SPOILER ALERT: read Episode 4 before reading this!
It is the sound of loneliness. The whistle on the AM radio as he slowly turns the dial left to right to left again, trying to find a human voice. I wonder how many people actually hear this these days? I don't think there are many analog radio dials anymore, and not many people listening to AM. There really is a creepy, lonely, electronic whistle when you're not quite tuned into a station. At night you really can pull in radio stations from distant cities. I used to spend hours turning the dial, looking for those distant human voices. Riding in the back seat of the car on a cold winter night with my dad trying to find the radio station that belonged to that tower in the distance is one of my earliest memories. We were just driving north to my granparents back then. Just a three hour trip but that's an eternity when you're just a few years old.
“This is for Bobbie!” the man screamed, pulling a knife from his jacket and driving it into the professor’s belly. This actually happened in my Psych 100 class! Well, sort of. They guy just made a lot of noise and said weird things and staggered out of the room. The point was the same. 120 witnesses all saw a completely different event. I guess in the past they actually shot the professor with blanks, but the event was just too traumatic for students and they didn't want to risk lawsuits and they had to tone it down.
“Well, he wasn’t wearing them but he usually does. You could tell by the dents on the sides of his nose.” Milo's ability to remember details about a person is inspired by a story I read about A. Conan Doyle. What few people realize is that Sherlock Holmes was actually inspired by a real person, a professor of Doyle's, who could just glance at a person and tell what they did for work, what their habits were and so on, all from their calluses and the wear of their clothes and such.
I put a song in my head, Gonna dress you up in Mylar/All over your body. Madonna’s inane lyrics stick like molasses and are almost impossible to get rid of. Yes, I know these are not the lyrics to the song. Milo hates Madonna so much that he can't bring himself to sing the lyrics right, even in his own head.
“What do you know about the history of the world?” There are a whole lot of lines throughout Castles that are actually taken from the lyrics of 80's alt rock songs. One of the best of these songs is The History of the World, Part I by The Damned which is actually a big inspiration for this whole thing:
No one alive and no one left
Nobody cares or ain't you heard
Looks like I'll take my dying breath
In the history of the world
There's some foreshadowing there, but I'm not going to say any more.
It is as if all history was caused by a few hundred kings and generals and presidents, and the occasional scientist of two. It really flabbergasts me that to this day most people don't even give a second thought to what history is. The sum total of human experience has been reduced to what can be tested on multiple-choice fill in the oval with a number two pencil exam, with propaganda and lies mixed in.
Grampa pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me. It was a ring. On it was an emblem I’d never seen before. It had a circle at the center, and from it radiated eight arrows, almost like a compass rose. “This is our sigil. The sign of the 27th letter, and the invisible helping hand." My friend Dustin Ruoff has this same ring. He bought it because he thought it was cool, even though he had no idea what it meant. I'm not sure who was the first to use this symbol. It figures prominently in many of Michael Moorcock's works as the symbol for Chaos, and is used by Peter J. Carroll in his text Liber Kaos as a representation of the five dimensions of Chaos Magic Theory. I don't know if Carroll was inspired by Moorcock, or if Moorcock was inspired by Chaos Magicians, or if the similarities are just coincidental (I know, I know... there are no coincidences...). I'm using it in both the Carroll and Moorcockian sense, and its appearance here is a special treat to the followers of either. Understanding that this is a symbol of Chaos is not critical to the narrative. However, if you are a fan of Moorcock, then you might be wondering if Grampa's motives are perhaps a little more sinister than Milo realizes, and if you're a Chaos Magician you'd either be getting jazzed or pissed off at the idea of a Chaos Magic action hero...
The 27th letter idea comes from The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, though he borrows heavily from everywhere so I doubt that he was the first to come up with it. I love the idea of there being letters in our alphabet that nobody knows about. Our language dictates what we're able to think about. In Spanish, for instance, there are verb tenses that we don't have in English. Spanish speakers can think about timein ways that English speakers can't. So if we had extra letters, we'd have new words, new meanings, new ways to think of things. The "invisible helping hand" comes from Adam Smith, a 1700s philosopher that believed that a free market was the solution to the worlds problems, and the "invisible hand" of enlightened self-interest would make people act to the benefit of society even when they were acting completely selfishly. I loved the idea of mashing Morrison together with one of the fathers of modern Capitalism.
“The Cure... Depeche Mode... Hüsker Dü... have you heard their latest album? It fucking rocks! I’ll bring it over. At least you’ve got good taste in music! Alright, here we go.” He pulled an album off the shelf. It wasn’t one I’d expect. Judy Garland Live at Carnegie Hall. Another "treat" for people in-the-know. Castles is set in the early eighties. However, there is nothing about the story being in the eighties that is critical to the narrative, so I don't call a whole lot of attention to it since it isn't important now (it will be if I ever get around to writing the sequels!). However, if you were a fan of bands like The Cure when they first came out and you were buying them on vinyl, you'd know exactly when this story took place, and you'd be one of the "elite". I got this idea from Joss Whedon. In shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, he's always putting in little references to things that maybe 1% of the audience will get. Like the scene in the final episode of Buffy where they're playing D&D and Andrew calls the dragon he's attacking the other players with, "Trogdor the Burninator". If you're a fan of Homestar Runner you know exactly who Trogdor is and find this hysterical. If you aren't you probably didn't even notice it. I love these little "treats" though. It makes me realize that there are people out there who are every bit as much of a geek as I am.
Oh, and everything Syd says about Judy Garland is true, by the way.
I’ll bring Zhang Yongwei over. He’s been teaching me. He’s like 2 dan which is really high for someone his age. Don’t call it Go though. Call it Wei Qi. He’s very touchy about the Japanese and says they stole everything good about their culture from the Chinese. It is standard for Chinese to use both first and last names when refering to somebody. Hating the Japanese for stealing their culture is also common, and not altogether unjustified.
There are two kinds of students who come to a school like this. Kids who can’t afford to go anywhere else, and kids who get sent here by their parents because they think it will get them away from the drugs, or whatever else they think they need to get their kids away from. This was my perception of the University of Maine, Orono, when I was a freshman there. I'm sure that this is true of a number of colleges. It isn't altogether innacurate. At the time, however, I was a lot more cynical than I am now. I didn't realize that there was a third group, those who were there because they love Maine and love their families and want to stay close to them. Back then I just felt trapped.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Thursday, July 28, 2005
episode four: secret origins: Golda
They say that "any similarity to persons living or dead is completely coincidental" and that's all bullshit. For it to be true the author would have had to have grown up in a complete vacuum, with no exposure to another human, ever. Any fictional creation is an amalgam of people the author has known, or read about, or seen on TV. I suppose that some mega-genius author might be able to spontaneously generate characters that are completely original and in no way inspired by anyone or anything outside the author's imagination. If a writer told me that this was the case with them I'd be more likely to consider them to be lying or deluded.
That said, I've never actually "met" Grampa or Milo. This is to say, they are a mix of so many people that I can't put my finger on any attribute that makes them like one specific person. Golda, on the other hand...
Her name was Martha. She was "the new girl" at my high school. She didn't dress fashionably and she wasn't skinny. She was also from Talmar Wood, Orono's low-income housing development. Being from Talmar was a social and academic death-sentance at the highly cliquey and heavily tracked Orono High. She was the kind of girl who boys shoot spitballs at to see if they can get a reaction, and when she doesn't react, they shoot more. I didn't shoot spitballs, but I didn't do anything to stop it either, and I felt guilty about that, but better her than me, I thought. She was so quiet I had no idea if she was really shy or actually "challenged." I never bothered to find out. She was from Talmar, after all.
That summer I worked in the cafeteria at the University. Martha was one of my customers. She was attending the University as part of the Upward Bound program. She was a different Martha. She had an entourage of people who followed her around and laughed at her jokes. She seemed the exact opposite of the person she was in school. I saw her on campus when I was biking home from work one day and stopped to talk. Her face was tan but her laugh lines were still pale. She smiled so much that they never got the chance to tan. Her face was covered with fine blond hair. They call it lanugo on babies, but it is supposed to fall off shortly after birth. It was so fine that it was invisible ordinarily, but if you were close enough and the sun was shining on her face, it was as if the sunlight caught there and played above her skin.
We hung out together during her breaks from the Upward Bound program. She was witty, intelligent, worldly, beautiful. I was enthralled. It wasn't my first crush, but it was the first time I ever got close enough to actually talk to the object of my infatuation. She was one of the first girls I ever touched, though it was never anything more than a kiss.
It was the first time I ever got the "You want too much from me," line. Sadly, it wouldn't be the last. There are three lines used to terminate potentially amorous advances, and if you've ever used them you should feel ashamed. "I really think of you as a friend," is a classic. How do argue with that? So the people you date aren't friends? Okay, I'll promise I won't be there when you need me. I won't listen to you or do anything nice for you, ever. "You're too good for me." Oh, no I'm not. I'm horrible. I'm a worthless piece of shit. I'm every bit as lousy as you are... "You want too much." At the time I wasn't aware of wanting anything from Martha. It was confusing and heartbreaking and I had no idea how to change myself to be the person she wanted. Of course I had very little experience with other humans at that point. There was lots I didn't understand.
There's a rare kind of cancer that only affects the males in the family. In the space of a few years Martha's father and brothers died from this cancer. Can you imagine what this would have been like for a teenage girl? For anyone? Seeing the people you love die a painful, horrible death, only it doesn't end there. The financial ruin forcing you to live in Talmar, the worst part of a mediocre town that looks down on you just because of where you live. To go from a school where you are popular and have friends to one where shitheads shoot spitballs at the back of your head all day every day...
Did I want to much? It doesn't matter. Martha was going through things I couldn't comprehend at the time. While I like to think I could have been loving and supportive and helped her through that painful time the truth was I was immature and selfish back then, and what should have been a lifelong friendship ended stupidly.
I have no idea where she is now. Last time I saw her she was self-destructing spectacularly. Last time I heard of her she was in Las Vegas. She didn't come to the 10-year high school reunion. Not that that is a suprise. Orono wasn't very nice to her.
So Golda is a Martha from a parallel Earth where the bad things never happened, where her parents grew old together and her brothers' kids can't wait to go play with their favorite aunt. I hope the Martha of this world is happy & healthy, wherever she is. She deserves it.
That said, I've never actually "met" Grampa or Milo. This is to say, they are a mix of so many people that I can't put my finger on any attribute that makes them like one specific person. Golda, on the other hand...
Her name was Martha. She was "the new girl" at my high school. She didn't dress fashionably and she wasn't skinny. She was also from Talmar Wood, Orono's low-income housing development. Being from Talmar was a social and academic death-sentance at the highly cliquey and heavily tracked Orono High. She was the kind of girl who boys shoot spitballs at to see if they can get a reaction, and when she doesn't react, they shoot more. I didn't shoot spitballs, but I didn't do anything to stop it either, and I felt guilty about that, but better her than me, I thought. She was so quiet I had no idea if she was really shy or actually "challenged." I never bothered to find out. She was from Talmar, after all.
That summer I worked in the cafeteria at the University. Martha was one of my customers. She was attending the University as part of the Upward Bound program. She was a different Martha. She had an entourage of people who followed her around and laughed at her jokes. She seemed the exact opposite of the person she was in school. I saw her on campus when I was biking home from work one day and stopped to talk. Her face was tan but her laugh lines were still pale. She smiled so much that they never got the chance to tan. Her face was covered with fine blond hair. They call it lanugo on babies, but it is supposed to fall off shortly after birth. It was so fine that it was invisible ordinarily, but if you were close enough and the sun was shining on her face, it was as if the sunlight caught there and played above her skin.
We hung out together during her breaks from the Upward Bound program. She was witty, intelligent, worldly, beautiful. I was enthralled. It wasn't my first crush, but it was the first time I ever got close enough to actually talk to the object of my infatuation. She was one of the first girls I ever touched, though it was never anything more than a kiss.
It was the first time I ever got the "You want too much from me," line. Sadly, it wouldn't be the last. There are three lines used to terminate potentially amorous advances, and if you've ever used them you should feel ashamed. "I really think of you as a friend," is a classic. How do argue with that? So the people you date aren't friends? Okay, I'll promise I won't be there when you need me. I won't listen to you or do anything nice for you, ever. "You're too good for me." Oh, no I'm not. I'm horrible. I'm a worthless piece of shit. I'm every bit as lousy as you are... "You want too much." At the time I wasn't aware of wanting anything from Martha. It was confusing and heartbreaking and I had no idea how to change myself to be the person she wanted. Of course I had very little experience with other humans at that point. There was lots I didn't understand.
There's a rare kind of cancer that only affects the males in the family. In the space of a few years Martha's father and brothers died from this cancer. Can you imagine what this would have been like for a teenage girl? For anyone? Seeing the people you love die a painful, horrible death, only it doesn't end there. The financial ruin forcing you to live in Talmar, the worst part of a mediocre town that looks down on you just because of where you live. To go from a school where you are popular and have friends to one where shitheads shoot spitballs at the back of your head all day every day...
Did I want to much? It doesn't matter. Martha was going through things I couldn't comprehend at the time. While I like to think I could have been loving and supportive and helped her through that painful time the truth was I was immature and selfish back then, and what should have been a lifelong friendship ended stupidly.
I have no idea where she is now. Last time I saw her she was self-destructing spectacularly. Last time I heard of her she was in Las Vegas. She didn't come to the 10-year high school reunion. Not that that is a suprise. Orono wasn't very nice to her.
So Golda is a Martha from a parallel Earth where the bad things never happened, where her parents grew old together and her brothers' kids can't wait to go play with their favorite aunt. I hope the Martha of this world is happy & healthy, wherever she is. She deserves it.
episode four now online
Get it while it's hot!
Initially I'd planned on doing 10 chapters, 10 pages each, double-spaced. Only I forgot to double-space so I wound up writing a lot more than I intended. By the fourth chapter, the story had taken over and was telling me how many pages to write, instead of the artificial, arbitrary limits I'd set before. I stopped fighting it and the tale became a lot more compelling, with new characters, more background, interesting and unexpected (even to me) twists. Enjoy!
Initially I'd planned on doing 10 chapters, 10 pages each, double-spaced. Only I forgot to double-space so I wound up writing a lot more than I intended. By the fourth chapter, the story had taken over and was telling me how many pages to write, instead of the artificial, arbitrary limits I'd set before. I stopped fighting it and the tale became a lot more compelling, with new characters, more background, interesting and unexpected (even to me) twists. Enjoy!
Friday, July 08, 2005
Words of Wisdom from Raymond Chandler
From Raymond Chandler's "Notes on the Mystery Story":
"A mystery serial does not make a good mystery novel. The "curtains" depend for their effect on your not having the next chapter to read at once. In book form these curtains give the effect of a false suspense and tend to be merely irritating."
Wish I'd read that earlier. In trying to rewrite Castles into a novel I found that to make it work it would have required huge amounts of revisions. It all makes sense now.
"A mystery serial does not make a good mystery novel. The "curtains" depend for their effect on your not having the next chapter to read at once. In book form these curtains give the effect of a false suspense and tend to be merely irritating."
Wish I'd read that earlier. In trying to rewrite Castles into a novel I found that to make it work it would have required huge amounts of revisions. It all makes sense now.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Castles: Now Creative Commons Licensed!
I just marked up the Castles site with a Creative Commons license (attribute, non-commercial, share-alike). Download, redistribute, rewrite the content you find here freely, with my blessing. The Creative Commons are one of the most important groups working in the world today for reasons I won't get into right here, right now.
There are a number of reasons I chose the CC license. I think people have gotten very weird about creativity. Not too long ago people believed in spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis. That is, that things like maggots came to exist spontaneously in rotting meat out of nowhere, and so on. Current copyright law seems to rely on some mythic form of "originality," that new ideas can generate from nothingness, and not be derived from anything that has existed before.
Oh, please!
Look at Done Deal and tell find me one truly original script that has been sold. Listen to any song in the Top 40 and find me one idea that hasn't been expressed before in a thousand other songs. Of course there are a few geniuses, an occasional visionary who says something new, creates something no one has ever seen before, but these are incredibly rare. The rest of us just re-interperet the work of those who came before us. Anyone who tells you different is either lying or deluded.
This isn't a bad thing. It is who we are. Culture exists through the transmission of ideas. If we weren't reusing and remixing the work that has been done before, civilization would cease.
In Castles, I've tried to be as new and original as possible, but I'm no visionary. Many of the ideas are based on extensive research and anyone with access to a library and the Internet could have come up with the same ideas. On the remote chance that I'm the first person to put together these ideas this way, should I now say, "No, you don't repeat any of these ideas to anyone." Other ideas are conclusions I've come to based on observable evidence that anyone else could have come to also. Should I keep these ideas locked away, too? Other parts were inspired by every book I've read and loved, and I consider the book an homage to the writers who made me love reading. A number of them are actually mentioned in the book. While I hope that there's nothing in the book that is specifically like any author, I suspect my writing style is a montage of everyone I've ever read.
I write because I have something to say that I feel is important. I hope that people find my ideas worth repeating and worth developing. At the same time, I've worked really hard on this, and if someone find that these words have monetary value, I want a cut! The Creative Commons license lets both things happen.
Finally, I'm doing it for H. P. Lovecraft. He just might be an early American "Creative Common." He encouraged others to take his ideas and run with them. As a result, almost every horror writer of the 20th Century (probably the 21st, too) has written novels and stories that fit withing Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos." Many movies too, including my favorites, the Evil Dead trilogy. Would Lovecraft have had such a lasting impact if he hadn't shared his universe?
Castles is my first novel, and while I don't think there's enough there to warrant a "Mythos," hopefully by the 50th novel, I'll have created such a vibrant and well-realized universe that others will want to create characters to inhabit it and new stories to perpetuate its history. The Creative Commons license seems like a great way to help make this possible.
Plus, I love the new "developing nations" CC license, allowing commercial versions of my work in developing countries. I think Castles would make a great soap opera. I used to be a big fan of Mexican soap operas when I lived in Portsmouth and got the Spanish station. They seemed like such better quality than American soap operas. Castles could be a sort of Dark Shadows crossed with Mexican soap opera thing. How cool would that be?
There are a number of reasons I chose the CC license. I think people have gotten very weird about creativity. Not too long ago people believed in spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis. That is, that things like maggots came to exist spontaneously in rotting meat out of nowhere, and so on. Current copyright law seems to rely on some mythic form of "originality," that new ideas can generate from nothingness, and not be derived from anything that has existed before.
Oh, please!
Look at Done Deal and tell find me one truly original script that has been sold. Listen to any song in the Top 40 and find me one idea that hasn't been expressed before in a thousand other songs. Of course there are a few geniuses, an occasional visionary who says something new, creates something no one has ever seen before, but these are incredibly rare. The rest of us just re-interperet the work of those who came before us. Anyone who tells you different is either lying or deluded.
This isn't a bad thing. It is who we are. Culture exists through the transmission of ideas. If we weren't reusing and remixing the work that has been done before, civilization would cease.
In Castles, I've tried to be as new and original as possible, but I'm no visionary. Many of the ideas are based on extensive research and anyone with access to a library and the Internet could have come up with the same ideas. On the remote chance that I'm the first person to put together these ideas this way, should I now say, "No, you don't repeat any of these ideas to anyone." Other ideas are conclusions I've come to based on observable evidence that anyone else could have come to also. Should I keep these ideas locked away, too? Other parts were inspired by every book I've read and loved, and I consider the book an homage to the writers who made me love reading. A number of them are actually mentioned in the book. While I hope that there's nothing in the book that is specifically like any author, I suspect my writing style is a montage of everyone I've ever read.
I write because I have something to say that I feel is important. I hope that people find my ideas worth repeating and worth developing. At the same time, I've worked really hard on this, and if someone find that these words have monetary value, I want a cut! The Creative Commons license lets both things happen.
Finally, I'm doing it for H. P. Lovecraft. He just might be an early American "Creative Common." He encouraged others to take his ideas and run with them. As a result, almost every horror writer of the 20th Century (probably the 21st, too) has written novels and stories that fit withing Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos." Many movies too, including my favorites, the Evil Dead trilogy. Would Lovecraft have had such a lasting impact if he hadn't shared his universe?
Castles is my first novel, and while I don't think there's enough there to warrant a "Mythos," hopefully by the 50th novel, I'll have created such a vibrant and well-realized universe that others will want to create characters to inhabit it and new stories to perpetuate its history. The Creative Commons license seems like a great way to help make this possible.
Plus, I love the new "developing nations" CC license, allowing commercial versions of my work in developing countries. I think Castles would make a great soap opera. I used to be a big fan of Mexican soap operas when I lived in Portsmouth and got the Spanish station. They seemed like such better quality than American soap operas. Castles could be a sort of Dark Shadows crossed with Mexican soap opera thing. How cool would that be?
episode three submitted for your approval
Well, it was a heck of a long time getting that one up there! If you've been paying attention to 100 Cups of Coffee, you know why it took so long. And I'd intended for the chapters to come out weekly! I've got to get it in gear if I'm going to finish the 50 novels I'd planned on writing. Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first novel at age 36 and wrote 50 during his lifetime, so that's my new benchmark.
Chapter 3 is where the story really starts taking off. It makes me realize how much rewriting I have to do to the first two chapters, still. If you've stuck with it for the first two chapters, here's where it starts paying off. Enjoy!
Chapter 3 is where the story really starts taking off. It makes me realize how much rewriting I have to do to the first two chapters, still. If you've stuck with it for the first two chapters, here's where it starts paying off. Enjoy!
Friday, July 01, 2005
the worst thing
Some things are so terrible that if you wrote about them as fiction you'd exceed the reader's willful suspension of disbelief. People just couldn't possibly do things like that in real life, could they?
They do.
If I hadn't met the boy myself, I might not have believed it.
The boy was a prisoner in the juvenile jail I used to work at. Those weren't the terms they used, though. He wasn't a prisoner, he was a "resident." And it wasn't a jail but a "Youth Development Center." Those euphemisms are lies, though. The "development center" was still punishment based, as if you beat someone down enough they'll somehow become better people.
But how much punishment does it take to correct what happened to this kid?
When he was younger his father nailed him to the floor. It made it easier for the father to rape his son. That isn't a figurative "nailing" but literally, his father drove nails through his hands and feet into the floor to that he couldn't stuggle, couldn't get away.
Things like that can't possibly happen though, can they? Not in real life....
They do.
If I hadn't met the boy myself, I might not have believed it.
The boy was a prisoner in the juvenile jail I used to work at. Those weren't the terms they used, though. He wasn't a prisoner, he was a "resident." And it wasn't a jail but a "Youth Development Center." Those euphemisms are lies, though. The "development center" was still punishment based, as if you beat someone down enough they'll somehow become better people.
But how much punishment does it take to correct what happened to this kid?
When he was younger his father nailed him to the floor. It made it easier for the father to rape his son. That isn't a figurative "nailing" but literally, his father drove nails through his hands and feet into the floor to that he couldn't stuggle, couldn't get away.
Things like that can't possibly happen though, can they? Not in real life....
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Strange Maine: Milo
People "from away" often get a very skewed impression of this state. "From away" includes not just people from other states, but people living in the Greater Portland Area (Maine's largest city) and points south. Those people may live within the same official map borders, but the Maine they inhabit is so different from the rest of the state that it might as well be a different country. In fact, for many people living in Maine, the state only exists south of where they live. They never travel north. They never think about what goes on north of where they live. Case in point: the Learning Results is a set of standards that teachers are supposed to ensure their students meet. There are standards on the Learning Results that involve going to museums. There are plenty of museums in Portland and in Augusta, the state capital, but for the majority of students in Maine the nearest museum is hours away.
If people "from away" do happen to travel north of Portland, the go to places like Camden or Bar Harbor, relatively prosperous tourist towns. There the locals are going to be nice to you even if they hate you because they need the tourist dollars, and the local officials go out of their way to make the towns look and feel the way the tourists expect them to look and feel. In Camden it is illegal to paint your house any color but white, for example (unless you're MBNA and have enough money to bribe the local officials to look the other way as you're demolishing historic houses and painting them the corporate green and gray). Or else they go to the more uninhabited parts of the state on camping trips. Either way, what people are seeing is representative of only a small fraction of the state. What they're seeing is an idyllic fantasy of "the way life should be."
There's another Maine. People from away don't realize just how much Stephen King isn't making up in his books. Take Milo, Maine for example. If you were just driving through you'd see a pretty little town on the river. "Quaint" is the word that people from away use to describe towns like this. People from here hate that word and find it condescending and insulting. If you actually took the time to stop in Milo you'd notice that almost the entire downtown has been abandoned. Nearly all the stores are empty. All the factories that once supported Milo have closed down. The nearest population center where someone might find a job is Bangor, an hour away, where unemployment is also high and one would be lucky to find a minimum wage service job. There have been no jobs in the Milo area for so long that being on welfare is now the norm, and a large percentage of people will actually look down on you for having a job, for "putting on airs," or whatever. So here amongst this idyllic natural beauty that really does exist throughout so much of Maine, there's a hopelessness and despair. The jobs left. They aren't coming back. If kids grow up with any aspirations at all, it is to get out of town as soon as they can.
But there's more than just a depressed economy. Milo is the unofficial marijuana capital of Maine, where the majority of pot is grown. In Milo, there are police officers shacking up with high school students (I guess they aren't going to arrest themselves for statutory rape). Milo is the birthplace of the KKK.
Last year a man burned a baby along with the usual household rubbish, and nothing happened. He was burning trash in his yard and a neighbor noticed him tossing a baby into the trash. The coroner was never able to figure out if the baby was alive or not when he threw it in the fire, so he never got charged with murder. There was plenty of gossip and speculation, but nobody ever said for sure where the baby came from. The man had two daughters. One of them had been wearing extra baggy clothes to school, and after her father burned the baby she started wearing less baggy clothing, so she might have been pregnant. She might have miscarried. They might have done a home abortion, or maybe the baby came to term and was stilborn. Or maybe they killed the baby.
The girls kept going to school. The dad, well, everyone said he was a respectable man who loved his daughters and would do anything for them... Charges were filed, but not murder since they couldn't prove anything. The day of the trial a key person failed to show up, and the charges were dropped.
Life goes on in Milo. A baby burned. A respectable business man burned it. That is all anyone knows for sure, except for the man and his daughters and they aren't saying anything.
Welcome to Maine. The way life should be. If you lived here, you'd be home now.
And yes, this is where the name Milo in the novel came from, though when I chose that name, Milo was just a town somewhere north of Orono to me. I didn't know anything about it.
If people "from away" do happen to travel north of Portland, the go to places like Camden or Bar Harbor, relatively prosperous tourist towns. There the locals are going to be nice to you even if they hate you because they need the tourist dollars, and the local officials go out of their way to make the towns look and feel the way the tourists expect them to look and feel. In Camden it is illegal to paint your house any color but white, for example (unless you're MBNA and have enough money to bribe the local officials to look the other way as you're demolishing historic houses and painting them the corporate green and gray). Or else they go to the more uninhabited parts of the state on camping trips. Either way, what people are seeing is representative of only a small fraction of the state. What they're seeing is an idyllic fantasy of "the way life should be."
There's another Maine. People from away don't realize just how much Stephen King isn't making up in his books. Take Milo, Maine for example. If you were just driving through you'd see a pretty little town on the river. "Quaint" is the word that people from away use to describe towns like this. People from here hate that word and find it condescending and insulting. If you actually took the time to stop in Milo you'd notice that almost the entire downtown has been abandoned. Nearly all the stores are empty. All the factories that once supported Milo have closed down. The nearest population center where someone might find a job is Bangor, an hour away, where unemployment is also high and one would be lucky to find a minimum wage service job. There have been no jobs in the Milo area for so long that being on welfare is now the norm, and a large percentage of people will actually look down on you for having a job, for "putting on airs," or whatever. So here amongst this idyllic natural beauty that really does exist throughout so much of Maine, there's a hopelessness and despair. The jobs left. They aren't coming back. If kids grow up with any aspirations at all, it is to get out of town as soon as they can.
But there's more than just a depressed economy. Milo is the unofficial marijuana capital of Maine, where the majority of pot is grown. In Milo, there are police officers shacking up with high school students (I guess they aren't going to arrest themselves for statutory rape). Milo is the birthplace of the KKK.
Last year a man burned a baby along with the usual household rubbish, and nothing happened. He was burning trash in his yard and a neighbor noticed him tossing a baby into the trash. The coroner was never able to figure out if the baby was alive or not when he threw it in the fire, so he never got charged with murder. There was plenty of gossip and speculation, but nobody ever said for sure where the baby came from. The man had two daughters. One of them had been wearing extra baggy clothes to school, and after her father burned the baby she started wearing less baggy clothing, so she might have been pregnant. She might have miscarried. They might have done a home abortion, or maybe the baby came to term and was stilborn. Or maybe they killed the baby.
The girls kept going to school. The dad, well, everyone said he was a respectable man who loved his daughters and would do anything for them... Charges were filed, but not murder since they couldn't prove anything. The day of the trial a key person failed to show up, and the charges were dropped.
Life goes on in Milo. A baby burned. A respectable business man burned it. That is all anyone knows for sure, except for the man and his daughters and they aren't saying anything.
Welcome to Maine. The way life should be. If you lived here, you'd be home now.
And yes, this is where the name Milo in the novel came from, though when I chose that name, Milo was just a town somewhere north of Orono to me. I didn't know anything about it.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
life imitating art
Apologies for not updating this as regularly as I'd planned. You can read up on all the crap that's been going on in my life over at my other blog. After next week, though, when Mayterm wraps up, and I'll be moved into my new digs in Belfast, I should be returning to my regularly scheduled broadcast.
I've been having literary moments of late. Not moments of reading literature, but moments where it seems my life is being written by someone else. For example:
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm the fifth generation of my family to live in this house. As my siblings all bought houses, this began to feel like a responsibility. When Mom finally moved on (from this house of from this life) it would be up to me to keep the house in the family. Some days this felt like a burden and some times like it could be a joyous thing, carrying on tradition, living here, having my own kids who would inherit this house one day. Since I moved back here five years ago I've been working to fix the place up, knowing it would either increase resale value and help my mom, and/or make it a nicer place for me to live.
One part of the property that I always wanted to work on but never got around to was the apple orchard. Fifty years or so ago, my dad planted a dozen or so apple trees. They'd been neglected for decades, and were choked out by maple saplings, but miraculously they still produced fruit. With some judicious pruning and clearing, they could be brought back to life. It was one of those things I'd planned to do if I bought the place.
But a few months ago I gave up on the idea of buying this house. It's time to start new traditions, new stories elsewhere. As soon as I decided this, I immediately felt lighter and happier and knew it was the right choice.
Last week I discovered that all the apple trees had been cut down.
With all the rain that's fallen, the river is higher than it has ever been this time of year, at least in my lifetime. We get a flood every year when the snow melts, but never this late in the year. Since the floodwaters are so high, so late, it means the beavers, who never stray far from the shoreline, have access to all kinds of trees that were never in their reach before. In all those years they've never been able to get at those trees, until now.
It seems a little too symbolic for real life.
I walk down the streets of what has been my hometown for so many years. In a week, it won't be my hometown anymore. There's a house I've walked by hundreds of times taking a shortcut to get to campus. It is immaculately groomed, in perfect shape, but I've never seen anyone there. It has been a mystery to me for more than a decade. Who lives there? Why does it look lived in when nobody is ever there?
Today I walked by and there's a guy with NH plates on his car, tidying things up. No mystery there. Just another Maine property owned by someone from away who only spends a couple weeks out of the year there.
There's a woman who lives in a house at the top of the hill. I pass by her house almost every day, but I've never seen her face. She's outside often, working around her house. She's often wearing a bikini, so I know what 90% of the rest of her body looks like, but somehow, her face is always obscured. She's either facing away from the street or carrying a big bag of groceries, or something. One time I walked by and she was working in the flower bed in front of the house, facing the street, and I thought for sure that it would be the day I finally got to see her face. But right when I got up to her, she leaned over to work the ground at the base of a fence post, the post blocking her face from my view! This has happened dozens of times now, like a sitcom. What was it? Home Improvement, where we never saw the next door neighbor's face.
So, it is all riding on this. If someone else is writing my life, then this is the week I see her face. It is series finale time, time for all these plot threads to be tied up. Maybe she's a long lost love, ironically living just a few hundred feet away for all these years. Maybe her face is so hideous I'll scream. It doesn't matter, though. There's so much mystery tied up in it now, anything will be anticlimactic. But if the week ends and I don't see her face, then I'm free. Nobody is writing my story but me.
I've been having literary moments of late. Not moments of reading literature, but moments where it seems my life is being written by someone else. For example:
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm the fifth generation of my family to live in this house. As my siblings all bought houses, this began to feel like a responsibility. When Mom finally moved on (from this house of from this life) it would be up to me to keep the house in the family. Some days this felt like a burden and some times like it could be a joyous thing, carrying on tradition, living here, having my own kids who would inherit this house one day. Since I moved back here five years ago I've been working to fix the place up, knowing it would either increase resale value and help my mom, and/or make it a nicer place for me to live.
One part of the property that I always wanted to work on but never got around to was the apple orchard. Fifty years or so ago, my dad planted a dozen or so apple trees. They'd been neglected for decades, and were choked out by maple saplings, but miraculously they still produced fruit. With some judicious pruning and clearing, they could be brought back to life. It was one of those things I'd planned to do if I bought the place.
But a few months ago I gave up on the idea of buying this house. It's time to start new traditions, new stories elsewhere. As soon as I decided this, I immediately felt lighter and happier and knew it was the right choice.
Last week I discovered that all the apple trees had been cut down.
With all the rain that's fallen, the river is higher than it has ever been this time of year, at least in my lifetime. We get a flood every year when the snow melts, but never this late in the year. Since the floodwaters are so high, so late, it means the beavers, who never stray far from the shoreline, have access to all kinds of trees that were never in their reach before. In all those years they've never been able to get at those trees, until now.
It seems a little too symbolic for real life.
I walk down the streets of what has been my hometown for so many years. In a week, it won't be my hometown anymore. There's a house I've walked by hundreds of times taking a shortcut to get to campus. It is immaculately groomed, in perfect shape, but I've never seen anyone there. It has been a mystery to me for more than a decade. Who lives there? Why does it look lived in when nobody is ever there?
Today I walked by and there's a guy with NH plates on his car, tidying things up. No mystery there. Just another Maine property owned by someone from away who only spends a couple weeks out of the year there.
There's a woman who lives in a house at the top of the hill. I pass by her house almost every day, but I've never seen her face. She's outside often, working around her house. She's often wearing a bikini, so I know what 90% of the rest of her body looks like, but somehow, her face is always obscured. She's either facing away from the street or carrying a big bag of groceries, or something. One time I walked by and she was working in the flower bed in front of the house, facing the street, and I thought for sure that it would be the day I finally got to see her face. But right when I got up to her, she leaned over to work the ground at the base of a fence post, the post blocking her face from my view! This has happened dozens of times now, like a sitcom. What was it? Home Improvement, where we never saw the next door neighbor's face.
So, it is all riding on this. If someone else is writing my life, then this is the week I see her face. It is series finale time, time for all these plot threads to be tied up. Maybe she's a long lost love, ironically living just a few hundred feet away for all these years. Maybe her face is so hideous I'll scream. It doesn't matter, though. There's so much mystery tied up in it now, anything will be anticlimactic. But if the week ends and I don't see her face, then I'm free. Nobody is writing my story but me.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
episode two: dead girls
(spoiler alert: don't read this unless you've read chs. 1 &2)
People die in this town.
That's no suprise. People die everywhere. What I mean is, people die badly here in Orono, Maine. Only they aren't supposed to. We get maybe a dozen murders, tops, per year in the State of Maine. In a town like Orono murder can't possibly happen. So when it does it is met with denial.
Her name was Hannah. I didn't know her personally, but I was friends with people who did. Hannah "committed suicide" a few years back. Because the police decided immediately that she'd committed suicide, they never bothered to look for clues that might have proved otherwise:
Hannah was a happy person with lots of friends, and had never shown any signs of being suicidal.
She'd just bought Christmas presents for her family and friends, and was talking about how much she was looking forward to Christmas.
There was no suicide note.
There were no powder burns.
She'd just started dating a guy who, it turns out, was just out of jail.
When these facts were brought to the police they said, well, she was probably cleaning her gun and it went off. Problem is, Hannah's dad was a cop. Hannah grew up around guns and gun safety was something she was fanatic about. Even though she didn't have kids, she always kept a lock on her gun when she wasn't using it at the shooting range.
It hurts just to think about what it must have been like for her friends and family. To have lost someone they loved, and to know that most likely she was murdered, but that the police destroyed any evidence that might prove this. To have, instead, your loved one held up to public ridicule and scorn for being a suicide. To spend the rest of your life not knowing the truth. What do you do? How do you heal from that?
If you're in Orono, stop by the Bear Brew Pub. There's a plaque to Hannah at the left end of the bar. Pay your respects to Hannah. I wish I could give more testament to her life, but sadly, all I really know about is her death and how much it hurt her friends.
There was another incident just a couple years ago. A student killed herself by hanging herself from a tree near her dorm. All I have to go by on this one are rumors. Suicides rarely make the news because they are seen as so shameful, and they want to protect the family, supposedly. So this student killed herself, but something about it just didn't sit right to me. She'd just gotten off the phone with her boyfriend and was going down to meet him. Again, there was no suicide note. Again, from what I hear, she was a happy person who showed no signs of being suicidal. And we're supposed to believe that in the short walk to meet her boyfriend her life suddenly turned so tragic that she spontaneously hung herself?
Just another teenage suicide. The police didn't bother to look for any other clues. I'm not sure it even made the papers, so the dead girl never even had a name. It happened in the fall. The University instituted an October Break policy years ago. AKA the Suicide Break because so many students killed themselves during that time period.
But this is a quiet town, and bad things like murder are things that only happen in other towns.
People die in this town.
That's no suprise. People die everywhere. What I mean is, people die badly here in Orono, Maine. Only they aren't supposed to. We get maybe a dozen murders, tops, per year in the State of Maine. In a town like Orono murder can't possibly happen. So when it does it is met with denial.
Her name was Hannah. I didn't know her personally, but I was friends with people who did. Hannah "committed suicide" a few years back. Because the police decided immediately that she'd committed suicide, they never bothered to look for clues that might have proved otherwise:
Hannah was a happy person with lots of friends, and had never shown any signs of being suicidal.
She'd just bought Christmas presents for her family and friends, and was talking about how much she was looking forward to Christmas.
There was no suicide note.
There were no powder burns.
She'd just started dating a guy who, it turns out, was just out of jail.
When these facts were brought to the police they said, well, she was probably cleaning her gun and it went off. Problem is, Hannah's dad was a cop. Hannah grew up around guns and gun safety was something she was fanatic about. Even though she didn't have kids, she always kept a lock on her gun when she wasn't using it at the shooting range.
It hurts just to think about what it must have been like for her friends and family. To have lost someone they loved, and to know that most likely she was murdered, but that the police destroyed any evidence that might prove this. To have, instead, your loved one held up to public ridicule and scorn for being a suicide. To spend the rest of your life not knowing the truth. What do you do? How do you heal from that?
If you're in Orono, stop by the Bear Brew Pub. There's a plaque to Hannah at the left end of the bar. Pay your respects to Hannah. I wish I could give more testament to her life, but sadly, all I really know about is her death and how much it hurt her friends.
There was another incident just a couple years ago. A student killed herself by hanging herself from a tree near her dorm. All I have to go by on this one are rumors. Suicides rarely make the news because they are seen as so shameful, and they want to protect the family, supposedly. So this student killed herself, but something about it just didn't sit right to me. She'd just gotten off the phone with her boyfriend and was going down to meet him. Again, there was no suicide note. Again, from what I hear, she was a happy person who showed no signs of being suicidal. And we're supposed to believe that in the short walk to meet her boyfriend her life suddenly turned so tragic that she spontaneously hung herself?
Just another teenage suicide. The police didn't bother to look for any other clues. I'm not sure it even made the papers, so the dead girl never even had a name. It happened in the fall. The University instituted an October Break policy years ago. AKA the Suicide Break because so many students killed themselves during that time period.
But this is a quiet town, and bad things like murder are things that only happen in other towns.
Episode Two Now Broadcasting
I just uploaded Episode Two.
Additonally, I have added the "LIT MA LSV" designation to the home page, for Literature (as opposed to TV) Mature Audiences, Language, Sex, Violence. This is adapted from the tvguidelines.org web page. Their definition of TV MA LSV is as follows:
Mature Audience Only
This program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. This program contains one or more of the following: graphic violence (V), explicit sexual activity (S), or crude indecent language (L).
I do a lot of work with elementary school kids, so some might get the impression I write for them too. While I make no promises that this work will offend you, it isn't intended for immature audiences, or for those with weak stomaches, or for people who are easily offended by things they disagree with and want to be protected from them.
Additonally, I have added the "LIT MA LSV" designation to the home page, for Literature (as opposed to TV) Mature Audiences, Language, Sex, Violence. This is adapted from the tvguidelines.org web page. Their definition of TV MA LSV is as follows:
Mature Audience Only
This program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. This program contains one or more of the following: graphic violence (V), explicit sexual activity (S), or crude indecent language (L).
I do a lot of work with elementary school kids, so some might get the impression I write for them too. While I make no promises that this work will offend you, it isn't intended for immature audiences, or for those with weak stomaches, or for people who are easily offended by things they disagree with and want to be protected from them.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
just for one day
Castles is a work of heroic fiction in the old-school sense. I saw an interview with George Lucas years ago on his reasons for doing the original Star Wars. He was hanging out with Joseph Campbell and they were talking about heroes (big suprise there) and the hero's role in culture. They are more than just for telling entertaining stories about. Heroes are role models, showing what is good and noble in a culture, inspiring us to be the best we can be. At least, traditionally this is what they've been, though I think in our own culture we've largely lost our heroes. Lucas thought so too, and he set out to create new heroes.
Lucas seems to have abandoned this with the last two movies (one reason among many why these movies are so awful). I can see why, though. It is simultaneously anachronistic, idealistic and fascistic. Fascistic, because to create a hero in the traditional sense, you have to believe that you know what is best for society and be willing to impose that view on others. Idealistic because to even bother trying you have to believe that you can make a difference, and that it is worth it to try. Anachronistic because America doesn't have heroes anymore. Not really. Heroes have been replaced by celebrity cults. Really, how many people can you point to and say, "I wish my kids would grow up to be like that person," or, "I wish I were more like that." There might be someone, but for most people in America it is because they make a lot of money, or a good at sports or a really famous, not because they're good people or have done anything to make the world a better place.
If the hero's is a reflection of what is good and virtuous in society, how can such a being exist in ours? We live in a cultural bipolar disorder. On the one pole concepts of right and wrong and morality are just marketing gimics. They're ways of furthering one's own agenda by opressing others. Think of the "religious right" (In quotes because they're neither) with their "We don't like it, therefore it is evil and immoral and should be prohibited" attitude or the Republican party's "Support the President or you're unAmerican," propaganda, where even questioning or voicing dissent is seen as immoral. On the other pole we have cultural relativism where every view is accepted and tolerated, and others can only be judged according to their own culture or upbringing, which makes the only real "immoral" act that of hypocrisy. Unless you yourself say that something is wrong, and then you don't live by that standard, nothing you do can be considered immoral.
I can see why Lucas would whimp out. Seems to me, though, that we need heroes now more than ever.
Do kids today have heroes? Do they have any examples they can look at and want to be when they grew up? I was lucky. I was an anachronism. I loved the old heroes: Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes and John Carter and Doc Savage. Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm not sure Captain Underpants really counts as a hero.
I'm not claiming to have created a "hero for our times." Castles is an exploration, an attempt to come up with a modern definition of a hero, one that can survive in a culture of diversity and contradiction, one that can be virtuous and noble but still "real".
After writing a novel about it and thinking about it for years, I'm not sure I'm any closer to figuring out what a hero is. I can point out a few examples. My own father, for instance. Before his aneurism, he was town manager of several different towns. One time a contractor tried to bribe my father with the gift of a house if my father approved his permit for a housing development. My father knew the contractor to be a good man, but at the time (and moreso today, I'm sure) the system was just so corrupt that you had to bribe your government officials in order to get anything done. I think about my dad back then, a young man supporting a wife and four kids, and how much he could have used the money, and how everyone around him was doing it, so he could have gotten away with it, easy. But he refused the bribe. And he still gave the guy the permit! That to me is one quality of a hero. Doing the right thing even when it isn't necessarily in your benefit. My dad also got curbside recycling started in Durham, NH in the 70s, twenty years before people in general realized how important it was. And he got a sewage treatment plant going that turned waste into usable compost instead of dumping it into the ocean. He saw problems and he solved them in ways that were best for the environment and the future, not because they were the cheapest, easiest or most politically beneficial ways.
I hope I live up to his example. Sometimes I might, but mostly, I'm no hero.
Lucas seems to have abandoned this with the last two movies (one reason among many why these movies are so awful). I can see why, though. It is simultaneously anachronistic, idealistic and fascistic. Fascistic, because to create a hero in the traditional sense, you have to believe that you know what is best for society and be willing to impose that view on others. Idealistic because to even bother trying you have to believe that you can make a difference, and that it is worth it to try. Anachronistic because America doesn't have heroes anymore. Not really. Heroes have been replaced by celebrity cults. Really, how many people can you point to and say, "I wish my kids would grow up to be like that person," or, "I wish I were more like that." There might be someone, but for most people in America it is because they make a lot of money, or a good at sports or a really famous, not because they're good people or have done anything to make the world a better place.
If the hero's is a reflection of what is good and virtuous in society, how can such a being exist in ours? We live in a cultural bipolar disorder. On the one pole concepts of right and wrong and morality are just marketing gimics. They're ways of furthering one's own agenda by opressing others. Think of the "religious right" (In quotes because they're neither) with their "We don't like it, therefore it is evil and immoral and should be prohibited" attitude or the Republican party's "Support the President or you're unAmerican," propaganda, where even questioning or voicing dissent is seen as immoral. On the other pole we have cultural relativism where every view is accepted and tolerated, and others can only be judged according to their own culture or upbringing, which makes the only real "immoral" act that of hypocrisy. Unless you yourself say that something is wrong, and then you don't live by that standard, nothing you do can be considered immoral.
I can see why Lucas would whimp out. Seems to me, though, that we need heroes now more than ever.
Do kids today have heroes? Do they have any examples they can look at and want to be when they grew up? I was lucky. I was an anachronism. I loved the old heroes: Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes and John Carter and Doc Savage. Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm not sure Captain Underpants really counts as a hero.
I'm not claiming to have created a "hero for our times." Castles is an exploration, an attempt to come up with a modern definition of a hero, one that can survive in a culture of diversity and contradiction, one that can be virtuous and noble but still "real".
After writing a novel about it and thinking about it for years, I'm not sure I'm any closer to figuring out what a hero is. I can point out a few examples. My own father, for instance. Before his aneurism, he was town manager of several different towns. One time a contractor tried to bribe my father with the gift of a house if my father approved his permit for a housing development. My father knew the contractor to be a good man, but at the time (and moreso today, I'm sure) the system was just so corrupt that you had to bribe your government officials in order to get anything done. I think about my dad back then, a young man supporting a wife and four kids, and how much he could have used the money, and how everyone around him was doing it, so he could have gotten away with it, easy. But he refused the bribe. And he still gave the guy the permit! That to me is one quality of a hero. Doing the right thing even when it isn't necessarily in your benefit. My dad also got curbside recycling started in Durham, NH in the 70s, twenty years before people in general realized how important it was. And he got a sewage treatment plant going that turned waste into usable compost instead of dumping it into the ocean. He saw problems and he solved them in ways that were best for the environment and the future, not because they were the cheapest, easiest or most politically beneficial ways.
I hope I live up to his example. Sometimes I might, but mostly, I'm no hero.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Remembering Welch
Now that I think about it, Welch may have been the first positive adult male role model I ever had. Not that I'm saying my own father was really a bad influence, but... well... he had a brain aneurism when I was 5 that left him brain damaged. I'm told he was a great man before this. A man of intelligence, honor and integrity. The father I know, however, sat around and watched TV a whole lot, ate too much junk food and dug through trash cans to find returnables like a homeless person. He couldn't carry on conversations or offer guidance or advice or do any of those things I hear dads are supposed to. I guess I didn't have it too bad though. At least he wasn't physically abusive. No wait, yes he was, until I got big enough to hurt back. Guess I really did get the short end of the stick as far as fathers go.
I met Welch when I was a freshman in college (first year student, in case you're unfamiliar with the term "freshman". The PC 90s changed that. IMHO, it should have been changed to Person of Fresh). I knew from that start that I'd be an English major, creative writing concentration. As long as I could remember I wanted to write novels. I never had the ambition to write the Great American Novel, as most English majors do. I wanted to write pure entertainment. Books that might not change you in any way, but that once you started reading, you couldn't put down again. The early Stephen King, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, they helped me escape for days on end while I was growing up. I was also a b-movie fanatic, watching every sci-fi and horror movie I could find. I found brilliance and inspiration in movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches the way respectable people found in Citizen Kane.
Of course I had to meet Welch. Welch Everman was a professor in the English department at the University of Maine. Academia may have become less hostile toward pop culture since the 80s, but back then Welch was a radical. He'd make analalogies between Hamlet and the latest twists in pro wrestling, and he had no trouble shelving comic books next to the "great classics of literature." Welch was my academic advisor. Advising sessions consisted of sitting in his office as he smoked cheap cigarettes while we discussed obscure horror movies that only the two of us had ever seen. Then he'd sign my blank class sign-up sheet and I'd fill in the rest on my own.
I think I learned more that way than in any of my classes. One of the most important things I learned from Welch was that the same techniques you'd use to analyze a Shakespeare play could also be applied to the worst monster movie, and that you could learn things from both. I think my whole life is a lot more enjoyable because of this. When you can see how Hamlet connects to pro wrestling, you can make the connection between Hamlet and your own life. Both Hamlet and Pro Wrestling become much more fascinating! All life becomes a text that you can learn from.
Welch also believed in me as a writer. He encouraged me to keep writing and try to get published. It was the first time I ever felt believed in, or encouraged.
Unfortunately, when I left college I persued a career in computer graphics. This effectively killed me as a writer. When you spend all day staring at a computer screen, the last thing you want to do is stare at a computer screen in your free time. Years past, and I lost touch with Welch. I still made attempts at novels now and then, but never made the time for it. Writing is one of my favorite things to do, so it is always the first thing to get sacrificed when things get busy.
Then my dad got Alzheimers and I returned home to help my mom deal with it. I became a student again. I didn't really feel a pressing need to get my masters degree. It was just something to do to keep from going crazy.
Meanwhile, Welch got cancer. All those cheap cigarettes caught up with him. He got through it. Well, "went into remission." Cancer isn't something that is ever cured. I'd always planned on publishing a novel and coming back to show Welch and making him proud. I realized that all Welch might ever see from me was a whole lot of false starts. I felt dissapointed in myself. So I took another creative writing class with Welch, and wrote Castles in one semester, last fall, just so I could prove to Welch and to myself that I could actually finish something. I planned on rewriting it and actually trying to publish it this time.
It was the last class Welch taught. The cancer came back, and I didn't even realize he was dying. Rumors spread fast on campus. I'd hear from one person that Welch was sick and from another that he was doing great. I was out of town when he died, and didn't even find out about the funeral until days later.
When I asked my mother, who works at the University with people who were good friends with Welch, why she didn't tell me, she said, "Oh, I didn't know you knew him."
I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere.
It is only recently that I've been able to talk about this. His loss is heartbreaking to me. I still catch myself thinking, "Oh, I should tell Welch about this!" and realizing I can't, and that I know I can't, and haven't been able to for a long time, and how does something like that slip your mind?
But I'll finish the novel. And I'll get it published. And I'll dedicate it to Welch.
I met Welch when I was a freshman in college (first year student, in case you're unfamiliar with the term "freshman". The PC 90s changed that. IMHO, it should have been changed to Person of Fresh). I knew from that start that I'd be an English major, creative writing concentration. As long as I could remember I wanted to write novels. I never had the ambition to write the Great American Novel, as most English majors do. I wanted to write pure entertainment. Books that might not change you in any way, but that once you started reading, you couldn't put down again. The early Stephen King, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, they helped me escape for days on end while I was growing up. I was also a b-movie fanatic, watching every sci-fi and horror movie I could find. I found brilliance and inspiration in movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches the way respectable people found in Citizen Kane.
Of course I had to meet Welch. Welch Everman was a professor in the English department at the University of Maine. Academia may have become less hostile toward pop culture since the 80s, but back then Welch was a radical. He'd make analalogies between Hamlet and the latest twists in pro wrestling, and he had no trouble shelving comic books next to the "great classics of literature." Welch was my academic advisor. Advising sessions consisted of sitting in his office as he smoked cheap cigarettes while we discussed obscure horror movies that only the two of us had ever seen. Then he'd sign my blank class sign-up sheet and I'd fill in the rest on my own.
I think I learned more that way than in any of my classes. One of the most important things I learned from Welch was that the same techniques you'd use to analyze a Shakespeare play could also be applied to the worst monster movie, and that you could learn things from both. I think my whole life is a lot more enjoyable because of this. When you can see how Hamlet connects to pro wrestling, you can make the connection between Hamlet and your own life. Both Hamlet and Pro Wrestling become much more fascinating! All life becomes a text that you can learn from.
Welch also believed in me as a writer. He encouraged me to keep writing and try to get published. It was the first time I ever felt believed in, or encouraged.
Unfortunately, when I left college I persued a career in computer graphics. This effectively killed me as a writer. When you spend all day staring at a computer screen, the last thing you want to do is stare at a computer screen in your free time. Years past, and I lost touch with Welch. I still made attempts at novels now and then, but never made the time for it. Writing is one of my favorite things to do, so it is always the first thing to get sacrificed when things get busy.
Then my dad got Alzheimers and I returned home to help my mom deal with it. I became a student again. I didn't really feel a pressing need to get my masters degree. It was just something to do to keep from going crazy.
Meanwhile, Welch got cancer. All those cheap cigarettes caught up with him. He got through it. Well, "went into remission." Cancer isn't something that is ever cured. I'd always planned on publishing a novel and coming back to show Welch and making him proud. I realized that all Welch might ever see from me was a whole lot of false starts. I felt dissapointed in myself. So I took another creative writing class with Welch, and wrote Castles in one semester, last fall, just so I could prove to Welch and to myself that I could actually finish something. I planned on rewriting it and actually trying to publish it this time.
It was the last class Welch taught. The cancer came back, and I didn't even realize he was dying. Rumors spread fast on campus. I'd hear from one person that Welch was sick and from another that he was doing great. I was out of town when he died, and didn't even find out about the funeral until days later.
When I asked my mother, who works at the University with people who were good friends with Welch, why she didn't tell me, she said, "Oh, I didn't know you knew him."
I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere.
It is only recently that I've been able to talk about this. His loss is heartbreaking to me. I still catch myself thinking, "Oh, I should tell Welch about this!" and realizing I can't, and that I know I can't, and haven't been able to for a long time, and how does something like that slip your mind?
But I'll finish the novel. And I'll get it published. And I'll dedicate it to Welch.
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