Just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was glitzy, glamorous, yada yada. I watched the red carpet and enjoyed looking at all the pretty people in their pretty pretty clothes. Ryan Seacrest was his normal plastic self, which is just what this sort of occasion calls for. Overall, though, the ceremony left me with a thought that is not by any means original or new, but is certainly important: why all the fuss?
While I understand that a huge amount of time, energy, talent, passion, creativity, and artistry go into making films and television shows, I sometimes wish we could redistribute the amount of media attention and awards ceremonies to other deserving professions. We don't get red carpet galas and primetime telecasts for teachers, doctors, police officers, firefighters, the armed forces, dentists, plumbers, construction workers... the people who educate us, protect us, help us to stay healthy, build our houses and pave our roads. We have all sorts of prestigious awards for the people and things that entertain us (not just TV and movies, but theatre, writing, even video games), but we don't dedicate enough attention and praise to the people and professions that have the biggest effect in our communities and lives.
I'm a storyteller. I get that there is power in stories, that they go beyond mere entertainment value. But I also understand that the things stories are about are just as important - if not more so - than the people who tell them. I just wish we were as enthusiastic about cops as we are about cop dramas, that we'd give as much money to our local glee clubs (and arts education of all forms) as we do buying iTunes recordings from a fake glee club on TV.
In a perfect world, right? But we still live in this one. So, that being said... Seacrest out!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
J.K. Lovecraft
So there's this website where you can insert a few paragraphs of text from something you've written, and it will analyze your writing style and tell you which popular authors you write like.
Being me, I obsessively uploaded a number of different things. I was hoping for a Neil Gaiman to pop up somewhere, but that apparently wasn't in the cards. Instead, the two that showed up the most were these:
Hey, I'm good with that! :D
Being me, I obsessively uploaded a number of different things. I was hoping for a Neil Gaiman to pop up somewhere, but that apparently wasn't in the cards. Instead, the two that showed up the most were these:
Hey, I'm good with that! :D
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Resolutions
It's the new year, and with a new year comes New Year's Resolutions.
Interestingly, it's not always a good idea to share your resolutions with others. It's been proven to actually make it LESS LIKELY that you will go through with them...
So, keeping that in mind, I'm going to be very vague here when I tell you that I've made 10 smaller resolutions for this year that involve health, travel, creative endeavors, finances and interpersonal relationships. I tried to make them realistic so I'll actually accomplish them. Of last year's goals, I only accomplished about half. One of them ("leave the country") is on my list again this year, and I was delighted to be able to go over to London. I don't mind telling that one, because it's pretty much going to be on my list every year until I die.
Here's another one I don't mind telling you about, because I'm hoping all my friends and family will help by holding me accountable: I'm trying to create something every day for a year. I've actually made a whole other blog where I'll be detailing my progress.
It's here: Good Madness 365
So there you have it. Resolutions. Let's see where we are this time next year.
Interestingly, it's not always a good idea to share your resolutions with others. It's been proven to actually make it LESS LIKELY that you will go through with them...
So, keeping that in mind, I'm going to be very vague here when I tell you that I've made 10 smaller resolutions for this year that involve health, travel, creative endeavors, finances and interpersonal relationships. I tried to make them realistic so I'll actually accomplish them. Of last year's goals, I only accomplished about half. One of them ("leave the country") is on my list again this year, and I was delighted to be able to go over to London. I don't mind telling that one, because it's pretty much going to be on my list every year until I die.
Here's another one I don't mind telling you about, because I'm hoping all my friends and family will help by holding me accountable: I'm trying to create something every day for a year. I've actually made a whole other blog where I'll be detailing my progress.
It's here: Good Madness 365
So there you have it. Resolutions. Let's see where we are this time next year.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thoughts That Stretch From One Year Into the Next
Guys, I feel so good right now. I don't know why. I'm not drunk. I haven't inhaled any illicit substances. The only drug I'm on is caffeine. But I feel so excited, like something big is about to happen.
It's New Year's Eve, so that probably makes sense, but past New Year's Eves I haven't felt like this.
Driving home tonight from seeing a movie ("The King's Speech" - SO GOOD), I looked at the rooftops of suburban neighborhoods all shadowy under nightfall and lamplight and I thought, "Magic is everywhere." It's not in some foreign kingdom, and it's not stuck in the pages of some book. It's everywhere.
G.K. Chesterton, a wonderful writer, once said this of George MacDonald, one of my favorite storytellers of all time: "The commonplace allegory takes what it regards as the commonplaces or conventions necessary to ordinary men and women, and tries to make them pleasant or picturesque by dressing them up as princesses or goblins or good fairies. But George MacDonald did really believe that people were princesses and goblins and good fairies, and he dressed them up as ordinary men and women. The fairy-tale was the inside of the ordinary story and not the outside."
I believe that the world is full of magic. We're all of us more than what we tell people we are. More than our jobs or our roles or relationships. More even than our goals or hopes. You may be a queen under some kind of enchantment, a hero at a crossroads, the wise mentor dispensing advice to wayfarers. You may be in need of saving, or you may be the dragon someone needs saving from.
Magic is everywhere. There are doors leading to it all over. It's hidden all around us. It's hidden inside us.
And that makes me so very happy I could dance.
It's New Year's Eve, so that probably makes sense, but past New Year's Eves I haven't felt like this.
Driving home tonight from seeing a movie ("The King's Speech" - SO GOOD), I looked at the rooftops of suburban neighborhoods all shadowy under nightfall and lamplight and I thought, "Magic is everywhere." It's not in some foreign kingdom, and it's not stuck in the pages of some book. It's everywhere.
G.K. Chesterton, a wonderful writer, once said this of George MacDonald, one of my favorite storytellers of all time: "The commonplace allegory takes what it regards as the commonplaces or conventions necessary to ordinary men and women, and tries to make them pleasant or picturesque by dressing them up as princesses or goblins or good fairies. But George MacDonald did really believe that people were princesses and goblins and good fairies, and he dressed them up as ordinary men and women. The fairy-tale was the inside of the ordinary story and not the outside."
I believe that the world is full of magic. We're all of us more than what we tell people we are. More than our jobs or our roles or relationships. More even than our goals or hopes. You may be a queen under some kind of enchantment, a hero at a crossroads, the wise mentor dispensing advice to wayfarers. You may be in need of saving, or you may be the dragon someone needs saving from.
Magic is everywhere. There are doors leading to it all over. It's hidden all around us. It's hidden inside us.
And that makes me so very happy I could dance.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Muse
For Christmas my friend Rebekah bought me a quill and ink and this:
Beautiful, right? The figures are two muses - you know, the ancient Greek goddesses who inspire creation. Her idea was they could inspire me in my writing ventures. Really sweet.
So far they've inspired this...
...and this...
So here's to a creative and inspired 2011!
Beautiful, right? The figures are two muses - you know, the ancient Greek goddesses who inspire creation. Her idea was they could inspire me in my writing ventures. Really sweet.
So far they've inspired this...
...and this...
So here's to a creative and inspired 2011!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Darkest Day
I'm not Wiccan, but I find beauty in their sabbats and esbats - days throughout the year filled with symbolic meaning to represent the changes in nature. I've always thought my favorite of these was Samhain (pronounced "SOW-en" where the "sow" rhymes with "now"), which everybody else calls Halloween. This is the transition of fall into winter. The harvest is over, and now come the cold months. I never really cared about that aspect. It was always more the costumes, the eerie thrill of it all. It's hard to resist the lure of Halloween: shadows lurking, ghosts and beasties, so many mysterious things that can never be fully explained.
That, and the candy. You can never go wrong when candy is involved.
So yes, Samhain - Halloween, or All Hallows Eve - is still probably my favorite holiday to celebrate. Costumes, candy, spooky fun. You really can't beat it. But when it comes to what these special days stand for, I think my favorite is Yule. But why, exactly?
Pagan friends of mine are quick to rant about how ancient Christians "stole" the pagan festivals, moving church holy days to the same days to win converts and make the transition from paganism to Christianity that much more appealing. ("Look - you can still party. Just party with US now!"). It's true. Jesus was most likely born sometime in April, or September. Those are the two I've heard bandied about the most, but every scholar seems to have a different interpretation. Still, it's very unlikely he was born in December, and certainly there would be no way to know if it was on the 25th.
But whoever it was who decided to celebrate Christ's birth side by side with the pagan Yule festival was something of a genius. Symbolically speaking, they fit together like two corresponding pieces of a puzzle.
Pagan Yule is celebrated not on the 25th, but on the winter solstice, the 21st of December. This is literally the darkest day of the year. Light is at its shortest span, and night is at its longest. It is a gloomy time, cold and bleak. The land will bear no crop. The weather is harsh and unforgiving. This is the epitome of defeat, of the lowest one could possibly go. But that's why it's significant: because it's the turning point. On Yule you can know that though you live in shadows, you've reached the blackest, coldest, most difficult hour and survived. To rephrase a Florence and the Machine song: "The dark days are over."
Yule stands for hope in the midst of greatest despair, and Christmas stands for the arrival of salvation. Good news when you would least expect to hear it. The beginning of something better. The coming of the light.
I stood outside a couple nights ago in my driveway, staring up at the sky and cursing under my breath. There was a lunar eclipse - the first time in over 300 years that it's happened on the winter solstice - but you wouldn't have known it from where I stood. The night was moonless. There were no stars. All were hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds.
Which made the dark of this darkest night of the year press in a little closer. Which made me shiver, all the more aware of the cold. Which made the world outside feel for a brief moment like one giant empty room. I felt small and alone, dwarfed by the void, insignificant in the midst of it all.
But that was then, and already the days are growing longer. Already things are looking up. So I'll celebrate Yule and Christmas, celebrate hope and light. I'll hold my candle to the dark and watch it glow.
That, and the candy. You can never go wrong when candy is involved.
So yes, Samhain - Halloween, or All Hallows Eve - is still probably my favorite holiday to celebrate. Costumes, candy, spooky fun. You really can't beat it. But when it comes to what these special days stand for, I think my favorite is Yule. But why, exactly?
Pagan friends of mine are quick to rant about how ancient Christians "stole" the pagan festivals, moving church holy days to the same days to win converts and make the transition from paganism to Christianity that much more appealing. ("Look - you can still party. Just party with US now!"). It's true. Jesus was most likely born sometime in April, or September. Those are the two I've heard bandied about the most, but every scholar seems to have a different interpretation. Still, it's very unlikely he was born in December, and certainly there would be no way to know if it was on the 25th.
But whoever it was who decided to celebrate Christ's birth side by side with the pagan Yule festival was something of a genius. Symbolically speaking, they fit together like two corresponding pieces of a puzzle.
Pagan Yule is celebrated not on the 25th, but on the winter solstice, the 21st of December. This is literally the darkest day of the year. Light is at its shortest span, and night is at its longest. It is a gloomy time, cold and bleak. The land will bear no crop. The weather is harsh and unforgiving. This is the epitome of defeat, of the lowest one could possibly go. But that's why it's significant: because it's the turning point. On Yule you can know that though you live in shadows, you've reached the blackest, coldest, most difficult hour and survived. To rephrase a Florence and the Machine song: "The dark days are over."
Yule stands for hope in the midst of greatest despair, and Christmas stands for the arrival of salvation. Good news when you would least expect to hear it. The beginning of something better. The coming of the light.
I stood outside a couple nights ago in my driveway, staring up at the sky and cursing under my breath. There was a lunar eclipse - the first time in over 300 years that it's happened on the winter solstice - but you wouldn't have known it from where I stood. The night was moonless. There were no stars. All were hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds.
Which made the dark of this darkest night of the year press in a little closer. Which made me shiver, all the more aware of the cold. Which made the world outside feel for a brief moment like one giant empty room. I felt small and alone, dwarfed by the void, insignificant in the midst of it all.
But that was then, and already the days are growing longer. Already things are looking up. So I'll celebrate Yule and Christmas, celebrate hope and light. I'll hold my candle to the dark and watch it glow.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Mad Ramblings
I had a dream last night that freaked me out while I was in it, but it fled away in the morning (in the way of dreams) before I could remember what scared me so much.
Two things remain: the first, I had a daughter, or a young girl who was in my care. I'm not really sure which. She was at least two years old, maybe three, but she didn't have a name yet. Her parents - I? - had not wanted to name her until she earned a name. Some cultural tradition maybe? I have no clue. And I just kept thinking it over and over again: "Pax. Her name is Pax." As in, Pax Romana.... Latin for "peace."
It felt very angel-messenger-at-Christmas-y: "And you shall bear a son, and he shall be called..." Only in this case it was, "This girl has been given to me (or is mine somehow?), and her name is Peace." Only it's Pax. Which is weird. But whatever.
The second thing I recall: I thought she had really long, beautiful eyelashes, but at one point - while she was sleeping, maybe? - when I got closer I could see they were actually the legs of centipedes which were resting on her eyelids, and they started moving and fell off.
This really isn't blog-post-worthy material. I have a list somewhere of blog posts I want to write: my reaction to the announcement that Disney plans to move away from the fairy tale genre, a total rant about James Frey and his stupid ripoff of young writers/YA-novel-assembly-line "Full Fathom Five," and other things I can't remember now. But instead you get this weird dream crap, because I'm sick, and my sickness is doing the "bubble head" thing where I feel like I'm in a space suit staring out at people through that big shiny helmet thing. All the pressure in my head is definitely doing that - making me feel like I'm in outer space or way deep underwater. My throat isn't bad - yet - but my nose is being annoying, and mostly it's my head. My stupid frakking head. I wish I was Princess Langwidere from "Ozma of Oz," only instead of stealing heads from other people I'd simply remove mine for a little while until it decides to behave again.
Sigh.
NyQuil is not working. And neither is this. All I want for Christmas is to get rid of this damn sickness!
Two things remain: the first, I had a daughter, or a young girl who was in my care. I'm not really sure which. She was at least two years old, maybe three, but she didn't have a name yet. Her parents - I? - had not wanted to name her until she earned a name. Some cultural tradition maybe? I have no clue. And I just kept thinking it over and over again: "Pax. Her name is Pax." As in, Pax Romana.... Latin for "peace."
It felt very angel-messenger-at-Christmas-y: "And you shall bear a son, and he shall be called..." Only in this case it was, "This girl has been given to me (or is mine somehow?), and her name is Peace." Only it's Pax. Which is weird. But whatever.
The second thing I recall: I thought she had really long, beautiful eyelashes, but at one point - while she was sleeping, maybe? - when I got closer I could see they were actually the legs of centipedes which were resting on her eyelids, and they started moving and fell off.
This really isn't blog-post-worthy material. I have a list somewhere of blog posts I want to write: my reaction to the announcement that Disney plans to move away from the fairy tale genre, a total rant about James Frey and his stupid ripoff of young writers/YA-novel-assembly-line "Full Fathom Five," and other things I can't remember now. But instead you get this weird dream crap, because I'm sick, and my sickness is doing the "bubble head" thing where I feel like I'm in a space suit staring out at people through that big shiny helmet thing. All the pressure in my head is definitely doing that - making me feel like I'm in outer space or way deep underwater. My throat isn't bad - yet - but my nose is being annoying, and mostly it's my head. My stupid frakking head. I wish I was Princess Langwidere from "Ozma of Oz," only instead of stealing heads from other people I'd simply remove mine for a little while until it decides to behave again.
Sigh.
NyQuil is not working. And neither is this. All I want for Christmas is to get rid of this damn sickness!
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