the hilarity of child soldiers and sex slaves

Read Jane Bussman's The Worst Date Ever. Now. Go read it.

I had particular interest in Bussman's subject--the international aid organization I work for sent me to northern Uganda a few years ago, so the place is dear to my heart. I recognize that this will not be true for most readers. I also realize that I now have a fairly high tolerance for the details of human atrocities. One of the perks of my job. (It took a while before I realized that my friends had not developed this threshold along with me and that there are some things you don't talk about at dinner. When they ask about my work I should say it is "interesting," "busy," or "rewarding" without giving any details about the report I was writing on rape in DRC.)
 

(Why yes, this is a photo I took in Uganda of a midwife bandaging a child's machete wound in a "health clinic" with no electricity, water, or drugs but plenty of moldy 2x4s.)

Occasionally I bring reports home with me to read or edit and occasionally these documents have photos. I consider the piece a failure if my husband asks me to read in the other room because the images are disturbing him. If your audience looks away, they are not getting your message.

Bussman writes about a horrific war wherein children were kidnapped to become child soldiers or sex slaves. She writes about interviewing victims of mutilation. She writes about governments' complacency because of the cash cow that such a war can be. This book is a hard sell.

But what makes Bussman different from and better than almost any account I have read is that the book is hilarious. Which means my anger and disgust was tempered. I did not put the book down; I kept reading. And while I know I am not the average potential reader for this book, I think The Worst Date Ever is even better for the more squeamish audience than it was for me. Because through her humor, Bussman keeps the reader from getting too upset and looking away. And since you don't need to put the book down, you learn about a truth that more people need to learn about.

Jane Bussman bares witness to the victims of a horrible war. She does it with dignity and anger. But unbelievably, with humor. Go read it. Now.

gaslight anthem is inspiring me today

When it comes to music, I'm a singer-songwriter kind of girl. Matt Nathanson, Tallest Man on Earth, and Dar Williams crowd my playlists. Occasional outliers like the White Stripes and Talking Heads make their appearance. But I am not a rock 'n' roll kind of girl, nor am I into punk. So when I fell in fast love with Gaslight Anthem some two years ago, I was somewhat confused. For those of you who don't know them, Gaslight Anthem is like Bruce Springsteen's punky nephews. And though I'm not one for punk or for Bruce Springsteen, Gaslight Anthem speaks to me like few musicians ever have.

Their upbeat songs (being most of them) have a kind of desperate joy about them. Like they know happiness isn't something you can hold onto in this world but they have it in their grasps for just this moment and the fleetingness does not lessen the joy at all. Makes it more manic perhaps, but also more meaningful.

The slower songs have a gritty beauty made more poignant by Brian Fallon's raspy voice.

I once told a friend that the innermost unchanging part of me has Gaslight Anthem as it's soundtrack. I hope that's true

For a bit of their desperate joy:

And a touch of their gritty beauty:

 

sometimes Jon Stewart is all that keeps me patriotic

Remember Jon Stewart's first show after 9/11?

I still cry when I watch the clip.  I'm trying to sum up why I am so affected by his speech and I can't.  But that night, Jon Stewart made the pain a little more ok.

And now, via a blurb on www.nymag.com (because I can't figure out how to embed this video), his latest proof that dissent and anger can be patriotic.  That there are people in the media, if not the government, who love this country in a way that makes me love it, too.  

Jon Stewart's response to Republican's fillibustering the Zadroga Bill.

I don't intend this blog to be political.  So if you don't agree with my politics, read this as a post about one writer/artist/comedian/journalist's abilities to touch others with his voice.

just because it made me smile

I liked Nathan Bransford's post today about the fallacies about authors who have made it.  But more than the post in general, I loved the end and feel the need to quote it for you now:

"We keep striving no matter how high we've climbed, even those who have climbed the highest. Pressure can cut into satisfaction, and the spotlight can be uncomfortable.

It all reminds me of the speed of light (or at least my own understanding of the speed of light, which is likely wildly flawed). The way my understanding of the physics of light works is that no matter how fast you personally are traveling, from your perspective a beam of light will still look like it's traveling at the speed of light. You can't travel alongside a beam of light. There's no catching up.

And I think there's actually something great about that. There will always be something to chase, always something to strive for, always another horizon to pursue. Who wants to be perfectly contented? Where's the excitement in that? There will always be something great to chase around the bend."

on beauty

Two nights ago, I saw Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at City Center.  The first time I saw the piece was eleven years ago, when the production first came to Broadway.  I was entranced and have since watched my DVD a number of times.  But Tuesday night was the first time I watched the show in its entirety in a long time.

I love the music.  I love every aspect of this production.  I can no longer imagine a version with a female dancing the part of the Swan because, really, female swans don’t make sense.  Swans are powerful, majestic, and cruel.  There is something inherently masculine about their physical strength.

I missed Adam Cooper.  His portrayal of the Swan was unimaginably layered.  Tuesday’s performance was good, better than good, even.  But something was missing.  With a flick of the wrist or a curve of his shoulder, Adam Cooper could evoke the movements of a bird, but also cruelty, love, lust, and aloofness.  There are no words to describe how many contrary emotions he could call with his wrist.

And that is what I want to write about.  The best dance I’ve ever seen hits me in the gut.  The emotions are so intense that it almost hurts to feel the loss or joy or anger or love.  Just being witness to the beauty and grace makes me ache.  When watching Swan Lake or my friend’s old brilliant dance company in college, tides of emotion start in the space between my solar plexus and my stomach and just radiate outward.

I don’t understand.

When I returned home Tuesday night, I tried to explain the production to my husband.  But in putting the relationship between the Prince and the Swan into words, I flattened it, deadened it.  The beauty of Swan Lake is that, without words, they dance simultaneous, contradictory, non-narrative relationships.

Does the Swan love the Prince?

Does the Swan torture the Prince?

Does the Swan protect the Prince?

Does the Swan feel remorse?

Does he hate the Prince?

Is he a perpetrator or a victim?

Is the Stranger actually the Swan?

Does the Swan want the Queen?

Does the Swan only dance with the women to hurt the Prince?

Is the Swan real or a figment of the Prince’s insanity?

Is the Swan capable of love?

Is the Swan capable of anything but cruelty?

Is this a story of requited or unrequited love?

Is this a story about insanity?

The answer is yes.

Try telling that relationship in narrative.  Try using words.  I dare you.  It doesn’t work.

After spending a number of years studying linguistics, cognitive science, literature, and art—and after spending even more years as a human being—I have come to the conclusion that people do not think in words.  Words come later.  Thoughts, emotions, happen on a pre-linguistic level.  Sure, our language affects how we think in the same way that picture frames affect what we see.  Thank you, Sapir Wharf.  But that’s it; words focus, but do not define, thought.  Haven’t you ever felt an emotion that you couldn’t put into words—not because you couldn’t remember the right one but because none existed for it? 

That’s what makes dance so profound for me.  It can tap into my emotions—into who I am—on a pre-linguistic level. Not sure what the lesson or conclusion I should draw from this is, as a writer.  I’m sure there is one.  Today, I am still just reeling from the raw experience.

ode to paranormal

Holding this particularly episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer up as an example of what made the show transcendent is a bit of a cliché, but I’m going to start my blog post here anyway.  “Surprise.”  It is the episode in the second season wherein Buffy and her vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend Angel have sex.  The unanticipated consequence of which is that Angel loses his soul and becomes evil.  More than any afterschool special or high school health class could possibly hope to accomplish, this episode and the rest of the season manifest a terrible truth for many young women: “I thought he loved me, we had sex, and then he became a monster.”

Women don’t ever say, “I thought he loved me, we had sex, and then he started behaving in a way that made me feel as hurt and betrayed and scared as I would if he had become evil.”  No, they say, “he became a monster.” 

Therein lies the weight of Buffy and all of the best in paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy/magic realism.  By shirking the boundaries set by realism, these genres allow artists to get to the emotional truth of a story and put it forward in a concrete, literal way.  

This is how life feels.

There are a myriad of other brilliant scenes and episodes in Buffy that exemplify such emotional truth, as do any great zombie stories, vampire fiction, Hogwarts escapades, what have you.  (Almost all of my favorite YA is paranormal because everything feels so high stakes and raw when we are young.  The time lends itself perfectly to the literalization of emotion.)  Paranormal fiction is metaphor writ large.  It is emotion made literal.

I am a great lover of John Donne’s poetry and one of my all time favorite lines is from “A Fever.”  Donne writes about the woman he loves being fatally ill and says, “The whole world vapours with thy breath.”  A beautiful and profound statement.  Technically a metaphor but you get the sense for this grief-stricken poet, it is quite literal.

When Villanelle loses her heart to her lover in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, she does so literally.  It is years later that she is strong enough to break into the woman’s home and reclaim her heart from the glass jar in which it has been kept.  Sethe is literally haunted by the ghost of her daughter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.  For characters in these hyper-real stories, nothing “feels like,” it only “is.”

My MS, FLIGHT, is the story of a woman who is so unable to accept who she is that she destroys her own happiness and that of the people she loves the most.  It’s a favorite character type for me (Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, anyone?) and by writing a work of magic realism, I could make the stakes real.  Maria doesn’t just go through a “self destructive phase” after her father dies or a boyfriend breaks her heart, she literally self destructs.

The high stakes makes for great fiction.  But it also, for me at least, feels much more true than any realism I know.

on racoons and hallways

In a guest post on Nathan Bransford's priceless blog, Bryan Rusell wrote today about revisions through the metaphor of building and then renovating a house. It's a pretty post, more interested in its own metaphor than in saying anything terribly real about the revising and editing process. But I had to post this quote, which I think is the apex of his metaphor:

"Hallways seem to go in the wrong direction. One of them ends inside a broom closet without a light, an albino raccoon hissing at you feverishly in the dimness. Where did that come from? It seemed so inspirational at the time."

working on a new story

I finished Outer Dark, left honestly underwhelmed. Maybe that was bound to happen after The Road. But it took me only two days to devour Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants. I just got sucked so completely into the world she created. Great book. I recommend.

I've also started a new story. The earlier (something borrowed) story idea is on hold. While I still like the idea and hope to go back to me, it just wasn't getting me jazzed. I wasn't sneaking time to write whenever possible.

Earlier this week, a new idea came to me. It came as a response to me pondering a conflict facing two characters in one of the books I recently read. (And since you know all of the books I've recently read, I'll let you figure it out.) The conflict really spoke to me and I imagined a different story in which a single person might be faced with the same struggle, instead of two with differing priorities. The story outline formed immediately in my head and I've been writing all week.

Part of me is nervous that I have pulled an idea from another book, but I suppose this happens often enough. Where do authors get their ideas? Where does inspiration come from? Not new questions. In any case, I am glad to be writing again.

for those moments of self doubt