Author Archives: Tom Harold

Prepared for Party Conversation

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I’ve mentioned this in some previous posts, but it’s pretty important, and after several folks asked about it, I realized that finishing my novel deserves more than just a paragraph. I’m apt to minimize the importance of some of my accomplishments, and maybe this will help non-minimize the minimizing which has already started to appear.

Way back in October of 2008 I signed up for something called NaNoWriMo. Some of you are familiar with National Novel Writing Month, but for those not so, it is a challenge where participants attempt to write a novel of at least 50K words in length between the dates of 11/1 and 11/30. This is especially lovely for those of us in the U.S. who work this frenetic exercise through the Thanksgiving holiday.

I loved NaNo. I can’t say enough good things about it. I made some new friends, learned a ton about writing, and overall just had a reall kickass time with the whole thing. I also spent a lot of money on coffee, but that was just a bonus. Come the end of the month I had blown the 50K goal out of the water by writing seventy-six thousand words! One little problem. Novel still wasn’t finished.

That’s right, I’d gone from day one where I wondered how crazy I was to be even attempting to write a real honest-to-pete novel-length novel of not-so-lengthy longness (50K is about 200 or 250 pages, as I recall – about the length of “Fahrenheit 451,” for reference), to “Holy crap, how am I ever going to stop adding words! Won’t these people please resolve their conflicts?!”

My determination at the outset of the project was in keeping largely with NaNo’s idea that it’s just pretty awesome to set yourself a big goal and then allow yourself the time and energy that you need to make it a priority and complete it. Completing it was still my priority, and I was determined that this was not going to be another one of those things where, two years from now I’d run into a friend at a Christmas party or a gig, and they would say, “Hey, how did that book go that you were writing?” and I’d shuffle my feet and look away and go, “Oh, yeah…I, um, I got a lot done, but it sucked, so I didn’t finish it.” I’m so NOT about not finishing these days. It’s one of the hallmarks of my past that I want to change about myself. Even if the final product isn’t that great, or I don’t really do anything with it, I want to be a person who finishes things, because if I keep doing that, then sooner or later those finished thigns are going to improve in quality, and then, maybe, at some point in the future, I will start having finished stuff that I can look at and go, “Okay, not bad. Kind of cool.” and then I won’t hate myself for never doing anything. It just makes it easier to get out of bed in the morning, you know?

So, November ended and me and my NaNo buddies scattered to the winds for the holiday season, but we kept in touch and after things calmed down we were able to regroup and still get together on the odd weekend for a little informal meeting and catchup. I continued to write either at these meetings, before, after, or just whenever the heck I could get some time.

It dragged on…and on…and on. At one point I remember there was a two-week period where I only wrote 80 words or something like that. I just had other stuff to do, plus I was getting the beat-down from the novel itself. I was stuck. I’d never done something like this, and it just wasn’t moving. I dug in my heels and refused to quit. Weeks went by here and there where absolutely no words made it into the document, yet I still refused to say I had stopped. When this happened I’d try to find a couple of hours one week and pound out as many words as I could, sometimes getting a thousand down, maybe two thousand, before events conspired and I was kept away again.

By June things had evolved. I’d moved forward with the plot a good deal, even though I didn’t like where it was going or what was happening, or even how it was happening. It didn’t matter, I was going to keep going until it was finished! I looked at some saved documents and noted that it had been about a month since I’d even pecked out a single letter on the novel. It was grim, but it looked like I was in the home stretch, I just didn’t know quite how to end it.

Have you ever ended a novel? I hadn’t. How do you take all those thoughts and words and wrap them up? I mean, after they’ve done all this incredible stuff, how do you have them do something so mundane as to just…get on with their little imaginary lives? How do they say goodbye to each other? How do I let go of them myself?

On June 28, 2009 I was sitting in the cafe wondering about this. I knew I was at the end. It was a done deal, but I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Two of my characters were down to saying goodbye to each other. They didn’t want to part, and I didn’t exactly want them to just stop living their little lives either, even if I knew their little lives needed a massive rewrite to become interesting little lives.

She has to leave, I thought, staring at the screen. It’s time for her to go. They both have stuff they have to get on with, and this part needs to come to an end. I don’t know what they’re going to do from here on out, but it’s time to say goodbye.

They said their goodbyes (for probably the third go-’round now), and she finally really made it to the door, opened it, walked out, and closed it behind her. He sat on his bed for a few moments, and then picked up what she had left for him.

I leaned back and looked at the screen. There wasn’t anything left to say. They were on their own now.

I clicked “Save,” and took a drink of my coffee as the word counter totaled it up. 92,165 words from hello to goodbye, from start to finish, from “How am I going to write a novel,” to, “Wow, somehow I managed to write a novel.”

It’s been quite a trip. It’s been fun, aggravating, exciting, annoying, interesting, hard, and overall just plain excellent. What I do with it from here on out, I have no clue, but I can at least say I’ve written a novel, which is a hell of a lot more than I could say about myself a year ago. Bring on the party conversation. Go ahead and ask me “How’s that book going?” I’m prepared now, fully prepared.

Sculpture? Yeah, finished that too!

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After many weeks of deliberation and second-guessing and fearing for the worst, Tuesday night I finally set about putting the finishing touches on the rolling ball sculpture for which my friend Tina made the base. Getting some help on a base was a new twist on my sculpture building, short though its history may be. By the time Tina was finished I was so pleased with the results I was just certain that I was going to do something to horribly wreck the end result.

I didn’t like the most obvious method to me, which was to tie it down with wire through holes drilled in the base. Tina, of course, was totally fine with that, but I wasn’t. Being a fix-it/mechanic/backyard engineer, I had half a dozen concepts in my head for better ways to do it, ways that seemed classier, ways that would look better, and ways that might function better. These ways, these many awesomely-conceived and clever ways, generally involved materials that weren’t readily available (tiny U-bolts anyone?), methods that were time-consuming (fashioning custom brass feet interlocking with routed cutouts and countersunk brass screws), or stupid expense (back to those custom tiny U-bolts again).

I decided once and for all to use the wire and just accept the fact that, at this point, it was my best option both in terms of ability and expediency (after I mulled it over and fretted about it for four or six weeks…or, um, eight weeks, of course).

Tuesday night I picked up the drill. It was scary. I was going to drill a hole in this carefully executed bit of wooden artwork that Tina had created for me. Visions of a slip of the hand and the drill bit skittering across its surface, gashing the tongue-oiled brilliance of the piece went through my head. Yeah, that was what was going to happen, I was sure of it. Definitely. No other possible way out of it. Oh, well, there was one other: I was going to drill crooked holes with terrible burrs at the edges and the result would be so distracting as to make the piece as a whole just look like a hack-job.

Okay, maybe there was one other possible outcome: it would be fine, but I wasn’t betting on that one, at least not the noisiest part of my brain.

However, I listen to that quiet part of my brain more these days, the part that says, “Yeah, you know, there IS a possibility that things could go wrong, but, dude, you’ve drilled HOW many holes in your life? I mean, really, give yourself a little credit. You’re going to make reference in the divots before you start, and you’re one of the most ridiculously careful people on earth. You’ve stacked the odds in your favor that you can succeed at this. Just take a deep breath, and do the work. The results will be what they’re supposed to be, and that’s okay.”

So, having made my reference marks and double-checked everything four times (that’s eight checks total, right?) I fired up the trusty Skil cordless and went to work. Once the holes were drilled I went to work underneath with my fabulous rotary tool and routed out room for the twists of wire that would hold everything down tight. I should have take a picture of this part, but I completely forgot about it for once. I guess that’s a sign of how driven I was to finish the thing.

I feel very fortunate in that there really were no major snags. The wire ended up being pretty decent as a fastening concept, and I only had to cut and redo one attempt. I soldered everything on the underside so that it will hopefully never come loose. Then I put on a sheet of adhesive cork that Tina provided so that the base won’t scratch anything.

Here it is, and it’s fantastic!

Overall shot.

Overall shot.

I don't have video, but here's a shot of it in action.

I don't have video, but here's a shot of it in action.

Detail shot of Tina's work and the mount for one of the feet.

Detail shot of Tina's work and the mount for one of the feet.

I’m glad to have finally completed this one, and I thank Tina for making it really stand out. The other day I saw a notice online for a local art show that is having an open call for art work, and I think I may send a photo in of this one and see what happens with that. It may be that I can use this as an opportunity to meet some other folks who enjoy this kind of art.

Man, I’ve now finished up two creative efforts within the space of a week. Last Sunday was the novel, and then Thursday night I finished up this sculpture. I sure am glad I took some time out for myself to work on my projects. I’m feeling a little better about things now.

On a related note, weeks ago I was talking with a friend of mine about my sculpture work, and she said, “You know, my ex-husband used to do work with metal stuff, and I have a whole roll of copper sheet sitting around that I was going to throw away. Do you want it?”

I had a bit of a coughing fit for a moment, and then I accepted. See, metals have shot up in price (along with all kinds of other stuff) in the past couple of years. I had just been thinking about buying some copper sheet and trying it out with my sculptures, but I was a little concerned about the expense.

For a few weeks there were a bunch of missed connections meeting up with my friend again, but on Saturday a group of us were out for lunch, and she said, “Hey, guess what? I made sure to put the copper in the right car today. I have it for you!”

She hadn’t told me much about it except that it was “a roll of copper sheet.” When we got it out of the trunk, this is what I found I’d been bequeathed:

rollingballsculpture004

You may notice that this copper looks rather yellow. I did too. I said, “It looks to me like this may be brass.” She said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.” I happily told her it was no problem, that brass would solder up to copper just as easily as the identical metal, and, in fact, I’d already started doing as much with my spare harmonica reed plates. I was totally jazzed and thanked her.

Later that night I went to take it downstairs. It was heavy. I mean, she really had given me a bunch of material. I got curious and laid it on the bathroom scale. Twelve pounds! That’s a lot of brass! I don’t know how many feet there are of it, but let’s just say I’m not going to be running out of it any time soon. It’s heavy gauge stuff too, so I’ll be able to fashion plenty of supporting objects out of it. It’s really good stuff!

I used to think that things like this just happened to people who were “lucky,” but these days it seems to me that if I put out the message of what I’m interested in, what I enjoy, what I’m working on, then things like this happen in turn. I’ve been operating under that idea for a little while now, and it’s been interesting what sorts of things have shown up in my life because of it. I see no point in changing tactics. Now, I wonder what would happen if I went around saying, “I want to write for a living” to everyone I ran into? Hmmm…

Stay creative!

Day of the Auditioning Dead

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Ever wanted to be a zombie? Thought so. Me too, but until now, I never dared believe that such a dream could be mine. It’s not in the bag yet, though, so maybe I just better back up and explain what I know at this point.

A few weeks back I was goofing around on Facebook (yep, I do that, and I do it very well, thank you!) when I saw that one of my friends had added a group to her favorites. The group was called “8 Wheels of Death,” and it had this kicky little graphic with two skate wheels making up the number eight. Combining wheels with anything gets me interested, so I clicked on it. Lo and behold, what should I find but a group for “the upcoming top-secret Roller Derby Zombie short movie to be filmed during the summer of 2009” in my old college town. “What the heck,” says I, clicking on the “Join this Group” button. “I’ll keep tabs on it. Sounds like fun.”

A week later an announcement went up: “A round of auditions will be held Saturday, June 27, from 4-7pm in 9th St Park.” “Huh,” says I, “this might be interesting.” I didn’t take any action, though. I mean, me, get involved in a movie? They’d probalby need for me to be places and do things and – well, that could all get very busy and uncomfortable! I just noted it and went back to my usual Facebook sending of flair and putting up announcements of finishing writing my novel (BOOM! Didn’t see that coming, did you?!).

A couple of days after that a note goes out to everyone in the group: “We need a cool old car for a scene, so if you know of anyone who has one…” *Tom smiles wickedly and rubs his hands together over the keyboard, then begins pecking* “Dear Mr. Director, I may have something you’d be interested in…”

A day later the ’67 Chevelle has been conscripted as the “cool car” for a pivotal scene in the movie. “Hmm,” thinks myself, “maybe I should go ahead and goof off with this audition thing. I always wanted to be one of the living dead.”

I send the director an email: “Glad the car will fit your needs. I don’t think there’s any abuse it can’t take, and it’s kind of beat up anyway, which sounds like that’s what you want. I’ll be heading down for auditions this weekend, too. I’m not dying for a part or anything, but I just thought it would be a fun experience.” At this point it’s prudent to mention that I’ve never done any acting in my life, unless you count grade school spring pageants, and I don’t.

Days later I’m gassing up at a station as I’m about to head out of town for the audition. My brother calls from the drag strip to give me an update on the car’s performance, the same car that will be in the movie. All is good. In fact, he’s doing rather well with it. I congratulate him and say, “I gotta go. I have to gas up. I’m going down to Bloomington to audition for a zombie movie, and get this: they want the Chevelle to be in the movie!”
“Really?” says my brother. “That’s kickass!”
“I KNOW!” I say, grinning like an idiot. I’m getting more excited now that my brother is on board with the idea as well. I gas up and hit the road.

Ninety minutes later and I’m down at the park. I basically just wander over to the one shelter they have there where a few people seem to be headed. I guess that’s how these things come together.

I get up to the group, who are laying out papers and positioning something that looks exactly like a video camera. My powers of perception tell me that I have, in fact, picked the right group to wander toward (this assisted by the fact that there were no other groups in the area at the time).

I introduce myself, and everyone seems pretty happy to be there and happy that I’ve come out as well. They’re a little surprised that I drove 90 minutes for the audition, but I didn’t get the opportunity to tell them that there were no zombie movies auditioning in my town that weekend. (I let them think it’s because I love theatre so much.)

Since I am cool and think of you, my Awesome Readers so much, I had the foresight to bring my trusty Nikon. Behold the gallery o’ fun that makes up the first round of auditions for “8 Wheels of Death!”

I had a blast, and the Chris, the director, was very awesome in granting my request to read first, as I had to leave only about twenty minutes later so that I could drive back up north and play a gig. It was a full day, but one hell of a good time overall. Before I left, Chris told me that it looked like I would probably have a good chance of getting a speaking part in the movie. I read for the part of “Chester” the EMT, who’s pretty much a straight guy, but I also read for “Buck” who is a “smarmy redneck” who comes to a bad end. I’m a little hoping I get to be Buck, because he’s kind of a jackass, and I could SO have fun with that, because I’m so NOT that guy. (It would be the perfect excuse to wear a T-shirt that says “Chicks Dig Me” or “#1 Lover” or something equally tasteless.)

I will certainly keep you all updated on this one. Shooting takes place in July and August with plans to have it done and ready to show to the public by Halloween of this year, which is a pretty short turnaround on a movie, in my mind. It’s a zero-budget thing, and very campy, but I hope it comes out fun and wacky and entertaining all the same. From the folks I met it looks like it’s going to be a good time!

Oh, yeah, and that part about the novel? For those of you who have just tuned in, I started my first ever novel attempt on November 1, 2008 during the wonderful caffeine-infused frenzy that is NaNoWriMo. I got 76K words written within 30 days, which was more than enough to hit the challenge goal of 50K, but not enough to finish the story. My goal in entering NaNo was to completely write the rough draft of a novel, beginning to end. Since it wasn’t finished, I plodded along, and sometimes it seemed like I was never going to finish the damn thing, but the day finally arrived. The day after my zombie audition, June 28, I sat at a table in a funky little cafe near my home, typed the final sentence, sat back, took a sip of my latte, and clicked “Save” once and for all. 92,165 words, and they are all done and all mine.

Stay creative, kids.

Anti-Perfectionism with Photography

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From time to time I’ve tossed up pics on the ol’ blogwall here to see how they stick. Mainly they’ve been illustrative in nature, and I guess that’s probably due in large part to the fact that I got a degree in Journalism and spent a good deal of my time learning how to create pictures that tell a story.

Sometimes, however, you just want a picture that makes a statement all its own. I have no idea if I possess an ability in that regard, but I still take a stab at it, but I’ve not often posted those results up here on thatstom. I suppose largely that’s due to the fact that I’m a perfectionist, and usually look at them and go, “Uh…suck!” The enemy of the creative spirit is perfectionism, and I’m a victim of it as much as anyone else out there, and on occasion far more than is healthy. Perfectionism is responsible for that voice that says, “Nah, you suck. That sucks. You’re not good enough. You might be good, but other people are better. People will laugh at this stuff. Who are you to think that you might even possibly be capable of doing something decent. You’re wasting your time!”

Perfectionism, it’s one of the most powerful anti-creation forces in the universe. It’s what makes us not start projects, or start projects but never finish them. (Hey, if you never finish something, it’ll never be imperfect, right? What a great excuse not to do something!) I have often fallen victim to perfectionism, and for years I thought it was actually a good thing, that it helped me create stuff that was very exacting and of good quality. I didn’t realize how often, by comparison, it kept me from trying new things I really wanted to try, from experiencing the joy of a completed work, or of basking in some justly-deserved praise. Perfectionism kept me from creating, and, as such, kept me from the very healthy practice of being myself! This, in turn, creates all kinds of other unpleasant negative feelings. Overall the whole thing’s just a bad deal, and I’m pretty much done with living my life being governed by negative feelings such as those.

Taking action is an outstanding way of dealing a blow to the negativity of perfectionism. Me not sharing some of my photos? Not a good thing. A very simple way for me to take action is just to put a few of them up here without worrying if they’re perfect or not. I achieved a massive victory this evening of simply flipping through a few photos from the past couple of years and picking whatever ones caught my eye without obsessing (too much!) over how fantasti-wondeful they were. And now I’m putting them up here for all of you, my Awesome Readers/Viewers, to take a gander at.

The following are just a few random images that seemed to at least sort of show some promise. Critique, lambaste, judge, wrinkle your nose, smile, roll your eyes, whatever strikes your fancy. Hopefully there is a little enjoyment to be had from them. I don’t know where any of this work is headed, I just know that I’m supposed to be doing it. If I’m not sharing it, then it’s not doing me any good. I’m my own worst critic, and it’s a good idea to get some feedback on occasion, because sometimes I may be wrong about me. Now enjoy, and feed back!

Dream a Little (Necessary) Dream

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I had a dream last night. No, this isn’t one of those blogs where I tell you I had a dream, but but then I reveal later that it wasn’t a dream in the sleeping-dream sense, that it was more of an awakening of thought while I still had my eyes open. It’s also not the sort of dream like I had this wish for myself for the future, but now it has fallen by the wayside, hence the past-tenseness of it all. Lastly, is not that I’m just pretending it was a sleeping dream, because it was really a real thought I had, but kind of a weird one, and so I’m sort of embarrassed about it, and so I’m just saying that it was a dream. Got it?

If not, well, here’s the basics: I fell asleep, and all these images ran through my head and there was some dialogue and a bit of storyline. Basically I got a short movie that I produced by and for myself for the price of closing my eyes and apparently being a little stressed out.

Two things are immediately significant about this whole affair. One, I don’t usually remember even having dreams. Two, if I do remember them, they’re usually like a photographic flash-type of thing, like this one: I was being chased by zombies. That was one of my more recent dreams – almost the whole thing in its entirety as I can recall it. If you want me to get wordy and descriptive, here’s what I remember: me and some unidentifiable other person (maybe, possibly, some other person) kind of running, and something was coming after us, and I knew it was a zombie, or zombies, but we couldn’t really see them, and I wasn’t going to turn around and look, you know? The end.

So, anyway, that’s what usually happens if I remember a dream I had. Last night? Not like that at all. Oh, and I should also mention, that when I do have dreams, they usually don’t have much bearing on reality – although there was that one time when I dreamt that a woman at the office was coming after me to kill me, which really was kind of close to the mark during that time in my life. Fortunately, she was eventually fired for taking pictures of sensitive documentation at work – but I digress! My dreams are usually vauge and/or pointless, brief, and I almost never remember them. Noted.

Last night, however, as I tried my best to attain some sort of uninterrupted REM the type of which truly restful nights are made of, a vision was visited upon me, and it was…well, it was…oh, it went like this:

In this dream I was trying my damnedest to get a residency in some new artist lofts that had just opened up in town. I desperately wanted to be a part of this. It felt like an immense moment of opportunity had arrived for me. This was the chance I’d been waiting for, the break that would enable me to lose myself in my creative work and really, truly, honestly, seriously make some big things happen.

My chances of getting accepted, however, were not looking good. The people who decide such things (I don’t know who they were, didn’t get that dream-info) were off somewhere considering my current work to see if I were worthy of being placed. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have that much completed work available. I’d known this was coming for quite some time, and I had been trying and trying to get some pieces finished for months now. Events had seemed to conspire against me, however, and one thing or another had cropped up and always prevented me from getting any real work done. The day job, the band, and a million other little things both expected and unexpected had continually thwarted my efforts to accomplish much.

I was at the point in my dream where I was aware of all of this, and I was sitting on the floor in some sort of makeshift studio or workroom, and I was looking at the few meager works that I had managed to complete plus a few projects that I had started – ones that showed real promise and would have secured my acceptance had I only been able to complete them! I sat there in utter frustration, knowing that I was unable to do anything, much as I might want to, that the time had passed, and all I could do was wait and pray I would be accepted, but that it didn’t look very likely. And as I sat there, knowing all of this, looking at my incomplete intentions on benches and the floor, I suddenly completely broke down and started sobbing, exhausted from anger and grief and stress.

Have you ever have one of those times when you’re physically and mentally worn out, like you’ve been working too many 12-hour days in a row, and yet, when you finally have an opportunity to sleep, you can’t? You just lay there and lay there and you’re absolutely dying to fall asleep, but you’re so wound up that your mind keeps going and it won’t shut down and you know that in another hour it won’t be eight hours, but seven, and then after that if you can’t sleep it’ll be six, and if you even get to bed by then it won’t do near as much good and you feel the night slipping away and you just know, you KNOW that tomorrow you’re going to wake up and be just as exhausted as you have been for the past two weeks, but you can’t do anything about it? It was like that. I was spent. Done. I was completely powerless to do anything, and I was feeling the opportunity just slip away.

I remember in the dream that I just kept saying “please” over and over again, while I was sobbing there on the floor, and I was saying that, because I JUST. WANTED. TO. BE. ABLE. TO. MAKE. SOMETHING! Something that mattered, something that made me feel good about what I could do and who I was, and it felt like somebody, like this big Hand of Life Itself was holding me back and preventing me from doing it.

I woke up at about that point, and I had a distinct feeling of relief for just a moment, a “Man, I’m glad I got that out of my system finally” sort of feeling – and then I realized I was just lying there in bed. None of it had happened. I fell back asleep almost immediately, and I don’t remember dreaming anything after that, but it came back to me when I woke up.

I don’t think that this exists as only a small connection to a conversation I had with my brother the other day. We were at the drag strip, and somehow he ended up asking how much sculpture I had done. I said, “Well, I’ve finished two, and I’m working on at third one, but I’m stuck. It’s been sitting there forever, and…I’m just stuck. I haven’t had time for anything lately. Just – no time at all. I haven’t written much of anything, and I haven’t done any sculpture work at all. It’s been two months or something like that.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever had a dream that was more transparent in my life. I think it’s time to stop waiting for some free time to reveal itself to me and time for me to start making some free time for some important work of my own. This reminds me yet again of the Artist’s Way in which it says that essentially creative people become unhappy, grouchy, cranky, and a little insane when we don’t get to create. I hope you allow yourself time for those some pursuits. It’s what keeps the creative self happy and, as a result, the rest of the self is happy as well.

Stay creative. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have schedule I need to rearrange. There’s free time to be cultivated.

Crate Expectations

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It's art! In boxes!

It's art! In boxes!

I got a call from my friend Darrell the other day. He said, “There’s this art installation going on down near Mass Ave.”
“What is it?” says I.
“They’re doing art in these giant metal shipping crates. You want to go?”

Now, I have no idea what constitutes an art installation, and wasn’t really sure exactly how this worked in conjunction with metal shipping crates. I didn’t know how “giant” the size would be, or what we’d be looking at, or why it was so interesting or novel. It would all have been a scheme from which to tempt five dollars from my thin little wallet. I didn’t know.

“Yes,” I said.
Given that I knew nothing, it seemed like I must find out, and now, so shall you.

The basic deal was that they had brought out six of those big shipping containers that you always see out by a dock somewhere. These weren’t crates as you normally think of them. They weren’t square boxes, cubes. These were those big, long, corrugated metal things. The containers open at each end, and they were divided in the middel, so one container would hold two different exhibits.

Here’s an overall view of a few of them:

installationnation

I wish I had some more images for you, but at art shows it’s kind of a courtesy not to take pictures of someone’s art work (’cause it’s like, you know, stealing!). I was able to get at least a partial view of one of the more interesting ones, and you can see Darrell taking part below.

installationnation2

You actually lay down on this thing (it was explained to be likened to an MRI) and then it carried you prone into the display and then back out. It was pretty freaky. There were some video screens with images being played over them plus jumbled audio messages being played at the same time. It was weird, kind of cool, kind of scary, and definitely met up with some of my expectations for the event. Some of the other displays were nice, but not quite so much what I was expecting. Some of the artists seemed to use the space more as a standard type of display area, and I guess I was expecting a little more wackiness out of the whole thing.

Darrell mentioned that often times an installation is geared more toward the use of the space as a whole and making it into an area of complete expression, a space that defines and identifies itself separate from the area around it. One work that did this pretty well had a curtain over the entrance, and when you went inside the whole friggin’ interior looked like a pine forest! There were tree-like posts set about, the three available walls all had black and white charcoal drawings of the forest, and the floor was covered with real pine boughs, needles, and pine cones. There were sounds piped in of wind and birds. It was pretty cool. The only thing that kind of brought down the effect a little was the fact that it was still daylight, and the inside of the container was warm rather than the coolness that the visuals implied.

There were some that were involved, but didn’t reach so far. One exhibit looked like a front yard leading to someone’s porch. There were flowers and stepping stones and old steel lawn furniture, and the back end of the exhibit even had a real wood front door. It was well done, but, well, you kind of looked at it and went, “Cute. Front yard.” It didn’t really go any farther than that.

Another was set up like someone’s living room, with a bunch of early sixties period furniture. The artist was displaying a number of small paintings on the walls of yet more home furnishings, explaining that she had bought them in some vague fit of nesting, but never had anywhere to use them in her tiny apartment, so she’d painted them, hung the paintings, and then put the goods in storage “pretty much in a container like this one.” She was fun to talk to. Later on as Darrell and I passed by the exhibit again I looked in and saw her and her friend sitting down to eat dinner at the couch at the back of the display, food set out on the coffee table. I got the eerie feeling that I was looking at a living room plunked down in the middle of an empty lot. It was probably the best moment I had during the whole experience where her art became reality for a few minutes.

Overall I had a good time. Since I’d never been to an installation, it was just fun to get out and see something new and different, even if not every exhibit was uber fantastic or mind-blowing.

After we’d taken in the show Darrell wanted to walk around a bit, so we headed down the street and I snapped some pictures along the way:

church

There was a church nearby, and I liked the look of the sun on the brick. I think black and white would have done a better job with this, but it was fun messing with the angles. Darrell and I as well as some other artists at the show, all remarked that this building would be outstanding as a set of lofts or studios for artists. It’s been empty for quite some time apparently.

plantwall

Another view of the church with some vegetation gamely vying for living space.

riggingshop

Rigging shop. I just love that sign. They probably sell stuff here with cool names like “turnbuckle.”

gianthook

Hook. Giant hook. Couldn’t walk by it without taking a picture. I kind of want this hanging in a big workshop. I wish I had a workshop big enough in which to hang it!

Hope you enjoyed the tour, kids. Sorry I’ve not been producing much on my own lately. It’s been a challenge. I’m hoping this changes in the near future. I hope you are all finding some inspiration of your own so that you too can “stay creative.”

The Beaumont Zone

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Aw, dudes, check this out!!!!

Collections of sinister, humorous, and just plain weird literary greatness.

Collections of sinister, humorous, and just plain weird literary greatness.

I know, old books. You’re as excited as I am, right??? If not, please allow me to explain just a bit. In the photos above what you see are original publications of short story collections by one Charles Beaumont. Like Richard Matheson, Beaumont wrote for The Twilight Zone. Unlike Matheson, Beaumont was not able to live a long life, thereby enabling him to spread his literary awesomeness to a greater audience, or to garner movie deals from his stories which would go on to be remade three separate times.

Beaumont died tragically at the young age of thirty-eight, victim of an odd condition that has now been said to be Alzheimer’s, but at the time was unknown. Due to his untimely passing, his career was understandably short, yet the body of work which he left behind him has led authors such as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and Dean Koontz to remark that his influence is deep and wide even today.

Doing some hunting around on Wikipedia in recent weeks, I happened across Beaumont’s entry, and became enthralled. I noted that, while he hadn’t been on this earth long, he’d still managed to produce enough work for several published collections. Not being flush with cash, I checked the local library catalog. Zilch. I then realized that, while there were a few newer anthologies of his work, each one omitted stories here and there from his original publications. This would not do. I had to have them all!

Raiding the change jar (literally – I found I had fifty-two quarters sitting on my dresser in a pickle jar), I went to abebooks.com, recommended by a friend, and typed in his name. Oh, the joy when the search results pulled up numerous copies! I bought all three of his first anthologies. It’s been one week since I received them, and I’ve read every single one of them. They’re outstanding. Some of it is sci-fi, some horror, some are just plain humorous, but all are excellent.

I’ve started making notes for myself on the how and why of his writing. It’s very interesting stuff. For instance, out of 17 stories in his first book, only six of them have death directly incorporated. Out of those six, only four of those deaths are violent, and this from a book subtitled “A Collection of Violent Entertainments.” Here’s a guy who obviously pulls off the creepy and fearsome without resulting time and again to hack and slash violence. It’s not overdone or overwrought, it’s just plain good storytelling, and this, friends, is what it’s all about: telling a story well. If you can do that, then you don’t need to come up with some crazy new idea that no one has ever done before. Although, honestly, Beaumont pulled that off too. His short story “The Crooked Man” caused quite a stir when it came out in Playboy in 1955. No one had seen anything like it in mainstream press at that time. His idea to flip heterosexuality with homosexuality in a word where births were controlled in a lab, making hetero relationships illegal – powerful stuff in that day and age. Still a good story to this day.

I will continue going through these and making notes. He was an expert, a pro, and there’s certain to be much I can learn from him. If you’re at all curious, I suggest hunting down some of his work. For six or eight bucks including shipping, you can do far worse than indulging in Beaumont’s work.

The Fallacy of Self-Destruction

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Because I read this today, I found out that Quinn Cummings and I both love the book Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Because I found that out, I thought that maybe I might not become a womanizing, drug-addled, mentally unstable, critically-acclaimed, poverty-stricken, lonely alcoholic writer by the end of next week.

Some of you may understand exactly how all of that makes sense. If you do, then I feel for you, because you have a brain like mine, and that isn’t always fun, even if it is entertaining. For those of you who don’t, allow me to explain the finer points of Being Tom’s Brain.

In the past few weeks I’ve been reading a lot about dystopian fiction. This is an area relatively new to me, and one which I’ve previously known about mainly through popular works such as Farenheit 451 and 1984. I love to do research, though, and while recently doing some Wikipedia research on 1984, I came across a list of 175 novels with the theme of dystopia. That’s a lot of grim future, my friends, and I dove into it with glee.

I started to make a reading list. In the process, I noted various authors: Jack London, Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells plus many other lesser-knowns. One that rang some sort of vague bell of recognition was Philip K. Dick. I knew only that he had written the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which had become the basis for the classic film “Blade Runner.”

As I plowed deeper into the list of titles, Dick’s name appeared several times. His wasn’t the only one to do so, but I noted on several occasions, that when it did, it was accompanied by fervent enthusiasm on my part. It seemed that every idea this man had flipped an exuberant ON switch in my brain.

I was piqued as to the background of the man. What was he like, this machine that seemed to be able to not only crank out numerous novels, but come up with ideas for stories that I wished I’d come up with myself? This guy was on my wavelength. I mean, I was really digging his stuff. What was his life like? How similar might be we two? I clicked on the link to his biography.

Me reading: Hey! Hey, look! He won a Hugo Award. Sweet. He won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Nice. Thirty-six novels and 121 short stories! Damn – Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report – all that stuff is his! It can be done! Here’s proof of literary success! He was awesome!

He was awesome, and…and divorced…five times.
…and lived most of his life in poverty.
…and…never lived to see any of those movies from his books.
Hmmm…history of drug use.
Uh…he thought he was…taken over by the, uh, spirit of the prophet Elijah.
Thought he was…living a double life? And the second one was as “Thomas,” a Christian persecuted by the Romans in the First Century A.D?

It was about this time that me head started to have great fun with me. Oh great, it said. THIS is the guy I like? THIS is the guy whose ideas seem like they could have come out of my own head? THIS GUY??? I’m doomed.

Clearly, my head said, I was hopeless, my path to literary greatness was predestined. If I loved the ideas presented by Philip K. Dick, it was unavoidable what should follow: My desire to embrace a life of creativity, of literary and artistic pursuit – this was all going to end horribly. Soon I would be losing my day job due to loss of work ethic. I would walk out the door with my little cardboard filebox of belongings declaring loudly, selfishly, that, “I just can’t cope with this sort of mundane existence! I must create!!!”

My foolhardiness would make itself known straight away by me not getting anything at all published for a year or two. During this period, I would boomerang between writing and alcoholic binges, turning out pages of dreck suitable only for immediate destruction and my own growing pool of self-hatred and shame. I would lose my house to foreclosure. I would alienate both friends and family as I stomped and raged through my self-involved wreckage, flinging aside offers of assistance, sure that my way was the only way and that society was ignoring me, that the world at large was against me!

Finally, when I was in darkest despair, and against even my best efforts at self-sabotage (like the time I would write to an editor and demand he publish me “Unless you want to be known for only ever printing the linings of bird cages rather than untested brilliance!”), I would be published. By this point, however, so energetically had I set about committing the arson of my many personal and professional bridges, the only places that would publish me were small rags, amounting to hardly enough for a month’s rent in one room of a run-down house in a seedy part of town.

My bitter hopes emboldened, I would crusade onward, declaring that, “They’ll see. I’ll show them all!” Somehow, good writing would still manage to come from pen, pencil, typewriter, or whatever writing instrument I could afford at the moment. My earnings would be spent on the barest subsistence of life, with the remainder thrown away on whatever libation happened to be cheapest that week at the corner package store. I would turn to the use of pseudonyms as a means of getting my work published, having managed to repel any and all publishers who might otherwise have considered my work worthy of print.

Upon death at an early age of 56, brought on notably by years of substance abuse and generally poor self-care, I would leave to my credit only a handful of known published works, most of these in magazines. It would not be discovered until more than a decade later that I had more than twenty novels to my credit, often published with houses so small that they were scarcely known to exist. Movies would be made from several of my books, and my family would profit well in the aftermath of my mismanaged life. I would become known as an unappreciated master, influencing a whole wave of fiction to come for a new generation of writers.

Nice, huh? I really know how to turn on the melodrama when I have an opportunity – and this from reading a single page of someone’s online bio! My mind works wonders, I tell you, wonders. I’m especially tickled at how I made me into an “unappreciated master.” I suppose, though, that it wouldn’t make much of a story if I simply became a drunk who wrote badly his whole life. I don’t think A&E would waste a biography on that one, nor would it merit a Wikipedia entry, and who wouldn’t want to be a Wikipedia entry?

All kidding aside, my head really does create excuses for me not to do this stuff. I vividly recall making the decision to major in Journalism in college. I reasoned that, “You can’t make any money as a writer. Well, some people can, but you have to be kind of born to that, or show some sort of miraculous gift for it early on. It’s no way to make a living. But you can get a job with a newspaper. That’s a real job.”

And so it went. You know what happens when you don’t really go for what you want? You don’t really get what you want, and you end up pretty disatisfied with what you choose. Now I don’t know about the whole “unappreciated master” thing (I’d actually like to be an appreciated one with a bank account to prove it), but I can say that I would enjoy at least having some stuff published. There is that. It may not make me rich, it may not even cover a month of my mortgage (though that would be sweet), but there’s nothing to say it wouldn’t be worth trying. There’s also nothing to say that I would become like Philip K. Dick if I pursued writing aggressively. I always seize the most negative aspects of something, which, not surprisingly, gives me all sorts of reasons NOT to do stuff. I’m kind of done with that. I’m ready to move forward and look for some positive stuff. After all, Quinn Cummings likes some of the same books I do, and she’s funny, can write well, and she has a husband, a child, and as far as I know she doesn’t believe she’s a resurrected biblical figure. There’s hope in that.

Easter – Color and Design

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Spent Easter with the fam as I am wont to do, and we performed the highly-anticipated ritual of coloring eggs. This was, needless to say, a perfect opportunity for everyone to indulge in a little creativity.

In my family the whole egg-coloring deal has held to tradition for decades. This means that we’re almost notoriously steadfast users of the Paas line of vinegar-scented chromatic madness. While there have been years where a crazy new idea came out (thinking of the year my older sister came up with some way of using food coloring and vinegar for these fabu starburst effects), we generally just stick with the tablets, some warm water, and then try and do everything we can to get the most out of the basic materials.

Here are some of this year’s results:

Easter egg colors

We had a bunch of fun this year, and mostly we let the kids do whatever they wanted to do, and the adults kind of goofed around with it. I recall in years past we had some pretty amazing results, but we were laid back about it this year. I’m probably the only one who was bothered about it, as I tend to take five times longer than anyone else in search of the “perfect” design, color, and style. (Yes, by now you are all familiar with how I can take something simple and overdo it. One year at a jack-o-lantern carving party at someone’s house I took as long to do one as everyone else did to do two of them. I’m sure my obsessiveness is entertaining. You’re welcome.)

Egg closeup

Getting a closeup on these, you can see better how we work with our limited resources. You have to get pretty creative (awesome!) with your execution when your coloring depends largely on dunking an oblong shell-coated embryo into a coffee mug full of tinted water. There’s the whole half-in-one-side/half-in-the-other-side, and then of course you can go for the “suicide” effet – putting the egg into every single color on the table, but after you’ve covered some of the obvious tricks you begin to want to reach for something a little different. Okay, maybe you don’t, but I do, and so does some of my family, apparently.

The first one on the right was done by putting the egg in multiple colors, then removing it, patting it dry in a few spots with a towel, and submerging it again. This thing looked fantastic when it was done. It had a crazy purple/gray/blue thing going on. My sister’s friend did it. I thought it looked almost like concrete. It was awesome.

Egg closeup

Above is a closeup of the ones I did. The foreground one was partly accident-related. Before I got hold of it it had been dropped. Didn’t matter, I love the way colors react around the damaged area. Check out how the blue has come out of the green at the cracks. Super sweet. Look further up toward the top and you can see a spiral that wraps around the egg. I got that by using a crayon and drawing on it, then submerging it.

The one with the wacky stripes on it came from putting the egg in read for a short time, then pulling it out and letting it dry a little, then wrapping rubber bands around it in random patterns and putting it back in, this time in purple. Rubber band ones are always fun.

The orange and yellow one was another crayon work. I put it in yellow and then scribbled all over it with crayon. When I put it back in I used red. I left it in a really long time, and the colors turned out nice and vibrant on that one.

And now for a little photo instruction. Check out these two photos:

easterfun09001

and:

easterfun09005

Have you sometimes wondered why your photos look like snapshots and not photos? A lot of it is in the lighting. The first (really cute!) photo was done next to a sunny window. You can see that the left half of the face has a nice, soft light to it. Skin tones look great, and it adds a lot of character to the photo.

The second photo looks fine, but the lighting is just…flat. It doesn’t do anything. This one was shot from a different angle, and the on-camera flash was used. Now, most on-camera flash is harsh and bright. Works great over a large variety of situations, and does a wonderful utilitarian job of getting illumination into all kinds of spots so you can see the subject in a dark room. However, it’s not the kindest of light. It’s flat, and it has no “color” so to speak. It makes pictures look like the one immediately above.

My little quick tip for you is if you’re trying to take a picture and make someone look as fab as possible, put them next to a window with some indirect lighting. This will soften wrinkles and round all kinds of unpleasant edges. Sunlight also has very nice color to it and won’t make the subject’s skin look pale or blue or any other number of undesirable shades.

My other nifty little tip is this: if you are using a point-and-click camera, and you do have to use the on-camera flash, but you really want to soften things up a bit, tape a piece of disposable tissue paper of the the flash. How many times you double it over is up to you, but try it out for fun some time and see how it looks. You’ll be amazed at how much nicer it appears.

They sell things like this for certain cameras. They’re called diffusers. You can’t get them for most pocket cameras, nor would you really want to mess with one, but in some situations it can be pretty cool, like if you’re at grandma’s 80th, and you want to get her with mom, and you want to take just a minute or two extra and get that quick shot where everyone will go “Aw…that looks great!” forever after.

When I was in college I couldn’t afford a diffuser for my zippy little mounted flash on my Nikon. I hated the harshness of the flash so much I ran around with a handkerchief rubber banded to the flash always. I never took it off, and I always preferred how that stuff turned out.

Hope you all enjoyed the recent holidays and that you had a chance to do some playing and have some creative fun.