Portraits

Funny thing about children... they'll help you rediscover memories that you'd thought were long gone.

Saturday morning. 7:30 a.m. Bright sunlight streams through the windows and illuminates the toys strewn on our floor, and gives a golden hue to our battered, comfortable, mostly second-hand furniture. I am up because, despite a relatively sleepless night, my body simply will not remain asleep beyond 6:00 a.m. anymore. (I used to think Dad was crazy for getting up early on the weekends... I'm starting to realize he did not have a say in the matter.) I make cafe au lait for myself, and a much weaker version in a sippy cup for my son. My wife remains asleep, nested firmly in the spot that I recently vacated. 

We sit in silence and sip our respective beverages. His sober little morning face is an incredible reflection of his mother's. 

"Something is missing," I tell him. 

He continues drinking from his sippy, his huge brown eyes studying my face. 

"Something important." 

His silence continues. Like myself as a child, Jack's consumption of coffee is an all-or-nothing ritual, where he does not rest until the cup is drained to the last drop. 

"Donuts, Jack. We need to get some donuts for Mommy. And flowers. Why flowers? Not because it is a special occasion... it's just that when you live with a woman, periodically giving her flowers buys breathing room for those times when you royally screw up. Free tip, kid."

"Donuts!" 

"Indeed." 

I stand up to get him out of his pajamas, and then I stop. It hits me like a freight train. 

It is probably 1987. New Orleans. The weather is that same muggy warmth, with the same sunlight that seems to turn everything to gold. My father and I are on the road. We're in his immaculate Nissan Maxima, with its square lines and uniformly gray everything. We're on our way to Morning Call, which is the other restaurant in town that sells beignets, French donuts with powdered sugar on top. Dad and I are both wearing our pajamas and flip-flops.

This is very strange, because my father is a very proper man. Always with immaculately combed hair, clean shaven, pressed shirts and pants. Always appropriate. Composed. Controlled. Even in his own home, I could never say that the man relaxed. I only got to see little cracks of my father's humanity on rare occasions. 

This was one of them. Riding in that old car, sitting in his ragged pajamas, my father wasn't quite my father. Or, at least, not as I knew him. His hair was unruly and his chin was covered with dark stubble. Chuck Berry warbled "You Never Can Tell" on the radio, and we bellowed along. (I tried, at least. My knowledge of Berry's songs was limited at that time.) Dad dropped the hammer and we tore down the road, likely considerably faster than the speed limit.  Both of us laughed in delight. 

It was one of the few times I ever remember him doing so. This is one of my favorite memories of my father, because I got a little glimpse of who he was as a kid, before the world went to work on him. Rakish, impulsive, and a bit irresponsible, there was a certain delight in him that day. I'm not sure exactly why the walls came down, but I'm glad they did. 

I smile at my son and leave his pajamas on. I neither shower nor shave. My hair looks like I've mixed it up with an electric socket and a battered "Tron" tee-shirt adorns my chest. 

"C'mon, kiddo. We're keeping up a tradition."

"Donuts?"

"Yes. Still the donuts. And flowers for Mommy. And whatever the hell else we feel like." 

I load him in the car. Through the magic of smart phones and little cables, Chuck favors us with another rendition of his classic. I roll down the windows and tear down the causeway, with the ocean wind roaring in my face. We sing along to the radio and shamelessly procure our treasure from the store. For a bit, the rest of my life with all its cares and worries fades into non-existence. I am 100% present, and I am delighted. Jack smiles his mother's beautiful smile. 

When we get back home, he surprises Mommy with our treasures. 

Hopefully, one day, something will remind him of this, and he'll smile at this glimpse of me, just as I did of my own father. 

Short: Soulless Cups

Little. Cylindrical. Coldly odorless and antiseptic. Its dull gleam quietly speaks of potentially explosive heat, pressure, and explosive consequences as you roll it in your hand. Its little clean lines and faint curves linger in your mind. It is oddly soulless and cold in its beauty.

You might think I'm talking about a bullet. While that description would surely be apt, I am actually describing the ubiquitous K-Cup. If you aren't familiar with these bizarre products, they are single serving pods of coffee. Chamber a "round" into your Keurig coffee-maker, and seconds later, after pushing a button, a single serving of coffee is blasted into your cup in a pre-determined amount which may or may not fill your chosen cup.

I have a problem with these little machines.

"But Pat," you say, "They are so practical! Who needs a whole pot of coffee? Waste not! Instant gratification! Cool modular future stuff! What is not to like?"

I'll tell you what.

Let me take you to a little rotting building. It used to be a bank, and after the bank went out of business, became a government law office. The coffee was "subpar", but it was still coffee and it was cheaper than walking down the road to the local coffee shop. A group of people stand around the coffee pot, waiting while said pot drips its torturous, slow drip. Of course, it would not do to just stand there and look at the pot (unless they are all really fucking tired), so they talk. In fact, it isn't just any talking, since that is such a broad, catch-all term. "Talking" includes everything from pre-coitus dialog to legal argument to hostage negotiation. No, these people aren't just talking.

These people are shooting the shit.

They share all the little details that come together to form the gestalt of life. This person dressed like a hussy. That person just came into some money. My youngest nephew just turned four. I've got this bitch of a theft trial later in the week. I finally got that new chair I've been bothering the boss about for the past two years. That new attorney might be gay.

Somehow, that random sharing of information transforms into something better.

In a weird sense, that impromptu gathering, necessitated by the gurgling pot, starts to feel like the magic spell cast by a campfire. You find yourself drawn to it, starting at it, and enjoying the warmth and community, even if you are not particularly cold. That little bit of inconvenience becomes a great excuse to share your humanity with your fellow man.

In my opinion, it is these little reality pockets that make work bearable.

That is what is missing from K-cups. Everyone gets their single serving and quietly leaves. I don't think it matters how gourmet it is, or how convenient. I look at my 3/4 full cup of coffee and think to myself, "Something is missing... and it isn't just a quarter cup of coffee."

So even though it is more labor-intensive, messier, and not necessarily economical, give me my coffee pot. I need my shit-shootery, my humanity, and hell... I might just need a second cup when I finish the first.

Go for the Gusto

One of my son's favorite shows is called "Dinosaur Train". The title is delightfully informative, because the show does indeed chronicle the exploits of dinosaurs who ride on a train. The only thing it is missing in order to be fully informative are the words "time-travelling" neatly inserted between the two words in the title. Essentially, a family of dinosaurs use a this time-machine to visit different parts of the dinosaur age, and meet the dinosaurs that live there. On the whole, it is a solid children's program. Jim Henson's son and his team produce it, and it continues to feed that time-honored bond (neigh obsession) between toddlers and dinosaurs.

This afternoon, I encountered my absolute favorite D.T. episode.

It bears the elegant sobriquet "Dinosaur Poop!"

I doubtless give you an insight into my childish character by sharing this, but I laughed at that title for a solid twenty minutes after reading it. It is such a wonderful piece of written humor. No, seriously, it is. Stay with me here. First, there is the obvious laugh: they went there. The writers trod on that most delicate topic of dung. Even more courageous, the episode actually focused on dinosaur droppings. The droppings were no mere set piece or carefully-buried sideline factoid. They were the main event.

What makes it absolutely perfect written humor? The exclamation point, of course. They've not just muttered "...dinosaur poop." The creators have shouted it from the rafters.

Dinosaur poop!

Admit it. You're smiling a little bit right now. This sort of humor, which vaults neatly over the head of the toddler audience, is one of those wonderful winks to the parents. It is the writer's way of saying, "Hey, I know this isn't what you want to be watching, Mom and Dad. Sometimes I get bored, too. In fact, so bored that I am writing an episode about dinosaur poop, just so I can find some light in this child-themed, profanity-lacking, educational hellhole!"

Okay, maybe they aren't saying it exactly like that, but that is how it rings in my head. It is amazing how the a couple of simple words and the right punctuation, placed just so can have you giggling for twenty minutes, creating a whole tableaux of amusing images.

The experience made me think about something that has been dogging me in my writing. All too often,  writers (myself included) ham-string themselves with the insecurity hiding in their writing. Doubt me? Let's take a look at a few examples.

Passive voice is a good place to start. Ask any writing teacher what the most foul affliction of the human soul is, and he will promptly respond, "Passive voice." Nearly every writer I've ever met has the same problem. If left unmonitored, these writers will quickly lapse into the passive voice. Doesn't matter if you've been at the craft for twenty years. Passive voice sneaks in to all of our stuff when we aren't quite sure of ourselves.

Examples:

The bat was carried by Ted.
The body was tossed into the pit by Steve.
The sex was had by Brandy and Tom.

It is as if the writers aren't quite sure how readers will interpret the action, so said actions are couched in the wordiest, weakest way possible. It's like walking up to a beautiful woman at a bar and starting out with, "Um, excuse me, ma'am, you're quite pretty, and, uh, if it is okay, I'd like to buy you a drink." Yuck! All that hesitancy kills the thing before it even starts. What makes it worse? Readers can tell instantly. They might not be able to articulate why it is weak, but enough passive voice and anything starts getting painful to read.

As creators, writers really struggle with putting their heart onto the page. Insecurity comes out, and if it controls enough, you get tripe like the examples above.  This is one of those areas where "Dinosaur Poop!" is so brilliant. It is fearless. No beating about the bush there. It is powerful and direct.

The above sentences could be, too.

Ted carried the bat.
Steve tossed the body into the pit.
Brandy and Tom had sex.

And that last example? That brings me up to another insecurity I see in writing. I call it "wrong word" syndrome. Everyone who writes has a little voice in their head... well, at least one. Sometimes more. But at least one voice that is telling them what they are really trying to say. This guy (or girl) tells it like it is. He hollers this truth from his dark little chamber in the human mind. The problem is that these very true words originate in the subconscious, and have to dash through the minefield of upper-brain insecurity before they escapes out and onto the paper.

Rarely do these poor words get to the other side of that minefield in one piece. Usually they is missing a limb or two. This is the sad story behind "Brandy and Tom had sex." Even as I wrote it, I realized that I had censored it. Allow me to properly state that sentence.

Brandy and Tom fucked.

(And most likely, it was much more satisfying than when they just "had sex". And it certainly beat the living shit out of the sex that was had by them... that was just a debacle.)

The beautiful thing about "Dinosaur Poop!" is that it uses the most direct words. It uses the right words, even if they are a bit childish. And it punches you in the face. And as you sit there on your ass, marveling at how someone got away yelling that at the start of a children's show, you inevitably find yourself laughing. (Or, if you are really bent and prone to written humor, you write an essay about it.) That is the problem with Brandy and Tom having sex. It isn't quite emphatic enough. To really capture the tone I was aiming for, I needed the "F-bomb" in all its glory. Too many times, writers use weaker words because they are worried about offending readers, or somehow ruining their narrative "personality", if you will.

"Faugh!" I say to that. The use of the exact right word (even if it seems a little edge or inappropriate) can be a brilliant ambush that delights the reader, if you have the guts and panache to do it. That is really why I thought this truly bizarre example was worth writing about.

The lesson "Dinosaur Poop!" teaches is that bold simplicity works. The trick is putting aside enough of your insecurities to embrace it and just go for it.

Great Writers

Like many English scholars, I came to college with aspirations to one day be a great author. I wanted to write a book that would change lives and echo through the corridors of eternity. To that end, I took quite a few classes on writing. In a sense, the classes were fairly ridiculous. Many of the teachers, who themselves were not great writers, promised that they could teach us gullible students to do the very thing that eluded them. Being a gullible student (not to mention being blind with desire for greatness), I took this promise at face value and put my nose to the proverbial grindstone.

For years, I worked and worked on my writing. I created countless pages, and tossed most of them in the trash. I experienced frustration so often that I could describe it like a familiar friend. While I could occasionally create a piece of work that was enjoyable to read, I just couldn't forge that huge, life-changing tale which sucked everyone in like a maelstrom.

Now that I've been out of college for nearly a decade, I've got a bit more perspective on what constitutes a great writer.

Here is what I can tell you for certain.

With the proper tutelage, a really poor writer can become a competent technical writer. Clean up his grammar, police his bad habits, and imbue him with some sense of working style, and even a poor writer will be able to communicate effectively. In essence, this is what all the writing teachers at the University of Florida did when I came through. It could be likened to teaching a basic shop class. These were the guys that made sure that you had all the tools to take on a project.

Actually doing the project, that was something else entirely.

That brings me to the second part of my theory. No amount of teaching can turn a competent writer into a great writer. I believe this because I have never seen it happen. The UF English Department, over the course of four years, turned me and a legion of other literature lovers into competent writers. That is all. Despite a wide array of teaching tactics and a veritable sea of dedication, the teachers there could only forge competence.

Please don't think that this makes the accomplishment any less important or remarkable. Imagine all the horror if a legion of teenagers just started producing whatever they wanted, with no one to tell them how or why it might suck. Were it not for the stalwart defenders of composition at liberal arts colleges, we would all be hip-deep in "inasmuch" and "heretofore".

Quoth Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!"

In the course of my life, I have been fortunate enough to meet two really great writers. In one case, I had the pleasure of meeting him well before he had received any formal instruction. Even then, anyone could see that there was something in his mind that made him different.

This was not the result of any sort of tutelage. Nothing that my friend learned in a class made him great. It was something hard to define... something he was born with.

To put it plainly, both of the great writers I know are freaks. Their minds do not work like other peoples', and they often have an extremely difficult time fitting in with the rest of society. Gifts such as theirs come with a price. Genius always does. I suspect that even the great writers who sail over a sea of adoring fans with their boatloads of money must live a terribly isolated, often frustrating existence. (Of course, I am speaking in painfully broad terms. I am not suggesting that all great authors hide behind a curtain when company comes over. I just think that they have to endure being permanently on a slightly different wavelength than the rest of humanity.)

In the case of the two greats I know, I got to ask them both how they went about creating the mind-boggling things that they did. Quite surprisingly, both of them admitted to being just as ignorant to the miracle as the rest of us. To distill two long, tortured explanations into a poor paraphrasing, they both said something like this:

"I have no fucking idea why I can do what I do. Sadly, I don't have any control over it. Sometimes it is there. Sometimes it isn't."

Perhaps it is easier for those like myself, who have never "spun straw into gold", so to speak. At least I am not surprised or disappointed when the straw remains straw. Not true for the greats. They have had that sublime experience where the straw glittered and transformed into something else entirely as their frenzied feet worked the pedals. It must be frustrating as hell when that straw stays dull and straw-colored.

Lest I be burned by a mob of angry English teachers, let me qualify what I am saying here. Great writers can still reap enormous benefit from good technical tutelage. Even if you have miracles exploding in your mind and onto the paper, the most patient reader gets grouchy after the fifteenth passive verb in a row.

In a way, though, that is what makes the greatness so mysterious and elusive. Off the top of my head, I can name at least a dozen great writers who are, in a technical sense, terrible writers. Case in point: J.R.R. Tolkien. While the man had a few marvelous turns of phrase, his dialogue was horrific and his paragraph organization was the sort of thing that Strunk and White had nightmares about. The narrative flow of his books could be likened to a drain unclogging. Regardless, people have been falling off the cliff and into his massive world for over half a century now. If you doubt the power of that particular narrative, go ahead and look at how much money the movies made.

That is what makes great writing so hard (perhaps impossible) to teach. While great writing isn't all about content, it is mostly about content. In a sense, good technique just plucks the burrs from a story and makes it form clearer. Think of it like a guitar getting finely tuned.

Good technique is not a substitute for telling a good story in the first place.

Where does this leave me? Am I to wring my hands in anguish and rail against the cruel hand that fate has dealt me?

Of course not. That is ridiculous. At 5'9", I'm not a great basketball player, either. In writing and on the court, I have learned to live with it. I've no desire to lead a cultural revolution or get rich with my words these days. On a basic level, I simply enjoy the process of writing. Let the end result be damned. I like putting on music and feeling the staccato pounding on the keyboard as my fingers play their own bizarre tune.

For a lowly norm like me, that is more than enough.

Why the Randomness?

Truly, this could be one of the defining questions of my life. I don't think I'll aim quite that high on a Saturday morning where my back hurts. That said, you may have noticed a dramatic increase in the frequency of my posts, as well as a bizarre hodge-podge of topics. In fact, this entire new "Book of Songy" lay-out as opposed to my thematic, subject-focused blogs smacks of some dramatic new change in direction.

I figured it was high time I address it, so that the subject would not keep you up at night.

... as I'm sure it has for weeks.

As my more dedicated readers (read: stalkers) will attest, I've gone about four years without any sort of regular posts other than the extremely rare musing on martial arts or stream-of-consciousness explosion. This was a vast departure from the previous decade, where I was generating content a few times a week.

The reduction process started for the most noble of reasons. I spent the bulk of my young life as a shameless attention whore. As I became a more seasoned... everything, I realized the error of my ways. On the advice of some people that I trust, I aspired not to say anything unless I had something really worth saying. For a professional bullshitter, such intentional silence is deeply educational.

That said, I allowed it to go too far in my own life. I got super picky, and eventually it got to the point where nothing got past the editor and onto the internet. In fact, my internal editor got so blood-thirsty that I could not even finish the first draft of a short piece before I threw my hands up in disgust. At the grim climax of this internal battle, I stopped writing entirely. That was about a year ago.

The current format and content of this blog are my way of trying to strike some sort of balance between my harsh, noxious, slightly fearful editor and that deeply hopeful, slightly mad inner child who likes to create words and blast them into the collective cranium of the internet (think flushing an M-80 down the toilet). I am forcing myself to create content and share it, even though I think that some of it is totally inane. (Let me defend myself here: I have not posted everything that I've written. I recently generated about 500 words on how to properly clean a coffee pot, and then decided that was even too boring for my most dedicated of readers. The fact is, there are just some topics that are so random that they don't merit sharing. I'm trying to cure a mental block, not commit the literary version of war crimes.)

This choice of tactics to address my problem comes from advice by one of my oldest writing teachers.

"Just write. There's no magic to it. Just keep sitting down in front of the keyboard and letting your fingers walk. Be as picky as you can, but ultimately realize that the muse comes only when she wants to. Like a beautiful and fickle woman, she can't be forced. Your job is just to be available at 3 a.m. when she happens to come knocking on your door."

So this is my version of putting on a pot of coffee and waiting for that difficult bitch to come staggering in from her wild night out.

The lack of adornment on the site and the stubborn refusal to properly package the content and organize it into tidy little neighborhood are all part of the psychological practice. If the inner editor/dictator gets too many options, I fear he will seize power again and institute a second draconian rule that is just as harsh and unproductive as the first was.

To this end, I am deeply grateful for your indulgences as an audience, and I deeply hope to create something rewarding in the future that will balance out all those times that you read my most passionate thoughts vis a vis coffee pot cleanliness.