Junkyard Quotes: Week of 4/17/11

1) “What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

-Voltaire

2) "[Language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible."

-George Orwell

3) “His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.’ “

-Terry Pratchett

4) “The future has arrived; it's just not evenly distributed."

-William Gibson

5) “I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."

-BBC News Magazine

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 4/10/11

I watched Jesus Camp this week, and so my mind is full of scenes and language from that film. It's too much to go into exactly how each quote makes me feel; I think I'd end up writing a (really boring) novel about it. So I'm just going to quote them this time.

"You don't make heroes out of warlocks!"

-Becky Fischer, Jesus Camp

"I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity."

-Becky Fischer, Jesus Camp

"It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!"

-Becky Fischer, Jesus Camp

"Did you get to the part yet where they say that science hasn't proven anything?"

-Levi's mother, Jesus Camp

"I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ."

-Levi, in Jesus Camp

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 4/3/11

Most of the junkyard quotes this week are long. I’m not sorry to make you read them!

1) “Language has the power to shape reality.”

-Dr. Lisa Gezon (UWG). It terrifies me that this is true, yet no one (outside academia) really talks about it.

2) “As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.”

-Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason. I could really quote the entire book and have nothing to add to this awesome sauce except to say that he later rants for a bit about the idiocy of studying languages. Specifically dead languages. He makes some valid and excellently articulated points in that argument, as well as a few statements to which I had a very horrified reaction: HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS TO ME, TOM?

Here’s some of it:

3) “The human mind has a natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first and favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds houses with cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the linguist.”

Among other things, he seems to have completely skipped over that little phase of infanthood where babies imitate the sounds they hear and begin to associate those sounds with meaning, i.e. begin to learn a language (or two). I won’t go into it because he's smarter than I am and I don't have all the tools necessary to successfully debate the issue, but that was probably the one part of his book (so far; I’m reading this in between schoolwork) that made me say NO. And SHUT UP.

Disclaimer: I’m a linguistic anthropology major. So there you have it.

4) “A culture that just uses a pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure, to be manipulated by whatever creative design the human can foist on that critter, will probably view individuals within its community, and other cultures in the community of nations, with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentalities.”

-Joel Salatin, in Food, Inc. I really have nothing to add to it, other than to say that it was the only time during the entire unforgettable viewing experience that I said “YES” aloud. That’s exactly how I’ve felt about what is perhaps one of the most trivial-seeming things in our daily lives: driving by roadkill. The closer we associate ourselves to something, the more likely we are to stop. Who wouldn’t stop for another human being? All other conditions being equal, it’d be more likely for someone to stop or slow down for a cat or a dog than a mouse or a squirrel, and for a squirrel or a mouse than a caterpillar. We don’t even know how many ants we run over every day. Who cares? Exactly.

5) “When you look at it, to have Martha play that scene (and no one questioned it—what that meant, or what the alternatives could have been underneath the dialogue), it’s mind boggling. The profundity of this subject was not in the lexicon of our rehearsal period. Audrey and I never talked about this. Isn’t that amazing? Truly amazing.”

Shirley MacLaine, in The Celluloid Closet. Some people tell me that it’s impossible for a writer to not know the entire potential of her own work (whether that potential be in setting, character work, theme, etc.), that every choice on how to use (or not use) that potential is, by default, done with her full awareness. Essentially, that it's impossible for a writer to shortchange her own subject matter or character, or to even write contrary to where the characters, themes, etc., seem to be naturally headed towards. I can’t agree with that at all, and it’s something I’m very mindful of (maybe too mindful or maybe still not mindful enough, being too concerned with other aspects of the work). We only have to point to how LGBT characters have been written and portrayed in history and even now to see there are many things writers (and actors) overlook, whether it’s deliberate or accidental. If I didn't believe other examples, I still have my own work, where I don't know how many drafts of a certain short story of mine (which I'm now torturing Professor Ellison with) I've gone through until I'm finally (this weekend) beginning to catch the heart of the matter, where the characters live and what their voices are, rather than the garbled mess that I've been hoisting onto them.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 3/28/11

1) "They are all subsistence farmers, and if they don't have a good harvest, they starve."

The CEO of GoDaddy explaining his elephant-hunting. That's neither here nor there for me at the moment. What struck me was his use of the word "subsistence" as a category of farming societies, rather than farming as a type of subsistence society. I'm so used to the anthropological use of the word "subsistence" that it throws me every time I hear someone use the phrase "subsistence farming." I guess one of the things about writing is to be aware that language evolves and that the same phrase might be nonsense in one context but have proper meaning in another. And not only that, but also to research whether or not a commonly used word or phrase is grammatically correct.

2) "There's a profound difference between 'I got outplayed today' vs. 'I choked'; implicit in the second is that your competitor could never have beaten you if you hadn't choked. It's a third rate, classless move and that's why truly fierce competitors never say it."

Someone on Television Without Pity message boards complaining about Richard Blais winning Top Chef. The breakdown of semantics would be an interesting discussion if not for the fact that it's a loaded argument to begin with: the poster isn't interested in debating the validity of both sides, only in presenting his or her own. I would argue, among other things, that "truly fierce" and "classless" are not automatically confined to either/or usage.

3) "You're having coffee alone at 7:30 in the morning."

Some guy on a tv show, explaining why the woman seated opposite him is single. Among other things, this attitude marks why I have an allergy to most romantic relationships on tv. The autonomy of female characters is forfeited almost by default. There are not enough BOOs and HISSes for that.

4) "While most reasonable people see women and men as equals, few (if any) dare to claim that femininity is masculinity's equal."

Julia Serano of Whipping Girl said this, and I'm unfamiliar with the series (or novel or whatever it is), but found this quote on TVTropes and felt compelled to think about it for a while. It's too much to go into, but I wonder sometimes at the implicit premise here: why is feminine value measured against masculinity to begin with? That reminds me of women in fiction who are "worthwhile" female role models, not because of what they're doing, but because they can do it as well as any man. When will we reach the point when that suggestion is met with a "What's 'man' got to do with it?"

Also from TVTropes:

5) "Anvilicious: A portmanteau of anvil and delicious, malicious or vicious, depending on the usage, anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head."

I mentioned Supernatural in my reaction to "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," and nothing describes exactly why I have gone from adoring the show to loathing the very faces of its heroes as well as this word. This is part of why "Popular Mechanics" worked for me so well and O'Connor's story didn't.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 3/21/11

1) "Some families will have lost everything but will be entitled to nothing, while others have the further indignity of having to continue repaying loans taken out on properties which no longer exist."

Telegraph.co.uk reporting on the tsunami/earthquake disaster in Japan. This is beyond comprehension to me, but I suppose corporations have lost a great deal of investments, too. I have to remind myself that, working in corporations that could also go under due to lost assets, are individuals and families. Still, you'd think after such a devastation, there would be a little clemency regarding loans. It made me think, perhaps bizarrely, of whether or not my novel is dealing with its own scenario of destruction with as much realism as possible. I have to be careful not to write a planet of hats, so to speak. Not everyone's loss is the same, nor do they all deal with the loss the same, nor will people ostensibly in the same "class" all have access to the same resources and for the same reasons. (I feel weird taking notes for my writing from an article like that, but it jumped out at me for some reason.)


2) Ursula K. Le Guin, regarding the theory that the only good sentence is a short sentence: "This is true for convicted criminals."

I love her. That's all. And a good reminder to me to not use an excessive amount of short sentences, which is a pattern I sometimes fall into for the rhythm of the story. Rhythm is good; short sentences over and over without end or emphasis are bad. In fact, they lose emphasis the more they're used. I get that, and I can only try to do better from now on.


3) "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shot her every minute of her life."

I can't argue with the sentiment when it comes to this particular granny, although I'm not sure she was actually any better at the end than she was at the beginning. That said, the reflection of the times in this line, specifically reflecting the casual mistreatment of women that was prevalent even in men who weren't killers, is what stands out the most to me. That it still happens all over the world, and that I work with men who would nod their heads, smiling, at this sentiment and think women overreact to it, makes me distinctly sick.


4) "Hey. Good evening. It's been real."

Eric Smith was continuously quotable throughout his Soup Kitchen reading, but I particularly liked the casual expressions of "Hey," rounding out the reading. For fear of going on too long about him and Katy Gunn, I'll just cut it off here and save the rest for my report on the Soup Kitchen reading. Short & sweet: they were amazing. They made me (very slightly) less afraid to read my own work aloud.


5) "Before the starry threshold of Jove's Court
My mansion is."
"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth."
John Milton

This quote was in my Astronomy text, and I just love it. I love all things that make me feel the vastness of the universe compared to us and the fluidity of time and space. It makes me feel that we can never know what it's all about or how or why, and that's an incredible feeling. It's so much more exciting to me to feel that I'm part of the universe, just another part, rather than to think that humans are all that and then some, because that would speak poorly of the universe, if true.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 3/14/11

1) “There are no cars on the roads, yet people wait at the pedestrian crossings until green man comes on, to cross the road.”

BBC reporting on what media has called the Japanese people’s “stoic calm.”

2) "She kept her status hidden from me. At the time, there were all sorts of rumours. People in Tokyo said 'Don't marry someone from Hiroshima, you will be contaminated'."

The husband of a Hiroshima survivor, Hiroko Tanaka, who waited 50 years (the article said) before applying for the certificate to prove to the government that she was a survivor of the atom bomb of 1945.

3) “I think we should let them join and just send them to the front lines.”

A co-worker, on gay soldiers. I have too much of an emotional response to this to be coherent, probably.

4) “Over the last 30 years in the United States, how many people have died because of nuclear energy? The answer is none. Zero. Zip. But guess which energy industry has experienced 35 deaths over the last 30 years? Wind. Yup. The wind turbine industry is responsible for more deaths in the United States over the last 30 years than nuclear energy.”

Thanks, Boortz! I’m glad to know that wind is evil and must be stopped. Green kills, people! Green kills people! Totally missing the point about toxic waste and long-term health issues, to name just two concerns people generally have. Silly people! But I loved this response in the comments section the best: “And what's the source of this stat? How did these wind turbines kill 35 people? Probably more people have died in America over the past year from putting up Christmas lights than they have from Islamic terror. Does that mean that Christmas lights are more dangerous?”

In other “missing the point” news…

5) “You don’t believe we were given dominion over animals?”

The response was genuine disbelief when I said “No.” This was in response to me feeling upset over how this co-worker was handling a mouse caught in a trap. We didn’t have time to get into a debate over the origin of species, unfortunately, since he seemed to assume that we're both working from a creationist viewpoint, but it remains a hot topic for me that so many people engage in an either/or debate concerning animal cruelty. But even from that viewpoint: didn't he feel God created all life, and that the point of sacrifice is to impress on sinners the gravity of their sins? That has been my impression, rather than to shrug off the sin as just some more red tape in goat's blood and "Did you see that blood spraying? Awesome!"

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 2/28/11

I was reading Walt Whitman this weekend and just marveling at his use of language.

1.

"The sea whisper'd me."

2.

"Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet."

3.

"This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,

This is the common air that bathes the globe."

I can't explain in so many words why I love these three lines but I just do. There's something about them that takes me places in my mind much like abstract photography and an unexpected curve in music.

4.

"Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

I have tried forever since I first read this line to work it into conversation, but it might be just as well I haven't found a way so far, since I'd probably come across sounding as if I need therapy.

5.

This one I've kept as a junkyard quote long before I knew about junkyard quotes. The phrasing is less unexpected than some of his other phrases but still so beautiful, and the sense of unending is striking.

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 2/21/11

I was reading some of Jimmie Durham's poetry over the weekend, and I have some other junkyard quotes from earlier in the week, but I wanted to devote this post to him. I love his phrasing.

1.

"At the festival of remembering the dead, even armadillos and subway victims may dance in the sky."

2.

"Indian people still speak English as a second language, even if we no longer speak our own languages. That is the true meaning of illiteracy in a class society; one is not in control of the language one speaks."

3.

"Looking at old photographs of Geronimo,
I always get the feeling that he was going to shoot
the photographer."

4.

"The Indians of Brazil say that at first the duck
Was afraid of the river, and had a canoe made of clay.
But when the canoe was dissolved and he found
Himself in the river, he discovered he loved it."

5.

There is a drawing by Jimmie Durham in his book Columbus Day of a bird, and the description reads, "A loon calling stars down on his back." It's taken from a line in his poem, "A Woman Gave Me a Red Star to Wear on My Headband." He takes something very abstract and makes a gorgeous phrase out of it, a picture I can clearly see in my head even without the drawing.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 2/14/11

1) The broad-backed hippopotamus

Rests on his belly in the mud;

Although he seems so firm to us

He is merely flesh and blood.

-T. S. Eliot, "The Hippopotamus"

There's a great deal more to this poem than just these opening lines, more meaning than what I'm remarking on here, but how he phrased the firmness of the hippopotamus. So often as an aspiring writer, I've been told to place my efforts in something more worthwhile, more tangible and of the "real world" instead of my imagination, and I constantly feel that the output of our imagination, our intellect, our emotions, all of those intangible things are what last long after the physical crust is aged and gone.

2) Nearby, across the river, a lark had begun to twitter and climb. It was morning. A blackbird called one or two deep, slow notes and was followed by a wood pigeon. Soon they were in a gray twilight and could see that the stream bordered the further edge of the wood. On the other side lay open fields.

-Richard Adams, Watership Down

There are some passages in published fiction that feel so perfectly placed, so understatedly set up and gracefully delivered, that they stand out at me even more so than passages where great dialogues or epic events occur. This chapter's end in Watership Down is one that is so simple, yet given the events that came before and the events that will follow, there is such a strong sense of the story's full circle actively in play that it gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction to experience it with Hazel, the point-of-view character. Writers like Adams illustrate how rewarding the simplest lines and dialogue can be, when deftly placed to build character, plot and theme.

3) His face was that of one who has undergone a long journey.

-The Epic of Gilgamesh

This is such a simple line, yet it evokes such a great visual, such a strong sense of identity.

4) What is now proved was once only imagin'd.

-William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

There is more about this line that I love than I can ever express. It will never be made obsolete.

5) There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

-John Hersey, Hiroshima.

I've had this book for years. This is the last line of the first chapter. I can't quite pinpoint why this has stayed with me.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 2/7/11

(Everything is hopelessly late this week...)

1) “If cats looked like frogs, we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are.”

-Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

I happened across this on Thursday, and now I need this poem about cats who look like frogs.

2) “Interestingly enough, in [Elizabethan] times, many young men posed as ‘melancholy’ which translated to sad, troubled, fond of wearing black, and artistic. Making this trope Older Than Steam.”

-TVTropes, on the subject of Emo

I totally agree, but I think the Greeks also have to be considered, and I think Homer has the Elizabethans beat when it comes to the melodramatic nature of characterization. The Iliad and The Odyssey are protagonist whinefests wrapped up in extraordinarily textured backdrop of war and adventure. I love them both, but I love The Iliad a little bit more. (I’m bored by the two main protagonists, though. Diomedes is where it’s at.) 

3) “Enter into every man’s ruling faculty; and also let every other man enter into yours.”

-Marcus Aurelius

It’s the simplest thing: “Be open.” But I find it so hard in practice when it comes to my writing. I thought the hardest part was actually sharing it physically with others, but I’m finding it harder still to relax my writing itself. This happens to me on every level of writing. I’ve been trying to finish my book forever, but I keep self-editing and stopping the flow of the story dead in its tracks. I can’t seem to remember how to let the characters breathe freely. They do in my head, but by the time it gets on paper, they feel stilted and self-conscious.

4) “He’s like if Ziggy Stardust and Cyndi Lauper had a very magical, very gay baby with an unbelievable range and the ability to shoot glitter and cocaine and entire battalions of Pussycat Dolls out of his hoo-hah.”

-TWOP Jacob, on Adam Lambert

Read it on TWOP once upon a time, and I just love it. That’s all.

5) “I thought of this that water swallows and elation sighs

That pillows dream and autumn kills herself to feel revived”

-Chris Cornell, “Heart of Honey”

I’ve just about decided that I’m incapable of not going to Soundgarden every week for inspiration and to hope to find phrases that leap out at me. I expect the unexpected from them, which doesn’t make it unexpected but still doesn’t dilute the pleasant surprise of their phrasing. I love the imagery in these lines, and how he phrases it when he sings.

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 1/31/11

Everything is from Soundgarden today. I was going back through interviews and other articles, looking for some insight on the creative frame of mind, and a few of their quotes jumped out at me for various reasons. I love how no-nonsense they are, but more than that, I love how all four of them open themselves up freely to the creative process and let the music go where it will without trying to “structure” the music or lyrics to match any particular standard.

1) RIP Magazine (1996):

"To me, music should be escapism. It should be confrontational sometimes, to a degree. And if it's done correctly, it can be really powerful. More than being politically or socially aware, it should serve as something that doesn't have to be touched by outside problems, something that's immune to what we perceive as normal humanity. If I started writing songs based on what I saw around me, in the social or political arena exclusively, then I'd start feeling like a puppet, as if whatever happens tomorrow is going to dictate what I write the next day. And I don't want to live like that. I don't want music to mean that to me. I want something else, where tomorrow I'm going to create something that never existed anywhere, and the next day somebody is going to hear it. To me, that's a lot more exciting."

-Chris Cornell

"We approach it more like the song helps the sound. The song helps everything else. The song makes it."

-Ben Shepherd

2) The Guitar Magazine (1996):

"One of my favourite solos with the band is on Slaves and Bulldozers. When our A&R guy came in we played it to him, and he was like, 'This is finished? Huh? C'mon guys.' I just said, 'You don't get it, do you? That's it, finished!' To me it's great - it seems free, it's real kinetic, it gives the song this great jarring feel. Like Suicide is another one I like, but I play that note-for-note every time, the same patterns. Slaves and Bulldozers live is when I'm real free. I just approach the fretboard with a 'what do I do now?' attitude. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it doesn't work. That's what music is like."

-Kim Thayil

3) PULSE (1994):

"People said to me after Temple of the Dog, 'I didn't know you could sing like that. And I had a hard time explaining that, actually, Soundgarden records are much harder to sing. And the reason it seems like it's better is because, rather than being up against the wall all the time like usual, I'm being mellow and flying under the radar, so the points when [my voice] shoots up will seem more aggressive."

-Chris Cornell

4) Rolling Stone (1992):

"That's what happens in a society when music is exposed and hyped one song at a time. Whatever song they grab the ball and run with is the song they're gonna remember you for. There are a few songs that sound like Soundgarden in a nutshell. I don't think ‘Outshined’ is one of them, but that's the one all the kids cheer for. You might play a sing that you feel is the best thing you've done in a while, and it kind of falls on deaf ears; then you play that song half-heartedly, and they love it. It can be depressing if you let it."

–Chris Cornell

5) RIP Magazine (1994):

RIP: That line in "Black Hole Sun," "No one sings like you anymore," who is that directed at?

Kim Thayil: Is it about John Lennon?

Chris Cornell: I ate some cottage cheese that turned, and I wrote those lyrics. I don't know; it's just sort of a surreal dreamscape, a weird, play-with-the-title kind of song.

RIP: Do you free-associate when you write, or do you sit down with a beginning, middle and end in mind?

Chris Cornell: I used to sit down with a cup of coffee, with usually the title in mind. When I start lyrics, that's what I always do; I start with a title.

6) SPIN (1996):

"You just have to allow yourself to go in different directions. There are songs similar to 'Black Hole Sun' that I wrote years ago, but it seemed like they didn't quite fit our perception of the band. Once sort of define what the band is, then you have to move on from there or you're finished, done."

-Chris Cornell

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 1/24/11

1)

"They don't want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish the force of their arguments."

–Wislawa Szymborska

A co-worker of mine repeated the subject argument of Szymborska's statement, almost verbatim and without irony. We were discussing religion. It was one of our many discussions on religion, which I have learned to try to avoid but he remains intent on discussing it, with a critical eye on anything contrary to Christianity in other world religions. I’ve tried to express my opinion that learning about is not the same as subscribing to, but it doesn’t go anywhere, and I don’t know how to express without rudeness that, in my opinion, willful blindness is not the same as faith. I don’t think it will ever end between us.

2)

Metaphors We Live By

This is a book title that struck me a few months ago, and I had to buy it. It's has been an excellent read so far.

3)

Driving home the other day, I saw a wooden sign alongside a fence on one of the back roads that read, simply, "WHO PAID?" It was just a random sign along the road, but I couldn't stop thinking about it and all of the different directions it could go, how very different an interpretation it could have depending on who was reading it.

4)

“But that's where Big Ben gets off the hook, because it's our fault for believing that how well star athletes do their jobs somehow equates to the person they are off the field. … En route to being great again, by association you are somehow seen as a good person.”

Hearing over and over how Ben Roethlisberger is redeeming himself of his off-field "misfortune" by on-field play made me feel a lot of things, primarily negative, but specifically from a writing standpoint, it reminded me of the irritatingly prevalent theme of a character who commits some grave wrong in one area only to be forgiven in the narrative by doing something entirely unrelated on a much, much smaller scale. A frequent offender is the show Supernatural, which I used to watch religiously but can't even stomach now. It's common to see one of the appointed heroes kill an innocent person or otherwise cause severe harm to an innocent entirely without remorse or even any hint of attentiveness, only to be given a sympathetic pat on the back in the script, which resolves him of having to atone in any productive way and furthermore allows him to continue on in this manner. That he feels bad and is misunderstood is apparently atonement enough. Making deals that damn the world is easily pardoned because the poor hero had a bout of insecurity and felt bad about lying to his brother that one time. Or something. There are a lot of four letter words for how I feel about that. It's a million times worse in real life. But then, it also makes me think of how we paint sports heroes, other celebrities and politicians in a certain light and are married to that light, and anything contrary to it is given hardly any attention at all. So Roethlisberger is a triumph of perseverance while Michael Vick is lower than slime, Rudy is the inspirational hero of millions while Joe Montana is a dick, George W. Bush was Satan 2.0 and Obama is now Satan 3.0, and Johnny Depp is always and forever some kind of sex god. (I'm okay with that last one. Now I feel like watching Ed Wood again.) I love Elton John's “Candle In The Wind,” but that he wrote and recorded that song sort of embodies the view he was ostensibly putting to shame. We love our icons to remain as we imagine them, for better or worse. We hardly ever allow them any texture. I would hate to do that to a character of mine. I would consider it the ultimate crime against realistic characterization.

5) The last word goes to Soundgarden again:

"One day this guy from another label walks up to me and says, 'I really like that song 'Seasons'. You should write more songs like that.' I just wanted to punch this guy. What a stupid thing to say. If I wrote more songs like that, who would care about that song? 'You should write more songs like that because I like it.' You should fuck off because I hate you. Probably why people would single out a particular song they like on this record is because it's the only song like that on the record. And if there were 15 songs like that on the record, it would be a lame-ass record. It would suck."

-Chris Cornell, in Guitar Player (June 1994)

Junkyard Quotes: Week of 1/17/11

I'm going to try to be a little more concise from now on, unless I feel powerfully inspired to ramble on about something.


1. This quote jumped out at me as I was reading 21st Century Astronomy for another class.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -Albert Einstein


2. Reading the quote above reminded me of a quote by Oscar Wilde.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

I think we are sometimes in danger of grouping all dead writers and poets under the same umbrella of humorlessness, and I feel it's somewhat unfair, as they weren't all consistent with the two extremes: melodramatic or painfully dry. I think Oscar Wilde, for instance, would have loved to hate bad emo poetry just as much as anyone alive today. There is a distinct sarcasm and self-awareness in much of what he wrote. ("All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.")


3. About six minutes into this video, Jamie Bamber responds to a fan's question, echoing the theme of some of my favorite works of fiction. Great powers of today seem as if they'll never fall, and I think sometimes it's difficult for people to put their own experience into a broader context across time and space. Whether it's Astronomy class or history class or political science, the theme remains the same: we have seen this before, and we will see it again. The world is greater than our perception of it. Part of that is how we die, specifically how we kill ourselves in our time and space, and Jamie Bamber (of all people) lays it out pretty bluntly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yX1f8APSaA


4. More from Battlestar Galactica:

 "I'm a scientist. And as a scientist, I believe if God exists, our knowledge of him is imperfect. Why? Because the stories and myths we have are the products of men, the passage of time. The religion you practice is based on a theory, impossible to prove. Yet you bestow it with absolutes like, "There is no such thing as coincidence." Absolute belief in God's will means there's a reason for everything. Everything! And yet you can't help ask yourself how God can allow death and destruction. And then despise yourself for asking. But the truth is, if we knew God's will, we'd all be gods, wouldn't we?"


5. Watching an NFL Films special the other day, I was struck by what Otto Graham said during a segment on greatest players. It's a pretty straightforward statement, but what stayed with me was how easily defeated I regularly am by the latter half of it. The first half is why I feel I should write, in addition to the deep need to write, but the second half is why I have taken so long to place myself in a creative writing class. I have loved to write for so long, and spent so many hours nurturing that dream in private, that the fear of failure freezes me as I step into the greater world.

"You have to have the confidence that you will do good, but at the same time, inside, you have to have the fear that you might fail."


I leave the final word to Soundgarden.

Kerrang: Why did you want to play the guitar?
Kim Thayil: Because it was louder than I could scream.

1/18/11 Junkyard: then how is it a religion?

The discussion of ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism in today's Anthropology class brought to mind a conversation I had with a co-worker late last week, during which I was asked about Shinto in relation to Christianity and explained that Shinto has no central "god" as strictly defined by various other religions.

Before I could continue, the response from my co-worker was: "Then how is it a religion?"

1/17/11 Junkyard: weirdness

I read this in a football forum following the Jets/Patriots game:

Professional athletes are very unusual people. If they weren't, they wouldn't excel to that extent. One aspect of their weirdness is that they care a lot about what is just a game. If they weren't weird in that way, they wouldn't be all that good.


So many of my favorite authors were also very "weird in that way." They cared very much about something fictional that had no direct impact on the world around them or their own private lives, but lived entirely in their imagination until they recorded it onto paper and spread their concentrated weirdness to the world at large. This world seems so preoccupied at times with normality. How often I hear in conversation, "That's not normal!" I used to think that was a compliment; now I'm convinced it's simply a flawed standard of measure. How can I determine weirdness? What measure do I use? My understanding of normal is not the same as that of someone across the world. Judge it against what is familiar, and I fall easily into the trap of dismissing another viewpoint. How often I read and hear, "You missed the point." But there isn't just one point to any viewpoint; the world isn't so small.

It reminds me of a common theme in speculative fiction: the worth of life and culture, specifically that of aliens. It comes up so often: "They're just like us." So the common denominator restores peace and goodwill, and the humans take one step further towards enlightenment. But why must worth be tied to similarity? This came up in Battlestar Galactica and was argued poorly, I feel, the argument against the genocide of the Cylon race being that some of them are friendly, that some of them are "just like us." And I thought, "Why does that matter? What if they all hated humans? What if they were completely alien in nature, like the original Cylons? Would their lives and culture be worth less for being alien?" It seems to me that this is one of the deepest roots of war in our history, that we so often dismiss the dissimilar as being worth less and, at the extreme, being a direct threat to what is similar and therefore intimate and passionately defended. So it can become as easy to dismiss another culture's religion as it is to drive over the remains of a dead animal in the road. This approaches generalities, and I don't mean to, but the trend across history appears tried and true. I'm speaking a little from my experience as a translator and as someone who grew up in one culture though born to parents of another. It seems we haven't yet reached the point where being as concerned with or open to the dissimilar is as "normal" as to be focused primarily on the similar. The harder it is to recognize myself, the less likely I am to give time and effort to understand it. Few people (scientists, artists, poets, musicians, etc.) seem to have that certain concentrated weirdness to seek understanding across all barriers.

William Blake once wrote the following, and although it is just one part of a monumental work that contains far more thought and expression than I've been pondering here, this section still lingers with me since I first read it years ago. I never feel so small, nor so capable of soaring.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

I'm so grateful for concentrated weirdness.

1/13/11 Junkyard: Poetry in Lyrics

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find

I felt so compelled to bring up Soundgarden's Chris Cornell during Wednesday's discussion of lyrics and poetry, but shyness kept me from speaking. He has written some of my favorite pieces of musical poetry, if such a genre exists. Below is "Seasons" in its entirety, the song from which I've taken my junkyard quote, along with a link to the music. It is just a sample of his voice.

SEASONS

Summer nights and long warm days
Are stolen as the old moon falls
My mirror shows another face
Another place to hide it all
Another place to hide it all

And I'm lost, behind
The words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Sleeping with a full moon blanket
Sand and feathers for my head
Dreams have never been the answer
And dreams have never made my bed
Dreams have never made my bed

And I'm lost, behind
The words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Now I wanna fly above the storm
But you can't grow feathers in the rain
And the naked floor is cold as hell
This naked floor reminds me
Oh the naked floor reminds me

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

If I should be short on words
And long on things to say
Could you crawl into my world
And take me worlds away
Should I be beside myself
And not even stay

And I'm lost, behind
Words I'll never find
And I'm left behind
As seasons roll on by

Music

1/11/11 Junkyard: Specifics in Character and Language

“If you aim for the general, you hit nothing, but if you aim for the specific, you might hit the universal.”

I first read this as a throwaway statement in a 2004 publicity statement about one of Johnny Depp’s films, but I’ve never been able to forget it, and it has greatly influenced the writing choices I’ve made since reading it. It might help to explain why I remember so many of Johnny Depp’s characters throughout the 90’s and very few characters portrayed by his peers. Or why Soundgarden’s lyrics linger with me as strongly as they do, whereas those of their more mainstream peers fail to linger at all. Or why I was fascinated by the character interplay in Battlestar Galactica until the primary source of drama became romance, and why I was so disappointed by how they failed to realize in fundamental concept and execution their own premise of a gender-blind world. Or why I am drawn to Ellen Ripley far more than to the multitude of stock heroines as presented by Hollywood. Or why characters like Daenerys and Jon and Sansa feel so out of place in George R. R. Martin's world, and why, out of all the hundreds of characters Robert Jordan created, I care about Mat the most.

However, there is a conflict I have with the original statement that involves a significant aspect of my novel. It stems from language itself, the culture and inherent statement of the words we choose, how the language we use both expands and restricts our writing choices, how it can unconsciously reflect perception. There are times that I wish I had enough talent to write my novel entirely in Japanese, which removes certain limitations that English places on me, but Japanese also has its own range of expression. I don’t believe it’s possible or even valid to remove culture from language, for I feel that language is born of culture and feeds back into culture. They are symbiotic elements that take part in shaping our views. Starting my novel, I found that one of the hardest parts was finding a way around certain restrictions of English without limiting range of expression, to aim for something specific and alive in characterization without letting the culture of the language I write in alter my general concept. Perhaps this is one of the banes of the speculative fiction genre. I think the hardest part of sharing my work when it’s finished will be asking others to take that step, too.