Trying to Get There This Fine Saturday Morning

I fell asleep early and woke about 1 am.

I forgot to mention speaking with DM yesterday. We got onto the topic of Bollywood films. Going to prison introduced me to Bollywood. Thank you, Shane. I started rattling off a list to DM, and promised him the list. It is now a little after 4 am. I put together the list, sent it to DM, and then thought I might as well put it up here:

• Haider: Hamlet in Kashmir
  
• The Lunchbox: This movie made prison worthwhile 
• Gangs of Wasseypur: a gangster epic unlike what we have seen in the U.S. 
• Fitoor: Dickens' Great Expectations, updated and set in India - watch Tabu
• Drishyam: why cannot Hollywood turn out a thriller like this?
• Delhi Belly: this comedy could have been made in the US, but it wasn't.
• Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu: a romantic comedy set in Las Vegas which plays with the conventions. 
• Ghajini : one of the first Bollywood movies I saw; a variation on Memento.
• Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India: How cricket came to India - both a historical and sports film. I almost came to understand cricket watching this one.
• Dhobi Ghat: which I know as Mumbai Diary; an art film.
• Gangster: A Love Story: an ending unlike any other gangster movie I have ever seen.
• Ishaqzaade: Romeo and Juliet - with guns.
• Jodhaa Akbar: a historical epic; my first Bollywood movie
• Cocktail: where I became a fan of Deepika Padukone, a hoot of a movie.
  

 I hope someone out there will give these movies a chance. If so, please leave a comment below.

By the way, these were not the strangest choices at Fort Dix's prison chapel video library. I am still uncertain why Reds and Patton and Moby Dick were in the chapel video library.

Going through the email, I read these articles from The Millions' newsletter: I Await The Devil’s Friend Request: On Social Media and Mary MacLane, Storytelling Has Gotten Out of Hand: The Millions Interviews Peter Brooks, Sound and Silence: The Millions Interviews Joe Meno, and The Original Fire: On Mary Shelley and Creativity. The latter is interesting but right now feels a bit slight under its headline. Joe Meno is a Chicago writer, and I wish for enough time to pick up his new novel. I am not quite sure what to make of the first article, except to highlight the excesses of online culture and pray I am not repeating it here. However, Storytelling Has Gotten Out of Hand: The Millions Interviews Peter Brooks, I am chewing over:

enny Picker: What led you to write this book?

Peter Brooks: I believe that there’s been a mindless proliferation of the notion of story and storytelling in our culture. I think all the battles about statues, for instance, and the naming of buildings, indicates that the story of who we are is very important to us. Storytelling has gotten out of hand—you go on any corporate website, and they tell you “Our Story.” What bothers me about that is the notion that “story” explains and justifies everything. Even in as benign an organization as NPR and their StoryCorps, the notion is story is, in and of itself, self-justifying, beneficent, and something we should all pay attention to. And I think that’s hogwash.

LP: Why do you say that?

PB: I think that you have to be aware of what story is, how it works on you, how story can degenerate into myth—the myth of a stolen election or American greatness or whatever—in which people come to believe without any awareness that it is a story that had been told to them, and that it’s fiction. So I think it’s important that we distinguish between living and telling. I mean, telling is very important to us, as a way of organizing our own lives. But it’s not the same thing as reality. It’s an interpretation of reality. So that’s the main point I think I want to make.

LP: You wrote in this book that today, the “only knowledge worth having is thought to be instrumental: that which gives you direct leverage on the world.” Given that many people are so overwhelmed by reality that they retreat into digital realms, or binge-watch shows, what’s wrong wit valuing instrumental knowledge?

PB: I have nothing against instrumental knowledge—we need it. But that’s not all there is in the world. And it seems to me that the role of the humanities is precisely to step back from the instrumental to consider notions of value, and notions of epistemology. How do we know what we know? And here, I think, narrative fictions, novels, actually are very helpful instruments. I mean, there’s been so much emphasis on STEM education. And one knows perfectly well why we need that. But it should not exclude this more reflective realm. I’m arguing for a realm of reflection, disengaged from the instrumental, so that one can reflect on the precise place of things in the world.

Two things: 

I have thought what I write here, my fiction, is interpretation; what I write here is open to discussion as to the meaning of that interpretation. I wish there were more comments. I have assumed their lack to my interpretations as being beneath discussion. So it goes. (As to the fiction, I would think the criticism has to be on the quality of its representation.) I suppose I get this from reading Nietzsche.

The need for reflection is important. Thanks to my own actions and the generosity of the American taxpayer, I got that time. I did not take that time before my arrest, and I have long thought it was not disengaging from work and my life, I took three vacations in 22 years, allowed my depression to take root and that led me to the life I have now. My PO comes around every once in a while, he has questions about my sex life, sometimes he asks about my living arrangements, and leaves without understanding I like the life I am living now, that I am unwilling to change it to include any other relationships into it. I have time for reflection here - as well as to tend to my aching joints!

Back to the Brooks interview for another important point:

LP: What role can the education system play in putting storytelling in its proper place, as opposed to being as dominant a form of communication and information-sharing as it’s become?

PB: I think education from the very beginning should be a process of awareness and self-awareness that you don’t exclude any stories, you simply teach people to be more aware of them—of how they’re constructed, and how they may be working on a listener or reader, which is one of the things that I try and talk about in the book. Stories are told generally with an intention, to make a point. We have to understand that what we have in any story, whether it be a newspaper article, or or an anecdote recounted to us, is just a version. And we sometimes need to try to track back through that to what is actually being told about.

The Los Angeles Review of Books has a podcast with Peter Brooks, Peter Brooks’ “Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative”. It is 51:21 minutes. I am not so fond of podcasts. I want to hear them, will play them when I am writing because I cannot just sit and listen to anything, and so I miss much of their worth. Your call. If I do listen, I will let you know what I think, Just do not rely on me to listen, okay?

I credit our educational system for those who vote Trump, believe conspiracy theories, and otherwise lack critical thinking. Maybe believing in myths rather than thinking was a trait needed for survival, now it is a trait which imperils the species.

From Daily Kos, I read Trump melts down bigly on Truth Social as Republican vultures circle the wreckage. Yeah, some joy in that, but my biggest question of  Trump remains - why did anyone think such an unpopular person, one who did nothing to broaden his base, there had to be election fraud for him to lose in 2020? All that comes to mind is we have some very weak-minded people here who project their own belief in a cult onto the broader population. Such neediness needs help.

There is an African speculative fiction magazine, Omenana Magazine Releases 23rd Issue on Embodying the Future. This one I will come back to.

Going to take a break now - it is 5:06. The chair is hurting my back. 

Back up at 7:44.

Returned to winnowing out the email. 

The Guardian published Adrienne Barbeau's I starred in the first US TV show to address abortion. Why is my country now going backwards?, and it is a good question that the midterms did not answer exactly. 

...When Norman Lear handed us the scripts, I cheered. It wasn’t about pro-choice or pro-life. It was about a woman’s right to control her own destiny; to control her own body; to make her own choices. Roe v Wade had passed and no one could invade our privacy. No one could tell us what to do. No one could make a decision for us.

That’s the way we’ve lived our lives for 50 years. Millennials and gen Zs have never had the government putting their lives in jeopardy, never been told they can’t use birth control, never run the risk of going to jail for a decision only they should be able to make, never experienced being second-class citizens under the control of old white men.

Well, now they know what life before Roe was like. When Maude’s Dilemma was filmed, women had to consult men for their medical treatments; they didn’t have control of their own lives. We’re going back to that today. We’re going back to our own dark ages.

Meanwhile, also from The Guardian: Ultra-conservative gala welcomes supreme court justices who ended Roe v Wade:

At a moment when opinion surveys show that Americans think the court is becoming more political and give it dismal approval ratings, the justices turned out to celebrate the group that helped Donald Trump and Senate Republicans move the American judiciary, including the supreme court, firmly to the right.

The Federalist Society has no partisan affiliation and takes no position in election campaigns, but it is closely aligned with Republican priorities, including the drive to overturn Roe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Alito offered brief remarks that steered well clear of the court’s work, though Alito praised the Federalist Society for its success in the Trump years and hoped it would continue. “Boy, is your work needed today,” he said.

I think I learned something from Christopher Isherwood on What Writers Can Learn from Theater:

Now I’ve deliberately sketched over the merely historical account of my relations with the theater before going back to the question of theory, and the question of approach, which is what I really want to discuss here. The theater is a box, a place of imprisonment in which the audience is shut up with the actors. The effects are created by means of claustrophobia: you can’t get out. Of course, you can get out, and if you do you break the spell, not only for yourself but, if enough of you go out, for everybody in the place.

To me, that is one of those things I say, "Oh, yeah." Not something I would think of - it is rather obvious - but once it's seen, so is its importance. Also for me, this seems connected to the suspension of disbelief. Trap the audience and make them believe? 

Which reminds me, I need to see what I can do with Masque of the Red Death.

I read "Lot's Wives" by Marie Biondolillo from Epiphany. I like it, albeit it was with a slow start, but it seems more like a prose poem. Flash fiction might be its category, and writing of something like this is not what I am doing.

I signed up for a newsletter from Malinda Lo. Too much for me to get through this morning - it looks good enough to take my time with. She has posted some of her short stories here.

I skimmed the latest Minimag and left with the feeling I am not clever enough for that crowd.

I could go over to the Mall for the Ukulele Singalong when I finish working, but at the rate I am going, the work will still be going on when I take my last breath. 

Who knew there was Hungarian speculative fiction? Read Hungarian Speculative Fiction: Forceful, Vicious, Viscous for an introduction. It seems not much has been translated to English, but it does make the point, I think, that speculative fiction allows for stories to be told that could be otherwise censored. Foreign version may give us pause to think how their ideas apply here.

Dalkey Archive is pushing its Big Books right now. I am very tempted by Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, since I have read much about this book from an Indiana writer. Its $27.95 gives me pause.

9:51, and I stuck my head out of the door. It is snowing.

Nixes Mate has a new issue. No short stories online, only poetry and a nonfiction piece by Kayla Randolph, Moving Day. I like the Randolph piece enough to think this may be a place to send one of my stories.

The Muncie Star Press published Entrepreneur Showcase Week offers free insight in business creation, operation:

MUNCIE, Ind. − The Muncie Innovation Connector is hosting a week of classes in starting and operating a business with information provided by local people who have been successful in running businesses in the area.

Entrepreneur Showcase Week begins Monday and goes through Saturday, Nov. 19, at the Connector, 1208 W. White River Blvd. The idea for the week-long exploration of things entrepreneurs need as they go about trying to launch a business started with Connector CEO and Executive Director Ted Baker.

I wonder if Anderson does anything like this. I suspect not, which is another difference between the two cities.

From Merriam-Webster I got 19 Words for the Cranky and Disagreeable (I know some of you have used some of these words about me, and if not used then certainly thought!), and also 17 of the Finest Words for Drinking (for a little fun, so as not to be truly cranky and disagreeable!).

Procrastinating, so I read From Literature Professor to Crime Novelist (interesting points on groupthink and writerly discipline and the uses of genre fiction), The Story of a Cheat Deserves to be Remembered (a movie I never heard of), and, with preliminary cynicism, On Writing a New Take on The Thin Man, Set in Space. This did not help my cynicism, thinking it may capture the movies but not Hammett's novel:

When I decided I wanted to do “The Thin Man in space,” I needed to understand the structure of the Nick and Nora movies specifically. So I began by watching all six of the films. This was a great hardship, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Here are some of the beats that are in all of the films: A happily married couple and their small dog solve crime while engaging in banter and drinking too much. Interestingly, they also contain the element that Nick does not want to investigate and Nora really wants him to.  Nick almost always gets along well with law enforcement. He has an uneasy relationship with the wealth of Nora’s family. There’s always a scene in which he goes off sleuthing on his own and carefully looks over a crime scene. More than one murder.

Then I read this:

From there, I started building the world of the novel. THAT is the hallmark of science-fiction and fantasy. We engage in worldbuilding in which we think about how changing an element or introducing a technology has ripple effects. For this, I knew I wanted to be on a cruise ship in space. There’s a writing workshop that my podcast, Writing Excuses, runs every year on a cruise ship. I based my ship, the ISS Lindgren on the types of things that happen on those and extrapolated for the future. 

3D printers exist now and pushing them forward 50 years gives us matter printers and printed clothing. Chronic pain would be managed by a Deep Brain Pain Suppressor. Constant connectivity transforms into new etiquette about privacy.

That gave me my setting and my structure. 

Next, we have the characters. I wanted them to be as much like Nick and Nora as possible while also being their own people. So I turned to one of my other favorite tools — inversion. I really enjoy taking a piece of a story and turning it into its opposite. In the films, Nick is the detective and Nora is the spouse who wants to participate in sleuthing but isn’t allowed.

Sure, I could have gender-swapped the characters, but that still means the detective is doing the detecting. I’m more interested in stories in which a competent person is put in a situation where their competencies are irrelevant. That means that my Nora — Tesla Crane — is still an heiress. Her Nick — Shalmaneser Steward — is still a retired detective. My Asta — Gimlet — is still a dog.

Something to be learned there. As for the book, it might be interesting - if I had time for another book!

Finally, When Consciousness Itself is the Protagonist: A Reading List. More books to read. I better get to getting some palpable work done, so I may sometime read them.

WMBR is coming over the internet.

Work awaits. I have pretrial detention journal entries to type. There is a new short story in my head. Submissions need to be made. 

R.E.M. with my biggest worry of the morning:

Have a good day. 

sch