  They seem to rise out of normal conversation, but in those moments of golden, accidental beauty that occasionally happens, phrases that flow so easily -- even when they are commonplace, or seem commonplace -- that they become musical.  It was while listening to the songs in "Graceland" that I first thought the Simon was actually an incredible writer of short stories who happens to set them to music.

Not to take anything from Simon -- I'm sure he labors mightily over ensuring just the right word lands in just the right place -- but this makes me think of what I've come to call "accidental art."  In my case, it usually comes in the form of things that have fallen in a perfect place, things that I find it hard, if not impossible, not to photograph.  This is one of the reasons I'm never to be seen without a camera, if not several of them.

Ironically, many of the pictures I make in these circumstances are done with the iPhone, because it's not only convenient but the right medium for the ephemeral purpose for me of many of these pictures.  I shoot 'em, put them on Facebook, and move on.  Others, however, are more permanent and either get shot with the Leica or double shot.

These columns, pulled off and stacked in front of a house undergoing renovation, were an irresistible subject to me for weeks, and I'm sure I will feel delight in their rediscovery when I finally process the film.

But the point here is: It's all accidental.  These things weren't placed or sculpted or planned.  They just fell where they did.  The art comes in the seeing of it, and then the capture.  Paul Simon could have overheard all those phrases in "Mrs. Robinson,"  but were they in that order?  And how the music slides with and compliments them ...

Meanwhile, On the Internet ...

"While I’m all in favor of this new world of media startups, where truly well-intentioned people are trying to figure out how the heck to make money from journalism on the Internet, I just need to step up right now and call bullshit on pretty much all the algorithms. Cause you guys just aren’t understanding the importance of a good writer."

So says Erin Biba, "a talented, experienced, smart  science writer."  As she explains, in her short, easy to read, and worthwhile post, "I love the idea of a new world of media that exists solely on the Internet. And I really, really want to be part of it. But I also want to pay my rent and feed my cat. I don’t think that’s a lot to ask. In fact, I’m gonna go ahead and say I’m pretty irritated that I have to ask at all. Actually, screw that, I’m INSULTED by how much you’re trying to pay me. Or not pay me."

Of course, I'm doing this for free, so ...

Speaking of free, Maria Tornberg did a blog post a while back on that very subject.  "In the last week I have found myself in several very uncomfortable situations where I was asked to work for free. First by a person I know, the second time by someone I know a little less and the third time by a stranger," She starts.  "Yes, you heard right. I was approached by people who asked me to do a job, at a day and time suitable to them, without getting paid."

Her point is that we are undermining our own value.  "If you hire me, pay me, with money ... I have bills to pay. I have a company. I‘m an entrepreneur who happens to be an artist."

Finally, Mathew Ingram, referring to another piece, explained a while back that Journalism isn't evolving.  It's being totally replaced by things we don't think of as "journalism."

"On a local level," he says, by way of example, "a whole series of websites and services from LocalWiki or Everyblock to Pinwheel are providing people with information about their neighborhoods ... And many people are duplicating what they used to get from their newspaper by using Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms."

So I'm not sure where that money Tornberg hopes we'll get is coming from, at least in my case.

On Writing

"I hate writing, I love having written."

- Dorothy Parker

There was another ugly gap in this blog recently.  Now, things were busy and I was moving (not to mention work, where I have taken on a massive project) but I also did promise not to do that again.  But here's the thing: I also want to do this right.

I'm now old enough, I think, to more appreciate the subtlety -- the deep, hard-to-describe, almost microscopic shades --  of things, and this can hardly apply more to anything than writing.

Lately, inspired by a friend's recent reading habits and aided by having to go through all my boxed up books, I have started rereading classic works of literature.  In the first encounter, I think, you can recognize something as great, as special.  I'm not saying that when younger we can't appreciate things, but so much of the world is new and fresh; the range of possibilities can be lost in the novelty of that first experience.

I wonder: As a general rule, what we consider "great literature" -- the classic novels, the truly timeless writing that has been proven such by the passage of time -- is wasted on the young.  In youth, we haven't experienced things personally to truly see and understand the depth, the tones of gray, the subtle range of color in great writing.  It's all too easy for us then to be impressed by flashy tricks or bored by less showy gradation.  Only in age do we appreciate the hard work in tiny changes, that there is one word that is the right word for that place.  All the others are not as good.

As an example, listen to the NPR story on some of the great poets of the 20th Century reading their work at the 92nd Street Y.  These are people who slaved over every word, every syllable.  Should a line end on a hard sound, or a soft sibilant one?  Did my joy in building that tiny little alliteration in the last sentence add, or just create a tautology?

Now, I don't think for a second that my blogging is ever going to reach the level of great writing -- I know I am no Samuel Pepys -- but I do want to do this well ... perhaps just to the level of being happy with it when I read it again in a year or so, having forgotten the details and moments that inspired it and the struggle that went into composing it.

But I promise I'll keep trying ... more frequently.

It's Just Hair

So on Friday the Virginia Tech baseball team held a "Shave for the Brave" event, where team members had their heads shaved in solidarity with pediatric cancer victims ... and ideally to raise money for the St. Baldrick's Foundation.

When Tara Wheeler, one of the anchors on the Fox 21/27 Morning News where I work, got the call to take part, I hear them ask her on the phone: "We know you shaved your head a few years ago for St. Baldrick's, so we won't ask you to do it, but maybe you could challenge someone on your show."  I'm standing there right in front of her, and her eyes raise up as she says, "Hey, Bruce, you wanna' get your head shaved?"

"Uh, sure."

Jennifer, my wife, posted an after picture of me on Facebook, and the "Likes" and supportive comments rolled in -- things like "very brave move" and "way to go."  That was pleasant and rewarding, but after a while I began to think: It's not like I really did anything.  I mean, it does open the conversation about contributing towards finding a cure for pediatric cancer, but that requires no particular sacrifice from me, and I'm very happy to say I have no particular experience the cause.  It's not like I'm actually working on a cure, or suffering in some way.  In the end, I just cut my hair.

So join with the baseball players at Virginia Tech (for whom losing their hair was I bet more jarring that it is for me) and give.  I'll take your admiration and comments on other stuff.

"We Will Rock You"

Max Raabe.

Found this the other day while looking around at other stuff.  I remember in high school, when it was first released, thinking -- as I still do -- that this and its companion, "We Are the Champions," were expressing remarkably fascist ideas.  In other words, the lyrics could be transferred wholesale to the mouth of a young Hitler and not seem out of place.

That's not to say I condemn the song or its sentiments; it simply is a statement of overcoming perceived injustice to a position of superiority -- "No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions."  And certainly the bizarre racial theories of Hitler and his fascists is totally absent.  It was just interesting to me that you could have performed it, probably to rousing cheers, in the beer halls of Munich in 1929.

Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester also fascinate me in general.  I happen to like 20s style music, but I also truly enjoy taking things out of context and looking at them again in a radically different way.

There's also an excellent version of Bohemian Rhapsody done as bluegrass ...

I Feel Awful

As moving has drawn to a close, I am exhausted and muscle sore, but that's not really the awful that I'm thinking of.

Part of my move -- and perhaps it should be part of every move -- is the dismissal and disposal of stuff.  It's the stuff that you've gotten over the years and have clung to for tenuous and amorphous reasons: old paperback books, random desk items, toys from childhood.  Sure, some can be precious and full of meaning, but most are things you just cling to.

In my case, this is often books.  It has become my standing joke that I have to get past the feeling that I am a monk in the Dark Ages, clinging to the last copy of Aristotle while ignorant peasants outside demand the paper to use as kindling.  The fairly obscure, but still common, history books and science fiction books are being preserved elsewhere.  I am not the last bastion of knowledge and cultural memory.

However, this came home with a wrench as we finally got into the ancient garages where many of my books were stored.  It was a damp place, and a number of boxes were placed against an outside wall.  Put simply, the books were furry with mold.  This meant I couldn't just, with a bit of regret, send them off to Goodwill or the local library.  They had to go to the dumpster as garbage, lost forever to everyone.

That was tough, but it still wasn't the worst.

Further back in the garage were my father's books.  50 years of higher education, a personal library collected with care and interest.  Like my books, they are generally obscure and surely are in libraries elsewhere.  Indeed, after moving to Lexington, he made contact with both Stanford (where he got his MA and PhD) and the University of Virginia to see if they would be interested in his papers and library.  Both reacted impassively.  If an educational institution can shrug a collective "Meh," this is what they did.

So we carried his books and papers from house to house as we spiraled deeper into financial disaster, as we carried mine.  All his papers and speeches, articles and books.  There was a box of nothing but diplomas and certificates of appreciation, framed and mounted for display.  And of course, the books -- boxes and boxes and boxes of books -- the physical representation of a lifetime of work, all of it both meaningless and deeply meaningful to me.

They were meaningless in that, to be brutally frank, they held no interest.  Most all were obscure tomes on various aspects of college administration and history.  They were meaningful in that they were to him what my books are to me, a collective physical representation of the mind and soul.  Now, they were moist and rotting, destroyed by a damp garage, not even worthy of charity.

I died little deaths as each came out, the box blue with mold, constantly threatening to disintegrate.  I focused only on the hope that the rotting cardboard would hold together long enough to make it to the dumpster.  The frustrating image of twenty pounds of books spraying across the ground, forcing me to toss them one by one, at least gave me something more productive to focus on.

They're all gone now, along with many of my books, old papers, toys and furniture.  I tell myself it was good, the sort of purging self-help types stell us so often is necessary.

Yet the worry and regret remain.