A Thousand Forgotten Influences

I’ve always felt fortunate to have kind and inspirational people around me, and yet never did I feel quite as inspired by them as I did through the various people I have never met. In fact, what I love best about the people I have known, it seems, is that they have introduced me to music, movies, and literature that has moved me more deeply than I can express. Perhaps it is that people can come and go, but their creations can remain forever. I loved my older brother Bob, but when he moved out and got married, the music that he had introduced me to remained. Rick and Tom were also older and did not always have that much time to share with an 8-year old boy, but their comics were always available to me.

Books, movies, music, those were my influences. Each wove stories for me, each brought me glimpses of lives and worlds far beyond my immediate surroundings.

I led a normal enough childhood. I spent many days playing baseball and football, and exploring whatever nature was to be found in my small part of the world. I spent my nights playing hide and seek, truth or dare, and even ding dong ditch (the game where you knock on someone’s door and run like hell). I played board games with friends when the weather kept us inside and made more than my share of prank calls. When on vacation I spent all the time I could at the beach or in a boat fishing.

And yet when I think back to my childhood, some of my most intense memories are of the basement of our home where the books, magazines, and records of my older siblings were stored. There I could adventure along with explorers of ancient civilizations and distant planets. There dwelt superheroes intent on defending justice, or monsters who sought vengeance on a world that had done them wrong. There were worlds under the sea and civilizations within the planet’s crust. There were giants and Lilliputians, sentient beings with many tentacles, and kind but misunderstood swamp creatures.

As I read through literally hundreds of horror magazines and comic books, I listened to the albums and 45’s that were part of my brothers’ collections. From such gems as Walk Away Renee and She’s Not There, I learned of love and caught glimpses of the mysteries that would be revealed to me when I achieved the mythic stature of a teenager. Motown and The British Invasion taught me of romantic love and through that, of a desire to be seen as noble and true in the eyes of another. I even managed to learn a little class consciousness through some of my favorite songs: Down in the Boondocks, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, and Tobacco Road.

Perhaps the world created for me by such stories did not grow more expansive as I aged—after all, how can the world ever be larger than our imagination—but the stories grew in depth. The books I started to read kept closer to reality but showed me how truly rich the real world can be. Gone were the days of creatures from outer space, and yet somehow I recognized that in such far-flung stories of superheroes and aliens I had also learned about nobility and relating to those we considered different from ourselves. Superheroes had super powers, yes, but they were also heroes. Their powers often failed them but even in their darkest moments they retained their moral code and their passion to do what was right. Mankind might have explored far distant galaxies but they still had to deal with the same questions we on Earth ask ourselves. And while they met many a menacing alien, there were as many more who were capable of teaching us a lesson about ourselves.

And so it was that I learned many of life’s important lessons from people I had never met. A thousand obscure authors and storytellers all but forgotten now by the world. It was more difficult to translate the lessons I learned on paper or in songs into real life—things were always so much more perfect and heroic in fiction. But in the end I learned that heroism and idealism were guiding forces. I feel a debt to each of those thousands, literally thousands, of strangers that brought me into their world of imagination and passion and made me see and feel and imagine things more deeply than I ever would have otherwise.

I want the world to remember their names. I want them to know that Jim Shooter, Michael Brown, James Warren, Robert Arthur, Gardner Fox, Jean Dutourd, Anthony Phillips, and so many more lived and created and inspired. I want to introduce such influences to a new generation so that they can experience the thrill I once felt, still feel when I cast my memory back to my youth. I want to keep alive all that was once so vital to me, and so I push on in that direction, hopefully making a bit of a name for myself so that I can reflect back on those who influenced me.

But even more than keeping alive the names of those who pushed me in the story-telling direction, I want to keep their spirit alive. I want to give to others what has been given to me. Not amusement and amazement only, but a sense of heroism and possibility as well. I write for adults, not for teens or children, but I feel it is important for everyone to keep alive ideals that we too often dismiss as naïve or impractical in our later years. Achieving a better world must first begin with perceiving and believing, and there is surely a better world possible than the one we’re currently constructing. I know that it is so, I have seen it in the work of a thousand nearly anonymous creators of wonder, and I will not let their inspiration fade away.

Stories Shape Worlds

In my third of three interrelated blogs about what shapes the world we live in, I would like to speak to those constructing the reality we perceive, those tellers of tales and builders of paradigms. For some time now you have forgotten the original magic that drew you to words and stories. What so clearly influenced you as a child you set aside somewhere during the growing process in light of the “realities” the adult world sought to convince you of. Somehow you forgot what you knew to be true, became convinced by the stories told by those who had neither conviction nor beauty in their craft. You came to believe in their ugly story, though to be fair to them, it was the best their storytelling ability could weave.

What they lacked in beauty and truth they made up for in insistence and threat. They sold you an ugly story and they did so by telling you the beautiful and true were childish notions. They told you what you believed to be beautiful and true was dangerous, and that the only safe alternative was to reach less far and for something of far less value. And you believed it, because they seemed so damned sure of themselves. You were trusting, because that is what people who embrace the beautiful and the true are. You were willing to believe that others knew more than you because you didn’t want to believe that anybody could really know that much less.

So you began to live the lie, even though you knew it was a lie. You knew a life so mundane and ugly must be a lie, because life must be better than that. You knew their story was not the real one because you had caught a glimpse of something so much more wonderful.

You never really gave up on the vision you had. Instead, you accepted to live within the lie in order that you could fight it from the inside. You would inhabit the lie and while experiencing it you would learn for yourself the flaws in the story. And there were many gross, horrible flaws in the ugly story spun for you by others. Still, you doubted yourself. You told yourself that perhaps you only wanted to disbelieve the story they told you precisely because it was so sordid and base. You doubted yourself because you had such a scrupulous conscience and felt such a need to be certain about your beliefs. More than anything, you wanted to know the truth—even if the truth was not beautiful—because if it was not beautiful, you would find a way to make it so. You would discover the truth and then overcome all odds to insure that beauty as well as truth won the day.

But the game was rigged against you. You fought the fight on their home turf. You let the tellers of the ugly lie decide the rules, and even then you foolishly assumed they would follow the rules they had created. But they were the tellers of the ugly story, and tellers of the ugly story aren’t able to conceive of a world where playing by the rules ever pays off.

It’s not their fault. Like you they were made to believe in the ugly story, but unlike you, they never got to experience the beautiful one. They were taught their lessons when they were young. They were taught ugly lies and in turn they acted upon them.

It’s a funny thing about a story. The story shapes your perceptions about the world around you. If the story says that people are basically bad, you will behave in fear and doubt and your experiences will basically confirm what you believe. But, if you believe in a beautiful story, if you have even once glimpsed a world that is beautiful, where people act according to the most noble of ideas, you will behave towards others in faith and love and that faith and love will transform your interactions with others.

Not always. The people who have been taught the ugly lie have been taught their lessons most cruelly, and they will not easily be swayed from the story that has caused them to be so guarded, so hurt. It takes someone well versed in the beautiful story not to be dismayed by those so deeply suffering from the ugly lie. Both sides, whether they realize it or not, are spreading the story they have been told, hoping to make their version of reality the official one.

The people who tell the ugly lie are hurting, and their hurt is proof to them the world is ugly. They deny the beautiful and the true but each time they do a little part of them dies. They oppose the story that is beautiful and true, but deep within them they are seeking it. They wish to be proven wrong, but have no great faith that it will happen. They do not realize that their behavior is precisely what is keeping them from truly experiencing it.

They are at war, the ugly story and the beautiful story, each seeking to disprove the other, each seeking to dictate the behavior and attitudes of us all. Each of us are soldiers in that battle, whether we see ourselves as conscripts, soldiers of fortune, or defenders of all we hold precious. If you think of yourself as a proponent of the beautiful truth, you must be as certain of your convictions as the other side pretends to be. You must show leadership. The story you tell must show beauty and truth, free as much as it is possible to be from the ugly and the untrue. For those who suffer from ugly lies will be quicker to see your hypocrisy than you ever will. In that way they will make you a better person if you permit them to.

For that reason you can never allow the belief that you are on the right side to permit you to act in ugly ways or to lie. You cannot win the war playing by their rules. You cannot win the game by accepting the ugly lie as a weapon you can use. In fact, you cannot beat them by thinking of them as your enemy. That is not the story you believe in. The story that is both beautiful and true is that all men are your brothers, all women your sisters. The beautiful truth is that we are all one, all of us destined for some future more wonderful than humanity has ever permitted itself to conceive of before. Thus the struggle is not against others but in the struggle to drag all of humanity more towards the beautiful and the true. And the beautiful and true story becomes closer to being the more we are able, not to combat those who believe the ugly lie, but to help them to see a better way. For in the winning of a soul from darkness, the ugly lie becomes less believable. With every fight we avoid and everyone we are able to convert, the beautiful and the true become more so.

We have all written a few lines of both stories, none of us are angels or demons. Some have written in one more than the other but we need worry about judging or comparing ourselves with others. If there are any winners to be named it is the sinner who has repented, the sheep that was lost and has been found.

And there is the battle, there is the struggle, to close the one book and open the other. The book of ugliness and lies has more pages written in it than ever need be read, nothing more need ever be added. The pages are many but the story is one not worth reading. It is time we close the book, recognizing it for what it is. It is filled with ugliness and lies and while we should not seek to deny it, it is foolish to dwell upon it. Let it remain as a reminder of what should never be, something that collects dust as it becomes a relic of a world that was. The book of beauty and truth is waiting to be filled, its pages already bursting with stories of heroism and faith. And yet, for all the pages of testimony to beauty and truth that awaits being read, there is no end to the blank ones waiting to be written.

Writers Shape Worlds

My last blog post was entitled Words Shape Worlds. In it I expressed my belief in the power of words to shape the way we see the world. Sounds like a bit of a fluffy, airheaded idea, doesn’t it? It’s not and I was being quite serious. If you doubt it then contemplate for a moment the amount of time and energy that goes into word choice in advertising. Think about the billions of dollars spent each year in order to influence the way you think and act. So much money and so much research is not done without a serious thought for return on investment. People want to get inside your head and the use of words is one of the primary ways of doing it.

But words, powerful though they may be, are merely the conveyances of ideas. They are the conduits that carry living, transformative changes of perception from the transmitter to the receiver. Words do indeed shape worlds since they shape the way people perceive the world and act within it. But it is the writer who decides what words to use, how the words are assembled in order to present the overall argument. In other words, words are the paint, but the writer creates the picture.

As the perceived value of words has diminished of late so too the value of writers. The role of the writer is to amuse, to distract, to create false worlds within which people can briefly escape from the harsh realities of the real world. Readers too are told this story, so that most of a writer’s audience has come to expect to be told fairy tales the way a child would. The only difference is that a child is less willing to complain when they learn something or are confronted by somewhat troubling notions. Children, after all, are in the process of discovering the world, whereas by the time people reach adulthood most of them are too frightened to pursue any real kind of discovery further.

So the writer is assigned the role of mollifer of the masses by the powers that be, and those who venture to do something more are criticized for moralizing, pontificating, philosophizing. You can’t be a good writer if you don’t conform to the mold.

And it’s easy to go along with this sort of thinking. After all, it’s not easy making a living with just pen and paper, metaphorically speaking. Attempting to write at all is stepping outside the safe parameters, to try anything more ambitious seems more than a little foolish. And all the forces of a rather rigid social norm are pushing against you, telling you you must conform.

Those who buy and sell want you to work for them, want you to help convince others through slick marketing campaigns to buy product. They tell you life is about money and that you will starve if you do not dance to their tune. But if you are a writer, I wish to remind you that the ideas you construct from your observations and contemplations are more valuable than gold, and it is said that man does not live by bread alone.

Those who live to gather power also wish to dissuade you from your course. With guns and veiled threats of violence they will tell you that writing what you perceive to be the truth is a dangerous notion that threatens to weaken the pillars upon which society sits. Never mind the fact that what you write is merely an observation of the weaknesses that already threaten to bring those pillars down. If you write too closely to the truth as you perceive it, you will make enemies of those with power, make enemies of those who have control over the soldiers and the police and those with the weapons of violence. But if you are a writer, I wish to remind you that the ideas you write and the truths you observe are as powerful as any threat against them, for has it not been said that the pen is mightier than the sword?

The written word is both precious and powerful. They are too valuable, too sacred, to use merely to sell product or amuse. Words can connect humanity, can elevate discord into meaningful discussion what elsewise would devolve into conflict and violence. Words lift us up from the merely physical and bestial into realms that are spiritual, magical, miraculous. If there is divinity within us, it is hewn from our baser clay by words and ideas.

If you are a writer you work for beauty and truth, not for money and safety. To the degree that you do not you are not a writer but a propagandist or a salesman. The words, ideas, and approach must be your own or else you are not a writer but a stenographer. The path of a writer cannot be dictated by anything other than the truth and inspiration he or she perceives.

Words written freely and boldly were what forged our nation. We were nothing until we embedded lofty ideas into a collection of words that became The Declaration Of Independence. Although past words and ideas echoed in the document, it was a weapon forged anew for the world that was. Writers of today, while influenced by the stories that came before, must write anew the story of today. We must share in the boldness of those who wrote yesterday’s stories if we wish to pay proper respect to them.

First Words Of A New Novel

The beginning of a new novel. Feedback is welcome:

     She walked the dirt road toward the cemetery, carrying a shovel and a machete. Although the sun was near to setting, the earth still contained enough of its heat to burn the bottoms of her bare feet. Sweat stained the simple white working shirt she wore, sleaked the ebon skin that was made even darker by years of labor in the hot Southern sun. But the steadiness of her step betrayed no weariness or hesitation.

     It was a long walk to the cemetery, but it no longer felt enough of a distance to those who lived in the workers’ houses on the plantation. There was a new fear now, even greater than the fear their master provoked. The master’s cruelty had stretched beyond what they were forced to endure in the fields. His reach had gone beyond punishment, beyond even the taking of his workers’ lives. There was hope once that whatever laws governed this country might come down upon Mr. Delavois, that such cruelty would be noticed even when so much cruelty was permitted or ignored. But Mr. Delavois could not be tried for murder: they had tried him once and he walked away a free man. They found him innocent even when seven people had testified to the beating he had given Old Man Jackson. They found him innocent even though the jurors could sense the evil he radiated.

     It is difficult but not impossible to convict a man of murder when the body is never found. But a jury simply cannot convict a man of murder when the body still walks the earth. When old man Jackson shambled through the courtroom doors, they had to let Delavois go, even though Jackson’s whole family had seen him buried in the ground. Delavois could murder with impunity because he had the ability to bring his victims back to life.

     She continued on, her feet kicking up the dust of an unusually dry and hot summer. The tears in her eyes did not disguise the determination in her stare.

     The master had killed her husband, it had been no accident. Nor was he murdered for some misdeed or crime. He was murdered because the master needed fresh servant to do the deeds that the living could not be persuaded to do. The dead did not last forever. They decayed as the dead do. And the stench they emitted after a while was worse than that of a normal corpse.

      Delavois had killed her husband, but she would make sure the crime ended there. She would strike out against his unnatural power with all that was human in her and it would be enough. She would climb the summit of what a human was able of in order to do what must be done.

     Simple white crosses marked the graves of her husband and everyone in that area with a similar skin color. When she reached her husband’s plot—the ground still mounded on the fresh grave—she through the machete to the ground, took the shovel from off her shoulder. She was no less weary than usual. True, she had been given the day off to attend Jobah’s funeral, but her emotional state lefter her worse off than a full day’s work would have. But she would do what must be done, would dig up her husband before her master got him, made him one of his unholy servants.

     The first thrust of the shovel into the dry earth told her how difficult a task it would be. Although it was freshly laid earth that distanced her husband from her, it was rocky and dry. She would spend the better part of the night at her task of freeing her husband from the fate worse than death, ridding her fellow man of an abomination of Delavois’ creation.

     She would have to mutilate the corpse. She never allowed the thought to fully enter her thoughts but it was there, it was the driving force of her actions. She would have to so badly butcher the flesh of her husband that he would be of no use to her master. Only in this way could she insure that her husband might achieve some rest in death as recompense for his life of unceasing toil.

     And when she was done with the digging and the butchering, shoe would have to return to the plantation and give a full day’s toil so that her master would not know what she had been up to. But she would not be beaten, would not give in to this monster that thought himself above the rules of both and God. Nature itself would soon have to rise up against this affront to its laws, and she would be an agent of that uprising. She was of the earth, never felt so much so before now. She was but a small aspect of it, like a blade of grass in the wind. But she would make things right.

     Somebody had to make things right. Someone had to bring the natural world back into balance.

Her body was used to work, but the motions of digging were new to her, worked different part of her body than the ones she had built up. Physical pain began to make itself known amidst the emotional anguish that blanketed her being. It all built up into one big wall of agony that sealed her off from any chance of really living again. Her whole body felt like one big cauterized wound.

     She achieved a rhythm that set itself above any physical desire to stop. It was only when she needed to halt to wipe the sweat from her brow or change her grip that the desire to cease overwhelmed her. At such moments she rested shortly, wiped the horror from her mind, and set herself back to work. Work was something dug deeply into her spirit. There was a certain freedom to be found in slavery, a certain amount of dignity to be found amongst oppression. It was something deep inside a person that no outside force could entirely destroy. It was perhaps the last bit of her soul that was left.

     She was lucky they didn’t dig him deep. If it was colored folk they would have been certain to dig him as deep as they could, knowing he might come back. But colored people didn’t come here any more, not unless they had to. Delavois knew that, that’s why he had white people digging graves nowadays. Whites didn’t know anything about voodoo. Whites didn’t have to be afraid.

     She hit the wood of the coffin with the shovel. There was no relief in the reaching it, she knew the hardest work was yet to come. It still took a good deal of work to clear the lid of all the dirt on top of it. When that was done, she rested a moment, braced herself for the hardest thing she’d ever have to do.

She dug the shovel into the slim gap between the lid and the casket, increased the gap to nearly an inch. Then she dug her fingers into the gap, pulled away the lid as gently as she could.

     Darkness saved her from seeing her husband’s face with any degree of clarity. But she’d have to do her work soon before the sunrise. Nevertheless, she gave herself a moment to rest, a moment to gather what strength she had left. She stood outside the grave and contemplated a hatred that she had no time for, the grabbed the machete and jumped inside. She stood inside the coffin, the only place she could stand and deliver the necessary blows with sufficient force. She swung a blow at her husband’s neck. Crrrtch. Then another. With a fury that was misdirected hatred, she swung with all the force within her. The space was cramped and the work was long. Before long her mind detached from her actions until she scarcely noticed what she was doing.

     When she severed the head, she lifted it and sat it on the pile of dirt to give her more room to work. Next she went for the left arm, which was easier for her to reach. The pain in her arm and back pleaded with her to stop, but she knew that any respite would give her time to reflect on what she was doing. She switched the machete to her other hand and continued.

     Her first attempt to hack into the leg went askew, digging into his abdomen. The machete had hit the same spot as the wound that had taken his life. His insides burst open, and with it came a stench like the blossoming of a rotten flower.