Switch Flipping

from 1.26.04
a response in part to Chris's essay

Hy called in the evening, surprise surprise, and we had a great conversation about writing. Hy has a lot of interests and skills that I do not have. He's created a map of his fantasy world, naming mountain ranges and bodies of water, drawing the continental shapes, populating the world with different races, designing religions for the different peoples, writing a history of the different peoples, and more. Even within the context of a genre, where stories and plots are already laid out for him, there is still a lot of impressive value in the very fact that he can create all the details of an entire world. That is a skill that I do not possess. His take on my writing is that I have more political and humanitarian interests, and that I write for myself, so I don't have to worry about creating characters (and their backstories) whose purpose is to entertain. As I told him, I do want to be entertaining, but through my sense of humor, not by creating soap opera type characters.

He was excited to tell me that he had a breakthrough in his guitar playing, and I told him how exciting that can be when a switch flips, to use my metaphor. He knew that you can write a song with only two chords, previously, but it finally clicked in his brain and that concept now seems to have a reality that it didn't have before, and he is now practicing with a newfound confidence and ability. This is the same thing that happened to me with my guitar playing and, just this past summer, with my singing. It is exciting, as if a new area of the brain begins to be utilized.

With writing, I am still waiting for a switch to flip. I told Hy how it can be discouraging, waiting for that to happen. For example I've tried reporting, hit a wall, and stopped. Nonfiction book writing, with the guide to the comic book business: same thing. Short stories, like two nights ago, when I tried to start one about a straight-edge girl in rural Kentucky who is the only person in her high school class. Unlike him, I found myself unable to take enough interest in the character to create a back story for her, to introduce other characters to provide a conflict, or to even think of a reason why she might be the sole person in her high school class. Salinger had Holden Caulfield. I have not yet created a character who takes over the story and directs it, who begins to speak on his own or make her own decisions, where I become a simple transcriber of the story.

On the other hand, Nabokov said anyone whose characters direct themselves can't call himself a writer.

I also told him about my bit of self-revelation, where I now know that writing is a means to keep me mentally healthy and stave off depression and listlessness. Again, that's reason enough to continue doing it. Hy told me to try not to put expectations on myself. To simply start where my interests lie, begin writing, and see where it takes me. That is often what he does: he starts a conversation between two characters without knowing where it's going, and they begin to reveal their personalities as the conversation grows.

It could be that, simply, I'm not that kind of writer, the kind who creates unique characters with all their backstory and hopes and dreams and complex personalities. That I must keep trying and experimenting with stories until I find the one that clicks with me. One promising story style for me is Vonnegut-style essay stories, letters to a government agency explaining something that happened from the narrator's point of view. Keep practicing until the switch flips. Remember: with guitar playing and with singing I had to do it over and over and over for YEARS until certain switches flipped. Only then, with continued practice, will the switch flip. It will not flip by sitting around and thinking about it.

It could also be that practice will result in a switch flip that turns me into a fine character composer, where I enjoy delineating their backstories, creating their personalities, and then pitting them against one another so that they take over and direct which way the story goes. Who can say.

Peanut

There is a baby sea turtle this morning in my bathroom sink. I warmed the water to room temperature and stopped two inches in the bottom. The little guy's shell has tanned squares with rounded corners. The outlines are seaweed green. He's still. After ten minutes he begins washing his face the way a cat does, rubbing its bent wettened paws on its whiskers. Instantly he withdraws when I pull the stopper in the sink. His eyes are that of an insect's, all pupil and black, and he could live to be 200. One day he'll be returned to a state conversation group and released into the ocean. But today I set him on the volcanic black sand of his aqaurium where he finds a new bed of leafy Romaine lettuce, the table set with food arrived while he was in the men's room.

The valley fog settles on we two

The valley fog settles on we two. I go to bed at four and get up at seven and sleep in the afternoon. Every day there's laundry to be done. When it's time to leave I tell you to stay and sleep, but you rise to follow me out. Go back to sleep, I say, I'm going to get a shower. My closet door creaks and outside a garbage truck is backing up but you don't stir until overwhelmed by the dozing coastline of your long back I lay down beside you. Your voice flutters. Is it time? Yesterday's top is crumpled over the guitar standing guard in the corner. My answer is not for you. Go back to sleep, sun, so this blissful fog is not burned away.

Base for Your Face

The rabbi didn't smoke, but he'd been disillusioned by his mentor quitting the synagogue where he'd held court for 41 living years. It wasn't a retirement, it was a full-on flight from everything they'd both kept sacred. Explanations were vague, not that any one thing could have accounted for this decision. So when the rabbi as a joke was offered a filter-free American Spirit from a young man on a skateboard he accepted on impulse. Back in the sacristy the rush of nicotine to the brain plowed him over. He first leaned against the wall, in slow motion sunk to his bottom, and then with chest heaving in short rapid breaths he laid flat-back on the marble floor full-on Trainspotting style.

"Whew," he said. "Whoosh."

The rush and the accompanying nausea passed in ten minutes. Lucky for him he went undiscovered. He rose, embarrassed. He wasn't a kid anymore, this rabbi, he was a middle-aged man with responsibilities. A quick penance followed, one meant to put out of his mind the larger implications of this tiny rebellion, not against God or his flock but one that chipped a corner of ice from the flawless geometry of his glacial wall. The rabbi was troubled. The one man he confided in had wished him well, the way people do to someone they expect never to see again.

Dear Pen Pal

Hello, my name is Duder. I am a 40 year old ex-military man from a country that is called Turkey, but that's just in English. We have our own name for our country in our own language. In reality my country has nothing to do with the flightless unintelligent albeit tasty birds that Americans serve for their Thanksgiving dinners. That is simply an accident of language. I read once that American founding father Benjamin Franklin proposed that the turkey should be the new country's national symbol. Someone else suggested the eagle. How ironic it would have been had the turkey been adopted. Nevertheless allow me to reiterate that turkeys have nothing to do with Turks.

In the military I blew a bunch of stuff up. It was cool.

I enjoyed reading how your hometown is famous for producing of cars. I notice that you have a Honda factory. Well that's okay because Hondas are good cars. They are very popular but in Turkey we like American muscle cars from the 1970s. Sometimes people call them "gas guzzlers" because they require a lot of fuel or "pimp-mobiles" for reasons we won't go into. Mine doesn't have hydraulics but I'm saving up for them. If only I didn't gamble so much I'd have more money.

Ruptured Scooter

Please allow me to direct your attention to a short story told in art-comics-photography by my talented cousin Bryan, an art student in Cincinnati.

She Went to a Guy Who Had Better Drugs

In checkered pants and muted scarf Celia smiled at my fact of the matter confession. She was demur, and bantered, but there was a nervous tinge to her words. Though she left the bar soon after, she asked me to walk her to her bike. On our parting I held a lighter to the packed pipe in her mouth. The breeze was strong, the winter chill dipping into the 60s. I had on a brown V-neck sweater. Celia lifted the scarf from her porcelain neck. She stretched it out in front of her mouth, blocking the wind, and the flame danced from my fingertips without going out.

Gigging Again

Played a show last night with some friends at a place called On Stage. It's a different style for me, more Latin and salsa mixed with my usual folk-rock. Right now it's me on guitar and vocals, Arnaud (France) on congas, and Kesh (India) also on guitar. This may become a regular thing.