old 97s
1/23/2005 @ 2:40 am Comments (11)one of the most abused concepts in the study of drama and fiction is motivation. what is the character’s motivation? why would he choose this path instead of that one. why would he risk everything, why would he step in front of the bullet. why would he answer the phone, why would he go out the back door. why would he use the stall rather than the urinal. why would he order fried chicken in a Vietnamese restaurant. The answer, more often than not, is why not. Because it was there, because he felt like it, and because he had so many choices before him he was half paralyzed by the pretty colors and blur of faces, and it’s a wonder he even got out of bed. motivation is bullshit, pure and simple. Phineas may have had a rant on this topic in Hell’s Half Acre, or maybe it was John Ransom Miller. I can’t remember at the moment but it’s a rant I’ve uncorked a time or two, back when they still let me loose in college classrooms. I bring it up now because it’s on my mind, because it figures into this short story I’m working on, because as much as I feel the collective guilt of living in the relative luxury of a two-bedroom in California with hardwood floors and central air, modern appliances, cable TV, and wireless internet while the tsunami victims have filthy drinking water and flies buzzing around their faces and they’re eating crackers and powdered milk supplied by the Red Cross, I want to change the subject. as some of you may know, I’ve been taking a break the last few months from the lifeblood sucking work that is writing a novel to concentrate on short stories, a few of which have been shared here. Two of them were set up as permanent to the site, over in the miscellenea dept, while others have popped up unannounced in the Velvet and been left on the shelf for seven days or so, like a carton of milk. The last of these was a fragment called the Butterfly Plague. I had thought that I was finished with being the milkman for a while, but then a few weeks ago someone in the velvet, whose operator name is Roy Hatred, asked if I was a fan of the Old 97s and did I name John Ransom Miller as a tribute to the charming serial killer in their song, great barrier reef. I confessed that I had, and for a while a discussion brewed about the 97s and their alt pop country songs of love and hate and hearts broken. And while everyone has their favorites, one that was mentioned by several of the velvet nation was Valentine, from Fight Songs, an interesting coincidence because I have a short story inspired by that song, called Valentine the Destroyer. At one point, I had a notion to write a story for each of the songs on that album, but I never got past valentine and Age of Reason. anyway I was planning to save this one for a sneak peek on february 14, but I got bored tonight and like I said, I wanted to change the subject. that’s my motivation.
seven days.
-wcb
after the flood
1/1/2005 @ 2:16 am Comments (23)I’m not one for resolutions and I don’t much care for fireworks, merlin hats, cheap champagne or any of the paraphernelia associated with new’s years eve. I never understood the ceremonial dropping of the big silver ball in times square. what does that ball signify, and where the hell do they keep it the rest of the year? and then there’s the undue pressure to kiss someone on the stroke of twelve or be damned the rest of the year, which always seemed a grievous insult to the loners, the unattached, and the broken hearts among us. of all the manufactured holidays, new year’s eve is right up there with valentine’s day in the bullshit department. so it should come as no great shock that I’ve spent most of the new year’s eves of my adult life tucked into my cave with my loved ones, a rented movie, and some top-shelf whiskey. sometimes I fall asleep before midnight but generally I stay awake into the wee hours wondering if this will be the year that the human race gets its ticket punched and the apocalypse comes. and when I was young and stupid, I might not have minded.. if I had to have one movie running on an endless loop in my head it would be a toss-up between mad max and bladerunner, if that explains anything, and most of my teenage daydreams featured a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by mutants and feral dogs and women in aeon flux gear.. anyway, now that I have two beautiful children, two angels fell to earth, I pray the end times are postponed for a century or so. But you never know when god is going to burn down your house, kill all your livestock, and scatter your family like ashes for no punishable sin other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the cataclysm that occurred in east Asia last week, incomprehensible as any of the events in the book of Genesis, reminds us of our station in the universe. I am a speck, and the other humans on this rock are a fistful of specks, and we can be wiped out by a planetary shrug, an astrophysical shiver. so the Hallmark poetry is true. life is short and beauty fragile. Death is on the wing and every breath we take is a miracle so kiss your children and take stock of your blessings, for we live in interesting times.
-wcb
“Heaven and hell are but a hand’s breadth apart.” -Milton