Some people walk right by Gwen’s place, and don’t even notice. They might be thinking about mortgages, or family problems, or jobs… or the latest national fixation, COVID-19. But Kirsten and friends weren’t distracted by any of that. The cold bright air made them happy, and the flutter of dark-eyed juncos at a feeder across the street… Until they were startled by the great, big, green Grinch nailed to the post under Gwen’s balcony. “Won’t steal my Christmas,” Kirsten pouted angrily, and everyone on the line agreed, even though Mrs. P, their daycare teacher, had to laugh. Snowmen, elves, and Santa himself crowded Gwen’s yard, too, fastened to sticks in the surrounding brick planter and tacked to the clapboard siding of her house. So Kirsten felt pretty sure that – as always – the Grinch would come to be a believer, too. It was Mrs. P who pointed to the painted rocks nestled in the grass along the planter wall. Kirsten figured they must be nice rocks, judging by their colours and shapes. “Life is short, eat dessert first,” Mrs. P read one. Kirsten agreed! “Less todos; more todays!” advised another. Kirsten’s favourite, though, was the one with the angel on it that said, “Believing is seeing!” Even though Mrs. P said “whoever wrote it got it wrong way round.”
About this Moment
Our neighbour, Gwen, loves Christmas, and goes all-out with decorations every year. This Moment was inspired when a gaggle of daycare kids all hanging onto a cord, with their daycare teacher in the lead, stopped to wonder at Gwen’s display. All I had to hand was my iPhone, so I took some pictures with that, and got one or two that were good enough to use. This is a fictional rendition. None of the names are real, and actual events have been interpreted to fit. Hope you enjoy.
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He’d never dived off Prospect Rock before, only jumped, legs and arms flailing, yelling like a banshee, anticipating the cold slap of the lake’s surface, and that alarming transition between this world and that… the world of summer sky, filled with clouds and birds and planes, and vastnesses; into that startling nether world of cold water pressing in, stifling your voice, forcing your limbs to straighten out, and your body into the shape of a dagger, plunged into an unknown. He’d never taken that shape, mid-air, hands clasped above – or, rather below – his head, feet pointed up into the sky, mind focused on the precise moment when he’d enter the water, not with a splash, but with a surgical penetration of the translucence between now and then, past and future tenses. Diving is a conscious act; jumping a wild, screeching, childish enthusiasm. You prepare to dive, imagine yourself arcing through space like a cormorant, parting the waters as if your steepled fingers could find the interstices between molecules, then point your flexing body into its precise curve through the fluidity of its new medium gracefully, missing the jagged formations imagined beyond the phenomenon revealed by light.
Surely there’s enough room in the universe for everyone who has died.
That’s a relief, I suppose. It means there might… just might… be a heaven out there, even a god, who only need occupy a tiny corner of the 13 billion light year breadth of measured space and time… and who knows what lies beyond the known, how far we’d have to travel in our transcendental spaceships to reach the ever expanding membrane of infinity.
Language can say things it’s impossible to comprehend. Thirteen billion light years, for example. Uncle Franklin tried to describe the speed of light for me once. “If I flicked on a light switch, here in Chemainus, say at the tip of Bare Point, you’d see the beam – it’s a wave, actually, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’d see that beam in just over a second, if you were standing on the moon, say in the Sea of Tranquility… one-point-two-five-five seconds to be exact, that’s how long it would take.”
Uncky Frank couldn’t have understood that most nine year olds wouldn’t have a clue what the heck he was talking about, of course. Or what the speed of light had to do with my father’s coffin, making its slow progress down the centre aisle of our church, borne on the shoulders of six strong friends and relatives. He was just trying to describe, after the fact, the theoretical speed a soul could fly according to his own theory of special relativity.
Mum and Dad used to laugh at Uncky Frank and his ‘weirdo theories’. “He should leave the science to Einstein, and stick to building houses,” Dad said. “He’s good at that.”
“His inquiring mind takes him to strange places,” Mum agreed, as if Uncky Frank’s brain was a poorly trained Pitt bull yanking him around on its leash.
They loved him, though. He was everybody’s favourite uncle.
“Your dad isn’t very far away, once you know ‘C’,” he said, sitting beside me at the wake. “That’s the constant that stands for the speed of light in a vacuum,” he added, when I gave him a puzzled, pleading look. “Three hundred thousand kilometres per second.” He smiled benignly.
“How far is it from your head to your heart?” he persisted. “Show me.” I put my left hand over my heart; my right on top of my head. “That’s how far away your dad is from you, always,” Uncle Franklin said. “He’ll never leave, and – at the speed of light – he’ll be with you in an instant, whenever you need him.”
Uncky Frank had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on a special shelf next to his favourite armchair. He’d read it every evening, as if it was the world’s longest novel, from A to Z with occasional side-steps to look up an incomprehensible word in another article, then another word in the explanatory article, and another, and another, and so on.
“Unless someone’s reading it, these are just lumps of masticated wood, glue and fake leather, gathering dust,” he told me once. “Knowledge doesn’t reside in books. Squiggles on a page don’t mean anything until someone reads them.”
To his dying day Uncky Frank claimed to be an atheist. I visited him near the end. Gaunt, pallid, and weak as he was, he still smiled and gazed at me with his pale blue eyes. He could tell what I was thinking, and put his left hand over his heart; his right on top of his head. “That’s how far away from you I’ll be, if you ever need me,” he said.
I tried not to show it, but he laughed. “Just cause I’m what you call an atheist, doesn’t mean I don’t believe something. A few more days, and I’ll be gone, but I’ll live on in your memory,” he smiled benignly.
“And when I die?”
“You’ll live on in the memories of your friends, your colleagues, your family. And I’ll be a smidgen of that, which is enough for me.”
Uncky Frank bequeathed me his set Encyclopedia Britannica. I browse them from time to time, but there’s no reference to any history of mine in there, just antecedents. The speed of light hasn’t changed, though, and the time it takes a beam to get from Bare Point to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.
End Note:
Writing is rarely a linear process. For example, this video has a typical pedigree. Yesterday I was working on Episode 43 of The Mural Gazer. In this scene Buddy paddles out onto Cowichan Lake, teetering on the brink of suicide. There, he encounters the spirit of Hong Hing, the Chinese merchant, bootlegger and gambling den operator, depicted in Chemainus Mural #4, who is tying to dissuade him. Although he’s alive and talking, Hong Hing is decked out as a deceased, oriental patriarch, and he’s floating to the forever-after on the mirror-calm surface of the moonlit lake.
I’m on aqua incognito for this description, so I started researching Chinese funerary traditions online, a fascinating glimpse into the rites of an ancient culture.
At the same time, I have been trying to get my head around Immanuel Kant’s metaphysical theory of Transcendental Ideals. Although that’s not the kind of subject matter you can throw undiluted into a novel, as a thematic undercurrent, I believe speculative philosophy enriches stories. And the rites I was learning about the Chinese belief in an afterlife, particularly the burning of Joss Paper and representations of things the deceased need to be happy in their new world, evoked by association Kantian proofs of god, heaven and immortality.
There’s no logic to the sequence that lead to The Speed of Light, but its origins do trace back to The Mural Gazer.
I’m not a poet, but in this instance, a novelist composing a sonnet, taken from the mind of the protagonist in my current work-in-progress, The Mural Gazer. Buddy Hope has decided to take the final, life defining step of ending his life. But he’s not approaching this ‘task’ from the usual anguished trajectory. Instead, he sees it as a logical conclusion, a job that needs doing, almost as if it were a household chore.
I’ve been trying to figure out how he came to this conclusion. Many of us have contemplated the act of suicide, not as something we would actually do, but as a way of getting underneath, or behind, or into the meaning of life. That’s not where Buddy’s head is at. He’s simply tired, and doesn’t look forward to another thirty or so years dragging himself through a world that has no purpose, no sustainable joy.
To paraphrase someone very close to me, who chose Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), Buddy isn’t living anymore, he’s just existing. He’s depressed at the prospect of carrying on, when every moment takes him farther from that time in life when he believed in his purpose as a father, a reporter, an armchair philosopher.
The question hanging in the air at this point in the novel is: Will Buddy’s recollections and contemplation heading toward his final act change his mind. He’s composed his parting letter, and left it on the dining nook table of the camper he’s been living in as his home-away-from-estranged-home. He’s saying his veiled goodbyes to family and friends, and is about to drive out of cell range to his chosen spot. Nothing he’s considered so far has dissuaded him from deploying EEK, his Emergency Exit Kit.
What Sense Reveals isn’t written to a particular person; it’s written to all the people he has known and loved.
Thanks for checking out my first video post of Today’s Writes. This excerpt is taken from Episode 56 of my novel in progress, The Mural Gazer. At one level, it’s a philosophical but very personal take on suicide – not as a desperate act, but as the rational decision by a man who’s grown tired of living. So I don’t see it as a discussion of suicide per se, so much as an existential, inner conversation on the value of life without meaning.
Protagonist Buddy Hope is more sad than desperate. Sad, because purpose and meaning have drained out of is life, and the thought of continuing seems cowardly. He has arrived at this ‘to be or not to be’ moment, not in Shakespearean torment, but almost dutifully. The twisted irony of his circumstance is: his purpose in life has become to end it.
And what about those he’ll leave behind?
That becomes the real question. And Buddy doesn’t have an answer. He’s written his note. Said oblique goodbyes to his estranged wife, children, lover, and friends Bernice and Harry. But he knows his leaving will be a painful shock to them, and they will be left to struggle with the question: why? To wonder what they could have done to save him.
So another conundrum confronts him: Buddy realizes he has to commit a cowardly act, if he wants to discontinue his cowardly existence. His only consolation, if you can call it that? The belief that people will have to patch the fabric of their own consciousness with shared memories of him, and that mourning might, in a convoluted way, bring them together.
Is that a vain hope?
Today’s Writes are excerpts and reflections on some of my works in progress. They are an opportunity to share, and an invitation for people to participate in my story telling. Thank you for being here.
Poetry, of course, stands on its own. In fact, one of the joys of all literature is the creative response it evokes in the minds of readers. Sharing our responsive impressions is now possible, and this is mine to Rosemary Ratcliff’s poem Our Changing World.
This video was produced for the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society, where I volunteer as a communications guy. Collaborations like this help bring the arts in general, and literature in particular, to a larger audience.
If you want to simply hear her poem, and let its language activate your own interpretations and visions, hit the play arrow, and close your eyes! Then share what it evokes for you in a comment!
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Picked up the cat this morning to give his mourning hug listened to the breath of going in and coming out squeezed like an accordion his fur pressed to my ear listened to the resonance of going in and coming out listened to the purr of in and out
I’m not going to be able to pack everything we need to know about setting up to produce video readings and trailers into a single blog post, so if there are topics within this topic you’d like me to explore and expand on, get in touch and let me know.
And if you’re really interested in the subject, don’t take my word for it, go online and get other perspectives. My take on what makes an effective video reading or trailer for websites and social media is unique; there are plenty of other variations on the theme you’ll be able to find, conferring with Dr. Google.
That said, let’s get underway. Before you actually do anything in the physical realm, play and replay an imaginary version of your video in your head, and view each showing from a different seat in your mind’s-eye theatre.
Take one: an artist’s POV. Ask what you want people to take away from your video? And what you want them to do? Buy your book? Attend a reading? Absorb a philosophical perspective and share it? Change their attitude about something? Know who your viewer is, and what you want to say to him before you set out producing your video.
Take two: put yourself in the ‘average viewer’s’ seat. What’s going keep her there? What is it about your story you want to emphasize? Do you want to make her laugh? Arouse her sense of curiosity? Send chills up and down her spine? Disgust her? Get her to like you? Wax philosophical? Wonder what comes next?
Take three: now you’re sitting in the producer/director’s chair. You have to figure out what’s possible and how to make what’s possible happen in the final cut. As you play through the video, ask yourself what kind of equipment you’ll need to make each scene happen? What skills you might have to acquire? How long it’s going to take to produce your masterpiece? Who you’ll need to involve in the production?
Take four: You’re the Production Manager. Your job is to figure out who and what you will need to bring together, when and where in order to get the video trailer or reading done. Once your assessment is finished, you should have a pretty detailed, step-by-step chart of how to get from scene-one to your finished video.
Now you know what you want to do, it’s time to set your ‘system’ up so you can keep track of how you’re doing. Even a simple video project can generate dozens of files, sticky notes, emails, and so on. Having all that data stored in accessible, navigable locations is absolutely essential.
I use three Adobe programs to generate elements of a video production: Photoshop (composite photos and slides), Premier Pro (assembling the video), and Audition (sound production). I also use stock sound and image services to get material I can’t photograph or record myself. Most productions require dozens of photos, videos and sound clips. All those elements have to be organized and coordinated, if you don’t to lose your way.
Typically, I open a folder for the entire project in File Manager on my Mac. It will contain sub-folders, the Premier Pro project file; and the final MP4 video. The sub-folders will be labelled: Photos-Images, Video, Audio, Slides, Elements, Correspondence, Text, and so on. You get the idea.
Once I start assembling and editing the video in Premier Pro, I will create a similar set of folders for Photos-Images, Video, Slides, Elements and Audio. As I need materials, I import them into the mirrored Premier Pro project folders, and when they are placed in the video, I colour code them, so I’ll know what’s been used and what’s on deck.
Although Premier Pro lets you import whole folders from File Manager into a project, I don’t do that. I prefer to transfer them one at a time. If it’s a larger production, I will also colour code imported files in my Mac’s File Manager, so I can ignore them when I’m looking for materials later.
All this may sound bureaucratic and tedious, and if you’re among those who can keep a dozen balls in the air at the same time and grab them on the fly, you may be able to do without the bother. I’m not. I find a structured process for gathering, storing and retrieving materials during a video production allows me to focus on the aspects of a project I really enjoy, the creative activity of transcribing a vision from my imagination into the mind-space of an audience.
Why might you, as a writer, want to consider posting online readings and book trailers? The obvious answer: the Internet is where more and more people are going these days to browse and buy. One need only mention Amazon.com to appreciate how book sales and distribution have been affected by the global transition to eCommerce.
Still, many are reluctant to give up the Underwood typewriter and weighty, leather-bound volumes as iconic symbols of true literature; and many more are prepared to blame technology – and especially the Internet – for the serious declines in writers’ incomes over the last couple of decades.
Are they right?
Yes and no, I think. But as a writer I can’t afford to overlook online options for getting my stories into the hands and minds of readers. So online readings and book trailers, as part of a self and direct-to-web publishing strategy, are approaches whose time has come. The conventional route of finding a publisher, who will get my book printed, then distributed to to bookstores, is still appealing, but exploring other possibilities makes sense.
And even if I do get my manuscript accepted by a publishing house, I still have to promote it on my own, and sell as many copies as I can, if I hope to supplement my income in any meaningful way. So ipso facto, I need to feature my books on my own web site or Facebook page. An online presence is essential for writers – especially little known writers – and it has to be done-up in genres a tech-savvy population demands: which translates into easy, quick, graphic, and catchy, which narrows down to video readings and book trailers.
The secret to producing a good online reading or book trailer is inspiration. You have to see it as a creative work in its own right – as art.
What equipment and skills do you need to do video promo of your books? A mobile phone and Rick Mercer demeanour are all you really need. But since most of us don’t have Mercer’s gift for gabbing; and jiggly, poorly lit, echoey recordings of halting speakers aren’t likely to impress audiences; an investment in equipment and training might pay off.
I do almost all my production on Adobe’s integrated photo, video and audio suite (costs about $50 per month). I use my iPhone quite a bit – and its video quality is more than adequate for most web and social media productions – but I also use a Cannon T7i, digital camera, and have an inexpensive studio set up that includes diffused lighting, green screen, tripods and so on. I’d say the whole kit and caboodle cost me under $3,000.
That’s a significant expense in my case, but the ability to create readings and trailers that are a cut above jiggly, poorly lit and echoey makes the investment worthwhile.
Training is another matter. Some younger, tech-savvy authors will also have the skills and equipment needed to do catchy video trailers and readings. Most will not. I’ve acquired my skills haphazardly, during a 30 year career as a journalist and communications manager. I’m not saying it’s an impossible undertaking, but the learning curve for most writers would be awfully steep, and would only be surmountable if they were energized by a passion for the process.
So for most the only realistic option would be to hire someone to produce their readings and book trailers, these days in a manner that observes all the COVID-19 protocols required. Professional video production can be prohibitively expensive, but quality video for authors’ web sites and social media channels can be reasonably priced, especially if some aspects of the production can be done by the authors themselves. A price of $100 per minute is possible, and three to four minutes is usually plenty of time to capture and deliver the essence of your message.
Another option could be a recorded reading workshop or circle – conducted totally online in the COVID-19 era. As well as ending up with a video reading or trailer that could be used to promote your books, you would get the support and encouragement of a group of like minded participants, who want to improve their story-reading skills and delivery. A three session workshop, with five participants, might cost $200 per person.
Thanks for joining me in this blog post. Next up: Online Readings & Trailers – Creative Steps
How do you define that precise moment when habit becomes ritual? It’s like pressing the button on a camera: first you frame the shot, then you focus, then – almost without your expecting it – the shutter opens and the effulgence is etched onto digital sensors, where it will reside forever… or as forever as we can possibly make anything in the neural network, where all our images and imaginings truly reside.
I can’t re-conjure the precise moment when I decided to make the bed with Cerberus lying on top of the tussled blankets and sheets, but there must have been a tipping point when that morning rite was sanctified, became official, obligatory, so fixed that Cerby won’t get up now until we’ve done our thing.
As for Mel, she doesn’t think it’s funny anymore. If she thinks about it at all it’s with annoyance.
There’s a trick to making the bed with your dog lying on it. Psychically, you have to place the canine at the very centre of the activity… think of her weight, depressing the mattress, as the locus of gravity in your suburban universe. Then you have to animate that gravity with consciousness – sanctify it as more than a mindless force, pulling everything downward, bending the universe toward a dark place from which nothing, not even an essence as ephemeral as light, can escape.
You have to imagine the warp as part of a continuum, like the yellow centre of a daisy, that holds the petals in place and draws your picture together in time and space… but with petals that aren’t sharply defined, that bleed into infinity by imperceptible gradations of awareness… memories shading off, one into another.
What is memory, after all, if not the whole of our past and entirety of our future, the infinitely large and small coalescing in the exact epicenter of mind? Once you’ve got that right, you tug, and smooth, and straighten, and – magically – everything works out… the bed gets made and the dog’s still lying there on top of the coverlet when you’re finished.
Mel and I used to share the bed-making duties. Some days she’d do it, some days me, sometimes we’d each take a side and work together. I suppose if we’d continued in that vein, Cerby would never have become so central to the process. Melanie wouldn’t have allowed it.
“It’s ridiculous,” she says. “The dog shouldn’t even be on the bed in the first place.” But she leaves it at that, lets the sleeping dog lie, while she busies herself getting ready for work on weekdays… for shopping, gardening, visiting friends and relations, or whatever on weekends and holidays. With Mel, there’s a ‘look’ for every occasion, and she’s meticulous about getting things just so. I’m sure people think her a bit too elegantly coiffed and dressed, but they don’t understand how hard it is for her to hold things together without breaking down, flinging papers about, smashing dishes.
Some days, when I remember, I compliment her on how good she looks. She appreciates that. If we didn’t have a past, it would be like flirting again and falling in love. “Beautiful” describes her best, but I have trouble using that word – it makes me feel unworthy, like I’m complimenting a goddess, who can see right through me.