Coloured Glass

honest like children

Wystan Hugh Auden would have been 100 this year. Still grievously underestimated. He's the topic of the Slate book club now, and there's some fine stuff in that discussion.

Was reminded of his famous "All that he did was remember / like the old and be honest like children", since a bit of the discussion centers on some early poems that Auden later cut from his body of work. He cut them because they were "dishonest" - mostly because they were about feelings he hadn't actually felt. So, emotionally dishonest, if you like.

It's an interesting position, to say the least. Not one I agree with, but still interesting. Imagine the implications if all writers substribed to that?
Never write of things you don't really believe, of feelings you don't feel, of convictions you won't defend.
Would change things up quite a bit, wouldn't it?
Of course, one has to doubt the old man looking at the poems of his youth, sorting through which feelings were true and which weren't. There are certainly things I'd wish I'd known better than to think or feel. Doesn't change the fact that I did.

no, yo're rigt, i can't spott my ovn mistakkes

Why is it that people seem to think that there's some force of nature that makes you blind to your own mistakes when writing?

Editing, that I get. That's got nothing to do with who wrote it, however, it's just a matter of detachment. I'm just as vicious an editor with stuff I wrote at age 16 as with other people's stuff. Since, essentially, "me at age 16" is 'other people'. Of my recent writings, I'm not the best judge. See, I'm reasonable, I'll go this far.

Proofreading however... Grrr. "You can't proofread your own text", people keep saying. Who taught people this nonsense? and why? It's just ridiculous. I know it's supposedly based on the idea that you're reading ahead, since you already know what's there. Or what's supposed to be. But that's what all reading is like. At least if you're a good reader. We constantly make assumptions about what lies ahead when reading, and we're usually all over the place while we're doing it... looking at one word, mumbling another, thinking about a third. Except when proofreading. It's. just. a. skill.

You can learn it. There's nothing magical about it. There are techniques. I promise you, when you proofread backwards, you won't jump ahead because you wrote it yourself. And, proofing your own text has the advantage of being quite boring, so you won't get too immersed.

It's really like saying that you can't drive a car in your childhood area, since you know it so well that you wouldn't spot a hole in the road if there was one. That's just ridiculous. Maybe if you weren't paying attention, but that's the whole point of proofreading, isn't it? Reading while paying attention to holes in the road.

Reading your own stuff doesn't magically give you ADD. If it does, you really should stop writing, don't you think?

can I bring my own words?

I quite often seem to bump into the term "creative writing" these days. To be honest, I don't really know what to think. (Mostly) I think I get what it's supposed to mean, and I usually find myself liking the surroundings in which the term appear. Like 'creative writing workshops', which usually means 'people trying to write and think at the same time'.

My initial reaction to hearing "creative writing" is one of "is there another kind?"

And I think my problem with it is that it's an extremely useful term, but still completely rubbish. It made me think of the brilliant definition of creativity from Ken Robinson's equally brilliant presentation at TED  (go watch. It's extraordinary).  He's obviously talking about creativity as an absolute positive, not just the process of creating things - it's not the equivalent of producing. He defines creativity as:

"having original ideas that have value".

Which is beautiful, useful, interesting, thoughtprovoking... and complete rubbish. Leaving aside the exceedingly troubling notion of 'originality' for a moment - no wait, let's not:

So Beethoven wrote symphonies. That's not very original, is it? Haydn wrote 104 before him. Oh, but not that exact symphony, you say? So he basically kept the format and changed the notes? uhm yes... So, what if I just change them some more, is that original and creative? No, you see, Beethoven's is really good different... I don't have to elaborate, do I? originality in arts is so difficult a concept, that to invoke it in defining equally difficult concepts is just... not going anywhere.  Maybe if you try defining part of creativity as "a labour aimed at being perceived as original". Creativity means, among other things, bringing about the feeling of newness to the receiver. Whether it's actually original is besides the point, I think.

[good] creativity is having original ideas [or old ideas just executed better]. So good creativity is having good ideas... that have value.

Ok, "... that have value". This is the biggie. Value how?  This is a planner's thought. The creative person's idea has value if it end up adding to actual brand value, as measured by surveys.

But no one will dispute the creativity of Mozart or Beethoven, right? so, Sir Ken surely includes the vague idea of 'emotional value' in this, and rightfully so. But? Just down the road from "this has emotional value for me" lies "this is art for me" or other relativist rubbish. He's clearly not implying that as long as an idea holds emotional value for someone, it's "the good kind of creativity". We all love our ideas to death, doesn't mean they hold water. So are we to resort to some sort of democratic  value scale? if 10 people find emotional value in an idea, is it creativity at work?  What about 20? That's how it works in real life in many agencies, but surely that's not what Robinson is looking for. That would also imply that James Blunt is a major creative mind, since so many people (of dubious taste) find value in his crap, while Pete Principle or Tony Ogden was not.
What I'm hearing in Robinson's 'that have value' is basically: that are good.

So: [good] creativity is having good ideas that are good. Whoopdidoo.

Which is pretty much what creative writing means, isn't it. Since all acts of writing produce words, and thereby create stuff that wasn't there before, it's all in a sense creative. So what we really mean is that creative writing is writing that is good.
Writing that keeps you reading, that puzzles, that fuels passion, that infuriates, that soothes, that enlightens, that is good.

'Creative writing' sounds like there is such a thing as 'uncreative writing', which there really isn't. We all use words that were there to begin with - or most of them anyway. We're not that original. Creative writing is a little bit of a cop-out that implies that it is ok that we sometimes do uncreative writing, you know, the other kind. Like it's a choice between formal and casual clothes.

But it's not. Writing is either creative - or just plain bad.

now THAT is good copy

As the flipside to my posting of Orson Welles' insult-spewing copywriter-loathing, it turns out Hemingway didn't share his contempt for marketing.
Just read an interesting review of a new book with Hemingway notes, letters and other 'sidecar material'; I remember seeing Hemingway in a few ads, but always just thought it was of the "Bill Murray shooting commercials in Lost in Translation"-variety. Never realized that he actually wrote the copy for most of those ads, blurps etc.
Though the review has a slightly different focus, it does offer a few nice examples of how "brilliant writer" trumps "decent writer/excellent strategy department". Like these Ballantine-lines:

"You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. When something has been taken out of you by strenuous exercise, Ballantine puts it back in."

Or my favourite, an otherwise utterly mundane job of advertising a specific balancing act in the Ringling Bros circus:

"In your dreams you watch Unus standing on one finger and you think, 'Look at such a fine, intelligent and excellent man making his living standing on one finger when most of us can't even stand on our feet.'"

That? cannot be topped.

someone else's life

Wow, that was unexpected. Through a Bush-inspired googling of Camus I somehow ended up on Newinventory.co.uk, and pretty soon I found myself reading away a large chunk of my life. I have no idea what that site is - maybe everyone in the world but me knows about it already. Seems like some guy's journal, 441 days beginning a week after 9/11 2001. No real explanations, no name or resume; just a thoroughly fascinating read.

Like being thrown into a life blindfolded.

This image from the site quite accurately captures the strange mix of pretentious, innocent, angry and vulnerable bits thrown together.
And here's the journal. Be prepared to lose a bit of time, though. And to unexpectedly find yourself thinking about sentences like this one:
"I wonder what birds make of rain?"
or: "Some days there is nothing to report. This is one of them. It is not, of cource, but I am tired."

And do forgive me if you already knew about this.

Bush: texas (st)ranger

This has got to be the funniest story of the day. MSNBC is reporting from George W's summer vacation ranch that he has been reading Camus' The Stranger.
Somebody get the guy some pr advice, fast. What staff member thought a novel about the remorseless killing of an Arab (shot 5 times, no less) was the best way to show off the ol' cognitive powers?

Might have been 'White House Spokesman" Tony Snow, who said Bush "found it a quick read" - it is - and added: "I don't want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism."
Really? what, Kierkegaard? Blaise Pascal?

UPDATE: aug 14 comes a Slate article on the subject, with John Dickerson offering this comment on the above quote: "Oh please, Tony, go into it. This is no time to be vague". Heh.

the hermetic fallacy

yeah, I didn't know it was out there either. But apparently it's taught at the Danish Authors' School ("Forfatterskolen"). The class of 06 is being profiled in a series of interviews in Berlingske Tidende; today it's Karin Toft, who may or may not be an excellent writer. I hope she is, since it seems to be a painful affair. "Writing has started to hurt", she exclaims, and her tired smile looks appropriately pale and world-weary. Poor thing.
Anyway, the point of the interview is that "the hermetic form is the most democratic, as it puts everyone on the same level." In other words, if you don't quote the classics, you're not leaving the slow kids behind.
Well... except not. Let's consider a bit of hermetic poetry, shall we? Nothing really exotic, just something like e.e.cummings' if i love You.

if i love You

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing

Does anyone really think that all readers are created equal when meeting a text such as this one? Our mind's ability to wrestle with paradoxical and enigmatic expressions is a skill aquired through practice, effort, reading tons of texts. It's just... mindboggingly arrogant to claim differently. Or ignorant, at least. And I don't really know if it's sad or inspiring that someone can be taught this exact skill for two years and come away thinking that as long as you don't reference, say, historic events that your slow-witted readers wouldn't know, you're really writing for the masses. Oh, well.

what's in a name?

Somebody asked about my blog's name. Yes, it's named after the Baudelaire prose poem Le Mauvais Vitrier. Pretentious, moi?

The poet, living in a poor Parisian area, gets a visit from a glazier; he calls him up the stairs and examines his panes. Once he finds out the glazier only brough clear panes he's enraged, pushes the poor guy down the stairs and even throws a potted plant at him, crying "La Vie en Beau!"

With life being sometimes a rather bleak affair, don't bother to come knocking if you're not bringing "rose-coloured panes, magic panes, panes of paradise",  anything that let's us look at life a little differently than before. So, this is my collection of coloured glass. Cute, isn't it?

Go read the text if you have time. Or some of the others from Spleen de Paris. Fascinating stories. One could write a book about them; but then, Charles Baudelaire already did.