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shadowkatI was blown away by last night's Dollhouse. If you gave up on this series and missed last night's episode? Well, it would have been akin to giving up on Buffy after watching Harvest, which was admittedly horrid. Rare that a tv show surprises me, but this one did repeatedly last night. I'll write a review later.
The other thing that is blowing me away at the moment? Iron Dragon's Daughter.
Here's a passage from the novel that I read last night in bed, which gave me one of those a-ha, epiphany moments. In which everything that's been plaguing me of late, suddenly made sense. Sort of like when you are struggling to find the answer to mathematical equation and suddenly see it? Or writing a story and struggling with a plot bunny and then you figure it out?
The passage is a conversation between the protagonist, a young human teenager named Jane, and her tutor, a pale elf, that she calls the Pale Man. He has just informed her that her scholarship application was rejected by the school secretary and she has asked him why. Why would she be rejected and what can she do about it.
"There is a logic to the shapes of lives and relationships, and that logic is embedded in the stuff of existence. The lover does not awake one morning convinced he would rather be an engineer. The musician does not abandon her keyboard without regrets. The CEO does not surrender wealth. Or if he does, he will find it easier to give up everything, find a cave in the mountains and become a philosopher than to simply downscale his lifestyle. You see? We are all of us living stories that on some deep level give us satisfaction. If we are unhappy with our stories, that is not enough too free us from them. We must find other stories that flow naturally from those we have been living."
"So you are saying...that I'm living a story in which I don't get financial aid? Is that it?"
He shook his head, "It's not you. The secretary is living a story in which she doesn't give you financial aid. It's a subtle distinction, but a crucial one. It gives you an out."
"What do I have to do?"
"You have to look at yourself through her eyes. She sees a troublemaker, a dilatory student, someone with potential - whatever that might be - who is lazy, who will never apply herself, who neglects her studies, and on whom a scholarship would be wasted."
"But I'm not like that!"
"What does that matter? In her story that's who you are, and in her story your sort rarely changes. Occassionally though it happens. Your low qualities are channeled for low purposes. Strawwe used to be just like you before he snitched on his friends."
"What? I wouldn't!"
The pale man had smoked his cigarette down to the filter. He lit a new one from the coal, and ate the butt. "You'll have to weigh the alternatives. On the one hand it's an unpleasant story to live. Your former friends will despise you and they may even beat you. You won't respect yourself. On the other hand, people you like don't get scholarships. You can keep your own story or you can get a doctorate in alchemy. But you can't do both."
I've often wondered how writers can be athesists, the very act of writing a story should make us wonder how it is we can be certain we are not in the end characters living inside someone else's tale or novel. We think our lives are random, but then, if we are any good at writing, so do our characters. Our characters do not believe in us any more than we appear to believe in whomever or whatever force is writing our tale. Our characters see no meaning in the story they are living any more than we see any meaning in our own, our ego prevents us from realizing that we are too small to see the whole of it. We are but threads in a larger pattern. And the stories we are living can only flow into others that support or expand them. We cannot just up and leave our story and go into someone elses.
Our characters in the stories we write, do come from us and our own story, but they are also their own individual entities. They exist outside of us as well. And when they come into contact with our readers - people who have stories separate from ours, and are view through those stories, our characters change, evolve, become something else merely through another interpretation of the tale.
We may not like our role in someone else's tale. We may wish to change it. But our ability to do so is limited and in some cases is simply impossible. It may require as the pale man tells poor Jane above, to change ourselves or make a choice that compromises who we are and want to be. Or it may simply mean continuing on a path that we are unhappy on - in other words compromising our own story, to make our role in theirs different. And in some cases, no matter what we do, we can not change our role or who we are in another's eyes. We can not change their story. We are not the writer. We are but a supporting player, as they are in our tale.
A perfect example is the memoir - an individual's story based on their lives and experiences. But it is just their view, their story, the people showing up in it - have their own views and stories which do vary from the writer' (memorist's) and may even contradict the memorist's or autobiographer's tale. When we read an autobiography or memoir we are reading the personal narrative of the writer of that tale, looking at their life through their memories and understanding of it. We do not see the broader picture, we do not know the full story. And the teller, like all teller's of tales, is unreliable - embellishing things to make themselves feel good or in some cases rip themselves to shreds.
Are we the writers of our own stories? I don't think so. I think our choices are limited by external variables that we have no control over - seemingly random bits, that from a wider perspective are not random at all - any more than a mistake in a native american tapestery or weaving is random. Yet, by the same token, our choices - do drive our tales and do influence how we are seen in other's tales.
So, I think, to the degree we have control over our story, and are the writers of it, we can to degree choose how to make it flow in a direction other than the one it is currently going, but must keep in mind that we if push it in that other direction, there is always a price or sacrifice involved. Also our story will not go in a direction that is against our nature, against what we are, and our role in the general tapestry. We may not see what that role is, or understand it, any more than the characters in the novels we read and write do, but it is there and without it - the story would unravel and collaspe in upon itself. What happens, happens, and it must, even if we hate it. That sound fatalistic, I know. But it's not really, we do have choices. We can affect the ebb and flow of our lives. But our choices are limited because they depend largely upon the choices of others, whose lives may run counter to our own. In their story, we may have to fall for them to move forward, while in ours they may have to be the villian who kicks us in the stomach for us to make a move forward in a new direction.
The other thing that is blowing me away at the moment? Iron Dragon's Daughter.
Here's a passage from the novel that I read last night in bed, which gave me one of those a-ha, epiphany moments. In which everything that's been plaguing me of late, suddenly made sense. Sort of like when you are struggling to find the answer to mathematical equation and suddenly see it? Or writing a story and struggling with a plot bunny and then you figure it out?
The passage is a conversation between the protagonist, a young human teenager named Jane, and her tutor, a pale elf, that she calls the Pale Man. He has just informed her that her scholarship application was rejected by the school secretary and she has asked him why. Why would she be rejected and what can she do about it.
"There is a logic to the shapes of lives and relationships, and that logic is embedded in the stuff of existence. The lover does not awake one morning convinced he would rather be an engineer. The musician does not abandon her keyboard without regrets. The CEO does not surrender wealth. Or if he does, he will find it easier to give up everything, find a cave in the mountains and become a philosopher than to simply downscale his lifestyle. You see? We are all of us living stories that on some deep level give us satisfaction. If we are unhappy with our stories, that is not enough too free us from them. We must find other stories that flow naturally from those we have been living."
"So you are saying...that I'm living a story in which I don't get financial aid? Is that it?"
He shook his head, "It's not you. The secretary is living a story in which she doesn't give you financial aid. It's a subtle distinction, but a crucial one. It gives you an out."
"What do I have to do?"
"You have to look at yourself through her eyes. She sees a troublemaker, a dilatory student, someone with potential - whatever that might be - who is lazy, who will never apply herself, who neglects her studies, and on whom a scholarship would be wasted."
"But I'm not like that!"
"What does that matter? In her story that's who you are, and in her story your sort rarely changes. Occassionally though it happens. Your low qualities are channeled for low purposes. Strawwe used to be just like you before he snitched on his friends."
"What? I wouldn't!"
The pale man had smoked his cigarette down to the filter. He lit a new one from the coal, and ate the butt. "You'll have to weigh the alternatives. On the one hand it's an unpleasant story to live. Your former friends will despise you and they may even beat you. You won't respect yourself. On the other hand, people you like don't get scholarships. You can keep your own story or you can get a doctorate in alchemy. But you can't do both."
I've often wondered how writers can be athesists, the very act of writing a story should make us wonder how it is we can be certain we are not in the end characters living inside someone else's tale or novel. We think our lives are random, but then, if we are any good at writing, so do our characters. Our characters do not believe in us any more than we appear to believe in whomever or whatever force is writing our tale. Our characters see no meaning in the story they are living any more than we see any meaning in our own, our ego prevents us from realizing that we are too small to see the whole of it. We are but threads in a larger pattern. And the stories we are living can only flow into others that support or expand them. We cannot just up and leave our story and go into someone elses.
Our characters in the stories we write, do come from us and our own story, but they are also their own individual entities. They exist outside of us as well. And when they come into contact with our readers - people who have stories separate from ours, and are view through those stories, our characters change, evolve, become something else merely through another interpretation of the tale.
We may not like our role in someone else's tale. We may wish to change it. But our ability to do so is limited and in some cases is simply impossible. It may require as the pale man tells poor Jane above, to change ourselves or make a choice that compromises who we are and want to be. Or it may simply mean continuing on a path that we are unhappy on - in other words compromising our own story, to make our role in theirs different. And in some cases, no matter what we do, we can not change our role or who we are in another's eyes. We can not change their story. We are not the writer. We are but a supporting player, as they are in our tale.
A perfect example is the memoir - an individual's story based on their lives and experiences. But it is just their view, their story, the people showing up in it - have their own views and stories which do vary from the writer' (memorist's) and may even contradict the memorist's or autobiographer's tale. When we read an autobiography or memoir we are reading the personal narrative of the writer of that tale, looking at their life through their memories and understanding of it. We do not see the broader picture, we do not know the full story. And the teller, like all teller's of tales, is unreliable - embellishing things to make themselves feel good or in some cases rip themselves to shreds.
Are we the writers of our own stories? I don't think so. I think our choices are limited by external variables that we have no control over - seemingly random bits, that from a wider perspective are not random at all - any more than a mistake in a native american tapestery or weaving is random. Yet, by the same token, our choices - do drive our tales and do influence how we are seen in other's tales.
So, I think, to the degree we have control over our story, and are the writers of it, we can to degree choose how to make it flow in a direction other than the one it is currently going, but must keep in mind that we if push it in that other direction, there is always a price or sacrifice involved. Also our story will not go in a direction that is against our nature, against what we are, and our role in the general tapestry. We may not see what that role is, or understand it, any more than the characters in the novels we read and write do, but it is there and without it - the story would unravel and collaspe in upon itself. What happens, happens, and it must, even if we hate it. That sound fatalistic, I know. But it's not really, we do have choices. We can affect the ebb and flow of our lives. But our choices are limited because they depend largely upon the choices of others, whose lives may run counter to our own. In their story, we may have to fall for them to move forward, while in ours they may have to be the villian who kicks us in the stomach for us to make a move forward in a new direction.
