The Non-Adventures of Wonderella.
It’s funny because it’s pedantic!
(Via my friend Dave on FB) (Hi, Dave!)
Nerdery
Obsession roster
Every time I start a new project, I suddenly have a laundry list of things I need to “research”. I put that in scare quotes because I suspect that it’s actually a subconscious strategy to derail myself. I can’t possibly write! I don’t know enough yet!
Here’s the current list of suspect preoccupations:
- Bantu knots/cornrows (thanks to everyone who answered my burning questions!)
- building styles and materials of Savoy/Hautes-Alpes (fortunately, I have a book with good pictures!)
- lichens (yes, you read that right)
- types of stone that might typically be found near layers of shale
- time of year gorse would be in bloom
- incunabula
- 15th century riding boots (ok, those last two I tend to look up all the time anyway)
I mean, they’re all useful things to know, right? I’m not just goofing off, here, am I?
Yeah, I kind of am. I hereby issue myself an official reminder: write first. Look up the precise species of marmot later.
Cacophony
[This post has a sister: Symphony. You may wish to read that one first, but it’s not strictly necessary.]
One of my favourite books is This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J. Levitin. Levitin is a neuroscientist at McGill University; before that, he was a session musician and sound engineer. I have always been one to ask stupid questions about music — Why does it exist? How does it have the power to move me? Why do Rush songs always sound like noise to me the first time I hear them? It’s very exciting to see this guy asking the same questions (well, maybe not the one about Rush) and then running experiments to find out the answers.
(In some alternate universe, I became a neuroscientist instead of a fiction writer. Of course, there’s also a universe where I’m a plumber, so my mileage definitely varies.)
Back when I was reading this book for the first time, this passage in particular struck me:
There is nothing intrinsically catlike about the word cat or even any of its syllables. We have learned that this collection of sounds represents the feline house pet. Similarly, we have learned that certain sequences of tones go together, and we expect them to continue to do so. We expect certain pitches, rhythms, timbres, and so-on to co-occur based on a statistical analysis our brain has performed of how often they have gone together in the past (112).
He goes on to discuss how our brains form schemata of musical genres, how the most interesting music violates our schematic expectations a little bit, and how if something violates our schema a lot, it sounds weird (at best) or like indecipherable noise (at worst).
The interesting part, to me, was the idea that these things are learned, that there is nothing inherently happy about a major scale or sad about a minor one. I have two stories from my own life that illustrate exactly this point.
(Those of you who know me well have probably heard the first story, because I love telling it. You can go get yourself a snack now and come back later.)
I was raised on classical music, if you recall. My teenage rebellion – such as it was – consisted of listening to cheesy 80s music (in secret!) and The Beatles (openly). Neither of these musics were that alien to me; 80s pop isn’t that different from Vivaldi, all bright and bubbly, and early Beatles music is straightforward enough. When I went off to college my roommate had The White Album, which excited me greatly. Here was some Beatles I’d never heard before! Sweet! I blazed through disc 1 and found it everything I could have hoped for. Disc 2 was ok, but then, out of nowhere, I hit the Wall of Cacophony.
It was “Helter Skelter”. I could not make head or tail of it. It sounded like noise to me. I sheepishly put disc 2 away, and did not attempt it again.
Fast forward to many years later, my son (Beatles-mad at the age of 4) gets The White Album for Saturnalia. I put the second disc on eagerly because I can’t wait to hear this nightmarish mess of a song again. “Helter Skelter” comes on and… and there’s nothing to it. I find it perfectly tuneful, practically an ear-worm, in fact. Years spent slowly learning the language of rock have rendered the song perfectly comprehensible to me. “Helter Skelter” is easy.
A second anecdote, and then I’ll let you go (those of you with the snacks can come back now)…
When I was in college I took a class on Indian music, taught by surbahar master Ustad Imrat Khan. Surbahar is to sitar as cello is to violin. Anyway, he was teaching us about ragas – which are kind of like modes and kind of like scales – and how certain ragas pertained to specific seasons or times of day. Well, there was this skeptical grad student in the class who raised his hand and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. How can this arbitrary cluster of notes mean ‘evening’?”
And master Khan said nothing, but picked up his surbahar and started playing this smoky blues riff. When he’d finished, he looked up at the class – most of whom had their mouths hanging open by this point – and said, “Where were you, just then? What time of day was it? That’s how.”
Interesting stuff, music and brains. I think about this more than I should, probably.
On art
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.”
Fall in love with the future!
Go check out The Intergalactic Academy, where my writer friends Phoebe and Sean have just started blogging about YA science fiction. The future’s looking better already!
Epic fail
* My friend Rich brought this article to my attention yesterday: The perils and pleasures of long-running fantasy series. It’s about what (if anything) writers of vast, volume-and-decade spanning epics owe their readers, and whether it’s inevitable that books of such unbridled magnitude will break your heart.
* As someone who’s left people hanging on the cliff, I sympathize. I can only imagine how much George R. R. Martin has changed as a person since beginning A Song of Ice and Fire, or how many new ideas he’s had that he can never implement because of all the thousands of pages already committed to print. How such a series may eventually feel like an albatross around the author’s neck.
* Speaking of which, I bought Game of Thrones last week to read on the airplane. It worked superbly for that purpose, making a long travel day seem shorter (except for the part where my son got irritated with me for reading instead of paying attention to him). But when I got home I didn’t pick it up again. I tried reading some more today, but I dunno. I’m finding it both engrossing and aggravating, and sometimes the latter outweighs the former.
* (Trigger/mature subject warning, after the fold) (Also, spoiler warning) (Also, also, sarcastic Rachel warning)
Only you, Mary Sue
I was looking at Ellen Kushner’s blog, as I sometimes do, and I followed a link to another interesting blog post (by Holly Black) about Mary Sues. Not about identifying Mary Sues in literature – which has become quite the sport lately – but about the sport of identification itself. About the fact that “Mary Sue” is coming to mean “that female character I dislike”.
Dilution of a useful term? Maybe. I’m not that convinced it was a useful term, with any meaning beyond the world of fanfiction and self-insertion fantasies. Not that I’ve never used it in a review. I believe I once called the protagonist of Twilight a Mary Sue, which was probably mean of me. But what Black points out is that some of the “Mary Sue” qualities people rail about in reviews are merely features of being the protagonist. Yes, she’s smart and resourceful and able to save the day: she’s the protagonist. It’s what they do.
Anyway, interesting discussion.
Impromptu
Over the weekend I watched movie Impromptu, about George Sand and Chopin at the beginning of their celebrated 10-year relationship. A friend had been shoving me toward it for years, but I hadn’t felt particularly compelled to try it: I’ve never read any Sand, and I’m not that enamoured of Chopin’s music (piano music often leaves me cold, and I’m not sure why). However, recent discussions my friend and I have had – about being scary, being judged, genre and the idea of branding oneself – led me to think that ok, maybe it was time to watch this movie.
It was wonderful, and exactly what I needed to watch right now.
George Sand, in addition to taking a masculine pseudonym, used to dress in men’s clothing. It was utterly fascinating to see the people around her react with everything from amusement to envy to horror. Chopin, a timid, nervous sort, is utterly terrified of her at first. She falls in love with his music and decides she must also be in love with the man who created the music. She pursues him relentlessly (on the bad advice of an envious friend), which scares and intrigues him (but mostly scares). Only when she puts on a dress and uses her aristocratic title is he able to listen to her — and just barely, at that. She gives up and leaves Paris, but that brief moment of listening has planted a seed in his mind. It’s his turn to pursue her, which he does by looking for her books. They finally meet again, having connected with each other’s art, and it’s STILL difficult. She still scares him; he still shies away from her. There’s some painful fits and starts and negotiation that has to happen before they can meet in the middle, Sand finding a way to moderate her exuberance*, Chopin taking some halting steps toward boldness.
* She’s back in trousers by the end, never fear! And that’s the beauty of it: they’re not giving themselves up, but learning empathy and how to take each other into account.
It’s rare for me to be moved by movie romance (or book romance, alas), but I found this really lovely. And I’m leaving out all the funny parts! Emma Thompson is hilarious as a young noblewoman who fills her house with artists in hopes that some culture will rub off on her, Mandy Patinkin is present in full beardy glory, and then there’s Sand’s children, leading a scion of nobility astray. It was good fun all the way through.
An introduction to Epicurus
I am utterly swamped today, friends, so it occurs to me that this would be the perfect opportunity to let someone else do the talking. I’ve been wanting to talk about Epicureanism — not in the modern sense of gourmet or hedonistic sensualist, but the original meaning, the teachings of Epicurus. He’s not a well-known philosopher anymore; of his more than 300 written works, only a handful survive. Most of what is known about him comes from the writings of others, many of them mangy stoics detractors.
But here, I’ll let someone else give you the philosophy lesson:
Here’s Part 2.
And the THRILLING CONCLUSION in Part 3.
Those of you who are at work, or don’t have time, or can’t be bothered, here’s the punchline. Epicurus believed three things were necessary for happiness: friends, self-sufficiency (or independence), and time spent THINKING about your problems. No mention of gourmet food or overindulgence, contrary to popular belief.
How does this relate to Seraphina? Well, that’s another post.
Limelight
This is the post I had envisioned myself writing first, but it turns out I’m like a whippet: I have to sniff in a circle for a while before I lie down. Once I’m down, of course, I just flop right on top of you and stick my skinny legs in your face and look at you like, What? I’m a whippet. You are my sofa. I’m pretty sure the reverse isn’t true.
So. Here’s the comfy flop: I’m a big nerd, and I like Rush. I intend to talk about music on this blog, and they’ve got a song that’s been on my mind, the lucky lads, so here they are right up front.
The embed function has been disabled on the YouTube video of the song, which is just as well since maybe you’re eating breakfast and maybe you don’t want Geddy Lee staring at you from my blog while you eat. But if you’re not familiar with “Limelight”, here she be. Unless you live in Canada, where a certain percentage of “Canadian content” is required, it’s not on the radio very often.
If you are in a bit of a rush yourself, ha ha, or if you are already rolling your eyes and thinking, “I haven’t liked Rush since I was fourteen years old and male!” — no worries. Here’s the punchline: As I set off on this journey toward publication, as I launch this new blog and poke at the internet, trying to establish some kind of “web presence”, it is a relief to hear my own ambivalence reflected in someone else’s music.
If you’re nerd enough to read on, matey, step into this matter transporter, here: Continue reading
Rachel Hartman 