Practical Demonkeeping

Book written by Christopher Moore

Stephen King has Maine and H.P. Lovecraft had Arkham. There’s Bloom County and Port Charles, too. Many artists create their own little worlds. Some simply work within an overarching theme, although critics are always happy to impose a plan on an artist. “Clearly, so-and-so always returned to eggshells as a metaphor for the fragility of human endeavor, which is why the chicken can be seen hovering in the background of every painting.” No form of art can escape interpretation.

But storytellers are the ones who create literal worlds. William Faulkner and Kage Baker seem practically embedded in their universes. Others are perfectly happy poking around the edges. Mysteries have a long reputation for enumerating the lives of their protagonists. More often than not, the lead characters never age, though some have made dramatically leaps in time as their authors have suddenly seen retirement or death approach.

It can be difficult not to be enamored of the very idea of “Easter Eggs” in DVD’s, where surprises are hidden behind items that are not expected to be selected. Artists have been guilty of the same temptation. After all, that’s not too far afield from the symbolism built into medieval paintings. “Ooo, did you see that halo on the third guy from the right? Doesn’t that mean it was really Paul and not just some random dude?” We love being in on it, whatever it might be.

Moreover, as a writer, you spend a lot of time with the people and places that you create. It’s nice to revisit them. They were good to you. Why not be good to them? Christopher Moore has a wonderful locale, called Pine Grove. He has wonderful characters that occasionally reappear, most notably in his holiday story. Other books follow other paths, but he really is a master of the continuing narrative.

All of this

leads to what I really wanted to discuss- audience reaction. Once word gets out that someone starts dropping in the winks, naturally, readers start looking for the internal references within the artist’s work. In some ways, this almost instantly downgrades the estimation of the work by critics, especially those who never read Faulkner or James Joyce.

But then the audience starts demanding the continued life. Moore has not explicitly revisited Pine Grove in a long time. As a fan, I miss it. I was happy when he continued the story of his funky vampires, so much so that the last one sits on my waiting-for-the-necessary-moment mental bookshelf. Even worse, I was dismayed when he began exploring Shakespeare (the book was brilliant). That was daft of me, but there you have it. I’m part of the audience and I have started making demands of the artist.

I don’t know anything about the sales figures for Moore or King. Mystery writers tend to have an audience for their character more than anything else. I suspect that we are more forgiving when the stories are about a place and capture a mood, but it can still be hard out here in the audience.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 136 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Identified, Detained & Inspected

Song written by Zander Schloss and performed by Low & Sweet Orchestra

What are the odds I was born where and when I was? I got a remarkably good deal pretty much any way that you look at it. The alternatives run the gamut from unceasingly difficult to short-lived (as I likely would have died near to birth under most circumstances). The tiniest of possibilities suggest a better life than the one that I have enjoyed. My only point is that the odds seem stacked against good stuff happening, but it does.

The fact that musicians get together and give birth to bands that don’t suck is not much more unlikely. Just watching Let It Be or Some Kind of Monster or I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, it becomes apparent that collaboration moves quickly into the danger zone. These movies all document groups that have a shared history. Only one of them found a way forward with all parties involved.

The Low & Sweet Orchestra was a shooting star that existed for a moment in time. I no longer recall the circumstances that led us to see them in a small nightclub in Pittsburgh. I knew next to nothing about them other than some members came from other bands that I liked. One of them was a famous actor. (Or maybe he would become famous after that.)

They played almost all original music, which can be deadly for a new band, but song after song was fantastic. Stunned, I bought the cassette that they had on sale. I should have bought fifty so that I could give them out as presents.

In my ignorance of the ways of the world,

I expected them to be on the radio the next day and the next. They were on my stereo all the time, so I played the tape to bits. I assumed the rest of the world was hearing them just as much. I waited a reasonable period of time for their next release. Life happened… la-la-la…

Finally, the internet arrived with a search engine. As it turned out, information was not readily available, though that seems to have changed. They don’t appear in Wikipedia, but I gather that they dissolved sometime after that first tour. No one made a movie about it.

I don’t know why some bands last any more than I know why some marriages end in divorce. Both are small miracles while they exist, though it is an otherwise false analogy. The act of creation by groups of artists is never a lifetime commitment. We don’t expect the performers in a stage show to necessarily make up the entire cast and crew of the next show. Some return while others leave. Maybe it is just the number of people involved.

The weirdest aspect may be the way the audience, as outside observers, want there to be a story. We require that narrative of the formation and dissolution. Searching the web, I just wanted to know what had happened. I imagined all sorts of possibilities. The lurid truth was that the band simply petered out.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 137 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Location of the first flight by the Wright Brothers

Growing up in Ohio, you hear about the Wright Brothers just a wee bit. They were part of the triumvirate of American genius responsible for the modern world: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Wilbur & Orville. Computers and all their related ephemera remained a distant dream. Naturally, perspective accrued and all of those great engineers shrank to human size.

I’ve been thinking about scale a lot lately. The minimal view prevents analysis while an overarching take removes reasonable judgement. Given a short enough view, fascism is individual missteps with occasional moments of horror while the extreme long view makes it appear as an unfortunate blip. Without context, Jesus’ disciple Matthew and the writer Cervantes were collaborators with the ruling powers if you observe their early years while their overall lives allow a completely different take.

Artists are not immune. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe would probably have some thoughts. But then there is also the scale of influence, which we measure over time. As an artist, you can’t look past the work currently in progress (that includes cooking in the back of your mind), which creates an interesting paradox. Art for public consumption is one of humanity’s most visible attempts to influence the world- often simply “look over here” or “empathize with me.”

Invention is the most extreme example of the engineer as artist, perhaps the audience is as much an inanimate object as other people. Certain inventors have had an outsized influence on the world- Thomas Edison and Leonardo da Vinci being prime examples of scale beyond all reason- the Shakespeare’s of their spheres. I do not intend to diminish their accomplishments. Our current lens that we use to view history favors what they did above all others.

And then there is the personal view.

The way I look at Charles Dickens or Tintoretto is not necessarily shared by the mass of humanity. Just because I consider them important or irrelevant today does not mean that I will feel the same way ten years hence. My scale changes as I gain more years and experiences.

A while back, we visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We visited beaches, light houses and nature preserves. Late in the season as it was, the weather encouraged non-seashore activity. Looking for more to do, we headed for the Wright Brothers National Memorial. When you are inundated as a youth with something, it just isn’t a priority after that.

I was good through the opening lecture by the Park Ranger. I was more than a little impressed by the airplane on display, though I had seen something similar at the Smithsonian. Then the Ranger invited us to walk the dunes where the Wrights first flew. Ground markers showed the paths of each flight.

In books, the distances sound insignificant. The development leaps made by the Wrights after their initial attempts are not mentioned enough. It’s all about scale. Walk those yards at Kill Devil Hills. On a personal level, my point of view changed based on the simple expedient of exposing myself to the original source.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 138 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.