I live and exist through art.
The older I get, and the further I get from my rebellious pre-teen years, the more it seems like my identity and existence are defined through my interactions with others. To be a thing, I must communicate, and no meaningful self can be communicated without artistry.
Further complications arise both from my liberal upbringing and from the near-proverbial "changing times" in which we live. In a conservative society, the basics of identity come from ideas which are well-known to all and easy to communicate: gender, religion, social class, familial relationships. By contrast, in a more liberal society, such things must always be in a state of flux.
Personally, I find that it's the changing status of women that affects me most. Partly this is due to being a woman in a male-dominated field, but mostly I would like to cantankerously blame it on the fact that nearly every notion of feminine sexuality out there either stinks or doesn't suit me. Creativity is clearly called for.
I look back gratefully to the strident feminists who fought for space, who took principled stands and rejected all that came before. Yet I must also bow before the artists who filled that space, borrowing from the culture that feminists repudiated even as they showed how it was flawed or how it might be changed. I'm thinking of George Eliot, whose women accepted the social order and yet you could always see how it was wrong for them. I'm thinking of Virginia Woolf, who could sneak female sexual desire in behind literary curtains. Sylvia Plath, whose self-absorption preserved a somewhat unconventional femininity that others might borrow from if they wished. All three of them had skills that took them far beyond the subject of femininity, yet all three of them could fold in their womanhood as they understood it. For all three of them, that womanhood was cutting edge.
In the past five decades, novelists and singer-songwriters have pasted cutting-edge pictures of womanhood all over the map. I admire Joni Mitchell, who has an unquestioned strength behind her self-questioning. Then there's k. d. lang, who was, I think, my first introduction to the way the queer movement completely redefined sex. The women in many of Anne McCaffrey's novels seem to be inhabiting a different universe (funnily enough...). Sometimes I wish I lived there.
None of what has gone before me is enough. I have a task to do; I believe that every woman does. Perhaps every man does, too. But I look on in awe at the creativity and courage of men and women, past and present. They are my inspiration and my light.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
The Land of High Metaphor
Plain-language poems are easiest. Say it honestly, say it in verse, say it without obvious contrivances of rhyme or style and you've done well. But once you enter metaphor-land, well, it's a bit like pulp science fiction. Anything is possible, but not everything is advisable. "You have eyes like vampire fangs," I once wrote of a man. It was true, but a bit lurid, and the poem it was part of had every pitfall of free verse, from ramblingness to, yes, metaphors shoved in purely for the purpose of reminding you that this is a poem rather than just some stuff I felt like getting off my chest.
In improv there's this idea known as the absurdity curve. Those new to improv -- the brave sort, rather than the ones who start off hiding in a corner -- occasionally enter a scene and jump straight off the wall:
"Hello, Jess."
"Hello, Joe. Here, help me move this crate."
"Okay."
"Oh, no! An octopus just fell on my head!"
Now don't get me wrong, this can be a great way to approach improv when you're new to it. Just jump out there and say whatever and don't be afraid to look silly. However, as you get slightly better at it, it's as well to develop a little more finesse. The idea of a 'rising absurdity curve' is that you start a scene with the small and ordinary. If you do introduce anything remarkable at the beginning, you take the time to establish it. But sudden dramatic events do not happen until later in the scene, as you reach the climax, at which point elements of the story that seemed normal earlier can and do blossom into full-blown absurdities.
Poetry doesn't have a set 'curve' of the sort that improvisers are taught to consider. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of a vivid metaphor really does depend on context. A poem might go with the improv curve, starting with the ordinary and deepening into metaphor as it draws you in. If you do start with a strong metaphor, you might need to broaden and establish it to make it seem at home. And, as I said at the beginning, sometimes you'd do just as well to leave the metaphors out altogether.
So anyway, I'm fiddling with a memory that I'd love to put into poetry. I write
I never saw a man so golden
as you were, lying by my side.
It's a shoddy approximation of what I felt, but the tone is right. I can't really go anywhere with it, though. I'm writing about something I don't understand. I don't have enough angles. Reluctantly, I give up on describing the exact feeling and decide perhaps I'll just put a little of that in a poem that includes some other stuff.
Late one night, when I'm supposed to be going to sleep, I hammer out a couple of lines that capture so much more of it.
The dawn that rose when I awoke tonight
was only in the halo of your hair.
I can't abandon those lines. They work. It's just that they set a level of metaphor that's going to be jolly hard to keep up with sensibly. This isn't going to be a plain-language poem. Look out, darlin', you're in the Land of High Metaphor. Whatcha gonna do to continue that? Bring out the octopi?
I've started in High Metaphor and now I need substance. Lots and lots of substance, because metaphor, if done well, can eat up substance like nothing else. It's a powerful and dense way of expressing things. One of the reasons I'm finding this so hard to write is that I'm expressing something remarkable that I haven't felt before. It's in the 'Whisky Tango Foxtrot' subgenre of love poetry. However, there have been several times in my life when I've felt something remarkable that I haven't felt before, so I have a better handle on that part of it than on the feeling itself. That helps. I might be able to use that in the poem, but, of course, this now means I'm negotiating two dangers. On the one hand we have Scylla the octopus. On the other hand we have Charybdis, the never ending whirlpool which consists of saying things in a poem like "I don't know how to say it" or "words cannot express this". If words can't express it, why are you trying, dude? Give up and start writing drippy pop songs instead.
It's been a few months, now, but so far I've been able to build this:
The dawn was rising when I woke, tonight,
but only in the halo of your hair,
and I, bemused, perceiving by its light
a whole horizon waiting for me there,
say nothing. I am waiting for a phrase
to catch some faithful gleam inside the haze.
If I could always have a minute more
to stay within the compass of your hand,
then by your touch and mine I could explore
the whole of you and I, and understand
the half-remembered dreams that shimmer through
this little world that takes its light from you.
In improv there's this idea known as the absurdity curve. Those new to improv -- the brave sort, rather than the ones who start off hiding in a corner -- occasionally enter a scene and jump straight off the wall:
"Hello, Jess."
"Hello, Joe. Here, help me move this crate."
"Okay."
"Oh, no! An octopus just fell on my head!"
Now don't get me wrong, this can be a great way to approach improv when you're new to it. Just jump out there and say whatever and don't be afraid to look silly. However, as you get slightly better at it, it's as well to develop a little more finesse. The idea of a 'rising absurdity curve' is that you start a scene with the small and ordinary. If you do introduce anything remarkable at the beginning, you take the time to establish it. But sudden dramatic events do not happen until later in the scene, as you reach the climax, at which point elements of the story that seemed normal earlier can and do blossom into full-blown absurdities.
Poetry doesn't have a set 'curve' of the sort that improvisers are taught to consider. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of a vivid metaphor really does depend on context. A poem might go with the improv curve, starting with the ordinary and deepening into metaphor as it draws you in. If you do start with a strong metaphor, you might need to broaden and establish it to make it seem at home. And, as I said at the beginning, sometimes you'd do just as well to leave the metaphors out altogether.
So anyway, I'm fiddling with a memory that I'd love to put into poetry. I write
I never saw a man so golden
as you were, lying by my side.
It's a shoddy approximation of what I felt, but the tone is right. I can't really go anywhere with it, though. I'm writing about something I don't understand. I don't have enough angles. Reluctantly, I give up on describing the exact feeling and decide perhaps I'll just put a little of that in a poem that includes some other stuff.
Late one night, when I'm supposed to be going to sleep, I hammer out a couple of lines that capture so much more of it.
The dawn that rose when I awoke tonight
was only in the halo of your hair.
I can't abandon those lines. They work. It's just that they set a level of metaphor that's going to be jolly hard to keep up with sensibly. This isn't going to be a plain-language poem. Look out, darlin', you're in the Land of High Metaphor. Whatcha gonna do to continue that? Bring out the octopi?
I've started in High Metaphor and now I need substance. Lots and lots of substance, because metaphor, if done well, can eat up substance like nothing else. It's a powerful and dense way of expressing things. One of the reasons I'm finding this so hard to write is that I'm expressing something remarkable that I haven't felt before. It's in the 'Whisky Tango Foxtrot' subgenre of love poetry. However, there have been several times in my life when I've felt something remarkable that I haven't felt before, so I have a better handle on that part of it than on the feeling itself. That helps. I might be able to use that in the poem, but, of course, this now means I'm negotiating two dangers. On the one hand we have Scylla the octopus. On the other hand we have Charybdis, the never ending whirlpool which consists of saying things in a poem like "I don't know how to say it" or "words cannot express this". If words can't express it, why are you trying, dude? Give up and start writing drippy pop songs instead.
It's been a few months, now, but so far I've been able to build this:
The dawn was rising when I woke, tonight,
but only in the halo of your hair,
and I, bemused, perceiving by its light
a whole horizon waiting for me there,
say nothing. I am waiting for a phrase
to catch some faithful gleam inside the haze.
If I could always have a minute more
to stay within the compass of your hand,
then by your touch and mine I could explore
the whole of you and I, and understand
the half-remembered dreams that shimmer through
this little world that takes its light from you.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Atheism
Imagination suffers, being free.
The real world gets more curious with time.
So play with method. Study how you see,
and by a prism
unweave the rainbow
and do not fear to write in red on lime,
but if the colour scatters carelessly
then look for method, metre, even rhyme,
and by a prison
shape a poem.
Yes, this is rainbow--poem, take 2.
[Edit: I've edited the title, because, staring at it after it was up, I realised that my original title of 'Humanism' mostly just fogged things up by linking it to a whole slew of ideas that were only partially related. Atheism has a much sharper denotation.
I don't know what it is about this poem that makes me so impulsive in posting it.]
The real world gets more curious with time.
So play with method. Study how you see,
and by a prism
unweave the rainbow
and do not fear to write in red on lime,
but if the colour scatters carelessly
then look for method, metre, even rhyme,
and by a prison
shape a poem.
Yes, this is rainbow--poem, take 2.
[Edit: I've edited the title, because, staring at it after it was up, I realised that my original title of 'Humanism' mostly just fogged things up by linking it to a whole slew of ideas that were only partially related. Atheism has a much sharper denotation.
I don't know what it is about this poem that makes me so impulsive in posting it.]
Monday, 22 September 2008
rainbow -- poem
When everything we see is bland and white
with platitudinous false prophecy
then look for method, study even light,
and by a prism
unweave the rainbow,
and do not fear to write in red on lime,
but if the colour scatters carelessly
then look for method, metre, even rhyme,
and by a prison
unlock a poem.
I should leave this for a day or two to see if I want to change it, but I can't resist showing it off. I've been trying to write the above as a blog post for ages, but there were too many interlinked ideas to be able to fit them all into a linear prose structure. Additionally, I've been thinking for ages that I should write a poem about atheism, but I kept finding that I didn't have any really good ideas. I suppose I ought to thank Maria for this post at Chromium Oxide Green, which made me realise that not having any good ideas for a poem about reality is kind of silly.
with platitudinous false prophecy
then look for method, study even light,
and by a prism
unweave the rainbow,
and do not fear to write in red on lime,
but if the colour scatters carelessly
then look for method, metre, even rhyme,
and by a prison
unlock a poem.
I should leave this for a day or two to see if I want to change it, but I can't resist showing it off. I've been trying to write the above as a blog post for ages, but there were too many interlinked ideas to be able to fit them all into a linear prose structure. Additionally, I've been thinking for ages that I should write a poem about atheism, but I kept finding that I didn't have any really good ideas. I suppose I ought to thank Maria for this post at Chromium Oxide Green, which made me realise that not having any good ideas for a poem about reality is kind of silly.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Plain Language
I fear that the embrace we shared back then
has lost its meaning in your mind today.
It's waiting for some other moment when
we're once again together. When I play
with memories in verse, do I disturb
the balance of our delicate regard?
Relationships are precious, and to curb
my muse is only wise. It's not so hard.
But, ah, the things you've given me! They sing,
seductive as the call of distant lands.
My fingers, clumsy with such substance, bring
no talent, but I shuffle with the strands
of silken colour, soft and light as air,
and beg forgiveness for my lingering care.
has lost its meaning in your mind today.
It's waiting for some other moment when
we're once again together. When I play
with memories in verse, do I disturb
the balance of our delicate regard?
Relationships are precious, and to curb
my muse is only wise. It's not so hard.
But, ah, the things you've given me! They sing,
seductive as the call of distant lands.
My fingers, clumsy with such substance, bring
no talent, but I shuffle with the strands
of silken colour, soft and light as air,
and beg forgiveness for my lingering care.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
For ---
Here’s fourteen lines on impulse – like the way
we hide beneath your jacket in the rain
and find that, since we have the chance today,
I might as well be kissing you again.
This one’s for friendship; this, for pleasant lust.
This one’s for luck, and this one is for trust.
We tell each other secrets, you and I,
and still can look each other in the eye.
So sit down here beside me on the grass,
and never mind the mud, and take my hand,
and kiss me on the mouth, for time will pass
and things won’t always go the way we planned,
but sometimes we find serendipity –
I hope, for now, you find it here with me.
(You are reading this, aren't you? Hope you don't mind.)
Friday, 6 June 2008
Girlishness
Kick up your heels, and wear
Pink flowers in your hair
And stop to feel the echoed kiss upon the air
Stand on the brink, and be
Catch breath in brevity
And string each fleeting note into a melody
Live from the heart, and know
Your mind works even so
For sometimes all of life is in the letting go
I like this one. I know it's sappy and I don't care. Pink flowers! Gotta love it.
On the other hand, I'm alternating between thinking the title is perfect and thinking it's a flimsy attempt to lower expectations. Maybe I'll come up with something else, who knows?
Pink flowers in your hair
And stop to feel the echoed kiss upon the air
Stand on the brink, and be
Catch breath in brevity
And string each fleeting note into a melody
Live from the heart, and know
Your mind works even so
For sometimes all of life is in the letting go
I like this one. I know it's sappy and I don't care. Pink flowers! Gotta love it.
On the other hand, I'm alternating between thinking the title is perfect and thinking it's a flimsy attempt to lower expectations. Maybe I'll come up with something else, who knows?
Thursday, 20 March 2008
Against Preferring Fundamentalists
There are atheists who say they have more respect for fundamentalist believers than for liberals. At least the fundamentalists follow their own logic, even if it is horrible -- so the reasoning goes. Fundamentalists, supposedly, are consistent within their own worldview, they don't "pick and choose", they don't rely on fuzzy, feel-good reasoning. They have their picture and they stick with it, whereas the liberal Christian picture doesn't even make sense.
I want to speak up for the liberal Christians.
There's a sonnet by John Donne that begins "At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels . . . ". At the round Earth's imagin'd corners. You see, Revelations 7:1 says "I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth." The Earth has no corners, but we may imagine them, let our religion in this one aspect be an element only of the life of the mind, a flight of the imagination that makes sense on an emotional, poetic level.
I get that. And you'll note that it's hardly a new idea! Fred Clark the Slacktivist has a certain liking for John Donne. That quote below his blog title about "knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend" is from another of Donne's "Holy Sonnets". And yes, I like that poem, too. For me the whole thing is mere flight of the imagination -- a view which the author would not approve of, I'm sure! Worse still, I don't necessarily agree with the poem's stance, even as metaphor, for it views human nature as sinful and speaks of help only as coming from without, and its call to be completely overthown is too similar to calls made by Christians for their reason to be overthrown for me to be able to be comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful, visceral cry for goodness that I can't help but be caught by it. Thus I can understand religious humanists, and the others who do not liberalise themselves quite so far, who blend truth and tradition by means of metaphor, retaining the structure of belief as an aspect of their lives, and retaining the belief itself to various degrees.
Some Christians, of course, are afraid that they or others will go this far. They would read what I have written above and say "See? This is why we can't go around taking stuff metaphorically all the time." Many of them would then go on to explain that not taking the Bible literally might let you support abortion or (gasp) homosexuality. Of course, the abortion thing is ridiculous, because there isn't a single verse in the Bible that guarantees either that abortion is wrong or that the soul is implanted at conception. In fact, there's at least one passage (Exodus 21:22-23) that sort of implies otherwise. Moreover, if anyone's 'picking and choosing' with no obvious justification, it's the people who pick the invisible verse condemning abortion along with "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination" (Lev:20:13) and Paul's statement in 1 Romans referring to "women [who] exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural" and "men . . . [who] were consumed with passion for one another" as "errors" and "degrading passions", while completely ignoring some or all of the following:
Deut 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.
How many of the people who speak against homosexuality also speak against women wearing trousers? I bet some of them are women wearing trousers.
Deut 22:11 You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.
Enough said. Nobody is demanding laws against wool/linen garments.
Lev 25:44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you [and not from the Israelites] that you may acquire male and female slaves.
Eph 6:5-6 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
(and many more from both Old and New Testaments)
People used to care about those ones, but people who liked those verses usually preferred to ignore this verse:
Deut 23:15-16 Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.
Small mitigation, I think.
I could go on until everybody is bored, but I won't (go to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible and you'll be able to pull out hundreds of verses that most of those who deride homosexuality don't follow, I'm sure). People over the centuries have used the Bible for their purposes and derided as "pickers and choosers" those who didn't come to the conclusions mandated by the verses they chose. Such people always ignore plenty of other verses. The reason those people -- whether railing against homosexuality, miscegenation, women's rights or the abolition of slavery -- seem to refer to the Bible more often than their opponents is very simple. It's because they don't have anything else to refer to. It doesn't mean that they actually take the Bible any more literally.
If you're going to pick and choose, by all means pick "love your neighbour as yourself"! Yes, to do so requires an extra-Biblical value judgement (oh, no!), but at least there is some justification! Unlike fundamentalists, people who pick "love your neighbour" aren't picking and choosing for no good reason. They have a reason. It's quite a good one. It's the common human sense of morality, not mandated by the universe, but felt by nearly all human beings in some form. To be sure, morality of this type can get fuzzy around the edges, but the Golden Rule has arisen independently in many, many cultures, and it's always considered crucial. It's not arbitrary, merely relative to humanity. Humanity in general, that is.
Don't feed the fundamentalists. Don't tell them they actually take the Bible more seriously. They'll just say "Yes, that's right, the Bible forbids abortion!" (It doesn't. Remember?)
I want to speak up for the liberal Christians.
There's a sonnet by John Donne that begins "At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels . . . ". At the round Earth's imagin'd corners. You see, Revelations 7:1 says "I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth." The Earth has no corners, but we may imagine them, let our religion in this one aspect be an element only of the life of the mind, a flight of the imagination that makes sense on an emotional, poetic level.
I get that. And you'll note that it's hardly a new idea! Fred Clark the Slacktivist has a certain liking for John Donne. That quote below his blog title about "knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend" is from another of Donne's "Holy Sonnets". And yes, I like that poem, too. For me the whole thing is mere flight of the imagination -- a view which the author would not approve of, I'm sure! Worse still, I don't necessarily agree with the poem's stance, even as metaphor, for it views human nature as sinful and speaks of help only as coming from without, and its call to be completely overthown is too similar to calls made by Christians for their reason to be overthrown for me to be able to be comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful, visceral cry for goodness that I can't help but be caught by it. Thus I can understand religious humanists, and the others who do not liberalise themselves quite so far, who blend truth and tradition by means of metaphor, retaining the structure of belief as an aspect of their lives, and retaining the belief itself to various degrees.
Some Christians, of course, are afraid that they or others will go this far. They would read what I have written above and say "See? This is why we can't go around taking stuff metaphorically all the time." Many of them would then go on to explain that not taking the Bible literally might let you support abortion or (gasp) homosexuality. Of course, the abortion thing is ridiculous, because there isn't a single verse in the Bible that guarantees either that abortion is wrong or that the soul is implanted at conception. In fact, there's at least one passage (Exodus 21:22-23) that sort of implies otherwise. Moreover, if anyone's 'picking and choosing' with no obvious justification, it's the people who pick the invisible verse condemning abortion along with "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination" (Lev:20:13) and Paul's statement in 1 Romans referring to "women [who] exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural" and "men . . . [who] were consumed with passion for one another" as "errors" and "degrading passions", while completely ignoring some or all of the following:
Deut 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.
How many of the people who speak against homosexuality also speak against women wearing trousers? I bet some of them are women wearing trousers.
Deut 22:11 You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.
Enough said. Nobody is demanding laws against wool/linen garments.
Lev 25:44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you [and not from the Israelites] that you may acquire male and female slaves.
Eph 6:5-6 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
(and many more from both Old and New Testaments)
People used to care about those ones, but people who liked those verses usually preferred to ignore this verse:
Deut 23:15-16 Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.
Small mitigation, I think.
I could go on until everybody is bored, but I won't (go to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible and you'll be able to pull out hundreds of verses that most of those who deride homosexuality don't follow, I'm sure). People over the centuries have used the Bible for their purposes and derided as "pickers and choosers" those who didn't come to the conclusions mandated by the verses they chose. Such people always ignore plenty of other verses. The reason those people -- whether railing against homosexuality, miscegenation, women's rights or the abolition of slavery -- seem to refer to the Bible more often than their opponents is very simple. It's because they don't have anything else to refer to. It doesn't mean that they actually take the Bible any more literally.
If you're going to pick and choose, by all means pick "love your neighbour as yourself"! Yes, to do so requires an extra-Biblical value judgement (oh, no!), but at least there is some justification! Unlike fundamentalists, people who pick "love your neighbour" aren't picking and choosing for no good reason. They have a reason. It's quite a good one. It's the common human sense of morality, not mandated by the universe, but felt by nearly all human beings in some form. To be sure, morality of this type can get fuzzy around the edges, but the Golden Rule has arisen independently in many, many cultures, and it's always considered crucial. It's not arbitrary, merely relative to humanity. Humanity in general, that is.
Don't feed the fundamentalists. Don't tell them they actually take the Bible more seriously. They'll just say "Yes, that's right, the Bible forbids abortion!" (It doesn't. Remember?)
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Stopping to Think
The Nonbelieving Literati -- the atheist book club started by the Exterminator -- had a striking success of sorts this last round. John Evo, choosing the next book for the Literati to read, decided to pick a classic that would be completely new to him, and we loosely associated literate atheists settled down, each in our own corner, to read The Plague by Albert Camus.
The results were stunning -- see the Spanish Inquisitor for an overview. Pick a Nobel prizewinner and you get posts all over the show, some thoughtful, some critical, some on smaller themes, some on larger ones, and nearly all of them making powerful points. I was particularly impressed by the Lifeguard's post, which took some of the scariest ideas in the book and faced them head on, starting with the disconnect between the way we live our lives day to day and the moments when we actually stop to think about the meaning of it all:
Art is more common than you think. When I was a child, for some reason I thought painting and music and dancing and the like were for kids. For kids, because they just might grow up to be good at them, and for the lucky few adults who actually did grow up to be real artists and musicians and dancers. But you know what? A few years back, I found my grandmother pulling out her set of pastels and carefully drawing a vase of yellow flowers. It wasn't much better than the good end of kids' drawings, and I thought it was a little weird for an old woman to be picking up a new hobby, but I figured it was kind of nice, really. Maybe you didn't have to give up that stuff when you got older after all.
A few months ago, I was getting into Nana's car and I had to shift a picture off the passenger seat. It was a wave, in glorious colourful blues and greens, the richness of the pastels in full display. I was impressed. And my grandmother? She smiled in that slightly shy, proud sort of way, as I might smile if you were kind enough to compliment one of my poems, and said "Actually, I'm particularly proud of that landscape on the back seat, there, the one with the red-roofed house. I think it's my best one so far."
If you put the work in, you really can get well beyond what your average mildly talented kid can produce. She might never sell a picture. I might never publish a poem. But we're both doing something worthwhile. Art is not just for those who might earn a living from it. Art is for those who might gain a little life from it.
Religion sometimes sells itself as a source of meaning. The alpha course is a good example. And whilst I don't advocate using your desire for meaning as a measure of the truth of a story, I think there's a lot to be said for organisations that give people the opportunity to explore these sorts of questions together. Here's one interesting example calling itself the School of Philosophy. I only have my brief exploration of their website to go by, but they appear to be refreshingly broad. Looking at this flyer advertising their Cultural Day, I conclude that they're not entirely free of what we skeptics refer to as 'woo', but nor does their entire programme rest on nonscientific mumbo-jumbo. Rather, they appear to be taking inspiration from all manner of thinkers from all times and places. Lack of dogma -- I approve. This sort of inclusive participation in the search for meaning and joy in life is a really good idea.
An atheist who seeks meaning or self-expression might take a course like this, or study poetry, or become fascinated by astronomy as a source of awe in the universe. The sort of philosophy that you learn in a university can be very mind-expanding, too.
If you're thinking of creating an atheist group in your region to discuss these sorts of things, though, might I suggest a book club?
The results were stunning -- see the Spanish Inquisitor for an overview. Pick a Nobel prizewinner and you get posts all over the show, some thoughtful, some critical, some on smaller themes, some on larger ones, and nearly all of them making powerful points. I was particularly impressed by the Lifeguard's post, which took some of the scariest ideas in the book and faced them head on, starting with the disconnect between the way we live our lives day to day and the moments when we actually stop to think about the meaning of it all:
Think about it. Every day you wake up. You wonder what you’ll have for breakfast. Should I just stop at Dunkin Donuts? No, I’m trying to lose some weight for the beach season. . . . All of these things cease to matter ten minutes later when a car comes crashing across three lanes, skidding 360 degrees on a rainy parkway just twenty feet in front of you on the way to work.Sometimes it seems like nobody bothers to ask the real questions. But the truth is, I think most of us do. We don't question our foundations all the time, but every so often, we all have to face the broader questions about where we find our motivation and what we want from life. Philosophy is more common than you think.
Life, it appears, has a funny way of reminding us just how irrelevant our everyday lives are.
Art is more common than you think. When I was a child, for some reason I thought painting and music and dancing and the like were for kids. For kids, because they just might grow up to be good at them, and for the lucky few adults who actually did grow up to be real artists and musicians and dancers. But you know what? A few years back, I found my grandmother pulling out her set of pastels and carefully drawing a vase of yellow flowers. It wasn't much better than the good end of kids' drawings, and I thought it was a little weird for an old woman to be picking up a new hobby, but I figured it was kind of nice, really. Maybe you didn't have to give up that stuff when you got older after all.
A few months ago, I was getting into Nana's car and I had to shift a picture off the passenger seat. It was a wave, in glorious colourful blues and greens, the richness of the pastels in full display. I was impressed. And my grandmother? She smiled in that slightly shy, proud sort of way, as I might smile if you were kind enough to compliment one of my poems, and said "Actually, I'm particularly proud of that landscape on the back seat, there, the one with the red-roofed house. I think it's my best one so far."
If you put the work in, you really can get well beyond what your average mildly talented kid can produce. She might never sell a picture. I might never publish a poem. But we're both doing something worthwhile. Art is not just for those who might earn a living from it. Art is for those who might gain a little life from it.
Religion sometimes sells itself as a source of meaning. The alpha course is a good example. And whilst I don't advocate using your desire for meaning as a measure of the truth of a story, I think there's a lot to be said for organisations that give people the opportunity to explore these sorts of questions together. Here's one interesting example calling itself the School of Philosophy. I only have my brief exploration of their website to go by, but they appear to be refreshingly broad. Looking at this flyer advertising their Cultural Day, I conclude that they're not entirely free of what we skeptics refer to as 'woo', but nor does their entire programme rest on nonscientific mumbo-jumbo. Rather, they appear to be taking inspiration from all manner of thinkers from all times and places. Lack of dogma -- I approve. This sort of inclusive participation in the search for meaning and joy in life is a really good idea.
An atheist who seeks meaning or self-expression might take a course like this, or study poetry, or become fascinated by astronomy as a source of awe in the universe. The sort of philosophy that you learn in a university can be very mind-expanding, too.
If you're thinking of creating an atheist group in your region to discuss these sorts of things, though, might I suggest a book club?
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Shoreline
This is the way it ought to be.
Far from the deepest current rushing
to tug my feet caressingly,
far from the dull dry sand, just brushing
the richly salty laps of sea.
The salt was wept by poets, here,
who knew the waves were unforgiving,
who felt the rush and held it dear,
but still they fought to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
Notes
(Feel free to ignore these if you want to just comment on the poem. Edit: I recommend just reading the first one.)
1. I've borrowed a metrical trick from the Onegin Stanza. I mean, it's just so brilliant -- by using feminine endings, you break up the tetrameter so it doesn't jingle too much, but it's still more musical than pentameter. I've always been frustrated by the way iambic pentameter can be so, well, invisible. There are advantages to that, of course -- it can be an unobtrusive scaffolding -- but there's still a part of me that insists that metre ought to be felt as more than a vague regularity in the back of your mind. Heck, sometimes pentameter just feels stodgy. As far as I'm concerned, Alexander Pushkin was a genius to come up with this alternative, so naturally I had to experiment to see if I could use it in a different setting.
2. Boy, this one took a long time! Alterations all over the place. If you're interested, here are some of my variations.
First stanza:
This is the way it ought to be.
Far from the danger of the rushing
tide of creativity.
Far from the dull dry sand, just brushing
the richly salty laps of sea.
That first line was the bit that started me off -- an unexpectedly iambic line in a definite conceptual context. The last line of that stanza was the main thing that made me sure I couldn't give up on this poem.
Second stanza:
We can't quite help but wander here.
We know the waves are unforgiving,
we know we mustn't go too near,
yet still we wish to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
Pretentious as heck, right? This is actually a later version than the one I went with, setting aside the changes I made once I reverted to my original version. I had a go at changing this second idea into first person with more natural language, which made it much less pretentious, but a little dull:
I can't quite help but wander here
I know the waves are unforgiving,
I know I mustn't go too near,
but still I want to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
See, this is better, but it's just not as dramatic as my first sketch (It has a nice bit of wander/wonder wordplay, but wordplay is not a reason to keep something that isn't working. Anyone who has ever groaned at a bad joke knows that wordplay just can't carry things on its own. Besides, I still have shore/sure. I'm not sure if that one works for anyone else besides me, but I like the soft reference I find in it anyway).
To be honest, I think the reason I was able to revert to my original idea on the second stanza is because I'd changed the first stanza. The original first stanza was too weak in comparison with the original second stanza, and the ideas conveyed weren't strong enough to carry the (perhaps overly romantic) lyricism of the second stanza, either.
Anyone who thinks I shouldn't have made the changes I did is welcome to speak up; I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I think I've made the right choices, but I'm not certain.
3. I agonised over saying 'poets' in the second stanza. I'd've liked to have said 'mathematicians' (or maybe 'philosophers', as the exact meaning of the poem shifted) but they both have a few too many syllables. And face it, 'thinkers' just sounds stupid. But the truth is, poetry actually doesn't feel like it's going to eat me. If anything, it's freedom -- a creative release that my parents don't know about and that therefore belongs entirely to me, to use or abuse as I wish.
I sure other people have felt like poetry might eat them, though. Maybe I just haven't been doing it for long enough. In any case, since anyone who reads this knows it was written by someone who writes poetry, referring to 'poets' has an intimacy that wouldn't be there otherwise. And, heck, poetry can have philosophy in it -- the deep kind of philosophy that can save or submerge you.
In other words, referring to poetry in this context can actually feel right, after all.
Far from the deepest current rushing
to tug my feet caressingly,
far from the dull dry sand, just brushing
the richly salty laps of sea.
The salt was wept by poets, here,
who knew the waves were unforgiving,
who felt the rush and held it dear,
but still they fought to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
Notes
(Feel free to ignore these if you want to just comment on the poem. Edit: I recommend just reading the first one.)
1. I've borrowed a metrical trick from the Onegin Stanza. I mean, it's just so brilliant -- by using feminine endings, you break up the tetrameter so it doesn't jingle too much, but it's still more musical than pentameter. I've always been frustrated by the way iambic pentameter can be so, well, invisible. There are advantages to that, of course -- it can be an unobtrusive scaffolding -- but there's still a part of me that insists that metre ought to be felt as more than a vague regularity in the back of your mind. Heck, sometimes pentameter just feels stodgy. As far as I'm concerned, Alexander Pushkin was a genius to come up with this alternative, so naturally I had to experiment to see if I could use it in a different setting.
2. Boy, this one took a long time! Alterations all over the place. If you're interested, here are some of my variations.
First stanza:
This is the way it ought to be.
Far from the danger of the rushing
tide of creativity.
Far from the dull dry sand, just brushing
the richly salty laps of sea.
That first line was the bit that started me off -- an unexpectedly iambic line in a definite conceptual context. The last line of that stanza was the main thing that made me sure I couldn't give up on this poem.
Second stanza:
We can't quite help but wander here.
We know the waves are unforgiving,
we know we mustn't go too near,
yet still we wish to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
Pretentious as heck, right? This is actually a later version than the one I went with, setting aside the changes I made once I reverted to my original version. I had a go at changing this second idea into first person with more natural language, which made it much less pretentious, but a little dull:
I can't quite help but wander here
I know the waves are unforgiving,
I know I mustn't go too near,
but still I want to go on living
in joy, in hope, in quiet fear.
See, this is better, but it's just not as dramatic as my first sketch (It has a nice bit of wander/wonder wordplay, but wordplay is not a reason to keep something that isn't working. Anyone who has ever groaned at a bad joke knows that wordplay just can't carry things on its own. Besides, I still have shore/sure. I'm not sure if that one works for anyone else besides me, but I like the soft reference I find in it anyway).
To be honest, I think the reason I was able to revert to my original idea on the second stanza is because I'd changed the first stanza. The original first stanza was too weak in comparison with the original second stanza, and the ideas conveyed weren't strong enough to carry the (perhaps overly romantic) lyricism of the second stanza, either.
Anyone who thinks I shouldn't have made the changes I did is welcome to speak up; I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I think I've made the right choices, but I'm not certain.
3. I agonised over saying 'poets' in the second stanza. I'd've liked to have said 'mathematicians' (or maybe 'philosophers', as the exact meaning of the poem shifted) but they both have a few too many syllables. And face it, 'thinkers' just sounds stupid. But the truth is, poetry actually doesn't feel like it's going to eat me. If anything, it's freedom -- a creative release that my parents don't know about and that therefore belongs entirely to me, to use or abuse as I wish.
I sure other people have felt like poetry might eat them, though. Maybe I just haven't been doing it for long enough. In any case, since anyone who reads this knows it was written by someone who writes poetry, referring to 'poets' has an intimacy that wouldn't be there otherwise. And, heck, poetry can have philosophy in it -- the deep kind of philosophy that can save or submerge you.
In other words, referring to poetry in this context can actually feel right, after all.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Trochaic Substitutions in Iambic Verse
I fear I am about to give you a lecture. Blame Alon, he asked for it (In the comments of this post. Sort of).
First things first. When we speak English, some syllables have stronger emphasis placed on them than others. By this I do not mean the same sort of emphasis that we would denote by italics. I mean the natural variations in stress that create the rhythm of our speech. Following Stephen Fry's convention in this lovely book, when I want to show you which syllables are stressed I shall write the stressed syllables in bold, like this:
The natural variations in stress that create the rhythm of our speech.
An iamb is a weak (unstressed) syllable followed by a strong (stressed) syllable. In ordinary speech I might be likely to pronounce it iamb -- but don't. As a way of remembering it, stress the second syllable: iamb. Iamb, iamb, iamb, iamb. That's the rhythm of iambic verse.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal -- yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
(Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
It is worth noting that if you merely read a poem in your head, you are less likely to take note of which syllables are strong and which ones are weak. This is one reason (and not the only one) for getting into the habit of always reading poems aloud. Even just whispering the poem makes a real difference to what you can get out of it. So, please, when I quote lines of poetry in this post, read them aloud to yourself. And if you will do me the courtesy of reading my humble poems aloud when I post them, I shall bless you as a considerate and thoughtful reader.
The excerpt from Ode on a Grecian Urn that I gave above is written in iambic pentameter. That is to say, there are five iambic 'feet' in each line; five sets of 'weak-strong'. Iambic tetrameter, with four iambs per line, is also quite common:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And make some extra, just for you.
(Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse)
A trochee is sort of the opposite of an iamb: 'strong-weak' rather than 'weak-strong'. Trochaic verse is less common than iambic verse, but there are certainly examples out there. Longfellow's Hiawatha, for example, is written in trochaic tetrameter (the name of the title character may have had something to do with that).
And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
Through the tranquil air of morning,
First a single line of darkness,
Then a denser, bluer vapor,
Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
Like the tree-tops of the forest,
Ever rising, rising, rising,
Till it touched the top of heaven . . . (link)
Longfellow wrote Hiawatha in huge sentences; they kind of drag on, sometimes, in my opinion. However, if I was writing trochaic verse I think I would have a hard time not doing that, myself. Trochees are not very, well, conclusive; they end weakly. Iambic verse, by contrast, ends on a strong syllable and, as a result, tends to sound stronger as a whole.
Within iambic verse, a trochaic substitution occurs when you substitute a trochee for one of your iambic feet. It can occur at the beginning of a line, like this:
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough . . .
(Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
It can also occur in the middle of a line, at the beginning of a new phrase, like this:
To be or not to be: that is the question.
(Don't get confused by the extra syllable at the end, there; it's called a feminine ending, and it's another perfectly common variation)
A trochaic substitution in the middle of a line forces us to have two stressed syllables next to each other. This naturally creates a tendency to pause between the two strong syllables. As a result, it's generally bad form to use a trochaic substitution in the middle of a line in a situation where the pause would not be natural. This rule about where trochaic substitutions are allowed to go is nearly universal. However, the effects that can be produced by trochaic substitutions within those limits are startlingly varied.
A trochaic substitution can be a way to start things with a bang:
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
(Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott)
Trochaic substitutions can fit nicely into a strong, purposeful rhythm, as in the conclusion of this poem by Wilfred Owen where he explains why he isn't writing jolly little poems about the ways in which war isn't so bad after all:
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
(Wilfred Owen, Apologia Pro Poemate Meo)
Trochaic substitutions can be used in dramatic verse to break the rhythm of a character's speech to show agitation. There are several good examples in Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII. Here's Lady Macbeth, berating her husband with trochaic substitutions all over the place:
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love.
My favourite trochaic substitution, though, is nearly invisible. It's a lilt, a beauty mark, at the beginning of the fourth line of the following poem. Since the metre flows naturally on its own, I won't spoil the elegance of it by crudely marking it out.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes:
(Byron, She Walks In Beauty)
Would you rather be a good enough poet to write that, or would you rather be pretty enough to have that written about you? I can't decide. Not that I would be foolish enough to have anything to do with mister 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' if he was still alive, but he did write awfully sexy poetry.
If Emily Dickinson is writing it, a trochaic substitution can even be soft and lingering:
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul . . . (link)
It's startling, but entirely typical of poetry, that the rules can be so strict, and the results so varied. I find that knowing something of the ways in which metre can vary makes a big difference to the way I read poetry. In Shakespeare, the metre can sometimes amount to a stage direction to say a line in a particular way. In Wilfred Owen's most famous poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, I read it again after I'd learned to read metre and couldn't believe I had never noticed before the way the metre sputters and dies in the final line. When Ebonmuse posted some excerpts from Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning, I knew full well I wouldn't have read them in the same even, powerful way if I wasn't sorting each pentametric line into iambic beats (with the occasional trochaic one).
It's worth knowing.
First things first. When we speak English, some syllables have stronger emphasis placed on them than others. By this I do not mean the same sort of emphasis that we would denote by italics. I mean the natural variations in stress that create the rhythm of our speech. Following Stephen Fry's convention in this lovely book, when I want to show you which syllables are stressed I shall write the stressed syllables in bold, like this:
The natural variations in stress that create the rhythm of our speech.
An iamb is a weak (unstressed) syllable followed by a strong (stressed) syllable. In ordinary speech I might be likely to pronounce it iamb -- but don't. As a way of remembering it, stress the second syllable: iamb. Iamb, iamb, iamb, iamb. That's the rhythm of iambic verse.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal -- yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
(Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
It is worth noting that if you merely read a poem in your head, you are less likely to take note of which syllables are strong and which ones are weak. This is one reason (and not the only one) for getting into the habit of always reading poems aloud. Even just whispering the poem makes a real difference to what you can get out of it. So, please, when I quote lines of poetry in this post, read them aloud to yourself. And if you will do me the courtesy of reading my humble poems aloud when I post them, I shall bless you as a considerate and thoughtful reader.
The excerpt from Ode on a Grecian Urn that I gave above is written in iambic pentameter. That is to say, there are five iambic 'feet' in each line; five sets of 'weak-strong'. Iambic tetrameter, with four iambs per line, is also quite common:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And make some extra, just for you.
(Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse)
A trochee is sort of the opposite of an iamb: 'strong-weak' rather than 'weak-strong'. Trochaic verse is less common than iambic verse, but there are certainly examples out there. Longfellow's Hiawatha, for example, is written in trochaic tetrameter (the name of the title character may have had something to do with that).
And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
Through the tranquil air of morning,
First a single line of darkness,
Then a denser, bluer vapor,
Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
Like the tree-tops of the forest,
Ever rising, rising, rising,
Till it touched the top of heaven . . . (link)
Longfellow wrote Hiawatha in huge sentences; they kind of drag on, sometimes, in my opinion. However, if I was writing trochaic verse I think I would have a hard time not doing that, myself. Trochees are not very, well, conclusive; they end weakly. Iambic verse, by contrast, ends on a strong syllable and, as a result, tends to sound stronger as a whole.
Within iambic verse, a trochaic substitution occurs when you substitute a trochee for one of your iambic feet. It can occur at the beginning of a line, like this:
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough . . .
(Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
It can also occur in the middle of a line, at the beginning of a new phrase, like this:
To be or not to be: that is the question.
(Don't get confused by the extra syllable at the end, there; it's called a feminine ending, and it's another perfectly common variation)
A trochaic substitution in the middle of a line forces us to have two stressed syllables next to each other. This naturally creates a tendency to pause between the two strong syllables. As a result, it's generally bad form to use a trochaic substitution in the middle of a line in a situation where the pause would not be natural. This rule about where trochaic substitutions are allowed to go is nearly universal. However, the effects that can be produced by trochaic substitutions within those limits are startlingly varied.
A trochaic substitution can be a way to start things with a bang:
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
(Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott)
Trochaic substitutions can fit nicely into a strong, purposeful rhythm, as in the conclusion of this poem by Wilfred Owen where he explains why he isn't writing jolly little poems about the ways in which war isn't so bad after all:
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
(Wilfred Owen, Apologia Pro Poemate Meo)
Trochaic substitutions can be used in dramatic verse to break the rhythm of a character's speech to show agitation. There are several good examples in Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII. Here's Lady Macbeth, berating her husband with trochaic substitutions all over the place:
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love.
My favourite trochaic substitution, though, is nearly invisible. It's a lilt, a beauty mark, at the beginning of the fourth line of the following poem. Since the metre flows naturally on its own, I won't spoil the elegance of it by crudely marking it out.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes:
(Byron, She Walks In Beauty)
Would you rather be a good enough poet to write that, or would you rather be pretty enough to have that written about you? I can't decide. Not that I would be foolish enough to have anything to do with mister 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' if he was still alive, but he did write awfully sexy poetry.
If Emily Dickinson is writing it, a trochaic substitution can even be soft and lingering:
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul . . . (link)
It's startling, but entirely typical of poetry, that the rules can be so strict, and the results so varied. I find that knowing something of the ways in which metre can vary makes a big difference to the way I read poetry. In Shakespeare, the metre can sometimes amount to a stage direction to say a line in a particular way. In Wilfred Owen's most famous poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, I read it again after I'd learned to read metre and couldn't believe I had never noticed before the way the metre sputters and dies in the final line. When Ebonmuse posted some excerpts from Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning, I knew full well I wouldn't have read them in the same even, powerful way if I wasn't sorting each pentametric line into iambic beats (with the occasional trochaic one).
It's worth knowing.
Saturday, 19 January 2008
'Streetcar' and Censorship.
Yesterday, I finally cracked. I was on my way home from work and I passed the DVD rental place, wandered in and, well, somehow A Streetcar Named Desire was just what I felt like seeing. I’d been holding off for a while. I had my reasons.
I saw a stage production of The Glass Menagerie a few months ago. It was incredible. We don’t study Tennessee Williams in high school over here. Shakespeare, sure, every year at least once, and if you don’t hit Steinbeck there’s a good chance someone’ll hand you To Kill A Mockingbird, but Tennessee Williams isn’t on anybody’s radar for exam fodder. So I think it was somewhere around the point in Tom’s opening speech where he refers to the fiddler in the wings that I became aware of -- became awed by -- the autheticity of the voice. It was intimate. It was elegantly constructed. It had a rough edge. It was incontrovertibly American. This was poetry created from the surrounding voice. It couldn’t rely on literary conventions to mark it out as art. It was the real deal.
I was so glad I had never had to write English assignments on it.
Of course I wanted more. Still, I was wary of watching Tennessee Williams on film. Having seen The Glass Menagerie in the theatre, I honestly couldn’t imagine how you could possibly make a film out of it. The way it uses the stage setting is too beautiful, the way it doesn’t entirely pretend to be real. It’s nostalgic -- it’s a stage, an illusion -- it’s intimate, but it doesn’t pretend to be entirely real. How could you possibly capture that on film? Why would you want to?
I didn’t know if his later plays had anything of the same effect. But I couldn’t help worrying that film really couldn’t capture Tennessee Williams, and that I might be spoiling a future opportunity to see the real thing on stage. When it came to Streetcar, there was the plus side that Tennessee Williams had had a hand in the screenplay. If he thought it was okay, maybe it would be! On the other hand, though, there was the censorship issue. Did I really want to see a version that might have had its teeth pulled by prudish fifties industry watchdogs?
(Spoilers follow because I can’t shut up about important plot details.)
Well, I’ve seen it, no going back now, and I think it was probably worth it. The censorship does pose problems, but the actors are brilliant. It’s the film that made Marlon Brando’s name, of course, and Vivien Leigh is as good as you’d expect, but I was actually particularly impressed by Kim Hunter as Stella. She deserved that Oscar. She was a great contrast to Leigh’s pale waif-like Blanche, and I loved the complexity of emotion in her sulky mouth. I was watching the director’s cut, which meant we had the nice close-up in that scene where she goes back down to Stanley after he has hit her -- really, it’s a crying shame the League of Decency forced them to change that scene at the last minute. It was one of the most impressive sequences in the whole film, central to portraying Stella and Stanley’s relationship.
I’m glad I knew already that Blanche’s husband was homosexual. You could see perfectly well how the stuff she said about him applied to that situation (“He came to me for help, but I didn’t know that”). I’d have hated to be confused into thinking he was just oversensitive enough to kill himself over nothing.
It’s the end that I regret. When I saw Stella say to
They suckered me. I am ashamed of myself.
Those stuffy, long-dead bastards! See what they’ve done? I’ll never get that moment back. For, of course, in the original play, Stella doesn’t leave
I wasn’t so much glad that Stella had left
Perhaps they did endorse that. Stupid bastards.
Monday, 7 January 2008
Monday
It's 6am. Rather be early this morning.
I think I'm in the wrong time zone. Last week I
well it's probably fine but I can't be sure she didn't
take it the wrong way completely. And yes I
forgot to shower yesterday and the day before I
spent the day in bed. Why didn't I
get out more? Bloody stupid! Spent too much
time on the internet. Should have called a friend.
Tense, relax. Don't try to smile.
Nothing to do but rise, and have a shower,
grab some food and take a bite
and step out hopefully. Let the world forgive
this wilted, weary woman; let me
return to reality, just a little bruised.
I think I'm in the wrong time zone. Last week I
well it's probably fine but I can't be sure she didn't
take it the wrong way completely. And yes I
forgot to shower yesterday and the day before I
spent the day in bed. Why didn't I
get out more? Bloody stupid! Spent too much
time on the internet. Should have called a friend.
Tense, relax. Don't try to smile.
Nothing to do but rise, and have a shower,
grab some food and take a bite
and step out hopefully. Let the world forgive
this wilted, weary woman; let me
return to reality, just a little bruised.
Saturday, 15 December 2007
A Liberty
Americans! Of rights and freedoms famed
(Famed often by yourselves, it's true, but still)
Why do I see your once-proud country named
In lists of those who torture when they will?
Why are Iraq's reporters held uncharged?
Why does your leader flout the rule of law?
Look to your homeland, see what is presaged
Consider what you should be fighting for.
Although I know that it might seem a liberty
To say the threat is to your life, and small
There is no power in terrorist activity
To force your strong democracy to fall.
When fears both real and fictional abound,
If you would keep your freedom, stand your ground.
Note:
There's a metric device known as a trochaic substitution. Essentially, instead of an iamb (weak-strong), you substitute a trochee (strong-weak). It's usually only done at the beginning of a line, or after a pause mid-line, at the beginning of a new sentence or new idea. There are lots of them in this poem. Please don't mangle them by saying, for example, "Why do . . . " instead of "Why do . . . " in a misguided attempt to stick to the metre. Oh, and you can put one at the beginning of the final line, if you like, even though it's maybe not quite so obviously needed there. I would.
(Famed often by yourselves, it's true, but still)
Why do I see your once-proud country named
In lists of those who torture when they will?
Why are Iraq's reporters held uncharged?
Why does your leader flout the rule of law?
Look to your homeland, see what is presaged
Consider what you should be fighting for.
Although I know that it might seem a liberty
To say the threat is to your life, and small
There is no power in terrorist activity
To force your strong democracy to fall.
When fears both real and fictional abound,
If you would keep your freedom, stand your ground.
Note:
There's a metric device known as a trochaic substitution. Essentially, instead of an iamb (weak-strong), you substitute a trochee (strong-weak). It's usually only done at the beginning of a line, or after a pause mid-line, at the beginning of a new sentence or new idea. There are lots of them in this poem. Please don't mangle them by saying, for example, "Why do . . . " instead of "Why do . . . " in a misguided attempt to stick to the metre. Oh, and you can put one at the beginning of the final line, if you like, even though it's maybe not quite so obviously needed there. I would.
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Of Grief in Dusty Corners, Take 2
The abstract halls of mathematics rise
in cool, high-ceilinged arches, every line
a segment of infinity, which lies
precariously, perfectly inclined.
Yet once it was a garden made for lovers,
a cornucopia of odds and ends
and evens, where unsteadiness recovers,
secure between co-operating friends.
And when I step through theorems again,
I fear that, in this subtle space, the scent
of grief in dusty corners will remain
to catch me where I thought to be content.
It's still not as good as Penelope, but who cares? I'm a lot happier with this version.
in cool, high-ceilinged arches, every line
a segment of infinity, which lies
precariously, perfectly inclined.
Yet once it was a garden made for lovers,
a cornucopia of odds and ends
and evens, where unsteadiness recovers,
secure between co-operating friends.
And when I step through theorems again,
I fear that, in this subtle space, the scent
of grief in dusty corners will remain
to catch me where I thought to be content.
It's still not as good as Penelope, but who cares? I'm a lot happier with this version.
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Of Grief in Dusty Corners
With slow and steady patterning we grew
into each other's thinking. When the blade
tore bluntly through us twain, we fell askew
in senseless silence, feeling but the shade,
the phantom limb of conversations played,
remembrances continuously rent
in echoes that interminably fade.
Although both hope and agony are spent
for always and for ever, still the scent
of grief in dusty corners can surprise
my desecrating entrance, innocent
on murmured thoughts where yet a memory lies.
Notes:
1. It's not as good as Penelope. That's going to be true of pretty well every poem I write for a while now. Sigh.
2. It's almost a Spenserian sonnet (thank you, Exterminator, for the link to a whole lot of sonnet forms which sent me along that line). I left off the final couplet, though, because it would have been absurdly extraneous. Instead, we just have twelve lines, deeply interlaced. I like that, at least for this poem.
3. The backstory is my post here. If you want to know.
into each other's thinking. When the blade
tore bluntly through us twain, we fell askew
in senseless silence, feeling but the shade,
the phantom limb of conversations played,
remembrances continuously rent
in echoes that interminably fade.
Although both hope and agony are spent
for always and for ever, still the scent
of grief in dusty corners can surprise
my desecrating entrance, innocent
on murmured thoughts where yet a memory lies.
Notes:
1. It's not as good as Penelope. That's going to be true of pretty well every poem I write for a while now. Sigh.
2. It's almost a Spenserian sonnet (thank you, Exterminator, for the link to a whole lot of sonnet forms which sent me along that line). I left off the final couplet, though, because it would have been absurdly extraneous. Instead, we just have twelve lines, deeply interlaced. I like that, at least for this poem.
3. The backstory is my post here. If you want to know.
Monday, 19 November 2007
Penelope
Since you have introduced me to the Onegin stanza, Alon:
While her husband's in the water
the coxcombs crowd like butterflies.
She weaves the way her mother taught her.
If they hope that with their lies
they can persuade, they're wrong! She'll never
make her choice, for she is clever.
Although she knows her husband strays,
she'll keep within her faithful ways.
With pride she views her work, while hating
the way that she has used her mind
with independence, just to find
herself obediently waiting,
unravelling so craftily
the shroud that could have set her free.
While her husband's in the water
the coxcombs crowd like butterflies.
She weaves the way her mother taught her.
If they hope that with their lies
they can persuade, they're wrong! She'll never
make her choice, for she is clever.
Although she knows her husband strays,
she'll keep within her faithful ways.
With pride she views her work, while hating
the way that she has used her mind
with independence, just to find
herself obediently waiting,
unravelling so craftily
the shroud that could have set her free.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
A Breath of Air (Sonnet)
I throw my head back! Life is in me yet
My heart can still skip beats and laugh, oh, yeah!
So jump! Rejoice that deathly blank despair
Can never be interminably set.
He'd just become an adult when we met
No longer awkward, slackly debonair
He smiles at me with such a friendly flair
I too must smile, releasing my regret.
I cannot say I've felt a love's embrace
Nor shall I ever find it here, I know
Another woman smiles to see his face
And day by day I see their comfort grow.
To her he gives his lively warmth and care;
To me, he's just a precious breath of air.
Notes:
1. In many ways this is an old poem. I didn't dare write it at the time, and I started writing it about a year ago if I remember correctly. But I only finished it recently, and yes, it is possible that new ideas have made their way in.
2. There are two main types of sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet starts with an octet that has the rhyme scheme abbaabba, and then goes on to a sextet, usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. A Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet: ababcdcdefefgg. Frankly, I find the Shakespearean sonnet unbelievably bitsy -- fragmentary, that is; my quatrains have a tendency to stand stolidly alone with no flow*. By contrast, a Pertrarchan sonnet has a well-defined shape, since you are supposed to have a volta -- a turn, a change of mood, a new idea -- between the octet and the sextet. But let's face it, quatrains aside, that final couplet at the end of the Shakespearean can be wonderful. So I have cheerfully attempted to get the best of both worlds; my rhyme scheme is abbaabbacdcdbb. This gives me an octet, a quatrain and a couplet, which is certainly a departure from the usual Petrarchan shape; the couplet is a conclusory thing that brings together both prior sections.
3. Yes, and I rhymed the couplet using the b rhyme of the octet. Again, this is an attempt to make my rhyme begin the 'cohesion' thing for me. It's also not very hard, because the word 'air' has an awful lot of rhymes. I could have fitted 'chair', 'hair' or 'compare' in quite easily. 'Bear', 'mare' and 'stare' would have been less useful, I think. I'm a little sorry I didn't include 'swear' or 'dare', because they're both lively words. On the other hand, I'm sure a line ending in 'there' would have been dreadfully bland. And at one point I did include 'repair'. But you get the point. Oh, and if being American means things don't rhyme as well for you as for me, then I apologise -- but I'm not particularly contrite ;-)
*Which is why I interlocked my ruba'iyat. So that they'd flow. I mean, if I'd wanted to imitate Khayyam or FitzGerald as accurately as possible, I really shouldn't have done that.
My heart can still skip beats and laugh, oh, yeah!
So jump! Rejoice that deathly blank despair
Can never be interminably set.
He'd just become an adult when we met
No longer awkward, slackly debonair
He smiles at me with such a friendly flair
I too must smile, releasing my regret.
I cannot say I've felt a love's embrace
Nor shall I ever find it here, I know
Another woman smiles to see his face
And day by day I see their comfort grow.
To her he gives his lively warmth and care;
To me, he's just a precious breath of air.
Notes:
1. In many ways this is an old poem. I didn't dare write it at the time, and I started writing it about a year ago if I remember correctly. But I only finished it recently, and yes, it is possible that new ideas have made their way in.
2. There are two main types of sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet starts with an octet that has the rhyme scheme abbaabba, and then goes on to a sextet, usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. A Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet: ababcdcdefefgg. Frankly, I find the Shakespearean sonnet unbelievably bitsy -- fragmentary, that is; my quatrains have a tendency to stand stolidly alone with no flow*. By contrast, a Pertrarchan sonnet has a well-defined shape, since you are supposed to have a volta -- a turn, a change of mood, a new idea -- between the octet and the sextet. But let's face it, quatrains aside, that final couplet at the end of the Shakespearean can be wonderful. So I have cheerfully attempted to get the best of both worlds; my rhyme scheme is abbaabbacdcdbb. This gives me an octet, a quatrain and a couplet, which is certainly a departure from the usual Petrarchan shape; the couplet is a conclusory thing that brings together both prior sections.
3. Yes, and I rhymed the couplet using the b rhyme of the octet. Again, this is an attempt to make my rhyme begin the 'cohesion' thing for me. It's also not very hard, because the word 'air' has an awful lot of rhymes. I could have fitted 'chair', 'hair' or 'compare' in quite easily. 'Bear', 'mare' and 'stare' would have been less useful, I think. I'm a little sorry I didn't include 'swear' or 'dare', because they're both lively words. On the other hand, I'm sure a line ending in 'there' would have been dreadfully bland. And at one point I did include 'repair'. But you get the point. Oh, and if being American means things don't rhyme as well for you as for me, then I apologise -- but I'm not particularly contrite ;-)
*Which is why I interlocked my ruba'iyat. So that they'd flow. I mean, if I'd wanted to imitate Khayyam or FitzGerald as accurately as possible, I really shouldn't have done that.
Saturday, 27 October 2007
The Proscenium Arch
I had a sweet singing voice as a kid -- the sort of accurate tunefulness that you don't necessarily expect to hear from a child, and a cute, wistful sense of feeling, you know the type. Oh, my pleased, proud parents! When Mum was a kid, she always wished she could sing. Her father (not a particularly nice man) told her not to be stupid, she couldn't possibly be any good at anything like that. As for my father, he loves to sing. Unfortunately he can't sing for too long without his voice getting hoarse, because he damaged his throat when I was still a baby with a few too many late nights of singing at his regular restaurant slot.
My father in particular was always very keen for me to sing with him. If he couldn't sing as much as he'd like, at least he could play the guitar for me. And thus it was that I ended up singing for grandmothers, aunts, uncles, godparents, family friends, the occasional work colleague or graduate student of my father's, and, really, all and sundry who passed through our house.
The first time my father suggested I sing for some family members, I balked. Squirming, I got up and tried to sing, only to duck away shyly. I didn't dare thus set myself up as worth listening to, and leave myself exposed to evaluation of the implicit claim. I didn't want to have to watch their real-time reaction, right there in front of me. I just ... didn't want to sing.
But I am not, and have never been, a shrinking violet. I hate that girly shyness modesty stuff. So the second time, I steeled myself, and sang. The response was positive, naturally. I do not think I really expected anything else. Responding without seeming proud was definitely one of the more uncomfortable parts of the stomach-churning experience. But it didn't put me off. Most of the time, when my father suggested I sing, I sang.
When it came to solos with the school choir, I quickly became blasé. But with small audiences, in the living room, there's always that core of fear in your gut. You can learn to set it aside to let the song through, but it never really leaves you. It was always there, from the sweet little performances as an eight year old until the day when I was sixteen and finally made enough of a fuss that my father had to stop telling me to "oh, come on, they're expecting it". On stage, it's different. On stage, you have the proscenium arch. It separates you and the audience. It frames what you are doing. It says "this isn't real", and under that cover you can be as real as you like.
Poetry is a proscenium arch. If it's a poem, you're allowed to speak floridly. If you want to exaggerate, it's merely hyperbole. If you want to spill your guts, well, nobody really has to respond to it as anything but a poem, do they? Verse is a particularly good proscenium arch: pay your dues to the gods of rhyme and metre, and you are officially excused the accusation of complete talentlessness and lack of effort.
The separation provided by my pseudonym 'Lynet' can act like a proscenium arch, too.
Nearly all forms of art have a proscenium arch of sorts. The effort to transcend that separation can sometimes mark a piece of art as particularly good, but at other times it's the cover provided by the form that allows the brilliance of honest expression. "I give to you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion," says Tennessee Williams. Well, that's what the proscenium arch is for.
My father in particular was always very keen for me to sing with him. If he couldn't sing as much as he'd like, at least he could play the guitar for me. And thus it was that I ended up singing for grandmothers, aunts, uncles, godparents, family friends, the occasional work colleague or graduate student of my father's, and, really, all and sundry who passed through our house.
The first time my father suggested I sing for some family members, I balked. Squirming, I got up and tried to sing, only to duck away shyly. I didn't dare thus set myself up as worth listening to, and leave myself exposed to evaluation of the implicit claim. I didn't want to have to watch their real-time reaction, right there in front of me. I just ... didn't want to sing.
But I am not, and have never been, a shrinking violet. I hate that girly shyness modesty stuff. So the second time, I steeled myself, and sang. The response was positive, naturally. I do not think I really expected anything else. Responding without seeming proud was definitely one of the more uncomfortable parts of the stomach-churning experience. But it didn't put me off. Most of the time, when my father suggested I sing, I sang.
When it came to solos with the school choir, I quickly became blasé. But with small audiences, in the living room, there's always that core of fear in your gut. You can learn to set it aside to let the song through, but it never really leaves you. It was always there, from the sweet little performances as an eight year old until the day when I was sixteen and finally made enough of a fuss that my father had to stop telling me to "oh, come on, they're expecting it". On stage, it's different. On stage, you have the proscenium arch. It separates you and the audience. It frames what you are doing. It says "this isn't real", and under that cover you can be as real as you like.
Poetry is a proscenium arch. If it's a poem, you're allowed to speak floridly. If you want to exaggerate, it's merely hyperbole. If you want to spill your guts, well, nobody really has to respond to it as anything but a poem, do they? Verse is a particularly good proscenium arch: pay your dues to the gods of rhyme and metre, and you are officially excused the accusation of complete talentlessness and lack of effort.
The separation provided by my pseudonym 'Lynet' can act like a proscenium arch, too.
Nearly all forms of art have a proscenium arch of sorts. The effort to transcend that separation can sometimes mark a piece of art as particularly good, but at other times it's the cover provided by the form that allows the brilliance of honest expression. "I give to you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion," says Tennessee Williams. Well, that's what the proscenium arch is for.
I am not resigned: A meditation on tragedy.
The last Poetry Sunday at Daylight Atheism was Edna St. Vincent Millay's Dirge Without Music. The poem itself is a beautiful, sensitive, defiant meditation on death. Yet it is not of death that I wish to speak, or not death alone. Sublime though the poem is in its entirety, in the process of responding to Ebonmuse's particular emphasis on its quiet refusal to succumb to perfect acceptance of the inevitable I have been caught, caught entirely, by the final line alone.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. It's a small, simple idea that might have meant very little to another person, or to myself at another time. Knowing this, I cannot be sure that I am able to explain what it meant to me. Nor can I be sure that it will mean anything to you, if I do succeed in such an explanation. I offer my attempt at explanation nevertheless.
Ebonmuse writes, almost coincidentally, in that same thread that "Paradoxically, there can be true beauty in tragedy, for all that I would end it in a second if I had the power." Let this be my starting point, for, friends, if I had in front of me the magic wand that would end tragedy forever, I could never pick it up. No, never! The sweetest moments of my life have been those when tragedy fell away. How many lines of flaccid free verse have I wasted on the taste of tears? On the way despair becomes a lens through which the simple details of the world seem unimaginably good in their detachment from your pain? The simple fact is that I am not sure my life would be worth living if it had no tragedy in it.
The beauty that is in despair was an observation on which I built my view of the world. It was how I dealt with the reality of despair. Let me put this in a broader context. Human beings in general have a need to find ways to deal with the reality of pain and suffering. I do not speak here of the 'Problem of Evil' which plagues so many versions of conventional theism but rather the more simple part of us that cannot help but cry out at the unfairness and pain in the world: our own pain; the pain of those we love; all pain. Compassion can only exacerbate such a feeling. How do we deal with the incredible weight of suffering in the world? How do we deal with times when we ourselves are not sure that our own suffering will ever cease?
Religions have several different types of answers that they can give to these questions*. For example, we have the idea that we suffer because we deserve it. The notion of karma in Hinduism is the most extreme and obvious version of this. Those who suffer deserve to suffer; if you would avoid suffering, behave yourself. Believing in the ultimate fairness of the universe in this way may perhaps allow people to be psychologically reconciled to the suffering that inevitably occurs. It explains what people must do to avoid it, and gives people an excuse for not worrying too much about the pain of others. As freethinkers, of course, we may well be concerned about the consequences of people choosing not to worry about the pain of others! More importantly, however, we simply have no reason to suppose that there is any such karmic justice in place. The notion cannot be of use to us, even if we wanted it to be.
Another very common religious answer is to pull in the notion of a heavenly afterlife. Never mind that you are suffering now. Some day, you will live happily ever after, and so will those you love -- at least, they will as long as they belong to the same religion you do. This answer seems to rely on a willingness to be cold towards outsiders, but that is hardly a quality that human beings generally lack. Believing in heaven, people can struggle through, even if they believe their lives will never get better, by hoping for paradise at the end. Among atheists, the question sometimes arises whether (and when) we have the right to try to take this hope from people. I shall not try to answer that question completely, but perhaps I can shed some light on the extent to which there are atheist alternatives.
I confess I once naively placed a lot of confidence in the beauty that tragedy can produce. It's almost... karmic. Certainly it is at least a shift towards balance. After the storm, after the rain, the air is still and the grass is clean, and the shaft of sunlight coming down from the clouds can be a blessing beyond belief, even beyond belief in any God. I still do think that happiness arises in part by contrasts. I do not think I have ever thought that contrast was the only contributor to happiness, but nevertheless, my experience led me to play up this aspect of things. I had known the pain that comes when your world falls apart because you built it on false premises -- a healing pain from which you emerge somewhat subdued, but wiser and stronger. I had known small failures and deep loneliness, and found the small sweetnesses in each (I still have a radiant smile left over from when getting a smile back from a stranger really meant something). And out of this I could reflect that surely the world cannot be so bad when it gives you the soft rush of small joys in compensation for hardship.
Ah, but even Pollyanna had her moment when the 'glad game' just wouldn't work any more. And in real life the world is not required to miraculously restore to you the dearly beloved things it so coldly destroys. It is these moments when the narrative fails that are the hardest. How many deus ex machinas have I screamed at in the last few years? How dare George Eliot end The Mill on the Floss with a dubiously engineered death? (I expected better, having read Middlemarch). She's not allowed to die, she has to live. Live and suffer, Maggie. Live and suffer and show me how.
The worst tragedies are off the map. Jane Austen never wrote about what it was like when the man she loved died before they could marry. Think of it! This, at a time when marriage was the dearest ambition of every woman of Austen's age and class, to have the promise of that dreamed-of home, adulthood, security, love replaced with what might be (and, indeed, turned out to be) a lifetime of spinsterhood.
Knowing you are not alone can almost seem to make this sort of thing worse. Pick yourself up. Hearts are broken every day, Lynet, even worse than your so-narratively-wrong case. Oh, don't remind me of the sheer weight of broken hearts!
Of course, we know how Jane Austen dealt with her situation. Mansfield Park has a somewhat insipid streak precisely because our poor Jane, having given up hope in this world, was resolutely focused on the next. And since her novels improved after that low point, we may assume that she did, too, somehow. That option for making it through the rough patch is not open to me. What is?
Ah, well, I have options Jane Austen did not have. My life need not revolve around a relationship (hey, hers didn't either and she still managed a lot!). I can have a career. While away the hours until I die. I know I ought not to go gentle, but the imperative to take a hold of life seems hard, sometimes. If I keep working, will life stop feeling so flat?
And so I read Dirge Without Music, and, being asked to fully comprehend "I am not resigned", realised that I had pushed away that part of it the first time I read through. It hurts, not being resigned. How many times have I told myself that I'll just have to lump it?
Oh, help me, for I am not resigned. I am not resigned, and if I were resigned, not all the calm precautions and shaky rebuilding would ever be enough to restore the shine to my broken world.
Take me back, world of narratives and dreams. I know that beautiful things can die worthlessly. I know that many dreams disappear from our lives abruptly without so much as a 'goodbye'. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
When I finished crying and went outside, the sunshine seemed less incongruous. The grass was clean, the air was still, and my remembered loss still wasn't worth it, but I -- I wandered down the street with my radiant smile just a little bit easier than it was.
*I do not mean to imply that the non-religious ways of dealing with pain that I give later are not just as deeply felt by those with religion, too, of course -- L.L. Barkat's recent post would be proof against that assumption.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. It's a small, simple idea that might have meant very little to another person, or to myself at another time. Knowing this, I cannot be sure that I am able to explain what it meant to me. Nor can I be sure that it will mean anything to you, if I do succeed in such an explanation. I offer my attempt at explanation nevertheless.
Ebonmuse writes, almost coincidentally, in that same thread that "Paradoxically, there can be true beauty in tragedy, for all that I would end it in a second if I had the power." Let this be my starting point, for, friends, if I had in front of me the magic wand that would end tragedy forever, I could never pick it up. No, never! The sweetest moments of my life have been those when tragedy fell away. How many lines of flaccid free verse have I wasted on the taste of tears? On the way despair becomes a lens through which the simple details of the world seem unimaginably good in their detachment from your pain? The simple fact is that I am not sure my life would be worth living if it had no tragedy in it.
The beauty that is in despair was an observation on which I built my view of the world. It was how I dealt with the reality of despair. Let me put this in a broader context. Human beings in general have a need to find ways to deal with the reality of pain and suffering. I do not speak here of the 'Problem of Evil' which plagues so many versions of conventional theism but rather the more simple part of us that cannot help but cry out at the unfairness and pain in the world: our own pain; the pain of those we love; all pain. Compassion can only exacerbate such a feeling. How do we deal with the incredible weight of suffering in the world? How do we deal with times when we ourselves are not sure that our own suffering will ever cease?
Religions have several different types of answers that they can give to these questions*. For example, we have the idea that we suffer because we deserve it. The notion of karma in Hinduism is the most extreme and obvious version of this. Those who suffer deserve to suffer; if you would avoid suffering, behave yourself. Believing in the ultimate fairness of the universe in this way may perhaps allow people to be psychologically reconciled to the suffering that inevitably occurs. It explains what people must do to avoid it, and gives people an excuse for not worrying too much about the pain of others. As freethinkers, of course, we may well be concerned about the consequences of people choosing not to worry about the pain of others! More importantly, however, we simply have no reason to suppose that there is any such karmic justice in place. The notion cannot be of use to us, even if we wanted it to be.
Another very common religious answer is to pull in the notion of a heavenly afterlife. Never mind that you are suffering now. Some day, you will live happily ever after, and so will those you love -- at least, they will as long as they belong to the same religion you do. This answer seems to rely on a willingness to be cold towards outsiders, but that is hardly a quality that human beings generally lack. Believing in heaven, people can struggle through, even if they believe their lives will never get better, by hoping for paradise at the end. Among atheists, the question sometimes arises whether (and when) we have the right to try to take this hope from people. I shall not try to answer that question completely, but perhaps I can shed some light on the extent to which there are atheist alternatives.
I confess I once naively placed a lot of confidence in the beauty that tragedy can produce. It's almost... karmic. Certainly it is at least a shift towards balance. After the storm, after the rain, the air is still and the grass is clean, and the shaft of sunlight coming down from the clouds can be a blessing beyond belief, even beyond belief in any God. I still do think that happiness arises in part by contrasts. I do not think I have ever thought that contrast was the only contributor to happiness, but nevertheless, my experience led me to play up this aspect of things. I had known the pain that comes when your world falls apart because you built it on false premises -- a healing pain from which you emerge somewhat subdued, but wiser and stronger. I had known small failures and deep loneliness, and found the small sweetnesses in each (I still have a radiant smile left over from when getting a smile back from a stranger really meant something). And out of this I could reflect that surely the world cannot be so bad when it gives you the soft rush of small joys in compensation for hardship.
Ah, but even Pollyanna had her moment when the 'glad game' just wouldn't work any more. And in real life the world is not required to miraculously restore to you the dearly beloved things it so coldly destroys. It is these moments when the narrative fails that are the hardest. How many deus ex machinas have I screamed at in the last few years? How dare George Eliot end The Mill on the Floss with a dubiously engineered death? (I expected better, having read Middlemarch). She's not allowed to die, she has to live. Live and suffer, Maggie. Live and suffer and show me how.
The worst tragedies are off the map. Jane Austen never wrote about what it was like when the man she loved died before they could marry. Think of it! This, at a time when marriage was the dearest ambition of every woman of Austen's age and class, to have the promise of that dreamed-of home, adulthood, security, love replaced with what might be (and, indeed, turned out to be) a lifetime of spinsterhood.
Knowing you are not alone can almost seem to make this sort of thing worse. Pick yourself up. Hearts are broken every day, Lynet, even worse than your so-narratively-wrong case. Oh, don't remind me of the sheer weight of broken hearts!
Of course, we know how Jane Austen dealt with her situation. Mansfield Park has a somewhat insipid streak precisely because our poor Jane, having given up hope in this world, was resolutely focused on the next. And since her novels improved after that low point, we may assume that she did, too, somehow. That option for making it through the rough patch is not open to me. What is?
Ah, well, I have options Jane Austen did not have. My life need not revolve around a relationship (hey, hers didn't either and she still managed a lot!). I can have a career. While away the hours until I die. I know I ought not to go gentle, but the imperative to take a hold of life seems hard, sometimes. If I keep working, will life stop feeling so flat?
And so I read Dirge Without Music, and, being asked to fully comprehend "I am not resigned", realised that I had pushed away that part of it the first time I read through. It hurts, not being resigned. How many times have I told myself that I'll just have to lump it?
Oh, help me, for I am not resigned. I am not resigned, and if I were resigned, not all the calm precautions and shaky rebuilding would ever be enough to restore the shine to my broken world.
Take me back, world of narratives and dreams. I know that beautiful things can die worthlessly. I know that many dreams disappear from our lives abruptly without so much as a 'goodbye'. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
When I finished crying and went outside, the sunshine seemed less incongruous. The grass was clean, the air was still, and my remembered loss still wasn't worth it, but I -- I wandered down the street with my radiant smile just a little bit easier than it was.
*I do not mean to imply that the non-religious ways of dealing with pain that I give later are not just as deeply felt by those with religion, too, of course -- L.L. Barkat's recent post would be proof against that assumption.
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