Friday pint

30 November 2008 | 4 Comments

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint archives.

I know, I know, it’s Sunday. I got so fired up on Friday that I was compelled to rant rather than pint.

So here you go. Back on Friday as usual with the next round.

  • Web (February 2004) — Short post about the web in Solitaire. I should have answered this one better — there’s a bit more about it here, but even that’s not really an answer. I’ll have to think more about this.

  • Inspiration (February 2004) — Where does this stuff come from?

  • Ambiguity (February 2004) — It’s the one-word-title week… this one’s about, well, ambiguity in Solitaire (grin).

Happy Friday-on-a-Sunday. Hah, that would mean that tomorrow was the weekend again, wouldn’t that be great?

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, virtual pint archives 

Big screen women

29 November 2008 | 4 Comments

The screenwriting life continues to have a storybook-quality wackiness that fascinates, frustrates, amuses, and occasionally depresses me, although really it’s mostly fun as long as I stop attaching to the outcome. I am learning huge lessons in loving what I’m doing in the moment, because tomorrow may never come…

But that’s a story for another time. I find I am reluctant to talk about my particular experience of this screenplay while it’s still ongoing. Not out of superstition, but because it’s too close to me. I wrote a while back about boundaries: well, this is private for me right now.

But I can tell you that there a couple of great roles for women in the script, and that I’m intensely interested in and frustrated by the absolute terror that studios have of movies with women. Who knew girls were so scary? Oh, sorry, girls aren’t scary, they just can’t open movies!

You may imagine my response to this (grin). And after you’ve had some fun with that, go read what Emma Thompson and Liane Balaban (who appear together in the upcoming film Last Chance Harvey) have to say about it.

And can I just say that Emma Thompson rocks?

Enjoy your Saturday.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, movies, screenwriting 

Do the work

28 November 2008 | 20 Comments

Do you want to be an artist? Do you want to be novelist, a screenwriter, a director, an actor, a musician? Then I urge you to read this magnificent rant by Karina Meléndez about her experience with wannabes in the prestigious UBC Creative Writing Program. And then please never, never, never do any of those things.

I’ve written before about why I think the professional creative game breaks artists, especially when it can take a long time for a person to come into her art. And I have seen what Karina describes a hundred times in workshops, at parties, on blogs — wannabes who have already bought into some version of Real Artists are Born, not Made. It’s hard, because there are just enough young geniuses out there that when we are learning our art, we almost always run into a couple. They shine early, they get attention and approval, they are special; and they make the rest of us feel inadequate and frightened and desperate to shine as well.

And here is what happens then: the goal for students in programs or workshops becomes not to learn, but to be validated. Because if one has something to learn, well, yeeps, that means you aren’t there, sister, you’re no genius, you’re not a Real Artist. Go drown your inadequacies at the Losers Pub: the rest of us will be here defending our Precious Genius to the death, explaining that people just don’t get how good we really are.

And resisting with all our might the essential qualities of real artists: self-honesty, vulnerability, and a hunger for learning so fierce and relentless that you’ll take a lesson wherever you find it — because real artists make themselves.

There’s a reason that a person’s art is commonly referred to as her work. It’s not coincidence or just a wacky way to use that crazy word. You want to be a real artist? Do the fucking work. Yes, it’s hard, and it can be the most please-just-shoot-me-now combination of frustration and despair and blazing hot I will do this somehow hope that you may ever feel about anything except possibly falling in love; and that’s when you finally learn that art is the way that real artists love themselves.

So what do you want? What’s more important, loving yourself and your art with such fierce passion that you’ll do whatever you must to make both of you better? Or being so frightened of the work and the life that you’ll spend all that energy instead on superstitious behavior, or complaining that no one gets your work, or refusing to be honest, or withholding your support from others. Spend all that precious never-get-it-back energy on trying to make everyone around you see you as a genius. Oh, baby, that’s like trying to make someone say they love you. Making them say it doesn’t make it true.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, writing 

Thankful

27 November 2008 | 5 Comments

No long lists from me today. Anyone who reads this blog knows how thankful I am for my life and my work and Nicola, for my family and friends, for wine and food and conversation, for music, for dancing, for all the joy I have in the beautiful world. So today I will just say thank you for stopping by sometimes, for sharing these moments with me, for the connections that we make here. They are important to me.

A lovely Thanksgiving to US citizens wherever you are in the world, and to everyone else, I wish you a happy day full of things that make you thankful.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog 

Say yes

26 November 2008 | 5 Comments

A few days ago, I read this review of a concert by the band Of Montreal in my morning newspaper. And I just had to share.

I don’t know the music. I fossicked about on YouTube and couldn’t find a good quality clip of a live show to share here, so I can’t even tell you if I would have the same experience of a concert as the reviewer. And it doesn’t matter. I am so taken by the giddiness and sheer geeky love of this review, especially coming as it does from Travis Nichols, an arts reviewer who always brings context and wide perspective and objectivity to his work. And enthusiasm — that’s one of the things I enjoy about his reviews, I always know when he likes something. But I’ve never seen him wiggle like this:

….they are at times so irritatingly goofy you just want to say no on principle.
 
But don’t be that way. Say yes.
 
Enjoy the glitter, the face paint, the pastel shorts, the tiger costumes, the dancing golden Buddhas, the confetti, the light show and the weird spectacle of frontman Kevin Barnes nearly naked, covered in shaving cream, doing some kind of New Wave strut on the Showbox SoDo stage. Say yes to songs like “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” and “Disconnect the Dots” and “Id Engager,” songs that are such a muddle of riffs and disco stomps that the only sensible thing to do is shout along to a chorus like “C’mon chemicals! C’mon chemicaaaaals!” until you’re hoarse.
 
– from Travis Nichols’ review of Of Montreal, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 Nov. 2008

It just gets better from there.

And it doesn’t matter if you like this particular music. Just that you like something enough to give yourself up to it sometimes. We should all have some stuff that makes us wiggle in joy, that makes us say yes.

Go read the review. Enjoy. I hope you get some yes in your day.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music 

Shirley Jackson

25 November 2008 | 3 Comments

I just read the post from Venetian Vampire in response to your blog on Oct. 20 about Shirley Jackson. I have always been drawn to her writing and wonder if you care to comment further about her. Thanks either way.

I think Jackson is a wonderful writer. I admire greatly her spareness of language, and the simplicity with which she describes complex, fragile moments between human beings. And she wrote some very shocking things for a mainstream middle-class white woman of her time — “The Lottery” was an absolute scandal, go read the Wikipedia article about it.

I think The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece, and I also like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, although that book seems to be more of a particular taste (sort of like artichokes or anchovies, I suppose). It fascinates and delights me that she wrote stories that were so unabashedly strange and frightening and shocking without having to get all bohemian about it. She lived an apparently satisfying life with her husband and kids and all the responsibilities of a 1940’s/50’s wife and mother, and then she went into her room and wrote Hill House… I would love to have had dinner with this woman.

And you know what else I love about Jackson? She was funny. I’m currently reading her essay collection Life Among the Savages, and there ought to be a tea-snorting warning on the book.

Those essays did for me what perhaps these days blogs do for us: they made Jackson human for me. They showed me the woman behind the marvelous creepy words I have loved for so long. I don’t always like what I learn about artists as people: but I like the sound of Jackson, I like the way she feels in her essays. I like her curiosity and her amusement at the wackiness of the world, and her clear love for her husband and children, and her bemusement at the response to her work.

Maybe it’s naive to say that I think she was a cool person, but I do; and maybe it’s evidence of my own lack of literary rigor that it matters to me, but it does. I would still love her work if I didn’t know anything about her: but knowing a bit of her personal life, and liking what I know, enriches the reading experience somehow for me. I don’t know if it works that way for others, but it’s always been like that for me. I’ve always been fascinated by the person behind the words.

I remember reading Hill House for the first time: the absolute confidence of Jackson’s prose, the small details of Eleanor’s life that told me everything about the howling wind that must live inside her, how glad I was when she escaped in the car and made her bid for freedom… and then the absolute horror of watching it all play out. Theo’s lesbian history revealed with nothing ever said about it, masterful writing. That Jackson is brave enough as a writer to show us the haunting but not the ghost. The effortless way she takes us into people’s heads. And the book scared the bejeepers out of me. That was a great afternoon.

You can start your own conversation now or anytime — just use the “Want to talk?” link on the sidebar or email me.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, talk to me, writing 

Exuberant roses

24 November 2008 | 6 Comments

Who knew roses could be such rebels? It’s November, dude? We don’t care! We wave our pink selves at your cold weather!

It’s 38 degrees Farenheit outside and I am stone in love with our exuberant roses.

Rebel roses fly their pink flags...
Rebel roses fly their pink flags...

... and spit in the eye of November!
... and spit in the eye of November!

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog 

Men who dance

23 November 2008 | 2 Comments

I love men who dance. In all the different ways.

Francisco Bosch as Bagoas in Alexander

Gale Harold as Brian Kinney in Queer as Folk

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog 

io9 reviews DS

21 November 2008 | 7 Comments

Many thanks to Charlie Jane Anders for a lovely review of Dangerous Space at io9. I’m especially delighted that she liked “Dangerous Space” (the novella) so much. I love that story, really love it. Practically every big feeling I’ve, every piece of music that’s ever gone bone-deep into me, every ecstatic experience I’ve had is in there in some small way. Sure, I’m in all my stories, every one: but this one is special.

See for yourself. Read the story.

If you’re so inclined, please leave a comment on io9 with your response.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reviews 

Friday pint

21 November 2008 | Leave a Comment

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint Archives.

A long and winding road today. I hope you’re enjoying the Virtual Pint posts and the rapid passage of time… we started in 2002 and we’re now in the beginning of 2004.

And in the present day, it’s nearly Thanksgiving. Virtual time isn’t the only kind that flies.

Enjoy your weekend.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, virtual pint archives 

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