Creativity: Making Connections, Part II

In my last blog, I talked about how to make creative connections. I want to pursue the idea of making

connections, seeing parallels and analogies and exploiting them, and I want to do so by focusing on the most basic fantastical connection that human race knows. It is ancient, found in the literature of most cultures of the world (I would even say all cultures). It is very present today. The thing to which I refer is making animals into characters—giving them human abilities and using them to illustrate vices, virtues, and numerous other attributes.

Examples are abundant—from Aesop to Huckleberry Hound—but I want to start with a poem by C. S. Lewis that maybe gets to the core of why this is so attractive to us and so much of a basic creative move. The poem is called “Impenitence.” In it, the speaker says he will not “repent” of his love of stories that involve talking animals, even though critics and intellectuals say they are not for adults and are silly and juvenile. The poem is too long to quote here in its entirety, but one section is particularly instructive. Lewis’s narrator says

                                               

                                    Look again. Look well at the beasts, the true ones.
                                    Can't you see?...cool primness of cats, or coney's
                                    Half indignant stare of amazement, mouse's
                                    Twinkling adroitness,

                                    Tipsy bear's rotundity, toad's complacence...
                                    Why! they all cry out to be used as symbols,
                                    Masks for Man, cartoons, parodies by Nature
                                    Formed to reveal us

                                    Each to each, not fiercely but in her gentlest
                                    Vein of household laughter . . .

Animals, he tells us, “cry out to be used as symbols.” We all recognize it. If we have pets, we’ve done just what the poem says. We’ve attributed human characteristics to animals. We’ve seen them as examples, archetypes of humans, and as “parodies of Nature / Formed to reveal us.”

The human race caught on to this early. Tribal cultures had their “trickster” stories of the fox or

coyote. Brer Rabbit (Brother Rabbit) is example of an African trickster figure brought to America by captives transported here from there who adapted the tales to our own culture. Native American tribes abounded in such trickster stories. Going further on, Aesop told animal fables in ancient Greece.

In the Middle Ages, there were “bestiaries,” books that taught moral lessons using the animal world (beasts). We still recite vestiges from those books:  the idea that an ostrich hides its head in the sand when afraid is from medieval bestiaries. Talking animals come to us today, whether it’s Scooby-Do (well, he doesn’t talk exactly), Buggs Bunny, or Sponge Bob.

From this, we glean that for creative, entertaining stories, human beings have always relied on analogy; that is, storytellers noticed similarities and use these similarities to create entertaining or enlightening tales. In a world where animals abounded and human beings had a great deal of contact with them, the connections were an obvious choice.

Donkeys were patient and stubborn; lions were ferocious; foxes were sly and crafty; horses were true-blue. Out of these similarities of animals to humans, stories were born. By connecting something outside the boundaries of human life with things inside human life, we could learn about ourselves. Maybe this is where imagination and creativity first came about. It’s still with us today.

We continued to use animal characters. But we can take it beyond this. I’ve noted how Neil Gaiman exploited the similarities between the homeless and supernatural beings in his novel Neverwhere. Though J. R. R. Tolkien adamantly insisted Lord of the Rings was not a political allegory, it seems plausible that the easy-going, food-loving citizens of England inspired hobbits; and the aggressive, rapacious, militaristic figures the British fought and World War I and World War II suggested the Evil Races of Middle Earth. He made the connections, at least to some extent, and used them to create one of the greatest stories of all time.

So notice the connections.

I’ll have one more blog on this subject and then go on to some other things related to creativity.

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Creativity: Making Connections, Part I

 I’ve blogged about creativity a couple of times, and literature on the subject abounds. Still, after I wade through what’s been written on it, I’m left with only a vague, hazy image of what creativity is—and a hazier idea of how you obtain, bring about, and generate it. How do you “do” creativity? How can you write a fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal story that is truly creative?  These questions lead us into the swamp of uncertainty. But a swamp isn’t all bad if you’re an alligator or a hank of Spanish moss. The first step in writing creatively is to get outside of the usual paradigms.

I talked about Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere in another blog ( link to blog). Here is a link to one more blog on this (Trains of Trust ). You can read about it in detail there. I would only say that when he was given an assignment, he did not do the thing people usually do. He did something completely different. He wrote about homelessness by creating a fantasy world. How did he think of this? I can’t get in his head, of course, but I do notice that he perceived certain analogies and similarities and exploited these in his writing. These were the stuff of his creative approach to a discussion of the topic. And it became one of the most powerful and moving statements about homelessness I’ve read even though the world is not once used in the novel.

What did Gaiman notice? He noticed the link between magical creatures and the homeless. He worked with these points. I’ll attempt to illustrate.

 

Very often, supernatural creatures are marginalized. Elves, dwarves, orcs, leprechauns, angels, werewolves, vampires, lamia—such beings are not a part of society. Try going to a job interview at a corporate office and explaining that when the full moon comes out you transform, so you can’t work on such nights; or that your blue-green skin is not a genetic condition because you’re not human, you’re a naiad. Supernatural beings such as inhabit the “London Below” of Neverwhere are emblematic of the homeless, the marginalized—of society’s outcasts.

Very often, supernatural beings are exploited. Why do people want to capture leprechauns? To get their gold! Werewolves and vampires are hunted down and destroyed because they threaten human beings. Elves, dryads, satyrs, ancient gods and goddesses are driven out as humans develop land, cut down forests, and build houses. King Kong was made a show, “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” This happens to the homeless too. Exploitation is often their lot. Gaiman made the connection.

We could go on and on about this. My point, however, I think is clear. Neil Gaiman wrote the most creative book I’ve ever read by perceiving and working with analogies and similarities. If I want to write successful paranormal literature—successful because it opens up fantastical worlds—I’ve got to exploit such connections and shape them into stories. So do you. In calls for submissions I always read things like “startle us,” “take us somewhere we’ve never been before,” and similar phrases. A writer does this by creatively shaping the material of life—by seeing connections and creating something that is new but oddly recognizable.  

I’ll give an example from my own writing. I am a guitarist and a fan of sixties music. Cream, one of the great rock groups of all time, released a song called “Strange Brew.” It had the line in it, “She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue. / In her own mad mind, she’s in love with you. / With you! What are you gonna do?  Strange Brew:  kills what’s inside of you.” I—and most people, I think—interpret this as a song about a trouble-making girl who has latched on to a guy and is going to make lots of trouble for him through her clingy behavior. What is he going to do with this disruption? How is he going to handle it?

But I got an idea. I made a connection. What if the woman in the

Vintage 1970

song was, literally, a witch? What if she had gone mad? And what if she fell in love with a guy? What would you do in a case like this? Moreover, the witch is not just any witch. She is the Sorceress of the Northern Seas, the most powerful witch in England. And she is not above using her magic to make sure the man she love sticks around. What is he going to do? As for her “mad mind”—well, it’s the 1970s in my novel, and Lybecca the sorceress has become a part of the drug scene and deranged herself to an extent on LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and all those wonderful hallucinogens people took back then. The plot thickens. What is he gonna do?

The creative move is to take the supernatural and connect it with pop culture, drug culture, rock culture, and music. The story develops from a funny, quirky one into a more serious one as Lybecca takes Andrew (the musician) back in time to seek a cure for her infirmity. They end up in the pre-civil rights south, meet blues icon Robert Johnson, and plunge into a harrying adventure that might or might not free Lybecca from her troubles.

The creative edge lies in making the connections:  take pop culture—drugs, the 1970s, the pop music scene, miniskirts, big hair on male rock singers—and connect it with magic, witches, and the supernatural. Irony, humor, and, in the end, a poignant story of love and healing come about.

So if I have a how, this is it. Notice the connections. Connect the dots that maybe aren’t visible, but

are there. Neil Gaiman did this with the supernatural and the homeless; I did it with early pop culture and the world of magic and sorcery; Kenneth Graham did it with proper Victorian society and animal behavior in The Wind in the Willows. The connections are there, waiting to be lashed together. Look for them. Read voraciously to notice how other paranormal writers, old and new (Shakespeare was great at doing this), have exploited connecting points between the mundane and the fantastical.

More on The Wind in the Willows in the next blog.

And by all means get a copy of Strange Brew

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Science as Religion: The Day the Earth Stood Still

A film that teaches we should worship Science is a classic sci-fi tale—I should perhaps call it an iconic film—titled The Day the Earth Stood Still. Released in 1951 (remake done in 2008), and still a great film to watch, it portrays American society just after World War II and gives a glimpse of the reaction to that era that cost millions of lives and ushered in the atomic era with the threat of global destruction—the Cold War. Most significantly, it advances the idea that salvation for the human race rests in the hands of Science.

Many have seen the film, so I will make my synopsis a quick one. A humanoid alien comes to Earth, landing in a flying saucer on the mall in Washington DC near the Washington monument. There is panic. Tanks and troops immediately surround the spaceship. The door opens and a creature emerges. When he produces what might be a weapon, one of our soldiers shoots and wounds him. When this happens, an eight-foot robot appears. A visor on his head opens and he emits a ray that destroys the weapons of the troops (though he does not kill anyone). The wounded alien gives him orders in their language and he desists. The army whisks the man off to a hospital.

His name is Klaatu. He is an alien from an unnamed planet who comes to earth on a mission. Not allowed to meet with world rulers, he escapes the hospital and stays in a boarding house run by a war widow, befriending her son, who leads him to a scientist. But the manhunt tracks Klaatu down and he is killed. Gort, the robot, retrieves his body and brings him back to life. The scientist arranges for a group of scientists to meet with the revived Klaatu. He warns them that other plants are afraid of Earth now that the people there have developed atomic weapons. If Earth does not achieve peace, the planet could be “eliminated.” He flies off into space.

Klaatu is very much like Jesus.

He comes from beyond the Earth, like Jesus. He is also a healer. What the solider who shot him mistook for a weapon was really a device that could cure cancer. It is damaged when Klaatu is wounded and rendered inoperable. And he is exemplary in his behavior. He is kind, thoughtful, polite, compassionate, and fair-minded; this is in contrast to most Terrans (and they are mostly men) who are violent, stupid, and crude. He is a paragon of virtue and intelligence. He has power. The Earth “stood still” refers to his demonstration of his power by shutting down all electricity and gas locomotion on the planet for half an hour. And, most of all, he dies and is resurrected.

All of this, of course, is due to Science, not the power of God or any other supernatural entity. Technology enables him to cure cancer, do the “miracle” of shutting down the Earth, and also brings him back to life. Science has done even more than this, we find out.

Gort, the robot, is example of how technology has brought salvation to his planet. There, Klaatu says, his people created “a race of robots” who function independently of humanoid control and keep order and peace. They are peaceful, but if they sense wrong (in the form of war or aggression), they destroy the perpetrators of such ventures. Thus peace has been achieved, on Klaatu’s planet at least, through the instrumentality of Science.

The scene at the end is fascinating. The scientist Klaatu met gathers a number of other scientists together. They stand in front of his ship. They are of many races and some of them are dressed in native costume, suggesting a universality of the human race. Light from the ship bathes them—rather like the light of God that shone on Moses. He delivers a sermon to the assembled scientists that tells of his own people’s salvation through creating a race of robots to police them. He warns them of the dire consequences of Earth’s current course (Judgment Day might come if we don’t change our ways) and then, like Jesus, he ascends—he flies off into the sky. Someday, he will return.

So Science will save the human race. It was, of course, the thing that put the human race in danger in the first place. Still, if properly used, as Klaatu’s people used it, it can save the human race from destruction. One might say the film was a call to the moralistic use of science and technology. Still, Science as surrogate religion is the main theme of this film.

Cardassians--not a good race of beings

For writers of sci-fi, I would suggest this is too pat an answer. Science is subject to human morality. If humans are immoral, science and technology will be used for immoral purposes. Rather than lauding the scientific method as the fountainhead of all truth and thinking—as I have heard many people say--that someday science will explain everything (as if that would cure our problems), speculative writers need to focus on the morality and ethics of the human race. What would make science a benign and not a malevolent thing? The moral disposition of those who are working with it could bring technology to good uses. This leads me to believe that ethics and morality, and how and why people are good, should be a prominent theme in speculative fiction.