Powerhouse Knocks Your Socks Off

Recently we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of John Glenn's flight into orbit around the Earth, a feat that still fills me with pride. Though I also celebrate the fact that Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova were the first man and woman in space, that flight was one of the great American achievements of the 20^th century. But another great achievement celebrated its 75^th Anniversary on that same date: the debut of Raymond Scott's best known composition, “Powerhouse.”

If you've ever seen an automated assembly line in action, you can't help but imagine “Powerhouse” playing in the background – it is truly the music of the Jazz/Machine Age. In a way, that technology is as Victorian as anything you'd find in a Steampunk novel, with its gears and perfectly calibrated interlocking parts. I can remember one Warner Brothers cartoon where a couple of ultra-polite chipmunks accidentally get transported to a canning plant inside a load of vegetables. Carl Stalling's arrangement of “Powerhouse” plays while these little guys try to avoid the machinery that processes and cans the veggies. When you listen to that rendition, you don't just hear the machines working – time itself seems to be marching off to some dazzling, relentless future.

Stalling's renditions of Raymond Scott's work are beefier than Scott's, since they're arranged for full orchestra. And the Warner Brothers orchestra recorded on one of the best sound stages in Hollywood. I grew up watching those cartoons (on the Wallace & Ladmo Show), and I ended up getting thoroughly spoiled by the high-quality animation and scoring. The wretched, canned music that accompanied cartoons in later eras is like fingernails on a blackboard to my ears. Fortunately, I can still get CDs with the good stuff on them.

My favorite Raymond Scott album is Reckless Nights And Turkish Twilights. If you look on Amazon, you'll notice that most of the reviews for it are 5 stars. It's a perfect collection. Some would say the sound quality isn't up to par with the great recordings of the 20th century, and that's true. But this album made me realize something about the music of Raymond Scott – it was actually written with that poor sound reproduction in mind. When this music is recorded in high fidelity, it's almost too much (though Carl Stalling certainly did a magnificent job with his arrangements.) I think the lower fidelity of this recording protects the listener from the full "manic" impact, giving you a chance to enjoy the performances and the composition.

And if you'd like the Warner Brothers/Stalling take on the subject, try The Carl Stalling Project. It will make you long for the days of those old big-band orchestras. If only there were nightclubs that still offered dinner, a big orchestra, dance performances by the likes of Fred & Ginger . . .

So I salute John Glenn on the anniversary of his flight into orbit. And I salute Raymond Scott for sending me into orbit. Here's to you, fellas.

The "Baby State" Turns 1.7 Billion

The state of Arizona is now officially 100 years old, semi-officially 1.7 billion years old (recent findings at the bottom of the Grand Canyon suggest that at least a few chunks of it are far older). There are many places in Arizona where that birthday can be happily celebrated, and one of them is the book store where I work.

The Heard Museum Book Store is located in the courtyard of the museum, right next to the Coffee Cantina, at Encanto and Central Avenue. It is one of the last surviving book stores in Central Phoenix. We specialize in books about the Southwest, Native Americans, and Arizona travel and history. Our courtyard is full of tables that sit under Ironwood trees, right next to a splashing fountain, where people who have just purchased books can sit, sip coffee, and enjoy the serenity. And you don't have to pay the entrance fee to shop there. It's the perfect place to explore the subject of Arizona's Centennial. In honor of that birthday, several books have been published about our history, and we carry them all.

My favorite is Jim Turner's Arizona: A Celebration of the Grand Canyon State. Whether you're an Arizona resident, a sometime visitor, or a fan of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS magazine, this is a book you must have in your collection. Though a lot of people in the world know a little bit about Arizona, Jim Turner knows a lot more, and what he knows is fascinating. He's put a wealth of interesting details into one handy book.

Arizona is the last of the territories in the contiguous United States to become a state. Our history is as unique as our geology – a point not lost on Turner, because he begins the first chapter with, “Eons ago, huge chunks of the Earth's crust called tectonic plates rammed into each other . . .” Beginning a book about Arizona's history with the tale of its geology is not a whimsical choice. We are what we are because of those tectonic plates – because of our latitude, our basin-and-range mountains, our volcanic history, and the inland seas that laid down the sedimentary rock that was eventually carved into the Grand Canyon by the Colorado River. That landscape of canyons, plateaus, mountains, valleys, and deserts is the setting for our “Wild West” history, peopled by Native Americans, cowboys, miners, adventurers, farmers, ranchers, soldiers, yahoos, scoundrels, scientists, and dreamers. Turner has stories to relate about all of them.

But don't get the idea this is a thick, dry tome of facts. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, maps, and illustrations. It is divided into chapters about each successive wave of populations, from the ancient ancestors of Native Americans to the post-war immigrants who drove here on route 66. The sections are accessible, more like magazine articles. You can peruse the text any way you like, from start to finish, or just by looking up the tidbits that interest you. Some may prefer to keep it on their coffee table, others will shelve it with their history or travel books.

I keep it where I can reach it easily. Like Arizona, this book is a treasure.

Heaven, Hell, And Other Devices

I've published a new ebook, titled Pale Lady, (cover art by Ernest Hogan) and this is the freebee coupon code for Smashwords: EG36Y. Just apply it when you're checking out, and it will reduce the price to $0.00.

Now that I've made the pitch, I have to make a confession. I can be very naïve when I decide what books and stories to write. Or maybe I should say I'm oblivious. I never consider how people may react, except to hope that they'll enjoy reading my work. In the case of Pale Lady, the novelette I just published on Smashwords and Amazon as an ebook, I didn't worry that people may assume the story is overtly religious until I was getting ready to publish it. Pretty funny when you consider that it's a story about a bunch of dead people whose souls have gone to Purgatory. Yep – I'm a pretty big dope.

I'm also an Agnostic. I have spiritual inclinations, but I don't want to belong to a church or a particular religion. I don't disagree with religious folk, and I don't disagree with atheists, either. I think they all make good points, but I'm happy to discover the mystery of the cosmos as I encounter it. Yet as a writer, I have to admit that Heaven and Hell make wonderful literary devices.

Especially Hell. I have a feeling that the less you say about Heaven, the more accurate you're going to be. And God seems too complex a being to really capture as a character. The Devil, on the other hand, is a fairly down-to-earth kinda guy. And the ruined grandeur of Hell is irresistible. Dante's Inferno is much more readable than Purgatorio and Paradiso. Or at least, I think it is, because I only made it halfway through Purgatorio and couldn't finish it. The same is true of Milton's Paradise Lost. His description of Pandaemonium kicks butt, and I was fascinated when Adam asked an Archangel why the universe is so big if Mankind is the only intelligent race in it, and the angel told him that he just doesn't need to know the answer to that (apparently the mysteries of the cosmos are revealed on a Need To Know basis). I suppose I should read Paradise Regained some day, but should and will are two very different things. Besides, sequels hardly ever live up to the original.

I don't write about the Devil in Pale Lady. But I think he's a great character. Subtle he must needs be, who could seduce angels, writes Milton, in Paradise Lost.

On the one hand, it's interesting to ponder the fallen Angel, Lucifer, a grand and beautiful super-being who felt confident enough to challenge the Almighty for supremacy (although I often wonder if he was just trying to show God that He was wrong rather than take over). High Fantasy writers use this sort of Devil to represent absolute evil, characters like Sauron from The Lord Of The Rings. Even in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug has some of the Devil in his personality – Tolkien warns that talking to a dragon too long can get you into trouble.

I think it's the Devil's human qualities that end up intriguing us the most. He took that fall because of his hubris, and that's a flaw we all share to one degree or another. The characters in Pale Lady also get into trouble because of their flaws. But you can say that about any book.

So it's probably my setting that could cause the most misunderstanding. The concept of Purgatory is that you're seeking redemption – you blew it, but maybe you can fix it. Some might see that as an attempt to proselytise. But religious instruction is not my bag – if I'm going to preach, it's more likely to be about conservation. I wrote about these characters in Purgatory for only one reason: I dreamed they were there.

Dreams aren't the inspiration for every single novel or story I write, but most of the time they're at least a factor. In the case of the dream that inspired Pale Lady, I wasn't remotely aware that I was dreaming – the place I found myself and the problems I had were quite daunting. Once I woke up, I knew I had to write the story.

I find the concept of being perched between two extremes irresistible, maybe because I think it's the human condition. We're edging toward Heaven or Hell in our lives – not so much spiritually, but in terms of how we're managing things, how happy we make ourselves and others, what we do in the world and what we suffer. I often feel compelled to write about characters who are trying to escape difficult situations and find some measure of freedom and self empowerment. My personal experience is that escape from metaphorical Hell or Purgatory takes a certain measure of self sacrifice and courage. I suspect that if those metaphysical places actually exist, that rule could only be magnified.

So that's my shtick. I'm not pushing Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or any other prophet, and I'm not one myself. I'm just a writer who has odd dreams. I hope you'll find them entertaining.

One last thing – it was my intention to publish Pale Lady as a free ebook and to use it to promote my other books. But because of the way I published the Amazon version, I'm not allowed to offer it for free on Amazon. Since I have a contract with them not to offer the book at a lower price on any other site, I have to charge $.99 as the list price. That's why I'm publishing this freebee coupon. Please use it and pass it on to anyone else who may be interested. You'll only be helping me if you do so.

Plus you're more likely to go to Heaven. (Kidding.)

Time Is The Fire: 11/22/63, by Stephen King

I don't usually write reviews for the books of super-popular writers. They don't need my help to get exposure, and my voice would probably get lost in the crowd. But this time around, I really feel compelled to write about Stephen King's new book, 11/22/63, not just because I liked the book so much, but also because I was so fascinated by the ideas in the book.

Like King, I lived through the early sixties. I was born in 1959, so I was only four years old when JFK was assassinated. But that event was so shattering, so enormous to ordinary American citizens, for most of my childhood it almost seemed like it had just happened. It seemed that way right into the mid seventies. Also, I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and though it's the biggest city in Arizona, in the sixties it was a big farming community, with cotton fields stretching as far as the eye could see. Culturally speaking, we were at least a decade behind the America you could see on your TV screen. So JFK still loomed big in our world. Yet the first thing that I read in 11/22/63 that really made me think that time travel might be a wonderful thing to do was not the idea that maybe someone could go back and prevent the assassination of JFK. It was the root beer.

I could taste that root beer he described in the book. And in Arizona, that experience had an extra dimension: the root beer was ice cold. If it's 107 degrees outside, and the humidity is less than 5%, drinking an ice cold root beer is a heavenly experience. When I was a kid, I was usually on foot when I went after the root beer, and sometimes I was even foolish enough to go barefoot, though the pavement could be incredibly hot. So the root beer hunt was a perilous adventure, one that offered truly fabulous rewards.

Nostalgia clouds our memories of the past. In most books about time travel, that isn't much of an issue – people go way back in time. So in this case, it's interesting that the character is only going back about 50 years. It's even more interesting that he isn't from that decade himself, he won't be born until the mid-seventies. Nostalgia isn't driving him at all, though he certainly develops a healthy dose of it once he's able to experience that root beer, as well as other delightful artifacts. Many other artifacts he encounters are not so delightful: racism, sexism, small town bigotry, and a resistance to putting really good books like Catcher In The Rye in school libraries, where they would actually do the most good. A man without a mission might just visit the past occasionally, stick to the root beer and the inexpensive golden-age comic books, avoid the jerks as much as possible.

But Jake (masquerading as “George”) does have a mission. In fact, he has more than one, and the JFK assassination isn't even the most important one. He has another rescue driving him, one that's a lot more personal, a friend whose life was changed by one terrible night when his father murdered the entire family. The friend was the sole survivor of that massacre, and was badly injured. Jake thinks first of him, and that's a good thing. If saving JFK was the only thing on his mind, that would be some serious hubris. Thinking you can stop the massacre of a family is also hubris, but most of us would try to do the same thing if we could. And like Jake, we would find out just how dangerous and daunting that is. First of all, guys who are capable of murdering their entire families possess a terrible vitality, and above-average cunning. Most people have no idea how to fight a dragon like that. So this is one of the many challenges facing Jake.

Another challenge is that time itself seems to resist his efforts. The deck is stacked against him. Can he defeat this law of nature? Yes and no, and that's the key to this book. I don't want to spoil it for you by describing what happens, you need to sit at the edge of that seat yourself. But this story really inspired me to reconsider the concept of time travel. Most scientists will tell you it's not possible. But people also said that about traveling faster than Mach 1, and we're way past that now. If you consider that anything is possible, then you have to consider that time travel is one of those possible things. And if it's possible, what are the consequences?

When someone tampers with history, does the timeline lurch into a new path? Or is damage done on some level we can't perceive until the dissonance is so severe, the weave of time/space starts to come unraveled in some places? Will time act to protect itself? King may not be the first to ponder those questions, but his approach is not the usual one taken by writers who like to write about time travel. Many writers like to puzzle through paradoxes and loops that pinch themselves off once someone has done something that would have changed history enough that their very trip through time has been cancelled out of the timeline.

Other writers like to employ the concept of the fan-shaped destiny, with multiple possibilities radiating from pivotal moments in history. I think most people would agree that the assassination of JFK is one of those pivotal moments. When I was a kid, I believed that if only he hadn't died, all of the fine dreams he had for our country would have come true. It wasn't until the presidential election of 2000 that I started to question some of my assumptions. I heard a respected reporter say that Al Gore shouldn't waste too much time grumbling about the way the electoral process had been mangled, because he was certain to win the 2004 election.

None of the other talking heads on the program questioned that assumption, but I did. No election is ever a sure thing for any candidate. And that's when I began to wonder if Kennedy could have gotten re-elected. Without the god-like shine of an assassinated president, would there be any reason to love him with such passionate devotion (unless you were a total dweeb)? If Lincoln hadn't been assassinated, would we have built his splendid memorial and chiseled all of those inspiring words into marble? Both presidents were thoroughly despised by a lot of people. The haters pretty much had to shut up after the assassinations, unless they wanted the ire of a grieving country to turn on them (not to mention the suspicions). So you could definitely get the wrong idea about what would have happened if Lincoln and JFK had been able to continue their careers.

And the assumptions don't end there. At any given time, people tend to believe that the past was a rosy place, where life was simpler, people were more virtuous, music was superior to the popular crap people listen to “these days,” and food tasted better. Somehow, they don't remember the bad stuff.

Yet at the same time, people also assume modern people are smarter. They think we're better educated, less inclined to believe superstition, stronger, and way more hip. In fact, we're so damned hip, that if we went back in time and played some modern music for those people of the past, they would think it was the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. In movie after movie, just such a scene plays itself out, with people of the past bopping to that wonderful, superior new stuff. Never mind that every ten years or so, the old generations lament the fact that the music of the new generation sucks, big time. Plus they dress funny and they have no manners.

Music aside, simple survival in a strange place would be the biggest challenge facing any time traveler. You would have to have workable skills, and they would not include computer programming. If you were actually able to travel back in time to show those ancient people how much smarter you are, you would probably get your head handed to you on a platter (maybe literally). If you were lucky, people would feel sorry for your stupidity – a big problem, if you're trying to keep a low profile. Sticking out like a sore thumb wouldn't just make it harder to do whatever it is you went back to do, it might even do more damage. You don't want things to come to a screeching halt while everyone stops to gape at this bozo who just showed up out of nowhere and didn't know anything. The Butterfly Effect that Ray Bradbury wrote about in “A Sound Of Thunder” (also mentioned by Jake in 11/22/63) could only get worse under those circumstances.

According to Bradbury, the Butterfly Effect would be magnified exponentially, depending on how far back you went. Yet, common sense would not necessarily stop a time traveler. You'd be asking yourself, Just how much will actually change? If I can do a greater good, will any harm that occurs as a result of people not meeting people, intersections failing to happen, new patterns emerging, be worth it? Maybe you would hope that things would be different-but-better. Or at least still okay. Or maybe you would selfishly pursue your own agenda and not give a damn.

Jake isn't selfish, though he does get wrapped up in the past. He at least has an excuse – his mission is a noble one, once he commits himself, and in the meantime, maybe he can do some good in the more ordinary lives he intersects. You don't blame him when he realizes that he's happier in the early 1960s than he was in the 21^st century. But he's screwing with time, and you have to wonder how big the bill is going to be when it finally comes due. And the mission itself seems impossible – how can he stop such a gigantic event? Maybe he can't. Maybe he should just disappear into the 60s and lead his new (increasingly un-fake) life. It might not lead to a happy ending, but it might be as happy as any life can be.

But once he's seen Lee Harvey Oswald, that's no longer possible. The smaller questions generate bigger ones, until it finally all boils down to one really big question: Can Jake sacrifice personal happiness in order to save the world?

That's what you'll find out when you read 11/22/63. But I've got a question of my own. Everyone wonders how things might have turned out if things had happened differently. What if Oswald had failed to shoot Kennedy? What if the assassination attempt against Hitler had succeeded? What if someone had realized that Harris and Klebold were bat$#*t crazy in time to stop them? Would the world be a better place, or just a different one?

I'd like to go one further than that. What if time is already doing the best it can? What if, once you average it all together, everything that has happened really is the best that can happen? Some people might be discouraged or even horrified by that idea. But if you have to take the bad with the good, maybe you have to take the good with the bad, too. Maybe you have to admit that many wonderful things have happened, all of us have had at least some happiness in our lives. Medicine is better, science is exploring new frontiers, and we have centuries of art, music, and literature at our fingertips. On average, we have more time to spend with our loved ones than people have ever had, in the history of the human race.

We can instantly download good books like 11/22/63. Maybe that's the best argument of all.

One more thing – I listened to 11/22/63 as an audiobook. The reader, Craig Wasson, was wonderful. He deserves an award for his performance. I'll be looking for more of his work.

Suffering For Your Art

I think writers are luckier than artists and composers. Most of us don't start out with the ambition of creating great art. Usually, we just want to tell an entertaining story and get people to buy our books. We want them to do that so we can keep writing. The way it usually turns out, people mostly don't buy our books, a fact that causes us both financial and emotional distress. But we keep writing anyway. By the time we figure out we're not going to be able to make a living with writing, we're already addicted to the process, and it's too late. We hold onto our day jobs and hope that some day the urge to write will go away and that we'll find a cheaper hobby. But we do have much in common with artists and composers. We all suffer. And that suffering isn't just due to lack of money and acclaim.

This situation is beautifully illustrated by the movie, Untitled. We see two brothers struggling to be the best they can be. One is an artist who has managed to make money at what he does, yet he can't seem to get critics and gallery owners to notice him or show any respect for his work. The other is a gifted musician who is also a composer – but the music he creates is far from commercial. Audiences walk out on him when he performs this music. He tells his brother, The Artist, that he's going to give it three more years – and if he doesn't “make it” by then, he's going to kill himself.

This is a line that makes you laugh – not because you think it would be funny if this guy killed himself, but because you actually understand how he feels. He's out there, a voice in the wilderness, and he really believes in what he's doing. His brother does too. Both of them have something all creative people share: hubris. It's a trait that flies in the face of American values, an overconfidence mingled with a lack of modesty. Yet we can't work up the nerve to create stuff without it. We draw, and paint, and compose, and write, and we show what we've done to the world. When the world ignores us – or worse, laughs at us – it's really painful.

Besides their suffering, the two brothers in Untitled share something else – or rather, someone. They both get involved with a young woman who's a gallery owner. She is strongly attracted to artists who are as unpleasant, unappealing, and weird as possible, because she believes they are true pioneers. Her great talent is to peddle this idea to wealthy patrons, and she actually makes her case very well. Despite her preference for unappealing art, she reps the artist brother, selling his “pretty” paintings to banks and hotels, making a lot of money for him and for herself. This allows her to mentor the weird artists she truly loves. But when the artist brother wants to have his own show, she puts him off. She thinks he's not good enough, but she can't quite come out and say that to him. We look at his paintings, and we can see her point of view. They're pretty, but seem kind of boring.

The gallery owner also thinks the composer brother isn't good enough. Yet she can't resist his weirdness, or the dissonance of his music, so she promotes him. She lets him perform at her gallery, and the audience loves him. But along with the applause and the appreciation, there's also laughter – they think he's being deliberately funny, and he's not. This really humiliates him – but the performance makes it possible for the gallery owner to get him a commission. For the first time in his life, he's got to come up with a serious composition that someone else is paying for.

For a writer, this is comparable to selling your first novel. You believe you've finally got your foot in the door. Finally getting noticed is heady stuff, you're ready to take the world by storm. But bookselling is a commercial business, and what happens to new books is that they get released as if they were hamburgers. You've got maybe a month or two to sell as many hard copies as you can in a Brick & Mortar store, and then you're pretty much off the radar. These days, with ebooks and internet, you've got some options writers didn't have before – you can petition bloggers to review your book, try to get guest blogs, try to make some happy noise on your social media networks. Basically you become the best carny barker you can be, regardless of what your publisher is willing to do to promote your book (which is generally almost nothing).

But even if your initial sales are enough to win you another book contract, you discover another painful truth. Your publisher has pigeonholed you as a certain type of writer, and they are only willing to consider certain story ideas. In a way, you've got to keep writing the same book, over and over. If you try something that's too different from what they expect of you, they won't buy it.

For the artist brother in Untitled, this is actually not a problem. His paintings are all very much alike – that's just what he wants to paint. But in his own way, he has still been pigeonholed by the gallery owner. She believes a show of his work will flop. And at this point in the movie, you agree with her. When the paintings are seen individually, they look pleasant, but uninspired.

Meanwhile, the composer brother seems to be blossoming. He has to direct other musicians, and for the first time, there are rumors of actual moolah materializing. He gets to work with a singer who hates his guts. She's talented, and very opinionated, and harbors suspicions that he's trying to sabotage her by making her look ridiculous. Yet she stays on board, and he learns more about directing. Every time they perform you still want to laugh, but you begin to realize that part of the reason you're laughing is that the music is not just “weird,” it's witty. There really is an inherent beauty to unstructured sound – you hear it every time you stop to listen to distant thunder, or wind chimes, or the sound of water bubbling over rocks. At this point the film has performed a subtle shift – the characters are seeing and hearing things differently, and so are you. You begin to realize that the gatekeeper in the movie, the gallery owner, is not just helping the artist and the musician. She's hurting them, too.

This is what gatekeepers always do, whether they're gallery owners, critics, recording executives, or publishers. They can turn you into a professional. They can make it possible for you to achieve critical and/or financial success. But in doing so, they become the bosses of your career. They decide what you're going to write, paint, and compose – and what you're not going to write, paint or compose. They decide what ideas and projects are worth pursuing. It's very hard to succeed without them. But once you've teamed up with them, your choices become very limited. And worse, those gatekeepers who let you in will eventually shut you out for good. Up until recently, once they closed the door on you, you were done.

Now things are shifting around pretty drastically in the publishing world. They're shifting in the music world too, though It's still hard to say what's happening with art. I suspect we still have some gatekeepers – like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, YouTube, Google – But so many people are using these services, they don't seem to have the time or the inclination to micro-manage anyone's career (yet). For the time being, we writers and artists and composers have the option of plying our trade online without getting the approval of a gatekeeper. Many of us are finding out how hard, exciting, satisfying, and aggravating that can be. Probably the best thing about it is that we get to decide what we've got that's worthy to show the world. Many people would argue that's also the worst thing about it. The possibility of looking ridiculous is scary – you could lose credibility, rack up hundreds of bad reviews, look like a fool to the world.

But sooner or later, you have to risk that possibility. Because you're creative, and this is how you can succeed, even when the gatekeepers won't let you in – or when they've decided you're done, and shut you out for good, which is what happens to most writers, and artists, and composers. You can take the guff and slink away with your tail between your legs, or you can seize the day.

And that's exactly what the brothers do, in Untitled. Just when you think they're going to keep knuckling under to the gallery owner, they decide they have to do what they have to do. The composer writes a composition all right, but when the time comes to perform it for the wealthy patron who bankrolled it, the composer emulates the gallery owner's favorite artist, a guy who makes “invisible” art. The composer makes soundless music.

And the patron demands his money back. But that's okay, the composer is ready to stride off in his own direction, he really knows what he wants to do now. He doesn't need to follow anyone else's ideas about what music he should make. His brother, the artist, also asserts himself – he demands his own show. He gets it, simply because all of the other avante-garde artists have abandoned the gallery owner by this time (apparently they're a fickle lot). So she fills her gallery with the “pretty” art. And another odd thing happens. Once you see all of those paintings together, they look beautiful and inspiring. You realize that the reason the paintings look pleasant-but-sort-of-boring by themselves, is that they were all really part of a larger work, something that's still in progress.

So the gallery owner was both right about him and wrong about him. She was helping him along and holding him back. Gatekeepers do filter a lot of amateurish stuff out before the wider public can ever see it. Sometimes they also mentor talented amateurs until they turn into professionals. Once you've got a gatekeeper in your corner, you really want to please them, you're inclined to see things their way. It's actually a little sad how badly you want to please them. If you become uber-successful, as a handful of people do, this relationship may shift until you're the one who needs to be pleased. I think we all hope for that outcome. More often, you just get strung along until you're finally dropped.

But in a way, that's the luckiest thing that could happen to you. You don't have to work up the courage to take the plunge, sever your ties with a gatekeeper, and possibly assassinate your career – because you've got no other choice. So what you do instead is make the best of it. You try to figure out what your options are. It's hard work, but not really any harder than becoming an artist, or composer, or writer in the first place. You suffer when people laugh at you, or ignore you, or write lengthy opinions about why you suck. You don't get much money, or much critical acclaim, but you still feel driven to express yourself. Every time you put something out there, you're taking a big risk, and it's scary.

The compulsion to create overcomes all that. And, after all, it's not slings and arrows every second. They say that anyone who can be discouraged from [fill in the artistic endeavor], should be discouraged. And that's the most essential thing all artists/writers/composers have in common. We can't be discouraged. We dream. We dream big.

Those qualities, above all else, may be what really define us.

Michael Levy's Beautiful Lyre Music

This video features Michael Levy's arrangement for lyre, of the 1st Delphic Hymn To Apollo (c.128BCE), from his album, "The Ancient Greek Lyre", set to a the ancient Greek poem "Parmenides' Journey":

Michael has made an appeal to music fans:

“If anyone out there "in the know", who knows anyone I could contact, to use my ancient lyre music for similar themes eg as background music for documentaries on "The History Channel" etc, this would be amazingly appreciated...my biggest frustration, is that apart from this website and my Youtube Channel, my voluminous virtuosity on the lyre, is virtually unknown!!!”

My Poltergeist

Let's face it – latchkey kids are the perfect target for a haunting. We're all alone. We're hungry (and sick of cheese sandwiches). And we've seen all the monster movies - we know that evil forces are out there, just waiting to gobble us up.

But what are you going to do? Mom and Dad are working to keep a roof over our heads, and we're too old for babysitters. So we walk home from school, let ourselves into our scary, empty houses, check in the closets and under the bed (baseball bat in hand) and settle down in front of the TV and/or game thingee with a crummy cheese sandwich. We find some diversion to keep us from freaking out until more people come home and turn the empty house back into a haven.

If you were a ghost, wouldn't YOU pick on that kid? Plus, you would have the advantage of surprise. In an ordinary neighborhood, who's expecting a ghost? We don't have a lot of abandoned mansions nearby. We're kind of expecting to get attacked by monsters of another kind.

I think my neighborhood was typical in a lot of ways. It was suburban, and we had a resident monster. She was called Mano Loco, and I suspect she was a spin-off of La Llorona, the vengeful spirit of a woman who killed children. Being a kid myself, I took that very personally. But sightings of Mano Loco were rare – the monsters we were most likely to encounter were human. And as a kid gets older, our expectations change. When you're 5, you think Frankenstein is going to get you. When you're 10 or 11, you're more likely to expect the crazy guy with the knife.

I think I almost encountered that guy once, or his close cousin. I got home from school one day with a really big problem – I had to go to the bathroom so bad, I almost didn't get the front door unlocked in time. I rushed into the house without even closing the door – the only smart thing I did was to lock the bathroom door.

As I sat there taking care of my business, my mind started nagging at me. You didn't close the front door, it warned. Bad idea.

Still concerned with more pressing matters, I brushed that off. No one's going to break in, I said with 99% confidence. It's not like crazy guys are waiting behind the bushes outside the house 24/7 . . .

Maybe they aren't. But I heard a sound in the hall, and then I saw shadow feet in the gap under the door. I ran to the door (I can't remember if I tripped over my shorts or not) and grabbed the doorknob just as it began to turn.

You may remember, I said I had locked the door. So why was the bad guy on the other side able to turn it? Because this oddball doorknob was designed with a hole in the center – if you inserted something into the hole, you could press on the mechanism and turn the knob, opening the door. This is an important point for two reasons: 1., if you couldn't turn the knob, you couldn't unlock the door, and 2. You actually had to have a knob like that to know how to get it open. Which means that the person on the other side of the door, attempting to ambush me in the bathroom, was probably one of my neighbors. I was only 10 or 11 at that time, but I grasped that little detail immediately, and to say that it freaked me out is a serious understatement.

I held onto that knob for dear life. The person on the other end kept trying to turn it. Fortunately, this was not comparable to arm wrestling – my desperate strength was just enough to keep the knob from turning. I'm not sure how long this contest of wills went on, because I think I was suffering from time dilation by that point. I just hung on until the galaxy stopped spinning and time itself came to an end.

Then I peeked under the door. No one stood there anymore. It took me a while to work up the courage to come out. When I did, I fled and stayed at a neighbor's house until my mom came home.

I never did figure out which neighbor tried to ambush me. And from that point on, I felt more than a little paranoid about being home alone. I think that may have been what attracted the poltergeist.

Poltergeists are “mischievous ghosts.” They like to move stuff around, to occasionally throw things, and to make loud noises. I had a friend who was trying to clean up her mother-in-law's house – the woman had been a pathological pack rat whose home was stuffed to the rafters. My friend had a lot of trouble making progress. She would sort books into separate piles, leave the room for a moment, then come back to find the books had been re-shuffled into one giant, precarious stack in the middle of the room. That's pretty typical behavior for a poltergeist.

My ghost only had one trick up its ectoplasmic sleeve. It demonstrated that trick to me one day after I came home from school. I was standing in the family room, setting my books on the table, when I was overcome by the certainty that someone was in the house with me. I turned, listening as hard as I could. Then something began to come down the hall toward me, stomping its foot and snapping its fingers as it came.

Let me clarify something. The noise I heard was not the sound a human foot and human fingers would make. It was grotesquely amplified, as if freakin' Godzilla were stomping his way down that hall, headed straight for me. And the snap was like the sound high voltage wires would make as the giant, mutated Komodo dragon walked straight through them. It went like this: THUMP! SNAP! THUMP! SNAP!

That line of THUMP-SNAPS would be a lot longer if I had actually hung out to listen to them. Instead, I ran out the front door as if my tail were on fire. I ran to my friend's house. And if this were a movie, this would be the part where I told my friend what happened, and she didn't believe me. That's what happened in real life too. So of course, I had to take her back to my house and show her.

No, really. We were that dumb. You would have been shouting, “Don't go back into that house, don't go up those stairs, don't go into that basement!” I didn't actually have a basement or any stairs, but if I had, I'm sure we would have climbed and/or descended to our doom. We went back into the house. We stood in the family room. We waited for a long time. Nothing happened.

She smirked at me and said, “See?”

And then something in the hall went, “THUMP! SNAP! THUMP! SNAP!” moving right toward us.

I think she may actually have gone airborne at that point. She zoomed out my front door with me right on her tail. But I admit, even in the midst of all that terror, some little part of me was saying, I told you so, with a ridiculous amount of satisfaction.

So for months afterward, I tried to avoid being home alone. But the THUMPSNAPPER still managed to ambush me a few more times. Each time it happened, I zoomed out the front door before I could get a good look at the supernatural prankster. And each time it happened, I had no trouble getting away. But then something unavoidable happened. I got sick.

I had to stay home in bed. And I was so sick, for a few days I didn't even think about the THUMPSNAPPER. I just sort of faded in and out of consciousnesses, halfway listening to the TV set on in the background.

Finally I got to the point where I was feeling better. I was wide awake in the back bedroom, watching some game show. And suddenly I heard the THUMPSNAPPER coming.

But this time, it started at the other end of the hall, between me and the front door. I couldn't get out. I looked at the window, and for one moment I contemplated trying to climb out.

Instead of doing that, I hid behind the door. And I didn't cower there. I waited, because I wanted to finally confront this thing that kept terrorizing me, that kept chasing me out of my own house. I had had enough. I was ready for a showdown.

Well – almost ready. I hid there as the noise came closer, my heart pounding. It reached the end of the hall and stopped there. It was on the other side of the door. I could actually feel a presence. And finally, I screwed up my courage enough to look.

Nothing was there. The THUMPSNAPPER had simply evaporated. That's when I knew that my poltergeist was nothing more than a loud noise. It could startle me, it could annoy me, but it couldn't hurt me. Its reign of terror was over. I never heard it again.

Years later, I was reading a book about ghosts and saw the word poltergeist. I had never heard it before, and I didn't know the word back when I was actually being haunted by one. I read something interesting about those noisy ghosts. The noises they make often sound unnaturally amplified. That's when I realized what had actually haunted me, years earlier. The THUMPSNAPPER was a textbook case, though it never threw anything at me. It was more playful than mean.

So if your kid tells you about something that scared them, something they never saw but that made REALLY loud noises, believe them. Tell them what a poltergeist is. Maybe they can confront it and make it go away. Or it may get bored and go away by itself.

Or it may just hang around indefinitely, waiting for the right moment to go . . .

. . . “THUMP! SNAP! THUMP!”

Sadko

When you turn on the TV in the wee hours of the morning, you're never quite sure what you're going to get. Sometimes it's a shopping program, or an extended infomercial. Sometimes it's an extra-early version of an early news show. And sometimes you discover something magical.

That's how I stumbled on Sadko, directed by the Russian master of fairy tale films, Aleksandr Ptushko. Several years ago, my husband and I were working a difficult shift at Borders, and had to get up at GodAwful O'Clock in the morning (it was 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. – not my favorite time of the day). We had cable TV, and turned it on to watch the news. But we didn't have it tuned to the right station, and instead we ended up in the middle of a movie.

We were not in a movie-watching mood. But Sadko was so charming, we left it there and watched Sadko and his men going up to the sultan's tower where the Bird of Happiness was allegedly being kept. And this was when an amazing moment occurred. The Bird had the head of a woman, she was sitting on a perch in semi-darkness. She moved slightly, so the light fell across her face, and it was the most beautiful face I've ever seen. That image struck me right between the eyes (an interesting experience to have that early in the morning), and it has haunted me (in a good way) ever since. The bird lady was a wonderful special effect, I completely believed her.

Years later, on a whim, I looked the title up on amazon and was delighted to find it available. I've watched the DVD several times now, and it never loses its magic.

Granted, it's been ridiculed on Mystery Science Theater 2000. Not everyone who looks at Sadko will see its charm. To American eyes, it may look pretty corny. The dubbed version is BADLY dubbed, and many people don't like having to read subtitles. There's no CGI (since the movie was made many decades ago in Soviet Russia), and the leading lady is a little plump by modern standards.

But her face is truly lovely, and her voice is even more beautiful. I love hearing the actors speak Russian, and the sets and mattes for the film remind me of the work of the Russian artist Nikolai Roersch.

Sadko is based on the Russian folktale, and was also the subject of a symphonic poem by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The movie is really a glimpse into two lost worlds: the world of fairy tales, and the world of film makers who have more creativity and ingenuity than money. It never forgets that it's a folk tale, never loses touch with the roots of the audience for whom it was made. In one scene, Sadko hires a crew for his ships based on how much vodka they can drink without falling over and whether or not they can withstand a punch in the chest. Also, being able to wrestle a bear is a plus. You'll be happy to know that no actual bears were harmed in the filming of that segment – a guy in a bear suit takes all the abuse.

When the movie was packaged for American audiences, they called him Sinbad, but Sadko is a way nicer guy. He is a musician who plays the gusli, but unfortunately also has political opinions. When he sees the suffering of the poor, he wants to do something about it. He doesn't totally succeed, but he gives it the ol' college try. He tries to find the Bird Of Happiness so he can take her home to Novgorod. What he finds is a far stranger, more dangerous creature, possibly a siren. She lulls people to sleep with her beautiful voice, so the bad guys can come and kill them. She belongs to the sultan, so I imagine she's fallen on hard times and is forced to work for her keep. She must spend her days sitting on her perch, in the darkness, contemplating the lost Golden Age. Sadko almost falls under her spell, but rouses himself at the last moment. He realizes he's been chasing a rainbow, so he decides to chase it home again.

His adventures aren't quite over. He still has to play his gusli for the Tsar and Tsarina of the Underwater Kingdom. When the undersea revelers make waves that threaten ships on the surface, Sadko breaks his gusli and escapes to find his true love in Novgorod.

In fairy tales, courage and love win the day. Sometimes a movie can capture that same magic. That's why I love Sadko, unreservedly.

Nikolai Roerich

This magnificent little video speaks for itself . . .

How Sarah Vowell Saved My Sanity

Before I actually started to listen to audio books, I had a bad attitude about them. I was very dismissive – I figured people listened to audio books because they were too lazy to read. In my defense, there is some truth to that notion. When I worked at Borders, I helped many harried mothers whose children had to read a book for school that they simply would not read, because they hated to read. So moms bought the audio book, thinking that might help. And they may have been right, though for many of those kids, paying attention to 9+ hours of material was probably more than they were willing to do.

I began listening to audio books by accident. Ernie and I had night jobs on a clean-up crew at a local grade school, and our supervisor was an audio book fiend. He would play them on the PA system. After the first night of this, I was hooked. I realized that audio books were very much like the old radio shows. And best of all, I could listen to them while doing other stuff, like gardening, housekeeping, cooking, or driving. Now that I can listen to audio books on my itouch, I'm really spoiled – these days I'm listening to an audio book at some point just about every day.

In the old days, price used to be a huge limiting factor for audio books. You paid anywhere from $25 to $125 for one book. Many people were willing to pay, but after the economy tanked, publishers reacted more intelligently with audio books than they did with print books. They went digital. Granted, they may have been forced into that technology by heavy hitters like Amazon, but it seems to be working out for the best. Prices are lower, and there are a wide variety of good audio books to chose from.

I have my favorite authors: Ellis Peters, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Jeff Lindsay, Elizabeth Peters, etc. But now that I've been listening for a while I also have my favorite readers, people you will not have heard of unless you listen to audio books. These folks are superstars, they don't just read the material. They are the ones who turn a good book into an entertaining dramatic presentation. Many of them can do multiple foreign accents (an ability I very much envy, now that I'm recording my own audio books). Patrick Tull and Barbara Rosenblat are two giants in the field. TV actors also find work narrating audio books: B.D. Wong's narration of Ticktock, by Dean Koontz, is delightful. Jay O. Sanders and Stephen Lang also narrated books by Dean Koontz, Dragon Tears and By The Light Of The Moon. I have a long list of favorites I can refer to when I need to be happily diverted.

Sarah Vowell features prominently on that list. And it's not because she has a beautiful voice or because she can do foreign accents. In fact, though Sarah Vowell narrates 70% to 80% of her audio books (except for The Partly Cloudy Patriot, where she does about 90%), guest narrators do the particularly challenging roles. It's not Sarah's acting ability that snags me, it's her wit, her comic timing, and her delightfully nerdy subject matter that keeps me tuning in. She is an unabashed American history buff, and her obsessive inquiries into our past are funny, fascinating, and illuminating. Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates can withstand multiple listenings. In fact, they just get better every time I hear them.

There are times I feel like I'm just a voice in the wilderness. It's nice to hear another voice crying out there too, even if it's a little squeaky. My voice isn't that melodious either. Sarah gives me hope – in more ways than one.

Treat yourself. Give her a listen.