How You Sleep at Night

(Image stolen from the Etsy store of one Shelle Kennedy.)

The latest issue of visceral Toronto lit zine The Puritan is out. It contains a short story I wrote called "How You Sleep at Night."

If you want to skip the table of contents and get right to my story, you can do that -- but I would recommend checking out the whole issue instead. My story is one of three fiction pieces, and I'm not sure whether I feel honored or somewhat inadequate to see my work placed alongside D. Hancock's "New Jersey" and A. Grassi's "Air Show," both of which are necessary reading.

Either way, I think this is pretty cool.

Passing fancies and structures.

(Borrowed from The Anti Room.)

There's a pleasure in etymology beyond that of the purely trivial, of knowledge for its own sake, of tracing of one word of one language to an older word in a different language. Before the abstract (which language is) there existed the material, the innumerable objects and phenomena of the physical world -- or more concisely, nature. No matter how long, circuitous, or obscure the path, every noun, verb, and adjective leads back to nature, and sometimes studying language brings to our attention the exquisiteness of natural patterns, the germs of which are inextricable from our words.

I recall an evening some time ago -- whenever it was, it was during the winter, and I was in Jersey. Snow had fallen during the day; in the evening the clouds blew over, but the trees were still laden with snow, frozen to the branches.

I went for a walk that night on one of the trails through the woods. There's one path I've always frequented more than any of the others (probably because it's so close to my mother's house), and there's a certain tree that always caught my attention. It's unusual because it's a spruce -- the only evergreen in sight, towered over on all sides by the older ash and maple trees. It's the odd man out, and I've always felt a fondness (even a sort of kinship) for this tree.

It might have been last year, probably around Christmas. I had come from Pennsylvania to visit the folks, and I had gone out to walk the old path and pay my respects to the evergreen odd man.

It must have been Christmas because it was between midnight and 1:00 -- this I do remember -- and Orion was overhead.

It was exceedingly frigid, even for late December: the sky was a limpid black and the stars shone cold and crisp. (Cold nights are best for stargazing in the northeastern United States: the lower the temperature of the air, the less obfuscatory moisture and dust it can hold.) I remember standing beside the spruce and looking up through a gap in the bare canopy.

The loveliness of the winter sky is distinguished by an intimation of geometrical structure. It's dense and richly patterned, almost arabesque. The straight lines of Orion's belt and scabbard; the conjoined pairs in Auriga, Gemini, and Canis Minor; the "V" shape of Taurus, and the prongs of Canis Major -- and all of these are as points and branching outgrowths of a hexagon, a wheel with Betelgeuse at the fulcrum.

As I gazed at the stars through a trellis of spruce branches (and bear in mind that the geometry of evergreen growth, all straight, divergent lines, is suggestive of fractal patterns) there was a gust of wind, scattering ice crystals overhead. The stars were so bright and the snow so reflective that wisp of ice momentarily sparkled -- and during this moment of superpositioning between the snow, stars, and spruce branches, the words occurred to me.

"Stellar dendrite."

From The Online Etymology Dictionary:

stellar (adj.) 1650s, "pertaining to stars, star-like," from Latin stellaris "pertaining to a star, starry," from stella (see star (n.)).

dendrite (n.) mid-18c., from Greek dendrites "of or pertaining to a tree," from dendron "tree" (see dendro-).

Stellar dendrite, then: "of stars, that of a tree."

This is, of course, is the term used to describe a structure seen in ice crystals and snowflakes.

(Taken from On Flat Lake Time.)

It was a small and passing thing, but ineffable and astonishing. If I had the conviction or faith, I might have said a prayer. I don't think I said anything. I'm certain I didn't.

I would like to say that I marveled, like Whitman, in perfect, knowing silence, knowing that silence is the language of the ineffable. But I didn't say anything because I didn't have the words to speak of what had touched me.

All language stems from nature, but sadly tends to lack the precision and felicity of its estranged parent.

Valentine's Day Tips for the Guys

 (Stolen from Just Call Me Frank.)

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, as I'm sure the advertisers have incessantly reminded you. If you're a single male, the 14th is often a sad occasion, a holiday apparently devised to rub all the happiness of the world's couples in your lonely face. If you're a male with a girlfriend (forgive me for being heteronormative here), the occasion is certainly not lonely, but it is stressful. You can be assured that your sugar plum is carefully taking notes on how her friends' beaux are treating them on the 14th, and will either choose to keep you around or begin the process of dumping you depending on how your efforts measure up. (If you're a married man, don't worry about it. By this point it will be enough if you just cut your toenails for christ's sake.)

Since so much hangs in the balance and you are undoubtedly anxious, your own judgement is not to be trusted. Fear not! Here are some tips on how you can really make an impression on your sweetie this Valentine's Day!

1.) Write Her a Poem

Ha ha! Just kidding. Seriously, do not try to do this. In all likelihood you will only bring about mutual embarrassment by handing over such poetical dingleberries as:

on the day we met
even though i didn't know it yet
you and i were meant to be
like a sort of something.....tree?

She can respond to this in one of two ways.

One: She tells you it's beautiful and she loves it. Of course she's lying in order to spare your feelings, thus introducing to your hitherto honest and pure relationship the pervasive taint of mendacity. Now it will only be a matter of time until she's faking her orgasms and fibbing about the results of her recent chlamydia test, and you've only got yourself to blame.

Two: She tells you it's beautiful and she loves it -- and she means it. In this case, you've just learned that your beloved is an idiot. It's probably better that you found out sooner than later, but it's sure going to make the Valentine's dinner to which you're treating her taste rotten.

The rules are different, however, if you can play guitar and sing your stupid little poem to her. Go ahead and do it -- she will be impressed, even if you probably don't deserve it. Asshole.

2.) Watch a Movie Together

This one is fairly obvious. Ideally, you’d take her out for an evening at the theatre, but all the tickets for the Valentine’s Day performance of The Phantom of the Opera have been snatched up by more considerate boyfriends than you. The cineplex is your only recourse, but let’s face it: everything playing today is shit. Since the alternatives are Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and Identity Thief, there’s no shame in falling back on a Netflix rental.

Casablanca is an excellent choice, as is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I hear good things about Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Many females also cherish an intemperate (and wholly inexplicable) fondness for Moulin Rouge.

Personally, I recommend the 1966 classic, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Advantages:

One: It’s a damned good film based on a touchstone of American drama. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor give stellar performances.

Two: It will give you a chance to show your sweetheart how cultured you are. Given how much you’ve been talking at her about the new season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic lately, you probably could stand to earn back a few points in that department.

Three: Your sweetheart has been hinting, with increasing assertiveness, that she thinks it is time you “took the next step” with respect to her. This film will present a chilling vision of things to come should she choose to persist in this course.

Furthermore, I recommend that the two of you watch the film on February 13, and then speaking to each other like George and Martha in front of your family and friends throughout the 14th. If your partner actually agrees to this, you probably should just go ahead and marry her. She’s worth it.

3.) Romantic Gifts

A box of chocolates or bouquet of roses won't cut it: she has no way of knowing that you didn’t just pick them up from the gas station on the way to her place. This is why you covertly deliver a series of gifts on the nights leading up to the 14th. And these can’t just be flowers or candies, either: they must speak to the special relationship the two of you share.

Suggestions:

February 10: Box of anal beads; one-gallon carton of pomegranate-flavored lubricant (extra chunky).

February 11: Eighteen-inch motorized dildo that plays “Flight of the Valkyries” when activated.

February 12: Leather girdle, studded thong, and cherry-red ball gag -- with a post-it note attached reading “for me ;)”.

February 13: Artificial dolphin vagina. (These do exist, but you’ll have to through some pretty bizarre Fur channels to get your mitts on one. Make sure you get the kind with the straps; otherwise include a roll of duct tape in the gift box.)

February 14: With any luck, you’ll arrive on the big night to find her door locked and the lights out. Now you can go home and spend an evening playing video games and jacking off like you’ve been wanting to for the last five months.

4.) Spice Up Your Romance. . .Chemically

Come on, you know you were curious.

Drunk sex is one thing, but lovemaking on LSD or psilocybin is transcendent (so I'm told), and some people swear it’s hard to resign yourself to a lifetime of sober sex once you’ve done it on MDMA a few times.

But you feel these are all too predictable, and you don’t have the sketchy connections to make them happen besides.

My perfectly legal recommendation, then, is a heroic dose of bath salts and Viagra -- spend all Valentine’s evening uncontrollably fucking and/or destroying everything at your sweetie’s place, including your sweetie herself. (Like most tender Valentine’s gestures, this one is best offered as a surprise.)

At any rate, you'll give her a Valentine's Day she won't soon forget. And if you do it right, she won't ever demand or hope for a Valentine's surprise again.

February Ping

I've written four short stories in the last ten months; that means in 2012 400% increase in short story composition over the entire period between 2005 and 2011.

One of these stories ("How You Sleep at Night") will be appearing in The Puritan, a Toronto-based literary magazine. Check them out -- their stuff is pretty visceral.

PUBLICATION. The hallowed legitimizer of the terminal scrawler. In the last year or two I've gotten so many rejection slips from so many journals, literary agents, and small presses I'm not even certain how to feel about an acceptance letter. Actually, for a good two or three hours I was positively megalomaniacal. But after that -- well, there's this Calvin and Hobbes strip I'm reminded of:

(thumbnail! click!)

One usually need not worry much about sitting on his laurels. The world usually doesn't give one much of a chance, and neither does oneself.

Speaking of which -- revising this manuscript has been more more of a process that I thought it would be (though I've been doing this long enough now that I probably should have anticipated as much). Progress is about 60%. I am losing sleep over it, yes.

(Have I already parroted that one George Orwell line? Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.)

Back to work I go.

Deadlines and Downtimes

Hmmm. Sometime way back in November I mentioned something about taking a break from blogging in order to focus on some other writing work. But I never took that break, and I'm farther behind in a few projects than I would like to be.

So today I'm announcing that I'm taking a break for serious. I want to have a working final draft of this short novel by the end of the month, which means it must not only take priority over everything else I do in my leisure time, but also dominate my waking thoughts. Any neurons I divert towards blogging will be to the manuscript's detriment. Once I polish off a draft that I won't be afraid to send to literary agent types (oh christ i'm actually going to go through this again fuuuuck), I will resume typing vast textchunks about things that aren't video games (and therefore aren't worth anyone's effort to read).

In the meantime: seeing as it's MLK Day, I would direct you to a transcription and recording of his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, which is much less often cited than "I Have a Dream," but is fundamental message is very probably more relevant in today's America. (True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.)

I'll also point out the Goodreads link that just appeared in the sidebar. (Goodreads is still a thing, right?) I'll try to keep the page up to date and populate it with books I've already read. If books is something you're into, go ahead and friend me.

Downtime begins now. See you in a few weeks, I'm sure! (I hope.)

What Is Art? (two cents out of a thousand million.)

(Caroline Shotton)

Some weeks ago, a kneejerk response to MoMA's decision to add video games to its collection prompted several comments. Some concurred and some disputed, but Mr. Pangrac sagaciously opined that partisans on either side were going off half-cocked:

But really, I have long been bothered by any discussion of 'Are video games art' due to the fact that no one ever seems interested in defining what 'Art' is. Like 'Truth' or 'Justice,' it's used as a vague catch-all to describe something that is good and noble, but anything more specific (or specific at all) is always left out of the conversation. Until we have an idea of what 'Art' is, what a work needs to achieve or attempt in order to be considered 'Art,' I find these discussions ultimately meaningless.

Perfect. We can't argue about what does and does not qualify as art when we have only vague and inconsistent notions of what "art" means.

So now we're on the right track. First we will define "art" -- and only when we have agreed upon a set of universally-applicable and unambiguous criteria for what something must do, be, or have in order to qualify as art, we can decide whether Mario and Mass Effect makes the grade. Sounds easy enough, yes?

Unfortunately if it were easy enough there would be no necessity for debate. Our definitions of art are vague because we've failed to draft any better ones, and it isn't as though people haven't been giving the matter any thought.

Rather than submit my own opinions about what art is/isn't and should/shouldn't be, I'll offer a demonstration as to why I'm at such a loss to make any assertions with even the slightest degree of confidence. We'll examine some characteristics that we generally recognize art as possessing, and that might be thought to designate art as such; then we'll look at some of the counterpoints that poke holes in these proposals.

(I do not presume to offer a treatise. This will be half-cocked as any of the IS/ISN'T arguments posted on any number of comments boards. It is only an effort towards corralling my own thoughts on the subject.)

I. Art Is Beautiful.

This should be it. What would be called art must be beautiful. End of discussion. If a person made something beautiful with the intent of making something beautiful, we call the thing he made art. There need not be any other qualifiers.

Problem #1: Pieter Bruegel's The Triumph of Death. Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. Peter Paul Rubens's The Massacre of the Innocents. Anything Andy Warhol ever did. Wolf Eyes. The Rite of Spring. American Psycho. Nick Ut's Pulitzer-winning Vietnam War photograph. There are some things which most people would call "art" that do not exude beauty -- their contents are disturbing, they flout aesthetics, they're sometimes just offensive to the senses -- ugly. What if this was the artist's intention? Do we only accept the work of artists whose intention is to present us an idealized (or bleached, or snowjobbed) vision of reality.

Problem #2: Any definition of beauty is subject to cultural bias, and culture (1) differs from one place to another (2) changes over time. What was beautiful to the authors and readers of English poetry in the 17th century seems magniloquent to the 21st century reader. Kabuki is an esteemed art in Japan, but probably looks and sounds ridiculous to the first-time visitor from the West. Shakespeare would have sounded like so much hot air to the austere sensibilities of the Greek tragedians. If Michelangelo had taken his David far enough east, its audience would have viewed it as idolatry rather than art.

Nobody can agree on what is beautiful. If we insist that art is what's beautiful, we ensure that nobody will agree on what is art.

Problem #3: What is beauty anyway? Do we think that discussion will be resolved any more easily?

If we're struggling to define a nebulous concept, what sense does it make to base it in terms of another nebulous concept we struggle to define?

Problem #4: "Well, duh. Everything is beautiful. Everything is art."

Whoa. Who said that? Leave the room, please. You have nothing to contribute to this conversation if you refuse to have it on terra firma.

To paraphrase D.H. Lawrence, people are not sewer pipes. However deliberately or indeliberately, we prefer some things to the exception of others. (We might call the sum of these preferences an identity.) All reality and its contents mights be beautiful in a TRANSCENDENT sense (and let's face it, it is and they are), but if the mass of humanity were intimate with the transcendent, no one would have use for art.

If we want art to mean something, it -- whatever it is -- must be exclusive. To borrow a thought from Pound, we have to treat some (most?) flowers as weeds if we wish to maintain a garden.

II. Art Is Nonutilitarian

We might want to make a distinction between "art" and "design" or "artisanry." The latter two are often artful, but in their ends they diverge from what we would call "fine art." We could limit our definition of art to the things that have no purpose other than to exist and be art. Such a definition would bolster Roger Ebert's assertion that video games are not art.

A meal can be prepared in an artful and exquisite way, but it is not art: it serves the practical purpose of providing sustenance. An ornately-carved chair is beautiful work of craftsmanship, but it is not art: it is built as a piece of furniture, a fixture possessing beauty as a supplement to its function. Design crafts such as web and fashion design would be excluded; although both require and exude artfulness, the end products are essentially tools. Video games would be eschewed for the same reason as board games: however well-designed or artfully crafted, they are first and foremost games to be played.

Problem #1: A painting isn't ever just a painting: it is something that is bought, sold, and hung up as a decoration. It has a function; a purpose towards which people use it. Shall we exclude stained glass because it serves the function of allowing light into a chapel? Do we admit that the relieving of stress is a societal necessity and throw out the theater, music, television, and film because of their utility towards this end?

Problem #2: Fountain.

Any lines we draw between "art" and "not art" on the basis of the object’s utility value must needs be arbitrary and subject to contention and subversion.

III. Art Is Communication

Art is something a person does or makes in order to convey information: ideas, stories, images, feelings, etc. Herman Melville was grappling with some ideas about humanity's relationship with the ineffable and eternal (and also whales) and so he tried to shape them into an articulate message by writing a book called Moby Dick. Whitman wanted to communicate what 19th century America and its people were to him; he wrote Leaves of Grass. Every painter in history's whole procession worked to communicate a vision. Virtually all music is composed for the purpose of conveying a feeling to the listener. Video game designers are more often constructing their games as situations designed to elicit (communicate) particular sensations from the experience.

Art is an act of communication.

Problem #1: This is likely the best criterion we can conceive in that everyone can agree on it. It's also the least effective: it screws on too coarse a filter. This blog post is communication. A dirty limerick written on the back of a cocktail napkin is communication. A brick thrown through a window is communication. A pop-up ad is communication. Inane office memos are communication. An automated Twitter account is communication. A penis drawn in a bathroom stall is communication.

What kinds of communication are art? Is it a question of content or form? Or both?


 
Backtracking a bit, we might borrow Ezra Pound's definition of beauty: beauty is aptness to purpose. What if we said that art is beauty of (or in) communication?

Idea: Art is a message conveyed through a medium with the maximum felicity afforded by said medium.

Problem: Again we're spinning our wheels. On paper, this might satisfy some people. In practice it only reframes the debate.

When we argue whether video games, hip hop, Fountain, or a work of a new or controversial form qualify as art, what we're really debating is the amount of cultural capital we should afford them.

How important is this object, form, or practice to our culture in the long run? Should it be taught in schools? Does it belong in a museum? Is it worthy of academic scrutiny? Does it deserve NEA grants? Should we assure it a space in the time capsule? Would it be one of the first things we show a visiting alien to communicate what homo sapiens and our civilization are all about?

What we might be debating, and have been debating all along, is the divide between "high" and "low" art. And this once again sets values and virtue as the measurers.

IV. (High) Art Is Enriching

What distinguishes high art from low art must be its values, or the virtue it communicates. High art doesn’t merely entertain, charm, or enliven. High art makes us better people.

Someone once said that artists are the engineers of the human soul. High art appeals to the nobler aspects of human nature; it speaks to our higher faculties.  High art is soul food. High art is the window through which we can glimpse our better selves in a better world.

Problem: "Enrich" is a funny word. By whose standards? What might be seen as enriching to someone from an eastern school of thought might be condemned as anti-intellectual by someone from a western school. Are we enriched by art that appeals to emotion? Are we enriched by art that makes us laugh? Do we praise the art of the ecstatic for the realms to which it transports us, or do we censure it as a detriment to rationalism (as does Plato)?

Can great art only be that which is solemn, baroque, and didactic? Or is the best art that which most titillates us? (In that case we might have to take down all the paintings and replace them with video games and porn.)

"Artists are the engineers of the human soul." The quote is Josef Stalin's. For an illustration of this principle in practice, look at North Korea. Is this what we want from art?

On the other hand: what is soul food? How do we sift the art that elevates from that which merely delights, interests, or entertains?

We're still unable to set down any criteria on these terms because we’re trying to count unquantifiables. It all seems up to interpretation, doesn't it?

V. (High) Art Is What (Some) People Say It Is

It's all opinion. What qualifies as high art depends on what the academics of a given time and place say it is. Or where the whims of the tastemakers and curators are directed. Or what the government insists. Art and its standards are defined by authority.

This definition leaves a bad taste in your mouth, doesn't it?

Would it be any better to democratize it? Let's say there's no such thing as high and low art. All art in and of itself is equal, and the measurer is public opinion. What the public loves best, that is the best art.

Leaving it up to prevailing opinions in the ivory tower might be unappealing, but would it be any better to let the mob decide what speaks for its culture? Are their preferences representative of what we would truly consider the best we have to offer ourselves?

None of this takes us any closer to a definition of art. Do we admit that art is too mutable, too elusive, and too arbitrary a thing to define? If we can't define it, then who the hell are we to talk about it, criticize it, or say what is or isn't?

But that's no less dissatisfying.

VI. Art Is Intuitive

The tool of the artist is his intuition: knowledge unsystematized, irrationality, inspiration. Likewise, it is through intuition that we perceive that thing that makes art what it is. What we see in art, in the best of it, can only be called the sublime. Art -- high art -- conveys something of the sublime.

Problem: We don’t know enough about it (the sublime, or our perception of it, or what causes it) or about ourselves to quantify or account for we perceive it as we do in what we do. Until we can -- let's see how far the physiologists and neurologists can go – we're just left shrugging and saying "I know it when I see it."

We can’t say that high art is that which has the most sublimity or highest concentration of it. That would be absurd.

If anything, by venturing down this route we've only proved that we're trying to objectively resolves something that only exists subjectively. It can't be done. Art is that which has the characteristic we recognize art as having.

If we backpedal to our earlier attempts, we’re stuck admitting that any definition of art will possess so many ramifications, exceptions, and ambiguities as to put the final decision in the hands of authority or consensus. What art is depends entirely on who says what art is (and how many people listen to them).

I suppose this means anyone interested in art is therefore obligated to continue arguing about it ad infinitum.

Unless anyone has a better idea?


My head hurts. For the time being I’m going to smoke and read Euripides. I’m a little ways into Medea and feeling cautiously optimistic about where things seem to be headed.

Edit: oh god

In Lieu of an Update, a Nitpick

Some time way back was a post about some of the hitches we're experiencing as our cultural digitization accelerates. Since then we've seen the unwarranted social media manhunt of Ryan Lanza, beautiful but fake Hurricane Sandy photographs, the bursting of the "Romney will win in a landslide" filter bubble, and so on. But today we're revisiting a recipient of the original post's criticism: QUOTE SITES.

There's a whole bunch of them out there, but they're pretty much the same: websites amassing pithy sayings from famous people and inviting browsers to search and peruse their ad-dappled indexes. One such site is Philosophical Quotes, whose Twitter feed I've recently begun following.

A few days ago, @philo_quotes posted:

« Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. »
Plato

Which is a beautiful quote -- but doesn't it sound sort of familiar? 

Plato technically did write that, sure. But in the Republic the line is spoken by Glaucon, and his suggestion that astronomy belongs in the philosopher's curriculum is immediately shot down by Socrates, Plato's mouthpiece within the dialogue. It's equivocal to present the statement as part of Plato's philosophy, since it was only proposed in order to be dismissed.

Yeah, sure. Nobody cares, nobody needs to care. But it's essentially erroneous information that most people following @philo_quotes (over 150,000 of them) will credulously accept. However much we might disagree with his assessment of astronomy's value, our man Plato was a stickler for the truth and would not appreciate being quoted out of context.

I emailed Philosophical Quotes to point this out. The site master thanked me for doing so, but the quote is still there. Well, whatever. Why should he give a shit?

To me this is another line (however small) underscoring the supreme necessity of the fact checker amidst our century's unprecedented gout of information. It also implies that a greater share of the burden of verification has been foisted upon the consumer's shoulders, whether he knows it or not. Want to be a more effective Internet user? Read more books.