Just before beginning my senior year of high school I started keeping a journal, in which I wrote about the events in my life and my thoughts about them. I figured that if someday I ever wanted to write a book that would reflect a definitive high school experience, it would be a good idea to have some notes I could reference for authenticity. I don't know how useful it would be now; I suspect if I tried to write a high school book and relied on that journal for background information, any YA readers would respond with something like, "Oh, tell us more about what the world was like when Huey Lewis and the News were popular and payphones cost a quarter, Grandpa!"
That journal, which was a slightly larger than normal notebook of 100 spiral-bound pages, filled up in about a year and a half. By that time it had become such a habit for me I bought a replacement notebook at my college's bookstore, and another one after that, and another after that, stretching into the earliest years of my teaching career.
I began writing 'Summer Vacation' in May of 2009, which now makes it six years old. My original reason for starting it wasn't that different from why I kept a journal -- I wanted to give myself one more way to practice writing. If you were to click through the archive listing on the right side of the screen you're looking at right now, you'd see there have been a lot of posts written in those six years. Interesting little fact: I didn't realize this when I began the daily blogging this month, but it turns out that today's post, the final one of this month-long marathon, is also the 400th post I've published here. Since this was also the month the blog went over 10,000 hits, this other milestone being reached makes it sort of a landmark month. Overall, I feel pretty good about how this year's blogging marathon went. The posts were coming easier than they did even just a year ago, there were several of them I was proud of, and only once did I feel like I had phoned it in.
There's a saying that I've seen passed along and repeated in different articles or web pages related to writing, which says, in essence, that each writer needs to write a million words before they know their voice well enough to be ready for the serious work. I think it's a safe bet that if I only counted the writing done between all of the pencil and paper journaling (it was always pencil, by the way) and six years of blogging, I've gotten those first million out of my system, and then some. I think 'Summer Vacation' has served its purpose as far as giving me a different way to practice, and I'm ready for the serious work. And I likely have been for awhile. Even though it's been coming to me in tiny increments, I think I'm comfortable with that now.
The last time I spoke with my agent was a little over a month ago. Our conversation spiraled through twenty or so different topics, some that had nothing to do with writing and some that did, including a bit of talk about the business end of the writing world. I was surprised to discover how at ease I was talking about it. I figured part of that came from her being awesome, and part from a lot of the writing world still feeling theoretical to me, in some ways. But thinking back on that, I'm pretty sure part of it also came from me just knowing I'm ready for the serious work. And I know that keeping up with this blog has been a part of what got me here.
As for the future...well, May is over tomorrow, so the daily posts are done with for at least another year. Beyond that I don't know what's going to happen with the blog. Maybe the day will come when it makes more sense for me to build an entire website instead and start a different blog as a component of that, or maybe it will just fade off to a natural end the same way my journals eventually did. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to overplan things like this since it's impossible to really know what direction life decides to go. But as things are now, 'Summer Vacation' will absolutely be around for the foreseeable future. After all, just because I've reached a different plateau with writing and I'm starting to feel more at home there, that doesn't mean I still don't need the practice.
To anyone who followed my progress here throughout the month: Thanks for reading, even this final post which kind of ended up being a blog post about blog posts. If you got anything out of any of the posts that showed up here over the past month, or earlier, be sure to check back. There will definitely be more to come.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Day 30: The Kings and Queens of Oakes Avenue
My grandmother’s house was incredible. She lived in Superior, Wisconsin, a city that shares the westernmost tip of Lake Superior with Duluth, Minnesota. Back in the days of 55 mph speed limits with my dad behind the wheel, it was a three-hour drive from the Cities for us to get there.
We felt as welcomed and embraced there as we did in our own home. The house was covered with blankets, pillows, and comforters all implausibly soft with age, ready to be used by any number of cousins who’d be staying there and would need a couch or a spot on the floor for sleeping if our parents had claimed all of the beds, which often happened even though the front bedroom upstairs probably could comfortably sleep seven. The bathroom had an amazing claw-foot tub that took forever to fill. The house was warmed by a wood-burning stove in my younger days, which was replaced by a more radiant heater in the later years. There was a small ramp in the floor that led from the kitchen and down into the dining room, that was either the result of some construction plan I never understood or the house settling over time (I was too young to ever find out which it was). It was the only house I’ve ever known that had an actual pantry, which we (meaning my sisters and me, and many of our cousins) only cared about because that’s where the cookies and cereal were kept. Even in the cold of winter -- which, since this is Superior and Duluth we’re talking about, was a serious level of cold -- the house was always just on the edge of being too warm for comfort from all of the people usually filling it.
Gram’s house was just as much a museum of our family as it was her home, with treasure troves of history stashed away in every corner: photo albums, stacks of paperback novels, framed photographs hanging on every wall (each person in the family was represented at least once), my aunt’s paintings, sheet music from decades past, old comic books, board games, sets of poker chips and decks of cards wearing thin from overuse, both in the construction of hundreds of card houses (my cousin Paul created one he named “The Belgian Cheese Factory”) and poker games, both small and epic (Jacks or better, trips to win, anyone?). The only game of Monopoly I’ve ever played to completion was played with my cousins Chris and Kelly. It took over four hours. We had the board spread out on the dining room table, a monstrously heavyweight piece of furniture which felt like it could sit at least thirty people at a time and probably came close to doing just that a few times.
Whether we went up there for a holiday or just a stray weekend visit, it was a better time when the cousins were around. There were always adventures to be had, even if they were little more than walking two blocks to 7-11 for Cherry Coke Slurpees when we were kids or walking to Godfather’s Pizza when we were older, because it was close, the pizza was all right, and they had a Ms. Pac-Man table. We had favorite bowling alleys, favorite movie theaters, favorite record stores, and even favorite restaurants -- we weren’t too picky about those because we were teenagers; thankfully there was a McDonald’s only a short drive away, which saved my cousin John and me during one Christmas dinner when one of our aunts got a little too creative with the recipes and we needed to make a quick run for fries before dessert was served.
Summers were always good for a ride over the singing bridge and out to the beach at Wisconsin point, where we could walk something close to a hundred yards (if I remember right? I was smaller) from the shoreline before the water would even get waist deep. There was snow football in the winter, exploring the train tracks that ran less than a block from the house, and for some of us, role-playing stories from “Hogan’s Heroes,” which was almost too perfect. After all, the house probably predated World War II, and we could always pretend our grandma was a German guard without her even knowing (she was Grandma Schulz, after all).
Whenever we were together for the bigger events and holidays (there are an amazing number of teachers spread out over three generations of the family and there always have been, so we always got together over Christmas break) there were sure to be sing-alongs around the piano. Aunts and uncles and cousins, occasionally getting out guitars or other instruments that had been brought along for accompaniment. I didn’t know most of the songs and wasn’t big on the sing-alongs anyway, so it’s ironic in a way that I have that same piano in my home now. If I get my face close enough, I can still smell the intoxicatingly thick varnish that covered it.
We all spent that early part of our lifetimes creating so many moments there that became monuments of personal history for us. I’m pretty sure we even had the presence of mind inside of those moments to understand and recognize that what we had together, while not always peaceful and idyllic, was unusual and special.
But a house that old couldn’t last forever. The generations shifted, and our headquarters eventually reformed about two hours south in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. One family of cousins had grown up there, and after our uncle passed and our aunt relocated, our cousin Dan bought his childhood home and converted it into a remarkably comfortable and impeccably decorated cabin. We had all put in a lot of time at Turtle Lake growing up, so it was a natural shift. So many years later now it’s almost as much of a Mecca for the family as our grandmother’s house in Superior had been. We’ve spent weekends there when people have come together from five or six different states, as well as three time zones.
The cabin is always there for any of us to visit, but there are a few big draws every year, with none bigger than the Turtle Lake Fair. It’s exactly the tiny county (tri-county, actually) fair you’d expect a small town to have and not remarkable on its own, but it’s been an excuse for us to get together now for well over twenty years. We’ve reached the point where there’s actually an activity schedule, along with a huge cookout on Saturday evening, followed by a night of music in the basement that goes late into the night. There are enough instruments set up down there to stage a small concert -- including the light show -- and we’ve done that for ourselves many times over. What used to be playing show tunes around the piano has evolved into dozens of people taking turns singing and playing with the band. The remarkable thing about the fair weekend is how we can have close to seventy people (I’ve counted before) from four generations together in an average-sized residential yard, and for us there’s absolutely nothing unusual about it.
I know there are a lot of people who have next to no relationship with their extended families, and there are just as many who get along well. It’s different for us, though. I know everybody wants to say that to show just how close their family is, but in our case it really, really is true. And unless you’re ever fortunate enough to get a chance to tag along with one of us for a weekend in Turtle Lake, you’ll just have to take my word for it here.
But if you were lucky enough tag along, I promise you’d be welcomed with open arms.
We felt as welcomed and embraced there as we did in our own home. The house was covered with blankets, pillows, and comforters all implausibly soft with age, ready to be used by any number of cousins who’d be staying there and would need a couch or a spot on the floor for sleeping if our parents had claimed all of the beds, which often happened even though the front bedroom upstairs probably could comfortably sleep seven. The bathroom had an amazing claw-foot tub that took forever to fill. The house was warmed by a wood-burning stove in my younger days, which was replaced by a more radiant heater in the later years. There was a small ramp in the floor that led from the kitchen and down into the dining room, that was either the result of some construction plan I never understood or the house settling over time (I was too young to ever find out which it was). It was the only house I’ve ever known that had an actual pantry, which we (meaning my sisters and me, and many of our cousins) only cared about because that’s where the cookies and cereal were kept. Even in the cold of winter -- which, since this is Superior and Duluth we’re talking about, was a serious level of cold -- the house was always just on the edge of being too warm for comfort from all of the people usually filling it.
Gram’s house was just as much a museum of our family as it was her home, with treasure troves of history stashed away in every corner: photo albums, stacks of paperback novels, framed photographs hanging on every wall (each person in the family was represented at least once), my aunt’s paintings, sheet music from decades past, old comic books, board games, sets of poker chips and decks of cards wearing thin from overuse, both in the construction of hundreds of card houses (my cousin Paul created one he named “The Belgian Cheese Factory”) and poker games, both small and epic (Jacks or better, trips to win, anyone?). The only game of Monopoly I’ve ever played to completion was played with my cousins Chris and Kelly. It took over four hours. We had the board spread out on the dining room table, a monstrously heavyweight piece of furniture which felt like it could sit at least thirty people at a time and probably came close to doing just that a few times.
Whether we went up there for a holiday or just a stray weekend visit, it was a better time when the cousins were around. There were always adventures to be had, even if they were little more than walking two blocks to 7-11 for Cherry Coke Slurpees when we were kids or walking to Godfather’s Pizza when we were older, because it was close, the pizza was all right, and they had a Ms. Pac-Man table. We had favorite bowling alleys, favorite movie theaters, favorite record stores, and even favorite restaurants -- we weren’t too picky about those because we were teenagers; thankfully there was a McDonald’s only a short drive away, which saved my cousin John and me during one Christmas dinner when one of our aunts got a little too creative with the recipes and we needed to make a quick run for fries before dessert was served.
Summers were always good for a ride over the singing bridge and out to the beach at Wisconsin point, where we could walk something close to a hundred yards (if I remember right? I was smaller) from the shoreline before the water would even get waist deep. There was snow football in the winter, exploring the train tracks that ran less than a block from the house, and for some of us, role-playing stories from “Hogan’s Heroes,” which was almost too perfect. After all, the house probably predated World War II, and we could always pretend our grandma was a German guard without her even knowing (she was Grandma Schulz, after all).
Whenever we were together for the bigger events and holidays (there are an amazing number of teachers spread out over three generations of the family and there always have been, so we always got together over Christmas break) there were sure to be sing-alongs around the piano. Aunts and uncles and cousins, occasionally getting out guitars or other instruments that had been brought along for accompaniment. I didn’t know most of the songs and wasn’t big on the sing-alongs anyway, so it’s ironic in a way that I have that same piano in my home now. If I get my face close enough, I can still smell the intoxicatingly thick varnish that covered it.
We all spent that early part of our lifetimes creating so many moments there that became monuments of personal history for us. I’m pretty sure we even had the presence of mind inside of those moments to understand and recognize that what we had together, while not always peaceful and idyllic, was unusual and special.
But a house that old couldn’t last forever. The generations shifted, and our headquarters eventually reformed about two hours south in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. One family of cousins had grown up there, and after our uncle passed and our aunt relocated, our cousin Dan bought his childhood home and converted it into a remarkably comfortable and impeccably decorated cabin. We had all put in a lot of time at Turtle Lake growing up, so it was a natural shift. So many years later now it’s almost as much of a Mecca for the family as our grandmother’s house in Superior had been. We’ve spent weekends there when people have come together from five or six different states, as well as three time zones.
The cabin is always there for any of us to visit, but there are a few big draws every year, with none bigger than the Turtle Lake Fair. It’s exactly the tiny county (tri-county, actually) fair you’d expect a small town to have and not remarkable on its own, but it’s been an excuse for us to get together now for well over twenty years. We’ve reached the point where there’s actually an activity schedule, along with a huge cookout on Saturday evening, followed by a night of music in the basement that goes late into the night. There are enough instruments set up down there to stage a small concert -- including the light show -- and we’ve done that for ourselves many times over. What used to be playing show tunes around the piano has evolved into dozens of people taking turns singing and playing with the band. The remarkable thing about the fair weekend is how we can have close to seventy people (I’ve counted before) from four generations together in an average-sized residential yard, and for us there’s absolutely nothing unusual about it.
I know there are a lot of people who have next to no relationship with their extended families, and there are just as many who get along well. It’s different for us, though. I know everybody wants to say that to show just how close their family is, but in our case it really, really is true. And unless you’re ever fortunate enough to get a chance to tag along with one of us for a weekend in Turtle Lake, you’ll just have to take my word for it here.
But if you were lucky enough tag along, I promise you’d be welcomed with open arms.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Day 29: My Life in 15 Songs
Sometime in the past year or so, Rolling Stone magazine began an interview series with artists called “My Life in 15 Songs,” in which they review their musical careers and highlight fifteen songs that were significant in some way. When I saw the article the first time, I thought it was going to be more like the artists listing any fifteen songs that had been important to them. It got me thinking it would be fun to try, so I started a list.
The only rule I made was that the song had to have some significant tie to my life that went beyond the song or artist itself; you won’t find any “I heard this the first time and checked out the band and then they became one of my all-time favorites” here, because that would be too easy. I don’t know if all the songs I’ve included would be the fifteen most definitive of my life or would even come close to making my list of favorites, but, as you’ll see, they’ve all attached themselves to specific and important moments. Some were related to formative experiences, some are tied to very specific memories, and some relate to things so deeply personal I’m a little surprised I’m even writing about them here. But, you know -- Day 29 of the month of daily blog posts. Ideas are running short.
Usually I’d preface a song list with “In no particular order,” but tonight I’ll try to be as chronological as I can:
“Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol: In the time before cable television reached the rural emptiness where my family lived in the 1980s, the only time I could ever see MTV was when we visited my cousins Chris and Amy. Twin Cities radio was sadly generic back then, so some of the songs from the early MTV videos seemed like they came from outer space. When my family caught up and had cable installed, this was the first song I watched MTV specifically hoping to see. I loved the way the guitar sounded just a little too tightly wound, then buzzed into so much distortion as the song progressed that the whole thing sounded like it was in danger of coming apart.
“Every Little Kiss” by Bruce Hornsby: Bruce Hornsby’s album “The Way it Is” was one of the first CDs I bought. If I ever mention to one of the younger people on the staff at school that I own CDs older than they are, this is one of them. As cut off as I felt from my friends while growing up in the middle of nowhere, and as much as I thought I wanted to put my hometown behind me, this song helped me find an appreciation for it. The vaguely country-tinged pop sound of the album reminded me of a slower and usually simpler rural life as I got further into college. The whole album, and this song in particular, was probably one of my very first nostalgia triggers. When this came out I could still kind of almost play the piano, and I’d bought the sheet music for “Every Little Kiss” just to try and learn the evocative piano solo in the first thirty seconds. It was well above my ability even at my peak, but I was proudly able to piece most of it together.
“Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2: I remember the big deal that was made about “The Joshua Tree” coming out in early 1987, and how everybody at college suddenly claimed to be a huge fan of U2, even if the band had been little more than a glorified “college rock” band before that, with the exception of one or two recognizable hits. The two guys who lived in the east corner room on my floor in my freshman dorm had this album almost right away, and local radio was playing this song as an album track long before it was a single, so we all recognized it. The song opens with this resonating chord progression that sounds like a melody created by the engines of an interstellar spacecraft. The guys in the corner room would play this song over and over just for that opening part. Since they had the loudest speakers on the floor by far, the sound could make your teeth vibrate from the other end of the building. This didn’t sit well with the metalheads and hippies on our floor, but the rest of us, who were so tired of listening to their music being played too loud, loved it.
“She’s the One” by Bruce Springsteen: Specifically, the performance of this song from the Tunnel of Love Express Tour at the Met Center in Bloomington, MN in May of 1988. When the E Street Band launched into this about mid-show, supported by a full horn section, it came together in a moment that stood as the single greatest musical moment of my life for a long, long time.
“Edge of a Broken Heart” by Bon Jovi: This was one of my first “holy grail” songs, the ones I would only hear on the radio and never had any luck finding in music stores. It only appeared on the soundtrack to the movie “The Disorderlies,” staring the 80s rap group The Fat Boys. Never saw the movie, but the song was getting a lot of airplay in the peak of Bon Jovi’s popularity. It’s a good pop-rock & fairly generic Bon Jovi sound, but it had hooks I couldn’t get out of my head. So many years later the song was included on a Bon Jovi greatest hits boxed set, and since the iTunes store would let me download individual tracks, I finally tracked it down. It sounded just like I’d remembered even if I hadn’t heard it in over two decades.
“Driving the Last Spike” by Genesis: This song became important to me in two different ways and at two different times for the same purpose. It’s a ten-minute epic that tells the story of the hardships suffered by the men who worked on constructing England’s railway system. I didn’t relate to that directly, but I connected to the struggles while I was out looking for my first teaching job. The job market back then was a waking nightmare for teachers, so there was a lot of frustration involved in that search. I learned to lean on this song as a source of perseverance.
There was also a weekend around that same time when one of my cousins had a graduation open house, so the whole extended family made the road trip and congregated for it. The first night there turned out to be one of those exceptional times that I think can only happen when you’re young enough: My cousin Jeff and I were set up with sleeping bags in the family room for the night and were just catching up before going to sleep, when Jeff’s sister Kelly walked in and joined us. The three of us wound up talking until about five in the morning. That night, and the rest of the weekend that followed, gave me a big push of confidence as I kept on driving around the state looking for a teaching job. I’d remember what an extraordinary family I came from and how many remarkable people I had in my corner supporting me. I kept reflecting on this each time I heard the song when one particular line came up: “They’ll never see the likes of us again.”
“Manhattan Project” by Rush: This is a song about the creation and use of the first atomic bomb. It’s a great song, but again, I assigned a separate personal meaning to it that became more important than the intended context. When my sister Jenny was pregnant with her first son, she overshot her due date and was understandably frustrated. One night, after we had all gotten together at her house for dinner and everyone who lived further away had gone home, I went out walking with Jenny, her husband, and their dog, to try and get things moving along. It was a beautiful spring evening, and this song kept playing on repeat in my head. I didn’t understand why at first, but after my oldest nephew Ben was born, I finally figured out it was because of one line that unknowingly had become some kind of a personal mantra for me during those events: “All the powers that be / and the course of history / would be changed forever more.”
“Primal Scream” by Motley Crue: No story here -- this is just my all-time #1 song to listen to while working out. It deserves a spot on the list just for that.
“Champagne Supernova” by Oasis: I have a decent-sized list of songs with bittersweet tones to them that always seem to work into my usual music rotation close to the end of the school year, the kinds of songs you might expect would fit over the closing credits of a movie after the story had ended and the characters sadly had to go their separate ways. I don’t always have the same misty feelings about the last day of school like I used to (because I’m just cranky and old and jaded and unpleasant now) but sometimes cracks will form and I can feel how much I will miss my kids and the place the had in my life for so long, particularly when I taught 5th grade and those kids would be moving on to different schools and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing most of them again. “Champagne Supernova” is one of the heavy hitters on that list of songs, and really only for the musical feel it has. The lyrics are so brilliantly nonsensical they allow you to easily to attach your own interpretation.
“We All Need Some Light: by Transatlantic: This is very possibly my favorite song, in that I can’t think of another one off the top of my head that would be able match it for that title. It’s a beautiful song, both so powerful and understated it could almost be mistaken for a prayer.
“Surrounded / Mother” by Dream Theater (& Pink Floyd): This song eventually tied “She’s the One” as the best musical moment of my life. I heard Dream Theater play “Surrounded” on their Chaos in Motion Tour, with an extended guitar solo that left my jaw hanging open. When a live album was released after the tour, I bought it just to have this song, and the version of “Surrounded” on that has probably become my all-time favorite solo. It’s tough to describe, because it’s played in such a quiet and slow part of the song but is as fast as anything else you could imagine, and somehow it all comes together perfectly. At the end, John Petrucci incorporates a recognizable passage from the David Gilmour’s solo in Pink Floyd’s song “Mother,” which on its own was also in the running to make this list. “Mother” was one of the emotional turning points from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” which was an album I listened to over and over and over for months while I was trying to piece together how I felt about my aforementioned cousin Kelly being deployed to Iraq in 1991.
“Soldiers of Misfortune” by Filter: I’m sure I’ve mentioned writing playlists on ‘Summer Vacation’ before. A lot of writers use them to capture certain tones or feelings while they work. This song, as much as any other, had a very important role in my writing Following Infinity. I had to reinvent the context once again to apply it to what I needed, but it suited that purpose very well.
“You’ll Be Bright (Invocation Part 1)” by Cloud Cult: The first song I heard in my car on the way home from the vet’s office after taking in my dog Spencer for the last time. I can’t hear this song anymore without remembering how that felt, and it has me choking up almost every time.
“A Letter to Georgia” by The Airborne Toxic Event: A very simple and beautiful love song, but absolutely heartbreaking. The type of song that makes you think about and remember people who were once in your life but aren’t anymore, and how the pain of not being able to have them with you fades over time but never truly disappears.
“Drops of Jupiter” by Train: One morning in the months after my sister Erin died, I had a dream that I was at her funeral. It wasn’t her actual funeral but a dream version of it, the kind that made sense in the dream but wouldn’t have anywhere else. I was looking at her body in its casket and saw the casket slightly shift. Afraid it was off balance and about to fall, I hurried over to stabilize it, but before I could get there my sister sat up. She was a child now, a child that didn’t look anything like her childhood self, but I knew it was her all the same.
She smiled widely at me as I hurried over and I was slightly taken aback. “I’m dreaming right now, aren’t I?” I said to her, and she nodded, still smiling. As soon as I realized that I knew the dream was likely moments from falling apart. “Well, you look happy,” I said. She didn’t say anything in reply but just laughed. I tried to think of what I would say to her or ask her while I had the chance, but couldn’t put it together in time before I abruptly woke up.
I sat up in bed so quickly I startled Spencer, heart racing, immediately alert, on my feet, wondering over and over, “Was that just some weird dream or did that really happen?” It was easily as vivid of a dream as I’d ever had; years later I can still remember so many details, down to how the pale yellow paint on the walls in that room had been old and just beginning to chip.
Now that I was out of bed and the sun was out, Spencer figured it was time for a walk, and began dancing around my feet. I robotically led him downstairs, put him in his harness and leash, and let him guide me down the block. As we walked, “Drops of Jupiter” started playing in my head. It reminded me a lot about Erin, since there are several lines in it that seem to wondering about what somebody the singer had lost was doing now that they had moved on. It stayed in my head until we were home and I went back upstairs to shower. Once in my bedroom I turned the radio on, and of course “Drops of Jupiter” was playing. My body broke into goosebumps that were almost painfully tight.
Since then, the song has come on at several other opportune moments, usually when I’ve been worried about something and needed reassurance or encouragement that things were going to work out. I don’t listen to the radio much anymore so that takes away from the chances I might randomly hear it, but I still remember the last time it happened: I was driving to pick up some take-out I’d ordered, for a little celebration dinner after first learning I had a full manuscript request from the woman who would become my agent less than a month later. True story, all of it. Promise.
And that brings us to fifteen songs. Definitely a longer post, but an important one to me. Thanks for sticking with it if you got this far.
The only rule I made was that the song had to have some significant tie to my life that went beyond the song or artist itself; you won’t find any “I heard this the first time and checked out the band and then they became one of my all-time favorites” here, because that would be too easy. I don’t know if all the songs I’ve included would be the fifteen most definitive of my life or would even come close to making my list of favorites, but, as you’ll see, they’ve all attached themselves to specific and important moments. Some were related to formative experiences, some are tied to very specific memories, and some relate to things so deeply personal I’m a little surprised I’m even writing about them here. But, you know -- Day 29 of the month of daily blog posts. Ideas are running short.
Usually I’d preface a song list with “In no particular order,” but tonight I’ll try to be as chronological as I can:
“Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol: In the time before cable television reached the rural emptiness where my family lived in the 1980s, the only time I could ever see MTV was when we visited my cousins Chris and Amy. Twin Cities radio was sadly generic back then, so some of the songs from the early MTV videos seemed like they came from outer space. When my family caught up and had cable installed, this was the first song I watched MTV specifically hoping to see. I loved the way the guitar sounded just a little too tightly wound, then buzzed into so much distortion as the song progressed that the whole thing sounded like it was in danger of coming apart.
“Every Little Kiss” by Bruce Hornsby: Bruce Hornsby’s album “The Way it Is” was one of the first CDs I bought. If I ever mention to one of the younger people on the staff at school that I own CDs older than they are, this is one of them. As cut off as I felt from my friends while growing up in the middle of nowhere, and as much as I thought I wanted to put my hometown behind me, this song helped me find an appreciation for it. The vaguely country-tinged pop sound of the album reminded me of a slower and usually simpler rural life as I got further into college. The whole album, and this song in particular, was probably one of my very first nostalgia triggers. When this came out I could still kind of almost play the piano, and I’d bought the sheet music for “Every Little Kiss” just to try and learn the evocative piano solo in the first thirty seconds. It was well above my ability even at my peak, but I was proudly able to piece most of it together.
“Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2: I remember the big deal that was made about “The Joshua Tree” coming out in early 1987, and how everybody at college suddenly claimed to be a huge fan of U2, even if the band had been little more than a glorified “college rock” band before that, with the exception of one or two recognizable hits. The two guys who lived in the east corner room on my floor in my freshman dorm had this album almost right away, and local radio was playing this song as an album track long before it was a single, so we all recognized it. The song opens with this resonating chord progression that sounds like a melody created by the engines of an interstellar spacecraft. The guys in the corner room would play this song over and over just for that opening part. Since they had the loudest speakers on the floor by far, the sound could make your teeth vibrate from the other end of the building. This didn’t sit well with the metalheads and hippies on our floor, but the rest of us, who were so tired of listening to their music being played too loud, loved it.
“She’s the One” by Bruce Springsteen: Specifically, the performance of this song from the Tunnel of Love Express Tour at the Met Center in Bloomington, MN in May of 1988. When the E Street Band launched into this about mid-show, supported by a full horn section, it came together in a moment that stood as the single greatest musical moment of my life for a long, long time.
“Edge of a Broken Heart” by Bon Jovi: This was one of my first “holy grail” songs, the ones I would only hear on the radio and never had any luck finding in music stores. It only appeared on the soundtrack to the movie “The Disorderlies,” staring the 80s rap group The Fat Boys. Never saw the movie, but the song was getting a lot of airplay in the peak of Bon Jovi’s popularity. It’s a good pop-rock & fairly generic Bon Jovi sound, but it had hooks I couldn’t get out of my head. So many years later the song was included on a Bon Jovi greatest hits boxed set, and since the iTunes store would let me download individual tracks, I finally tracked it down. It sounded just like I’d remembered even if I hadn’t heard it in over two decades.
“Driving the Last Spike” by Genesis: This song became important to me in two different ways and at two different times for the same purpose. It’s a ten-minute epic that tells the story of the hardships suffered by the men who worked on constructing England’s railway system. I didn’t relate to that directly, but I connected to the struggles while I was out looking for my first teaching job. The job market back then was a waking nightmare for teachers, so there was a lot of frustration involved in that search. I learned to lean on this song as a source of perseverance.
There was also a weekend around that same time when one of my cousins had a graduation open house, so the whole extended family made the road trip and congregated for it. The first night there turned out to be one of those exceptional times that I think can only happen when you’re young enough: My cousin Jeff and I were set up with sleeping bags in the family room for the night and were just catching up before going to sleep, when Jeff’s sister Kelly walked in and joined us. The three of us wound up talking until about five in the morning. That night, and the rest of the weekend that followed, gave me a big push of confidence as I kept on driving around the state looking for a teaching job. I’d remember what an extraordinary family I came from and how many remarkable people I had in my corner supporting me. I kept reflecting on this each time I heard the song when one particular line came up: “They’ll never see the likes of us again.”
“Manhattan Project” by Rush: This is a song about the creation and use of the first atomic bomb. It’s a great song, but again, I assigned a separate personal meaning to it that became more important than the intended context. When my sister Jenny was pregnant with her first son, she overshot her due date and was understandably frustrated. One night, after we had all gotten together at her house for dinner and everyone who lived further away had gone home, I went out walking with Jenny, her husband, and their dog, to try and get things moving along. It was a beautiful spring evening, and this song kept playing on repeat in my head. I didn’t understand why at first, but after my oldest nephew Ben was born, I finally figured out it was because of one line that unknowingly had become some kind of a personal mantra for me during those events: “All the powers that be / and the course of history / would be changed forever more.”
“Primal Scream” by Motley Crue: No story here -- this is just my all-time #1 song to listen to while working out. It deserves a spot on the list just for that.
“Champagne Supernova” by Oasis: I have a decent-sized list of songs with bittersweet tones to them that always seem to work into my usual music rotation close to the end of the school year, the kinds of songs you might expect would fit over the closing credits of a movie after the story had ended and the characters sadly had to go their separate ways. I don’t always have the same misty feelings about the last day of school like I used to (because I’m just cranky and old and jaded and unpleasant now) but sometimes cracks will form and I can feel how much I will miss my kids and the place the had in my life for so long, particularly when I taught 5th grade and those kids would be moving on to different schools and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing most of them again. “Champagne Supernova” is one of the heavy hitters on that list of songs, and really only for the musical feel it has. The lyrics are so brilliantly nonsensical they allow you to easily to attach your own interpretation.
“We All Need Some Light: by Transatlantic: This is very possibly my favorite song, in that I can’t think of another one off the top of my head that would be able match it for that title. It’s a beautiful song, both so powerful and understated it could almost be mistaken for a prayer.
“Surrounded / Mother” by Dream Theater (& Pink Floyd): This song eventually tied “She’s the One” as the best musical moment of my life. I heard Dream Theater play “Surrounded” on their Chaos in Motion Tour, with an extended guitar solo that left my jaw hanging open. When a live album was released after the tour, I bought it just to have this song, and the version of “Surrounded” on that has probably become my all-time favorite solo. It’s tough to describe, because it’s played in such a quiet and slow part of the song but is as fast as anything else you could imagine, and somehow it all comes together perfectly. At the end, John Petrucci incorporates a recognizable passage from the David Gilmour’s solo in Pink Floyd’s song “Mother,” which on its own was also in the running to make this list. “Mother” was one of the emotional turning points from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” which was an album I listened to over and over and over for months while I was trying to piece together how I felt about my aforementioned cousin Kelly being deployed to Iraq in 1991.
“Soldiers of Misfortune” by Filter: I’m sure I’ve mentioned writing playlists on ‘Summer Vacation’ before. A lot of writers use them to capture certain tones or feelings while they work. This song, as much as any other, had a very important role in my writing Following Infinity. I had to reinvent the context once again to apply it to what I needed, but it suited that purpose very well.
“You’ll Be Bright (Invocation Part 1)” by Cloud Cult: The first song I heard in my car on the way home from the vet’s office after taking in my dog Spencer for the last time. I can’t hear this song anymore without remembering how that felt, and it has me choking up almost every time.
“A Letter to Georgia” by The Airborne Toxic Event: A very simple and beautiful love song, but absolutely heartbreaking. The type of song that makes you think about and remember people who were once in your life but aren’t anymore, and how the pain of not being able to have them with you fades over time but never truly disappears.
“Drops of Jupiter” by Train: One morning in the months after my sister Erin died, I had a dream that I was at her funeral. It wasn’t her actual funeral but a dream version of it, the kind that made sense in the dream but wouldn’t have anywhere else. I was looking at her body in its casket and saw the casket slightly shift. Afraid it was off balance and about to fall, I hurried over to stabilize it, but before I could get there my sister sat up. She was a child now, a child that didn’t look anything like her childhood self, but I knew it was her all the same.
She smiled widely at me as I hurried over and I was slightly taken aback. “I’m dreaming right now, aren’t I?” I said to her, and she nodded, still smiling. As soon as I realized that I knew the dream was likely moments from falling apart. “Well, you look happy,” I said. She didn’t say anything in reply but just laughed. I tried to think of what I would say to her or ask her while I had the chance, but couldn’t put it together in time before I abruptly woke up.
I sat up in bed so quickly I startled Spencer, heart racing, immediately alert, on my feet, wondering over and over, “Was that just some weird dream or did that really happen?” It was easily as vivid of a dream as I’d ever had; years later I can still remember so many details, down to how the pale yellow paint on the walls in that room had been old and just beginning to chip.
Now that I was out of bed and the sun was out, Spencer figured it was time for a walk, and began dancing around my feet. I robotically led him downstairs, put him in his harness and leash, and let him guide me down the block. As we walked, “Drops of Jupiter” started playing in my head. It reminded me a lot about Erin, since there are several lines in it that seem to wondering about what somebody the singer had lost was doing now that they had moved on. It stayed in my head until we were home and I went back upstairs to shower. Once in my bedroom I turned the radio on, and of course “Drops of Jupiter” was playing. My body broke into goosebumps that were almost painfully tight.
Since then, the song has come on at several other opportune moments, usually when I’ve been worried about something and needed reassurance or encouragement that things were going to work out. I don’t listen to the radio much anymore so that takes away from the chances I might randomly hear it, but I still remember the last time it happened: I was driving to pick up some take-out I’d ordered, for a little celebration dinner after first learning I had a full manuscript request from the woman who would become my agent less than a month later. True story, all of it. Promise.
And that brings us to fifteen songs. Definitely a longer post, but an important one to me. Thanks for sticking with it if you got this far.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Day 28: The Shark Curtain and Beyond
Just a few days ago I finished reading a book called The Shark Curtain. The author’s name is Chris Scofield, and it’s her debut novel. Full disclosure: It’s entirely possible I never would have found it if not for the happy fact that Chris and I are both represented by the same agent -- Carrie Howland of Donadio & Olson (I may have mentioned her once or twice.)
As one might expect, I’ve become very interested in what kinds of books the agency (and Carrie specifically) represents. I’ll admit, I still have moments of feeling like I snuck into this whole writing world through a back door someone forgot to close all the way, or showed up at the party after finding someone else’s invitation on a sidewalk. Throughout this time it’s been fascinating to learn and experience so many new things, including having any kind of connection, no matter how tenuous, to a published book.
The Shark Curtain is told from the perspective of a girl named Lily Asher as she’s growing up through her teenage years during the 1960s. Lily’s life is occasionally complicated by both the dynamics of her family and her own internal conflicts, which frequently have a way of spilling out and affecting the world around her. I know that’s a vague description but I don’t want to give too much away, especially since there are so many layers to Lily as a character that I think would be best discovered by reading the book, and I highly recommend people do just that. As soon as I finished reading it, I walked around the house in a sort of book hangover, knowing there wasn’t any more story for me to read, but not quite being ready for it to end and not quite sure what I was supposed to do with myself next after exiting the book and re-entering my own world. Hopefully you're familiar with that feeling, because it means you’ve been reading the kinds of books that can take over your life.
Right after finishing Chris’s book, I started in on the manuscript of another one of Carrie’s clients, Rachel Simon, after she and I had been catching up on Facebook one night and got to talking about our manuscripts and decided to trade. It’s pretty common for writers to connect with other writers, and usually discuss or share their work. But for me at least, the experience of reading a published book, or one on its way there, and being able to express any ideas about it with the author is new enough to be an exciting novelty.
A good-sized cluster of us writers represented by Carrie have found each other online and have formed a nice, happy little socially-networked group (Team Howland shout out!). I had the chance to connect with Chris while I was reading her book. We’ve had some nice exchanges, and I can say she’s now responsible for about 80% of the movies currently listed in my Netflix queue (I almost don’t dare give her recommendations in return since she obviously has better taste than I do). For most of my life I've tended to narrowly identify an author with their writing instead of acknowledging the obvious truth that writing is a lot of made-up storytelling and can have very little to do with the person telling it. I feel I've gotten a few glimpses about why Chris was the perfect person to write The Shark Curtain, but now being on the writer side myself, I've appreciated getting to know her and the other Team Howland members as people, beyond what they write about.
I’ve always seen writing as a solitary endeavor. The first full-length manuscript I wrote to completion was mostly done between the hours of 12:00 and 3:00 AM during a summer break that saw my usual sleeping patterns shot to hell. I would take stabs at the research involved in querying agents, and occasionally would be lucky enough to encounter other writers who could relate to what I was trying to accomplish. All these years later, it's nice to find myself becoming more comfortable with the larger world of writing and the people who are a part of it.
As I write this, there's a HUGE publishing event taking place in New York -- BookExpo America. Some of the people I've mentioned here are attending and getting to meet people in the industry, and making new connections, and spending time surrounded by books and writing and all kinds of people who bring these things into the world. It's easy to feel slightly out of the loop being a thousand miles away from all of that, but then I'll remember that things might not always be that way, and maybe the time will come when it's my book leaving people stumbling through a reading hangover. Until then, it's great fun being able to see others experience that from a front row seat.
As one might expect, I’ve become very interested in what kinds of books the agency (and Carrie specifically) represents. I’ll admit, I still have moments of feeling like I snuck into this whole writing world through a back door someone forgot to close all the way, or showed up at the party after finding someone else’s invitation on a sidewalk. Throughout this time it’s been fascinating to learn and experience so many new things, including having any kind of connection, no matter how tenuous, to a published book.
The Shark Curtain is told from the perspective of a girl named Lily Asher as she’s growing up through her teenage years during the 1960s. Lily’s life is occasionally complicated by both the dynamics of her family and her own internal conflicts, which frequently have a way of spilling out and affecting the world around her. I know that’s a vague description but I don’t want to give too much away, especially since there are so many layers to Lily as a character that I think would be best discovered by reading the book, and I highly recommend people do just that. As soon as I finished reading it, I walked around the house in a sort of book hangover, knowing there wasn’t any more story for me to read, but not quite being ready for it to end and not quite sure what I was supposed to do with myself next after exiting the book and re-entering my own world. Hopefully you're familiar with that feeling, because it means you’ve been reading the kinds of books that can take over your life.
Right after finishing Chris’s book, I started in on the manuscript of another one of Carrie’s clients, Rachel Simon, after she and I had been catching up on Facebook one night and got to talking about our manuscripts and decided to trade. It’s pretty common for writers to connect with other writers, and usually discuss or share their work. But for me at least, the experience of reading a published book, or one on its way there, and being able to express any ideas about it with the author is new enough to be an exciting novelty.
A good-sized cluster of us writers represented by Carrie have found each other online and have formed a nice, happy little socially-networked group (Team Howland shout out!). I had the chance to connect with Chris while I was reading her book. We’ve had some nice exchanges, and I can say she’s now responsible for about 80% of the movies currently listed in my Netflix queue (I almost don’t dare give her recommendations in return since she obviously has better taste than I do). For most of my life I've tended to narrowly identify an author with their writing instead of acknowledging the obvious truth that writing is a lot of made-up storytelling and can have very little to do with the person telling it. I feel I've gotten a few glimpses about why Chris was the perfect person to write The Shark Curtain, but now being on the writer side myself, I've appreciated getting to know her and the other Team Howland members as people, beyond what they write about.
I’ve always seen writing as a solitary endeavor. The first full-length manuscript I wrote to completion was mostly done between the hours of 12:00 and 3:00 AM during a summer break that saw my usual sleeping patterns shot to hell. I would take stabs at the research involved in querying agents, and occasionally would be lucky enough to encounter other writers who could relate to what I was trying to accomplish. All these years later, it's nice to find myself becoming more comfortable with the larger world of writing and the people who are a part of it.
As I write this, there's a HUGE publishing event taking place in New York -- BookExpo America. Some of the people I've mentioned here are attending and getting to meet people in the industry, and making new connections, and spending time surrounded by books and writing and all kinds of people who bring these things into the world. It's easy to feel slightly out of the loop being a thousand miles away from all of that, but then I'll remember that things might not always be that way, and maybe the time will come when it's my book leaving people stumbling through a reading hangover. Until then, it's great fun being able to see others experience that from a front row seat.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Day 27: Single Digits / Closure
There's been some debate at school lately on the number of days left in the academic year. The way I look at it, the school day counts as done when I'm able to come and go from the building as I please, so the day isn't over until the dismissal bell rings. When it rang tonight, our countdown to summer vacation crossed into one-digit territory with nine days remaining. Admittedly the case could be made for ten days since teachers still have to report one more day after the students are finished, but most people count the last student day as the official last day. If that gets me down to nine days left, I'm going with it.
Because really, at this point, I'm pretty much done. Mentally, that is. I'm not necessarily burned out and I still have enough curriculum left to keep the class busy (and a lot of it is engaging stuff that they really enjoy), but I've reached the point where I'm mostly going through the motions now. I'm really ready for the year to be done so I can move on to something else, whatever that might be.
Things are just feeling used up now. The little name plates on all of the lockers outside every classroom that were so cute and perfectly aligned back in September are hanging on for dear life everywhere you look. The hallways have so much stray clothing on the floors after school that they look like a Lost and Found pile gone viral. If you walk far enough, you'll probably find a chair just sitting by wall for no apparent reason, and it doesn't even surprise you even if you know it shouldn't be there. Art projects that represent such careful work by so many students have practically fused into the walls. The bright, clean, shiny, motivating atmosphere that permeates our school for so much of the academic year is now communicating more of a "We're all in this together, so let's just agree to get through the last few days" vibe. It's safe to say that nearly everyone senses and feels it.
But as ready as I am to be done, I know myself enough to realize it wouldn't go well for me to just pack up and walk away when that blessed last day arrives. I know all too well how badly I'm going to need some sense of closure before I can tag the school year with its terminal punctuation mark. To a degree, I'm like this every day. Before I can get back to my room and focus on what I need to take care of before I leave or what I want to have done before the following morning, I'll get some aimless wandering in, sometimes hanging out with people out front after the buses have all left, sometimes getting caught up in a pick-up conversation on the way back to my room, sometimes stopping in the classroom of one of my friends just to spend a little time talking and decompressing, finding a way to put a mental separation between the end of the day with the kids and the life waiting beyond.
So if I do this at the end of most days, you can imagine how badly I need that sense of closure before I drive off for the last time and begin my summer break. I'll find ways to incorporate closure activities into my final days of lessons, as much to make sure the kids get their chance to emotionally tie off the year as I do myself. I'll start choosing music to keep on my iPhone that has somehow imprinted on me when it comes to the end of the school year. I'll put in a little extra push in getting my work finished ahead of time, so on that final staff day, the actual last day when the kids are gone, I'll have time to talk to people a little and hopefully get in that sense of the year being done, with nothing left over afterward to concern me and only the open months of the summer ahead. I don't know, maybe it's a writer thing -- maybe I just need to feel that whatever story arcs had come to define my year have been brought to satisfying resolutions, as much as they can, even if I have to look for ways to manufacture that.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not at all saying that I'm going to feel a big hole in my psyche once the school year is over and spend that first weekend crying into a pillow. No way, no how, no dice, no chance. But I know how important it is for me to feel closure when something, anything ends. I don't know why I am this way, but I've been through this routine enough to know I'll need more of a closing than just standing on the sidewalk with the whole staff and waving goodbye to the departing buses (although that little ritual has happened enough times now that it helps). I've got PLENTY to do this summer as the Other Job gets to take over the full-time role, but I just want to make sure I feel it and know I'm done. There have been too many years when I've driven off for the final time with a car load of whatever personal stuff I'm bringing home and a slightly discombobulated feeling that won't go away for a day or two. I'm hoping that having scheduled this post so close to the end will be one more step in making sure the loose ends are dealt with.
Am I the only person who sees it this way?
Because really, at this point, I'm pretty much done. Mentally, that is. I'm not necessarily burned out and I still have enough curriculum left to keep the class busy (and a lot of it is engaging stuff that they really enjoy), but I've reached the point where I'm mostly going through the motions now. I'm really ready for the year to be done so I can move on to something else, whatever that might be.
Things are just feeling used up now. The little name plates on all of the lockers outside every classroom that were so cute and perfectly aligned back in September are hanging on for dear life everywhere you look. The hallways have so much stray clothing on the floors after school that they look like a Lost and Found pile gone viral. If you walk far enough, you'll probably find a chair just sitting by wall for no apparent reason, and it doesn't even surprise you even if you know it shouldn't be there. Art projects that represent such careful work by so many students have practically fused into the walls. The bright, clean, shiny, motivating atmosphere that permeates our school for so much of the academic year is now communicating more of a "We're all in this together, so let's just agree to get through the last few days" vibe. It's safe to say that nearly everyone senses and feels it.
But as ready as I am to be done, I know myself enough to realize it wouldn't go well for me to just pack up and walk away when that blessed last day arrives. I know all too well how badly I'm going to need some sense of closure before I can tag the school year with its terminal punctuation mark. To a degree, I'm like this every day. Before I can get back to my room and focus on what I need to take care of before I leave or what I want to have done before the following morning, I'll get some aimless wandering in, sometimes hanging out with people out front after the buses have all left, sometimes getting caught up in a pick-up conversation on the way back to my room, sometimes stopping in the classroom of one of my friends just to spend a little time talking and decompressing, finding a way to put a mental separation between the end of the day with the kids and the life waiting beyond.
So if I do this at the end of most days, you can imagine how badly I need that sense of closure before I drive off for the last time and begin my summer break. I'll find ways to incorporate closure activities into my final days of lessons, as much to make sure the kids get their chance to emotionally tie off the year as I do myself. I'll start choosing music to keep on my iPhone that has somehow imprinted on me when it comes to the end of the school year. I'll put in a little extra push in getting my work finished ahead of time, so on that final staff day, the actual last day when the kids are gone, I'll have time to talk to people a little and hopefully get in that sense of the year being done, with nothing left over afterward to concern me and only the open months of the summer ahead. I don't know, maybe it's a writer thing -- maybe I just need to feel that whatever story arcs had come to define my year have been brought to satisfying resolutions, as much as they can, even if I have to look for ways to manufacture that.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not at all saying that I'm going to feel a big hole in my psyche once the school year is over and spend that first weekend crying into a pillow. No way, no how, no dice, no chance. But I know how important it is for me to feel closure when something, anything ends. I don't know why I am this way, but I've been through this routine enough to know I'll need more of a closing than just standing on the sidewalk with the whole staff and waving goodbye to the departing buses (although that little ritual has happened enough times now that it helps). I've got PLENTY to do this summer as the Other Job gets to take over the full-time role, but I just want to make sure I feel it and know I'm done. There have been too many years when I've driven off for the final time with a car load of whatever personal stuff I'm bringing home and a slightly discombobulated feeling that won't go away for a day or two. I'm hoping that having scheduled this post so close to the end will be one more step in making sure the loose ends are dealt with.
Am I the only person who sees it this way?
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Day 26: Cinnamon Checks In
I knew it was too good to last.
I stayed at school a little late tonight, trying to get ahead of all the end of the year business that’s about to surge at me. So I’m sitting there in my classroom enjoying the peace and quiet, just listening to some music and winding down from the day when I hear the e-mail alert on my phone.
All right, before I go any further: If you somehow missed out on the odyssey I endured last winter, revisiting the posts I’ve linked below should catch you up....
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 1
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 2
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 3
The Conclusion of the Cinnamon Invasion
Okay, so now we’re all on the same page, here’s what I found waiting in my inbox.
**********
Hey buddy!
Sorry it’s been so long since you heard from me. Actually I guess this is the first time you’re hearing from me, isn’t it? Because we first met when I just showed up in your house that one time (hahaha!). I found your email address the morning I hacked your password and messed up all of your Internet stuff (you buy some very unsettling things in your online shopping, by the way; what’s up with that? Browser history, anyone? Here’s a tip: Clear it, the first chance you get.) just in case we were ever separated and I needed a way to get in touch. Well, you know now how that turned out.
Women, I tell ya...you just never know. You CAN NOT be too careful. Pretty sure I learned my lesson, though. I really thought I was safe. She was pretty, she smelled nice, she laughed at my jokes, she was a name brand instead of some discount store knock-off, she was only about ten inches tall so we were pretty compatible there, and she even wore a sparkly holiday dress. How am I not going to notice that whole package? Then she turns out to be some kind of demon with a thing for razor blades and wire hunting me down...man, I tell ya. That dude in The Crying Game has nothing on me when it comes to awful surprises.
But that distraction you gave me when you were storming around the house and yelling was all the time I needed to get out. Yeah, I had to use up most of the magic I’d been allotted for the season to do it, that’s true. And I had to find a new hat after I shredded up the old one to throw her (it? I don’t even know) off my tracks. Once I put a fair amount of real estate between me and that plastic chunk of crazy, I thumbed my way up into the ice-road trucker part of Canada and hooked up with some old buds of mine from the guild. I had some explaining to do (haha) but I passed around some of that awesome candy I’d found at your place and everything was cool. One of the guys even gave me one of his spare hats, so I’m as ready to rock and roll as I’ll ever be.
Which is pretty darned lucky, by the way, because if I knew just exactly how dire things were outside of our happy little holiday sanctuary last year, I probs would have tried to hide myself a little better than I did, just to stay out of the crossfire. Did I mention there’s pretty much a full-on WAR going on out here? Of course no one bothers to tell me any of this to me until I’ve settled in and all, but, um, YEAH. Battle Royale for the hearts and minds of the world and all, I’d call that kind of a deal. As soon as I heard about all that, I understood why they were so eager to forgive and welcome me back to the fold, even after all the stuff I’d pulled in the past (not that it wasn’t justified, mind you; I’m just saying). From what I can tell, my overlord status isn’t as important to the cause as it might have been some 200-300 years ago, and now they’re just happy to have one more body on the game board. Sure makes me feel needed. (That’s sarcasm, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell -- you and I weren’t housemates all that long, but quick thinking didn’t seem to be one of your strong points, so I just don’t want any of this sailing over your head.) I mean, don’t get me wrong and all -- being here beats being on the run. By a country mile, or, kilometer, I guess, since technically I’m still in Canada right now. I’m supposed to be moving out sometime later in your summer. I haven’t been told where yet, but really, anything will be better than Canada at this point. I can’t tell you how many of the nimrods I’m living with still think “Take off, hoser” is the peak of all that is comedic.
But anyway, I mostly just wanted to check in with you and let you know, that, yes, I’M FINE. I can only imagine how worried you’ve been since I just lit out without as much as a goodbye or a Happy New Year or anything, and I apologize so much for that. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it up to you at some point; like I said, I haven’t been told where I’m being deployed or exactly what my responsibilities will be once I’m there, but I’ve been listening closely to a lot of conversations that weren’t meant for my pointy ears, and I THINK there’s a CHANCE I MIGHT be finding my way down in your neck of the woods again at some point! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could hang during the holidays again? Talk about Bro Time! The memories.... I never went to college or anything, but I’m sure it probably would have been just as awesome as that month at your place.
Just to be on the safe side though, you probably want to have someone come out this summer to clean out your air ducts a little better.... I developed some kind of funky respiratory infection in early January, and I’m not saying it’s because of anything from your house, but, you know, I was there for a whole month so I’m not saying it isn’t, either. Well, mostly a whole month, except for that one night on the town...man, remember, just never trust the Barbies. I am not kidding about that.
Catch you on the flip side...Cinnamon out....
**********
Now, at this point, I realized I hadn’t checked the incoming address of the message. Of course it was my own, like one of those times someone is trying to be all stealth in hiding who they’re sending their email to, so they do some kind of BCC-ninja move when the only address that shows up on the message is their own. When I put it together that Cinnamon had been running around with my e-mail password since December, a lot of the more deviant spam I’ve been receiving since then suddenly made more sense.
The holidays are still many months down the road, but I’m already feeling a quiet dread about them now.
I stayed at school a little late tonight, trying to get ahead of all the end of the year business that’s about to surge at me. So I’m sitting there in my classroom enjoying the peace and quiet, just listening to some music and winding down from the day when I hear the e-mail alert on my phone.
All right, before I go any further: If you somehow missed out on the odyssey I endured last winter, revisiting the posts I’ve linked below should catch you up....
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 1
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 2
The Cinnamon Invasion, Week 3
The Conclusion of the Cinnamon Invasion
Okay, so now we’re all on the same page, here’s what I found waiting in my inbox.
**********
Hey buddy!
Sorry it’s been so long since you heard from me. Actually I guess this is the first time you’re hearing from me, isn’t it? Because we first met when I just showed up in your house that one time (hahaha!). I found your email address the morning I hacked your password and messed up all of your Internet stuff (you buy some very unsettling things in your online shopping, by the way; what’s up with that? Browser history, anyone? Here’s a tip: Clear it, the first chance you get.) just in case we were ever separated and I needed a way to get in touch. Well, you know now how that turned out.
Women, I tell ya...you just never know. You CAN NOT be too careful. Pretty sure I learned my lesson, though. I really thought I was safe. She was pretty, she smelled nice, she laughed at my jokes, she was a name brand instead of some discount store knock-off, she was only about ten inches tall so we were pretty compatible there, and she even wore a sparkly holiday dress. How am I not going to notice that whole package? Then she turns out to be some kind of demon with a thing for razor blades and wire hunting me down...man, I tell ya. That dude in The Crying Game has nothing on me when it comes to awful surprises.
But that distraction you gave me when you were storming around the house and yelling was all the time I needed to get out. Yeah, I had to use up most of the magic I’d been allotted for the season to do it, that’s true. And I had to find a new hat after I shredded up the old one to throw her (it? I don’t even know) off my tracks. Once I put a fair amount of real estate between me and that plastic chunk of crazy, I thumbed my way up into the ice-road trucker part of Canada and hooked up with some old buds of mine from the guild. I had some explaining to do (haha) but I passed around some of that awesome candy I’d found at your place and everything was cool. One of the guys even gave me one of his spare hats, so I’m as ready to rock and roll as I’ll ever be.
Which is pretty darned lucky, by the way, because if I knew just exactly how dire things were outside of our happy little holiday sanctuary last year, I probs would have tried to hide myself a little better than I did, just to stay out of the crossfire. Did I mention there’s pretty much a full-on WAR going on out here? Of course no one bothers to tell me any of this to me until I’ve settled in and all, but, um, YEAH. Battle Royale for the hearts and minds of the world and all, I’d call that kind of a deal. As soon as I heard about all that, I understood why they were so eager to forgive and welcome me back to the fold, even after all the stuff I’d pulled in the past (not that it wasn’t justified, mind you; I’m just saying). From what I can tell, my overlord status isn’t as important to the cause as it might have been some 200-300 years ago, and now they’re just happy to have one more body on the game board. Sure makes me feel needed. (That’s sarcasm, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell -- you and I weren’t housemates all that long, but quick thinking didn’t seem to be one of your strong points, so I just don’t want any of this sailing over your head.) I mean, don’t get me wrong and all -- being here beats being on the run. By a country mile, or, kilometer, I guess, since technically I’m still in Canada right now. I’m supposed to be moving out sometime later in your summer. I haven’t been told where yet, but really, anything will be better than Canada at this point. I can’t tell you how many of the nimrods I’m living with still think “Take off, hoser” is the peak of all that is comedic.
But anyway, I mostly just wanted to check in with you and let you know, that, yes, I’M FINE. I can only imagine how worried you’ve been since I just lit out without as much as a goodbye or a Happy New Year or anything, and I apologize so much for that. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it up to you at some point; like I said, I haven’t been told where I’m being deployed or exactly what my responsibilities will be once I’m there, but I’ve been listening closely to a lot of conversations that weren’t meant for my pointy ears, and I THINK there’s a CHANCE I MIGHT be finding my way down in your neck of the woods again at some point! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could hang during the holidays again? Talk about Bro Time! The memories.... I never went to college or anything, but I’m sure it probably would have been just as awesome as that month at your place.
Just to be on the safe side though, you probably want to have someone come out this summer to clean out your air ducts a little better.... I developed some kind of funky respiratory infection in early January, and I’m not saying it’s because of anything from your house, but, you know, I was there for a whole month so I’m not saying it isn’t, either. Well, mostly a whole month, except for that one night on the town...man, remember, just never trust the Barbies. I am not kidding about that.
Catch you on the flip side...Cinnamon out....
**********
Now, at this point, I realized I hadn’t checked the incoming address of the message. Of course it was my own, like one of those times someone is trying to be all stealth in hiding who they’re sending their email to, so they do some kind of BCC-ninja move when the only address that shows up on the message is their own. When I put it together that Cinnamon had been running around with my e-mail password since December, a lot of the more deviant spam I’ve been receiving since then suddenly made more sense.
The holidays are still many months down the road, but I’m already feeling a quiet dread about them now.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Day 25: The Memorial Day 500
Today is Memorial Day, which means a few different things:
*There are many events paying tribute to the service men and women who have made great personal sacrifices while defending our country. The sky is filled with flags, small towns and cities are filled with parades, and cemeteries are filled with people paying their respects to the fallen. As it should be.
*People in Minnesota who went to their cabins for the weekend will inevitably get rained on. I think that’s been a law since around 1960.
*There’s a lot of meat being grilled and consumed today.
*With all of the sales going on, odds are somebody somewhere is buying a new mattress.
*There are any number of classic rock radio stations across the country running their Memorial Day countdowns of “The 500 Greatest Rock-n-Roll Songs of All Time.”
Of all time? Really?
Here in the Cities, we have one station that considers itself the flagship of all that is classic rock. I won’t mention the call letters here because this station is such a self-parodying dinosaur of music it doesn’t deserve the mention. I listened to it back in junior high and high school when I was still educating myself on rock and roll history, but at some point in the past thirty years or so they slammed hard into a time loop which prevents them from acknowledging there have been anything other than token moments of quality music released after about 1981 (my cousin Eric just might be the program director).
Of course they’re doing a Rock-n-Roll 500 countdown, like they do every year, and they’re probably playing the same exact five hundred songs in the same exact order they did last year and the year before. Out of curiosity, I’m going online to read through their list of just the top 100 (I do have a life, after all) and divide their song selections into two parts of a timeline: songs released before 1981 and songs released after. I’m choosing 1981 as a cut off since that’s approximately the year I first became aware that rock and roll was more exciting and diverse than what was found in my parents’ collection of Carpenters LPs. Before I even start, my guess is this list will end up weighted on the older end of the timeline, just like it always has been....
Okay. Done. Called it.
Pre-1981 Songs: 91
Post-1981 Songs: 9
Come ON! NINE?!
For the record, here were the most recent releases that made their top 100:
Free Fallin’ - Tom Petty
Pride (in the Name of Love) - U2
Small Town - John Mellencamp
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
Back in Black - AC/DC
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - U2
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
Sweet Child of Mine - Guns n’ Roses
By my estimate, “Free Fallin’” is the most current song to appear on the list, since I remember it coming out in either 1989 or 1990. Which would mean it’s at least 25 years old.
Okay, look, Grandpa Radio: Since I don’t need to hear The Doors, The Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller, George Thorogood, and Foghat on constant repeat, I haven’t even had you as a mostly-ignored car stereo preset in over a decade. Consequently, I don’t care if your playlist blatantly panders to your demographic; that’s to be expected, after all. And I'm not saying that just because a song has been around for a long time means it can't be a good song. But conversely, just because it hasn't been around forever doesn't mean it isn't.
So please don’t call your countdown an “all-time” list when it clearly isn’t.
*There are many events paying tribute to the service men and women who have made great personal sacrifices while defending our country. The sky is filled with flags, small towns and cities are filled with parades, and cemeteries are filled with people paying their respects to the fallen. As it should be.
*People in Minnesota who went to their cabins for the weekend will inevitably get rained on. I think that’s been a law since around 1960.
*There’s a lot of meat being grilled and consumed today.
*With all of the sales going on, odds are somebody somewhere is buying a new mattress.
*There are any number of classic rock radio stations across the country running their Memorial Day countdowns of “The 500 Greatest Rock-n-Roll Songs of All Time.”
Of all time? Really?
Here in the Cities, we have one station that considers itself the flagship of all that is classic rock. I won’t mention the call letters here because this station is such a self-parodying dinosaur of music it doesn’t deserve the mention. I listened to it back in junior high and high school when I was still educating myself on rock and roll history, but at some point in the past thirty years or so they slammed hard into a time loop which prevents them from acknowledging there have been anything other than token moments of quality music released after about 1981 (my cousin Eric just might be the program director).
Of course they’re doing a Rock-n-Roll 500 countdown, like they do every year, and they’re probably playing the same exact five hundred songs in the same exact order they did last year and the year before. Out of curiosity, I’m going online to read through their list of just the top 100 (I do have a life, after all) and divide their song selections into two parts of a timeline: songs released before 1981 and songs released after. I’m choosing 1981 as a cut off since that’s approximately the year I first became aware that rock and roll was more exciting and diverse than what was found in my parents’ collection of Carpenters LPs. Before I even start, my guess is this list will end up weighted on the older end of the timeline, just like it always has been....
Okay. Done. Called it.
Pre-1981 Songs: 91
Post-1981 Songs: 9
Come ON! NINE?!
For the record, here were the most recent releases that made their top 100:
Free Fallin’ - Tom Petty
Pride (in the Name of Love) - U2
Small Town - John Mellencamp
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
Back in Black - AC/DC
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - U2
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
Sweet Child of Mine - Guns n’ Roses
By my estimate, “Free Fallin’” is the most current song to appear on the list, since I remember it coming out in either 1989 or 1990. Which would mean it’s at least 25 years old.
Okay, look, Grandpa Radio: Since I don’t need to hear The Doors, The Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller, George Thorogood, and Foghat on constant repeat, I haven’t even had you as a mostly-ignored car stereo preset in over a decade. Consequently, I don’t care if your playlist blatantly panders to your demographic; that’s to be expected, after all. And I'm not saying that just because a song has been around for a long time means it can't be a good song. But conversely, just because it hasn't been around forever doesn't mean it isn't.
So please don’t call your countdown an “all-time” list when it clearly isn’t.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Day 24: Quiet
Until about a year ago, I had spent a good deal of time wondering what was wrong with me. I felt I had been misunderstood by most people my entire life, and by no one more than myself.
I would look at the people I knew, the ones who seemed so confident and complete and happy with their lives and their families, and I couldn’t understand what was keeping me from being more like them. I saw so many things I thought were parts of normal life that were missing from mine. It’s not that I sat around for months and years at a time neck-deep in reflective self-loathing or anything, but I didn’t understand why things were the way they were. Eventually I decided there was probably something wrong with me, and for whatever reason I was the only one who wasn’t able to see it. I figured I could either continue to passively beat myself up over this (as I had been on and off for several years) or just accept how things were, and move on. I moved on.
And then I read Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It’s not overstating things to say this book changed my life.
Suddenly everything made sense. There wasn’t anything wrong with me; I was just something of an outlier in what had, until recently, been an under-recognized category, at least in terms of how dominant of a personality trait it could be.
The book described introverts as people who find their energy internally, and have a need for a certain amount of quiet and solitude to recharge and feel comfortable. Being in a crowd of people, whether that crowd is a concentrated group of four or an informal group of fifty, becomes overwhelming very quickly and difficult to internally manage. Introverts aren’t anti-social misfits who avoid all social interaction; they just don’t have a need for it, and are highly reactive to too much stimulation all at once. And since there aren’t as many of us as our extroverted counterparts, the world can sometimes be an uphill battle for us.
Reading Susan Cain describe her own experiences and share her extensive research and interviewing with other introverts made me feel like I had discovered a support group I hadn’t even realized I’d needed. It was like living a life where I was sure there was something chronically wrong with my body until, by chance, I encountered a medical specialist who was able to assure me: “No, that thing you’re worried about? It’s actually totally normal. You just weren’t aware of it.”
It explained so many things: How I often hesitate or openly refuse to put myself in a position where I’d be the center of attention without any control over what happens; why it’s impossible for me to feel comfortable if I’m sitting with my back to anyone in a meeting; why the mere act of having to sell fund raiser items door-to-door as a child or a teenager was physically and existentially painful; why I had a short list of go-to generic excuses to talk my way out of social engagements I see as overwhelming (and then would rationalize afterward that my absence wouldn’t even be noticed); the way I can throw around one-liners to a social networking audience, but come across as much more guarded in real life with people, unless I feel safe enough to trust they accept me; why following through on a blind date set up is something I’d procrastinate into oblivion. A fishing trip with the guys? I’ve never had a group of “the guys” to take a fishing trip with, and even if I had, that kind of concentrated proximity with casual acquaintances for that much time would be absolute torture for me. Even my typical gaming strategy of carefully observing my surroundings before taking action screams introversion.
I remember my mother being concerned that instead of riding my bike through the neighborhood looking for new friends, I was more than content to explore the woods behind our house alone, inserting myself into first-person adventure stories the whole time. I know there are people on the staff at my school who are convinced I’m arrogant and aloof and either don’t like them or just won’t give them the time of day, when the truth is much closer to me not knowing them well enough to have that level of trust and safety and connection to be comfortable with them. One of my closest friends at school is probably the most extroverted person I know. If she hadn’t made it a mission to bulldoze her way through every guarded wall of defense I usually have around me, we would never have gotten to know each other the way we do now.
The more I read, the more it reminded me how introversion had usually been a component of different personality inventories I’d taken as educational experiences during college and my post-grad work. Curious, I found an online version of the Meyers-Briggs personality test and looked it over. I’d seen enough of these tests and inventories like them in my professional life to recognize it was likely more reliable than a quiz trying to pinpoint my favorite fictional snack at Hogwarts, so I went through the extensive question list and answered it all as truthfully as I could. My introversion score came in at 100%.
I think of my work in school, and I’m glad I have a strong team of people I work with and that I have the level of trust I need to work with them effectively. But that hasn’t always been the case, and it won’t always remain that way. It’s not exactly a secret at my school that I’m not a fan of most meetings. I see them as a part of the process, a convention in a work environment that wants to prize collaboration. As an introvert, I don’t have the same need others do to talk things out and bounce around ideas. I’m usually more successful with a strategy of “Just tell me what you want me to do and let me go figure out the best way I can do it.” Historically, a lot of my better ideas have come from having the chance to work something out independently and then pursuing my own vision, and I’m confident that if these bigger projects had been brought to committee before I had a chance to realize them, they would not have been as effective.
I don’t see “not collaborating” and “working alone” as being either/or prospects. Different people just need different approaches to do their best work. I will commonly give my students the choice between either working in small groups or working independently when the opportunities come up in class. For me, that’s just as important of a differentiated learning accommodation as providing a variety of experiences to meet various academic abilities.
It seems like since Quiet came out, there have been all kinds of memes and groups and quizzes all about introverted people. I know of extroverts who are very bothered by this, like this fad is all about “Oh, these introverts think they’re so special all of the sudden, and I’m tired of seeing this crap painting them as multi-dimensional saints while the extroverts are labeled as little more than thoughtless, blathering annoyances.” Well, I would agree with that point if it were true, but I don’t think that’s exactly the case. I’m sure it is for some people -- after all, we introverts have all made our way through lives where we have been absolutely steamrolled into nonexistence by some of you extroverts, and, yeah, there are times we’ve probably been a little pissed about it. But everyone has been made by different experiences. And remember: We’ve been misunderstood for a long time. Coming into our own is not necessarily something we’re going to do with boldness and immediacy.
Everybody’s viewing the world through their own personal lens, which is something it wouldn’t hurt any of us to remember. I now know that if I go out to a happy hour some night after school (even if, to be frank, the place where I work doesn’t seem to have a lot of people interested in such things these days), I know I can manage it. In fact, I want to go -- I really do. I like a lot of the people I work with, and hopefully I’m comfortable enough with myself to make sure they understand that. I enjoy spending time with them, and if I have the chance to sit down with someone and get caught up in a deep and personal conversation, I know that’s a reward for me and hopefully for the other person, or people, as well. But I also know if I don’t find that and I wind up with people where small talk and bantering surrounds the table all night, I’m probably going to leave early and not feel the least bit guilty about it.
Because if I do that, it’s not a judgment about anyone else. It’s just finally being able to acknowledge who I am and take care of that.
I would look at the people I knew, the ones who seemed so confident and complete and happy with their lives and their families, and I couldn’t understand what was keeping me from being more like them. I saw so many things I thought were parts of normal life that were missing from mine. It’s not that I sat around for months and years at a time neck-deep in reflective self-loathing or anything, but I didn’t understand why things were the way they were. Eventually I decided there was probably something wrong with me, and for whatever reason I was the only one who wasn’t able to see it. I figured I could either continue to passively beat myself up over this (as I had been on and off for several years) or just accept how things were, and move on. I moved on.
And then I read Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It’s not overstating things to say this book changed my life.
Suddenly everything made sense. There wasn’t anything wrong with me; I was just something of an outlier in what had, until recently, been an under-recognized category, at least in terms of how dominant of a personality trait it could be.
The book described introverts as people who find their energy internally, and have a need for a certain amount of quiet and solitude to recharge and feel comfortable. Being in a crowd of people, whether that crowd is a concentrated group of four or an informal group of fifty, becomes overwhelming very quickly and difficult to internally manage. Introverts aren’t anti-social misfits who avoid all social interaction; they just don’t have a need for it, and are highly reactive to too much stimulation all at once. And since there aren’t as many of us as our extroverted counterparts, the world can sometimes be an uphill battle for us.
Reading Susan Cain describe her own experiences and share her extensive research and interviewing with other introverts made me feel like I had discovered a support group I hadn’t even realized I’d needed. It was like living a life where I was sure there was something chronically wrong with my body until, by chance, I encountered a medical specialist who was able to assure me: “No, that thing you’re worried about? It’s actually totally normal. You just weren’t aware of it.”
It explained so many things: How I often hesitate or openly refuse to put myself in a position where I’d be the center of attention without any control over what happens; why it’s impossible for me to feel comfortable if I’m sitting with my back to anyone in a meeting; why the mere act of having to sell fund raiser items door-to-door as a child or a teenager was physically and existentially painful; why I had a short list of go-to generic excuses to talk my way out of social engagements I see as overwhelming (and then would rationalize afterward that my absence wouldn’t even be noticed); the way I can throw around one-liners to a social networking audience, but come across as much more guarded in real life with people, unless I feel safe enough to trust they accept me; why following through on a blind date set up is something I’d procrastinate into oblivion. A fishing trip with the guys? I’ve never had a group of “the guys” to take a fishing trip with, and even if I had, that kind of concentrated proximity with casual acquaintances for that much time would be absolute torture for me. Even my typical gaming strategy of carefully observing my surroundings before taking action screams introversion.
I remember my mother being concerned that instead of riding my bike through the neighborhood looking for new friends, I was more than content to explore the woods behind our house alone, inserting myself into first-person adventure stories the whole time. I know there are people on the staff at my school who are convinced I’m arrogant and aloof and either don’t like them or just won’t give them the time of day, when the truth is much closer to me not knowing them well enough to have that level of trust and safety and connection to be comfortable with them. One of my closest friends at school is probably the most extroverted person I know. If she hadn’t made it a mission to bulldoze her way through every guarded wall of defense I usually have around me, we would never have gotten to know each other the way we do now.
The more I read, the more it reminded me how introversion had usually been a component of different personality inventories I’d taken as educational experiences during college and my post-grad work. Curious, I found an online version of the Meyers-Briggs personality test and looked it over. I’d seen enough of these tests and inventories like them in my professional life to recognize it was likely more reliable than a quiz trying to pinpoint my favorite fictional snack at Hogwarts, so I went through the extensive question list and answered it all as truthfully as I could. My introversion score came in at 100%.
I think of my work in school, and I’m glad I have a strong team of people I work with and that I have the level of trust I need to work with them effectively. But that hasn’t always been the case, and it won’t always remain that way. It’s not exactly a secret at my school that I’m not a fan of most meetings. I see them as a part of the process, a convention in a work environment that wants to prize collaboration. As an introvert, I don’t have the same need others do to talk things out and bounce around ideas. I’m usually more successful with a strategy of “Just tell me what you want me to do and let me go figure out the best way I can do it.” Historically, a lot of my better ideas have come from having the chance to work something out independently and then pursuing my own vision, and I’m confident that if these bigger projects had been brought to committee before I had a chance to realize them, they would not have been as effective.
I don’t see “not collaborating” and “working alone” as being either/or prospects. Different people just need different approaches to do their best work. I will commonly give my students the choice between either working in small groups or working independently when the opportunities come up in class. For me, that’s just as important of a differentiated learning accommodation as providing a variety of experiences to meet various academic abilities.
It seems like since Quiet came out, there have been all kinds of memes and groups and quizzes all about introverted people. I know of extroverts who are very bothered by this, like this fad is all about “Oh, these introverts think they’re so special all of the sudden, and I’m tired of seeing this crap painting them as multi-dimensional saints while the extroverts are labeled as little more than thoughtless, blathering annoyances.” Well, I would agree with that point if it were true, but I don’t think that’s exactly the case. I’m sure it is for some people -- after all, we introverts have all made our way through lives where we have been absolutely steamrolled into nonexistence by some of you extroverts, and, yeah, there are times we’ve probably been a little pissed about it. But everyone has been made by different experiences. And remember: We’ve been misunderstood for a long time. Coming into our own is not necessarily something we’re going to do with boldness and immediacy.
Everybody’s viewing the world through their own personal lens, which is something it wouldn’t hurt any of us to remember. I now know that if I go out to a happy hour some night after school (even if, to be frank, the place where I work doesn’t seem to have a lot of people interested in such things these days), I know I can manage it. In fact, I want to go -- I really do. I like a lot of the people I work with, and hopefully I’m comfortable enough with myself to make sure they understand that. I enjoy spending time with them, and if I have the chance to sit down with someone and get caught up in a deep and personal conversation, I know that’s a reward for me and hopefully for the other person, or people, as well. But I also know if I don’t find that and I wind up with people where small talk and bantering surrounds the table all night, I’m probably going to leave early and not feel the least bit guilty about it.
Because if I do that, it’s not a judgment about anyone else. It’s just finally being able to acknowledge who I am and take care of that.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Day 23: The Disney Divergence
I’m just going to say this: Disney? I don’t get it.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the whole “magic” of the core Disney universe. If there are people who are completely captivated by that, hey, great for them. The appeal has just never connected with me. Mice, ducks, all animated creatures great and small, it all just seems so arbitrary. Where does this cult-like fan devotion come from?
It’s not like I’m coming at this from an alien perspective, mind you. I grew up in America, and I had a childhood that included “The Wonderful World of Disney” on TV every Sunday night. We watched it in our house, hoping to see cartoons, but usually getting some kind of short movie from the 60s or 70s that may or may not have featured animals, Angela Lansbury, Jodie Foster, Kurt Russell, or the wilderness. They usually didn’t do much for me because they came from the same pool of movies that would have been acceptable to watch at school, so seeing them on the living room TV was one lateral step away from having to do homework. Kids growing up in the 1970s learned the code that Disney movies almost always meant G-rated family afternoons in the summer, and if you weren’t a family that went to the movie theater that often, you jumped at whatever chance you were given. Granted, Disney had a theatrical creative renaissance in the 1990s with movies like “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” and several others that may have made the leap from lunch boxes to special edition DVD releases to Broadway musicals, but to me those movies always felt like it came with asterisks when compared to the older, classic Disney material.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids. I’m sure the appeal of the theme parks increases tenfold if you visit with your children and you know they’re going to light up like candles with excitement just to be there. But I also know adults who get just as excited about those trips, and have taken Disney vacations while leaving the kids at home, and have still had photos taken with costumed characters. Adults, as in plural. I know people who go nearly every year, and, to a degree, see the time of normal life between vacations as little more than down time. I was a guest at Disney World once. (Granted, I was only staying at the hotel and was in Orlando for a different reason, but the bill on my credit card statement and the subsequent years of snail mail pamphlets I’ve received since are proof enough I was a paying visitor.) I remember a swimming pool that was mostly wading pool depth which took up at least nine acres of real estate in the center of the cluster of buildings that made up our...hotel? Resort? Neighborhood? Commune? I remember walking out of my room and turning right and seeing a three-story pair of spangly cowboy boots about five doors down, and they frightened me. I also remember one of the most expensive souvenir shops I’ve ever seen.
I know if I ever conversationally brought up my lack of understanding with the true Disney loyalists, it’s likely I’d be dismissed for not knowing how to just have some fun, which could be a point I wouldn’t readily dismiss. But doesn’t that particular brand of fun come with a price? And I don’t just mean the time invested, or the potential for cranky, tired children during the trip, or the inevitable inconveniences that come with traveling, but a financial (and from what I understand, usually a none too small) price? Couldn’t a similar level of fun be found in other ways?
Why does it need to be Disney? What am I missing here? I see so many others getting so worked up about it and find myself on the outside looking in. It makes me feel like I would be the one person in the world who doesn’t think the Beatles are the greatest band in...
...wait a minute....
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the whole “magic” of the core Disney universe. If there are people who are completely captivated by that, hey, great for them. The appeal has just never connected with me. Mice, ducks, all animated creatures great and small, it all just seems so arbitrary. Where does this cult-like fan devotion come from?
It’s not like I’m coming at this from an alien perspective, mind you. I grew up in America, and I had a childhood that included “The Wonderful World of Disney” on TV every Sunday night. We watched it in our house, hoping to see cartoons, but usually getting some kind of short movie from the 60s or 70s that may or may not have featured animals, Angela Lansbury, Jodie Foster, Kurt Russell, or the wilderness. They usually didn’t do much for me because they came from the same pool of movies that would have been acceptable to watch at school, so seeing them on the living room TV was one lateral step away from having to do homework. Kids growing up in the 1970s learned the code that Disney movies almost always meant G-rated family afternoons in the summer, and if you weren’t a family that went to the movie theater that often, you jumped at whatever chance you were given. Granted, Disney had a theatrical creative renaissance in the 1990s with movies like “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” and several others that may have made the leap from lunch boxes to special edition DVD releases to Broadway musicals, but to me those movies always felt like it came with asterisks when compared to the older, classic Disney material.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids. I’m sure the appeal of the theme parks increases tenfold if you visit with your children and you know they’re going to light up like candles with excitement just to be there. But I also know adults who get just as excited about those trips, and have taken Disney vacations while leaving the kids at home, and have still had photos taken with costumed characters. Adults, as in plural. I know people who go nearly every year, and, to a degree, see the time of normal life between vacations as little more than down time. I was a guest at Disney World once. (Granted, I was only staying at the hotel and was in Orlando for a different reason, but the bill on my credit card statement and the subsequent years of snail mail pamphlets I’ve received since are proof enough I was a paying visitor.) I remember a swimming pool that was mostly wading pool depth which took up at least nine acres of real estate in the center of the cluster of buildings that made up our...hotel? Resort? Neighborhood? Commune? I remember walking out of my room and turning right and seeing a three-story pair of spangly cowboy boots about five doors down, and they frightened me. I also remember one of the most expensive souvenir shops I’ve ever seen.
I know if I ever conversationally brought up my lack of understanding with the true Disney loyalists, it’s likely I’d be dismissed for not knowing how to just have some fun, which could be a point I wouldn’t readily dismiss. But doesn’t that particular brand of fun come with a price? And I don’t just mean the time invested, or the potential for cranky, tired children during the trip, or the inevitable inconveniences that come with traveling, but a financial (and from what I understand, usually a none too small) price? Couldn’t a similar level of fun be found in other ways?
Why does it need to be Disney? What am I missing here? I see so many others getting so worked up about it and find myself on the outside looking in. It makes me feel like I would be the one person in the world who doesn’t think the Beatles are the greatest band in...
...wait a minute....
Friday, May 22, 2015
Day 22: Your Summer Must List
During each of the two previous years I've posted every day in May, I wrote posts about the big movies I was looking forward to seeing that summer. I never got around to that this year for some reason. But when I got home tonight I saw my newest issue of Entertainment Weekly in the mailbox (yes, I still have some actual, physical magazines delivered to my house). This wasn't just a regular issue, mind you, but a special double issue featuring "the 110 movies, TV, music, books, and more!" coming out in the summer of 2015 that I won't be able to live without if I don't take advantage of the glories they are waiting to bestow upon me.
Therefore, I'm going to take a look at this "must-list" right now and see how much of it I agree with. I don't want to bag on things I don't find interesting, so I'm only going to comment on the things that I find any degree of interesting. In a slight change of pace -- mostly just to entertain myself -- I'll be writing my first reactions to the list as I read them, and write those responses immediately. So be warned: Tonight's post is coming at you as an unproofed first draft. There will likely be typos and moments of unconventional phrasing, but at least I'll be able to look back on this list to remind myself if there was anything going on this summer, entertainment-wise, that I wanted to check out.
Here we go.
MOVIES
"Jurassic World" - I'm looking forward to this. I loved the surprise of the first one, thought the second one was okay, barely remember the one time I saw the third. A reboot could be a good thing here.
"Trainwreck" - Amy Schumer is fearlessly hilarious. This is a serious must for me.
"The Man from U.N.C.L.E." - Spy movie. Late summer. Probably.
"Fantastic Four" - There's a lot of buzz about the unconventional approach to the source material (comic book), so I'll see it mostly out of curiosity. It might turn out really cool.
"Vacation" - Comedy. Late summer. Why not?
"Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" - I think the series has been pretty strong overall, even if the movies haven't exactly stuck with me as favorites. I'm looking forward to this one.
"Terminator Genisys" I've seen all the others. Why stop now? Another reboot, which could be interesting in what they do with the existing story.
"Masterminds" - I don't know anything about this so I looked it up. Pretty good cast, so I'll probably check it out.
"Ant-Man" - This one is going into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I hope it works. Paul Rudd as a superhero is as interesting of a choice as Robert Downey, Jr. was before "Iron Man." So, maybe.
"Inside Out" - Probably. Pixar has a pretty darn good track record.
"Ted 2" - Maybe. Or probably. If there's a day in the middle of the week when I'm bored.
TV
"True Detective" - Of course.
"Zoo" - A sci-fi summer series about animal attacks. I'll give it a shot, but if it goes all "Under the Dome" or "Falling Skies" too quickly, I'm done.
"The Brink" - More because it's on HBO than because it's got Jack Black in it, but the previews I've seen look interesting.
"Documentary Now!" - Never heard of this, but Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Fred Armisen making a fake documentary is intriguing.
"Fear the Walking Dead" - Absolutely.
"Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" - A series about old, washed up rock stars could have potential. Plus Denis Leary is usually great.
MUSIC
Entertainment Weekly and I don't see eye-to-eye on much here. Or anything. But I might actually watch an episode of "Fox and Friends" if Alice Cooper is going to play on it. I love the idea of the people who consistently picket Alice Cooper concerts (whom I imagine are part of the "Fox and Friends" demographic) seeing Alice interact with their TV buddies.
BOOKS
None of my go-to name-brand authors have releases mentioned in this magazine, so I'm going to skip this section too. Not because I'm disappointed they didn't list my favorites, but I've already got several thousand pages of summer reading waiting for me.
Bring it on, summer. I'm more than ready for you.
Therefore, I'm going to take a look at this "must-list" right now and see how much of it I agree with. I don't want to bag on things I don't find interesting, so I'm only going to comment on the things that I find any degree of interesting. In a slight change of pace -- mostly just to entertain myself -- I'll be writing my first reactions to the list as I read them, and write those responses immediately. So be warned: Tonight's post is coming at you as an unproofed first draft. There will likely be typos and moments of unconventional phrasing, but at least I'll be able to look back on this list to remind myself if there was anything going on this summer, entertainment-wise, that I wanted to check out.
Here we go.
MOVIES
"Jurassic World" - I'm looking forward to this. I loved the surprise of the first one, thought the second one was okay, barely remember the one time I saw the third. A reboot could be a good thing here.
"Trainwreck" - Amy Schumer is fearlessly hilarious. This is a serious must for me.
"The Man from U.N.C.L.E." - Spy movie. Late summer. Probably.
"Fantastic Four" - There's a lot of buzz about the unconventional approach to the source material (comic book), so I'll see it mostly out of curiosity. It might turn out really cool.
"Vacation" - Comedy. Late summer. Why not?
"Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" - I think the series has been pretty strong overall, even if the movies haven't exactly stuck with me as favorites. I'm looking forward to this one.
"Terminator Genisys" I've seen all the others. Why stop now? Another reboot, which could be interesting in what they do with the existing story.
"Masterminds" - I don't know anything about this so I looked it up. Pretty good cast, so I'll probably check it out.
"Ant-Man" - This one is going into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I hope it works. Paul Rudd as a superhero is as interesting of a choice as Robert Downey, Jr. was before "Iron Man." So, maybe.
"Inside Out" - Probably. Pixar has a pretty darn good track record.
"Ted 2" - Maybe. Or probably. If there's a day in the middle of the week when I'm bored.
TV
"True Detective" - Of course.
"Zoo" - A sci-fi summer series about animal attacks. I'll give it a shot, but if it goes all "Under the Dome" or "Falling Skies" too quickly, I'm done.
"The Brink" - More because it's on HBO than because it's got Jack Black in it, but the previews I've seen look interesting.
"Documentary Now!" - Never heard of this, but Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Fred Armisen making a fake documentary is intriguing.
"Fear the Walking Dead" - Absolutely.
"Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" - A series about old, washed up rock stars could have potential. Plus Denis Leary is usually great.
MUSIC
Entertainment Weekly and I don't see eye-to-eye on much here. Or anything. But I might actually watch an episode of "Fox and Friends" if Alice Cooper is going to play on it. I love the idea of the people who consistently picket Alice Cooper concerts (whom I imagine are part of the "Fox and Friends" demographic) seeing Alice interact with their TV buddies.
BOOKS
None of my go-to name-brand authors have releases mentioned in this magazine, so I'm going to skip this section too. Not because I'm disappointed they didn't list my favorites, but I've already got several thousand pages of summer reading waiting for me.
Bring it on, summer. I'm more than ready for you.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Day 21: The Year That Was / The Year That Will Be
It seems every year I have lunch with people who check the horoscopes in the newspaper. Last year on my birthday I posted what it read for "Your Birthday Today," just to see how prescient the guidance of Holiday Mathis would prove to be. Here's what it said:
"You are highly intuitive now, reading the thought bubbles above people's heads. June gives you a stage for your talent. You have intense powers of focus and group support in July, so your ideas will take off like wildfire. September brings an important sale and the start of a lifestyle improvement. Scorpio and Libra people adore you."
A year later...
I'd like to think I'm intuitive, but on the other hand I'm also very literate, and usually not that skilled at picking up the subtext in a conversation. June was the first month I was able to try out the life of a full-time writer, which was awesome, but I don't know if you could call my small, dark air-conditioned office much of a stage. I can't remember much about July that would have required intense powers of focus, except, again, living in the revision cave, and I don't know if any writer would describe the painstaking, tedious work of revision as anything like wildfire. I don't remember any big sales in September or the start of any life improvements, but I guess I was starting a new school year with a great team and great classes. That should count for something. As for the Scorpios, the Libras, and their supposed adoration? Well, it seems they're hiding.
Here's what it had to say today, along with my annotations:
"The others will be trying to catch up with you this year (so...same as always then?). You'll be prolific. Whatever it is you love to produce -- smiles, phone calls, cookies, kind words, doodles, deals, your special product -- you'll turn out record amounts. (Looks like you better pare down that inbox a little bit, Carrie -- apparently I'll be keeping it busy.) July shows you carefully plotting (I'm definitely more plotter than pantser when it comes to writing, so this actually fits, and probably bleeds over into other parts of life as well), and August shows you going full force (I'd be more excited about "full force" if this was from December when the new Star Wars movie comes out). Sagittarius and Leo people adore you. (Hey there, all you Sagittariuses -- or is it Sagittarii? -- and Leos. What's up....? *wink*) Your lucky numbers are: 45, 24, 31, 1 and 17." (The omission of the Oxford comma in that number list bothers me, but I left it out for the integrity of the quote. If anyone sees any reason I should be excited about these numbers, I'd love to hear it.)
Again, it looks like I've got quite a year ahead of me. Because what other source are you going to rely on when it comes to predicting the future than the same page of the newspaper where you can find "Mark Trail" and the Wuzzles?
"You are highly intuitive now, reading the thought bubbles above people's heads. June gives you a stage for your talent. You have intense powers of focus and group support in July, so your ideas will take off like wildfire. September brings an important sale and the start of a lifestyle improvement. Scorpio and Libra people adore you."
A year later...
I'd like to think I'm intuitive, but on the other hand I'm also very literate, and usually not that skilled at picking up the subtext in a conversation. June was the first month I was able to try out the life of a full-time writer, which was awesome, but I don't know if you could call my small, dark air-conditioned office much of a stage. I can't remember much about July that would have required intense powers of focus, except, again, living in the revision cave, and I don't know if any writer would describe the painstaking, tedious work of revision as anything like wildfire. I don't remember any big sales in September or the start of any life improvements, but I guess I was starting a new school year with a great team and great classes. That should count for something. As for the Scorpios, the Libras, and their supposed adoration? Well, it seems they're hiding.
Here's what it had to say today, along with my annotations:
"The others will be trying to catch up with you this year (so...same as always then?). You'll be prolific. Whatever it is you love to produce -- smiles, phone calls, cookies, kind words, doodles, deals, your special product -- you'll turn out record amounts. (Looks like you better pare down that inbox a little bit, Carrie -- apparently I'll be keeping it busy.) July shows you carefully plotting (I'm definitely more plotter than pantser when it comes to writing, so this actually fits, and probably bleeds over into other parts of life as well), and August shows you going full force (I'd be more excited about "full force" if this was from December when the new Star Wars movie comes out). Sagittarius and Leo people adore you. (Hey there, all you Sagittariuses -- or is it Sagittarii? -- and Leos. What's up....? *wink*) Your lucky numbers are: 45, 24, 31, 1 and 17." (The omission of the Oxford comma in that number list bothers me, but I left it out for the integrity of the quote. If anyone sees any reason I should be excited about these numbers, I'd love to hear it.)
Again, it looks like I've got quite a year ahead of me. Because what other source are you going to rely on when it comes to predicting the future than the same page of the newspaper where you can find "Mark Trail" and the Wuzzles?
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Day 20: Q & A, Round Three
After three years of blogging every day in May, there have been a few post topics I've repeated each year, just because they're fun to do. For one of them, I put out the call to my Facebook friends to see if anyone has questions they'd like to ask. I leave this very open to whatever they might come up with and always do my best to come up with actual answers. Here's the crop from this year:
Are there any individual TV show episodes that you either go back to rewatch or just consider the pinnacle of a series?
Skip this if you don't like spoilers, but since all of these shows have been around and over for awhile I think it's fair to say the statute of limitations on spoiler accusations has expired.
Breaking Bad: The episode where Walt finds a way out of Gus's employment by blowing him up in a nursing home.
The Walking Dead: Tougher for a definitive episode because it's more about moments for me on this show. But if pressed, I'd go with the episode when the Governor couldn't pull back far enough to see reason and killed Herschel. That set a lot of things in motion for the following seasons.
Freaks and Geeks: When Daniel played Dungeons and Dragons with Sam and his friends.
The Office: Michael's proposal to Holly. The arc that defined him the entire series was perfectly resolved in that moment.
The West Wing: Two Cathedrals. Period.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Best of Both Worlds. I was surprised I felt strongly enough to include this one, but it really was great.
Community: The party at Troy and Abed's apartment that spawned the alternate timelines. Genius.
Will you retire to Florida with the rest of us?
My friend Dax used to live in Florida. When he’d tell me about the unusual things that seem to frequently happen there and I’d react with any amount of disbelief, his response, which evolved into a catch phrase for us, would always be, “And yet somehow Florida still surprises you.” So, I'm not sure about Florida. Plus the hurricanes. And for all we know, by the time I reach retirement age half of the state will be three feet underwater.
Pancakes or French toast?
Pancakes.
Do you think there will ever come a day when electronics is considered archaic technology?
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Unless humanity finds a way to destroy itself first. Side answer: Interestingly coincidental question to ask. I’m currently preparing a series of synopsis ideas to send to my agent for her input about which of those ideas might be the strongest for the next book I start writing, and one of them has a pretty big plot point involving a technology that could be the next step beyond electronics, or at least serve as a bridge between electronics and whatever would come next.
Will Cinnamon and Evil Barbie be back for next holiday season?
No spoilers. But I’d follow the remaining May blog posts closely if you’re curious.
What is your favorite place to visit?
My happy place is probably spending a temperate evening walking through downtown Poulsbo, Washington with my adopted PNW family, just visiting, enjoying the evening, looking out at Liberty Bay and knowing I have absolutely no responsibilities for at least a few days. And even though it’s probably more of a necessary evil to the people out there than anything else, I still love the novelty of the ferry ride into or out of Seattle. I don't know if it's a "favorite," but it's the first place that came to mind and it did so quickly.
Will you be my friend?
As long as I don’t have to clean up after the alpacas.
Are you truly a Gemini or a Taurus?
Gemini, dammit. There is no either/or at play here. Once upon a time it was May 21st. The end.
Do you find that every year you have a student that stands out to you in class, not academically?
Honestly, I don’t. Not every year. And I attribute that to specializing, just because there are so many more kids I work with each year now and I don’t have the chances to build the same kinds of relationships with them as I did when I worked with them all day long. But every so often some will stand out, for any number of reasons, in either positive or negative ways.
What is your funniest moment teaching?
I couldn’t possibly isolate one moment, but I’m sure when I sit down someday to think over my career and plan out my definitive work of literary fiction that will show exactly what teaching in 21st century America is like, it will probably be in there somewhere.
What one thing would you find life much harder without?
My huge, unusually close extended family. Just because there are so many people I rely on for so many different things in life, and I would be lost without them.
Why do you write middle grade and not YA? Is it because that’s what you teach?
Short answer: Yes, it’s mostly because that’s what I teach. That’s what I have in front of my face every day, and those are the people I think about as ideas begin to form. Longer answer: I personally believe that middle grade literature is more important than young adult, in a formative sense; I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but I think most YA books are written with specific, built-in audiences in mind. If you read YA in any genre, you have things about it that you crave, whether you’re 15 or 25 or 40. I think middle grade can be a harder sell because so many readers are still emerging and determining their preferences. I see a lot of kids read the same book over and over, not because they necessarily love it, but because they haven’t found better options for themselves yet. I want to be a part of providing those options. I have nothing against YA though, and I wouldn't rule out writing at that level someday if I found a story that needed telling. In fact, one of the synopsis ideas I'm preparing for my agent right now would be better suited as a YA novel just due to the subject matter. I'd call it a dark horse as far as winning the title of Next Project anytime soon, but it's definitely earned a spot in the queue.
Dog or cat? And why?
Dog. Because they’re better and I’m not as allergic to them. Having said that though, I can spend days staying with my friend Dax, his wife Melissa, and their pets -- one of which is a cat -- without any real kind of reaction, even though we're all pretty vigilant about keeping Kitty out of my lap. Some dogs don’t bother me at all, while some dogs (Toby) can just lick me once and fill my arm with enormous red insanity welts.
As much as I love dogs, I still put it at very long odds that I’ll be getting another one any time soon (I'm measuring that in years). There are different reasons why, but ultimately what I went through before broke me in half, and there are still too many wounds that will rip open on me with very little provocation.
Who has been the most influential in your writing style and do you share that with your students?
That’s really tough. Back in high school and college I got a lot of Stephen King comparisons, mostly because I wrote so much friggin’ horror. And then like ten, fifteen years back it was more Garrison Keillor -- not because of the goofy small town stories but more about striving for the same authenticity of voice in his more sincere moments. Now I mostly try to be like any number of writers I read who can come up with such a perfectly crafted line in their work that I don’t have any other choice but to be pulled out of the story to pause and admire it. (Justin Cronin is one who comes to mind.) Middle grade-wise, I love the way Katherine Patterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" does such a perfect job of creating characters and a realistic sense of place; I don't know if I'd call her specifically a favorite, but I've probably put as much time into studying that book as I have reading it. As far as sharing with the students...I don’t teach anything to do with reading or writing. Some people see this as a head-scratching irony, but that’s just how things settled. My students know about my author side and are well past thinking it’s any big deal anymore (though I did have to clarify for them once what the difference is between having an “agent” and a “spy”). The only way I could share anything to do with writing with them would be if I used something I wrote as a read aloud in class, and I would never do that. I’m too introverted to do it comfortably, and see it as far too self-serving.
If you couldn’t be a writer or a teacher what would you be?
I have never seriously considered anything else. However, to answer the question the best I can, other people have said before they think because of my reflective nature, the insights that follow that and perspectives I've shared, I would have been a good therapist. Not sure about that one myself....
If you could only eat five foods for the rest of your life, what would they be? Bacon. Smoked salmon, only from the PNW. Tortellini alfredo. Thanksgiving turkey. Soft, heavily-chipped chocolate chip cookies.
Is there a dream or goal that you have (outside of being a writer/teacher) that you are working towards? Outside of the whole “become a published author” thing, my ambitions for life have all been fairly modest. I suppose I still would like to get married someday, though admittedly this isn’t the easiest prospect for an off-the-charts introvert like me. Not to mention that as the years roll by, it seems to become less and less likely I’ll be able to find a woman willing to put up with this defining collection of idiosyncrasies I have that take the place of any kind of personality. (That’s just a self-deprecating joke, Mom -- calm down).
Do you want to keep living in Minnesota? Where will you probably retire?
I’ve never seriously considered living anywhere else, though the past few winters have me realizing there are some things about living here that I truly hate (January and, to a lesser degree, February, to be specific). I haven’t thought much about retirement other than a recently planted seed of hope that I might be able to do it sooner than I've always thought. It’s a fun little game to listen to people at school speculate how many years are left before I'll be able to write my way out of the classroom (which, trust me, is not guaranteed to ever happen anyway). I could easily see myself settling in the PNW, but I’m not sure how the whole cloud and rain thing there would work if it were more permanent.
Do you have any underrated movies in mind?
YES!! 1. "Mystery Men." 2. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." 3. "True Romance." Probably even more if I took the time to think about it. Maybe this year I’ll have a staff underrated movie marathon party/open house in the middle of summer. I’ll provide a schedule and people can show up to see the ones they’re interested in, and that can be a big fun summertime staff get together. Or maybe we can do it at someone else’s house. If they have a pool or something....or maybe I'll just lazily forget about the whole thing. Good chance, that.
If you could go back and go to college again, would you go to the same place or some place else?
I’ve always said if I had the chance to relive any month of my life, I would choose any random month I spent in college. I don’t think it had so much to do specifically with St. Cloud though. I think it was more about experiencing the way the whole world seemed to open up around me while I was there, which probably would have happened to most people wherever they may have gone to school.
Can you identify characteristics of dog people or cat people?
Dog people are probably just better in several ways because dogs. Cat people either seem a tiny bit off to begin with, or they surprise me because I can’t imagine why someone would choose a cat over a dog. There’s just no sense in that. Sorry, cat people. I won't be playing on your softball team anytime soon.
Best lines from movies, or books:
I took these from my Facebook quotes section:
"If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies... we draw our lines around these moments of pain and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us." --Neil Gaiman
"It's a wonderful thing to push on alone toward the horizon and have it be your own horizon and not someone else's. It's a good feeling, lonely and magnificent and frightening and peaceful..." -- Garrison Keillor
"It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people." -- C.S. Lewis
Movies are tougher since there are so many lines I could quote. A current favorite is probably from "Avengers: Age of Ultron," when Captain America tells the rest of the team in a battle, “You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed, walk it off.”
What is your favorite metal, and why?
Vibranium, because that’s what they use to make Captain America’s shield.
What are your five favorite commercials, and why?
Sorry, Paul. I thought about this and really tried to reward you with a clever answer, but I can't think of any commercials that have me lighting up with excitement, or even acquiescence, when they come on.
What is the book that made you want to write?
I think the writing was ignited by two things happening in very close proximity on my personal timeline: In 4th grade or so, I first read "A Wrinkle in Time" within months of seeing the original "Star Wars." Imagine that pairing being presented to a hyperactive young imagination that hadn't yet found the creative outlet it didn't know it needed.
Why is your sister, Jenny, so sexy?
I can think of no good way to answer this. Ask her husband.
Are there any individual TV show episodes that you either go back to rewatch or just consider the pinnacle of a series?
Skip this if you don't like spoilers, but since all of these shows have been around and over for awhile I think it's fair to say the statute of limitations on spoiler accusations has expired.
Breaking Bad: The episode where Walt finds a way out of Gus's employment by blowing him up in a nursing home.
The Walking Dead: Tougher for a definitive episode because it's more about moments for me on this show. But if pressed, I'd go with the episode when the Governor couldn't pull back far enough to see reason and killed Herschel. That set a lot of things in motion for the following seasons.
Freaks and Geeks: When Daniel played Dungeons and Dragons with Sam and his friends.
The Office: Michael's proposal to Holly. The arc that defined him the entire series was perfectly resolved in that moment.
The West Wing: Two Cathedrals. Period.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Best of Both Worlds. I was surprised I felt strongly enough to include this one, but it really was great.
Community: The party at Troy and Abed's apartment that spawned the alternate timelines. Genius.
Will you retire to Florida with the rest of us?
My friend Dax used to live in Florida. When he’d tell me about the unusual things that seem to frequently happen there and I’d react with any amount of disbelief, his response, which evolved into a catch phrase for us, would always be, “And yet somehow Florida still surprises you.” So, I'm not sure about Florida. Plus the hurricanes. And for all we know, by the time I reach retirement age half of the state will be three feet underwater.
Pancakes or French toast?
Pancakes.
Do you think there will ever come a day when electronics is considered archaic technology?
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Unless humanity finds a way to destroy itself first. Side answer: Interestingly coincidental question to ask. I’m currently preparing a series of synopsis ideas to send to my agent for her input about which of those ideas might be the strongest for the next book I start writing, and one of them has a pretty big plot point involving a technology that could be the next step beyond electronics, or at least serve as a bridge between electronics and whatever would come next.
Will Cinnamon and Evil Barbie be back for next holiday season?
No spoilers. But I’d follow the remaining May blog posts closely if you’re curious.
What is your favorite place to visit?
My happy place is probably spending a temperate evening walking through downtown Poulsbo, Washington with my adopted PNW family, just visiting, enjoying the evening, looking out at Liberty Bay and knowing I have absolutely no responsibilities for at least a few days. And even though it’s probably more of a necessary evil to the people out there than anything else, I still love the novelty of the ferry ride into or out of Seattle. I don't know if it's a "favorite," but it's the first place that came to mind and it did so quickly.
Will you be my friend?
As long as I don’t have to clean up after the alpacas.
Are you truly a Gemini or a Taurus?
Gemini, dammit. There is no either/or at play here. Once upon a time it was May 21st. The end.
Do you find that every year you have a student that stands out to you in class, not academically?
Honestly, I don’t. Not every year. And I attribute that to specializing, just because there are so many more kids I work with each year now and I don’t have the chances to build the same kinds of relationships with them as I did when I worked with them all day long. But every so often some will stand out, for any number of reasons, in either positive or negative ways.
What is your funniest moment teaching?
I couldn’t possibly isolate one moment, but I’m sure when I sit down someday to think over my career and plan out my definitive work of literary fiction that will show exactly what teaching in 21st century America is like, it will probably be in there somewhere.
What one thing would you find life much harder without?
My huge, unusually close extended family. Just because there are so many people I rely on for so many different things in life, and I would be lost without them.
Why do you write middle grade and not YA? Is it because that’s what you teach?
Short answer: Yes, it’s mostly because that’s what I teach. That’s what I have in front of my face every day, and those are the people I think about as ideas begin to form. Longer answer: I personally believe that middle grade literature is more important than young adult, in a formative sense; I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but I think most YA books are written with specific, built-in audiences in mind. If you read YA in any genre, you have things about it that you crave, whether you’re 15 or 25 or 40. I think middle grade can be a harder sell because so many readers are still emerging and determining their preferences. I see a lot of kids read the same book over and over, not because they necessarily love it, but because they haven’t found better options for themselves yet. I want to be a part of providing those options. I have nothing against YA though, and I wouldn't rule out writing at that level someday if I found a story that needed telling. In fact, one of the synopsis ideas I'm preparing for my agent right now would be better suited as a YA novel just due to the subject matter. I'd call it a dark horse as far as winning the title of Next Project anytime soon, but it's definitely earned a spot in the queue.
Dog or cat? And why?
Dog. Because they’re better and I’m not as allergic to them. Having said that though, I can spend days staying with my friend Dax, his wife Melissa, and their pets -- one of which is a cat -- without any real kind of reaction, even though we're all pretty vigilant about keeping Kitty out of my lap. Some dogs don’t bother me at all, while some dogs (Toby) can just lick me once and fill my arm with enormous red insanity welts.
As much as I love dogs, I still put it at very long odds that I’ll be getting another one any time soon (I'm measuring that in years). There are different reasons why, but ultimately what I went through before broke me in half, and there are still too many wounds that will rip open on me with very little provocation.
Who has been the most influential in your writing style and do you share that with your students?
That’s really tough. Back in high school and college I got a lot of Stephen King comparisons, mostly because I wrote so much friggin’ horror. And then like ten, fifteen years back it was more Garrison Keillor -- not because of the goofy small town stories but more about striving for the same authenticity of voice in his more sincere moments. Now I mostly try to be like any number of writers I read who can come up with such a perfectly crafted line in their work that I don’t have any other choice but to be pulled out of the story to pause and admire it. (Justin Cronin is one who comes to mind.) Middle grade-wise, I love the way Katherine Patterson's "Jacob Have I Loved" does such a perfect job of creating characters and a realistic sense of place; I don't know if I'd call her specifically a favorite, but I've probably put as much time into studying that book as I have reading it. As far as sharing with the students...I don’t teach anything to do with reading or writing. Some people see this as a head-scratching irony, but that’s just how things settled. My students know about my author side and are well past thinking it’s any big deal anymore (though I did have to clarify for them once what the difference is between having an “agent” and a “spy”). The only way I could share anything to do with writing with them would be if I used something I wrote as a read aloud in class, and I would never do that. I’m too introverted to do it comfortably, and see it as far too self-serving.
If you couldn’t be a writer or a teacher what would you be?
I have never seriously considered anything else. However, to answer the question the best I can, other people have said before they think because of my reflective nature, the insights that follow that and perspectives I've shared, I would have been a good therapist. Not sure about that one myself....
If you could only eat five foods for the rest of your life, what would they be? Bacon. Smoked salmon, only from the PNW. Tortellini alfredo. Thanksgiving turkey. Soft, heavily-chipped chocolate chip cookies.
Is there a dream or goal that you have (outside of being a writer/teacher) that you are working towards? Outside of the whole “become a published author” thing, my ambitions for life have all been fairly modest. I suppose I still would like to get married someday, though admittedly this isn’t the easiest prospect for an off-the-charts introvert like me. Not to mention that as the years roll by, it seems to become less and less likely I’ll be able to find a woman willing to put up with this defining collection of idiosyncrasies I have that take the place of any kind of personality. (That’s just a self-deprecating joke, Mom -- calm down).
Do you want to keep living in Minnesota? Where will you probably retire?
I’ve never seriously considered living anywhere else, though the past few winters have me realizing there are some things about living here that I truly hate (January and, to a lesser degree, February, to be specific). I haven’t thought much about retirement other than a recently planted seed of hope that I might be able to do it sooner than I've always thought. It’s a fun little game to listen to people at school speculate how many years are left before I'll be able to write my way out of the classroom (which, trust me, is not guaranteed to ever happen anyway). I could easily see myself settling in the PNW, but I’m not sure how the whole cloud and rain thing there would work if it were more permanent.
Do you have any underrated movies in mind?
YES!! 1. "Mystery Men." 2. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." 3. "True Romance." Probably even more if I took the time to think about it. Maybe this year I’ll have a staff underrated movie marathon party/open house in the middle of summer. I’ll provide a schedule and people can show up to see the ones they’re interested in, and that can be a big fun summertime staff get together. Or maybe we can do it at someone else’s house. If they have a pool or something....or maybe I'll just lazily forget about the whole thing. Good chance, that.
If you could go back and go to college again, would you go to the same place or some place else?
I’ve always said if I had the chance to relive any month of my life, I would choose any random month I spent in college. I don’t think it had so much to do specifically with St. Cloud though. I think it was more about experiencing the way the whole world seemed to open up around me while I was there, which probably would have happened to most people wherever they may have gone to school.
Can you identify characteristics of dog people or cat people?
Dog people are probably just better in several ways because dogs. Cat people either seem a tiny bit off to begin with, or they surprise me because I can’t imagine why someone would choose a cat over a dog. There’s just no sense in that. Sorry, cat people. I won't be playing on your softball team anytime soon.
Best lines from movies, or books:
I took these from my Facebook quotes section:
"If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies... we draw our lines around these moments of pain and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us." --Neil Gaiman
"It's a wonderful thing to push on alone toward the horizon and have it be your own horizon and not someone else's. It's a good feeling, lonely and magnificent and frightening and peaceful..." -- Garrison Keillor
"It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people." -- C.S. Lewis
Movies are tougher since there are so many lines I could quote. A current favorite is probably from "Avengers: Age of Ultron," when Captain America tells the rest of the team in a battle, “You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed, walk it off.”
What is your favorite metal, and why?
Vibranium, because that’s what they use to make Captain America’s shield.
What are your five favorite commercials, and why?
Sorry, Paul. I thought about this and really tried to reward you with a clever answer, but I can't think of any commercials that have me lighting up with excitement, or even acquiescence, when they come on.
What is the book that made you want to write?
I think the writing was ignited by two things happening in very close proximity on my personal timeline: In 4th grade or so, I first read "A Wrinkle in Time" within months of seeing the original "Star Wars." Imagine that pairing being presented to a hyperactive young imagination that hadn't yet found the creative outlet it didn't know it needed.
Why is your sister, Jenny, so sexy?
I can think of no good way to answer this. Ask her husband.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Day 19: No Off Position on the Genius Switch
Imagine if you woke up one morning and some fundamental part of life was gone. You stepped outside to get your usual morning newspaper and it wasn’t there; not just that it hadn’t been delivered that morning, but the concept of newspapers had ended. You got in the car and reached to turn on the radio, but couldn’t find anything but static on every station because radio was no more. Things that you had grown so accustomed to after having them around for so much of your life, to where it became all too easy to take them for granted, had just suddenly stopped. This is sort of how I feel about knowing David Letterman’s last show is on tomorrow night. It might not be the show that I watch every night anymore, but I’ve taken comfort in knowing it was always there.
I’ve been with Dave since he was still doing “Late Night” back on NBC. This was a problem in high school since staying up until 12:30 to watch TV was tough to do without my parents noticing and having something to say about it. It got easier in college, as long as my schedule didn’t have any 8:00 AM classes that term. It was worth the effort when I made it that late, though: Watching Letterman frequently enough to be fluent in some of the running gags made you feel like you have membership in one of the coolest underground antisocial circles around. The Monkey Cam, Conspiracy Guy, the originally random (and far superior) Top Ten lists, throwing stuff off the roof, Toast on a Stick, Larry “Bud” Melman passing out hot towels with his interviews...there was nothing like it. This wasn’t a talk show the way Johnny Carson had defined it. This was the show that spoke to every snarky little punk in America.
When Dave moved to CBS for The Late Show and was suddenly on at a reasonable time, it was all I could have hoped for. The show still had the same anarchistic vibe in the background, though tamed down for a more mainstream audience. The Late Show provided Dave with a bigger playground, a wider cast of characters, and more real estate for his legacy. It came so second nature to him after decades of shows there were times when it seemed like it was easy for him to just phone it in sometimes and still be at least good, but he was never better than when he was angry or impassioned. I still think the night when Dave came back on the air after 9/11 was just as important for national morale as anything else that had been done at that time.
I’ve paid more attention to the show as his retirement has neared, knowing that new shows were quickly becoming a limited resource. Last December when they ran through, for the last time ever, the holiday tradition of having Darlene Love come on to bring down the Ed Sullivan Theater with “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” I choked up while watching it...and quickly posted the video on my Facebook timeline so I’d always be able to find it.
I vaguely remember the temporary vacuum left behind after Johnny Carson retired and... *ahem* ...Leno took over. I wasn’t a huge Johnny Carson loyalist, but I had watched the show enough to appreciate what a change his absence would bring. It felt weird knowing this show, this tradition, this scheduled part of the day had just ended and was gone forever.
I think that emptiness is going to be a lot more noticeable this time around.
I’ve been with Dave since he was still doing “Late Night” back on NBC. This was a problem in high school since staying up until 12:30 to watch TV was tough to do without my parents noticing and having something to say about it. It got easier in college, as long as my schedule didn’t have any 8:00 AM classes that term. It was worth the effort when I made it that late, though: Watching Letterman frequently enough to be fluent in some of the running gags made you feel like you have membership in one of the coolest underground antisocial circles around. The Monkey Cam, Conspiracy Guy, the originally random (and far superior) Top Ten lists, throwing stuff off the roof, Toast on a Stick, Larry “Bud” Melman passing out hot towels with his interviews...there was nothing like it. This wasn’t a talk show the way Johnny Carson had defined it. This was the show that spoke to every snarky little punk in America.
When Dave moved to CBS for The Late Show and was suddenly on at a reasonable time, it was all I could have hoped for. The show still had the same anarchistic vibe in the background, though tamed down for a more mainstream audience. The Late Show provided Dave with a bigger playground, a wider cast of characters, and more real estate for his legacy. It came so second nature to him after decades of shows there were times when it seemed like it was easy for him to just phone it in sometimes and still be at least good, but he was never better than when he was angry or impassioned. I still think the night when Dave came back on the air after 9/11 was just as important for national morale as anything else that had been done at that time.
I’ve paid more attention to the show as his retirement has neared, knowing that new shows were quickly becoming a limited resource. Last December when they ran through, for the last time ever, the holiday tradition of having Darlene Love come on to bring down the Ed Sullivan Theater with “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” I choked up while watching it...and quickly posted the video on my Facebook timeline so I’d always be able to find it.
I vaguely remember the temporary vacuum left behind after Johnny Carson retired and... *ahem* ...Leno took over. I wasn’t a huge Johnny Carson loyalist, but I had watched the show enough to appreciate what a change his absence would bring. It felt weird knowing this show, this tradition, this scheduled part of the day had just ended and was gone forever.
I think that emptiness is going to be a lot more noticeable this time around.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Day 18: TV from the Olden Days
There’s a passage in the book I’m reading to my class these days where the main character and his friend are trying to decide how to pass the time before “Happy Days” comes on. The book is set in the early 1980s. One of my students asked why they would wait for the show to start, and I tried to explain how there was a time when there were only five channels to watch and no way to record any programs. They seemed just as surprised about this as some of the facts they’ve recently learned in Social Studies about Ancient Egypt or Ancient China. It didn’t occur to me until that moment that a story set in the same time period I think of as my childhood would be considered a period piece now.
I tried to think about the shows we would have considered appointment television back then, and the list that came to mind was much more about the after school / evening reruns we watched than what was on prime time, with a few notable exceptions. "M*A*S*H" was the king of all that was television back then. The rerun schedule was so saturated with "M*A*S*H" reruns I remember thinking how great Mondays were because not only could you plan out an afternoon and evening of flipping channels to see four episodes like you could every other weeknight, but there was also a new episode on in prime time. “Happy Days” was the other show that gave us a bonus new episode each week (Tuesdays). As much of a staple as “Happy Days” was in the middle of its run (before Ron Howard left and the show lost its direction) they were already stretching themselves thin with franchising spin-off attempts: “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy,” and, since I have to include it to be complete, “Joanie Loves Chachi.” (I can honestly say I only watched one episode of that, out of curiosity, before deciding it wasn’t for me.)
With only a few channels to pick from, we usually wound up watching whatever the local networks decided to put on in the after-school time slots. I never cared much for “The Brady Bunch,” especially when the kids grew up and turned all groovy, but I probably saw each episode. “Welcome Back, Kotter” was hilarious in a way that made us feel like we were probably getting away with something our parents didn’t know about. I watched “Leave it to Beaver” pretty regularly due to a lack of options, but I was a die-hard fan of “Gilligan’s Island.” One of my prized possessions in second grade was my very own Gilligan hat. The other would have been the TV mail order double album by The Monkees that was advertised during the commercials of their show, which I bought with $5 worth of my first communion money. My sisters and some of my cousins would play “Hogan’s Heroes” whenever we were up visiting our grandmother; since we were staying at Grandma Schulz’s house, it only made sense that we gave her the role of Sgt. Schulz in our adventures, whether she ever knew it or not.
I kind of feel sorry for the kids today with three our four entire networks devoted to programming exclusively catering to their age group. Because, believe it or not, as much as something like having seen the whole scary Brady Bunch Hawaiian adventure story arc was almost a rite of passage for kids from my generation? The only Brady that the kids today know anything about is the one who just got suspended by the NFL.
I tried to think about the shows we would have considered appointment television back then, and the list that came to mind was much more about the after school / evening reruns we watched than what was on prime time, with a few notable exceptions. "M*A*S*H" was the king of all that was television back then. The rerun schedule was so saturated with "M*A*S*H" reruns I remember thinking how great Mondays were because not only could you plan out an afternoon and evening of flipping channels to see four episodes like you could every other weeknight, but there was also a new episode on in prime time. “Happy Days” was the other show that gave us a bonus new episode each week (Tuesdays). As much of a staple as “Happy Days” was in the middle of its run (before Ron Howard left and the show lost its direction) they were already stretching themselves thin with franchising spin-off attempts: “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy,” and, since I have to include it to be complete, “Joanie Loves Chachi.” (I can honestly say I only watched one episode of that, out of curiosity, before deciding it wasn’t for me.)
With only a few channels to pick from, we usually wound up watching whatever the local networks decided to put on in the after-school time slots. I never cared much for “The Brady Bunch,” especially when the kids grew up and turned all groovy, but I probably saw each episode. “Welcome Back, Kotter” was hilarious in a way that made us feel like we were probably getting away with something our parents didn’t know about. I watched “Leave it to Beaver” pretty regularly due to a lack of options, but I was a die-hard fan of “Gilligan’s Island.” One of my prized possessions in second grade was my very own Gilligan hat. The other would have been the TV mail order double album by The Monkees that was advertised during the commercials of their show, which I bought with $5 worth of my first communion money. My sisters and some of my cousins would play “Hogan’s Heroes” whenever we were up visiting our grandmother; since we were staying at Grandma Schulz’s house, it only made sense that we gave her the role of Sgt. Schulz in our adventures, whether she ever knew it or not.
I kind of feel sorry for the kids today with three our four entire networks devoted to programming exclusively catering to their age group. Because, believe it or not, as much as something like having seen the whole scary Brady Bunch Hawaiian adventure story arc was almost a rite of passage for kids from my generation? The only Brady that the kids today know anything about is the one who just got suspended by the NFL.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Day 17: Yet Another Guest Writer!!!
During each of the two previous years I’ve done this “write a blog post every day in May” marathon, I had a guest writer take on one of the posts for me. The first year was my cousin Paul, who is a very good writer even if he doesn’t have any real interests or ambitions in that direction, other than putting together the occasional amusing or head-scratching Facebook post. Last year it was my friend Betsy, who keeps a blog of her own called Literary Pathways (and don't you just love that name??) about her ideas and experiences as a Language Arts teacher. (Click here if you haven’t seen it before and have any interest in finding out what an elementary reading and writing teacher at the top of her game has to say about the profession.) For this May, even though I have met several writers in the past year and I know many of them would be more than happy to step in and take on a guest post, I immediately thought of my cousin Alejandro.
Alejandro is fifteen and lives in San Antonio. I like that he’s fifteen right now, because I can enjoy living in a time when I’m a better writer than he is; I promise you that will not always be the case. He started writing in elementary school just like I did, but while I sat back and did little more than watch MTV in my early teens, he began to find his stride as a writer. He’s had some impressive successes in regional academic writing competitions, as well as some at his school, and spent a year as the editor of his school’s award-winning literary magazine in eighth grade. His proud mother (my cousin Kelly) sent me a quote from one of his writing teachers: “He has such a strong vocabulary that I often have to look up the words myself to see what they mean.” Now finishing his sophomore year of high school, he’s still working on his craft and has signed up for science fiction and fantasy summer writing courses through the Gotham Writers Workshop. His passion is horror (as you’ll see from his post).
When I asked if he was interested in doing a guest post, I said he could write about anything he wanted to. He pitched me a few ideas, and we agreed on one that had to do with storytelling elements in video games. I thought this was perfect. I’m not afraid to admit that even with my busy adult life I still fire up my XBox 360 from time to time, and storytelling is always the element that makes a difference in whether I think a game is worth my time or not. Anyone who thinks big-time console video games are little more than violent and cartoonish exercises in time-wasting...well, a lot are. But not all of them. I feel myself getting a little fired up on the topic right now, so it might be better if I just pull back and let Alejandro, who knows so much more about the subject than I do, take over.
**********
I play a lot of video games. Like, a lot. I did some calculations the other day and found that I've played almost 1,700 hours on my computer alone. So with that kind of devotion to the hobby, it should come as no surprise that I see video games as a storytelling medium equal to films or books.
But that doesn't mean all game stories are good. Really, most of them aren't. And they don't need to be, because unlike books or movies, games can stand just on how fun they are to play. The perfect game, however, would be both fun to play and have a story that's interesting to experience and think about. The closest any game has ever come to perfect, at least for me, is Dark Souls. For this post, I mean to look at Dark Souls' story to show just why it's so great, and to better understand what it takes to tell a good story in a video game.
GAMEPLAY/PRESENTATION
In Dark Souls you're a lone warrior exploring a world on its last legs, fighting monsters, and trying to save mankind. This involves a lot of swinging your sword, tricky maneuvering, and dying. The game is infamous for its difficulty, so you'll be dying a great deal, but that all ties into the game's central theme (more on that later). I won't linger much on gameplay, as it's not the focus of this little ramble, but suffice to say it's more than fun enough to support the story.
Now, presentation is extremely important in video games. You could have the best story in the world, but nobody will hear it if they're turned off by the visual design or art style. Dark Souls doesn't really have this problem. Everything in the game is ancient, forgotten, and decrepit, all castles with crumbling walls or decaying underground crypts, and there are very few sane or friendly people around anymore. It instilled an acute sense of loneliness and despair in me, which I'm sure was the intended effect. Melancholy is a good word for the game's visual design, and indeed the game as a whole, so it gets an A+ for capturing the tone perfectly.
EXPOSITION AND STORY DELIVERY
Dark Souls' method of telling a story is rather unorthodox for video games; the details aren't presented to you on a silver platter, but hidden subtly around the world for you to find, and the wording is too ambiguous to find any objective truth in what's going on. If you want to know the story, you have to find it yourself, digging through item descriptions and dialogue to learn about characters, history, and the world. And after you've found all the information, you have to interpret it as well, figuring out what means what and how everything fits together. There's no right answer for anything in this game.
I love that. There was immense satisfaction in hunting down clues and making sense of everything, learning what's up with this evil murderous knight or that deranged fiery spider-witch. It made me feel like I was piecing together a vast, intricate puzzle, and put everything that happened in context. Now I know the spider-witch was actually just killing people to cure her sister's wasting illness, and by killing her I've also condemned her innocent sister to death, and I learned all that out myself. When the last piece of that sprawling story fell into place and everything made sense together, it didn't feel as though somebody had given it to me; I'd earned the right to understand, which made understanding all the sweeter.
THEME
Now this is where Dark Souls REALLY shines. The central theme of the game is decay, entropy, the inevitability of death, that kind of thing. The world is going to end and there's nothing you can do about it. And every single aspect of the game reflects that theme in some way.
Some lore you can find pretty much confirms that even if you succeed, you're only delaying the end of mankind for a little while longer. When you're playing, at least one resource (like health, healing items, weapon durability, or stamina) is always dwindling, like a ticking clock counting down to your death. You explore the ruins of other civilizations that thrived long ago, then died and were forgotten, just like yours will. Almost every major character is on the slippery slope to insanity, death, insanity followed by death, or death followed by insanity.
It's a depressing game, sure, but it's depressing with a purpose. There's not a single wasted part of it; everything, from the story, to the gameplay, to the visual design, complements everything else and makes for an experience that feels more cohesive than anything else I've played.
IN CONCLUSION
So, if we take Dark Souls as a shining example of storytelling in video games, what makes a good game story is 1) gameplay that doesn't detract from the experience, 2) a complex, subtly-delivered plot, 3) a sense of player involvement/achievement (fulfilled by Dark Souls' clue-hunting and difficulty, but it doesn't have to be so obscure) in the story, 4) varied and interesting characters (I didn't talk much about them, as this post is running long already, but Dark Souls has them by the dozen if you're willing to dig through the lore) and 5) strong central theming that brings everything together.
Many of the same things that make a good book or movie, you'll find. As different as writing video games can be, it seems there's a lot of crossover that’s forgotten when it comes to making a story interactive. Thankfully, the developers behind Dark Souls didn't forget, which might be why it tells one of the best stories in any medium.
*********
Even if video games aren't your thing, you have to admit the kid’s got some chops, doesn’t he?
Alejandro is fifteen and lives in San Antonio. I like that he’s fifteen right now, because I can enjoy living in a time when I’m a better writer than he is; I promise you that will not always be the case. He started writing in elementary school just like I did, but while I sat back and did little more than watch MTV in my early teens, he began to find his stride as a writer. He’s had some impressive successes in regional academic writing competitions, as well as some at his school, and spent a year as the editor of his school’s award-winning literary magazine in eighth grade. His proud mother (my cousin Kelly) sent me a quote from one of his writing teachers: “He has such a strong vocabulary that I often have to look up the words myself to see what they mean.” Now finishing his sophomore year of high school, he’s still working on his craft and has signed up for science fiction and fantasy summer writing courses through the Gotham Writers Workshop. His passion is horror (as you’ll see from his post).
When I asked if he was interested in doing a guest post, I said he could write about anything he wanted to. He pitched me a few ideas, and we agreed on one that had to do with storytelling elements in video games. I thought this was perfect. I’m not afraid to admit that even with my busy adult life I still fire up my XBox 360 from time to time, and storytelling is always the element that makes a difference in whether I think a game is worth my time or not. Anyone who thinks big-time console video games are little more than violent and cartoonish exercises in time-wasting...well, a lot are. But not all of them. I feel myself getting a little fired up on the topic right now, so it might be better if I just pull back and let Alejandro, who knows so much more about the subject than I do, take over.
**********
I play a lot of video games. Like, a lot. I did some calculations the other day and found that I've played almost 1,700 hours on my computer alone. So with that kind of devotion to the hobby, it should come as no surprise that I see video games as a storytelling medium equal to films or books.
But that doesn't mean all game stories are good. Really, most of them aren't. And they don't need to be, because unlike books or movies, games can stand just on how fun they are to play. The perfect game, however, would be both fun to play and have a story that's interesting to experience and think about. The closest any game has ever come to perfect, at least for me, is Dark Souls. For this post, I mean to look at Dark Souls' story to show just why it's so great, and to better understand what it takes to tell a good story in a video game.
GAMEPLAY/PRESENTATION
In Dark Souls you're a lone warrior exploring a world on its last legs, fighting monsters, and trying to save mankind. This involves a lot of swinging your sword, tricky maneuvering, and dying. The game is infamous for its difficulty, so you'll be dying a great deal, but that all ties into the game's central theme (more on that later). I won't linger much on gameplay, as it's not the focus of this little ramble, but suffice to say it's more than fun enough to support the story.
Now, presentation is extremely important in video games. You could have the best story in the world, but nobody will hear it if they're turned off by the visual design or art style. Dark Souls doesn't really have this problem. Everything in the game is ancient, forgotten, and decrepit, all castles with crumbling walls or decaying underground crypts, and there are very few sane or friendly people around anymore. It instilled an acute sense of loneliness and despair in me, which I'm sure was the intended effect. Melancholy is a good word for the game's visual design, and indeed the game as a whole, so it gets an A+ for capturing the tone perfectly.
EXPOSITION AND STORY DELIVERY
Dark Souls' method of telling a story is rather unorthodox for video games; the details aren't presented to you on a silver platter, but hidden subtly around the world for you to find, and the wording is too ambiguous to find any objective truth in what's going on. If you want to know the story, you have to find it yourself, digging through item descriptions and dialogue to learn about characters, history, and the world. And after you've found all the information, you have to interpret it as well, figuring out what means what and how everything fits together. There's no right answer for anything in this game.
I love that. There was immense satisfaction in hunting down clues and making sense of everything, learning what's up with this evil murderous knight or that deranged fiery spider-witch. It made me feel like I was piecing together a vast, intricate puzzle, and put everything that happened in context. Now I know the spider-witch was actually just killing people to cure her sister's wasting illness, and by killing her I've also condemned her innocent sister to death, and I learned all that out myself. When the last piece of that sprawling story fell into place and everything made sense together, it didn't feel as though somebody had given it to me; I'd earned the right to understand, which made understanding all the sweeter.
THEME
Now this is where Dark Souls REALLY shines. The central theme of the game is decay, entropy, the inevitability of death, that kind of thing. The world is going to end and there's nothing you can do about it. And every single aspect of the game reflects that theme in some way.
Some lore you can find pretty much confirms that even if you succeed, you're only delaying the end of mankind for a little while longer. When you're playing, at least one resource (like health, healing items, weapon durability, or stamina) is always dwindling, like a ticking clock counting down to your death. You explore the ruins of other civilizations that thrived long ago, then died and were forgotten, just like yours will. Almost every major character is on the slippery slope to insanity, death, insanity followed by death, or death followed by insanity.
It's a depressing game, sure, but it's depressing with a purpose. There's not a single wasted part of it; everything, from the story, to the gameplay, to the visual design, complements everything else and makes for an experience that feels more cohesive than anything else I've played.
IN CONCLUSION
So, if we take Dark Souls as a shining example of storytelling in video games, what makes a good game story is 1) gameplay that doesn't detract from the experience, 2) a complex, subtly-delivered plot, 3) a sense of player involvement/achievement (fulfilled by Dark Souls' clue-hunting and difficulty, but it doesn't have to be so obscure) in the story, 4) varied and interesting characters (I didn't talk much about them, as this post is running long already, but Dark Souls has them by the dozen if you're willing to dig through the lore) and 5) strong central theming that brings everything together.
Many of the same things that make a good book or movie, you'll find. As different as writing video games can be, it seems there's a lot of crossover that’s forgotten when it comes to making a story interactive. Thankfully, the developers behind Dark Souls didn't forget, which might be why it tells one of the best stories in any medium.
*********
Even if video games aren't your thing, you have to admit the kid’s got some chops, doesn’t he?
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Day 16: XIV
I didn’t grow up with any brothers, so I relied on my cousins to fulfill the responsibilities that would have come with those relationships. Most of my cousins were boys, and older than me, so I had a lot of choices when it came to deciding who I was going to try and keep up with and how. I can almost completely credit my cousins, and the posters on their walls, and their collections of 45s and LPs, and their concert shirts, and the bands they played in, and the radio stations they listened to, with the fascination with music I developed and still holds me today. If pressed, I’m certain I could name any one of my cousins and quickly dig up a memory I have of them that would somehow be associated to a specific song.
They didn’t always agree on everything musical -- some were more into metal, some pop, some laid-back 70s singer/songwriter music -- but almost universally they were fans of Toto. You remember Toto, don’t you? Even if you weren’t alive back then or were too young to care about any music other than the theme songs to your favorite cartoons, you have to remember something of Toto. “I bless the rains down in Africa” Toto? “Rosanna?” “Hold the Line,” which still gets dragged out by classic rock radio on occasion? 1983 Album of the Year Grammy Award Winner for Toto IV? Yeah...now I’m sure things are coming together. My cousins all loved Toto so I had to keep up, and Toto albums played a not insignificant part in the growth of my nascent record collection back in junior high. None of the AC/DC or Billy Squier fans at my school were that impressed, but I didn’t care. My cousins thought they were cool, so they had to be.
It might be almost more accurate to think of Toto as a rotating musical collective than a band, since even though there have always been core members, they’ve had a lot of people coming and going, and coming back, and going again while past replacement players or singers came back as replacements once more. But it’s never mattered. Throughout the decades they’ve remained a group of talented writers and musicians, and even though time and culture somehow decided that their popularity would reach its peak back in the early 1980s, Toto has remained a working band ever since. “Isolation” was the cassette I listened to on my off-brand Walkman more than any other during my one-way 40-minute school bus ride in 11th grade. I played “Fahrenheit” so much in my first year of college, I have specific memories about my earliest explorations of the St. Cloud State campus associated with it. I remember buying “The Seventh One” while visiting two of my cousins in Tucson during one spring break, and hoping the album would make it back home in one piece while traveling in my suitcase. I loved the hard rock direction of “Kingdom of Desire.” The melodic rebirth in “Tambu” defined an entire summer vacation for me, particularly with the unsteady heartbeat rhythm found in one of the best overlooked ballads in all of popular music, “I Will Remember.” When “Mindfields” came out in the mid-1990s, the music started to feel like they were phoning it in, and there was something of a dry spell from the band after that, at least for me, with a series of greatest hits and live albums taking the place of new music. I was excited for the comeback when “Falling in Between” was released in 2006, but as good as the album was it didn’t have staying power for me.
This past spring I saw on iTunes that Toto had a new album coming out, “Toto XIV.” As I thought back to how their more recent albums didn’t mean as much to me as the earlier ones had, I was on the fence about buying it. I felt there was all too much of a chance it would become yet another album in the music library I’d listen to for a week or two and then forget about. But then I saw one of my older cousins, who is still remains the greatest Toto loyalist of us all, post this on Facebook last month:
If you haven’t bought the new Toto album, Toto XIV, you NEED to!!! Enough said.
It doesn’t take too much arm-twisting to get me to buy new music, so that was all the nudge I needed to change my mind. Before I even played through it a first time though, I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get distracted by something else until I knew the album really well. So I went out of my way to listen to it a lot -- during the weekend afternoons, in the car, in my classroom before and after school, falling asleep at night...any moment I could. On purpose. And I feel like I got to know it pretty well. It even got me to dig out and revisit some of my old Toto albums. The thing that struck me the most about listening to all of this music from the band, old and new, was how much one of my friends would probably love this band if he was ever exposed to them beyond their few hit singles. Being a musician himself, one of the things he prizes the most in the music he listens to is melody. Musicianship and strong melody is still as much of a part of what Toto is doing now as it was back in 1982.
But....
I think if I was ever asked to take the Toto albums in my library and rank them from best to worst, this one would wind up in the bottom half. Not that it’s a bad album; it isn’t by a long shot. For me, it just isn’t great. The performances are as strong as ever, although one of the three guys taking on lead vocals sounds noticeably off his game compared to where he used to be (luckily he only has a song or two). There are a few songs on here I think are great, and they’ll probably be included in a playlist or two in the future, but a lot of the other songs, while having different elements I enjoy, just seem to take up space ("Chinatown" being a good example of what I mean, if you know the album). I’m glad I got to hear new music from the band, and I’m glad my cousin (and his daughter) love the album so much. It just isn’t connecting with me as a whole.
However, listening to this one did inspire me to play through a lot of their older stuff, which has been great fun. I guess sometimes the best thing about a new album from an old band is how it can remind you about the music that came before it. And if that spurs you into rediscovering how important those older songs once were to you, that isn’t such a bad thing.
They didn’t always agree on everything musical -- some were more into metal, some pop, some laid-back 70s singer/songwriter music -- but almost universally they were fans of Toto. You remember Toto, don’t you? Even if you weren’t alive back then or were too young to care about any music other than the theme songs to your favorite cartoons, you have to remember something of Toto. “I bless the rains down in Africa” Toto? “Rosanna?” “Hold the Line,” which still gets dragged out by classic rock radio on occasion? 1983 Album of the Year Grammy Award Winner for Toto IV? Yeah...now I’m sure things are coming together. My cousins all loved Toto so I had to keep up, and Toto albums played a not insignificant part in the growth of my nascent record collection back in junior high. None of the AC/DC or Billy Squier fans at my school were that impressed, but I didn’t care. My cousins thought they were cool, so they had to be.
It might be almost more accurate to think of Toto as a rotating musical collective than a band, since even though there have always been core members, they’ve had a lot of people coming and going, and coming back, and going again while past replacement players or singers came back as replacements once more. But it’s never mattered. Throughout the decades they’ve remained a group of talented writers and musicians, and even though time and culture somehow decided that their popularity would reach its peak back in the early 1980s, Toto has remained a working band ever since. “Isolation” was the cassette I listened to on my off-brand Walkman more than any other during my one-way 40-minute school bus ride in 11th grade. I played “Fahrenheit” so much in my first year of college, I have specific memories about my earliest explorations of the St. Cloud State campus associated with it. I remember buying “The Seventh One” while visiting two of my cousins in Tucson during one spring break, and hoping the album would make it back home in one piece while traveling in my suitcase. I loved the hard rock direction of “Kingdom of Desire.” The melodic rebirth in “Tambu” defined an entire summer vacation for me, particularly with the unsteady heartbeat rhythm found in one of the best overlooked ballads in all of popular music, “I Will Remember.” When “Mindfields” came out in the mid-1990s, the music started to feel like they were phoning it in, and there was something of a dry spell from the band after that, at least for me, with a series of greatest hits and live albums taking the place of new music. I was excited for the comeback when “Falling in Between” was released in 2006, but as good as the album was it didn’t have staying power for me.
This past spring I saw on iTunes that Toto had a new album coming out, “Toto XIV.” As I thought back to how their more recent albums didn’t mean as much to me as the earlier ones had, I was on the fence about buying it. I felt there was all too much of a chance it would become yet another album in the music library I’d listen to for a week or two and then forget about. But then I saw one of my older cousins, who is still remains the greatest Toto loyalist of us all, post this on Facebook last month:
If you haven’t bought the new Toto album, Toto XIV, you NEED to!!! Enough said.
It doesn’t take too much arm-twisting to get me to buy new music, so that was all the nudge I needed to change my mind. Before I even played through it a first time though, I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get distracted by something else until I knew the album really well. So I went out of my way to listen to it a lot -- during the weekend afternoons, in the car, in my classroom before and after school, falling asleep at night...any moment I could. On purpose. And I feel like I got to know it pretty well. It even got me to dig out and revisit some of my old Toto albums. The thing that struck me the most about listening to all of this music from the band, old and new, was how much one of my friends would probably love this band if he was ever exposed to them beyond their few hit singles. Being a musician himself, one of the things he prizes the most in the music he listens to is melody. Musicianship and strong melody is still as much of a part of what Toto is doing now as it was back in 1982.
But....
I think if I was ever asked to take the Toto albums in my library and rank them from best to worst, this one would wind up in the bottom half. Not that it’s a bad album; it isn’t by a long shot. For me, it just isn’t great. The performances are as strong as ever, although one of the three guys taking on lead vocals sounds noticeably off his game compared to where he used to be (luckily he only has a song or two). There are a few songs on here I think are great, and they’ll probably be included in a playlist or two in the future, but a lot of the other songs, while having different elements I enjoy, just seem to take up space ("Chinatown" being a good example of what I mean, if you know the album). I’m glad I got to hear new music from the band, and I’m glad my cousin (and his daughter) love the album so much. It just isn’t connecting with me as a whole.
However, listening to this one did inspire me to play through a lot of their older stuff, which has been great fun. I guess sometimes the best thing about a new album from an old band is how it can remind you about the music that came before it. And if that spurs you into rediscovering how important those older songs once were to you, that isn’t such a bad thing.
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