Another week gone by. I swear, I don’t where the time is going right now. I can keep track of the days, but the weeks… Anyway, for today’s Photo Friday post, I offer you a set of images captured literally right outside our door. Nancy is an avid gardener and her Japanese Irises are blooming right now. They’re gorgeous, especially after a light rain. So here are a few photos I’ve taken over the past week or so.
Enjoy, and have a wonderful, safe weekend.
This is a somewhat longer post than usual, but I hope you’ll read through it. It is the text of an address I gave a few years ago at our local high school to mark the Day of the Book (April 23) in 2016. My younger daughter, a junior at the time, was in attendance, which made the occasion that much more special. The talk is about far more than books, as you’ll see. I hope you enjoy it.
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I had a dream a couple of weeks ago – I swear this is true – I was being introduced for this talk, and you all just got up and walked out. Even Erin. She saw the rest of you leaving, cast this furtive glance my way, and then hurried to the door. So thank you all for staying. I appreciate it…
I’m delighted to be here to help you mark the Day of the Book. When Ms. R_____ first approached me about giving this talk, she mentioned that this was a particularly significant year for celebrating the written word, in part because this is the Centennial of the Pulitzer Prize. Which is absolutely true. This is the one hundredth year in which the Pulitzer prize has been awarded to some writer who isn’t me. Frankly, it’s not a milestone I’m that eager to celebrate…
As a writer, as someone who makes his living with the written word, I’m drawn to the idea of celebrating the book. But I’m also a musician and a huge fan of music. I’m a dedicated amateur photographer and an admirer of all the visual arts. I’m a fan of the theater, of film, of just about every art form. And so I find the idea of The Day of the Book somewhat odd. We don’t have a day of the song, or the album, a day of the painting or the sculpture. But somehow the Day of the Book is acceptable. It’s strange. And I think it’s worth exploring why this is so.
In a way – and again, I say this as an author – books have always been the peas and carrots of the art world. A long time ago, someone decided that books were good for us. “Someone.” Who am I kidding? It was probably a writer, right? Some young novelist somewhere convinced people that reading books would expand young minds and the next thing you know, parents were haranguing their kids about reading. Instant sales. You never hear parents telling kids they need to spend more time listening to music, or watching movies, or even going to look at paintings. But we hear all that time that we should turn off the TV and read a book.
The real reason I think books occupy a special place in our culture – and this starts to get at the crux of what I want to talk about today – is that narrative and creativity lie at the very core of what it means to be human. Story forms the backbone of our society, our political culture, our religions, our ceremonies and rites of passage. Story defines family and friendships. Sometimes those stories are tales of relatives doing foolish or funny things, sometimes they’re stories of holiday disasters, or unusual interactions among family members that become the stuff of family legend. At other times they’re movies or TV shows or, yes, books, that take on special meaning for the family unit. When Erin and her sister Alex were younger, in addition to all the stories we told about each other and other folks in the family, the Harry Potter books became central to our family life. We all read them, we watched the movies together, we listened to the audio books on long drives – and we took a lot of long drives.
Other families built relationships around other books. I remember when Erin was in kindergarten, her teacher asked parents to come in and read to the class, telling us to choose a book that was special to our kids. I told the teacher I would be glad to come in and read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. A few days later I mentioned at a gathering that I would be reading to the class, a friend told me that The Lorax was one of her daughter’s favorite books, as well. This little girl’s dad read it to her all the time and did different voices for the characters. So I went to the class and I read the book and all the kids seemed to enjoy it very much. Except for this one poor girl – the daughter of my friend – who, when I was done, looked at me like I had shot her dog. And I understood immediately why: That was her book – hers and her dad’s – and I didn’t read it the way he did; I didn’t read it right, as far as she was concerned. Books – stories – can become very special to us. They can occupy a singular place in our lives.
But it also needs to be said, that not everyone is a book person. We don’t all celebrate the Day of the Book with the same level of enthusiasm. A lot of us, let’s be honest, couldn’t care less about books. And you know what? That’s okay. Because the truth is, we can all still appreciate this day. We don’t all have to be book lovers to find value and inspiration in the notion of creating our own book.
And that’s what I want to talk about today: the ways in which narrative and creativity, the building blocks of story, inform all aspects of life, not just the writing of books, or even the creation of art.
Let me start by telling you in the broadest terms what it is I do for a living. Writing books is like… well, any of number of things. I’ve heard people compare writing a book to building a house, drawing a map, completing a jigsaw puzzle, baking a lasagna, pitching a baseball game, and about a hundred other things. I couldn’t tell you which analogy I think is most apt – I’ve relied on several of them at different times.
When I write a book or a piece of short fiction, I usually start with a storyline, a narrative. I have some idea of where the book is headed; I’ll usually outline what I intend to do. But that outline is always rough. I don’t like to set up my plot in too much detail, because a lot of the creative act happens in the moment. For a 15 page chapter, I might have in my outline two sentences: My lead character meets up with character b. They get into a fight and decide they can no longer work together. That’s it. But when I reach that chapter in the writing process, the fun begins. I don’t know when I begin to write what those characters are going to say to each other. Sometimes I don’t even know what the fight is going to be about. I come up with that as I write, on the spur of the moment. That’s the exciting part, the moment of discovery that makes writing so much fun for me.
I’m telling you this, not to try to convince you to write, but rather to encourage you to look at the things you do in a different light.
My brother is a professional visual artist – a painter, and a very good one. He will often begin a painting with a vision, an outline of what he wants to be in the image. He’ll draw it in an open impressionistic way on a canvas. Just the broadest contours of what he intends to paint. Then, once that’s done, he’ll start to fill it in with color, with shading, with the brush strokes and texture and all the other artistic elements that bring a canvas to life. That should sound familiar. That broadly drawn, bare-bones drawing with which he begins is his narrative. The addition of color and the rest, that’s the creative part. The finished painting is his book.
I mentioned before that I’m a pretty dedicated photographer. And long ago, when I was teaching myself how to do the sort of photography in which I was interested, I read something that has stayed with me ever since, not just because it’s helpful for photography, but also because it’s helpful for writing. Every picture, this book I was reading said, is about something. The longer it takes you to explain what the photo is about, the less successful the photo is going to be. Or put another way, the easier it is to distill a photograph down to its most basic narrative, the better the photo. And, I would say the same is true of books and stories.
But part of what stuck with me, when I got behind the camera again, was the idea of applying narrative to photography. We can pick out something we see that we want to capture with the camera – a sunset, a building, a group of friends, something abstract, for instance the play of light and shadow on the façade of a church. That subject matter is the narrative, the story we’re trying to tell. The creativity comes when we search for the perfect way to compose that image, when we decide what details to highlight and which ones to play down or omit entirely. We make a hundred different choices when we take that photograph. But in the end, we’re blending narrative and creativity. And again, the result is a sort of book.
What about music? As I said before, I’m not only a huge fan of all sorts of music, I’m also a musician. Maybe those of you who write your own music have a chord progression and melody for a piece you’re working on, but haven’t yet come up with the words. That musical structure is your narrative; the creativity might come when you assign lyrics to that structure. Or maybe it works just the opposite way. You have your lyrics, maybe a poem that you want to set to music. In which case THAT’S your narrative, and the creativity comes when you blend it with melody and rhythm. Maybe you’re a drummer or a guitarist, a fiddle player or a saxophonist. You don’t write songs, but you improvise solos when you play with your fellow musicians. Chord progression and beat are your narratives. The solos you play are the essence of creation. Whatever your approach, the finished piece is your book.
Somewhere in this room is Cinderella [the school had done the play Cinderella that spring; the title role was played by one of my daughter’s closest friends]. Somewhere in this room, is her evil, rhymes-with-witch of a step-mom [played by my daughter]. The script and song lyrics provide the narrative for a theatrical production, but each actor brings to the stage her or his own flair for performance, his or her own interpretation of the role or the lines, of the emotion. Narrative and creativity. A book. The same can be said of dance – choreography is your plot, but every dancer is different, and is inspired to move in her or his own way. Another book.
But what if art isn’t your thing. We can apply this model to painting and sculpture, theater and dance, music and photography. But not everyone is an artist at heart. And that’s all right. Because narrative and creativity aren’t exclusive to the artistic world.
Erin’s mom is a biologist. And several of the people in this auditorium who have been Erin’s friends since they were toddlers have scientists or mathematicians for parents as well. This is a little harder for me to discuss intelligently, because I kind of suck at science and math – there’s a reason I write fantasy novels for a living. But I have a Ph.D. in history and I used to think of myself as a professional historian, which isn’t all that different. In fact we share this mountain with a University that is filled with scholars in a whole host of disciplines.
All of them do research. All of them have protocols and formats they have to follow – narratives that guide their work. But all of them also have to think creatively to make their personal mark on their scholarship. Whether it’s finding a new way to work an equation, or designing new experiments to explain scientific phenomena, or developing new theories to explain political or social behavior, the basis of learning and research is intellectual creativity.
And so is the basis of teaching. Teachers are often the most creative people we know, because it’s not easy finding innovative and engaging ways to present material that as a teacher you know backwards and forwards already. The act of creating a lesson plan, of developing a course – that’s a creative act, and yet that’s just the narrative part. Because a hundred times every day, teachers have to supplement that narrative, or stray from it, in order to reach a student who might not yet understand, or to engage an entire class that pulls the material in a direction no teacher could have anticipated. Narrative. Creativity. This time, maybe think of each class meeting as a chapter, the finished course as the book.
But maybe that’s not your thing either. Maybe you’re an athlete. And yes, people create in sports all the time. Coaches draw up game plans – passing routes and running plays in football, set pieces in soccer, shifts in volleyball, wrestling moves, pitch patterns and defensive alignments in baseball. Those are narratives. They’re patterns of action, preconceived and taught to us until they become second nature. But it’s impossible to anticipate every game situation. Which is where creativity comes in. No two plays in any game in any sport are exactly the same. Circumstances on the field, gridiron, mat, pitch, court are always changing. How you respond, drawing upon the narrative you’ve practiced, and bringing to bear your ability and your imagination – well, that’s a book, too, isn’t it?
I could go on. There are lots of ways in which the book analogy works. It works really well with cooking – recipes are your narrative, but we also bring creative flair in the way we season or add our own secret ingredients. Earlier in this talk I compared writing a book to building a house, but you can flip that around as well. People who work from blueprints and house plans – their narratives – also make creative decisions every day, bringing their personalities and inspirations to the work they do. As I say, I could apply this to pretty much any profession or hobby you can imagine. I won’t, because I’m supposed to end this sometime before lunch.
I will say this once again: the book analogy works so well because narrative and imagination, story and creativity, lie at the heart of who and what we are.
But so what? All that may be true, but why does it matter, except as a rationalization for designating this day as the Day of the Book?
I would argue that it matters for two reasons:
First, it matters because in a world filled with labels, a society that seems too often to look for ways to divide us, to put us in cubbyholes, the notion of identity becomes one more criteria, one more way to split us into our little tribes. We see it in young adult literature all the time. Harry Potter and his cohort are sorted into their houses, each of which has a personality, each of which carries implications for those placed in them. Many of you may be familiar with Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, a dystopian, futuristic series that begins with young people – people your age – being split into social groups – Abnegation, Erudite, Dauntless, Amity, and Candor – to which they’re supposed to remain loyal for the rest of their lives.
I’m not going to tell you that we live in a dystopia, though I know it sometimes feels that way. But I do think that we’re too quick to force ourselves into categories of that sort. We’re science nerds, or we’re literary types; we’re theater people, or we’re artistic; we’re jocks, or maybe we’re fantasy geeks.
Now I’m not trying to say that identity is a bad thing, or that finding a community of like-minded people is a mistake. It can be fun and comfortable and rewarding to form that bond with teammates or the cast of a play or a band.
But I think there’s tremendous value in recognizing that we share important qualities across all those boundaries we set up. When we acknowledge that there’s creativity in science as well as in writing, in sports as well as in acting, we break down those divisions just a little bit. We remember that before we became Gryffindor or Dauntless or geek or artsy, we were people, just like the folks sitting next to us. This common experience, this ability we all share, ties us to one another, and I hope, allows those of us in groups that are seemingly far apart, to recognize a bit of ourselves, in what others are doing.
The second reason the book analogy matters is that there’s one more realm in which it works. And actually, this is the one where it works best, even though it’s also the one in which it might seem least likely to fit: relationships.
I can tell you that the most creative thing I have ever done, the most creative thing I still do, is parent my kids. But the idea of narrative and creativity is also an apt analogy for friendships, for romantic relationships, for the way we deal with siblings and parents. How? Well, think of narrative as the expectations we bring to those interactions. Those expectations are the guideposts, the rules, if you will, that we believe those relationships ought to follow. And I don’t just mean society’s rules for what a parent or sibling should be and should do. I mean our personal expectations, based on what we know about the people with whom we interact. We can anticipate certain things in the ways our friendships and families work.
But we can’t anticipate all. Creativity and imagination come into play all the time, because we’re human, and we don’t always meet expectations, be they our own, or those of the people we love. Sometimes we fall short of them; sometimes we exceed them. But as a Dad, a husband, a son, a brother, and a friend, I can tell you that in every one of my relationships there come times when I have to be creative, when I have to think in the moment and use my imagination. And I would bet everything I have that the same is true for you. Maybe it will be to rescue an awkward moment, or help a friend who’s in trouble, or advise a person you love on some problem you couldn’t possibly have foreseen.
In those moments, you’ll find that creativity is the greatest asset you’ve got. And those relationships are the most important books you’ll ever write.
We lost my mother nearly twenty-five years ago. It seems like so much longer, and it seems like yesterday. A cliché, I know, but true.
I am the youngest of four children, and by the standards of the time, my parents had me late in life, so I can say truthfully all of the following: I’ve always felt that I was too young to lose my mother, and I know that Mom died too soon, but I also know that she lived a full, rich life.
She was a child of the Great Depression – she would have been seven when the markets crashed, ten when Franklin Roosevelt was first elected. Forever after, he remained her political hero, the measure by whom all other Presidents were judged. She came of age during World War II, a young Jewish woman in New York, horrified by the spread of Nazism across Europe, and by the subtler forms of anti-Semitism found all through her city and her country.
Mom and my father married in the fall after the war ended, while my father and his family still grieved for my uncle Bill, Dad’s younger brother, who died in France. When my oldest brother was born three years later, of course they named him William.
Two and half years later, my sister was born. Six years after that, my second brother, and six years after that, me. Four children spanning almost the entirety of the baby-boom generation. Somehow, Mom managed to parent each of us with both consistency and sensitivity to our unique personalities and moments in history. My brother Bill, who grew up rebellious and tortured, a product of the Sixties, adored and worshiped her. My sister, who didn’t rebel the way Bill did, and who was the lone girl in our family, considered Mom her closest friend and confidante. And Jim and I, younger than the other two, raised in very different eras with different expectations and needs, loved her deeply as well, and learned so much about parenting from her shining example.
Mom didn’t work outside the home for her first two decades as a mother. Later in life, though, as I was starting elementary school, she began her studies to earn an advanced degree and her teaching certification. She taught for twenty years as a learning disabilities specialist in a public school system outside New York City, a job she loved in a field that was her passion.
When she wasn’t working and parenting, she was learning. She was a voracious reader – it’s no coincidence that my siblings and I all wound up as writers of one sort or another. She and my dad were happily married for nearly fifty years, and they loved, loved, loved us kids. But it seems to me that their marriage flourished after we were grown. They had always loved to travel, but once on their own they truly began to explore: France and Greece, Israel and Egypt, Peru and Turkey. They attended the theater, went to concerts, visited museums and galleries. Always together, always curious, always valuing the arts in every form.
On this Mother’s day, I can’t help but wonder what Mom would think of the world we live in now, a world nothing at all like the one she departed in 1995. She would have been devastated by the 9/11 attacks on her beloved New York, and might have wept with joy at Barack Obama’s election seven years later. My father was the gadget lover in their marriage, and so he might have been more taken than she with computers and smart phones. Then again, any device that allowed her to see her children and her grandchildren on demand, at a moment’s notice? On second thought, she might have been the one pushing for the newest technologies.
She would be horrified by the current occupent of the White House, appalled by his lack of intellect and curiosity, his mistrust of science, his cruel and craven approach to politics, his criminal disregard for the principles enshrined in our Constitution. She would have a healthy respect for, and fear of, the coronavirus, and would be contemptuous of those ignoring health experts in their rush to “open the economy.” But she would also have genuine compassion for those suffering in this, the worst economic downturn since the Depression of her youth.
Mostly, she would be concerned for the well-being of her kids and grandkids, frustrated by her inability to get to the symphony or the Long Wharf Theater, and eager for news from all of her friends and relatives.
It would be fitting in a piece like this one to end with something about how much I miss Mom, and how I think of her every day. And I do, both. Honestly, though, she’s been gone a long time, and as much as I grieved in the years immediately after her death, I have long since made peace with the loss. The truth is – another cliché – she is with me all the time. I hear her voice in my head whenever I read something she would have found interesting, or take a photo she would have loved, or cook a meal that might have impressed her, or marvel at the speed with with my own children have grown into adulthood.
It doesn’t take Mother’s Day to make me think about her. But for this Monday Musings post, I thought I would introduce you to my Mom.
Enjoy your week.
Those who know me well, know that I am an avid birdwatcher. My older brothers got me started when I was just a kid. And when I say just a kid, I mean that – I started birding when I was seven. For Christmas just before my ninth birthday, my brother Jim created a whole set of life lists and year list templates (before templates were really a thing) and bound them in a notebook. Totally geeky, right? To this day, it remains one of the best presents anyone has ever given me.
I bring all of this up because we are now in the middle of spring migration, when the forests of North America become a byway for returning songbirds heading north to their breeding grounds. Yes, there are migrations for other types of birds as well – certain species of hawks return to our area in the spring, as do shorebirds. But for those birds fall migration is the more significant event. Spring migration is all about birds from the neotropics.
Warblers, tanagers, orioles, certain grosbeaks (Rose-breasted and Blue), flycatchers, thrushes vireos. These are among the most colorful and beautiful birds we see in the States. Brilliant yellows and oranges, deep reds, stunning blues. Many of the birds have gorgeous songs – the thrushes in particular. Most of the migrants are very small; the warblers tend to be only four or five inches from beak to tail. And many of them hang out at the very top of the forest canopy, making them very difficult to spot, much less identify, and leading to an avocational malady known as “warbler neck,” which is pretty much self-explanatory.
For serious birders, spring migration is New Year’s, Mardi Gras, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. I know that it is my favorite time of the year and I am pleased to say that despite the pandemic, it is something I have been able to enjoy fully this spring. Every morning I walk a few miles on a rails-to-trails path near my home. I get a bit of exercise, and I see my favorite birds. Just about every day I am reminded of a birding experience from my childhood, of a moment with my brothers or an early sighting while alone that convinced me I could identify species on my own. For me, spring migration is about more than seeing the birds. It is about reconnecting with nature, and also with a passion that has remained with me for literally half a century. It is about memory and family. It both calms and invigorates me. A single good sighting on my morning walk can buoy my mood for the entire day.
As a kid, I was self-conscious about my interest in birds. A few of my closest friends knew, but otherwise I kept it to myself, fearing that I would be teased. I was already a nerd. I was short. I wasn’t the best athlete. I was usually in the school play. So already I had a lot of geek cred. The birdwatching, I feared, would be one nerd-attribute too many. Looking back on this, I regret how shy I was in this regard. It has always been so important to me. And yet, even to this day, I feel a twinge of embarrassment when I’m out with binoculars in hand, searching the foliage for a warbler or wren, and someone I know happens past. Old habits die hard.
On the other hand, I once had someone ask me for an interview what my superpower was. And the truth is, my superpower is that I can identify by song almost any bird native to my area. I’m sitting outside as I write this, and just in the moment I pause in my typing I can hear a Red-eyed Vireo, a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, a Carolina Chickadee, a Tufted Titmouse, a Summer Tanager, a House Finch, and a Nashville Warbler. Yeah, I know – as superpowers go, it’s not much. But really it’s all I’ve got.
In any case, I wasn’t sure what to write about today, and given how much of a balm birding has been for me these past few weeks, I thought I would share this.
For those who are interested, birding is an easy hobby to pick up and a rewarding one to pursue. All you need is a pair of binoculars, a good field guide, and a willingness to learn.
Wishing you all a wonderful week.
Last week, when I wrote my Monday Musings post, I was pretty ticked off at the world. And this week, after watching “protesters” in Michigan, North Carolina, and other states take part in the worst sort of astroturf demonstrations, one might expect that my mood would be even worse.
I mean, think about it. People in NC drove to the state capital to demand that their state be opened up because, they claim, the governor has overreacted to the crisis. Yet, many of these protesters remained sequestered in their trucks wearing face masks! You can’t make this shit up! Then there are the Michiganders who showed up for their protests carrying high-powered rifles and Confederate flags (dude, I live in the South, and the flag has nothing to do with my heritage. It sure as shit has nothing to do with yours…). One guy carried a banner that read “Trump Pence” and that displayed between their names an enormous Swastika. Yes, that ought to help their reelection chances. Hard to believe they haven’t yet turned it into a lawn sign…
Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s most visible flunkies, was on Fox News the other day trying to justify the Trump Administration’s withholding of money from the World Health Organization, and she actually said “This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks…” implying that health officials should have been better prepared. The problem with this “logic” is that we didn’t have Covid-1, Covid-2, Covid-3, etc. The disease is called Covid-19 because it was identified in 2019. But, hey, it’s not as though Kellyanne is a senior aide to the most powerful political leader… Oh, wait…
On Saturday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opened Florida’s beaches. Yep. And Floridians flocked to them, unprotected and, it seems, utterly clueless. This after DeSantis was caught on camera putting on a face mask the wrong way – he put one of the ear loops around his head so that the mask hung sideways over his face with the other ear loop dangling below his chin.
We’re fucking doomed.
Except we’re really not. And that, actually, is the point of today’s post.
My wife is the provost of the university here in our little college town, and as the Chief Operating Officer of the school, she is tasked with coordinating the Covid-19 response. The other day she sent out a message to the university faculty and staff that concluded with a personal note about how much hope and solace she took from the community’s response. And I was amazed at how similar her thoughts were to my own percolating ideas for this very post.
Let’s start with the obvious: many of the reactions we see to the crisis – on all sides – are rooted in fear. I am observing social-distancing and stay-at-home guidelines because I don’t want to get sick. I’ve read enough about the disease to harbor a healthy fear (as it were) of contracting it. In the same way, the protests we’ve seen – however wacky and misinformed and filled with rage and hate – are based in people’s legitimate fears of an economic depression. Fear is, and has always been, a powerful stimulus for political action and governmental response.
But I see more than just fear at work here. I am worried about the economy, too. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. A large swath of the population, though, has made a conscious choice – a supremely rational one, in my view – to sacrifice their short-term economic security for the health of their families, their friends, their communities. We have said, “Yes, I know this is going to be painful, but I want to keep my children safe, my elderly parents safe, my neighbors and friends safe. And I want to be safe, too.”
We have done this despite the utter absence of Presidential leadership, and often despite the absence of leadership at the state level as well. Sure, there are people who thumb their noses at safety, at community. And yes, every day we see new idiocy from our leaders and opinion shapers – Doctor Mehmet Oz telling Sean Hannity that losing 2-3% of our school children would be an acceptable outcome if we reopened schools; Bill O’Reilly telling us that many who have died from the coronavirus were “on their last legs anyway.”
For the most part, though, people throughout the country and the world have put material concerns aside in order to save lives. And that ought to give all of us grounds for hope. If we can do this to stop the spread of Covid-19, might we also be capable of doing it to curb global climate change? Might we be willing to make the far, far smaller economic sacrifices necessary to ease social inequality, combat the historical economic and social impacts of systemic racism, and find solutions to our ongoing health care crisis?
This is a rare moment. A historical inflection point. A tragic moment to be sure. We are being tested daily. Some days we are found wanting. Too often, our elected leaders and media outlets fail us. And yet, I’m hopeful, perhaps naïvely so. People keep saying that even after we emerge from this crisis, our society will never be the same. I believe that. And I believe the differences between the old normal, and what my wife calls “the next normal,” can be ours to choose. Likely we will find ourselves in a more cautious world, maybe a less physically intimate world, at least at a societal level. But I choose to believe that it will also be a world in which we will appreciate more fully the potential of cooperation, communal action, and commitment to something greater than ourselves.
Wishing you all a healthy, wonderful week.
Last weekend, in between rainstorms, Nancy and I got out for a lovely walk on what is known here as the Mountain Goat Trail. The Mountain Goat is an old railroad bed and the MGT Alliance is part of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.
It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the play of shadow and light, of path and bare trees, made for a peaceful black and white image. I hope you like it.
Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be in Charlotte, NC for the Saga Professional Development Conference. Hope to see some of you there.
For this week’s Photo Friday, I offer a different sort of photo, one that comes with a bit of a story. My Uncle Bill (left) fought and died in World War II. He was eventually stationed somewhere in France, but early on he must have trained somewhere in the UK. The point is, he wasn’t allowed to reveal his precise location in his letters home. But as my grandmother used to tell the tale, pride coloring her voice, my uncle knew how clever my father – his older brother – was in all things mechanical. (My dad was very sick as a young man – spinal meningitis, which almost killed him – and so was designated 4F for the draft.) Bill sent this picture home, knowing my father would pull out a map and geometric compass and pinpoint Bill’s location. It boggles my mind that the War Department didn’t realize this as well, but apparently it didn’t occur to the mail inspectors, who let the photo go through. And my father figured out where he was. (As best I can tell, this photo was taken somewhere in northern England or, more likely, Scotland.)
Have a good weekend all. Be good to one another.
Sometimes we take photos for the sake of art, other times to commemorate events – times with loved ones, special occasions, etc.
And on occasion we snap pictures simply to document something unusual. This week’s Friday Photos are of this last sort.
My brother and sister-in-law came to stay with us for a few days this week, and their visit coincided with soaking rains, thunderstorms, and flash flooding. These two streams, in the woods just below the top of the Cumberland Plateau, usually flow as trickles. By midsummer, they sometimes dry up entirely. Yesterday, they were torrents, their waters frothing, their roars filling the forest. The photos don’t do them justice. But I promised to get out with my camera every week. This week, this was the best I could do.
Enjoy! And have a great weekend!
I need to work through the memories and regrets, the guilt and love, the unresolved conflicts and incomplete conversations. Not because I want to, though I do, and not even because I might actually have a home for it when it’s done. I have to write it because NOT writing this story is keeping me from doing my best work on other projects.
As the year began, I found myself in the unusual position of not knowing what to work on. I have one book under contract, but it’s already written and I’m waiting for revision notes. I have the anthology submissions to read and I had to write my own story for Galactic Stew (a new Thieftaker story, for those of you who are fans of the series). After that, though…
I have ideas –projects I intend to take on this year, and I’ll get to those. But there was and is another factor at work.
Some of you know that we lost my oldest brother a couple of years ago. The truth is, I have struggled with everything I’ve written since then. I’ve put out some of the best work of my career – the final products have come out well. But my initial drafts have been far rougher than usual, and the actual process of writing, which I usually love, has been painful.
I didn’t make the connection at first. You might think I would have – it seems so obvious to me now. I suppose, though, that sometimes when we’re in the middle of an emotional storm, it’s not as obvious as perhaps it becomes in retrospect. The fact is, I’m still grieving, and I hadn’t processed my brother’s death.
Until now.
I am working on something new, something utterly different from anything I’ve written before. I’m writing essay-length memoir, a family history that touches not just on my complicated, loving relationship with my brother, but also on parallels between our relationship and the relationship between my father and his brother, who died in World War II. As it happens, an editor has expressed interest in working with me on the project, so I might even wind up selling it.
Honestly, though, the possible sale is secondary.
Sometimes we write what we’re supposed to – a book that’s under contract, a story we’ve promised to one market or another, the next book or novella in a series we’re publishing ourselves. Sometimes we write what we want to. We have nothing under contract or required of us and we dive into the idea that has captured our heart, maybe one that has been percolating in our thoughts for months or even years.
And sometimes we write what we have to, as in the case of this non-fiction piece. Even if it doesn’t come out well, even if no one ever wants to publish it, I need to process these emotions creatively. I need to work through the memories and regrets, the guilt and love, the unresolved conflicts and incomplete conversations. Not because I want to, though I do, and not even because I might actually have a home for it when it’s done. I have to write it because NOT writing this story is keeping me from doing my best work on other projects.
My art is my work, and it’s also my livelihood. Creativity is an expression of will and vision. It can be cerebral. It can be whimsical. It can be calculatingly commercial. That my professional work provides as well an emotional outlet is both a blessing and a burden. Often I am able to process personal issues and confront personal demons as I write. This time I couldn’t. This time I actually had to write about me and my life.
It’s been weird writing this piece. At times it’s incredibly hard. I usually try to write to a certain word count each day. I haven’t with the memoir. I don’t want to force it, and I’m not sure I could. Memories have come to me while I write, some painful, some happy. All of them have enriched the essay. More to the point, each evening when I finish work for the day, I feel just a little lighter, a bit more at peace. I don’t miss my brother any less, but I’m certain that writing about him is helping me heal. Finally.
And that’s what I hope you’ll take away from this. We write to be published. We write because it’s what we love to do. We also write because we have to – for peace, for love, for solace, and for the clarity we need to do our best work.
Last week, I wrote about the musical biographies and autobiographies I’ve been reading, and I wanted to stay on the theme of music this week.
I am the youngest of four kids, and all of my siblings are (were) much older than I am. The oldest was nearly fifteen years older, the other two twelve and six years respectively. When I was young, all three of them delighted in turning me on to their favorite musicians. This was particularly true of my oldest brother, Bill, who we lost a couple of years ago. I was born in the early 1960s, which meant that my siblings were children of the 60s, and they listened to some pretty amazing music. I was given my first rock/pop record when I was all of seven years old – James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. By the time I was ten or so, I had a record collection (yes, records. LPs. Kids, ask your parents…) that included four James Taylor albums, three Carole King records (including the remarkable Tapestry), Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s eponymous debut album as well as CSN&Y’s Déjà Vu, a couple of records by Simon and Garfunkel, several by the Beatles, Loggins and Messina’s Sittin’ In – a terrific and underrated album — Don McLean’s American Pie, and other titles that I’m blocking on right now.
I don’t mean this as a humble brag. It wasn’t about MY taste – it was theirs, seeping into my musical consciousness. But the benefit of it was that they served as gatekeepers for me, filtering out the crap and passing along the good stuff. (Mostly. Don McLean really was the prototypical one-hit wonder. “American Pie” is an incredible song, and “Vincent” was pretty good. The rest of the album is forgettable at best. And I also had other albums that I haven’t listened to in years: America’s first album, a couple by Seals and Crofts, and others I’m too ashamed to admit to. [Small voice] I’m pretty sure there was a Helen Reddy album in there…)
My tastes have expanded of course – rock, jazz, bluegrass, classical. But to this day, the music to which they introduced me remains at the core of my listening habits. Which means that when I listen to music, I am often flooded with memories of my childhood and adolescence and reminded of interactions with one sibling or another. As you might guess, this has become bittersweet in the years since Bill died.
Yet, I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I have a mix on my phone that is named for Bill and that is collected from albums he first played for me, artists we talked about and argued about, albums I introduced him to when I grew old enough to make our musical interactions two-way. The list includes literally hundreds of songs.
Music, like a familiar aroma, has the power to transport us, to carry us through time to emotions that feel as fresh as oven-warmed bread. That is the joy of it, and yes, the sorrow as well.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. This blog feature is called Monday Musings for a reason. I have no agenda. I’m listening to music, missing my brother, thinking of calling my other brother, just to tell him that I love him. And so I leave you with a thought and a question:
The thought: When we gift music, we do more than give a disk or a tape or an LP or an iTunes gift card. We give memory, emotion, a piece of ourselves. Over the years, my brothers and I gave each other music all the time, and even years later, those particular gifts are more dear to me than I can say.
And the question: What was some of the earliest music that found its way into your life, and what sort of memories does it carry?
Feel free to answer me on Facebook or Twitter.
Wishing you a great week.