It's Official

Please check out Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet. This is my first professional sale, and I'm thrilled to be part of such illustrious company. Honestly, when I submitted I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Please support this anthology by purchasing a copy when it hits bookstores later this year.

My First Check!

Today I negotiated my first payment for a story bought by strangers. A threshold has definitely been crossed.

Getting Closer

I'm getting closer to being able to announce my first sale. The contributors are all sworn to secrecy, but within days I ought to be able to link to the anthology and its publisher. My lips are sealed and my fingers mittened until then.

The Holy Lie

My good friend Steve today blogged about Grand Theft Auto IV and the Holy Lie.  To recap the irony: many will oppose this game based on their perception that it promotes violence and antisocial behavior.  Yet the empirical data doesn't support that notion.  So the arbiters of moral rectitude will lie in order to promote their agenda.  It used to be that the Devil could "quote scripture to his purpose."  But now that the church has abrogated or has been deposed of the mantle of the determiner of reality, the Devil quotes data to the same purpose.  What will please old Scratch more--the idea that there are some hormone-driven youngsters out there virtually carousing, drinking, stealing, etc., or their moral guardians' lies?  Won't old horny-head salivate at the prospect of having a group of the righteous headed for the circle of hell that incinerates hypocrites?

I'd much rather stick a self-righteous theocrat with my pitchfork than a pimply faced kid.  But that's just me.

If only it were that simple!  The problem is not with the kids or the videogames or with the Devil, for that matter.  The problem is the nature of belief.  For 2000 years Western Civilization has relied on scripture as the final say in what's real and what's moral.  But those attitudes have changed decidedly in the last 200 years.  As a result, the purveyors of "correct standards of behavior" have changed their tactics.  They now rely upon the bible AND the scientific method.  It used to be that they could scold bad behavior simply stating that it was anti-Christian.  Now, they have to have data to support their position because they know that science is the only thing that anyone pays any attention to.  The subtext being: Isn't it interesting how science supports biblical standards.  (Except for evolution, of course). 

The problem is that they approach data without any understanding of science--they view data as though IT WERE SCRIPTURE.  I.E., the data is a matter of belief and faith, *not of proof or disproof.*  The data supports them because they *believe* it supports them.  There is no truth other than the truth of personal perception based on biblical principles.  Objective truth simply doesn't exist.  Therefore, they can't be said to be LYING, because they don't believe the alternative to be true.  Anything that does not support their personal perception of biblical principles is a lie.  Thus the worst that they can be accused of is willful self-delusion.  Not exactly the same as lying. 

While it sounds like I might be defending these hypocrites, I realize that I fall prey to the same willful delusion by relying on science too much in daily life.  While science might be helpful in some circumstances to daily living, it has less relevance than the bible.  I'm not a researcher.  I cannot independently verify the data, I have to have faith that it is true!  I must choose to believe it.  While experts will tell me that such and such is supported by the data, I either have to accept that at face value or say, "show me the proof."  Graphs and charts are totally abstract.  You can't see the objective truth unless you understand the statistical principles underpinning them.  Again, you have to accept on faith.

In many respects it is just this problem of science/belief/faith that has caused Global Warming to be such a divisive area of science for so long.  Science has theorized that it is happening for decades.  But Science is not equipped to tell us what the moral response to the data should be.  Thus we are left to flounder. 

While it may be bad for you to play Grand Theft Auto, it isn't science's place to say so.  Many of the same blue noses pointed to Doom and Quake and the Littleton, CO massacre. 

In that respect we return to our old adversary, the devil.  It used to be that if someone went out and shot someone "the devil made him do it!"  That was quantifiable evil.  Nowadays, because of psychology, we have to figure out the psychpathology that made him do it.  Except for a small handful of researchers, psychopathology is a scientific stand-in for the devil.  But where is the truth?  And more importantly, where is the truth that matters to daily life?

Psychotic Tendencies

Saw a very disturbing thing this morning on the way to work:  a naked woman sitting in the middle of the road.  I had just turned the corner.  Traffic had slowed but I couldn’t see why until I turned the corner.  She looked like she was in her mid-20’s to mid-30s—difficult to gauge.  When I saw her, I immediately thought that she was injured, that she’d been hit.  But then she got to her feet.  She looked like a character out of the Ring or the Grudge, with her snarled hair hanging down over her gaunt, pallid face.  As she got up I could see that she was naked from the waist down.  Next thought: has she been raped?  As  she crossed the street in front of me, she began to take off her t-shirt and it became apparent that she was psycho. 

 

After those initial shocks, my attention widened to take in my surroundings.  Plenty of other people were observing the situation and at least one had her cell phone out, so I stopped reaching for mine.  And I drove on.  I was scared that if I got out of my vehicle to try to help, the raw madness would coalesce into projection and she might take out her demented misery on me.  So I drove on.

 

But then I felt absolutely horrible about myself.  Obviously, I’m one of those people who can observe carnage without doing anything about it.  While this quality may make me a good writer, it makes me a terrible Christian. 

 

If this were an isolated situation, I might feel better about myself, but it’s happened more than once.  (Not with psychotics, but with drunks). 

 

I remember once when I was first moved to Seattle and saw someone lying insensate in the park near my apartment and when I returned an hour later and saw him in the same posture, I did call 911.  Turned out he was just a derelict passed out.  But I didn’t know if he was dead or not.  So I called.  When it turned out he was just a passed out drunk I felt like a fool.  Maybe that experience caused a callous to form over my naïve heart.  Life in the big city (especially one with as many homeless as ours) has challenges.  One of the quips about Minnesota that I remember fondly is: “40 below keeps the riff-raff out.”  Words of wisdom—words of wisdom.  Minneapolis didn’t have the homelessness that Seattle has.  (However, I don’t know if that’s still true).

 

Obviously, my mind doesn’t work quickly enough to respond.  I live in too much fear.  I fear altering my routine, even to the point of stopping to get out of the car to assess the situation.  I live in a fantasy world of stories and ideas, to the point that, when confronted by grim reality it takes inordinate mental concentration to respond in a meaningful way.  My response to this situation wasn’t meaningful.  I didn’t do anything to ameliorate it. 

 

So, here’s the philosophical point I’m left with:  I didn’t do anything.  In the Bible story, I was one of the many whopassed bybefore the Good Samaritan stopped to help.  It isn’t that I don’t have a desire to help—I do, but the fear, the weird, disconnected, free-floating fear that I’m going to call “city fear” keeps me isolated and unresponsive.

 

It’s a primal state, a strange, subhuman state, and I don’t know what the answer is, except that if one other person had been in the car with me—this series of events would have been completely different.  Isolation is as much a part of the problem as moral deficiency.  Both for me—and the poor madwoman, I dare say.

The Dialectic of Opera

Thesis.  Antithesis.  Tinnitus.

Feeling in a playful mood today.  Tuesday and Wednesday were DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL in which heavy depression and anxiety dogged my every footfall.  Can only speculate the cause.  Tomorrow I turn 50. 

I've been reading Duma Key by Stephen King and I'm enjoying it.  Like all of King's work in the past 15 years it suffers from prolixity, but the mood is involving, the setting is different for him, and his characters are interesting. 

However, in this case the story is very thin.  That was the case with The Cell, too.  I'm sufficiently engaged in the characters to keep reading, but very little has happened.  The high points:  Edgar Freemantle is involved in a life-altering, catastrophic accident that results in amputation of his right arm and neurological deficits (injury to Broca's area).  His erratic behavior  leads to divorce, but his children are grown and they support him.  He retires to Duma Key on Florida's gulf coast in order to rest, recuperate and heal his heart, mind and body.  But then his phantom limb begins to tingle.  At first, Edgar's forays into drawing and painting seem like precognition.  As time goes by, however, his artwork seems to actually be affecting reality. 

Like all of King's work in the past few years, this too is derivative.  The only thing original here are King's characters.  The gimmick of the paintings affecting reality is identical to an episode of the X-Files in Season 9 titled "Scary Monsters."  But the idea of art affecting reality is older than that.  King compares one of the art dealers that visit Edgar as "Dorian Gray."  So apparently he was completely cognizant of his plot pilfering.  Plot pilfering is completely fine, as long as you spin it somehow, and King uses his characters to that end.  It's going to be different this time because the characters are so unique.  That's King's strength, always has been.

However, when the story no longer supports the number of words it takes to tell it, there's a problem.  This is a problem with Duma Key.  While King is always careful to give the reader sensory details, nice humorous touches, disturbing emotion and feelings, terrific reactions, etc., when that no longer propels the action of the story forward, the prose feels stagnant.  That's what happens here.  Too much description of too much minutiae.  All of it is told with active, vibrant prose, but by describing everything in minute detail, the reader loses touch with what's really important. 

I Smell Children....

Without doubt, one of the movies that influenced me most as a child was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  It's now getting rave reviews as a stage musical in London and New York.

The character in the movie that fascinated me the most was the evil Child Catcher--played by Sir Robert Helpmann.

On stage, in a stunning feat of perfect casting, the character is portrayed by Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame.

Click here to see who I think should play the Child Catcher when they make the movie of the stage musical!

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