Back at the Blog Again: One of my Newer Stories and a Return to the Old

Yogini deep in practice

A blog is something you want to keep going at an established pace and keep up forever. But, as with all things, life tends to intervene. I've neglected my blog for a long time, and now it's time to start it up again, rekindle the fire, and begin my practice once more. "Practice" in the vocabulary of yoga means training, doing postures, maintaining your regimen of exercise, perfecting your mastery of the discipline. I have not done yoga very much the last few years, and my joints show it. They're stiff and inflexible as a result of neglect. In the same way, I haven't published my blog for a few months, and that seems to have affected my expressiveness.  I usually write about stories I have published, and my blog is subtitled, "My History as a Writer." This one, the kick-starter, will be a discussion of what I have published recently, and after this one, I will go back to a weekly post on what I've published in the past. 

The reasons I've neglected my blog:  mainly, my job teaching as an adjunct professor at a local university. I like teaching. I've done it all my working life and was once a full professor. A series of circumstances led me to resign from my professorship and begin teaching part-time. It was by choice and not by choice--a story I don't care to share. At any rate, preparation for two sections of African-American literature, a class I had not taught before, and one I was asked to fill in for, took up a lot of my time. I regularly teach a class called Literature of American Minorities, which always features a section of African-American Literature, and so, when the regular teacher of the class (who is African-American) could not teach it, I was the likely candidate to fill in.

And it was a wonderful class. Like most readers, I had encountered the African-American literature that gets anthologized a lot:  "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Gilded Six-Bits" by Zora Neale Hurston. But the Norton Anthologies of Early and Modern African-American Literature presented works I had never read and authors I had not encountered. I read the poetry of Melvin Tolson (whom I had never heard of) and Ethridge Knight (whom I had heard of but never read). Both were magnificent poets, but they were new to me. I had read Gwendolyn Brooks, but never her novella, Maud Martha. A lot of new literature kept me busy. For another class I taught, I picked out some new books:  H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr—excellent books but reading them was time-consuming. 

So the blog suffered. Now it’s summer and I can get back to blogging. I’m going to talk about a recent publication and then next week I’ll get back to my anatomy as a writer. 

My latest publication is a story called “Azalea,” and it appears in the April issue of Amarillo Bay. That journal is special to me because my first-ever story, “The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake,” appeared there, when I first began writing fiction back in 2006.

Erina

It is the story of a Japanese-American graphic designer who is attracted to the CEO of his company. The social gap between them, however, is insurmountable—until one of his friends, the CEO’s cousin, asks if he would like to meet her. Jeremy and Erina meet. He mentions his love for Japanese poetry and quotes a line by the great haiku master Basho:  Cold, white azalea / lone nun / under a thatched roof. Erina reacts to this, they talk, Jeremy invites her to an exhibit of his art, and is astonished she accepts. 

Their romance develops. He learns, too, that Erina’s mother wanted her to be a Buddhist nun. She would not consider it, they quarreled, she went to college in the US to get away from her mother, and her mother died, the two of them unreconciled. He is surprised to find out that Erina—despite her beauty, wealth, and the glamor of her role—hardly dates and is still a virgin.  

As their relationship develops, he asks if she will pose for him. He wants to use her as a model for a painting representing the poem by Basho. The painting enables her to put the disagreement with her mother behind her. Art can bring healing through revelation of the soul. 

Here is a link to the story "Azalea." And since I mentioned the first story I ever published, “The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake,” here is a link to that. They’re both good, stories, long ones, and reading them will enhance your lives. 

More to come. Next week I’ll talk about an old story, “The Gaia Proposition.”

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #108: Imagining Song: "Suzanne"

Cover for the single of "Suzanne"

Music informs my writing. I am a musician, I play guitar, mandolin, and banjo, and I perform locally. From the onset, my writing has explored themes related to music. From one of my earliest publications, "Son of a Preacher Man" (after an old song by sixties singer Dusty Springfield) to "What Debussy Wrote for the Guitar," to my novella The Last Minstrel, music has motivated my imagination. In 2013, I got the idea for another such story, "Suzanne."

"Suzanne" became a best-selling and signature song for folk artist Judy Collins. It was written by Canadian songwriter, the late Leonard Cohen and has been recorded by more artists than any of his other songs ("Hallelujah" included). Cohen's is also a poet, and his song lyrics reach the level of poetry at times. "Suzanne" always intrigued me. It's about someone who is in love with Suzanne. She lives in a house by the sea from which you can see the Statue of Liberty; a lot of what he (I assume it's a guy narrating the song) says about her is enigmatic. They apparently have a live-in relationship. But the lyrics say, "You know that she's half-crazy, and that's why you want to be there." The chorus is enigmatic. It repeats (and is the only rhyming line in the poem), And you want to travel with her and you want to travel blind / And you think that you can trust her, for she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

The guy stays with her for some reason, something she gives him. It has some other lines that are hard to interpret. Here's another stanza of the song. Speaking of Suzanne, it says

… she shows you where to look amid the garbage and the flowers.

There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning.

They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror.

I puzzled over the lyrics for years. My interpretation is that Suzanne is speaking the two middle lines. In other words, she is indeed "half-crazy," perhaps from drugs. The two lines are her half-crazy talk. But the narrator of the song stays with her for some reason. I think—again, my interpretation—that he too is so burned-out, disillusioned about life, and so rootless that he finds something appealing in Suzanne's insanity.

So the story: Sossity Chandler is filming a video beside the Ohio River. She stays behind to enjoy some privacy, goes for a walk, and runs into a girl who recognizes her and says she's a fan of her music. Sossity accepts an invitation to go into her riverside cabin. The girl has a guitar and requests a song. Sossity plays her first hit and most popular song, "Cloud Shadows." The girl, named Deidre, says she listened to her music. The song "Cloud Shadows," she says, always sends her messages and helps her read what is written in the clouds.

At that moment, her boyfriend appears. He and Sossity talk in private. He informs her that Deidre is recovering from a breakdown due to hallucinogenic drugs. She is improving, he says, noting that a year ago she was "stark, raving mad." Sossity sympathizes. When they go back inside, Deidre is painting. She is an artist of considerable skill. Sossity talks with her, says she likes her art (which is indeed remarkable) and says she would like to see her again. She feels a pang of guilt then:

Sossity felt disgusted by her words and the patronizing tone of her voice, which sounded like how she would speak to a small child. Deidra Bennett was a woman and human being, not someone to whom you must speak in slow, deliberate phrases so she could understand. “I like it a lot. Your art is beautiful. So are you. Can I come back and see you sometime?”

Consulting more with her boyfriend, she promises to get them tickets to a small concert she is doing in Philadelphia in a few months, Deidre cannot handle big crowds, her boyfriend says, but a small venue would be fine. It would help her get more in contact with the exterior world. She asks Alan, her boyfriend, what he does for a living. He replies: I take care of her. I had a job in marketing for a firm in Philly. After I met her, I left to live here. It’s a better deal than what I had. And, of course, I love her. 

The content of Cohen's song is repeated and done as a variation in my story.

Sossity leaves. Once again, her status of a celebrity singer has brought her in contact with the truths of human existence—with the drama that plays out over the word all the time but of which we witness so very little.

The story appeared in Foliate Oak. You can read it here.

For additional titles, see my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #91: Creativity in Art and Life: "Zen and the Art of Marriage"

There really are times when I get away from the werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and demons of paranormal and write about the more quotidian matters of life. "Zen and the Art of Marriage" explored several notions that float around in my thinking. One is the nature of creativity—both the good and the bad side of it. The other is marriage. What is the essence of marriage and the nature of it? Why do some marriages succeed and many others fail? Is an artist’s creativity inimical to marriage? What makes for a proper balance in an artist’s life between the creative and the quotidian?

These considerations came from a couple of things I noted on the matter. Artists seem hard to get along with. Milton was divorced—a rare thing in his day. Solzhenitsyn—even though, like Milton, he was a very devout Christian—could not get along with his wife very well. And we hear of artists who can’t seem to get along with anyone, let alone a spouse. I had also read an article in a magazine by a woman who was an artist and finally ended up divorcing her husband because she felt she did not feel “free to be creative” because she was married (even though her husband was, by her confession, loving and considerate and they had a good relationship).

Is there something about being creatively gifted that alienates? Is the artist the brooding Byronic hero, too restless and moody to love anyone? These were some of the questions that went into “Zen and the Art of Marriage.”

Desmond is a painter. He is successful, always finding enough work and does well for himself. He has recently split with his wife, Joanna. They have children. What has split them up is Desmond’s behavior when he is working on a project. He becomes angry, touchy, and intense. His wife and kids know not to talk him. He stalks the house, brooding, ultra-focused, unable to be civil to anyone. Finally, they split. Desmond is shocked, but Joanna has put up with him for too long to want to be reconciled. She takes the children and moves out. Alone, Desmond despairs. And to fill up the empty hours he begins to study Zen. The study helps him to understand himself. He invites Joanna to stay with him at a remote cabin in Canada his family owns—so remote you have to fly in to get there. To his surprise, she agrees.

They fly up together. She is cordial but distant. They are civil until he brings up Zen and tells her it has changed him. He asks if she has read a book on Zen he sent her. She unloads on him:

“I read a little of it. I don’t want to read books. You should have been reading books like that before all this happened.”

He had not expected such a level of hostility as he caught in her tone.

“It’s a good book and it really helped me, Joanna.”

“About five years too late. You think you can treat me like you did the last years we were together then undergo some kind of”—she searched for a word—“conversion and that will make everything all right? It’s still just about you, isn’t it? You read a book and that should cure the whole problem. The problem, Desmond, isn’t me! It’s you. If you could get that through your head you might understand why I left you.”

Her attack cut through him so much he did not know what to say. The scenario he had built up in his mind of an even, civil, heartfelt conversation that would end in reconciliation dissolved like sugar in hot tea. She was angry. He had hurt her and words were not going to repair the damage he had done to her soul.

When he did not answer, she drummed her fingers on the tabletop.

“That’s how I feel,” she said, her voice softer and more conciliatory. “I can’t pretend I feel any differently. I pretended I felt fine for years when we were married and I can’t do it anymore.”

He realizes his plan has failed. They do some things together. He paints a watercolor of her and, as he works, tries to modify how he behaves when painting. They boat, see bear and moose, and get caught in a torrential rainstorm. She seems to have fun. Seeing her naked when they come back, soaked, to the cabin rekindles his passion for her. Desmond desires reconciliation, but after their spat he cannot find words and they spend most of their time together in silence. At one point she weeps over how terribly the divorce has hurt their kids. He comforts her silently. Despite this, Desmond decides he has lost the bid. They will not reconcile. This deepens the silence between them, though the silence is not hostile. Before he goes to bed that night, he reads from the Tao Ti Ching

Those who know do not talk.

                        Those who talk do not know.

                        Keep your mouth closed.

                        Guard your senses.

                        Temper your sharpness.

                        Simplify your problems.

                        Mask your brightness.

                        Be at one with the dust of the earth.

                        This is primal union.

                        He who has achieved this state

                        Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,

                        With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.

                        This therefore is the highest state of man.

Lao Tzu

In the morning, he finds a note from her. It reads, I am at the lakeshore, bathing.  Please come to me. He finds her there naked. They make love. Through silence, he has opened the door to reconciliation. Desmond knows it will not be easy but also knows—through the silences that have brought him the truth about himself and her—that there is hope and their relationship can be mended. When the pilot returns for them, he and Joanna are ready for the endeavor. They sit together in silence on the flight, knowing there will be plenty of time to talk when they get home.

The story appeared in a zine called Dirty, Filthy Secrets. As I recall, the journal did not last long. I can’t find a reference to it on the internet, let alone an archive. So many journals only have a short run and so many good stories get lost in cyberspace. This may be another I need to resubmit. Of course, it seems I'm saying that way too much lately.

For additional titles, see my Writer's Page.

For another love story, one that is indeed about vampires and the paranormal, get a copy, print or electronic, of Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute. Nelleke is world-renown lutenist and guitarist. She also has an appetite for human blood. 

 I would love to hear your comments.

Dave’s Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #87: Art and Truth: “Just About Right.”

 

Sossity Chandler

“That’s Just About Right” is a postmodern song. It was written by Jeff Black, recorded in 1995 by the country group Blackhawk, and climbed to number seven on the American country charts. I would call the music neo-country. It does not sound like the music of Hank Williams or even Alan Jackson. Not traditional, with a very low “twang factor,” it could pass off as a pop song, though the mandolin and fiddle playing give it the country flavor. It is, like many of Mr. Black’s songs, subtle. It’s about a man who goes up in the mountains to paint “the truth” but can’t quite nail it and is frustrated by that. Finally he abandons the project. The song puts it this way:

           My old friend, came down from the mountain

           Without even looking, he found a little truth

           You can go through life with the greatest intentions

           But you do what you do what you just got to do.

The truth the man finds is that you cannot capture the truth, not in a painting or any other form. You can only say, as the chorus notes, “That’s just about right.”  I say it’s postmodern because postmodernism emphasizes the relativity and the constructed nature of all systems that claim ultimate and final truth.

And the song inspired a story.  

In the story I wrote in response to the song, my ongoing character Sossity Chandler meets artist Brionna Morgan at the art museum in her home city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sossity, there to participate in the museum’s Sunday night concerts series, is enthralled by one of Brionna’s paintings. The two of them fall in together, talk about art and creativity. Sossity notices how much Brionna drinks. Before she leaves the woman gives her an invitation to visit if she is ever in Vermont. Sossity is informed by some of the people there that Brionna lost an adult child and subsequently went through a divorce. Her drinking is a result of that.

Two years later, Sossity, who has herself gone through a painful divorce, gives a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, remembers Brionna’s offer, calls her, and asks if the invitation is still open. She arrives at her house. She has done some research and found out her friend is a painter of some reputation with art in many top museums of the world. She is also shown a portrait of her son, who had was killed in an accident, Brionna has managed to stop drinking and put her life in better order. She shows Sossity a vista that she (like the artist in “Just About Right”) wants to paint but can never get exactly right.

The next few years, their friendship deepens. Brionna design the cover for one of Sossity’s CDs and does portraits of her and her children. Sossity buys several of her paintings. They visit whenever Sossity is in her area of the country. During one such visit, the two of them walk a section of Appalachian Trail. Toward the end, they come to a vista Brionna has always loved and wanted to paint. She takes out her sketchbook and draws. They walk on their final destination and check into a motel.

  

When Sossity goes to throw something away, she finds a painting, a simple watercolor, of the overlook lying beside the dumpster. Brionna looks through the window, notes what has happened, comes outside, and says she had not wanted Sossity to see the painting. It has not captured, she says, the nature of the place and is incomplete.The following exchange takes place:

“Why do you want to depict that?”

She did not answer but they both knew what she did not want to say. Sossity thought of Brionna’s son, whom she had never met. His portrait had expressed what lay beneath his physical appearance—soul, spirit, personhood. What stood behind nature would be the answer to why he had died.

“Some things you can represent. What impressed me about the portraits you did of my family is how you showed our personalities. People can see our souls by looking at our faces.”

“That’s what I want to do with this landscape. I can’t capture it.”

Sossity regarded the painting a moment. “Art is never complete,” she said. “We just agree we’ll leave it at some point.” She ran her eyes over the landscape. “I’d say this is just about right—as right as anyone could ever get it.”

Sossity’s words seem to strike home. Brionna nods and takes the painting back into their motel room. Art can express truth—but only to a certain extent. Even the portraits Brionna has done—those of her son and of Sossity and her children—can express the soul only to an extent. Truth, pure truth, the truth behind things, is eternally elusive. “Just about right” is usually the only way we can get it.

The story appeared in Motley Press, which is no longer in print. There are some websites with that title, but apparently none of them are the one that printed my story. This may be another story to resubmit. It seems that lots of journals close after only a short run.

For more good stories, novellas, and novellas, see my Writer's Page.

For your reading pleasure, get a  copy of After Happily Ever After. What happened after Cinderella married Prince Charming? After they met Snow White, were the Seven Dwarves ever the same? In my story, see what happened after Morgianna and Ali Baba got rid of the forty thieves--everything did not go smoothly for them.

I would love to hear your comments.

Have a Happy New Year!

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #26: My First Book, The Gallery.

Your first book is like your first time having sex or your first day in school. You never forget it and it's a landmark event in your life. If you're a writer, you always have a soft spot for it—rather like you do for your first lover or your first-grade teacher. The book I published to begin my career as an author-finally-in-print was a novelette titled The Gallery. Like most people's first day in school or first seduction, it took a lot of doing.

I got an acceptance of it by an indie press up in Canada. Naturally, I was elated. But time passed and nothing happened. My attempts to contact the press did not produce replies. Finally, I got an email that said they had to cut costs and were not going to publish The Gallery. I had a contract, and I suppose I could have made trouble, but I decided to just let it slide. Back to the drawing board; back to the weary, tiresome tasks of submitting the story.

The Gallery is about a musician. In fact, it is one of my ongoing characters, Martin Rollins, who appears in far fewer stories than Sossity Chandler, but is notable for being the narrator of the first short story I published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." He has appeared in a couple of others. (Note to self:  write more stories with Rollins as main character.) Martin is doing a concert and meets an artist, Siobhan O'Conner. They fall in together. As their relationship develops, he learns more about her.

She is a skillful artist who is able to live off the sales of her paintings. She is working on a major exhibit. She also suffers from partial amnesia as the result of an automobile accent. She can remember, but large spots of her life—her school days and some of her early adulthood—are blank. As she opens up, and as Martin becomes more involved in her life, he finds out some other things—things that are unsettling.

Most unsettling, she is being stalked. A man named Seamus Keirce—a thin, tall, gangly Irishman—seems to follow her around and warns Martin that he must not let Siobhan sell her art. When asked why, he simply says he has his reasons and he shows up at several events where the young woman is present. Martin feels duty-bound to watch out for her. When he mentions the man's name, Siobhan laughs and says there is a legend about Seamus the Wraith, one of the undead who haunts houses with paintings hanging on their walls and art galleries. An internet search confirms Siobhan's identification of the man. The article Martin reads says that Keirce seems to sustain himself through the power and creativity locked in art. Obviously, Siobhan's art is of particular interest to him.

Tensions mount. Keirce begins to follow Siobhan and also to harass Martin. Siobhan asks him to pick up some paintings she has in a storage area and bring them to her long-awaited art show. When he tries to, he is attacked by Keirce, who admits he is one of the undead and needs the paintings to draw his life energy. He comes at Martin with a knife. Martin is unarmed, but takes a writing pen out of his pocket to use as a weapon. He stabs Keirce in the shoulder with it, hoping to disable him so he cannot use the knife. The pen, a graduation gift from his father, is silver and, once it pierces Seamus the Wraith's skin, destroys him. He vanishes slowly in a flaring of red light. Martin retrieves the pen and takes the paintings to Siobhan's presentation.

All the art has sold out and made her a hundred-thousand of dollars. One is purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Aine, Cletic goddess of poetry and love

They return home that night. Martin dreams. In his dream he sees a goddess. Siobhan has told him about Aine and Cliodna, Celtic goddesses of art, poetry, and fertility. Somehow Martin knows—perhaps the goddess communicates it to him—that the woman in the dream is Aine and that she has inhabited the empty spaces in Siobhan's mind vacated by amnesia; and that she had possessed Siobhan for a mission:  to rid the world of Seamus the Wraith.  In the morning, he sees Aine, in her form as a white gull, fly off.

The story ends on a note of ambiguity. Martin knows Siobhan will not be the same without the goddess possessing her spirit. Still, love can change. 

He lies in bed and contemplates this as a new day begins.

My first book, The Gallery is available through Amazon. It's a great Halloween  read--short enough to finish on that particularly spooky night.

If you want to read a story featuring my ongoing character, Martin Rollins, I suggest "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake" online at Amarillo Bay Magazine; or "The Space Between," which appeared in Scholars and Rogues.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

A brand new book (number nine now) is available as well:  Le Cafe de la Mort offers coffee to die for--and a whole lot more. 

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #12: Art and Inspiration

Flaming June by Sir Frederich Leighton

One of the great events of my life (and by this you will get to see what a geek I am) was visiting the Tate Museum in London. Art I had seen in glossy picture books, in encyclopedia articles, and on the internet, was suddenly there before me in all its glory. When I say that, I don't simply mean it was glorious and beautiful, though it was. The color and texture of a painting can never be fully expressed in a reproduction, no matter how good the photography or dense the pixel matrix might be. An example I saw was Frederic Leighton's painting, Flaming June. I had seen posters of it. A friend of mine has a reproduction of the work in his living room. But when I looked on the work itself, amazement struck me. The colors knocked my eyes out! It glowed and radiated color. No copy I had beheld came even a little close to conveying the richness of the painting from 1895.
.

It inspired me so much that, a couple of days later, on the flight back from England, I began writing.

I have a particular gift that I can write most anywhere and at any time when I have an idea. Author Louis L'Amour once said he could write on a bus or train or in the middle of Times Square. I can do that as well. Distractions don't bother me. In fact, they help. My brain welcomes minor distractions, background sounds, and "grey noise." One of my friends clarified it for me once when she said she liked to write and plan in public places where there is background noise because, "I have monkeys running around in my head. If the monkeys have something to listen to, they quiet down." I began writing on the airplane.

I write in longhand. Sitting next to my dear and loving wife, on that eight-hour flight from Heathrow to Pearson International Airport in Toronto, I began writing a story about Sossity walking through a small private museum and running into the ghost of Jemima Martindale, a woman artist from the 1700s, little known, who did capable art and ended up committing suicide. Sossity is intrigued. She later meets Jemima at the Tate and learns her story. She wanted to paint, her husband forbade her. Eventually, she went to Saint Ives, England, learned to paint, and also got pregnant. She has the child, but after her husband kills her lover in duel, she hangs herself.

Saint Ives, England

Sossity goes to a museum in Saint Ives and meets Rosie, a docent studying to be a painter who gives tours of the museum. They find a painting, Andromeda, by Jemima Martindale. Sossity discovers, to her chagrin, that it has been sold. But she feels something there she must investigate. She talks Rosie into letting her into the museum at night. Jemima appears and instructs Sossity to remove a board on the back of the frame. Behind the painting are Jemima's drawings and her journal as well. She also learns Rosie is a descendent of the son Jemima had out of wedlock. Sossity takes the documents.

She wanted to buy the painting, but since a German art dealer has already closed the deal on it, she is stymied in this. Jemima comes to the rescues, haunts and torments him, until he asks to get out of the contract. Sossity buys the painting. She also arranges to have Jemima's diary published. At the same time, a historian discovers the diary of the doctor who did the autopsy on Jemima Martindale and who was bribed by her husband to cover up the truth. He reveals it was a suicide. The two documents spark interest in Jemima and her art. Soon she is the focus of study and re-evaluation. Her work is saved from obscurity by this. Sossity keeps the painting in her home and, when she looks at it, feels the influence of Jemima, who has finally gone on her rest and her reward.

Art can inspire. In fact, art has inspired me as much as reading has. Poet Scott Cairns once remarked that he often gets ideas for poems by reading theological books or lives of the saints. He once quipped that someday he'll actually finish one of those books without the interruption of inspiration for a poem during the reading. I feel the same way about art. I always carry a moleskin when I got to a museum. Ideas for poems or stories inevitably following looking at art.

Many things can provide ideas for stories. Reading is the most common thing. Walking in nature is another. Art, a visual medium, can do the same. But I've found it doesn't work as a source of ideas, inspiration, or as a starting point, when viewed online or in a book. You have to be there. You need to see the vitality the artist put into the work. Then it comes alive. 

Has art ever inspired you to write a poem or a story?

Do you think viewing art is a pathway to creation of other works of art?

Is printed art or art reproduced on line equal to the actual work of art?  What is your experience in this?

The story appeared in the journal, Monday Night, still in print.  Here a link to it. I think it's a pretty good tale--for being written on an airplane crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

For more books on art, love, and the supernatural check out my Writer's Page.