Wondering where the wondering comes from. How it starts. Am I the sum of all my parts, each experience personal whether acted out, seen or read? Has every book and movie made its mark on me; am I Lucy, Ethel, Mary Tyler Moore and Luke Skywalker as well? Do I wake up as Chuckles the Clown one day, a bastard child of Napoleon the next?
Are we not all multiple personalities with a Ringmaster?
Learning, always learning. At every age, every stage. Wear long pants when weedwhacking. That would have helped. My mother’s clothes are long gone; my father’s, even just for outdoor labor, are still too big, though not really caring how I look. Going through the drawers and closets, some still new with tags. Just taking those away for now that are too new, or old, too worn to give away. These, of course, that he most loved to wear, I must discard, or wear.
Driving home I stop in first to see them though they sleep. Gardening there as well, my hands are black with grave dirt on the wheel.
Mood broken as a song comes on the radio, my nose pointed north, and riding on the wind back where I belong. The space I left behind, I see now in the distance, out the rearview mirror, fading gradually away.
Janis singing, humming, screaming a husky-voiced and angelic “Bobby Magee” to me is like an intravenous glucose given when I need it most.
A train of thought is chug-racing through my brain, and I needed to sit down quick and type to keep it on track.
After several years of scattered Lit and Writing courses, some things have sunk in and established themselves as a part of me that comes out in writing. Or, maybe I’m just more aware of them. One of the items was “borders,” the lines that are crossed in story by the characters, and the multitude of ways they appear within it. That little element has been showing up more and more lately.
Another, that of “space,” is just beginning to jell and take form, live, and walk around within my narrative. It’s evident that a majority of my stories, postings, inspirations come from the bits of time I spend outside on my back step looking around the back yard. (My husband always said that we bought this house because of the back yard, and now I appreciate his foresight!) This morning, while pouring a cup of coffee and looking out the kitchen window—something I’ve done a hundred times in this sequence—I realized that the backyard was “framed” in the space of the window, thus making the actual acre of space into an area of just a couple square feet. Just recently in a story I had the protagonist being watched by a neighbor out of her window as she passed by:
“Mrs. McHale looked up from her bread baking to spot Rachel in the distance passing the small space of her kitchen window.”
I’m not sure where I’m heading with this thought, but the relevance between the two views of the same scene mean something. The whole picture is changed by the position of the viewer; the “big picture” of Rachel crossing a field changes shape and form by the distance from which it is seen. Yeah, I know, this is a simple fact of life, but in this particular scene, the importance lies in the fact that our view of Rachel becomes one of sympathy, perhaps, as she becomes so small in size that it takes a longer period of time for her to cross the maybe 30 inches of distance.
It’s a writing tool, I would think.
Hmmm. Gotta think some more on this one.
(NOTE: I do have pictures taken of this phenomenon with my digital camera, which would have offered a visual of the effect, but unfortunately have not as yet had the time to learn the part about transferring the digital info from camera to computer. “Pictures? Writers don’t need no stinkin’ pictures.”)
Anyone who has followed Spinning in the almost year that it’s been in existence has wearily noted that on a regular basis I go off on a tangent about writing “voice.”
Something just came out at me from memory about reading voice that may indeed clinch the argument about who makes the story—the writer or the reader.
Many years ago, among friends hip and savvy as myself (!) I happened to start reading a mini-story that came in a box with a chocolate Easter bunny. I remember that as I started reading aloud, I got into a silly mood and just by tone, pauses, and other elocutionary gimmickry I managed to turn a simple little children’s tale into a near-pornographic rendition of the poor bunny’s Easter story. Needless to say, by the time I finished, we were hysterical, but the point is that I did not change one word, one mark of punctuation, but the story became filled with innuendo and changed with the mere reading.
I’m sure that as we read, even silently to ourselves, we establish a tone, mood—a voice that determines the story we are reading.
That’s the word I’ve been looking for—osmosis. This is the whole of my education. Of course I study; I cram for exams, I write essays surrounded by books and notes, I pay attention in class and take those notes.
But I don’t remember, or consciously remember a darned thing. For example, I learned a term for this particular type of memory in a Psychology course just last year. I don’t remember the proper term at all, nor even the number of types of memory. I never did have good recall; never. But I’m sure it’s gotten worse with age.
So how come some of the elements of writing are starting to infiltrate what I produce? Why is it improving?
Osmosis.
Not just from the classes alone—although they’ve influenced me heavily and with a faster, more forceful impression, even if I couldn’t tell you two months later what I learned. It just was absorbed–maybe bypassing the Records Office of my brain. The same processing happens from reading as well. Sometimes I look back on something I’ve written and can’t believe I wrote it. Obviously, much of my style or voice has been drawn from readings that must have left their mark with twists of phrase or language that comes out of storage cells when I sit down to type.
Edgar’s laughing his fool head off.
Moving into a very busy season, carrying into it a workload from its prior, facing writing deadlines that I–just for the experience–refuse to let pass on. I’ve lost enough this year; must look at and learn from what the couldabeens became with luck and grace.
Two stories. Three or maybe four places to submit. Gotta do it, before it gets too late. Just gotta.
Headache, tension headache. Like someone carving out a pumpkin that’s my skull.
I hope he’ll decide to paint on eyes.
T’ain’t polished and proper as promised, and I’m not sure I’m on the right track with it, but in comparing newspaper media with news online, both using USA Today, I’ve written up an essay as an assignment for the New Media class.
It ran longer than I’d expected, and I’m still adding in afterthoughts, but I’m linking it here (http://smgct.typepad.com/spinning/files/exercise_1.doc) if anyone’s interested.
Actually, I’m wrong. About my rather primitive definition of New Media, that is.
I should have known better, but in referring to something we received in class that I should have kept in mind, “new media” in effect is quite complicated in its definition, and when digitalized and in some type of software format, new media retains only the very basics of traditional media, or media as we’ve known it up until now. The “newness” of it is in the creative process rather than the final product so to speak.
In other words, while a team may produce a movie short that resembles simple camera work, the actual piece will go beyond the capabilities of that process because of its manipulability via the software that can make it happen. For example, Humphrey Bogart showing up in a current television commercial.
For once, the technology may be keeping pace with creativity and indeed, be further advanced (aside, of course, from the creative mind that conceived and engineered it). What new media offers, then, are the tools to open another door in the mind.
“If I could only fly…”
“You can. Where will you go?”
I may be totally wrong on this, but my interpretation of “New Media” is combining some of the various forms of communication, i.e., visuals, text, sound, movement, in all their relative means of production, i.e. again, television, paper products, computer, radio, stereo, movies, and all their various forms, i.e. one last time, novels, poetry, information, non-fiction, journalism, advertising, to produce a resultant story in a computerized environment that follows a narrative structure.
All the words above were created from an instant of flicking on the CD’s in my shop to realize that Willie’s “Red Headed-Stranger” was in effect, a series of connected story line in both musical and lyrical form.
Or, I could just ignore all that and enjoy him as I always do.
But then again, I am working along with the song, creating works of art of my own here in mini-stories that I’ll wrap in plastic and consider finished product, while each contain little stories of their own within a frame.
And you know what else? This particular CD and the story it contains was made into a movie. Starring Willie. I have it, of course. Maybe I’ll watch it tonight, comparing the narrative of the CD to the movie. And enjoy Willie.
Uh-boy.
Just noticed something in my bedroom that made me realize that I have long ago merged technical aspects with creativity.
The bed is covered by a quilt that I made probably twenty five years ago, with over 3,000 colorful geometric forms to combine into a pattern that was calculated for durability, design, and usability.
Early dawn, sunshiny face still hidden beneath a blanket of trees. Small birds set the stage with their opening act, flitting from bushes to feeders. Quietly, though; their tiny beaks peep more than crow. But tranquil is broken afar in the distance. Tensely, I open my ears and my eyes, focus on sound with my body.
Too concentrated for the squirrelly squirrel, more weight than the lightfooted deer. Not quite the crunching of bear—I don’t think…
It never appears, though long in the wings. It loses its impact in a crescendo of sunrise, since not all that is screaming is heard through the ear.
I’ve just finished a paper for my New Media class. It’s a story about reading a newspaper. It’s also about reading the news online. It’s about experiencing each, and comparing, contrasting the two different forms.
I was quite surprised yesterday to find that one of my customers, a writing instructor at Yale, does not use, nor teach, nor keep a weblog. Heh, I said, and proceeded to expound on this writing form. My, aren’t we bloggers a snooty bunch.
Since weblogging itself is a form of new media, I have decided to open up another category for this and leave some record of this journey. If it is not interesting to you, just consider it a space-filler. If it is, at least it’ll all be in one section. I find these academic episodes quite enlightening when looking back at the learning process. As soon as this particular essay is polished, I’ll post a link to it.
Though I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a Statistics Category, eh?
For the past almost five years, I have been ruled by a journey I chose to take into furthering formal education. As my life affects my classes, my classes affect my life.
Timewise, luckily owning my own business allows for some finagling of hours. So many of my clients are teachers that they applaud my efforts with the side benefit of being more understanding of my strange shop hours.
On a relationship level, what I have become by experience has set a standard for me as a student. What I am learning as a student, changes to some degree my dealing with people on the “outside.”
On a mentally challenging level, I am extending my experiences into fields I never would have ventured into except on the most basic of levels, as in Philosophy, Psychology (although I have learned so very much by observation, a course may serve to provide labels for the behaviors witnessed), and yes, Algebra and Statistics. These latter two, ground me. They are stable, unswerving, unassailable. No doubt I could use some of that in my life.
But perhaps the courses that have most changed me for now and evermore, are the Literature , Writing, and now New Media.
They, in developing deep-seated desires and needs, have allowed me to occasionally soar.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology