What Else Can I Do? (From Encanto) [Inspiration]

Disney

Like everyone else on Earth, apparently, I've been listening to the Encanto soundtrack lately. I actually saw (and loved) it in the theaters—well…the drive-in technically*—and I was kind of delighted to see everyone catch up when it landed on Disney+ streaming.

(*There are little kids in my world, so I'm still very Covid conscious.) 

It's possible, though, that I'm hyperfocusing on something a little different than most folks. While it seems the entire world watches the Madrigals "not" talk about Bruno, this is the song I'VE got on repeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBeZSuHI4Qc&ab_channel=DisneyMusicVEVO
Full lyrics at the bottom.

For me this song says so much about art and the creative process and is such an anthem for young artists (and especially writers) to embrace. I think about lines like "It's not symmetrical or perfect, But it's beautiful and it's mine" or lines like "What could I do if I just grew what I was feelin' in the moment? What could I do if I just knew it didn't need to be perfect? It just needed to be?" and I think about how so many writers (and more broadly artists) get frozen because they want their drafts to be perfect. They don't trust that they can just write something in the moment and that the most important part of a first draft is simply that it EXISTS. 

Or I think about how so many writers try so hard to be "clever" with their writing instead of just reaching into themselves and finding something genuine, authentic, and honest. "I'm so sick of pretty, I want something true, don't you?"

Of course, there's revision to come, and the practice improves the craft, but how many would-be writers would create so much more if they would just let go of their need to be perfect and wrote "deeply, madly, truly" in the moment.

While there is something to be said for continuously working to refine one's craft and to work to perfect the ability to express ideas, the genesis of art is not about practiced perfection. It's about unexpected, new, and sharp. 

Lyrics

Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz- From Encanto (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Disney, 2021

I just made something unexpected
Something sharp, something new
It's not symmetrical or perfect
But it's beautiful and it's mine
What else can I do?
Bring it in, bring it in
Good talk, bring it in, bring it in (what else can I do?)
Let's walk, bring it in, bring it in
Free hugs, bring it in, bring it in
I grow rows and rows of roses
Flor de mayo, by the mile
I make perfect, practiced poses
So much hides behind my smile
What could I do if I just grew what I was feelin' in the moment?
(Do you know where you're going? Whoa)
What could I do if I just knew it didn't need to be perfect?
It just needed to be? And they'd let me be?
A hurricane of jacarandas
Strangling figs (big), hanging vines (this is fine)
Palma de cera fills the air as I climb
And I push through
What else can I do?
Can I deliver us a river of sundew?
Careful, it's carnivorous, a little just won't do
I wanna feel the shiver of something new
I'm so sick of pretty, I want something true, don't you?
You just seem like your life's been a dream (whoa)
Since the moment you opened your eyes
(How far do these roots go down?)
All I know are the blossoms you grow (whoa)
But it's awesome to see how you rise
How far can I rise?
Through the roof, to the skies
Let's go
A hurricane of jacarandas (woo)
Strangling figs (go), hanging vines (grow)
Palma de cera fills the air as I climb
And I push through
What else, what else?
What can you do when you are deeply, madly, truly in the moment?
(Seize the moment, keep goin')
What can you do when you know who you wanna be is imperfect?
But I'll still be okay
Hey, everybody clear the way, woo
I'm comin' through with tabebuia (she's comin' through with that boo-yeah)
Making waves (making waves), changing minds (you've changed mine)
The way is clearer 'cause you're here, and well
I owe this all to you
What else can I do?
(Show 'em what you can do)
What else can I do?
(There's nothing you can't do)
What else can I do?

Inspiration: It's the Little Things (Also some little things)

Sometimes you have to just crank up Danny Elfman, and imagine that curving bullets is totally a thing.

I can't really do songs with lyrics WHILE I'm writing. The words in the song tend to interfere with whatever I'm writing. Songs in languages I can't understand are fine, and some artists are hard to understand or just sort of croon out their lines (I can't really understand Enya even when she's singing in English), but the less the words kind of flow over me, the more they are likely to side track whatever word I'm reaching for in my own linguistic efforts. (It was a tough couple of months when I was ga-ga for Hamilton, but it kept making my writing sound like hip hop.)

But lots of songs really get me ready to go, many of which I've posted here, and this one REALLY gets the blood flowing. It's GREAT for starting a session, especially when I want to feel like a bad ass who is ready to take on writing and the world.

Bad things come in twos.

Double points when you actually have a day of knocking out the little things.

I have to make a single entry to Facebook's FAQ about our new practice of transcribing posts on our FB page.

It's long overdue to sit down for a few hours and go back fixing entries I never placed into their proper menus.

It's already June. (HOLY SHITSNACKS!!) So it's time to do end of the month stuff for May and also to gear up for summer school.

If you've never been here at Writing About Writing, there's a tough six weeks every year where I get paid phenomenally to teach middle school students. It's probably going to be one of the last side gig/non-writing jobs I quit since it's so well paid and only four hours a day and three days a week. However, those six weeks are a very difficult time for me doing a schedule that is already too damned busy on the best of days, so my posting update schedule usually falls behind.

If you weren't here LAST year, then you don't know that this has a particular meaning since I got my Patreon. (And while you can always sign up to be a patron, this is not my monthly appeals post. I'm going to hold off on that because of what I'm about to tell you.) For those six weeks I replace one of my posts per week with an appeals post. That means six of them in six weeks. It's kind of like a pledge drive for this blog.

It ALSO also means that I need to get some writing done ahead of time or I spend five out of the six weeks writing posts that are like "I'm dying. Send help. Need Twinkies. Aaaaarrrrgh."

So today I give you some inspiration, and I take care of....The Little Things.

Moana Soundtrack (Inspiration)

In keeping things light while I'm on vacation in Vegas* (but almost always serving up something) let me share with everyone one of the most inspirational soundtracks I've come across in years. Something about these songs just drops me into writing mode almost immediately.'
I think the themes of Moana really resonate with my inner writer. Finding one's true self. Exploring that sense of what calls to you. The idea of a pedestrian life that is vaguely unsatisfying.

I'm not going to just do the whole soundtrack here (though I like it), but here are a couple of my favorites.

There's a line where the ink meets the page. It CALLS me.....

*Oh I am so not going to finish this Star Wars The Force Awakens article before The Last Jedi showing. I guess maybe next Friday I'll have to get it up with a big sheepish grin and hope there's some hype wave to ride.

Hamilton

I had a thing come up suddenly, so everyone has a one day stay of execution on on voting in the first quarterfinal round of the worst page turner poll. 

Today I will share with you one of the things feeding my current insatiable hunger for motivation and inspiration.
If you haven't seen or heard Hamilton, rectify this egregious oversight in your life immediately. A lot of the 101 level history focus on Alexander Hamilton is about his involvement in the American Revolution and the national banks, but the Broadway musical–in addition to being six kinds of amazing–really focuses on Hamilton's life as a writer. Unless someone is kind of studying the Federalist Papers, or really studying JUST A.H., it's a much lesser known aspect of his life. But the musical really gets into just how much writing he did.

Here are a couple of the most inspiring "writerly" songs from Hamilton, but if you haven't listened to the whole thing (especially if you're the kind of nerd like me who loves Les Mis, Phantom of the Opera, Cats and such), what the hell is wrong with you?

Inspiring Music

It's been eighty hour weeks around here since I got back from caring for OG. Rather than fall behind and do catch up jazz hands all weekend, I'm just going to write a short post today, relax a bit to get my steam back, and try to catch up so that I can round the month out with some real power hits. They're in here. I just need a little more time to get them cooked up.

SO....I'm going to just leave you with a little something I often turn on while I'm writing. I hope you find it as inspiring as I do. Part I and Part III are good too, but this one is my favorite. Though there is a part in there that makes me miss World of Warcraft from before they made all the sucky changes.

Here's another good one.

Be Inspired

I'm working on some "behind the scenes" housekeeping today, cleaning up menus and lists for things like The Reliquary (where most of my "main" articles are) and The Best of WAW (where all the most viewed articles by month and year are). Plus Wednesday is my watch baby for five hours, clean for two hours, teach for four hours (and commute for three hours), cat box cleaning, trash to the curb putting day. I usually have very little time to do much more than a cursory bit of free writing.

So I'm going to leave you with a couple of the videos I have watched multiple times and still find inspiring.

Look At Everything Upside Down

Part of having bad A.D.D. is that even when I'm not multitasking, I need to be multitasking.

When I clean the house, I like to put on a show that can create background noise without distracting me. If it's too interesting I'll get distracted, sit down, and watch it. If it's too boring, it won't help me focus on the cleaning and I'll wander off to find something shiny. Most shows I haven't seen before will distract me*, so I can't catch up on Doctor Who or check out Gilmore Girls (which I love so far). So I usually watch shows I've seen already. I recently got through House M.D. for probably the third or fourth time.

*Supernatural has been the only show I have been able to watch for the first time while cleaning. If I missed some dialogue, I just assumed Dean said "Sam, you're my brother," a few times and then one of them died.

I've been re-watching The West Wing lately since I've seen it two or three times. (Actually, technically, I've seen the first four seasons two or three times, but I always lose interest after Sorkin stops writing and the quality of dialogue tanks.) There's one scene that always reminds me of writing even though it involves no writers and has nothing to do with writing.

It's the scene with the Cartographers for Social Equality.

It is ever a reminder to me as a writer to look at everything upside down. Everything. Always.

Inspiration (Where's the Friday Mailbox????)

Those of you paying attention to my usual update schedule might be feeling a little frustrated right now. Perhaps even angry. This week has been filled with missing "big posts" and strange unresolved cliff hangers.

Hopefully not this angry.

Everything that's happened in the last week or so is going to start making a lot more sense in a day or two. I promise. We're doing much more than just a cosmetic change here, and while it probably won't matter even to most regular readers, it will probably make all the difference in the world to that cute guy Chris.

In the meantime, I'll share a couple songs that have lately gotten me juiced up for writing.

The 17 Rules Of Writing

1. Great writing involves great risk–the risk of terrible writing. Writing that involves no risk is merely forgettable–utterly.

2. When you fail–and you will totally fucking fail–don’t fail to learn. Then you can't really fail at all. That's the best way to approach writing...and life.

3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Read 2. Revise 3. Routine.

4. Remember that being unknown is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn grammar rules so you know how to break them properly. This also goes for rules of craft and process. Actually, this goes for the rules of life too.

6. Don’t let a little problem like having to rewrite an entire story from scratch destroy your motivation. (Seriously, you were pretty much going to have to do it anyway.)

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, don't panic. You can go back and fix it in the next draft. Would that life were like writing in this way.

8. Spend some time completely alone every day. Turn off Facebook. Put down your phone. Your quiet thoughts are your most powerful creative wellspring. Hear them.

9. Open your arms to criticism, but don’t let go of your confidence in the process. This may mean having to fashion your confidence into a cloak or capri pants.

10. Remember that it is only in your silence that others will tell you their stories. Listen. You'll be surprised what others will tell you about their lives when you stop telling them about their lives.

11. Write with all your heart. Every time. 

12. In disagreements with the page, deal only with the sentence in front of you. Don’t fret about the huge changes you'll have to make to the next draft and how much work is yet to come and how the task is huge and overwhelming. Just the one sentence. Just the next right thing.

13. Share your knowledge. Teaching others to write is the single best way to learn. And it's good for the soul and shit.

14. Be gentle. Be kind. (Unless you have a safe word.)

15. It's okay to keep a few irons in the fire–you don't have to work on one thing at a time–but never abandon something you're working on to do another project. It will become habit faster than you realize. You'll never get anything finished that way. Finish your shit.

16. Remember that the best relationship with writing is as an activity you love. Money, fame, fans will never fulfill you the way the writing itself will. Ever.

17. Judge your success only against yourself from yesterday. Any other yardstick will only harm your soul.


In the interest of full disclosure this is heavily influenced by the 18 Rules of Living found in The Art of Happiness by the Dali Lama. I've changed all of them (most of them substantially), but if they strike you as familiar, that might be why.


If you're enjoying this blog, and would like to see more articles like this one, the writer is a guy with a rent and insurance to pay who would love to spend more time writing. Please consider contributing to My Patreon. As little as $12 a year will get you in on backchannel conversations, patron-only polls, and my special ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

McKennitt: Dante's Prayer

When I was in high school, I was that sensitive dork who quietly memorized poetry (but never ever told my friends about it). I never quite liked the stuff that we studied (usually because studying it took a glimmer off of it for me), but I always had a few poems I'd found here or there that I worked on being able to recite.

That's why one day when I was a senior, my parents were listening to some of their god-awful parent music (as parents are wont to do). I had that dawning sensation that somehow I knew the words of a song I'd never heard before. I still remember the exact moment I realized why I knew what I was hearing.

"The knights come riding two by two/She hath no loyal knight and true."

I recognized that! It was from a Tennyson poem called "The Lady of Shalott," and it was one I had worked at for months the year before to recite without making a mistake. (I never quite managed to do it perfectly.)

Even back then I had begun to realize that wanting to write was going to make my life sequestered, and I loved how she was this artist–a brilliant weaver–doomed to live a life where she could only really experience the world by watching it from a distance....through a mirror. It's a perfect metaphor for an artistic life. But this song set the whole thing to Celtic music and a haunting melody line that gave every other stanza of the Tennyson poem an almost hypnotic reedy repetition and then shattered them brilliantly during the alternate stanzas with full range and voice. And her smooth, liquid crystal voice could make a seraphim shed a tear.

That was my introduction to Lorena McKennitt.

In high school, it's apparently only cool to like one genre of music (and that genre will define you as a person) but I liked McKennitt on the down low when my friends and parents weren't looking. And as soon as I got out of high school, I started picking up her albums whenever I could.

If you want to find "The Lady of Shalott," it's not hard, but it's a 13 minute song, and not the one I want to share today. "Danté's Dream" is actually the McKennitt song I find most inspiring. I played it every morning for nearly five years. The transitions from piano to cello always struck me as one of the most beautiful musical effects I've ever heard.

One of the reasons I like this song so much is that it means so many different things to so many different people. Play it for ten people and you will have ten wildly different stories about who they think the speaker is. Some imagine lovers who have died speaking from beyond the grave. Some imagine themselves talking to such lovers. Some imagine that the speaker is about to kill themselves. Some imagine that the speaker has decided to keep living. Some imagine singing to exes. Some imagine exes singing to them. Some remember the one that got away. Some remember the one they let go. Some imagine God calling them back to faith. And some, like me, imagine a personification of some part of their lives.

I started to play this song a lot when I returned to writing in my late twenties. For eight years prior, I tried to live the life that society told me to live. I put on a tie and managed a restaurant. I made good money and worked long hours. I wrote, but only sporadically. And I grew cold and miserable. I filled my life with ambitions of middle management and better cars and DVD's and CD's and stuff, but it didn't help the way everyone said it would, and the way the whisper of culture promised it should.

When I got back into writing, I had to start completely over with a lot of the basics including morning writing, and this song kicked off my anthem of music each day. I always imagined that it was me imploring my muse (or whatever you want to call it) to return to me, and bring back the light of creativity to my life.

To this day, this song can help me when I'm having trouble getting started.

When I wrote I was happy, and when I did what society told me would make me happy, I was miserable. I tried to get that happiness back. But (as with all things) art did not make it so easy for me to just return; I had to quest to implore that light and fire to return to my life.

And after a lot of work, it did.


When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and fire

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We'll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Please remember me

Carry On

When I was young, my father had this truly mammoth collection of cassette tapes recorded from other people's LPs. They took up a whole bookshelf stacked upwards on each other--sometimes two deep--and he would pop them into his high fidelity stereo with the snazzy cassette player (right below the eight track), crank up the volume, and fill the house with contemporary hits.

Of the time....

After I got over my Air Supply phase, my Michael Jackson phase, my Madonna phase, my Starship phase, My Phil Collins/Genesis phase, and then my everything-my-parents-love-must-(by-definition)-suck phase, I eventually had to face the cold, harsh reality that my formative years were heavily influenced by seventies rock artists.  It's not that I don't love the movements that have come sense--a shuffle all tour through my iPod is an eclectic journey that will have you listening to Mozart, Ke$ha, Gershwin, and Garbage, Die Form, or Covenant are as sure as Enya, Lorena Kennett, or orchestral versions of Final Fantasy Music if you are brave enough to hit "Shuffle All."

Beware the groove baby.

But something about those seventies artists always sounds extra..."right" in my head.  Their chord progressions. Their resolves. Their really shitty synthesizers. It's not that other music isn't good--despite what Facebook memes say, some modern music is very, very good. It's just that there's a place in my brain that will always hear those artists as the boy who wasn't too old yet to sit in his mother's lap and suck his thumb.

My thirties have been a pastiche of discovering love for bands I was only vaguely aware of.  Blue Oyster Cult, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan (Oh GOD yes, Steely Dan!), Led Zeppelin, Kiss, The Clash, and of course Kansas.

I've always loved this song even before Screw The Bechdel Test Supernatural made it popular by playing it every season finale with an extended clip of scenes from previous episodes. ("Carry on Winchester sons! Another season's almost done. Don't you die no more!") Even though it's a little morbid and/or religious in it's overall theme, it seems to perfectly capture the soul of an artist. And I've always heard this song as a writer.

You don't have to know what you're doing. You don't have to have some perfect clarity of vision. You will never "make it," whether it be to heights or vision or wisdom--you can only do better than before. You just have to keep working--keep struggling.  Keep writing (in a writer's case). You pretend to know what you're doing ("masquerading as a man with a reason") and you do the best you know how to do. 

And as it turns out when you do keep struggling, and keep struggling, you look back and start to realize your creative life adds up to something. It matters. (Or you get to go to heaven...depending on how literal and religious you want to be about the meaning.)

For what could be more artistic (and really more human) than the idea that until we are feeding worms, we are defined not by our perfection but by our struggle. No one's going to sit down one day and write the great American novel.  No one.  Writing--and really life--is nothing more than the ambition each day to be better.

Carry on.

Progress is Progress

Got a picture here of another paycheck from Google--my second.  I'm not putting it here to brag.  I can't imagine bragging over making this little anyway.  (That three hundred dollars is representative of no less than 800 hours of writing, is the product of seven months of writing but couldn't pay my bills for even one, and even combined with donations from Paypal average out to less than minimum wage...in Malaysia.

A lot of people know the story of Stephen King's 400k advance (in 70's money) but not how long he wrote short stories for any place that would pay him a few dollars.  They know about Ray Bradbury's tenacity  for not giving upwithout really having a concept of the part about how long it *actually* took him even before he sold his first story.  They know that Rowling rose from welfare with her first book about a wizarding school but don't have a sense of how long she was writing ambitiously before she penned Philosopher's Stone.

I don't know if some genuine financial viability is in my future.  Right now I'm in that twilight between hobby and "really shitty-paying job." But I think it's important that starting writers have a sense of this part of the process.

One of the reasons I really like having a blog is that people can actually see how long I've failed, failed again, and failed better before I got there.  If you want to go back and see the first entries and how rough they could be and how they were WAY too long and WAY too wordy, it's two clicks away.  If you want to know how long it took me to make my first hundred dollar paycheck (ten months) it's right there to be seen in all its fantastically underpaid glory.  I think that's important because most starting writers seem to think they're going to sit down and write a novel that will get them a 400k advance or that they're only looking at a year or two of rejection before the money really starts pouring in.  And for many writers--even household names--that couldn't be less true.  They worked in ignominy for more like a decade (or more) before something really exciting happened.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, his probably will be the last check (or one of the last checks) I post online for the world to see.  When people don't see the grueling hours, they tend to think the paycheck fairy just stopped by or that the articles that got me that money were slammed out in ten minutes between episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

But in accordance with my Mission Statement, I want starting writers to take note:

A year ago, I was making an average of $20 a month.  Today that average is more like $100 per month.  This is if you take out the fluke success of "Creepy Guy;" the average is actually about $200 a month if you don't.  I tend to feel like that's not something I am likely to repeat for quite some time on a blog about writing, but who knows.  I also didn't expect it to go viral (at least not that much), so it's very hard to predict what future spaghetti will stick to the wall.

People don't seem to understand something about the "big scores" in writing (and art): 1) the planets only align for the Hail Mary once in a while, and in the meantime don't be afraid (or too good) to simply work the ball down the field, 2) you may not have the slightest idea what is going to catch on and what won't--some of my most "fire and forget" articles have done very well and some of the ones I really wrote for mass appeal have died a quiet death--and 3) in order for something really good to happen to a writer, you have to be on a few people's radars already.  Almost no writer (ever) simply bursts onto the scene from innominate origins.  It's okay for you to start small with people who know who you are and like your work.  In fact, those people will become better networking than you could pay for when you do write something that really nails it.

Write Today. Because It's A Brand New Day

I tend to turn on reruns of old shows while I clean house.  I get distracted too easily if I'm cleaning in silence.  And if it's a show I haven't seen before, I get distracted BY the show and wind up sitting down and watching it.

So a little while ago I was oiling the hardwood floors with House M.D. on in the background and I heard this song.  It made me think of how often we put off writing not because of where we are, but actually because of the past.  Like a diet or exercise regimen, writing is easy not to do because it hasn't been going well lately.

Now I can't seem to get enough of it.  In fact the whole album it's on (Joshua Radin: Simple Times) has been on repeat for a while.

But when we consider each day a tabula rasa and wake to the possibility that this will be the day we stop stopping and start writing, it is much easier to make the slumps short and...as Gold Five says: "Stay on Target."  Yeah, I know it's sort of about other stuff, but you know how you kind of bend and twist song lyrics to fit your lives like a Rorschach inkblot test?  Well, I do that a lot.

Forget how it's been going.  Forget that you've had a bad run.  Forget that you fell off the wagon thirty times before...and that was just last month.  Today is a new day.  Write.

I Give a Fuck About an Oxford Comma and I Hope to Go the Distance

I can't say I agree with the sentiment of this song.  Well, not the surface sentiment anyway--though the underlying one is pretty spot-on.  However, the inner word nerd in me simply loves that there actually is a song about punctuation.  (A song not sung by a Muppet or with a chorus of prepubescent kids, that is.) Besides Vampire Weekend is pretty damned cool, and who can't dig the fact that (apparently) Wes Anderson is making videos these days.  I mean...that just rules.

Also, I'm off to see a mouse about a thing, so I'll share with you one of the Disney songs I often play to inspire myself.  I know it's technically about doing enough push ups to be allowed in Mount Olympus, but if you kind of pick and choose your lyrics like a salad bar, it becomes totes motivational yo.  I'm less interested  in the cheering crowds or places where I belong and a lot more interested in going the distance.

Also, fuck the Michael Bolton version.  I think if I put Bolton in a post with Vampire Weekend, my entire blog would just explode.

Don't burn down the internet kids.  See you next week!

I'd Like You All To Meet Adam Licsko

http://www.adamlicsko.com/bio/

I'd like to introduce you to Adam Licsko.  

Adam is a painter and visual artist of extraordinary talent.  This is his website where you can see how amazing his dramatic use of color, light, and scope is and how he uses deceptively simple form to bring out really rich content.  His paintings remind me of the best kind of fiction--the stuff that just keeps getting more complicated the longer you look at it.  It's sort of like the visual version of Raymond Carver.

I've known Adam since junior high when we were fast friends.  And while I will not tell you that we broke into the Calabasas Lockheed facility and dodged security cameras for fun, we had many a childhood adventure.  We would stay up all night watching Jaws at our friend Brandon's house.  We would invade the local business offices with our water gun wars because they always had the best cover and obstacles and clear out long before the police arrived to drive us off.  And I can't even tell you how many times we walked around the lake in Calabasas Park just talking.  (We were so young that the security guards didn't have the heart to kick us out of what was a private park not intended for the apartment-dwelling likes of me and Adam.)  Whether it was the beginning band of A.E. Wright middle school, the first stirrings of our artsy brains to appreciate certain things that many of our other friends just didn't "get," or just general mayhem, we were partners in many wonder-years stories of mischief.  But not that Lockheed one.  Seriously.  That never happened.

Adam has recently written a hilarious book self love, called Kama Sutra for One and a blog promoting it.  I hope he doesn't hate me for saying I find his painting much more inspirational.  It's not that I don't want to think about the guy up at the top of this entry giving me tips on masturbating, it's just that I think that...okay yeah, that's exactly what it is, actually.

Mostly though, Adam inspires me because he's an artist.   I grew up with this guy.  We played Atari together, and agreed that Tax Evaders was the worst game ever.  (Of COURSE I mean except for E.T.)  We watched Blade Runner over and over because even back then we could tell something more important was going on in that movie than in Star Wars.  And he is a working artist.  He made it.  I lost track of him for years, and then one day I walked into a gallery in Cambria (on the California coast near Hearst Castle) and half the store was just his stuff.  I tried to convince the store owner I knew him, but I think she thought I was a stalker fan or something and wouldn't pass a message on to him for me.  It took me a few more years (and Facebook) to finally track him down.  But knowing Adam when we were both young, and seeing him later, really brought home to me that working artists are not some strange species of creature.  They're just humans with a flicker of talent, and the passion and will to blow that spark into something greater even if it takes a metric asston of work.

He's had so many recent articles--of high praise--on Huffington Post, that I'm pretty sure he HAS to be sleeping with Arianna.  And yet...I still knew him during the summer where I'm pretty sure he didn't say a single thing that wasn't a Bobcat Goldthwait impersonation.  Though, maybe Arianna likes that sort of thing, I don't know.

Technically I even own one of Adam's paintings.  I could NEVER afford one myself, but I did some biography writing for him a couple of years ago and instead of mess with freelance contract BS., he just offered me a trade of one of his smaller prints of a dirigible.  (Which I will totally be staring at repeatedly when I write my steampunk zombie story.)  He just needs to get off his tortured artist butt and actually send it to me.

Nothing but love Adam.  Seriously.  Not anything (well, except perhaps for a hint of envy that is probably good because it drives me forward).  It's been an honor to know you.

And you guys should totally check him out.  Spend more than a couple of minutes looking at one of his pictures, and I promise you'll realize something you didn't see at first glance.  Sometimes art of completely different media can be the most inspirational thing you'll ever encounter.  Well, except maybe for realizing that the working artist with the gallery in Cambria and the mind blowing paintings used to be your friend who didn't like to practice drums and always stole your fries.

15 Totally Inspirational Quotes....That Aren't Real

Fiction enriches our lives.  I might not be quite the same person if I didn't read or see some of these quotations.  Here are some fantastically inspirational quotes from people who never actually existed (or who possibly existed, but probably didn't say anything like this):

Promise me you'll always remember: you're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think

Winnie The Pooh

Never give up.  Never surrender.

Galaxy Quest

Just keep swimming (writing).  Just keep swimming (writing) swimming (writing) swimming.  What do we do?  We swim (write). Swim (write).

 Finding Nemo

Do or do not.  There is no try.

The Empire Strikes Back

Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Ferris Beuller's Day Off

You are what you choose to be.

The Iron Giant

Every man dies.  Not every man really lives.

Braveheart

Each day means a new twenty-four hours.  Each day means everything's possible again.  You live in the moment.  You die in the moment.  You take it all one day at a time.

Legend

What are we holding onto, Sam?
That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo.  And it's worth fighting for. 

The Two Towers (Movie)

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

The Lorax

Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

It's a Wonderful Life

We're actors in our lives, pretending to be who we want people to think we are.

 Perfect Chemistry

Life is not about how hard you can hit.  It's about how hard you can get hit.

Rocky 5

It is not our abilities that define us.  It is our choices.

Harry Potter



And of course, last but not least, is the most important advice of all for all writers and would-be-writers alike:

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Beatles--Paperback Writer

Ever a reminder what NOT to be.

I love the Beatles, but I love their later stuff more when they were way to famous for a record label to force them to be bubble-gummy.  Plus their production values went up and they had more complex instrumentation.  Much like their critics, I really start paying attention at Elenor Rigby.

And oh my word do I ever have an unhealthy love for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  That's probably one of my all time most played albums.  (Even more than Ke$ha if you can believe it!)

But I love Paperback Writer.  It is forever, for me, a reminder of the pitfalls that surround writing, and that many of the themes of writers wanting to break into the industry were already tired and worn out cliches worth poking a bit of fun at....even forty-five years ago.

I also think the "controversy" of Lear is easily solved if you consider how many pretentious writers claim to be reproducing a style when they so obviously know nothing about it.  ("This is chick lit crossed with superhero fiction crossed with gritty western all set in steampunk....but literary") You can't get much further apart than a nonsense poet and popular commercial novels.  Not without adding complex lit analysis into your pop song.

It is ever a reminder to me to keep working, keep working hard, and keep working to improve the quality of my writing (not just to write more words).


Paperback writer

Paper back writer (paperback writer)
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

It's a dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
Their son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer - paperback writer
Paperback writer - paperback writer

Shakespeare's Sonnet 23--My Forbidden Love

Not YOU!
All you did was write it.

Unsupportive Girlfriend gets really jealous when I talk about Shakespeare's Sonnet 23.  She says, "You care more about that damned poem than you do me!"

This is, of course, absolutely and patently ridiculous.  It doesn't even make sense, honestly.  How she can come to such an unreasonable conclusion is totally beyond me.

I make sure to take extreme pains to take both of them out to lunch the same amount of times, and I'm very careful to get them both gifts at the same time. When I bought 23 a white Akoya pearl necklace, I made sure to also buy unsupportive girlfriend several pairs of kooky knee-socks. Granted I had that one picnic with 23 out in the park where I made my famous tuna salad and we walked the lake as the sun set, but Unsupportive Girlfriend doesn't like those things anyway.  At least I think she doesn't.

I mean, sure, there was that incident last year.  And that was my bad...I admit it.  No matter how many times I tried to explain that 23 and me are just really good friends, she wasn't buying it.  Then she looked at me and said, "if you can look me straight in the eye and swear to me that you don't love 23 more than me, I'll never say another word." Well....I kind of flubbed and said something about "different love" and "kinds of affection."  It was probably not the best thing I could have said under the circumstances, but that was seriously like seven months ago.

Now every time I take 23 to dinner and a movie unsupportive girlfriend turns into a dreadful harpy about the whole thing.  "You're taking 23 to I-Sushi, huh?  You only took me to IHOP."

Seriously?  You want to keep score about that?  IHOP makes great eggs and really great coffee!

Don't worry about her, my love.
She just gets upset since she and I don't have the same connection.

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
   O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
   To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.


I am a writer.  I have a dumpy writer's body, and on the best of days I'm wearing clothes that don't match and only sort of fit.  I would much rather talk about how vampires have changed as a monster over the decades and why Hawthorne gets a bad rap for being dry when he was off the HOOK with all the messed up shit going on in his writing than I would enjoy getting drunk and having dick measuring contests about whose job sucks more. I watch alpha dogs (not always just alpha males) work their mac daddy mojo on the world and everyone in it while I can't seem to quite care quite enough to do anything but be immolated with envy when they get what I want (not always just teh hotties).  People with great fashion, great cars, great pecs, and great extroversion leave me choking on their dust, and while I don't care quite enough to shuffle my priorities away from writing, reading, writing, being a geek, writing, cheese, writing, video games, and writing, I also don't not care enough to not feel a pang.

So that's why some days I love this fucking sonnet so hard.  I can't imagine my life without it.  I bought it a diamond ring, and I'm going to ask it to spend the rest of our days together.  I know I should probably check with Unsupportive Girlfriend before I do, but she'll probably just find some way to blow the whole thing out of proportion somehow.

Carpe Diem: Which Technically Means "Pluck" The Day Like A Flower, But Whatevs

Carpe THIS buddy.
No, seriously.  This is what you want to carpe. 

"...TOMORROW WILL BE DYING"

This is the reason.

It's the reason to write. But really, it's the reason to do anything your soul moves you to do.

You do not have time to NOT do it.  

My ex wife used to work in framing and people would always ask her how they should frame expensive pictures. Her answer was always the same: "I can give you some suggestions...but ultimately, it's going to go on your wall." At the end of the day, you're the only mofo who has to look at it every single damned time get out of bed in the morning or come home from work and not get sick of it.

Life is a little bit like that. Actually, life is a LOT like that.

Don't let people tell you what to what's worth reading, what movies you should like, what kind of wine you like or what food is good. It's worth being adventurous, and the advice of those you respect might be worthwhile, but it's your finite number of breaths.

Just like you don't let them tell you what genre you should like in fiction, or what food you should like, or what cars you should like, or what sports you should like, or what kind of sex makes you a good person, or what shows you should like, or where you take your meaning or what you find important. Or that you're wasting your life to invest in writing. Or that you're wasting your life to not have children. Or that you're wasting your life to not do something they deem important and worthy.

Quite frankly, you simply don't have time to live their version of a life worth living. You only get the one.

If you want to write, write. You find people who respect and support that choice and surround yourselves with them and do it. Put your white picket fence and your chance of ever keeping up with the Joneses and your healthy social life and maybe even your "normal marriage" with 2.5 kids on that sacrificial altar, and go for it. If you think a life without reading and writing is not a life worth living, than go gather different rosebuds...

....while ye may.

Each of us has a date. Maybe with a bus or maybe with emphysema or maybe with a self-replicating clump of mutated cells or maybe with a rabid raccoon or Pumkinhead or Sharktapus, and we might go quietly in our sleep or screaming for more morphine and we may not even know who the people are in our hospital room are who are saying good-bye, but one thing is true: we are rapidly--very, very rapidly--working our way through a finite number of breaths.

But none of us is getting out of here alive. We are all food for worms. There is absolutely no time to live life on anyone else's terms.

Make your life extraordinary.

Techomancy and Angels

My friend Matthew (a writer big in the local community and reading scene) loves to post the scene below on his Facebook. I was reminded of it as I flew home from Texas. Last night, coming home, I chased a sunset--took off from Houston around 8:15, and landed in Oakland at just after 10.

When I think of magic, one of the things I think of is where we will be in a couple of generations, and what we'll be able to do then that we now can't even fully imagine. Things we don't even know we haven't considered yet. And I think backwards as well to people just a few generations ago who didn't really wrap their head around the technomancy we would be casting today. Like flying west in a tube of metal through the troposphere.

Like three and a half hour sunsets.

I watched the sun the whole time. I read a bit, but my eyes kept going back to the window and the horizon. Every one of those moments of magic, with the brilliant oranges, and violets, and vermillion smudges across the sky stretched out for hours and hours. And between our descent and deceleration, the last little pinprick of visible light slid under the horizon as we slipped back down through the clouds to the California coast.


I love HBO's version of Angels in America. I love the actors they cast--every one seems to have their role written for them instead of the other way around.  I love the long, stirring soliloquies. Marie Louise Parker is not the only big name who knocks it out of the park.  I love it's paradox of reverence and absurdity. But mostly I watch it when I am feeling particularly sideswiped by someone who says that fiction has to be realistic to truly impact our lives. Maybe they were particularly condescending or particularly harsh or particularly talking directly to me, but they got to me somehow about "what is art" or "what is worthy of fiction" and I worry that they might be right.

Then I pop this in the DVD, and I remember...magic isn't something you have to be afraid of when you write. Tropes and cliches, certainly. Plot over character, maybe. But not magic and mystery and angels and all manner of unrealistic stuff that they say dilutes the impact of "real" fiction. Because this movie will hit you where you live in a dozen socially relevant places all at once rip your heart out and leave you broken, and then...when you have nothing left to give, it restores your faith.

And it will have ghosts and angels and prophets and magic the whole time and never once apologize for any of it.