The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode. -Flannery

It has always been a dream of mine to work as a librarian. The idea of living and working every single day in a world consumed with books is one of the most thrilling vocations I can imagine. My picture of heaven includes a lot of things, but one in particular is an endless shelf full of books. Kind of like the library the Beast showed Belle. It makes me giddy inside.

I bought a Kindle. I'm not ashamed. I have a reason for it and I have justified it in my mind, so no worries. But I will never give up the feel of binding and paper between my hands. I will never give up the ink stains on my thumbs or the cramps in my finger joints from being strained in the same position of balancing an open book. I will never give up my library card. I don't care whether people read only from hard copies or only from digital formats. I care that they read.

Some people are not readers, and while I accept that, I just don't understand it. I feel like there is a laziness of sorts at the root of it. Literacy is a gift, a privilege. People don't realize that there still are classes and societies and cultures where the ability to read is not as prominent as the class, society and culture in which I find myself. The choice to not read, I believe, is to forfeit the chance to expand the horizons of one's mind, the perimeters of one's understanding. Knowledge is power in many senses, and reading is the basis of how knowledge is attained for oneself. The written word is a gift. Literature is an eternal conversation, in a way, and by reading and writing, we add to that conversation. We make our voices heard by writing as well as listening to the voices of others by reading.

Some people are avid readers, some people simply read books. It is not important what pace a person goes in reading or what amount a person reads. Some people like to go slow, some like to flit through the pages. All modes are for various reasons. And that doesn't even really matter. It matters to me (and to every reader and writer) that the word simply be read.

So. Read.

Southern Gothic

It's interesting to me how genres can split in countless ways over time. It wasn't fifty years ago that you bought a record, and it was classified as "this." Now, we by albums that are more likely to be classified as "this, this, this, and that, and a little of that." Some people like this, some don't. There's no such thing as "rock music" anymore. It has to be classified as alternative, experimental, art rock, grunge, heavy metal, instrumental, progressive, punk, southern rock....

We have come a long way since the time of The Beatles. Life is not so simple anymore. We are genre-less.

My favorite band changes every few years, and of course this is because of what I'm drawn to in other areas of life, and of course that has to do with where I am at the time. As a writer, I'm drawn to the rawness and honesty in the stories around me, the books I read, the friends I make in my writing classes, the burnt coffee, the hidden family secrets, the struggles of my neighbors. The things I am drawn to in my personal life and the situations I find myself in when I study for my degree strangely seem to coincide with each other.

I've been a Joy Williams fan since I was 12 years old. The first CD I bought with my own money was her debut. I was sad when she disappeared for a couple years after she released her third album. Then in fall 2007, I ran across an article online that stated she had created another Myspace profile in addition to the one she maintained for personal and what little musical activity she had been sharing at the time. This one would be for her songwriting activities. So for several months, I visited these two sites to see what she had been producing. She released a few EP's, wrote for some pop artists here and there, did a handful of shows, then in early 2009, she announced that she was teaming up with some guy I'd never heard of. Two years later, almost every show of theirs is sold out. Can you put them into one category? No. The best one can do is: folk, Americana, singer/songwriter, country? We are all being influenced by so many, and so the art we produce in these times will exude traces of the many, and there rarely exists these days a musician or a singer who falls strictly into one style of music. And these beautiful artists don't care where they're put. They just want to play. And they're always sold out.

I believe that this is largely due to the fact that so many people are realizing how malnourished they are musically. For the past several years, pop radio has ruled people's ears, and sugar, though delicious and loverly, eventually makes you sick. So when someone comes along with something so organic and pure and unglistened, it pierces needs we didn't even realize we had.

These are artists who realize that the stories we tell should be honest, the tension in our relationships should not be brushed under the rug. And that's what people need to hear. We need to be okay with the fact that our stories can't be put into one box or one category or one section of the music store.

This comes as a relief to those of us who grew up in the setting that inspires many of these songs. But honestly, we're just glad that more people are starting to realize this. Some of us have already been familiar with these concepts because we have Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown, William Gay, Harper Lee. Writers who defined what has come to be known as "Southern Gothic". This is basically defined as stories that reject the common stereotypes of the South in the form of the happy slave, the southern belle, the God-fearing preacher, and the chivalrous gentleman, and instead write stories about what life in this environment is really like for some people. It's okay if you had an uncle who did nothing but drink his family into depression and lifelong therapy. You can tell that story. It's okay if your parents never had enough money to buy you a pair of shoes without holes in it. It's okay if you never married like your family wanted you to. Life is hard regardless of the region you call home. But at least some regions have those who are willing to advertise it on the paint-chipped front porch if it will put others at ease and make them sigh in relief that they're not the only ones, even though not all will go so far as to admit it.

My favorite quote on this literature is by Flannery herself, "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." This can be explained by another quote of hers: "I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it."

In my daydreams, I...

am an accomplished swing dancer, jazz singer, and theatre actress

live by the sea -- not the beach -- the sea

travel to coffee shops, bistros, cafes, small bookstores and taverns to read excerpts from my writing

teach things that I love, and get paid for it

take my children on a tour through Paris (without a nanny!)

have lunch with JK Rowling, Joy Williams, and/or Tina Fey

have read all "the classics"

like beer

know how to knit and sew everything

cook every day

can play a piano that is not out of tune

can swim

have a few precious little brunettes running around calling me mommy and learning how to knit and read and play musical things

Every child is an artist.

The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. - Picasso

Lately there have been quite a few thoughts when it comes to art and storytelling. I'm reading about this guy who published a book about his life, and it made a lot of money, and people wanted to make a movie out of it, and they wanted him to write the screenplay, and what I'm reading now is a book about him writing a screenplay for the movie based on the book based on his life.

And there has been a lot of talk of writer's block (whatever that is I don't believe it exists but that's another topic) and how to deal with it. There is a discussion that involves the idea of the artist living vs. creating. If the artist tells the story, he has no time to live in it. If he lives in it, he has no time to tell the story. So what are we to do? Which is more important? Someone has to tell these stories.

But isn't it also possible that, while we are gifted in that we can speak for those with no words, it is ultimately up to an individual whether or not he would like us to speak for him? Wouldn't our time be better served if we could teach people how to tell their own stories? And if people knew how to tell their own stories, wouldn't it be much easier for all of us to tell our own stories as we live them?

Storytelling is special. It is what makes us uniquely human. It is, I believe, part of being in God's image. Being able to tell a story. Being able to live a story. But it is all too easy to think we are better than others and we are serving a better purpose in the world by locking ourselves in our rooms and "making art."

One possible interpretation of Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" is that he felt a distance from society and could not relate to them. Thus, the Lady is cursed to stay in her room weaving constantly and can only view society from its reflection in her mirror. It's that thought of, "they just don't understand"

But isn't it our job to make them understand? It is not art if it is not an attempt to help the world understand something better or at least grapple with something complicated. No more excuses of "we're just too different" or " they won't get it."

But this book. It makes me think a lot about my story. It makes me aware that I am a character. And I have a plot.

"The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps."

Sometimes when I write . . . I don't want to. Sometimes I stare at blank lines that look to be filled. The pen rests and stares back at me with questioning eyes. I pick up the pen with exceeding effort, and I feel like I'm peeling off pieces of myself with something really sharp. But I continue even though it gets painful. I feel like it's my life or my identity, and I must continue, I must press forward even though I have no desire or will to. I wonder if this is healthy. I wonder . . . if something is not ready to leave the safety of my self. But I still push it. For I fear that if I do not write, then I will lose the desire or the will altogether. If I do not write, if I do not force myself, the pages will never have any meaning. People look at a painting and assume it was naturally done. Maybe it was. But naturally does not always mean easy. Sometimes . . . to write is to urge something out of oneself with great pain. And the hope that someday it will be worth it.

I should be writing papers instead...

I'm wide awake now thanks to the energy of my favorite redheaded person with whom I traipsed through Walmart while she claimed to be sleepy, but managed to find excitement with nearly every item at her eye level in the store. I do not know if that is an entirely grammatical sentence.

So instead of writing a five page paper on Shakespeare's sonnet 14 or my memoir for nonfiction writing, I'm here. I have no thoughts except that I am feeling rather accomplished. I've done all my homework for tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. So yay me!

I was labeled a liberal last night. I don't know who was the originator of the pairing of that term with my name. And then when we were trying to make the film we were told to "do what your shirt says." What does that mean? How do you do liberal things while playing Clue? At least I wasn't the "slob" or the "blonde."

So the definition of "veracity:"
"We see into our memories in much the way that we see across the floor of a sunbaked desert: everything we conjure, every object, creature, or event we perceive in there, is distorted, before it reaches us, by mirages created by subjectivity, time and distance. . . The best the a would-be nonfiction writer can do is use imperfect language to invoke imperfectly remembered events based on imperfect perceptions."

SO in creating a memoir, or memory in words, the facts aren't just so. Unless one has a journal they keep all the time and photographs. Oh hey! I do! But still, memories are subjective, selective, and clouded by time. But it's my memory. And even if it isn't true, I'm being faithful to the spirit of my memory. Because it is mine. My memory, my perspective, my viewpoint.

I still haven't decided what memory I'm going to write about. I'm thinking a conversation I had with my granddaddy at dusk on May 27, 2000, on a patio swing, just the two of us. A walk to get the paper. One sentence I'll never forget.

ZOMG the location of the second zero has moved.

Happy 2010!!!

Yeah I said zomg. So what? I know, I know. I always say I will never conform as it is my biggest fear, but sometimes I just get tired of fighting. Sometimes there is no better expression. Sometimes sounding out "oh em gee" is the only way others will understand certain emotions. Sad. I wish I had real words. It's my culture. And I am a part of it.

Next, I watched Defiance today with Daniel Craig. It was soooo good. Except that I was left saddened at the end when my favorite character died. He was my favorite, not because he was a cutie, (which he was) but because he was just such a sweet one.
It's amazing to me how every WWII movie I watch always brings out so many emotions. Anger, sadness, frustration, pity. I'm always so confused. When I see these soldiers killing Jews without thought I can't ever comprehend why. It's more than following orders. Everybody had a choice. What could possibly motivate any one person to determine anybody else's value or lack therof? Why punish a person for living? Not that any ethnicity is a bad thing. Only the opposite. But even in some crazy, alternate, unbelievable world in which it could be a bad thing, why punish any person for something that is not under their control? It never made sense to me.

But I guess that's a good thing. It would be terrible if I did understand it. I don't think I would ever want to know what that hatred feels like. Why does any person think they have a right to determine another person's life and value? It's cruel. Who gave them that right? Sometimes I'm not even confidant enough to speak my mind, I can't even imagine assuming such power.

The past will always exist. I wonder if dealing with that existence will ever stop being such a struggle. For groups and for individuals. But we just keep swimming. Sometimes that's all we can do. And it may not seem like much, but it's something. The fact that we can still do something is worthy of gratitude. We show that gratitude by doing that something.

So good luck with your somethings!

The only moment we were alone.

It always comes as an understatement: Music is powerful. I seem to be reminded of this most of all when I listen to something instrumental. As someone who loves language, writing, and words, I look for the lyrics first in a song. The lyrics are a big deal to me. They need to be clever. Whatever words are used, they need to be clever. And there's no limit to how this can be done. I've heard songs with short and simple repetitive words, and I've heard songs with phrases and words I've never heard of or would never think to put together, and they all are brilliantly written. It's not the words that are used, it's how they're arranged. If I can predict the next line in the song, it's usually a poorly written one. I love lyrics.

But without the lyrics, the song still stands. It's the instrumental stuff that pierces me because sometimes it's not about words. Sometimes I just need to shut up. One of my favortite stories (probably made up, who knows) was about Beethoven going to visit a friend mouring the death of a loved one. Beethoven never spoke a word at this visit. He simply went to his friend's piano, played a song, and left. The friend said he received more comfort from that visit than from anyone else's.

On Sunday mornings I have a brilliant and talented group to lead me in worship. They know and love their music. Sometimes, my worship leader can go a whole song without ever opening his eyes. That's power. To be taken somewhere else entirely by an arrangement of sounds. Music is powerful. Beautiful. When you see someone that lost, the words don't matter anymore. Perhaps even the music doesn't matter anymore. It's all been blended into a collection of somethings that takes you ...... somewhere. And you're lost. But right where God wants you. I'm listening to Explosions in the Sky right now and I gotta say, it does a pretty good job of clearing my head. That's nice at the end of the day. It wouldn't work if the song was cluttered with words which would only clutter my mind more.

So many of my greatest blessings were experienced with music in the starring role. Tonight at our Christmas service, our worship leader played my favorite worship song. It wasn't planned, it was the last one, and I never hear anyone do it in church anymore. I usually have to sing it to myself to hear it. But God can do anything. For me. On the way back to my house on July 27, 2009, I was stuck in a traffic jam. Never think your day can't get any worse. Sitting in a daze of hardest loss I've encountered, what should come on the radio station that rarely comes in? That song where every word and sound matches your every thought and feeling at that time. Because God can do anything. For me.

"Music is a fair and glorious gift of God," a random piece of wood on a wall once said. Indeed.
"We'll sing and dance in heaven," Grandma once said. I sure hope so. Because I think "pretty music" is in the definition of heaven somewhere. Along with "smells like chocolate chip cookies" and "Bekah will finally be able to play the violin."