Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #38: "Punishment"

Seamus Heaney

Continuing on with Sossity Chandler, another story came to mind, this one inspired by a poem by Seamus Heaney. If you don't know his poetry, the late Mr. Heaney was an Irish poet who won about every award you could think of, had a long and illustrious career as a poet, and also worked as a translator. He did a translation of the ancient poem Beowulf. That particular translation was the first book of poetry to make the New York Times Bestseller List in fifty years (the last one was one of Robert Frost's books). The name of the story was "Punishment."

Sossity appears at different stages of her career. In some of the stories, she is struggling, playing one-night stands, and barely making enough money to survive. She doggedly goes on, determined to continue her career as a musician even if it is not rewarding Success eventually comes to her. At the beginning of "Punishment," she has just made it big, her songs have gone to number one, and the status she dreamed of has come about at last.

Sossity still respects the gigs she scheduled before success came. She plays as featured artist at a poetry slam at a place called Quimby's Irish Bar. I did poetry slams for years. They were raucous readings of performance poetry done often in bars and coffee houses. Poets would read and judges picked from the audience rated the poems. In the story, "Punishment," Sossity not only does music but reads some of her favorite poetry. She also meets Aidan Sinico, a regular patron who, her husband mentions, is a former IRA member who had to leave Ireland for going rogue. One night, in fact, she helps his wife get him home when he drinks too much. She notes that his house is across from a house in which she grew up. One of her booking agents who was Irish said Sinico committed terrorist acts. When Sossity asks about them, he says, "You don't want to know."

Years later, on a tour of Ireland, she meets another person who knows Sinico. Her name is Gisel, and she was the victim of one of his gang's terrorist acts. She was, literally, tarred and feathered by them. “They tarred and feathered me,” Gisel continued. “Some people found me an hour later. I was almost dead. They got me free and got me to a hospital. Recovering from the physical damage was easy compared to what it took to put myself back together psychologically. I tried to kill myself twice. The second time I almost succeeded. If it hadn’t been for Lenny, my husband, and the people from this organization who supported and counseled me, I would have either committed suicide or gone mad.”

Sossity tries to console Gisel, but her efforts don't work. She tells Sossity the IRA wanted to kill Sinico because his acts made them look bad, but they could not locate him. They would only go after him, she said, if they could do it "pat"—easy and with no chance of being caught. Later on, Sossity hears that Sinico has been killed—shot to death and then covered with tar and feathers. She also finds out that she had a part in it because she told her booking agent that she used to live across the street from Sinico and there was only one number difference in their addresses. Her web page included a picture of her as a little girl, on her bicycle, in front of her house. The house number is visible in the photograph. Her booking agent probably mentioned it to Gisel, Gisel looked at the webpage and reported what she found to the IRA.

The story ends with Sossity reflecting on the impulses that lead to terrorism and murder. She remembers the poem "Punishment" by Seamus Heaney, about a girl killed in ancient Germany and an incident in Ireland similar to it a millennia later:

My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur …

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

The layers of tribalism, hatred, sectarianism seem to be so embedded in our society, so entrenched they can never be challenged or altered. Sossity wonders how music or anything else can make a difference. As Heaney points out, we condemn but we also understand. The impulse to belong to and exclude run deep in the human soul. All of us are vulnerable to satisfaction of "tribal, intimate revenge."

The story appeared in Sex and Murder magazine, no longer published, but you can read it in their archives, here, "Punishment."

Coming soon, a new novella, a wuxia story (Chinese martial arts tale) titled The Sorceress Time. Stay tuned for details.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As A Writer, #37: Relationships and Hero-Worship

After a spate with werewolves and vampires, I began to once again focus on my ongoing character of Sossity Chandler. I had written two stories about her in the last eighteen written and published, so my inclination bent back her way. Ian Fleming had James Bond and W. Somerset Maugham Ashtendon; Laura Ingles Wilder had her Laura, a character based on her own self. There is something attractive about exploring a character through several stories or books. And there is something attractive about the character that makes us want to write about them more than once. With Sossity it was her career as a musician and the things she encounters in her travels and concertizing. Soon the story "Come Together" began to form. Based on a song by John Lennon, it had the refrain "Come together right now over me." This title and that line opened up something that had been a philosophical concern of mine for some time.

That concern was what we might be call hero-worship, though that is not exactly the right phrase to express what I have often wondered about. It is not merely heroes—sports heroes or war heroes—that I see people following, emulating, praising, and venerating. It is also philosophers, writers, critics, religious leaders. And people do not always simply "worship" these people because, as with my original two examples, the person they cherish hit a lot of home runs, three-point shots, or  displayed valor on the battlefield. In the case of religious leaders, they sometime have so many followers who consider them venerable that they become cult leaders like Jim Jones. But there are lot of way one might become infatuated. "Come Together" explores those directions.

Pamela Revard is an old friend of Sossity's. They knew each other in high school and ran track together. Sossity remembers, with amusement, that Pamela always sang the lyrics of songs incorrectly. But she also knew Pamela as a cynic. She always made sarcastic remarks and maintained a rather nihilistic view on life. To quote from the story, to this woman " …everything was absurd, good did not exist, hypocrites governed in every sphere, and everything claiming moral or ethical value amounted to a false hope that only naive, gullible people believed. In Pamela’s view, all ethics were a sham. She maintained, like Nietzsche, that claims of truth were in fact plays to gain power. The world was a jungle, she often remarked, and she was merely one dog intent on eating the others dogs before they effectively devoured her."  Her view is so unrelentingly negative and cynical that Sossity avoids her.

She sees Pamela again and is surprised that she has jettisoned a lot of her cynicism. This is because she has become a follower of the philosopher Wendell Berry.

Wendell Berry is not so much a philosopher as a social critic (and also a poet and novelist) who emphases localism, the idea of that people should not be so nomadic but rather rooted to a given place, that our society should not be such a "throw-away" society, that people should be close to nature, the land, and a locale. These are good ideas, but I've noticed that the followers of Berry (I know a few) do not follow him. They practically worship him. They adore him and his ideas. They never critique his ideas, which, brilliant as they are, have some major flaws, and they generally don't like anyone pointing out his flaws. They venerate him. Their veneration often borders on worship.

Sossity notices that Pamela's cynicism seems to have disappeared, but she also notices that she has become a rather fanatical follower of Berry. When Sossity critiques some of the statements he has made, she gets angry. Sossity has also found out she is having an affair that threatens to break up a family and confronts her about this and about her cynicism. They depart angrily. Soon after, Pamela overdoses and ends up in the hospital. She realizes the truth of what Sossity told her and the two of them are reconciled. Sossity says she will help Pamela to get her life back on track and they reaffirm their friendship.

Sir Jaques, Cynic from As You Like It

I've found that cynics--those of who see life as absurd, or nihilists, who think there are no real values--will venerate someone—one figure they think is a true, genuine soul in a world of hypocrisy. Thus they all but worship this person and will tolerate no criticism of the figure they venerate. Such quasi-religion, however, is a dead-end street, as Pamela finds out. People are flawed. At best, one ends up disappointed at a philosophy; at worst, as in the case with someone like Jim Jones, people end up dead. A healthy skepticism (not the same as cynicism) is necessary to navigate a world where charlatans and hucksters—or well-meaning people who are just wrong—abound.

The story appeared in a now-defunct journal called The Smoking Poet. It does not have an archive, so you can't read the story. This is another one I may have to look for a journal that takes reprints.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

For a fascinating story and a great read, get a copy of Mother Hulda, a science fiction tale based on a story by the Brothers Grimm. Lakshmi Parvati is fleeing her powerful, domineering mother, who has wrecked her life and favors her younger sister. When she arrives on Planet Hulda, things begin to drastically change. 

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #36: First Vampire Tale, "Prima Noctis"

Actor Jack Palance as Dracula

 Vampires are always a fascination. They become popular and then people get tired of the films and books. In the 1930s you had the Dracula films. They faded after a while. Then, years later, Twilight came along. Despite its immense popularity, especially with the young, a lot of writers hooted and jeered both at the films and at the books. (I only saw one of the films and read one of the books and thought they were, really, not that bad.) But vampires bounce back. Not surprising, since they are the undead! You can't kill vampires, and the genre seems undying as well!

One of Buffy's many vampire enemies

At that time in my writing career I had not done a vampire story. I decided to give it a shot, maybe because Buffy was still on TV and Twilight was all the rage and because of the fascination vampires pose. For example, what would it be like to live forever if the prices of doing so was to kill people so you could renew your eternal life? A vampire character in one of my later stories laments to her mortal boyfriend, "How can God let something like this [becoming a vampire] happen to us and then hold us responsible for it?" Maybe this is a question we ask whether we believe in divinity or not. How can we be morally responsible when we weren't asked to be born, don't understand why we do unethical things, and feel we're doing wrong but can't help it? These questions are perpetual. Maybe that's why the vampire myth is so popular. They cope with these questions as a point of their very existence.

And there is the question of ethics. Are vampires completely evil? The old ones, like Dracula, were. They were evil creatures driven by a desire for blood and had no good traits whatsoever. The novel Dracula and my favorite vampire movies, Taste the Blood of Dracula and the made-for-TV movie of Dracula with Jack Palance playing the lead role, presented this sort of vampire:  evil, driven, with no redeeming virtues whatsoever. But soon Ann Rice's Interview With a Vampire came along and we saw conflicted, anguished, morally ambiguous but not evil vampires. The same was true for some of the characters in Buffy. These things play into my first vampire story, "Prima Noctis."

Heston in The War Lord

Prima Noctis means "first night" and refers to the idea that a nobleman in medieval times had the right to take a peasant girl's virginity to "begin her life." This custom is essential to the plot of an old movie called The War Lord with Charlton Heston; if you saw Braveheart, it is a part of that film as well. Now, I must play myth-buster here. Prima noctis is completely fictitious. Never happened, not in the Middle Ages or anytime. It is something modern people made up. Ancient kings used to accuse other kings of it, usually to get their people up in arms and on their side when an invasion threatened them:  "If these people conquer us, they will take your virgin daughters on their wedding night!" they would say. But it was an untruth. Still, it makes for good stories.

  

In my story, an English noble named Berwyk rules an area of Scotland and has instituted prima noctis. The Scots respond by not getting married. After three years with no weddings, however, the people tell them there will be a marriage and he will take his privilege. They have a great feast. The young people are married, but Berwyk notices a lot of the Scots are wearing necklaces of garlic (a local custom he had not noticed, he thinks). And the married couple look a bit a pale, as if they had not been out in the sun. The wedding takes place at moonrise. His servant-woman/mistress warns him about the Scots:  “They have one foot in the world and one in the kingdom of darkness. They dance with the dead and kiss the very Devil’s ass.” Berwyk laughs at her

When he takes the woman up to his chamber, he quickly finds out she is a vampire. She bears her fangs and, he sees, her vampire bridegroom has gotten into the house and killed and feasted on the blood of Amaryllis, the serving woman who tried to warn him. The Scots have set him up.

Berwyk knows about vampires and flees to his room, where he has, on the wall, a crucifix and a picture of the Virgin. Vampires will flee from the cross and from other holy objects. To his horror, those items are gone from his bed chamber where he hoped to enjoy the body of the woman married that day. The Scots have sneaked into his room and removed them, leaving him at the mercy of the vampire couple. He fights them, but his weapons are useless. The bride he had hoped to "swyve" ends up not with hymeneal blood on her body but with his as she kills him and drains his vital life. Prima noctis turns out to be something the English knight never dreamed it would be.

Ethics come into play in this story. Vampires are evil, but in this case they are doing good by serving as the instruments of justice. Are right and wrong so easy to define? Vampire tales, at least the newer ones, suggest they are not. In the yin and yang of the universe, there is a bit of evil in good and a bit of good in evil.

The story appeared in a journal called Infinite Windows, closed down now, with no archive.

If you want to read one of my vampire stories, I would suggest The Angel from the Dead from the (also shut down) journal Roar and Thunder. This journal maintains an archive and you can read the story there. I'll have a new vampire novel, Sinfonia:  First Notes on the Lute, coming out next year.

For a Christmas stocking stuffer I would suggest ShadowCity. A dark world, an unwilling savior, an old lover who follows her in and gets caught up in unbelievable danger, and a maenad who is a slave fight the darkness, which has grown to dangerous levels. In a dark world, the light within is all you have. 

 For additional titles, see 

my Writer's Page. 

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #35: Music and Fiction, "Walking Man"

I had taken a break from writing about music and musicians, but we return, always, to what is our natural bent, and pretty soon my on-going character, female musician Sossity Chandler, turns up again. He career is outlined in many stories I've written on her (some 35 published), from her early, struggling days to her ascent to fame and super-stardom. A story titled "Walking Man," catches Sossity just after her place as a pop star is established. She no longer has to worry about money or be anxious about making it as a musician. But she does have other concerns, and, in this case, the concerns and her career as a musician are intertwined.

 The title of the story is taken from a song by James Taylor, "Walking Man," the feature song on an album by the same name. I used to be in a cover duo that did a lot of songs from that album (and a lot of Taylor songs in general), "Walking Man" being one of them. It's a fascinating song, one with a little more substance to it than many popular tunes. It's about a man who is "moving in silent desperation / Keeping an eye on the holy land." The character Taylor sketches is someone who lives by a utopian idealism and never connects with the daily things of life that root us in community, in the lives of others, in our own identity. Always seeing that "someone's missing and something's never quite right," he walks through life missing what is essential because of his idealism.

I could particularly identify with this because I attended a college that had a seminary attached to it. So many of the seminarians were what Shakespeare would have called "precise." They thought everything had to be perfect, according to their belief system. If a person or an organization held a different interpretation of the Bible or Christian theology, the seminarians would reject them. Like the figure in Taylor's song, they breezed through life "keeping an eye on the holy land" and missing the quotidian joys that make for human happiness:

                                    Well, the frost in on the pumpkin

                                    and the hay is in the barn

                                    and Pappy's gone to rambling on,

                                    stumbling around drunk down on the farm—

                                    and the Walking Man walks.

                                    He doesn't know nothing at all.

                                    Any other man stops and talks,

                                    but the walking man walks.

Sossity meets a friend whose tendency toward utopianism has ruined his life, wrecking his marriage and impoverishing him. Rich McLauflin is an Episcopal priest. Sossity had come to him for counseling during a particularly rough part of her life (Sossity is an Episcopalian). His radicalism has destroyed his life. 

He lambasted Christians for their materialism, their lack of concern about the poor and oppressed in the world, and said that if Jesus came to earth today he would rebuke not sinners but the rank and file of Christians, the modern Pharisees who risked exile through their neglect of justice for the oppressed.  Completely immersed in all of this, he had neglected his wife, who drifted away from him; and he alienated the wealthier, more influential members of his church, who did not appreciate being equated with Pharisees and King Ahab.  He was asked to leave. A week after that, Emily left him for another man.

He gets a part-time teaching job, is arrested for civil disobedience, engages in affairs with women in his new radical circle, but eventually drifts back to his old town and gets a job in a bookstore. He barely scrapes by on what he makes there and is not able to find a position as a clergyman because of his past behavior. Sossity invites him to hear her sing at a fundraiser held at his old church.

His former wife is there. They speak awkwardly. Sossity greets him. Though she says nothing about his past behavior, she sings the song "Walking Man." He knows it is a message to him. Reflecting on what he has done, he doubts he could ever mend his life. But church is a site of grace. He and his wife talk. He finds out she and the man she took up with have split. She notices the marks of his poverty. They work together handing out refreshments at the reception afterwards. At the end, they leave together. There is perhaps a small chance for reconciliation.

When writing on religion, or at least bringing religion into a story as a thematic point, too many writers turn into walking men. They try to evangelize, or, in the opposite, to vilify religion. But writers need to "tell it slant," as Emily Dickenson once put it. Grace means a second chance. Religion runs deep in most peoples' lives in one form or another. When we write on it, though, we don't need to be "walking" men or women. Religion works into the everyday rhythms of life. How it does is not usually through doctrine but through behavior. In many of my stories, religion has been a theme, but I have approached it "slant."

The story appeared in a journal called Divine Dirt Quarterly. A journal by that name exists, but I can't find my story in the archives, so I think the venue I printed in is defunct and another journal has taken that name. Reading it after so many years, I was impressed that it was one of my better stories. I might try to find a new place for it. We'll see.

For books that will make great Christmas gifts, check out my Writer's Page.

I highly recommend my urban fantasy, ShadowCity.  In a dark world, the light within you is all you have.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #34: Werewolves Again: "The Girlfriend"

 

Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman

Writers are like anyone else. They can get on a "kick" and they can get stuck on a theme. I had written the story "Wolf Moon," a science fiction story about werewolves marooned on a planet who manage to get free (see Dave's Anatomy #32). And werewolves were on my mind. I would not say I got obsessed or was on a kick. But the theme of werewolves is fascinating. Once, while watching an old movie on TV where Lon Chaney, Jr., is undergoing the transformation to his wolf-self, an aunt of mine, who, as far as I knew, was no great fan of horror, and happened to walk in and see that little segment of the movie. She told me, "I always feel sorry for the Wolfman. He doesn’t want it [the transformation] to happen, but then it does and he can't stop it." Maybe that's the essence of why we find werewolves fascinating (I would say this applies to vampires too). Something happens you did not ask for and cannot control. You fight against it, you take precautions against it, but eventually it gets the better of you. Kind of like life, right? But werewolves bring in the horror element.

In the story, "The Girlfriend," boy meets girl. So far so good. Sabrina plays violin for the city symphonic orchestra. She meets Wayne and likes him, they begin to date and develop an intimate relationship. Everything about him checks out—except for a few anomalous matters. Once a month, usually around the time of the full moon, he is unavailable. Wayne works for a prosperous firm that designs and builds various kinds of structures. Sabrina can see how he might travel a lot, though sometimes his absences are disappointing.

Sabrina is chosen to play the solo parts in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, a difficult piece that, if she executes it well, will advance her career. She practices diligently but Wayne says he has to go to Europe when the concert is scheduled. She asks if he can negotiate the trip because she wants him to be there to see her perform. He insists he has to go and apologizes. Sabrina performs a flawless and powerful concert. Her friends throw a party for her, but her happiness is dampened by the fact that Wayne could not be there. She reconciles her feelings. After all, he has a good job and it makes demands on him. But when he meets one of Wayne's friends from work, she finds out he was lying. The friend tells her he was at work all week long. He did not go to Zurich.

Sabrina is angry, to say the least. The following exchange takes place:

“Why did you lie to me, goddamn it?” I hissed at him, my face red. “Tell me the truth.”

When he did not reply I added, “Are you seeing someone else?”

            “If you’ll come over tonight I’ll try to explain.”

“Explain? Explain what? Maybe you can call up your other girlfriend. Hell, we’ll have a ménage a trios.”

            He put up his hands, looked side to side, and spoke.

            “There was a reason I lied to you.”

            “It had better be a damned good one.”

            “It is. Come over tonight and you’ll find out all about it.”

            “I don’t know, Wayne. I’m not sure I want to hear your fucking explanation.”

            “If you don’t, don’t come. But I want to explain it to you, Sabrina.”

Sabrina struggles with it and then decides to go. When she get to his house, his sister, Constance, meets her. Wayne is nowhere to be seen. Constance takes Sabrina downstairs. She suddenly finds herself enclosed in a small glass booth. A glass wall separates it from an old basement that has been redone, the windows sealed, all the furniture removed. Sabrina is suddenly seized with terror, thinking the two of them are psychopaths who lure women into a soundproof area and then . . . well, who knows what? Constance assures her this is not the case.

Sabrina sees Wayne. He stands on the other side of the glass, turns and opens the window shade to the full moon, and begins the painful transformation to a werewolf. She does not believe in werewolf legends and thinks they them "ignorant, superstitious myth from barbaric eras in human history." Experience teaches her how wrong she has been.

A technique in writing effective horror is to make the supernatural real. In the old movies, Lawrence Talbot (the old werewolf) and Tony Rivers (the teenage werewolf) always manage to keep some clothes on for the sake of modesty. But this is unrealistic, and the transformed Wayne rips his garments to shreds. Sabrina is terrified but tells Constance she wants to watch. She does not want to leave him. She manages to endure seeing him in his animal form.

Afterwards, Constance tells how her brother became a werewolf. Constance falls asleep as Sabrina contemplates where their relationship will go. Would she be willing to help Wayne through a dysfunctionality she had not imagined really existed? She thinks she will. The story ends with her contemplating the difficulties she will face.

This story was published in Lightning Flash--now defunct, no archive. 

For information on the books I've written, check out my Writer's Page. 

For a great Christmas stocking stuffer (for adult stockings), get a copy of ShadowCity. In a dark world, the light within you is all you have. 

I would love to see your comments.