The Homeless Moon

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.”
– Anais Nin

Have a great weekend, America!

Summer is marching on, and I’m keeping after things as best as I can–fielding rejections and re-submitting, digging into my new editorial commitments, working on all the logistics and paperwork for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, planning for my trip to ReaderCon, and trying to squeeze in some time on my own writing as well. Ah, summer.

These were the rites of morning by a low concrete
parapet under the copper spears of the palms,
since men sought fame as centaurs, or with their own feet,

or wrestlers circling with pincer-extended arms,
or oblong silhouettes racing round a white vase
of scalloped sand, when a boy on a pounding horse

divided the wrestlers with their lowering claws
like crabs. As in your day, so with ours, Omeros,
as it is with islands and men, so with our games.

A horse is skittering spray with rope for its rein.
Only silhouettes last. No one remembers the names
of foam-sprinters. Time halts the arc of a javelin.

—Derek Walcott, Omeros

Another brief, sublime sojourn in my chaotic odyssey through modern epic poetry in English. Derek Walcott is a Caribbean author born in St. Lucia, who now apparently teaches writing at Boston University. Omeros is a novel-length epic about two fishermen, Hector and Achille, whose friendship is broken over a woman, Helen. It has inspired me to no end. Not only does its verse follow a fairly strict meter, it adheres to this three-line structure throughout, and even actually rhymes not infrequently, yet without coming across as singsongy or stilted. It’s certainly the most unpretentious and accessible epic poem I’ve ever encountered. And it was published, I was surprised to discover, in 1990—long after the advent of the contemporary poetic taboo on metrical rigidity and rhyme, at least as I understood it. I am constantly amazed at the mileage he gets, in terms of variety and stylistic weight, out of little innovations in rhythm. The shortening of “Achilles” to “Achille”, for example. Or the way he interchanges the words “canoe” and “pirogue” to put the accent where it needs to be in a sentence. Often he will seamlessly digress into French or Caribbean patois for a line or a word, conveying both a rich sense of this cobbled-together post-colonial culture and a lesson in the versatility of verse. There’s still a certain amount of overhead, which I encounter whenever I read poetry, where I have to re-learn how to read both for meaning and sound—but in most cases, I end up having to reread at least once in order to get both senses. Here, I can actually do both at once. Which isn’t to say I haven’t been going back to reread—but I’m doing it out of desire rather than necessity.

The other astonishing thing is the way the influences of these disparate cultures combine to make the epic form feel new—and to make it applicable and relevant to events in the lives of a couple of poor, modern-day fishermen. At one point (which I’m not going to be able to find now) he compares a tropical storm to a fete thrown by the gods, invoking Zeus and Ogun in the same sentence. He equates the waning influence of the British empire with that of Rome, the exoticism of tourists with history’s reification of flawed human beings to the status of heroes. Hector ferries tourists around the island in a beat-up nine-passenger van with leopard-print seat covers, and somehow it feels completely natural for us to be reading about it in free verse.

I got onto this epic poetry kick because I was trying to write some of my own, and looking only at translations of Ovid and Sophocles and Homer wasn’t helping. In the end I think it was Omeros that really convinced me I could do it.

Then, one by one, he lifted the beautiful conchs,
weighed each in his palm, considering the deep pain
of their silence, their palates arched like the sunrise,

delicate as vulvas when their petals open,
and as the fisherman drowned them he closed his eyes,
because they sank to the sand without any cries

from their parted, bubbling mouths. They were not his
property any more than Helen’s, but the sea’s.
The thought was noble. It did not bring him any peace.

Okay. Lousy week, etc. etc. That's no excuse for being a "warm, yellow puddle" now is it?

On weeks like this, not only do you have to hit the bad with the big guns, but you have to dig deep and find the big guns you didn't even know you had. First, I tried "Pass the Dutchie" by the Musical Youth. Sounds to make you rub and scrub. But I needed more. I needed to get down deeper, down, down into the secret corners of my soul.

The Glam corner.

The freaky, Brazilian Glam corner where Secos e Molhados live.

You know these guys never had to file paperwork.

So, I give you three songs: Sangue Latino and O Vira -- and this knockout glitter pink hot pants, checkered halter-top, and metalic vulture of death song Flores Astrais.

I've listened to "Flores Astrais" probably twenty times now. Please, just give it thirty seconds. You won't regret it. Well, in fact you might, it could possibly give you nightmares. But still, it's worth it. Listen to it enough, and Strange Horizons might start buying your stories. ;)

Have a great weekend.

Today, old news is good news.

I thought I would direct your attention to "Of Dice and Men", the article Sir Justin of Howe and I wrote on role playing games and fantasy fiction, published at Clarkesworld before this LJ went active. Heck, while you're at it, read the piece I wrote for clarkesworld on pro wrestling as a form of fantasy! http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ridler_12_07/


Some folks have thought most of the RPG article was dismissive of RPGs as a positive influence on writing.

Um, no. I think Pratt and Lake and Waggoner were pretty stoked about the experience of RPGs and their influence on their writing life and career.

But see for yourself.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ridler_howe_05_08/

For me, RPGs were a subconscious attempt to get into writing. I never thought of myself as a writer as a kid or young adult, but I loved making characters, plots, and stories through RPGs. Only later in life did I see this as part of my desire for creating narratives

 Now, back to my master narrative dissertation of doom.

JSR

CONTROL


The Joy Division movie. ZOMG!!! I fast-forwarded through much of it and wound up not finishing it. Instead I listened to Joy Division for three days straight afterwards.

800 BULLETS


Alex de la Iglesia’s mash-up of PAN’S LABYRINTH, CINEMA PARADISO, and Spaghetti Westerns. A monstrous child flees the tyrannical control of his mother and grand-mother by seeking out his grandfather, a man who once worked as Clint Eastwood's stunt double. Reunited, the grandfather initiates the boy into a make-believe world of violence, alcohol, porn, and prostitutes. Mayhem ensues, and there might be twenty minutes too many in this film -- but if you like Spaghetti Westerns and are in the mood for one of those sappy, nostalgic European coming-of-age movies then check this out.

THE FOUNTAIN


I liked this. I am a pretentious hippie.

HAVE SWORD WILL TRAVEL


100% Grade A Shaw Borthers goodness. If you’re in the mood for old-school kung fu with swords and a plot like an Italian Opera as filtered through a viewing of SHANE, then this is the movie for you.

THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF


A Spanish horror movie from 1980 that plays like the Halloween episode of CHARLIE'S ANGELS where Jill, Kelly, and Sabrina split up, and Sabrina teams up with a werewolf while Jill and Kelly fall under the spell of a sexy vampire. Special effects are done with slow-mo and guide wires. Needless to say I loved this movie. It’s tasteless beyond description, and the hero looks like the middle brother between Kenny Rogers and Bob Hoskins. This movie shows a mastery of storytelling that you can’t believe it is being used for such pandering ends.

Session 9: Brad Anderson’s 2001 Horror film set on the grounds of the Danvers State Mental Hospital.

Since breaking into the hospital was always a dream of mine as a juvenile delinquent, I’ve been more than a little curious to see this movie, but feared it would wind up being some hodge-podge of BLAIR WITCH meets EVENT HORIZON or worse, something incomprehensible like DEATHWATCH.

I’m a bit on the fence with it. Parts of it are really good, but other parts bugged me.

On the plus side, the casting is good. The actors are physically unattractive, and the tension builds nicely between them. On the negative side, the characters do some pretty stupid things (Lets split up. Let me creep around at night with my headphones on. Hmmm, maybe I should listen to these tapes at home, instead of in this creepy back office -- nah!) And the “monster” was a bit too powerful. The "inside your mind", but also "inside the environment" type nemesis. If it was simply a voice on a tape, this would not have bothered me so much.

Overall the pieces add up to a pretty spooky whole, and a vicarious thrill for me to see the inside of the hospital. And the end is creepy! They’re now making this place into condominiums -- or would be if there hadn’t been those strange “accidents”.



There's a line in this movie, early on, when a minor character talks about the hospital being shutdown in the 1980s, and the inmates being released onto the streets. There's also a recurring location of a wooden gazebo where the characters eat lunch. On the sides of the gazebo are painted crucifixes as if it might have been part of an outdoor chapel.

I grew up a few towns over from the Hospital, and those crucifixes reminded me of this one summer when this crazy woman appeared in our town. Whether she was a former patient or not, I have no clue, but this would have been in the 80s. She lived in this house with her parents near a busy intersection and a grammar school. When her parents died she remained in the house.

Once alone in the place she definitely started to lose it.

First she painted the house red. Then she painted these white crucifixes all over it: on the shingles, wood railings, steps, and windows. Everywhere. She shaved her head, started to wear a monk's robe, and carved a cross on her forehead. You'd see her in the supermarket and go as fast as possible in the other direction. Surprisingly, she was kind of chubby and baby-faced, which made the black stubble on head, crucifix carved in forehead combination that much more piss-your-pants worthy.

Needless to say she was the talk of the town that summer. My mom drove us by there a few times, probably fascinated herself, but sped up so she wouldn't have to look at it. Like I said, there was a grammar school right beside the house, and I know some kids that went there. During Little League (while playing in the outfield) we would talk about the house. One of these kids told this story about how one of the teachers at the school wound up stranded after a snowstorm and had to spend a night in the house. You knew it was bullshit, because it wasn't like the house and school were miles from civilization, but on the otherhand it made you think, "What if I had to spend a night in that house?" so you loved it.

Anyways, with the school year coming on and the woman's behaviour getting more erratic, there was probably some public outcry against her, and she was put away before that September. The house remained vacant a couple of years and was resold. The new owners fixed it up and you'd never be able to tell from looking at it that this woman had lived there.



Seeing those crucifixes in the movie though... that brought all this back to me. And made my hair stand up more than anything else.

Growing up, I had a soft spot for reject heroes in the comic book world. I liked the Brave and Bold stories were Batman somehow ended up hanging with Ragman, the Demon, or The Creeper. For the Marvel Universe, I always had a soft spot for Power Man and Iron Fist, Heroes for Hire. I always thought Iron Fist was damn cool, a white Kung Fu expert who had mystical powers and was a bit of a smart ass. My kinda hero!

Suffice to say he was a C-grade Marvel hero, somewhere between Manthing and Speedball. Not very popular, but pretty nifty. He and his partner, Luke "Sweet Christmas" Cage (AKA Power Man), blipped on and off the comics radar for twenty years. Until recently, I'd forgotten all about them.

Now, Ed Brubaker, the comic-noir maven, has breathed new life into ol' Iron Fist and it is terrific. It maintains a noir-seriousness with the hyperbolic pulp-violence of comic book heroes and sense of wonder rooted in  Asian mythology and the aesthetics of wuxia films (what I call "kung fu flicks"). David Aja's art is captivating and stylish and fits the mood of the story like a hand in glove.

I have not been this stoked about comic books since I read Preacher. If you like noir, wuxia, fantasy, and/or action storytelling, check out the Immortal Iron Fist.

JSR