the Village Knittiot

Yesterday at work my tasks were dull and repetitive. It has been 5 days since I have had any writing assignments. Mostly I am charged with “cleanup” efforts. Apparently in the world of providing content for online retail outfits, we are already heading into our pre-Christmas slump. Frightening, no?

Since our particular traditions don’t involve the sharing of gifts, I feel fairly cut off from that world, but this weekend at Target I noticed that right behind the Halloween decorations was a wall of giant, white wire deer stuffed with lights. It was fairly creepy and I thought at first they might have been intended to be ghostly animals looking at us through vacuous eyes urging us to revel in the holiday of ghouls. Then I saw the Christmas trees next to them and realized they were one of those hideous lawn decorations you start seeing right around Thanksgiving. Better than the plastic floating-santa-head-of-death that one of my old neighbors used to staple to his garage every year, but creepy nonetheless. If I were to own one, I would use it as a Halloween decoration. You know, string it with that fake spider webbing and put red bulbs right where its eyes are. Maybe dribble a little red paint around its mouth. The Stag of Death. Maybe I could knit it a little sweater with a skull on it. That’s supposed to be really “in” right now, isn’t it?

Anyway, I digress. Because work has been so dull, I have had ample opportunity to listen to NPR. Yesterday Terry Gross interviewed the director David Cronenberg about his new film — A History of Violence. His brilliant adaptation/interpretation of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch was a high point in movie watching for me, and it is not hard to see how he was able to pull it off after listening to him. At some point Terry started saying something about how he tends to deal with the darker aspects of our world, the more horrific elements, and he said that he really believes that no artist should ever feel apologetic for exploring the dark, because “Society does not tend to encourgage people to tell the truth.” That is the nature of how a society continues to survive, by maintaining the status quo. And what you really need is the artists and the rebels to expose reality — not as it is presented to us, but as it is. This is how you achieve important things such as justice.

Last week my sweetie had a really interesting post over on his blog in response to his current reading of McLuhan’s classic book on media. He talked about the importance of telling our own stories. As I progress as a writer and a human being, I have begun to realize just how central to my life the concept of story is. And how I really perceive my role as an author not to be merely the enabling of my own ability to tell stories, but to help other people learn to tell their stories. I realized that this is precisely what a good story does. You need to tell other people about it. You need to interact with it. You need to explore how these people relate to your own lives and why they have gotten so deeply into your heart or under your skin.

After I read Corvus’ post, I felt that my biggest concern was the prevalence of dishonesty in our culture — and not the obvious lying, but the subtle willingness with which we learn to believe our own hype and that of the people, companies and entities around us. I have worked in plenty of environments where there is a company story — sometimes an officially and carefully crafted story and sometimes an organic one born out of a reactionary approach — but it has seldom been based on reality as it is. It becomes reality as it is presented, and it can make you feel crazy when the words people say do not match what is actually going on. Still, it gets into you like programming or brain washing and you find yourself grasping for those familiar words whenever you have to talk to people. It is so easy to do when they provide you with the script. Lying is a way of life here, and according to Cronenberg, this is merely a byproduct of society. Very interesting.

Since reading Feed, I have become much more acutely aware of exactly how much this consumer culture affects my thoughts, impulses, wants and desires. I am not beyond the problem. I am part of the problem. I write the stories or further the myths that surround products. I smooth over the rough spots and promote cheap garbage. I am part of the machine that works to make you need something that you don’t. And I’m just doing my job. Furthermore, I am “helping” to sustain our economy that (according to two senators I heard last week) is 2/3 dependant on consumer spending.

So my thoughts are drifting toward the struggle to live in reality and the quest to find honesty. These are most certainly internal journeys, but oh what stories we will have to tell.

Last weekend, after an exhausting and exhilirating experience helping a friend with the African dance and drumming workshop she and her husband host every year, I came down with a nasty little cold. So I decided to take the week off from blogging and bury myself on the futon with blankets and books and spend some sleepy time getting better.

Just to switch things up, instead of doing a recap of recent reads, here is a rundown of recent NOT reads.

As some of you may remember, I became fairly impressed with Stephen King after finally picking up his book On Writing a couple of months ago. I decided that perhaps I hadn’t given him a fair chance and so when I was at the library for one of my weekly trips, I grabbed The Shining off the shelf and proceded to carry it around in my backpack for nearly two weeks before I finally decided to sit down with it. Everyone has alway talked about how scary it was, and I’m a big fraidy cat, so I was nervous about sitting alone in my big old house listening to the wind howl autumn into existence as I slowly went insane alongside this frightening author. I think I made it to page 28 and decided that, though Mr. King may have a lot of useful and practical advice (and thank you for that Stephen, really), he didn’t always take his advice and wasn’t, after all, the kind of author that I get excited about. Once upon a time I had a really difficult time not finishing a book that I had started — no matter how awful. But those days are gone. I promptly returned it to the library.

The second book I did not read was the new John Irving book. It has some spectacularly unmemorable title and I can’t be bothered at the moment to look it up. That is just how much I don’t want to have to think about him or the book. In my college years, reading for pleasure seemed like a supreme luxury (it still does, but that is another story). So when I started reading A Prayer for Owen Meany and then could not set it down, neglecting (very, very, very unlike me) all my homework duties, I decided that John Irving was an amazing writer. Then I read Cider House Rules, which I thought was even better than Owen Meany. Of course, it became a truly awful movie, but that too is another story. After that, I decided I needed to read and own everything he had ever written. So I bought World According to Garp. Good, but I liked the movie better. I read some of his earlier stuff. Eh. I tried to believe that the work showed “promise,” but truly, it was just flat (like everything else I have read of his). I bought nearly all his books. But there they sat on my shelves. Unread. When a one-note author writes multiple books, by the time you get through the third book, it is hard to voluntarily go back to hear more. If there is one thing I want from an author, it is evidence of creative growth, which most certainly comes from personal growth. Not so much with Irving.

Still, I felt some sort of allegiance to him. I just couldn’t bring myself, at the time, to believe he had nothing of value to say again. When The Fourth Hand came out, I bought the hard cover (can I have my money back now, please?). So, so, so disappointing. I guess it was kind of a morbid curiosity that led me to request the new one whose title is so dull as to escape me. I have now come to realize that Irving is precisely the kind of creator that I loathe. He is so locked in his own particular psychological distortions and so intent on being enamored with his own dysfunction that it becomes the only thing about him that makes him “special” — in his own eyes. He comes across as a narcissist and a misogynist. He views women as these all-powerful alluring creatures of such unbelievable strength (putting them on the pedestal) and then turns them into these emasculating (even if unintentionally) beings that hold all the power. Yes, John Irving, you are at the mercy of strong women. You love them. You can’t help it, of course. But you are just a weak and puny little man and we can control everything about you just by withholding our love and affection and approval. Aren’t we just wicked and wonderful all in one mysterious package? It’s not that you don’t want us, it’s just that you need us. See how cruel life is? I’m not fond of this archetype, can you tell? Anyway, I don’t remember how far I made it into the book, but I knew I’d never make it to the end without wanting to run the entire thing through an industrial grade shredder. So I returned it. Thus ends all traces of a former infatuation with a writer who had a couple of good books.

Other stuff in the works here, but more on that later…