Artificial Hubris

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As much as I love writing, words are not the same as thoughts.  As much as I might strive to describe a vivid dream, I always fall short.  Even in my novels and short stories I’m only expressing a fraction of what’s going on in my head.  Here’s where I critique AI yet again.  Large language models (what we call “generative artificial intelligence”) aren’t thinking.  Anyone who has thought about thinking knows that.  Even this screed is only the merest fragment of a fraction of what’s going on in my brain.  The truth is, nobody can ever know the totality of what’s going on in somebody else’s mind.  And yet we persist in saying we do, illegally using their published words trying to make electrons “think.”  

Science has improved so much of life, but it hasn’t decreased hubris at all.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Enamored of our successes, we believe we’ve figured it all out.  I know that the average white-tail doe has a better chance of surviving a week in the woods than I would.  I know that birds can perceive magnetic fields in ways humans can’t.  That whales sing songs we can’t translate.  I sing the song of consciousness.  It’s amazing and impossible to figure out.  We, the intelligent children of apes, have forgotten that our brains have limitations.  We think it’s cool, rather than an affront, to build electronic libraries so vast that every combination of words possible is already in it.  Me, I’m a human being.  I read, I write, I think.  And I experience.  No computer will ever know what it feels like to finally reach cold water after sweating outside all day under a hot sun.  Or the whispers in our heads, the jangling of our pulses, when we’ve just accomplished something momentous.  Machines, if they can “think” at all, can’t do it like team animal can.

I’m daily told that AI is the way of the future.  Companies exist that are trying to make all white collar employment obsolete.  And yet it still takes my laptop many minutes to wake up in the morning.  Its “knowledge” is limited by how fast I can type.  And when I type I’m using words.  But there are pictures in my brain at the same time that I can’t begin to describe adequately.  As a writer I try.  As a thinking human being, I know that I fail.  I’m willing to admit it.  Anything more than that is hubris.  It’s a word we can only partially define but we can’t help but act out.

Not Intelligent

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The day AI was released—and I’m looking at you, Chat GPT—research died.  I work with high-level academics and many have jumped on the bandwagon despite the fact that AI cannot think and it’s horrible for the environment.  Let me say that first part again, AI cannot think.  I read a recent article where an author engaged AI about her work.  It is worth reading at length.  In short, AI makes stuff up.  It does not think—I say again, it cannot think—and tries to convince people that it can.  In principle, I do not even look at Google’s AI generated answers when I search.  I’d rather go to a website created by one of my own species.  I even heard from someone recently that AI could be compared to demons.  (Not in a literal way.)  I wonder if there’s some truth to that.

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I would’ve thought that academics, aware of the propensity of AI to give false information, would have shunned it.  Made a stand.  Lots of people are pressured, I know, by brutal schedules and high demands on the part of their managers (ugh!).  AI is a time cutter.  It’s also a corner cutter.  What if that issue you ask it about is one about which it’s lying?  (Here again, the article I mention is instructive.)  We know that it has that tendency rampant among politicians, to avoid the truth.  Yet it is being trusted, more and more.  When first ousted from the academy, I found research online difficult, if not impossible.  Verifying sources was difficult, if it could be done at all.  Since nullius in verba is something to which I aspire, this was a problem.  Now publishers, even academic ones, are talking about little else but AI.

I recently watched a movie that had been altered on Amazon Prime without those who’d “bought” it being told.  A crucial scene was omitted due to someone’s scruples.  I’ve purchased books online and when the supplier goes bust, you lose what you paid for.  Electronic existence isn’t our savior.  Before GPS became necessary, I’d drive through major cities with a paper map and common sense.  Sometimes it even got me there quicker than AI seems to.  And sometimes you just want to take the scenic route.  Ever since consumerism has been pushed by the government, people have allowed their concerns about quality to erode.  Quick and cheap, thank you, then to the landfill.  I’m no longer an academic, but were I, I would not use AI.  I believe in actual research and I believe, with Mulder, that the truth is out there.

Being Perceived

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The philosopher George Berkeley argued that to be is to be perceived.  This perspective goes by the name of immaterialism and I have to admit to being sometimes seduced by it.  The real question comes down to who counts as a perceiver.  In any case, as a book author there’s always a worry that the book sent to the publisher isn’t real until it appears in print.  I’m Berkeleyian enough to think that ebooks aren’t really perceived, and so I mean in print.  Until I see a copy of the book, I don’t really believe it exists.  This entire week I’ve been waiting.  Sleepy Hollow as American Myth was released on either Monday or Wednesday, depending on who you believe about such things, and my author copies have been on their way.  At last, the book exists!

In the publishing industry there are those who consider a book like a box of puzzle pieces.  They often refer to books as “content,” or “product.”  Something that can be divided up and sold piecemeal in electronic form.  A chapter at a time.  Never mind what the author was trying to do when s/he wrote the book.  Such people, it seems to me, should be forced to spend several years working on an integrated project only to see the producer of said product take it apart and sell insubstantial pieces of the whole.  It feels like being eviscerated.  Books are objects and those who love them form cultures.  I know there are people who read ebooks, and I don’t judge them for it—readers are readers and we need more of them!  But for me, book culture involves, well, books.

One of the greatest thrills a writer can know is opening that first box of their author copies of a book.  Many academic publishers are cutting down the numbers, to save money, of course.  McFarland, I’m happy to report, still provides ten, which used to be standard.  So before I start doling them out, I have, for the moment, ten copies of my sixth book.  I have only one copy of the second edition of A Reassessment of Asherah and two copies of Nightmares with the Bible.  They’re both too expensive for me to buy more.  (Income from writing books may bring images of Stephen King or J. K. Rowling to mind, but they’re household names because their situation is so exceptional.)  Right now, however, I’m bathing in the glow of knowing, at least at the moment, my latest book is being perceived.

A Glimmer

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You just never know.  A few months back I emailed Liverpool University Press because my book, The Wicker Man, has apparently not sold any copies.  I had never received (have still never received) a royalty statement or any payment.  Now, I’m willing to accept that no copies have sold.  I’m not a recognized name and a bigger book came out in 2023, the fiftieth anniversary of the film.  I moved on.  Then, the day before my Sleepy Hollow as American Myth copies were scheduled to arrive, a friend sent me a text that made my day.  He’d seen on the MIT bookstore staff picks shelf, a copy of my humble little book.  I was floored.  Someone had read it and liked it.  And MIT!  I mean, that’s worth celebrating.  It also made me curious.

Image credit: a friend

I checked a website that tracks classroom adoptions.  The Wicker Man had been adopted for a class at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.  Ironically, just the day before my friend’s text arrived, a colleague at a nearby seminary asked if I’d come and give a talk about Weathering the Psalms.  This is all very dizzying to me.  I am an obscure private intellectual because no schools will open resident scholar or any other such non-tenure positions to me.  I can’t even verify myself on Google Scholar.  But a few people, it seems, have found my books.  In case you might think otherwise, I’m very well aware that the scholarly world is small (and the current administration would like to make it smaller by the day).  But I tend to think of myself as lost in that small world.

The Wicker Man was a departure for me, as is Sleepy Hollow as American Myth.  In these two books I moved away from my identity as a scholar of religion.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used my background and experience, and even latent knowledge of religious studies in both books, but they aren’t fronting religion.  It remains to be seen if the just curious will pick them up.  I know many people don’t default to, “I find this interesting, I’ll buy a book on it,” as I do.  And I’m more than willing to suppose that others aren’t interested in what I have to say.  Still, just when I’m starting to feel down on all my efforts, a little ray of hope shines through.  Someone in a bookstore somewhere has recommended one of my books.  And it feels good.

Non-Saints

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It was an epiphany.  My wife has, on more than one occasion, accused me of playing the martyr.  I know very well that I let other people step all over me.  The epiphany came when I was reading about Stephen’s martyrdom in the Acts of the Apostles (in the New Testament).  Unbidden by me, a memory—more of a distinct impression, a deeply planted feeling—arose.  I started reading the Bible at a young age.  The story of Stephen is disturbing to a child.  The thought of being stoned to death for saying what you believe is a species of horror.  The memory, or impression, was of my mother pointing out how good it would be to be like Stephen.  He is not technically my namesake, but since there were no male role models in my family, I subconsciously made the connection: Stephen the martyr, Steve the martyr.

Giovanni Battista Lucini – Martyrdom of St. Stephen, public domain. Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/martyrdom-of-st-stephen/twGNCf3waLKDvA via Wikimedia Commons

It’s strange to realize this suddenly after half a century of not consciously recollecting it.  What we teach our children stays with them.  If we tell them that it’s good to die for your beliefs, well, we shouldn’t be surprised when they grow up with strong convictions.  (My brother tells me that Virgos think they’re always right and that’s why we’re stubborn; is it the stars or is it the Good Book?)  The Bible puts a positive spin on Stephen’s death.  Formal sainthood isn’t a biblical concept, but he dies forgiving his murderers.  It struck me there in the middle of a working day.  Some of my subconscious personality traits floated to the surface.

My deep desire to avoid Hell also formed my young outlook.  Although my beliefs have to be held accountable to what I’ve learned over decades of study, that fear never departs.  This too was planted in me before I had any real concept to absorb it.  When I grew old enough, the horror became academic, but nonetheless real for it.  I’d studied the history of Hell and I knew New Testament secrets.  To avoid the bad place, be like Stephen.  The dilemma is that as life goes on, we continue to learn.  Young parents don’t know as much as old ones do.  And since we have to teach our children not to run out into the street, or not eat that thing they found, we cast ourselves as The authority.  And that includes things religious.  If we live an examined life, we see shades of nuance where once there was only certainty.  And sometimes we have epiphanies.

End of the Story

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You know that feeling?  Like when you’re driving in thick fog and you know you should stop but you’re late and you have to keep going?  There comes a moment as you’re driving when you know that it’s going to end, and probably badly.  Yet you keep on going.  Trump has me thinking of the end of the world quite a bit.  I know there are many evangelicals out there praying for it fervently while the rest of us would like a little more time on this beautiful planet.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand this outlook, because I do.  I grew up with it and I’ve never forgotten the sensation it caused.  And then I pondered that we are story-telling, and story-thinking creatures.  Perhaps other animals don’t think this way, but we constantly tell ourselves stories.

A story has a beginning, a middle, and well, eventually, an end.  We all know, at some level, that we’re mortal.  Life will end, and every completed story has an end.  Why not the world?  It’s a strangely haunting idea, the world continuing on without us here to make it interesting.  Plants will grow in any soil they can find, even microscopic cracks in the pavement.  Every year it’s like one day everything is suddenly green where only the day before we could see the sky through the branches.  And animals continue their quests for food, mates, and shelter.  Some live to hide while others strut.  Each has a role to play and if you watch them closely you’ll find yourself narrating their stories.  That rabbit.  That bluejay.  That fox.  They have a beginning, middle, and end.  If they can’t tell it, we can do it for them.  It comes naturally to us.

Long ago I learned how one version of Bible interpretation came up with the end of the world as we know it.  I also learned that this was contrived, just as all interpretations are.  This particular one has landed, like a seed, in the cracks of our mind.  It grows, just like that weed in the pavement.  This story must have an end.  We can imagine it no other way.  Even when we grow up and realize that the story was only one we told to children—children old enough to handle it, of course—we still have this certainty that an end is coming.  Like driving in the fog, we just know it.  Even when we realize that in reality we should be putting on the brakes.

Alchemy

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While reading about alchemy (surprised?  Really?), I found myself learning about Jakob Böhme.  His name was familiar—he’s one of those many people I know vaguely about but having been raised in an uneducated household really knew nothing concerning him.  In any case, Böhme is considered a mystic who began as Lutheran, but who came to trust his own spiritual experience (the latter being more or less the definition of a mystic).  I read about how one day he experienced a vision while staring at sunlight reflected off a pewter dish.  Now, I have had visions but you’ll need to get to know me personally if you want to hear about them.  But at that moment Böhme believed the spiritual structure of the world had been revealed to him.  I couldn’t help but think of what had happened to me at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

It was 1987 and I was a volunteer on the dig at Tel Dor.  Visiting Jerusalem one weekend with friends, we came to the Church of All Nations, built around the traditional garden of Gethsemane.  It was hot and I was feeling tired and I went inside the church to sit.  I spied a purple stained-glass window high overhead with the sun shining through it, in a shadowy alcove.  In an instant of rapture, everything made sense to me.  It was as fleeting as it was shocking and to this day I cannot articulate the certainty I experienced in that one brief moment alone in a church.  It was an assurance that, despite all outward appearances, this does indeed make sense.  This experience has never been precisely replicated in my life, but those who know me know that there is a certain color of glass that, if I see the sun through it, instantly brings me serenity.

Sunlight can do such things.  One morning while out jogging at Nashotah House, the rising sun struck me directly in the eye.  Immediately stopped running, holding my head against a migraine that had suddenly developed.  I was sick the rest of the day, lying in a dark room with a damp washcloth over my eyes, head splitting apart.  I’ve been cautious with the sun ever since.  Some things are so full of glory that to see them directly is to invite danger.  Yet we’re compelled to look.  I felt that I understood Böhme.  And I know that if the sun is right, and a certain color of glass is at hand, and if I’m brave enough, I can almost get back to that place.

Just Trust Me

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When I google something I try to ignore the AI suggestions.  I was reminded why the other day.  I was searching for a scholar at an eastern European university.  I couldn’t find him at first since he shares the name of a locally famous musician.  I added the university to the search and AI merged the two.  It claimed that the scholar I was seeking was also a famous musician.  This despite the difference in their ages and the fact that they looked nothing alike.  Al decided that since the musician had studied music at that university he must also have been a professor of religion there.  A human being might also be tempted to make such a leap, but would likely want to get some confirmation first.  Al has only text and pirated books to learn by.  No wonder he’s confused.

I was talking to a scholar (not a musician) the other day.  He said to me, “Google has gotten much worse since they added AI.”  I agree.  Since the tech giants control all our devices, however, we can’t stop it.  Every time a system upgrade takes place, more and more AI is put into it.  There is no opt-out clause.  No wonder Meta believes it owns all world literature.  Those who don’t believe in souls see nothing but gain in letting algorithms make all the decisions for them.  As long as they have suckers (writers) willing to produce what they see as training material for their Large Language Models.  And yet, Al can’t admit that he’s wrong.  No, a musician and a religion professor are not the same person.  People often share names.  There are far more prominent “Steve Wigginses” than me.  Am I a combination of all of us?

Technology is unavoidable but the question unanswered is whether it is good.  Governments can regulate but with hopelessly corrupt governments, well, say hi to Al.  He will give you wrong information and pretend that it’s correct.  He’ll promise to make your life better, until he decides differently.  And he’ll decide not on the basis of reason, because human beings haven’t figured that out yet (try taking a class in advanced logic and see if I’m wrong).  Tech giants with more money than brains are making decisions that affect all of us.  It’s like driving down a highway when heavy rain makes seeing anything clearly impossible.  I’d never heard of this musician before.  I like to think he might be Romani.  And that he’s a fiddler.  And we all know what happens when emperors start to see their cities burning.

Al thinks this is food

Storytelling

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Those who know me personally say that I’m a good storyteller.  My own head houses, however, my harshest critic.  Since I tend to work alone this creates an inherent conflict.  This is most evident in my fiction.  I finished a draft of my eighth novel earlier this year, but it still needs work.  (No, really it does—not just harsh critic speaking.)  Part of the problem is obviously time.  My morning writing period is frequently held hostage by my moods.  Some of my past novels are, I think, publishable.  I’ve tried repeatedly with one of them, getting as far as having a signed contract, but things collapsed after that.  It sits brooding on my hard drive.  Another—I think it may be number four or five—seems publishable but it requires reworking with magic pixie dust.  Sometimes my supply of it runs low.  (Moods again.)

I sometimes wonder if I read too much nonfiction.  I’m a curious sort of chap, interested in the world around me.  When that world seems to be falling apart, however, fiction is my friend.  I’ve been reading a lot of novels and I’m often struck by the beauty of the prose.  Head critic says, “why can’t you do that?”  Then I recall the writing advice that I picked up from Stephen King’s nonfiction, On Writing.  Adjectives may be bad for your health.  Just tell the story.  With style.  My current novel (eight) tells an interesting story, I think.  If I’m honest I’ll say that I started working on this before any of the other completed novels (except number one, and that was a throwaway).  It was an idea that just wouldn’t go away.  I knew the beginning and the ending, and part of the middle.  I even found a potential publisher, but it has grown too long for them.

About three chapters from the end I realized that I hadn’t tied things up as well as I’d initially thought.  What I need is time away from work to think about it.  Thinking time is rare, even in the time I manage to wrestle from the 9-2-5.  There’s always more to be done, trying to stay healthy and out of the weather.  And really, maybe I should be reading even more fiction.  But what about the “real world” out there, which requires nonfiction to face it boldly and with informed decisions?  It’s dramatic, isn’t it?  Like a protagonist (hardly a hero) on the edge of a cliff.  How does the story end?  Perhaps an actual storyteller might know.

Nanowrimo Night

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Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month—November—has been run by an organization that is now shutting down.  Financial troubles and, of course, AI (which seems to be involved in many poor choices these days), have led to the decision, according to Publisher’s Weekly.  Apparently several new authors were found by publishers, basing their work on Nanowrimo projects.  I participated one year and had no trouble finishing something, but it was not really publishable.  Still, it’s sad to see this inspiration for other writers calling it quits.  I’m not into politics but when the Nanowrimo executives didn’t take a solid stand against AI “written” novels, purists were rightfully offended.  Writing is the expression of the human experience.  0s and 1s are not humans, no matter how much tech moguls may think they are.  Materialism has spawned some wicked children.

Can AI wordsmith?  Certainly.  Can it think?  No.  And what we need in this world is more thinking, not less.  Is there maybe a hidden reason tech giants have cozied up to the current White House where thinking is undervalued?  Sorry, politics.  We have known for many generations that human brains serve a biological purpose.  We keep claiming animals (most of which have brains) can’t think, but we suppose electrical surges across transistors can?  I watch the birds outside my window, competing, chittering, chasing each other off.  They’re conscious and they can learn.  They have the biological basis to do so.  Being enfleshed entitles them.  Too bad they can’t write it down.

Now I’m the first to admit that consciousness may well exist outside biology.  To tap into it, however, requires the consciousness “plug-in”—aka, a brain.  Would AI “read” novels for the pleasure of it?  Would it understand falling in love, or the fear of a monster prowling the night?  Or the thrill of solving a mystery?  These emotional aspects, which neurologists note are a crucial part of thinking, can’t be replicated without life.  Actually living.  Believe me, I mourn when machines I care for die.  I seriously doubt the feeling is reciprocated.  Materialism has been the reigning paradigm for quite a few decades now, while consciousness remains a quandary.  I’ve read novels that struggle with deep issues of being human.  I fear that we could be fooled with an AI novel where the “writer” is merely borrowing how humans communicate to pretend how it feels.  And I feel a little sad, knowing that Nanowrimo is hanging up the “closed” sign.  But humans, being what they are, will still likely try to complete novels in the month of November.

The Valley

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Juneteenth seemed a good day to get to Valley Forge.  With all the nonsense going on in the White House, we need to be reminded what this country was founded on and for.  I like to think that we weren’t the only ones there yesterday for that reason.  In fact, in the gift shop I found a book titled America’s Last King.  By the time we left it was sold out.  Like many Americans, I suppose, I only had a vague idea why Valley Forge was important for our young country.  We took a tour that helped explain it.  A tour that some in Washington ought be be required to take.  Valley Forge was a winter encampment—the third in the War of Independence.  George Washington had just suffered two defeats and the British had taken Philadelphia.  His poorly provisioned army set up winter headquarters in this strategically secure hill country.  Inadequately clothed, barely fed, many dying, they planned how to keep their efforts to survive alive.

What happened that winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge that kept the United States alive depended on two things, both brought by immigrants.  Let me say that again, in case ICE is having trouble hearing—immigrants saved America.  The young country was in very real danger of defeat.  What turned the tide was an alliance with France (the name Lafayette still looms large here in the east) and the help of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian.  Without these foreigners, America would never have survived to become great.  Oh, and Mr. Kennedy, Washington ordered vaccinations at Valley Forge to prevent so many of his troops from dying from small pox, an inconvenient truth.  What emerged from Valley Forge that winter was a more organized, healthier United States Army that would go on to defeat the British so that we could be free two and a half centuries later.

I needed Valley Forge.  Although it was a hot day and the roads are paved, I needed to be reminded what it felt like to be proud to be an American.  Juneteenth is to commemorate the end of slavery.  History shows that many in Washington’s army were of African descent.  It seems that DC has forgotten what America is and what we were fighting for all those many years ago.  It wasn’t to exclude those who were different.  No, it was to pull together to survive.  Our would-be king spends his idle days planning military parades in his honor.  The US Army was born in Valley Forge.  And as an American with ancestors here from Washington’s day on, I really needed that visit to remind me of how America became great.

Scary Father’s Day

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Given my circumstances, I never really celebrated Father’s Day growing up.  By the time I was old enough to get the concept, my father was long gone.  My step-father, some years later, was no real father.  Besides, we were poor and it was hard to think what such a celebration might entail.  All of which is to say that I never really expect much from the day myself.  My wife and daughter suggested we try Nightmare in New Hope again—this is the horror movie museum in New Hope, Pennsylvania, which had been closed last time we tried.  It was an appropriately rainy day, the kind we seem to specialize in around here.  I suspect that the museum will show up in a future blog post or two, but suffice it to say that it’s an impressive little collection.  It’s an odd feeling, this human desire to be in the presence of something you’ve seen in a movie.  I recommend it for any horror fans who happen to be along the mid-Delaware.

Not being large enough to take all day, we considered what we might do that afternoon.  In keeping with the theme, a visit to Vampa: Vampire and Paranormal Museum was suggested.  This museum is in Doylestown, which is only about a quarter hour from New Hope.  There’s more to it than just the museum, so it too will likely come up in future posts.  This museum contains a truly impressive array of artisanal vampire hunting equipment from Europe, dating between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.  I’ll try to put together a photo essay of it soon.  But that’s just the first room.  A second deals with demonic possession.  Then rooms have displays of occult and other esoteric artifacts, along with creepy suggestions to be careful of engaging too much with them.  The final room is dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, and it warns that the struggle with evil is real.

Both places had a steady stream of visitors yesterday.  It would be fair to say that by the time we finished I was over-stimulated.  You have to understand that I personally don’t know many people interested in horror.  Going to these places was the sacrifice of a rainy Sunday afternoon for my family but will likely become one of those pleasant, lingering memories of the unusual that take on a rosy afterglow over the years.  This blog quite often ponders over why such things take on meaning for someone interested in religion and belief.  Being in the presence of artifacts, as noted above, puts you in touch with a kind of earnestness that mere electronic reading on the internet lacks.  If you happen to be along the mid-Delaware, the side trip to Doylestown is a worthy add-on, Father’s Day or not.

A Father’s Day

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Some thoughts I hope I’m allowed to share on Father’s Day: I recently saw a review of The Wicker Man that pointed out (rightly) that my treatment of gender was outdated.  Similarly, the (few) readers of Nightmares with the Bible make a not dissimilar observation about my use of Poe’s formulation of women in danger.  I am very much aware that gender studies (which wasn’t even a potential major when I was in college) have done much needed work in clarifying just how complex a phenomenon it is.  I have posted several times on this blog about precisely that.  Still, we all write from a position.  My training is not in horror studies, and it’s not in gender studies.  My writing, despite the price, is intended for non-academic readers, but I too may be between categories here.  I’m trying to escape the academy that has already exiled me, but the framing of my questions is too academic.  I get that.

I also write from the perspective of a man. There’s no denying that I write as a straight, white male.  This is how I experience the world.  And how I experience horror.  Returning to Nightmares, I think my point might’ve been better expressed as noting that writers, directors, producers, and others in the film industry understand that viewers of their particular films may be more moved by a female possession than a male.  Or, in Wicker, that publicly expressed concerns about rape and sexual violence are more commonly expressed by women.  Statements can always be qualified, but that happens at the expense of readability.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch after all.

Academics can’t be blamed for doing what they do.  They critique, poke, and probe.  My books since Holy Horror have been intended as conversation starters.  But they’re conversation starters from the perspective of a man who watches horror and tries to understand why he reacts to it the way he does.  There is an incipient ageism, I fear, that sometimes discounts how people raised to use “man” when referring to mixed or indeterminate genders—taught so earnestly by women who were our teachers—sometimes take our earliest learning for granted.  Those early lessons are often the most difficult to displace.  I try.  Really I do.  I’ve had over six decades looking at the world through a straight man’s eyes.  I welcome comment/conversation from all.  Of course, my intended readership has never been reached, and they, perhaps would have fewer concerns about my view.  Romance (hardly a feminist-friendly genre), after all, is one of the best selling fiction categories, even today.  And many of the writers—generally women—express the gender-expected point of view. That’s a genre, however, outside my (very limited) male gaze.

Parson’s Poe

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Some things just don’t mix: oil and water, cats and dogs, intelligence and Republican policy.  That’s the way of nature.  I don’t have a lot of time to listen to music—unlike some authors, I can’t write with music playing.  I end up paying attention to the music rather than what I’m trying to do.  So the other day when I had the opportunity, I went through our CDs to see what I hadn’t heard for a while.  I’d completely forgotten about the concept album Tales of Mystery and Imagination Edgar Allan Poe by The Alan Parsons Project.  Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Alan Parsons, but some of their songs are among my absolute favorites.  One of them can almost invariably make me tear up and my throat clench.  And I think Ammonia Avenue is one of the great albums of all time.

You’d think their mix of alternative rock would be favorable to Poe.  Poe is extremely personal to me.  I’ve read probing biographies and put them down thinking how much my perspective is similar to that of Poe.  I mention him in my books because he’s my writing companion.  APP just doesn’t get it.  Neither did Lou Reed.  Like Black Francis, I like Lou Reed.  But I like Poe more.  Not even Poe (sorry Anne Decatur Danielewski) comes close.   I have heard rock adaptations of Poe that I do like, so why didn’t Alan Parson, Lou Reed, or Poe (Danielewski) do it for me?  It’s difficult to say.  Music is very personal to me.  It stays in my head for a very long time, so I have to be careful what I let in there.  I don’t write much about music on this blog because I just don’t know you well enough.

I got the Alan Parson’s album long after it was published.  I can’t remember how I found out about it, but I had great hopes for it.  I guess Poe (the man) has a certain sound profile in my head.  It’s likely because, to me, Poe is more than the author of tales I read when I was young.  He is a symbol, coming to represent more than just another writer who struggled and was likely never understood in his lifetime (if ever).  As those who write and attempt publication know, this is a hostile business.  It’s difficult to get published in the traditional way and then it’s difficult to get your work noticed after it’s published.  These days a “like” and a “share” can go a long way (click “like” if you do), but even so my Poe music will be mine alone.

Remembering Holidays

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Memorial Day is an important stepping stone to get through the capitalistic year.  Not only does it mark the unofficial beginning of summer, it’s also the first holiday after the long, long drought of March, April, and nearly the whole month of May.  That’s a long stretch of unbroken work.  My ideal holiday may be one where I could hole up in my study with books and endless time to write, but that kind of situation isn’t really realistic.  There’s a lot to do.  Around these parts, however, getting outdoors to take care of those weeds has proven difficult.  Every day since last Tuesday (nearly a full week, as of today) it has rained at least a little.  Sometimes a lot.  And the temperatures dropped on Wednesday, back to early April levels, as if May were vying for the title of the cruelest month this year.

We’ve been making the best of it, getting out to see local attractions while dodging raindrops.  The weeds, I’ve noticed, love this kind of weather.  And I have a visceral reaction to putting on a heavy jacket to go out pulling weeds while watching each passing cloud for a potential downpour.  On the plus side, we have rainbows.  In fact, two nights in a row, about the exact same time, near sunset, we had a rainbow in the exact same spot in the sky.  That’s a sign of hope.  And indeed, the summer takes on a more relaxed atmosphere at work and a few holidays start creeping back in.  Until the stretch of September-October, the second annual drought.  But by then, however, off in the distance I can see the holiday season that starts in November and I know I can make it through to December.

It’s an odd way to live, isn’t it?  Experts talk about how work will be different in the future, but I have a mortgage due in the present, so I step from holiday to holiday, grateful for the time to recover.  With a government trying its best to eliminate benefits to seniors I may have chosen a bad time to reach my sixties.  At least I’m young enough to still pull weeds and push a mower.  (Once the grass dries, that is.)  The main point is not to waste this rare gift of a holiday.  There’s no rain in today’s forecast (but there is for Wednesday, every day through next weekend).  Seeing the sun buoys me up.  And if I can’t have that I can always hope that at least I can have rainbows.