Reflections on Being an Artist

It's difficult, this life.  Being the conduit for the vision is a responsibility that, while I do not wish to be hyperbolic, is the most important and life-altering responsibility that anyone who ever lived anywhere will have.

Particularly my vision.  Why do I do it?  Because I must.  I must communicate my vision to the world, no matter the personal cost.  Those who work with me, those who bring the vision to life, are mere vessels in my hands.

The critics won't understand, of course.  They'll say things like, "You've done it again!" and "It was adorable!" and "I liked the rapping reindeer!" but they won't get it: the sweat, the blood, the agony spent during torturous sleepless nights.*

My production of "Is Santa Smarter?" may have very well set the world of the fifth-grade part-time musical theater on fire.

Trendsetter?

Groundbreaker?

Perhaps.  But these words, no matter how true, are ultimately unimportant.

Above all, I am the shaper of the vision.  When I tell that actor, "Honey, you have to speak into the microphone," I am imparting the wisdom of the muses.

"Don't wave at your parents while you're saying your part," I say.  That's direction.  That's vision.

"We need to all step to the right first," I command.  Authority.  Having the vision means not being afraid to say it outright.  I don't sugar-coat; I can't.

Not everyone can do it.  I know this.  I am blessed.  When I arrive at work this morning, my classroom still redolent with the scent of last night's Subway sandwiches, I know that stinky, pickley air will be truly rarified.  I will receive the adulations due me.

I'm expecting a mention on the morning announcements.

*Well, I might have slept, but not well.  Okay, well, but not long enough.  Okay, long enough.  But I occasionally dreamed about the production, which in my version starred Rob Pattinson as Santa Claus and Taylor Lautner as himself.

Guilt

Guilt is, above all else, a great motivator.  If you figure out how to make someone else feel guilty, you have almost limitless power.  Mothers have known this for years, through the following techniques:

1. The trembling sigh.  As in, "Dear, you know I understand you can't come home for Christmas this year, of course what you do is important.  Don't give it another thought.  (Trembling, tear filled sigh.)"

2. The "but, you know:"  As in, "Sweetie, it's fine.  Go and do what you need to do."  Beat.  "But, you know, this may be your grandfather's last Arbor Day, and your Cousin Fitz goes to trial next week.  That's all I'm going to say."

3. The nothing-at-all.  As in, they don't say anything or do anything, but you just know they're cooking up something, so you give in because you are afraid of what that card may be.

4. The labor time/diaper change accusation.  As in, "I spent 78 hours in labor giving birth to you and you can't even take three days off of work to see your second cousin graduate from veterinary school?"

Fortunately, my own mother uses guilt only when absolutely necessary and openly acknowledges it, so it's above board.  My own Momz is a master of the trembling sigh.

Momz: It's okay.  I understand.  (Trembling sigh.)

Deb: Did you just play the Trembling Sigh?

Momz: Did it work?

Deb: Darn.  I'll see you at 6.  I'll bring the potato salad.

Momz: Bring Sven's, it's better.

Deb: Oh.  I understand.  (Trembling sigh.)

Momz: Well played.

So this kind of cordiality shows that guilt can, if applied appropriately, be a useful and hilarious tool for family negotiations.

However, some people use guilt in truly toxic, harmful ways, as well as guilt's obnoxious bullying older brother, shame.  Guilt and shame are two things our society seems to be trying to eradicate entirely, at least in an emotional sense.  What people seem to forget is that guilt and shame, when appropriate, are good things.

You SHOULD feel guilty if you do something awful.

You SHOULD feel shame in some circumstances.

And some people just need a healthy dose of both on a daily basis.

But, what do I know?  I'm just a blogger, trying to get by.  Go on.  Have your fun.  Don't worry about me.  I'll be fine.

(Trembling sigh.)

Perspective

I recently posted that I now have to wear glasses all the time.  I find this mortifying.  My eyes, if I may be so bold as to mention it, are really my best feature.  (I assure you, the competition for that title is stiff.  My nose hasn't spoken to my upper lip in three years, and my ears still boycott holiday meals.)  But, my eyes win the contest, so I do my best to "play them up" through subtle use of makeup and expression:

It would be difficult to draw attention to my daintily pointed ears in such a fashion.

Now, with glasses, I feel like a librarian: dowdy, frumpy, and old:

It turns out, Sven thinks I look like a librarian, too.  Only Sven has a slightly different interpretation of the word:

Who knew?  In any case, I feel a little better about the glasses.  Once this pinkeye clears up (I know, how could I be more sexy, right?) I'll put on some makeup and take a picture of my new glasses.  My hopes, frankly, aren't high, but who cares?

The way I look in Sven's eyes is better than any mirror.

Glasses

I went to the eye doctor yesterday.  The verdict: glasses.  All the time.  Not just for reading and driving, like before: all the time.

Of course, to be fair, I haven't worn my glasses for reading or driving for a long time.  Years, really.  I'm pretty sure the last time I went to the eye doctor was 1998.  I always had good vision, but as a teenager, it was discovered that I have a lazy eye.

Glasses, the doctor explained, would correct my lazy left eye, which had become nearsighted.  My right eye, as if to compensate, was farsighted.  I was given glasses, which I wore, usually.  I eventually when to contacts, which was cool because I could just wear the left one.  When I ran out of contacts, I ordered more, but I just sort of let it go.

I don't like wearing glasses.  Here are the actual un-retouched photos of me with and without glasses:


Without:

With:

But I'm wearing them.  After years without them, my lazy eye has become shiftless.  It now sits on the porch drinking beer while my hard-working right eye does all the work.  Finally, in a fit of despair, my right eye developed a horrible case of pinkeye (technical term: conjunction junction) just to get me into an eye doctor.  My left eye, protesting, has been to an AA meeting and employment counseling.  Righty is relieved and thinks it may work out.

But I look like a nerd.

Most Fascinating?

Every year, Barbara Walters, arbiter of all that is important and worthy of attention, caps off the year by announcing who we all found Most Fascinating.  It's a good thing, too; without Barbara, I might not have known who I was interested in this year.

Boldly and bravely carrying on her 84th year of these interviews (I believe she began them on a morse-code telegraph show), Barbara has again hit the nail on the head of the coffin by choosing a truly eclectic (meaning: "type of eel") group of real, honest-to-goodness CELEBRITIES this year.  (I can only tell you 9; Barbara saves #10 for a surprise, just in case not enough viewers tune in to see how thick the Vaseline will be smeared on her camera lens this year.)

I am a bit surprised at some of her choices, though.  No-brainers Kate Gosselin and Glenn Beck get no complaints from me; it is my hope that Kate leaves the interview carrying Beck's dodecoduplets (since Kate can get pregnant just by wishing) because those children would be a perfect storm of television mayhem.

She's also interviewing Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert.  I hope an entire legion of babies erupts from this interview: gay, extravagantly dressed, gender-ambiguous babies.

Others on the list include celebrities so fascinating I have already forgotten who they are.

Here's the one that gets my head a-scratchin': included on the list are Michael Jackson's three children: Prince, Paris, and Blanket.  (There are three of them, but they share one slot.  They can, they're little.)  I'm sure Barbara means this sincerely and is not being exploitative at all, but does she not understand anything at all about Michael Jackson?  That fame, perhaps, was not the healthiest life path for him?  And, maybe, these kids don't need to be put into the spotlight anymore than they are already?  That they might have a chance to be, if not normal, healthy and functioning adults?

No, Barbara understands that these kids are doomed to a life before the lens, whether they like it or not.  She's probably doing them a favor.  Why pretend?  We find them "fascinating," don't we?

Okay, snark over.  I find this repugnant.  Barbara Walters should be even more ashamed of herself than she hopefully already is.  (Snark not over, I lied.)  These kids didn't ask for celebrity.  They just lost their dad, who, despite everything we know about him and everything else we suppose about him, was clearly the center of their lives.  These kids don't need to be profiled on prime time network television, they need a counselor.  And a teacher.  And people who love them enough to tell them they can't have another cookie.  I don't find them fascinating.  I find them unspeakably sad.

Oh, I despair.  It's time for another moist towel and a bowl of peeled grapes.  Whatever can I do to escape this endless exploitation of people's lives for fun and profit?

I wonder what's on E!...

Compatibility: The Cold War

I know I am supposed to be concerned about climate change.  I am.  Deeply.  I am, to be precise, concerned about the climate change that occurs in my bedroom whenever the temperature outside dips below 60.

Sven drives me crazy every year with his insistence that the house be warm in the winter.  Really.  I don't understand it.  Why, if you are comfortable at 72 degrees in the summer, must you have the house at 74 or 75 degrees in the winter?  Why isn't 72 still comfortable?  THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ME AT ALL.  Still, it is a truth: in the summer, we have the thermostat set to 72 or 73 at night, and we are fine.  In the winter (which in Texas can last as long as 7 non-consecutive weeks) the thermostat can go no lower than 74.

74 is inhumane.  It is miserable.  I cannot exist at 74 degrees indoors.  Outdoors, okay.  I'll give you that, 74 is pretty comfortable when you're outside.  Indoors, I become a sweating, grumpy, belabored musk ox at 74.

For the first several years of our marriage, I got my way sometimes.  Sven would pile on the blankets and sleep in the "chill" but insist that I turn on the heat before he got out of bed.  Now, he has the perfect excuse to keep the house at interrogation-tactic level:

The children.

It's for the children.  The children can't be cold.  The children kick off their covers.

Sure.  The children.  I knew he'd get me with that someday.

I miss the days Sven and I were in college.  We lived in a dilapidated house his grandfather built in the 1500's or something, which had no central air or heat.  Since we were in Beaumont, Texas, we weren't as concerned about heat, so we installed window unit air conditioners.

Then came the coldest winter in Beaumont history.  And old, hardwood floors.  And a barely-insulated house on a pier-and-beam foundation, which made the floors so cold you could feel the wind blowing up through your toes as you ran.

Those were the days.

Come to think of it, that's probably why Sven likes such a hot house in the winter.  Even though we have a nice house now, with carpet and everything, he likes knowing that he can be toasty warm anytime he wants.

I guess he's earned it.

Snarl.

New Discovery

I was working on a lesson about Franz Schubert for my 5th graders when I came across this video on YouTube.  The singer is named Bibiana Nwobilo, she was born in Nigeria but raised in Austria, and she is amazing.  I think we will be seeing a lot of this performer in the future.  Check out her website (http://www.bibiana-nwobilo.com) for some more videos.  Sublime!

Book Review: Stephen King

I just read Stephen King's latest, Under the Dome.

It was awful.

I say this as a confirmed Stephen King fan.  I have been a huge fan of King since the 8th grade, when I read Pet Sematary for the first time.  I went on to devour everything he wrote: novels, short stories, novellas, even screenplays.  I currently own at least one copy of pretty much everything he has ever written.

I am not one of those annoying SNL-style King "purists" who proclaim that everything he has written since 1982 is trash, but there is a definite difference in styles when one considers the different phases of what has been a very long career.  Personally, I think the difference is editing.

His early work was (mostly) stellar: Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, the Stand...these are all masterpieces.  They are also all short.  In the "uncut revision" of The Stand, King confirms that the publishers were much more controlling in terms of editing in those days.  Some semi-stinkers (Christine) and stinkers (Cujo) followed, but beginning in the late '80's and early '90's, King's novels began to routinely run 1,200 pages.  I am estimating, but based on my own recent excursion into noveling, I would guess that puts him in the 400,000 word range, more or less.

In 1999, King was in a serious accident, in which he was struck by a van while walking.  Since then, his work has been markedly different in the opinion of most critics.  He was already losing relevance, however, and most people, including devoted King fans, disliked his newer work.

I loved Bag of Bones (1998, I think).  Other than that, most of his work has been fairly meh.  Last year, for my birthday, Sven got me a copy of Duma Key, which most people hated, but I thought wasn't bad.  It was definitely scary...it kept me up a couple of nights, for sure.

Which brings me to Under the Dome.  It is dreadful.  You know a book is awful when, on page 852, you think, "Finally, we're getting somewhere."  This book is 852 pages of setup for a plot that takes about 200 pages to tell.  In other books, King's penchant for delving into the minutiae of characters not only peripheral, but completely outside the scope of the story, is charming (for example, the chapter of the "uncut revision" of The Stand in which King details just a few incidental deaths that occurred after the flu epidemic had passed).  In this book, it just feels like rambling.  We get character after character after character, and I was bored.

The crazy thing about the book is that there is no setup at all.  He doesn't introduce anything, or anyone, at all: out of nowhere, an invisible dome has settled over a town in Maine.  The book opens with the dome settling in place (with some very grisly, King-like consequences) and the story should just take off.  It doesn't.  I kind of got a picture in my head of King thinking, "What if..." and getting going, which has worked before, but it falls flat here.

One of King's strengths is writing villains, and in this the book excels.  The town of Chester's Mill is "under the dome" for only a few days, but it is enough time for a small-town Hitler to create a climate of hate and terror.  The villain of the piece is truly a bad guy.  There is nothing supernatural about him.  He's just a jerk who, when presented with an opportunity, will do or say anything to keep his power.

Another of King's strengths is making the implausible seem plausible.  It is at this that Under the Dome failed spectacularly for me.  Spoiler: highlight to see, don't read it if you want to read the book: about halfway through, someone decides the dome is the work of aliens, then they figure out it is actually alien children playing with them the way human children play with anthills, so to get rid of the dome, they have to beg the children and convince them that humanity/earth is "real." The idea of the dome is intriguing, I suppose, but the real story is the human one: what happens to these people when they are isolated from, yet completely visible to, the outside world?  The pseudo-sci-fi purpose of the dome just muddied the water for me.  I honestly would have preferred no explanation.

I will say I loved some of the characters, though in a King book, an abundance of characters also means an abundance of death.  Lots of death under the dome.  Suicides, of course, but accidental deaths, deaths from illness, and of course murders also occupy these pages.  It is tiring investing so much in a book without a satisfactory payoff.

The payoff I wanted was twofold: a happy ending for some of the characters I was rooting for, and comeuppance for those I wasn't.  I was only partially satisfied.  To avoid another spoiler, I will just say that the ending was far to abrupt for everything that went into the beginning.  If I were Mr. King's editor, I would have lopped off about 100,000 words from the beginning and added about 50,000 to the end.

That being said, I cannot wait for Mr. King's next book, whatever it is.  I hope I will love it.