Not this year(1) - Wiscon

21 April 2008 | 3 Comments

A series of posts about things I thought or hoped or feared I would do in 2008.

This year, I am not going to Wiscon.

Wiscon is a thing that some people still scratch their heads over — a feminist science fiction convention. Why this still puzzles folks is a bit beyond me, but there you go. Maybe it’s because so many people’s notions of sf are formed these days primarily through movies, and Hollywood has some distance yet to go on the “feminist” side of the equation in pretty much every way. (I have tried to make my movie as feminist as possible, and at least it stands up to The Rule, but I do feel a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness…)

Nicola and I first went to Wiscon in 1995, when she was a Guest of Honor. I’ve been once on my own in the late 90’s. And we’ve attended the last two years.

I see a lot of difference between the 90’s and the now. The convention is bigger (attendance cap of 1,000 as opposed to the olden days of about 750 or so, I think). In other words, about a third bigger, and it’s interesting how much bigger that feels to me, and how much less better. I think it’s great for all the folks who otherwise wouldn’t get in the door, but it’s starting to feel a little too big to me. Fragmented. Like every other large con, it’s become many different cons in the same building, and the divisions between people are more apparent. There are the people (like us) who can afford to stay on the Governor’s Level of the hotel, which includes a free bar for GL guests only, and where those on the GL congregate constantly, thereby becoming much less available to the people who can’t afford much beyond sharing a room and eating in the Con Suite every night. There are the more-established writers (like us) who hang with other writers whom they haven’t seen in ages, or with editors and critics, and thereby become much less available to the readers at the heart of the convention. There are the less-established writers who attend in groups and support each other by organizing midnight readings of their work. There are the East Coast writers who organize private parties, and the West Coast writers who organize private dinners. There are the academics. And so on.

Wiscon is based on feminist and humanist principles in every way that the organizers can imagine, and they do an excellent job. Wiscon has flat-out the best access policies and practices of any event of any kind I have ever attended. And they work hard to give everyone a chance to participate in programming. I think this is great — and it’s exactly the kind of event I find less personally welcoming, because there are too many choices. I’d rather have a choice of two panels with hundreds of people in the room for each, than fifteen panels with fifteen audience members. More fragmentation.

And I hate the fact that readings are now group events where everyone gets maybe 10 minutes to read from their work. Two years ago, Nicola and I shared an hour-plus reading slot with the fabulous Pat Cadigan, which was Very Cool. Last year, Nicola and I shared a 50-minute reading slot with Nisi Shawl and Eleanor Arnason, both terrific women whom I was honored to be with — but it was rushed, stressy, and seemed like a whiplash experience for the audience. Again, this is designed to make opportunities available to everyone who wants to read, and I think that is All Good for the principles of the con — but it’s not good for me. I’m a fucking snob, I guess, but I remember reading And Salome Danced — the entire story — to a packed room of attentive people, with time left over for an interesting and extended conversation. And I think that’s better — for writers and readers — than getting 10 minutes in an assembly-line situation just because there are jillions of people who want to read at Wiscon.

Change is. I’m fine with that. I’m not disrespecting Wiscon — it’s one of the most exciting, enduring and important events in speculative fiction. But I think that Wiscon and I may be changing in different directions. It doesn’t mean I’ll never go again — I especially love the chance to meet readers and reconnect with writers, and some of the best people in the world are there. It’s a rocking convention, smart and fun and full of opportunity.

But it doesn’t feel like my place anymore. And maybe it never really was. I’ve always been mostly an outsider, and it’s easy for me to feel that a space is too small. That’s my problem, not theirs. But I do find it ironic that this space feels too small for me because it is trying so hard to be big enough for everyone.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

A story of Dublin

20 April 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ve just posted my favorite story of Dublin over at the @U2 blog. Enjoy.

For those who don’t know, I’m a staff writer for @U2, the world’s #1 independent U2 website. I’m wicked proud of the work done by the entire @U2 staff, and I count my personal essays, articles, interviews and reviews for the site as some of my best work. If you’re interested, you can find links at the bottom of my essays page, or search the @U2 site.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, writing

Let’s do the time warp again

20 April 2008 | 3 Comments

Oh lord, I have become too old for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We watched it on DVD recently and didn’t finish it. That might be because I was bone-tired from a screenplay deadline (ten or so in a row of those 4 AM days…). But I think it was because it’s a 33-year-old movie, and it shows. And I just couldn’t get past that.

But between September 1978 and May 1979, I bet I went to midnight showings of Rocky Horror at the Biograph in Chicago at least 20 times. Maybe more…

I was a freshman at Northwestern University, a thoroughly miserable experience made bearable by the friendship of Sudi Khosropur. She was awesome — and we bonded over trash TV, Rocky Horror and a mutual crush on Tim Curry. Very often on a Friday or Saturday night, we’d get dressed up in full Rocky Horror audience participation splendor and take the El down to the Biograph. I wore a black leotard, an unbuttoned white man’s shirt, a black bow tie, fishnet stockings, boots, and a black fedora. Sudi wore fishnets and heels and short skirts. We’d join the line of hundreds of people waiting to get into the midnight show. People had beer and boom boxes playing the music. We did the Time Warp out on Lincoln Ave. more times than I can remember.

And then we were in, and seated, and the crowd would buzz with adrenaline like a jet engine… and then the movie would start. And we’d yell the lines, throw the rice, hold up the newspapers, squirt the water, throw the confetti and the cards… we did it all. It was fantastic.

Tim Curry had a career as a rock musician, along with his stage and screen career, and I had all three of his albums. So you may imagine our excitement when he came through Chicago on tour. He played at the Park West. You had to be 21 to get in. We were 18. But we were determined…and not just to see the show. Sudi, who had way more guts than I did, called the venue the afternoon of the show, when we knew the band would be loading in and sound-checking, and asked for Tim Curry. She got his manager, and she told the manager that we wanted to take Tim Curry to dinner after the show.

The manager said no very nicely, as I recall.

So off we went to the show. This was in the days before the obsessive checking of ID’s, so you just had to have enough brass to act as if. I looked about 16, but I was good at appearing absolutely comfortable — and Sudi looked 21 and was very good at distracting the guy at the door while I breezed through.

We had a great time at the show, and we got to meet Tim Curry. I was appalled to see a whole contingent of people at the meet-and-greet who were dressed up in RH gear… it seemed so tacky. Sudi told Tim Curry how much she had enjoyed his performance as William Shakespeare. She got the best smile of the night.

And then the two of us went out for a 2 AM breakfast and splurged on steak and eggs. That was fantastic too.

I left Northwestern at the end of that year. And Rocky Horror was never the same for me again.

Sudi, if you’re out there, never mind about the last time we saw each other when you probably thought I was too fucking weird for words. I would love to hear from you.

Kelley and Sudi, 1979

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

The weather is wrong

18 April 2008 | Leave a Comment

It is snowing outside my house.

Snowing.

This is deeply, deeply wrong, and the only reasonable response is to drink and eat paté by the fire.

snow in april

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

Dance to the music

6 April 2008 | 1 Comment

So I did my dancing thing last night and had a blast.

The club was packed, the dance floor was heaving, and people were having a great time. DJ Stacey played Frankie Goes To Hollywood just for me. In my two sets, I got everything from “We Are Family” to “Sexyback.”

My mother was there. With her video camera and her tiger t-shirt. She got an unexpected treat when one of the other dancers dropped into her lap and started to wiggle… It was wonderful to see her smile and laugh and move to the music. She remarked on how much she loved seeing an entire room full of women who all looked so happy — and for me, the gift is that she was one of them.

And Nicola was there, which made it all the more special. She looked gorgeous, she told me I was fantastic, and she didn’t blink when other women stuffed dollar bills down my bra. (Is she a keeper, or what?) I feel very lucky indeed (no pun intended) to have such unconditional, confident love.

And good friends came to cheer me on. Thank you, thank you to Sue, Vicki, Alsia, Elbereth, Kate, Liz, and Luey for being there. Thanks for dancing (you all looked beautiful!). And thank you especially for the goodwill, and for letting me share with you some of the particular joy that dancing is for me.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

Story is real

3 April 2008 | 6 Comments

True confession time: although I’m often billed as a science fiction writer, there’s actually very little science that engages me beyond either the practical (Does it make my life better? Or If it’s broken, how do I fix it?) or the aesthetic (Meteor showers are pretty!). I have never been fascinated by science for its own sake. It is human experience that interests me, and it’s true that much of human experience is grounded in, or informed by, science — in particular, how we respond to our own biology (gender, sex, illness, dying, fear, memory…). Each practically-identical biological human mechanism — and in spite of our individual genome patterns we are 99.9% the same — is also a particular person with our own thoughts and feelings and responses, our own unique set of experiences. We are essentially the same, and a huge part of that sameness is that we hunger to be different and are yet so often terrified by difference in others. We are souls who drive, and driven by, the most complex wetware that we know of in the universe… now that’s interesting.

And so in spite of my general disregard for scientific discoveries, I am in love with the idea of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons fire in our brains when we perform an action or when we see someone else performing an action. Mirror neurons help us assign meaning to other people’s behavior. I see you and I know what your actions mean, because in my brain there is no neuronal difference between you doing a thing and me doing it myself. It feels the same to my brain.

I know what it means when you look at me with rage or hurt or bedroom eyes — because the same neurons fire when I look that way at you. I know that look. I see you pick up a baseball bat and shift your grip, heft it in that certain way, and I know the only thing you’re planning to knock out of the park is me. I know when a baseball bat turns into a weapon — and there, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because even reading a description of an action, if it is accurately and specific, fires your mirror neurons.

There are lots of theories now that mirror neurons are the basis of empathy, and that they are instrumental in acquiring language. But what they mean to me as a storyteller is that I really can show you what’s happening instead of having to always tell you.

And now I know why story works. I know why words on a page or pixels on a screen can make me feel such deep joy or sadness, can make me tremble with fear or wonder. Because when story in any medium is done right, it really does come to life inside us. For an instant, we live the story. It’s real.

And I know something else: I know why I am a writer. I know why I took an acting degree that I was so clearly at the time unsuited for. I know why I dance. I know why I sing along with U2 at the concerts.

Because story is real. When I write, when I act, when I sing in the car, when I am brave or stubborn enough to keep at it until I have been as specific and honest as I can be in the creation — when I get the story right — it fires all those fabulous mirror neurons, and those moments of story are just as real to my brain as if I were actually doing them. I am watching my life drop down an elevator shaft; I am a rock star; I am fighting for my life or struggling with love or having amazing sex or holding my breath at the immensity of some moment of everyday life in which, suddenly, everything has changed…

In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff refers to “emotions this raw.” I’ve always liked (and been grateful for) that, because it comes closest to my own ideas about what I love in story, and what I strive for in the stories I tell. I don’t give a fuck about Big Ideas. I am all about Big Feelings. Not necessarily big experiences — although I like those too — but the way that the large and the small of life can make us feel, and what we do because of or in spite of those feelings.

I’ve said that I write because I want to make people feel those things. To make difference accessible to readers — behavior and feelings that they might not otherwise choose in their own lives. To open a mainline into someone else’s personal truth. But that’s not it, or at least not the most important part. I do it because I want (or need) to feel those things myself, in ways that don’t necessarily involve actual experience. I won’t ever be a rock star, but I want the physical and psychic blast of 20,000 people singing my song to me. I don’t want people I love to die, but I respond so violently to grief in stories that it’s like I am practicing or preparing as best I can for the day when it will grab me by the throat and shake me. I can’t be an astronaut (that science thing…) but I want to see my world suspended in a deep dark universe of wonders.

And I can. We all can. We’re not limited by our own lives, by our own choices. We can live other lives and other choices too, and that’s not just an intellectual concept. It’s real. It’s as real to your brain as your last banana muffin on a warm Sunday morning, or how your sunglasses make you feel hip even when you’re just pumping gas, or the smile yesterday from that beautiful stranger on the train, or the heartstopping second before you say I love you to someone new.

And there. I just told you four little stories, and perhaps one of them was real to you. Perhaps for a second you were there. Really there.

Story is real. It makes me want to shout or dance or cry or go hug someone from the sheer joy of being human. Every story you love, whether it’s Frodo and Sam, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, or Buffy, whether it’s Shakespeare or Calvin and Hobbes, is alive and real in the amazing space inside you.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, writing

Felicia, those are her whites in the dryer…

17 March 2008 | 9 Comments

Some days you can just let the rudeness go by.

Other days…

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

Torture is wrong

9 March 2008 | 2 Comments

Yesterday, President Shrub vetoed an intelligence authorization bill because it prevents the CIA from torturing people. The bill would have banned waterboarding, stripping people naked, forcing them to engage in or simulate sexual acts, subjecting them to extreme temperatures, and making them stand up until they fall down. It would still be okay to ~~hurt~~ interrogate them in lots of other ways.

I’m not a Christian, and I have a hard time turning the other cheek — and I still know that torture is wrong. GWB, on the other hand, does profess to be Christian, and I have to wonder why he thinks that waterboarding is what Jesus would do. And even if he thinks it’s morally okay, I can’t believe he’s stupid enough to think it really makes enough of a difference to the overall goal of national security to justify the damage it does to us as a people. Torture does not consistently produce reliable information and it does not build the long-term goodwill of the world community towards America. All it reliably does is reduce human beings to bags of suffering, or the monsters that cause it.

I am ashamed of the president of my country, and all the politicians who have participated in and supported the misery he has inflicted on people here and abroad.

I do not often engage in political discussion, even with members of my own family, because usually people just stake out positions and pound on each other. Everyone wants to be “right.” Everyone wants to win. Kind of like elections. Kind of like war. People want to win, hey, I get it. But we don’t have the right to win at any cost. We don’t. We have, or used to have, the right to speak freely, to move freely, to be in general treated equally under the law, to dissent without fear. We’ve given up a lot of that to our leaders’ need to win.

And for what? Does this feel like winning to you?

Edited to add: At the risk of seeming to diminish my own outrage, here’s a funny take on the absolute seriousness of where we are right now.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

DST sucks

9 March 2008 | Leave a Comment

I hate Daylight Savings Time with a savage passion. Hate hate hate hate hate it. It is deeply stupid, hard on my body and my psyche, and not even fuel efficient, people! Stop messing with my time!

Grump.

Edited to add: I just read this post which ends with this:

I just realized it’s time to turn the clocks ahead. Thank God — I actually thought I blacked out for an hour. — Erik Davis, with whom I sympathize completely.

You see? DST is baaaaad…..

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life

What’s your story?

7 March 2008 | 2 Comments

Have you heard of six-word memoirs? They’re in full swing over at SMITH Magazine (which is, by the way, a pretty cool site in general — wow, the human impulse to tell stories…). You can find out more in this New Yorker article, a brilliant marriage of information and demonstration.

I keep trying to come up with my own six-word memoir, but… can’t tell me in six words.

However, today I stumbled across this, and thought, But here I am in 20…