Riding the Wave

Whether you are tuned in to your surroundings or spend most of the day hovering in the stratosphere like me, the evidence all around my town and I’m sure yours of College Move-In Day has cropped up unmistakably in the past week.

Ah yes, College Move-In Day: That magical day in the year when out of state vans and station wagons piloted by frugal, watch-tapping fathers and their overemotional first mate mothers tote boxes of clothing, blankets and towels, enough imperishable food to fill a modest bomb shelter, hand me down appliances, Wal-Mart specials and other last minute impulse buys. It’s easy to separate the first-timers from the two, or three year vets here. By sophomore year, that load of crap in the trunk and backseats is significantly diminished. By junior year, even that once emotional co-pilot can’t wait to book out of there as soon as possible. Senior year we are left with not but a seasoned undergrad unloading a few totes and bags from his or her own car, grabbing a red SOLO cup and finding whatever dorm the booze is flowing most freely from.

I experienced all four, starting with a Fall convocation signaling a new journey right up to the Spring graduation signaling the end and all the move-ins in between. This year I watch the end of summer tradition from the sidelines. What a precarious position it is.

I think at the end of things, after one part of our lives is book ended we find ourselves waiting on the cusp of something new, expecting it to sound its arrival with some form of pomp and ceremony.

What happens next is something akin to surfing, I think. I’ve never been surfing per se, but I suspect that if I did, I’d find myself floating aimlessly on my board for a while. I envision myself tossed around by this unrelenting force far greater than my own, expecting it to lift me upright.

It’s unconscionably awkward: You find yourself trying to balance on a shaky and unpredictable surface. You think you can’t do this, it’s written all over your face. You make a halfhearted attempt to stand, your knees wobbling and your arms outstretched and flailing like the crooked, derelict wings of a WWI fighter plane. They showed you how to do this on land and you envisioned yourself in this role many times. The designs on the board you rented most befit you and your personality. You know where you want to be, how you wish to look, Hell you even bought the skin-tight wet suit that the real surfers wear. But still you wade timidly on your stomach, letting the water take you or worse yet, you’re still standing on the beach.

Up until now you familiarized yourself with something, a self-actualized version of yourself with a lifestyle you want, in a world you wish to inhabit. You know its logistics, who else lives there, and where you want to fit into it. But up until now you’ve only theorized, you haven’t really, well, done much. Bruce Lee once likened practicing martial arts in this sheltered, reserved manner to be like learning to swim (or...surf?) by wading through dry land. He frequently echoed the maxim that knowing was not enough without applying, and willing not enough without actually doing.

Our own will is the pretext here; the earth doesn’t tremble, stars don’t fall from the sky into our hands, and koalas don’t crap rainbows of golden inspiration in our brains. It’s a process that we must start, and a process that we must trust.

You have to sort of feel the ocean out, FIND the wave, and hitch a ride onto it. At the risk of falling, you hop seamlessly from one wave to the next actively looking for the biggest one, the one that will take you the farthest, challenge you the greatest. The link from wave to wave, this chain of events is the process also known as the rest of our lives. Some waves were only meant to carry us so far, as a means to the end of something else. What you envisioned as the perfect wave may yield to an even greater one on which you may surf higher and happier.

This sense of wave hopping, as with going into the water, and paddling towards the waves before actively rising to your feet and riding them out only happens with a self-directed mindset and the constantly renewed sense of what you want to do and who you want to be.

Alright I’m sure most of you are getting the picture here, and I’ll spare anymore philosophizing. I bring it all up not for the sake of producing the 8th Habit of Highly Effective People, but because it’s a situation a lot of people, including admittedly, myself find themselves in after College. I guess I could have simplified this whole post into that one, time-honored, battle tested Nike mantra: JUST DO IT. Let us writers write, let the musicians rock out, and the artists paint according to our voices and visions.

Well, back to the now. My first article for Connecticut Creative Magazine is up and can be viewed either at the link to the right, or at one via my Facebook. On second look it could be a bit better, but I’m a bit attached to it, as It’s the first sort of professional thing I’ve done so, go easy on it. More will come. Got some creative stuff flowing well in the works, and a job interview soon I’m terrified about, so things have been going well by my watch. Let’s hope I can ride this one out without falling.

It starts with a small wave, and an attempt to stand on your own.

Much More Than Escapism

So, I took a creative writing course this summer. It was one of two courses I needed to take in order to satisfy the six remaining credits I needed for my degree. I found the course to be helpful and very flexible and being that it was conducted online, yielded little room for egos to run rampant, something that typically plagues writer's workshops. However, I happened to be skimming the professor's syllabus one day and came upon a disclaimer:

"Make sure to avoid sensationalism: murder/mysteries, car accidents, sci-fi, alien abductions, or mistaken identities. Save this kind of writing for the producers of television programs and movies. You are learning to write literature."

I wasn't necessarily surprised, just disheartened. Academics and artsy hyper-neo-post modernist writers seem to suffer this long standing superiority complex aimed at anything they consider to be "GENRE FICTION"; i.e., Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Suspense, Romance and so on. I've heard stories from people enrolled in in BFA and MFA programs for creative writing wherein their professors, "highly accredited, published writers", actively steer their young hopefuls away from any such projects, condemning the very idea. As an avid reader and writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror who is actively searching for an MFA program to improve my writing ability i find this disconcerting to say the least.

I had a conversation with my best friend a few months back in which I was basically selling the idea that enrolling into an MFA program was the next logical step for me. "It's functional", I said, "I'll be FORCED to get all my ideas out and organized; I'll be gaining a deeper understanding of the craft, and discover my own style and voice; I'll be surrounded by open minded writers who will make me better..." I think this was the last straw for him. He'd been sitting across from me in the diner booth sipping an empty coffee for my whole spiel.

"Don't be surprised", was all he said.

He went on to liken any process of becoming, of realizing one's purpose, one's art and one's creative drivers to be like fashioning themselves out of clay. "Don't be surprised when they all try to knock your hands away, reach in, and mold you the way they want you to be", was what he said, and I tried to defend a few programs in a few cool cities but in the end I knew he was right. As a musician and song writer who had been enrolled in a few different music programs the past couple of years, he had already experienced this, the voices telling him that he needed to change, that he could never sing properly, the classical musicians condemning the indie, blues infused rock music he had been synthesizing, the self proclaimed "poets" who continuously criticized his lyrics for being, well, lyrics and not imagist poetry. I'd had a poetry professor who essentially echoed my friend's warning when he spoke of the pitfalls of work shopping a peer's material: "Try as we might not to, in the end we all naturally want to make someone else's work just like ours."

What good would it serve for me to pay untold amounts of money for a program that forbade me from writing the way I want to? From discovering my own voice? From indulging my imagination, and piecing together the characters and settings that whirl around in my head all day long like fiery meteors through the night sky? Aren't writers supposed to write about what they know and what they love?

I think academics who cling to the "canon" fail to see the merit in science fiction and dismiss it as escapist literature. But authors such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Kurt Vonnegut remind us that behind a work of enthralling, page-turning imagination there are concepts rooted firmly in reality, metaphors that connect allegorically to and endure beyond the present day. Doomed reliance upon technology, ethical use of military might and scientific exploration, political upheaval, drug use, societal growth and over population, information exchange and privacy are only a few concepts that drove the work of the previously mentioned writers. Very often science fiction, and even it's more flighty and whimsical, however still as enjoyable younger sibling, Science Fantasy, ask the question of where we are headed, and if it's a particularly good place.

One can't deny the historical and philosophical subtexts found in most prominent works of the Fantasy genre. Using science fantasy as an example, George Lucas' timeless Star Wars saga deals with philosophies and warrior cultures from the far east, through the order of the Jedi. Replace a light saber with a katana, and The Force with chi, or possibly the concept of the Tao, and you have a philosophy closely mirroring that of Zen-Buddhism.

Beyond the philosophical and historical, the level of scholarship that men like J.R.R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, and many others employ in their work is astounding to say the least. They all possess a very deep knowledge of mythology, folklore, religion, language, and literary traditions that they draw upon to create their heroes and villains, their landscapes and worlds, and their customs and ways.

Writers like Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Clive Barker show through their works of horror that the monsters they write about are in reality, us. Mary Shelly's Dr. Frankenstein shuns morality and ethics in his research, and creates a perversion of science. The Wolfman and The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Invisible Man all deal with the duality of man and our tendencies toward the violent and the perverse.

I can go on forever with these. Lucky for you all, I'll stop right there.

As far as the mechanics of a good novel, novella or short story, these authors deliver on almost every level. The quality of narrative, complexity of style, experimental forms, depth of character, detail in setting, and smoothness and whit of dialogue are all, dare I say, fantastic. Neil Gaiman blows me away with his ability to play with form, and development of silly, hypnotic, dark, amoral, or mysterious characters and the distinct voices attached to them.

It would be a service to academia if the work of these authors were included in the so called canon, or were at the very least included in a syllabus and lesson plan by some young open minded professor. As far as stuffy fine arts programs go, works of "Genre Fiction" are more than just technically sound, they are perfect examples of "literature", just more enjoyable to actually read. It is short sighted and ignorant to suggest that these authors are sub-par, escapist, pulp writers because their imaginations brought them to the alluring worlds of fantasy, science fiction and horror.

, You will find...

I'm new to the blogging experience and the simple act of setting this one up (in all its minimal glory) took several days to pine over and a few hours for me to construct. I've decided to post a range of topics here, including, though not limited to: literature, writing, film, excerpts of my own creative work, daily thoughts and reflections of the above and any other miscellaneous things that I can make fit the paradigm in some way.

I suppose my inaugural blog should cover the name I chose for it. Hidden Beneath the Leaves is one loose English language translation for Hagakure, a book of anecdotal musings on the Japanese philosophy of Bushido collected over a period of several years by a young Samurai who frequently visited a much older of his contemporaries whom was by then living out the remainder of his life as a Buddhist priest in the quietude of a hermitage, enveloped by the sights and sounds of nature: rushing streams, the wind in the trees, the occasional prayers of a wandering monk, and the movement of his own mind. During these visits the young man was treated to stories and reflections from the life of the former Samurai, each person, place, opinion and event recounted a valuable and enlightening lesson. Knowing he was privy to something quite special, the young Samurai transcribed each meeting down on paper, and the resulting collection garnered a reputation as a modern (at the time at least) treatise on the way a warrior should think and behave, bordering a bit on the fanatical.

Sparing readers delving any farther into this origin story, I'd first like to point out that I'm not a warrior monk, and in no way wish to give rise to the "new warrior caste" in America or anywhere else in the world. That said, I'd secondly like to emphasize that the title implies that amid the rank and file of ordinary everyday things lies something very profound, hidden for us in plain sight and visible if we just stop, listen and take it all in. Decipherable In any idea, or work of art there is an answer, or ultimately some part of our own truth. Perhaps it suggests that in something as simple and commonplace as Autumn's falling leaves there is an innate and everlasting beauty. Perhaps in this seemingly humdrum bit of blog space, just one leaf amidst thousands there is something profound, thought provoking, witty, humorous and engaging to be read. Perhaps I continue to use this falling leaf metaphor because I live in New England and the cascading, multicolored foliage seems to be our trademark. Even now, in Summer you can glimpse them. Of course it's mostly in the form of old, soggy, brownish-gray rotting piles gumming up the storm drain, or sitting in the corner of your driveway because back in November, in addition to your own leaf fall, the leaves from EVERYONE of your neighbor's yards just seemed to magically hitch a ride on the brisk Fall winds and find their way to YOUR house. You are never done picking them up.

....

Though really I think this metaphor serves as the window into something extraordinary; a place where our world intersects with a liminal one running parallel to our own, containing all elements fantastic, fascinating, and sometimes frightening. Most importantly though I feel it's where ideas come from. I became really attracted to this idea of liminality while learning about Irish folklore, and that attraction only grows with each work by Neil Gaiman I read. All topics I'll discuss in other posts, for this one has gone on long enough. As i become more adept at upkeep and maintenance I'll have more to post, and will eventually organize them into various headings. The page is a bit skeletal right now, and I'll have to do something to remedy that and give it a little more personality. That about wraps this one up. I look forward to posting, and to everyone's comments. Over and out.