Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Life

  • Playing Jazz, part two

    Smoke pirourettes around the shrinking shapes of idle speculation.  Ritual anticipation settled for the inevitable triage of experience and achievement, dues and wisdom, invitation and exclusion.

    Sax throated obligatory admiration, mood recycled in reserve, and the shadows pressed faceless to the glass, watching the shark-moves of truth encircled by motifs, melodies, modes, and measures.

     

    Do you even know, they asked, what it is you want to say, never mind how to say it?  Do you have a mouth to match your measures?  Chords for your chords, a tongue for your tune?  The heart for your beat?

    The Kid folded his wings, shuffled his stand, arranged his perspective, and raised his sites. The air gathered close, keeping clear through the collection of relevant minutiae, ready to move when the words finally came.

    “I seen sad corners, he said, empty streets full of ghosts and ghosts full of need. Houses without homes and homes with no walls, towns without pity, summer in the city, and cities with no names.  I’ve heard all the ways a dime can be rolled, a quarter flipped, and a promise sold for the safety of a brick.  I’ve sat at bars and listened to the pointless frustration of voices with no song, the outlines of dreams, substanceless schemes, and aimless desire with no match to ignite, through nights with no stars only lights in the sky, and I came through the mess with a shape and a name and a point to be made.

    So here I am and I’m asking the chance.

    Let me sit in ‘cause I want to play jazz…”

  • Playing Jazz, part one

    I hung out in a small spot of night on the fringes of No Smoking and Adults Only.

    Thick air, eighty proof attitude, and shadows that kept your seat for you during intermissions.

    The stage belonged to a round of changing keys, facile fingers, and moods found in forgotten closets, abandoned buildings, after hour garages, and overlooked streets, brought in by saxes, axes, horns, and skins wearing misery wrapped up in puzzles, suits that only glowed in moonlight, who spoke in tongues unheard by day.

    One night they were handing out faces to the smiling, voiceless crowd, laying foundations for towers that never rose, sending messages in forgotten codes, when the Kid walked in, case under his arm, hat cocked, eyes clear behind opaque wisdom no one sought.  He stood at the foot of the stage, straight, respectful, patient, till the set was done and they noticed him.

    They asked him who he was and what did he want.  He set his case down on the edge of the platform and he said:

    “Who I am is a work in progress, a collection of possible outcomes, an arrow looking for a bow, a bullet for a barrel, a truth for a mouth to put it in.  What I do is whatever it takes to make all this congeal into reason and purpose.”

    We heard echoes.  So what, they asked then, do you think you’re gonna do here?

    And he answered: “I want to play jazz.”

  • Down. To It and Otherwise

    But not depressed. Just tired. Sort of a twilight feeling.

    I’m working on the last chapter of The Spanish Bride, an action/historical mystery/thriller/etc set in the uncrowded days of 1780s St. Louis.  This is about the fifth draft now and I think it’s ready.  Just one more chapter.

     

     

    This is always a dangerous point in the process.  I see that finish line and I get anxious, I want it to be done, but the last stretch of a novel is where all the promise is supposed to pay off, so you shouldn’t hurry it up.

    It will be fine.  After I finish this draft, Donna gets to read it and then I must go back and fix the things she indicates need fixing.

    But I am tired.  I’ve been constantly redrafting a novel—this one and Orleans—since March.  I need a break.  A couple weeks to catch up on some other things.  I have a guest blog to write, things around the house to tend to, more photographs to finish, friends to catch up with.

    The image above was taken the night of the Fourth of July.  A pall of smoke filled the neighborhood as if some battle had been fought (which ritualistically it had).  I’ve manipulated it a bit to make it a little stranger.

    I’m going to go feed the dog and watch some tv now.

  • Debunking Du Jour

  • Door 4171

  • Playing Around

    I’m trying another new theme.  One of these days I may build something all my own…or, at least, watch while someone who knows how to do it builds something for me at my direction.

    But I like this one, I think I’ll leave it alone for a while.  It’s more in tune with what I like to think myself all about—broad vistas, cosmic scenery, special effects.  Well, maybe not so much special effects, but, you know, skiffy.

    From what I have seen so far, I’m very much liking the new WordPress.  Of course, that means I’m distracted.  This is not the sort of writing I need to be doing just now.

    I particularly like this feature, inserting images and adding text alongside.  This may be old hat to a lot of seasoned bloggers, but till now I haven’t been able to do it.  It’s more the sort of thing I’ve been wanting to do.  I have a lot of images that will serve fine as accent, but I don’t want them as the main attraction.

    It’s Saturday and once again Donna is at work.  Audit season, we don’t see much of one another.  For the time being, that’s okay since I do have a book to finish.  Once I get done telling you all this, I have to go back to the 1780s and get with it.

    I finished the first rewrite for my new agent (in case I haven’t mentioned that previously).  The alternate history is out the door.  My door.  She still has to pass on it and tell me it’s brilliant.  Meanwhile, I’m working on the historical mystery, and this week I ran into the chapter from hell.  One of those miserable pieces of writing that has a good deal of parts I don’t want to love, but embedded in a marsh of motionless gunk.  I finally figured out how to fix it, but it requires throwing a lot of what’s already there in the can, and I am loathe to do it.  As this is Saturday and my love is nowhere near (hell, even the dog is out of the house, at the groomer’s), I have no excuse.

    So enough.  I have a couple of more studied posts I want to do later—one in particular on the new Yes album, which after three weeks I still quite like—and maybe some more political kvetching, of which there is ample to kvetch about.  But I must end this playing around now and do some serious work.  Really.  Right now.  I’m going.

    Later.

  • Upgrading, Updating, Up-Lating

    It’s going to take a long time to fix all the things that need fixing on this new blog.  Mainly it’s the images.  When I loaded the new theme, the auto-sizing that had apparently been in force (for WordPress 2.0) no longer worked for this version, which is 3.2.1.  So I have to go back through and manually resize all the old images.  Over the last few years, I’ve put up a hell of a lot of them.

    But this version has some nice features for images.  It’s tempting to just move forward and not bother correcting all those old posts.  Who reads them anyhow?

    Someone will.  Someday.

    So, meanwhile, while I gradually make fixes, I will continue to put up new images, only without the need for…well, corrective surgery.

    Hence:

    That’s Gabe, our host in our recent long weekend away.  (I know, John thinks he’s the master of his abode, but really everyone knows better.)

     

     

     

    Along the way we stopped off for some necessary supplies at one of the roadside establishments.  Only the best for such a festive trip.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Even without fine dining, it was the more sylvan, pastoral elements of the visit that were the chief attraction.  Rest…man, both of us needed rest.

     

     

     

    Of course, while we were there we also watched almost all of A Game of Thrones.  That was restful.  Sure it was.  But needful.

    As you can tell, I’ve been laying out words just to have an excuse to play with some of the image options, which I really like.  I’ll get better at this.  Really.

    Later.

  • An Evening With Ursula K. Le Guin

    An Evening With Ursula K. Le Guin

    Outside the air rippled in the late afternoon heat. Midwest summers get this bad, they do, but we’ve had 95 degree-plus weather now for going on three weeks. Stepping into the air conditioned comfort of the Daniel Boone Regional Library was almost sleep-inducing.

    But there was business to attend. Tonight, the 26th of July, was to be a signal event. My interview with Ursula K. Le Guin.

    Very SFnal, this. A double-sided flatscreen monitor with a ray-gun style camera on top facing the almost throne-like chair in which I would sit for the evening. On a wall screen to my right Ursula’s image would be projected. I had them switch off the monitor facing me that showed me. Distracting. Besides, it seemed backwards. A blank screen was best.

    About fifteen minutes before time, she appeared. We chatted while sound levels were adjusted and framing was set. There was an audience in my room, she had a couple of technicians, a microphone, and a glass of water.

    At seven on the dot, an announcement was made that the discussion would be between Ms. Le Guin and myself, without questions from the audience, then, after an awkward moment (we hadn’t actually discussed a signal to begin) I read off the introduction and started talking.

    It’s rather hazy now. I admit I was a bit nervous. There are people on the planet who intimidate me, who I hold in awe. Not, often, who one might expect. Ursula K. Le Guin. The name has resonance for me all the way back to…well, I remember when the Ace Specials of The Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness were brand new. And the book we were discussing tonight, The Dispossessed, is simply one of the finest novels of the 20th Century.

    But I remember her smiling and, a couple of times, laughing, and we talked with only a minor pause or two for nearly 55 minutes, and for a space it felt very comfortable, even if we were discussing literary theory and anthropology and so forth. I had planned it out fairly well and did not quite make it to the full hour, but no one seemed disappointed, and I have a warm memory now that I will cherish.

    Sometimes this writing life is really very fine.

  • Treason To The Future

    No, I’m not going off on some political rant.  At least, I don’t think so.  (I was accused recently of using my blog as a soapbox…well, I thought, isn’t that what it’s for?  The question is, how good is the soap.)

    At our recent Dante session I was reminded of a quote I’d forgotten all about.  One of the best philosophical thinkers of the 20th Century was Alfred North Whitehead.  I recommend him.  Even where I disagree with him, there is plenty to stir the imagination and encourage new thought.  One of his better books, quite short and to the point, is The Function of Reason.  In the chapter three or thereabouts, we find this little gem.

    “To set limits on speculation is treason to the future.”

    By that, I read him as meaning that we must be free to speculate about where we’re going, what we hope to do, how we’ll make it happen.  All ideas are welcome, even bad ones, as long as we’re only speculating.  But more than that, it’s kind of one of those notions that ought to go without saying—all thinking is speculation, even problem solving, and to arbitrarily set limits, to say “You can’t talk about that,” is to shut the door on possible solutions to problems we may not even know we have yet.

    I’m using that quote in a talk I’m doing tomorrow night in Columbia on What Is Science Fiction.  I think it answers a century-worth of ridicule and criticism toward the form that ought not to have come up to begin with, but which was predictable.  People are uncomfortable with change.  (Here’s a little bit of politics coming up.  Sorry about that.)  When you look at the current wrestling match going in the country—indeed, around the globe—there seems to be one basic demand from people with regards to the problems we face:  fix it but don’t change anything.

    Science fiction is all about change.

    There are two ways to look at change—as an inevitable force impossible to avoid or as a fate we seek to hide from.  Change is coming regardless, so hiding does no good, but it does do harm, because in hiding we surrender any say we might have in how change happens.  And when you do that, then whatever happens will probably be something you won’t like.

    Preparing this talk reminded me why I’ve always liked science fiction in the first place.  I’ve never been afraid of the future.  The future, to me, has always been a place where the best could happen.  It might not, things might go sour, but it’s not inevitable, and even if we do go through a bad time, the future is still there, with potential.  When I was a kid, Today was always pretty much dull.  Tomorrow—and by that I mean TOMORROW! —held all the really cool stuff I knew would make life better.  By and large, I haven’t been terribly disappointed.  In spite of things transpiring that rather annoy, irritate, and anger me, there is much more that I find generally wonderful.

    The trick is to be open to that part instead of stockpiling a list of complaints.

  • Pretty Good July So Far

    If anyone is interested, July has been a good month to this point.  I’m working on the line edits of a novel, which I hope to have finished by August, and I’m feeling good about the results.  The new agent is working me and to good effect.

    This past week has been filled with good stuff.  We had company for two days, Donna’s sister and her husband, up from Florida, and we ate at an excellent restaurant (The Shaved Duck, should anyone be interested, which I unreservedly recommend) and had good conversation.  Friday night Donna and I went to see Tim Minchin at the Sheldon and that was very fun (with the added pleasure of viewing, in the Sheldon Gallery, a showing of photographs by Larry Fink).  Last night I played at the coffeehouse, something I do purely for fun once a month, and we tried something brand new that came off fine.

    This morning we did our Dante group—we’re on Canto X of Paradiso—and that was pleasurably dense.  This after a morning session at the gym where I learned to my pleasant surprise that I’d been pressing (legs) above my all-time heaviest because I underestimated the base weight of the platten.  (Leg press at 810 lbs, if anyone is interested.)

    This coming week I’ll be doing a talk at the Daniel Boone Regional Library about the nature of science fiction and spending the rest of the weekend in pleasant company.  We may be watching Game of Thrones, which I haven’t seen yet, not having cable.

    Then the following week I’ll be conducting a teleconferenced interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, which I am anxiously enthusiastic about.

    I cannot complain about July.  It has been a good month, even if the heat is oppressive (close to hundred today, maybe tomorrow).  Oh, and I received the new YES album,  Fly From Here, which I’ve now listened to about four times.  I think it is fine and I will be writing a long piece about it here, but I have to think about it a little more.

    There’s other stuff I know I’m overlooking, but I’ll save it for the end of the month.  Instead of complaining, as I often do here, I just wanted to say things are pretty good at the moment.  Hope things are well with you, whoever you are and wherever you may be.