Speechless Tuesday

For The Love of Artifacts

There's a simple reason I eschew e-readers: there's no artifact. There's no weight of the book in your hand, no turning of pages to dog ear. What I would miss more than anything, though, is cover art. Collector of paperback editions that I am, cover art is where it's at. In honor of great cover illustrations, I chose a few from off my shelf to pine a bit. The image above from Stephen King's short story collection, Night Shift, is a real showstopper. I may not want to give it a high five but one look at that cover and I'm compelled to read the book.

I'm not even a Thomas Pynchon fan, but when I saw this paperback the other day, next thing I knew I was buying it. For three bucks you could do a lot worse than this little gem. V is Pynchon's first novel and the only one I've not read, so who knows, the Dali-esque cover might make me into a fan after all. The text at the top creates a nice balance and anchors what might otherwise be a weird concept.

Ah, Philip K Dick, my old friend. Here we have not only an arresting image of genuflecting freak man (he's the title character) but a title that demands your attention. When it comes to titles, Dick had a special gift. I like that The Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is implied here (the stigmata is) by the halo and contrasted nicely with what appear to be Pterodactyl wings depending from his shoulders. This dude is not invited to my next party.

I saved the best for last. If not for the cover art on this paperback copy, I might have gone my life without reaping the enjoyment of Shirley Jackson's prose. She is a terrific writer and We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of her best. This is also one of my favorite book covers. The black windblown tresses draw you right into that staring eye and give it incredible power.

Organized Belief (or, How I Took the Red Pill and Learned to Love It)

"Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?"

This is the question posed by a character in The Matrix. He gripes that instead of taking the easy way out in life, he swallowed the red pill. No, he wasn't alluding to democrats and republicans: the red pill opens your brain to the "real world" while the blue one lets you remain plugged into the matrix.

I can relate.

There are times I wish I hadn't taken the red pill. Outside of the movies, the red pill becomes a metaphor for engaging belief in transcendent truth, orthodoxy, ethical living. I took mine growing up in the church. This laid groundwork for a life of believing. The structure of organized belief that is a church enabled me to live as a person of faith.

Like the fellow in The Matrix, I sometimes question why I didn't choose an easier way.

Another fellow by the name of Leonard Cohen, not a film character but a mystic poet very much part of the real world, has some intriguing things to say about belief:

I'm aware that I'm embraced by the absolute... I feel that the technology for experiencing the absolute has been lost, but all the great religions have this experience, this information, this data, this technology....

I've always wondered why religions emphasize this idea of "belief." Why should you believe in these matters? But experiencing these matters is available to all of us -experiencing the absolute is available. To be tyrannical or to be in some way oppressive about belief... I think it's not fair to ask people to believe things they don't experience.

In other words, he's saying that people can pop blue pills if that's what makes sense to them. You can't force the red pill down people's throats.

Continuing with the intersection of spirituality and sci-fi, here's a snip from an interview with an author whose work was concerned with mystic experience as much as the technology that avails us of it. Philip K Dick had a lot of bizarre ideas, but his heart was in the right place.

When questioned about his own religious beliefs, Dick said he could best be classified as a "religious anarchist."

"I'm totally against organized religion," he states. "I believe you have a direct relation with the divine or you have no relation with the divine. It has nothing to do with faith or dogmatic creeds. The initiative comes from the divine side. There is nothing you can do. All you can do is live an honest life, be brutally honest with yourself, and hope to become an object of interest with the divine beings."

That last bit about "divine beings" is out there, but I appreciate the thrust of what he says, that it's down to us to take responsibility for what we believe. To surrender such a vital aspect of being to outside agency is imposing a filter. Being part of organized belief is fine, but on terms that engage us directly; anything less is to compromise the reason we are alive.

That's the take of a red pill popper, anyhow.

I leave you with lyrics from the Leonard Cohen song, "The Window", as fine a meditation on belief as I've found:

Why do you stand by the window
Abandoned to beauty and pride
The thorn of the night in your bosom
The spear of the age in your side
Lost in the rages of fragrance
Lost in the rags of remorse
Lost in the waves of a sickness
That loosens the high silver nerves
Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love
Oh tangle of matter and ghost
Oh darling of angels, demons and saints
And the whole broken-hearted host
Gentle this soul
And come forth from the cloud of anoint
And kiss the cheek of the moon
The New Jerusalem glowing
Why tarry all night in the ruin
And leave no word of discomfort
And leave no observer to mourn
But climb on your tears and be silent
Like a rose on its ladder of thorns
Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love...
Then lay your rose on the fire
The fire give up to the sun
The sun give over to splendour
In the arms of the high holy one
For the holy one dreams of a letter
Dreams of a letter's death
Oh bless the continuous stutter
Of word being made into flesh

Inspiration

Deep into sixth draft something unusual happened: the manuscript inhaled. Not in the Clintonian sense of doing something it shouldn't have, but filled its lungs and gave voice to how I should proceed. Some crucial details were missing in a scene I was working on and the manuscript told me what I should do to rectify the lack. At first hesitant to follow such advice, I overcame my reluctance and tried it out and you know what? it brought the scene together in a fresh way. Sounds weird, I know.

The earliest drafts were tough because they were a collection of disparate scenes without plot threads to connect them. Subsequent versions have brought new hurdles, the latest of which is making the text lift off the page and come to life. Plotting is done and scenes I've got by the truckload, but breathing life into the words and transforming the story into an enjoyable experience has been difficult.

Then this happens.

I had come home from work and as is typical lately, I was looking at some pages before cooking dinner. The pages did not look good. Something was missing. The section I was editing had basic features in place but... I couldn't put my finger on what the problem was. Then it happened: the page seemed to speak and describe what was needed to complete the scene. At once I sat down and started writing some rough descriptions and dialogue. Next thing I knew an hour had passed and I had a passel of notes that brought a significant new dimension to the book.

Soon after I found myself thinking of Philip K Dick.

A science fiction writer who has no equal in the 20th century, PK Dick has long been an inspiration to me. For many years I devoted myself to learning as much about the author as I could, collecting his entire catalog of 43 novels in paperback editions and bundling them away in a suitcase that I kept by my desk. He is fascinating both as artist and man. The suitcase has since then been donated to a Seattle bookseller, but his influence continues.

Phil, as he was known to friends, would routinely churn out novels quickly and efficiently. After typing out a manuscript over a benzedrine-fueled weekend, he would collapse with pneumonia. Some of these books are quite good, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Blade Runner) and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; others are not quite up to snuff.

The Simulacra suffers from the author making it up as he goes. Though Dick was known to do this, part of what makes his writing crackle is the headlong energy investing it with a sense that what is around the corner is a mystery to both author and reader. There is a weird sense of shared discovery that is totally unique to reading PK Dick. This sometimes gets out of control and ruins an otherwise good story. In The Simulacra there are so many twists and reversals they obviously exist for no reason than to keep things moving, and move they do -in all directions. Too much inspiration!

This came to mind the other day after I'd experienced a bout of inspiration. It is easy to be convinced that a burst of insight is sufficient cause for committing words to the page, but this conviction has risks. Though I wish an editor had seen fit to rein in PK Dick, what failed in some of his books is uncontestably great in others.

This reminds me of the musician PJ Harvey, who says that every successful song she's written has 9 bad ones preceding it. Mistakes are an unavoidable part of the process. When creating, the expedient feels no different from true substance, from the stuff that actually makes words come to life. Discovering which is which is out of creators' hands and must be determined by the audience, a hard truth to come by.