Favorite Kind of Squash?

I have three favorite books. The Hobbit is one. Has been for nigh on a decade and I ain't hardly ever wavered in m'loyalty. Starship Troopers a second, and of my favorite books this is the only one I've only read once. In itself peculiar, because the last time I picked it up I didn't get very far into it, yet I still consider it one of my favorites. Then Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel is the third.

All these books have one thing in common, and that's the feeling I got as I read them. Not after, but in the process of actually beginning and middling and ending them. The feeling of "this is really something special. I'll never forget this."

The first time I read The Hobbit.... I must have been nine. Maybe ten or eleven. I almost have not a single memory of it. I was given a nice--and terribly durable--copy of it for some special occasion, and it's lasted me all that time without a single change. I don't remember exactly what I was thinking about at the time, but I remember what I was in to. Power Rangers. Martial arts, kicking people, punching people. So I'm compelled to wonder: what mystical energy made this story about a scared, short, furry footed, unwilling burglar so wonderful? I can't say. I just know it's on the faves list.

I read Starship Troopers maybe five, four or five, years after that. Once again, I was given a copy for a gift, I think. At the time, I'd been reading a lot of YAs. Animorphs was a great series, folks. And I read YAs about Jedi. Books on a monthly release schedule. Not a lot of depth, just a lot of fast, blatant, excitement.

Starship Troopers, the book anyway, isn't a lot of fast, isn't a lot of blatant, isn't a lot of shallow. It's a lot of gradual, it's a lot of subtle, it's a lot of deep. It's almost only deep-subtle. How did THIS book possibly engage me? The answer's some where, I'm sure. Go find Freud dude.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel wormed a funny course. I thought it was, anyway. I was bored. I wanted something to read. I took to going to the library, starting at the top left, opening the books and reading the first paragraph, and slamming the book shut. If I liked that first paragraph, I slammed it shut after the second paragraph, which I generally didn't like.

JS&MN took up a lot of space on that shelf. Nice shade of brown. I didn't really like that first paragraph. It seemed to me not to have all the things a first paragraph needs to be engaging. I kept thinking that for a few days, then went back to check if I was right. I thought I was, but I figured, to make a thorough study, I should take it home with me and check again later.

I read almost half of it. But it proved bulky, and I got it on CD and started again at the beginning, then got to the end. Then got it again a couple months later and started over.

This was a few months ago. These days, I like quick. I like direct. I like TV.... While I think JS&MN would make a good BBC Masterpiece Theater, I don't think it's very TV, or quick, or direct.

So I guess I'm concluding that the word "favorite" means that which changes your mind.... Or maybe that what we think we like is our way of lying to ourselves about reality. Or maybe I'm just concluding that nothing makes sense.

There you go: life is perfect, because nothing makes sense.

Dictionary of Musical Terms, adapted by Mad Oz/Whit of the Net

"I wanted to incorporate tempo and timbre into the piece,"--Mishell

I'm a singer some. And, what's more, I like the classical stuff. It gets into my grain a little, and I describe other things with singer terms. Because other things can have singer terms applied to them, because singer terms are generally just Itallian words for just stuff.

So here are some singer terms applicable to writing.

Crescendo: a mounting stress. Increased excitement.

Decrescendo: decreasing stress.

Staccato: divided; disperate. Choppy.

Legato: smooth; flowing.

Allegro: speedy. Climax, semi-climax, car chase speed.

Forte: big and impressive.

Fortissimo: really big and impressive.

Andante: slower. Something's brewing speed. Or conflict over, time to conclude, speed.

Bebop: Jazz style developed in the 1940s. I just like the word...

Marcato: the bits with bold expressiveness that renew interest. Plot twists are marcato.

A tempo (pronounced "ah tempo"): Going back to the normal speed of the piece. Note: a tempo isn't necessarily the speed in which the piece began.

Accelerando: slow increase of speed or excitement.

Meno mosso: less speed.

Diminuendo: To gradually become subdued or quieter. Conclusions are often diminuendo.

Dissonance: conflicting ideas that cause headache.

Dynamic, dynamics: excitement eb and flow. A force providing interestingness to the plot.

Fermata: telescoping a moment out for tension building effect.

Vivace (veevahchey): Lively.

Piano: quieter and more subdued.

Pianissimo: much quieter and more subdued.

Subito: suddenly. Used with other words usually, as in subito forte to mean suddenly, and perhaps unexpectedly, exciting.

Suite: short story cycle.

Fine: the end.

Theme Songs: Drift Away

"Day after day I'm more confused,/but I look for the light through the pouring rain./You know that's a game I hate to lose./I'm feeling the strain./Now ain't that a shame."--Mentor Williams, Steppenwolf

I identify with music. And I identify with words.

Making any leaps of judgment here? Okay, good; I'll assume we're all on the same page.

I have begun compiling a list--playlist--of theme songs. Songs that are already floating around in the void. So far they mostly fall into the "no duh it's that one" column. However a couple have really surprised me. A phenomenon in itself quite shocking since I'm talking about me choosing something to be associated with something that I made up.... Not a strangity that I think I can explain.

Steppenwolf is an old band, and they have an old song most everyone has heard. The "Give me the beat boys to free my soul, I want to get lost in the rock and roll" song. It's called "Drift Away". It's a pretty feel good, ephemeral song. Almost sad, really. Not high tempo, blood and guts rock and roll. More classicky, more artistic.

I was just listening to it and reading Jenny's blog about revision, and thinking about the revision that I've been putting off on "Taking Bluegrass". And I associated "Drift Away" with "Taking Bluegrass". It felt right. It didn't think right; my intellect said "NO! NOT HARD CORE ENOUGH! TOO MUCH OF A SOFTY SONG! GAH! BRIGHT AND SUNNY FEEL GOOD! BAD BAD! CROSS FINGERS! BACK! HISS!"

But then I listened to the lyrics, real close. And the intellect started to agree with the instinct.

So all the other songs on my playlist are the theme songs of characters. But this one is for a short story. Or, more specifically, for my protagonist's mindset. Not for the character, because this is a transitional point in her life and she was never this way before and won't be again later on. So it's all very cool.

It occurs to me now, though, that the revision which "Drift Away" associates with is one most of my readers won't be familiar with.... So...yeah, make like a door and be open [minded].

Happy Anniversary, Alice!

http://www.alicecooper.com/

Alice Cooper. Rockstar, personal buddy of Kieth Richards, possibly Ozzy Osbourn, and Satan--according to his announcer--and proud husband of one Sharyl Goddard, now Sharyl Cooper for thirty-two years, and mother of three little Alices.

...

So rockstars can pretty often have pretty stable relationships. Hmm.

Let us examine, what is a rockstar? A poet. A rage against the man poet. An "I am me--screw the world" poet. Which means what? We're talking self aware, here. We're talking self-awareness taken to an uttermost. We're talking understanding of oneself. Oneself being pretty damned messed up...but one not being a stranger of one, if that makes any sense. Most people, I have observed, have some confusion about who they are and what place they want to or feel that they can fill in the world. But rockstars have that figured out.

So where have we gotten so far? We've established that rockstars are honest. And what, little children, do Hollywood and other echelons of propagandist society agree with experience and reality on what sorts of things working relationships work best upon?

I'm just some kid, but honesty is one of the words I hear a whole bunch.

Rockstars is poets. Poets do poetry because they want to put the inexpressible into words. An emotional and romantic business, no matter how loud you shout it.

So rockstars are emotional honest people.... Why are we surprised they have working marriages? Maybe it has something to do with the eyeliner.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

"Damme if I'll let him see he has made me angry."--Captain Sir Edward Pellew

Apart from this strange spelling of damn, this is a thought provoking piece of dialog.

This is a direct quote from the book Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. Not long ago, Ioan Groffud starred in a television adaptation of the same, and this Edward Pellew dude said this exact line in that as well. And this wasn't the only occurance of a piece of dialog being the same in both media. A great deal of the dialog out of the Hornblower book got without deviation into the television shows.

In the television shows, though, there was a lot more talking. There was hours of television, sometimes, that in the book was only a paragraph. One particular instance, near the end Hornblower is in a Spanish prison, a POW, and it says that he was there for a few months and didn't like it much. In the television show during that time period there was a return of a character from an earlier episode thought dead and an attempted escape and subsequent punishment at least.

C.S. Forester is an excellent writer. I entertain myself these days, when reading, by judging the sentences, seeing if I have a problem with them, and if so how to fix them. Or judging if they're clear, or if they could be more clever. In general, there wasn't an occurance of an unclear or badly phrased sentence in this book. The dialog was also good, but there really wasn't much of it. Forester concentrated on two things: Hornblower himself, and boats. He spent more time describing messing about in boats than anything else, and the only character that he seems to enjoy at all is his main character. Who is, admittedly, and agreeable and interesting character. But another, I think good, change that the television shows made from the book was to bring in some other characters. Throughout the book Forester will mention seamen who only stick around for a couple seconds. In the television shows there are about four seamen who are constant through the stories instead.

An interesting sort of juxtaposition. A good piece of literature and a good movie adaptation and the changes that were made and the changes that were not.