Me

Wrestling the knee jerk

/ rachelhartman / 9 Comments

The phrase “knee-jerk reaction” refers to your patellar reflex, the one where a doctor smacks you on the knee with a hammer and your leg jumps. You can’t control it; it’s hard-wired right into your body. An electrical impulse travels to your spinal cord, bypasses your brain entirely, and comes back to your leg with a command: jump!

Let me just reiterate part of that: it bypasses your brain entirely. It doesn’t matter how badly you don’t want your leg to jerk, it’s gonna jerk.

Sometimes we humans are jerks just that involuntarily, predictably, and reliably. Culture and experience wire our brains a certain way; the brain makes snap judgements – because it has to, because there are times when actual survival depends upon it – and those judgements are sometimes hurtful to others and just plain wrong.

I want to tell you the story about the time I really understood, to my utter shame and dismay, that I am capable of a racist knee-jerk reaction. I was walking down the street in Chicago when a black woman asked me whether I had change for a dollar so she could take the bus. I averted my eyes and muttered No and hurried away, because my brain had performed a lightning fast calculation: black person + mention of change = pan-handling.

As I walked, however, the rest of my brain began to catch up and register additional information. She had been well-dressed and holding a dollar bill in her hand. She wasn’t asking for spare change; she wanted change for a dollar because the bus only took exact change.

I was horrified at myself. I had believed I was better than that. But there it was, laid out starkly before me: my knee had jerked, and I had acted from a place of racism.

I felt sick. I made myself turn around, mortifying as it was, and I made myself walk back to where she had been standing. She was already gone. The winter wind blew all around me.

I’ve had friends tell me I’m being too hard on myself. Those friends do not live in my brain. I was there when I failed; I saw it all. I’m telling you this story because it was a significant moment for me, a moment where I was suddenly transparent to myself.

I don’t want to be racist; it goes against everything I value and believe. Unfortunately, at a deep, unconscious level, I am — and not just racist, but sexist, ablist, name your prejudice, step right up. It happens before I know it. Have you seen those implicit association tests online, used to demonstrate unconscious prejudices? That’s the timescale of snap judgments, the degree to which one can’t control it or even perceive it happening.

It’s scary to think my brain is doing things without my conscious permission, but in fact, it does all kinds of things like that, all the time. It has to. If I had to consciously control every reaction, I’d have been hit by a bus by now. This particular tendency for the brain to apply shorthand stereotypes to the world around me is a feature of how the brain works. It’s what we have to work with, so how can we make it work? How do I go forward, knowing about the ugly potentials lying latent in my own head?

The key is second thoughts (and even third thoughts, for the Pratchett fans among us). Now that I know this about myself, now that I am aware of this particular synaptic pattern in my own head, I can be observant and vigilant. I can recognize the knee-jerk for what it is when it happens. I can anticipate it and head it off, sometimes. I can aim that jerking leg away, so it doesn’t kick anyone. I can notice I kicked someone, and apologize.

I can humbly accept it as truth when someone tells me I kicked them, and work to do better.

And that is the key word: work. This reaction is like a reflex, but it’s not really a reflex; that was just an analogy, and analogies fail. The reaction is programming, and the brain can be reprogrammed from the inside out. It takes time and will and effort, and a recognition that some unforeseen circumstance may trip the old switches again when I’m not expecting it. There may always be a booby-trap somewhere in my head, where I can’t anticipate it. I know will fail; I have already failed, plenty. I will continue to get up and try again.

This is getting super long, and I still haven’t talked about how any of this relates to what I’m writing. I’ll have to make this a two-parter, I guess. In the meantime, here’s a blog entry that was part of RaceFail ’09. It’s called Open Letter: To Elizabeth Bear, and part of it moved me deeply (the part about Star Trek; god I’m such a dork). I had another little epiphany, and it relates to what I’m writing now.

What AM I writing now?  Hm… long blog entries, apparently! Work calls, darlings. See you Monday, most likely.

Hello, new friends!

/ rachelhartman / 6 Comments

The site is beginning to see some traffic from people who haven’t known me for years. That’s wonderful!

It’s also slightly comical timing, since I just spent the last week and a half raving about YES. It’s a bit like answering the door in your underwear. Oops. Um, yes, I was just dancing to “Don’t Kill the Whale”, ha ha. I’ll just, um, get dressed now, shall I?

All right. Much better. Welcome, darlings.

I promised my editor that when we got to this point I’d be ready to serve tea and discuss Proust – and we can certainly do that. But I am a person of myriad enthusiasms and variable attention. I tend to go a lot of different directions, sometimes all at once. I’m not good at maintaining a decorous and dignified façade. Rather than pretending to be something I’m not (calm, aloof), it’s better to be up front about what I am.

I’m a laugher, first and foremost. If it makes me laugh, it wins. I love many kinds of music, but especially the nerdy kinds: prog rock, early and ancient music, classical music, bagpipe music. I am interested in psychology, neurology, and archaeology; I am a passionate amateur Medievalist. I am a dog person, not a cat person. I like trying strange foods just to try them. I find travelling to new places exciting and renewing. I love my family and friends more than anything, but require vast tracts of time alone. I am an Epicurean and an atheist who dabbles in meditation. I used to belly dance, and will again once I find a new teacher. I love plants, rain, reading, occasional TV, and baseball (go Cardinals!). I once spoke very good Spanish and passable Irish, and could read ancient Greek, but I haven’t kept up on any of them, I’m afraid.

Second only to laughing, I enjoy thinking. If you make me think, you win. Consider it a challenge. Hm. I like challenges too. That’s one reason I became a writer: because it’s HARD.

Please make yourselves at home. Sit anywhere. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge (although knowing me it’s something strange). I’ll be in and out, puttering about.

I’m happy you’re here.

Agonistes

/ rachelhartman / 2 Comments

There are days this isn’t fun, the whole writing business. Days I say to myself, “You know what would be fun? ACCOUNTING. Numbers don’t break your heart. Nobody imbues them with an emotional significance above and beyond their face value. They are predictable and constant and simple. Awwww, numbers, my dearest friends!”

Then I begin to notice that I’m already imbuing them with emotional significance, and I haven’t even added a single digit yet. Apparently putting an emotional charge upon the world is what I DO.

There is nothing so simple I can’t make it complicated.

My mother once gave her French friend a can of Easy Cheese as a joke. “This is what passes for cheese in America,” she said, spraying it onto a cracker. Her French friend politely tried it, struggling not to gag, and then said in a tiny voice, “I believe I prefer… Difficult Cheese.”

That story really resonates with me. I, too, prefer Difficult Cheese, where “cheese” stands for just about anything you care to name. I am drawn to complexity; I consider it worth the struggle. I like the agon; I go looking for walls to kick down and challenges I can punch in the face. I’m a pugilist, by nature and by choice.

The life of the mind results in a shocking number of bruises, but they heal.

Impudent updates

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* Writing! Sometimes it’s wonderful, sometimes it’s like hitting yourself in the face with a bat!

* Hm. Interesting question. I’ve gotta go with “aluminum bat”, I think. The wooden ones split against my thick skull.

* And hey, good news everybody! No, the cover still isn’t done — or at least not the North American cover. But that’s okay, because the NINYSH cover art is ready! Seriously. Here it is:

Wow! How awesome is that?

Apparently in Ninys it’s traditional to put the author on the cover. Nice, hey? It looks just like me, and the descriptive sign card is totally spot-on. The blue fence is a nice touch; I like how it accentuates my teeth.

* Whaddaya mean Ninys isn’t in your atlas? Look, it’s not my fault your atlas is out of date.

* Hm. Maybe that can be my excuse for poor performance today. It wasn’t writer’s block — I was in the stocks.

On art

/ rachelhartman / 3 Comments

A friend recently mentioned my “Epic Fail” post on a Metafilter comment thread. I’ve been checking back periodically to see whether the arguments are still going or if they’ve died down. I am intrigued to note that the discussion seems to have veered away from feminism and toward art (well, some of it has. The part I find most interesting).

I really like talking about art. I am tempted to make myself a Metafilter account and leap right in, but I don’t have the time and besides, if I want to spread my crackpot ideas around the  internets, I have my very own space right here.

I think about art a lot because art is what I do. Honestly, the only reason I write (as opposed to sing) is because I have some native ability there. If I could dance or cook or paint or build gigantic bizarre installations at anything like the same skill level, I might be doing that instead. I’m not fussed about the medium; I just want to get out there and art it up.

I sometimes think art should be a verb: the impulse to art, the tendency to art, quick get me a bucket I’m gonna ART…

I don’t like definitions of art (the noun) because people  insist upon quibbling about the borderlines – X is art, Y is not – and I find that tedious (also, I get silly and end up talking about toilets, and who needs that?). Art has no borders that can’t be redrawn. Some artists spend their entire careers just stretching those borders. That’s what they find exciting, and more power to them. That’s not a question that moves me, particularly.

Here’s what does move me: subjective experience. That’s what I look for in art. The artist is a lens held up to the face of the world, showing everything from an unaccustomed angle, revealing what is hidden, making the old look new. Art (to me) is a burning need to share the subjective, to say, “Here’s what I’ve seen, what I’ve felt and thought and tasted, loved and wondered and fought. This is what it was to be me.”

That may sound like egotism, and I admit it’s a fine line. But egotism says, “Look at me!” whereas art, I believe, says, “Look through me, because the world is fascinating (or other adjective of choice) and I want to show it to you.”

The things we often take for art – virtuosity and technical skill – I would call craft. Good craft can make the lens less obvious (and poor craft can do quite the opposite), but it’s always there, and you can always see it if you know how to look. Sometimes you have to deduce its dimensions from the negative spaces around it. Me, I like seeing the lens. I tend to think the lens is the entire point, rather than what is shown on the other side.

My favourite authors tend to be the ones I recognize as kindred minds, as my people – Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold, George Eliot. I read their work and see a person who has suffered what I’ve suffered, loved where I’ve loved, been through the same fires and come out the other side. But they are not me. They come to different conclusions, try different solutions, broaden my conceptions of what’s possible, and give me a new angle on my own challenges. They don’t have answers; they have experiences.

And this, I think, is what art is for. It’s a signpost on the road, saying, “Humans have been here before. It’s a rough road ahead, but you do not walk it alone.”

About Amy Unbounded

/ rachelhartman / 48 Comments

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to write, illustrate, photocopy, and staple a minicomic called Amy Unbounded. It was a pretty good minicomic, as far as these things go. I took it to comic book conventions, made a lot of friends, and had tremendous fun doing it; those were great years, and I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could.

But I have something I need to tell Amy fans, something they’re not going to want to hear. They’ve been asking me for almost ten years, and I’ve been hedging because I don’t like delivering bad news. But here it is, friends, and no more soft-pedaling it:

Amy Unbounded is done. There is no more in me. I will not be making more. I’m sorry.

It’s possible that I will make more comics at some point, for I dearly love to draw, but I can’t promise that. I can guarantee that characters from Amy Unbounded will find their way into other things I do; indeed, some already have. Dame Okra Carmine, Sir Cuthberte, and Squire Foughfaugh all appear in Seraphina. Amy herself, older and wiser, might sneak into another story someday. Goredd goes on.

Continue reading →

Here’s how it’s gonna be

/ rachelhartman / 4 Comments

I always like to write myself a little mission statement at the beginning of a new blog, so that I can look back years later and say, “Whaa? I said I would do THAT?” It’s like getting a surprise present from myself!

I have a few aspirations for this blog. I often find myself pontificating in my own head whilst walking the dog, explaining to some invisible audience all the myriad odd inspirations for my work – and there are a lot of them. There’s music, of course; the book is deeply concerned with music. There’s neurology, psychology, and philosophy. There’s my Grand Tedious Theories of ART. There’s that feeling I get when I’m walking under the plum trees in March, and I look up and see the first buds, bright as stars, opening against the grey sky.

Inspirations are everywhere, and ideas are not far behind. As I always say, “Ideas are like cockroaches: there’s always more behind the fridge!”

Books are an antique map of the mind, curlicued and elegant, with Zephyrs and grotesquerie all around the margins. Here be the author’s dragons! Here the Mountains of Madness and the Swampland of Piss and Vinegar! Such a map is beautiful, if baroque, but not always an infallible guide to “What was she thinking?”

Sometimes what you want is a GPS. That’s the blog. A crisp, sure voice saying, “In 100 meters, turn right onto Music Theory Road.”

I’m looking back over what I just wrote and trying to decide whether it sounds grand or silly. I’m gonna have to go with silly. Also: nerdy. That sounds like an excellent (and accurate!) start to me.

A beginning is a very delicate time…

/ rachelhartman / 6 Comments

That’s the obligatory first blog post title of any nerdly being worth the name, is it not? Well then. I had to fly my colours right up front, so you know who you’re dealing with.

Of course, now you’re going to picture me as the disembodied head of Princess Irulan. I can think of worse things, so that’s okay.

My name is Rachel Hartman. I’m a writer and a smart-ass. I’m Canadian and American and generally full of beans. This is a test-post, obviously, so you shouldn’t take anything here too much to heart.

Welcome, all.