Cheers

A warm afternoon, sitting in the sun and listening to music.  Well…and…

Look, I’m sitting in the sun with music blaring in my ears — of course I’m writing, too!

I wasn’t thinking about doing a blog post today, however.  No, today was for stories.  But…

But, there’s always a but, in my life!

I can’t listen to music and not get ideas.  Yeah, yeah…I still have that bit of flashfiction I promised early last week, but that ain’t where this is going.  I still have the image in my head, and I still want to write the piece,* but that ain’t gonna happen today.

*I’ll stake out the parameters now: 400 words, from an image of snow softly falling in the streetlights…

Now, what pulled me away from my first love — from longform storytelling — was a song.  A song that…evoked.

I’ve talked more than once about the ability of music to evoke in the listener emotion and memory and feeling.  From sadness to joy, from nostalgia to hope, from the bitterest regret to the purest hope, music can — and should —  make the listener feel.

Er…kinda like all art…

The writerly aside is, by the way, the same as it ever has been on these blog pages: if your story does not make your reader feel, you’re doin’ it wrong.

Now, I’ve talked before about nostalgia…and about my general aversion to that particular sin.  But, well — yep, there’s yet another but in my life! — that aversion applies more to that brand of nostalgia that makes you…well…sad.  The nostalgia that makes you think back and want.  The nostalgia of what could have been.  The nostalgia of what you have lost, and what you never had.

There is, however, a good kind, too.

There is that nostalgia that makes you think about everything you have done…about everyone you’ve loved…about the world as a place of experience and fun, rather than one of lack and loss…

There is that nostalgia that reminds you of friends who are still there, rather than of those long past…

To make up for the 1,600 word monster-post of last Friday, I’ll keep this one short and close it out here…with, of course, the song that made me think about the ”good” nostalgia.  Forget the specific names and events noted in the song, and just let yourself feel the emotion behind it all.  For me, it brings the memories and emotions of pints of Grimm in the backroom of the brewery…

Of giant margaritas — with extra tequila, of course! — with Sally and Pete and ‘Stina…

Of long nights of stiff drinks and shitty pool at Snug Harbor…

Nostalgia, On The Rocks

Nota Bene — I posted this a few weeks ago, as “Under the Fireflies.”  I posted it, then I took it right back down after barely an hour.  I wasn’t sure, at the time, if it was something I should have posted.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to go with the tone…or with the, well, openness of it.  I’m still not sure.  I’m not sure, but screw it…when have I ever let second thoughts or self-editing stop me on this blog?

I don’t get it.  I really don’t.

I don’t do nostalgia…at all.  No freaking way, not for me.

I avoid sentiment and memory as much as humanly possible.  Memory and sentiment are, to me, the memory of dead friends and the sentiment for the times to which I can never return.  Beyond that, however, lies also the fact that the friends of my past, from high school and college, have all gone on to lives bigger and better, while I’ve gone on to…well…write.

“Great to see you again!  I’m the President of a 756-trillion-dollar oil company!  What are you up to now?”

“Great to see you again!  I designed a new computer chip that Apple just bought for a billion dollars!   What are you up to now?”

“Great to see you again!  I can’t stay long because I’m off to receive my Nobel Peace Prize!  What are you up to now?”

Well…I wrote a great fight scene yesterday…

*sigh*

The worst part of nostalgia for me is that from time to time — okay, all the freaking time — I have to remind myself of the things I’ve done that so few have.  I have to work to note the unquantifiable, immeasurable things in my life to which our modern society gives no worth or meaning:

I’ve stood on the deck of a small boat and watched the sun rise at sea, out of sight of any land…

I’ve watched a wolf pack bring down a huge bull elk…

I’ve snuck through a grizzly’s den…

I’ve stood in the middle of an arena and listened to thousands cheer…

I’ve stood on the Palatine and used my hands to read the past in inscriptions too faint for eyes…

I’ve been lost and had to follow the stars to get myself out of deep shit…

I’ve been drunk in the wardroom of a Royal Navy destroyer…

I’ve jumped from 15,000 feet with nothing but a hangover and a parachute…

I’ve touched a gun, a hundred feet underwater, that was last touched by a sailor trying to shoot down the plane that killed him…

I’ve heard, and written, the tears of a man who watched his best friend go down with the ship…

I’ve stood in a gas chamber at Auschwitz…

I’ve created characters and worlds, and I’ve destroyed them…

I’ve made readers laugh, and I’ve made them cry…

I have a photographic memory.  I don’t say that to brag, but to set the scene.  My memory does not mean I remember things like they were “photos,” by the way.  Rather, it means that I don’t forget, well, anything about the moments and scenes that make up my life.

Sight, smells, feelings…

I remember the first funeral I ever went to in just as much detail as the last.  I remember the friends I lost when I was young as much as the friend I so recently lost up here in Yellowstone.  I remember the first time I ever saw snow as much as the snowstorm currently blowing outside my window.

I remember the smells, and the atmosphere…

I remember the sounds, and the sights…

I remember the emotions and feelings of the scenes in my life as much as I do the details.  Can I tell you what color tie I wore to my middle school graduation?  Yes, I can.  But far more can I tell you about the fear and anxiety of moving on, mixed with the pride at being smart and capable.

As a writer, by the way, just how much material do you think comes from being able to remember the emotions and reality of the night you lost your virginity?  Or the first time you smoked pot?  Or the first night your parents caught you lying to them?

On the flip side, just how much do you think I would pay to rid myself of the night when the first of my friends committed suicide?  How much to forget the night my sister died?  The night my girlfriend told me she had aborted our child?

Okay, it’s time to repeat myself: I hate nostalgia.  More than that, I hate memory.  I hate it for a lot of reasons, but not least because the scenes and memories of my life never go away.  They never fade, and they never disappear.

That’s “great,” by the way, from a writing perspective.  It’s “great” because I always have a well of emotion and memory on which I can draw.  It sucks as the writer, however, because all of that loss and pain is as real today as it was yesterday…

P.s.

Okay, so given that I work very hard to avoid memory and nostalgia, why are most of my favorite songs so evocative of those very qualities?  No, really, WHY THE FUCK?!

Look, I know it’s a function of key and melody and lyrics, but I just can’t stop myself.  I’ve pointed out before a few songs that tend to hit me upside the head with the nostalgia-bat, but I’m going to link here a song that has been hitting me lately.  This song may not be the perfect expression of nostalgia and memory, but it is the song that is absolutely stuck in my head as I write this…

 

I Don’t Do Nostalgia

Something scary happened to me the other day.  Now, I get disturbing and unsettling things fairly often, and I get irritating things every single day, but scary?  Not so much.

I was talking with an acquaintance.  Arguing, really.  It was a discussion about the best sci-fi TV series of all time.  Nothing unusual for me in a debate like; while I have strong opinions on shows I love and hate, I am always looking for ways to get another perspective, always willing to talk about shows and movies.

In addition to writing and music, I am also — if you haven’t guessed — a movie and TV nerd.  We all have regrets from when we we were young.  We all have those annoyingly nostalgic memories and thoughts of paths not taken.  Well, my biggest regret, my worst missed path, was in not following my love of cinematography and directing.  I worked in film/TV in high school, even did some in college, but I never trusted myself enough to pursue it.  Of course, I didn’t trust myself to pursue anything in that first stint in college…which is probably why I drank my way through it rather than study…

Ahem.  Never mind.  That particular little bit of random regret is most definitely not what I sat down to write about…

I’ll spare you all the gory details of the debate itself.  I mean, you already KNEW Deep Space 9 was the best of the Star Trek series, that the (relatively) recent re-make of V was muddled garbage, and that HBO’s Game of Thrones is better than the actual books right?  Right?!?  Of course you knew all that.

None of that was the scary part, anyway.  Want to know what the scary part was?  Firefly.

Fire-fucking-fly.

Not just one of my favorite sci-fi shows, it’s one of my favorite shows of any genre and any time period.  I mean, crap, it’s on my list with Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H and Cheers, for God’s sake…

And it’s better than fifteen years old.

FIFTEEN!

Holy shit…it feels like that thing just came out!  I mean…crap…I can still remember watching it when it when it was new!  Hell, I still binge-watch it at least once a year…

Fifteen years old.

The damned show can almost drive.  Pretty soon it’ll get married and have little baby shows!*  Crap, a barrel of scotch made when it premiered is just about ready to drink!

*Don’t I wish — Firefly’s tiny fourteen episode run is still far-too heartbreakingly short.

By the way, if you want a good lesson in the use of flashbacks and seemingly-random jumps in sequence and timing to tell a story, and to build pathos, watch the episode Out of Gas.  I’ve written before about learning from everything when it comes to writing, and I meant it.  Some of the most important lessons on writing and storytelling I’ve ever learned came from movies: Spielberg on foreshadowing, Hitchcock on tension and suspense, Scorsese on symbolism, Scott on mood and atmosphere, Singer on manipulating perception and expectations…I could go on for a long time, but I think I’ll save that digression for another time.

The original Star Trek is over fifty…Star Wars over forty…Blade Runner thirty-five…and none of that is quite so depressing as Firefly being fifteen.

Crap, I don’t do memory (when I can help it), and I avoid nostalgia like the plague…this is no freaking way to start a day…

***

Random musical interlude — nothing really to do with Firefly or the post I just wrote, nothing other than the fact that this particular song is one of the most evocative pieces I have ever heard.  I know it’s the key and the progression and the rhythm that all combine to evoke memory and nostalgia…I know that, but still it works:

Rolled Along The Unbroken Song*

*Hey, it’s a great freakin’ line…I had to use it at least once!

When you get right down to it, the church drove me out of established Christianity, but it didn’t kill my faith. It wounded it…it drove it into hiding…but it didn’t kill it. I still have my own version of faith, and Christmas is still a time of year that means…well, everything to me.

Now, my favorite carol is a semi-nonsense song: “Little Drummer Boy”.  If you listen to the lyrics, however — and I mean really listen — it is a song about the poor and broken, about those who have nothing to offer but themselves.  As an artist, that song resonates more than I generally like to talk about.

To that carol, I want to add another.  Err, two more.  This post was, in fact, intended to be about only one of those, but I’ve always been given to excess, so you get two.

The title above comes from the first of those, comes from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”*.  It would be hard to find a song that better mirrors the bitter despair that so characterizes…well…just about everything nowadays:

 

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

That pain and despair, and the hope that arises at the end of the song…well, Ray Bradbury described it best: “immensely moving, overwhelming, no matter what day or what month it [is] sung.”

Much as I like that carol, however, that is not what I set out to write about.

No…for a number of reasons, I am not ready to unpack that song. Nor am I ready to truly embrace the hope with which it (and the Longfellow poem from which it was created) ends.

The song behind this post is very, very different. It channels that one sin I have so often sworn does not afflict me: the sin of nostalgia, and of memory.

It doesn’t afflict me because I don’t let it…except at this time of year. This time of year starts a chain of memory that, for me, runs unstoppably from the bittersweet of Christmas to the still-raw pain of New Year’s Eve.

There has been a lot of water under my particular bridge. I’ve felt some of the highest highs you can imagine. And the lows…they’ve been there, too.

In all that has gone on in my life — from success to depression, and everything in between — I have built and strengthened that armor we all wear…the armor of the adult. We insulate ourselves, we protect ourselves…and we forget what it means to feel.

Think back to when you were ten…

The world was a very different place to a ten-year-old. Now, in many ways, the act of “growing up” is as good as it is inevitable. But, no matter how good, we lose something in the process. More than lose something, we sacrifice something…we sacrifice a very great deal, in fact.

We sacrifice not just the magic, and the honesty, and the imagination, of childhood…but also the hope, and the ability to lose yourself. To lose yourself in the excitement of a special time of year…to lose yourself in the simple pleasures of the world around you…to lose yourself in the closeness that comes only from those who share the imagination and dreams of the young…

I want to feel Christmas how it used to be
With all of its wonder falling on me
This season has felt so empty, oh, for quite a while
I want to feel Christmas like a child

I want to see snowflakes fall to the ground
My brothers and sisters all gathered around
Singing “away in a manager” as we sit by the fire
I want to feel Christmas like a child*

Part of this, I have to admit, is because my family is not whole…and has not been for years. I miss my sister…and, for whatever reason, that loss is just more real on Christmas. I want to be able to laugh and love — to play and live — the way it was so many years ago.

I want, in the end, to go back to when it was all so easy…and so happy.

 

* “Christmas Like A Child” — Third Day, 2006, Essential Records