A Sand Like Talcum Update

Sand Like Talcum, my manuscript loosely based on my experience during Operation Desert Storm, has sat idly for some time. Idle, that is, until I woke in the middle of the night with, as Yeats would say, a fire in my head that demanded that I rewrite the story.

From earlier posts you’ll know that I’m researching Vietnam War Memorials in California. That research involves taking photographs and interviewing people, usually veterans. What I’ve run across in my interviews is a group of people who think deeply about war and culture. Vietnam Veterans, because they were so Othered when they returned, have offered me unusually rich insights. Those insights, at a subconscious level (I guess), have helped me to unravel the weaknesses of my narrative.

I realized that I had cast my characters wrong; that I was asking them to perform in ways that were impossible for them. Instead, a minor character who whose role was less than a page in the first complete manuscript has taken a lead position as mentor. The character himself hasn’t changed, just the role assigned. Once that happened, the shape of the narrative improved and the characters became much deeper and rounder.

With these changes I’m trimming scenes, making the story much less plot driven, and giving the characters the room to speak for themselves. The internality not only allows me to trim frivolous scenes, but it’s forcing me to do so because the scenes are detracting from the dramatic arc of the story.

More updates to come.

Using My iPad as a Phone = Epic Failure

Last August I tried something I never thought I’d do – I replaced my iPhone with my iPad. Like a lot of people I was tired of paying the monthly cost of the iPhone. Particularly I’m someone who doesn’t speak on the phone much, so the only value to having an iPhone was the data plan, and even the data plan was starting to wear on me a bit. I found that the constant barrage of emails and texts had a way of distracting me from the real world. So I did something radical. I cancelled my iPhone plan and used my iPad for texting and Voice calls (via Skype). How did it work? Terrible!

Texting worked fine. I just used the Google Voice app (I’ve been a user of the service since it was called Grand Central) and used that number for voicemail. For outgoing calls I used Skype (paying the monthly fee of, I think $6) and set it up so that it would display my Google Voice number in the Caller ID. So far so good.

Where things got ugly was the quality of the calls was terrible. I don’t know if it’s Skype’s fault or AT&T’s fault, but there was constant complaining that my calls were unintelligible. I seemed to run into this issue whether on 3G (which is no surprise since Sonoma County, CA is known to have terrible AT&T service) or WiFi. At first I didn’t mind because people were encouraged to text or email me instead, but I knew I had to change after a few friends threatened to slash my tires or cause other mischief if I didn’t get a traditional cell phone.

So did I return to my iPhone? No. An iPhone and a 3G iPad seem redundant (and expensive) to me. Instead I bought a Go Phone. I enjoy it because it’s good to be reminded how bad phones were before the iPhone and it’s very affordable. I rarely turn mine on and, when I do, I call through my Google Voice number.

The only real problem I have with the Go Phone is tech support. AT&T works very hard to ensure that you can’t get a live person on the phone for support. I’ve had problems with SPAM texts and every call I place to AT&T just shuffles me off to an automated system. I’ll follow up with a later post once this gets resolved.

But if, like me, you’re thinking about making calls on your iPad, you may want to think twice.

The Opening Paragraph from Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship of Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

- Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest.

The Berkeley Vietnam War Memorial

After interviewing Country Joe McDonald, I drove to downtown Berkeley and visited theVietnam Memorial.  Located at the Veterans Memorial Building, the memorial is unassuming, yet powerful.  I felt fortunate to catch the dramatic light when I did.

As I photographed, several employees watched me through the glass doors, and one women poked her head out, looked at me, looked at the memorial, looked back at me while pointing at the memorial, pantomiming if that was what I was photographing.  I nodded yes.  She squinted at the memorial plaque, shrugged, and went back indoors. It was clear that she hadn’t ever looked at the memorial or understood its significance, and her reaction isn’t uncommon.  I’m often stopped while shooting the memorials and asked what I’m photographing,

It’s as if the memorials are invisible.

Country Joe MacDonald and the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorials

I visited Country Joe McDonald (countryjoe.com) at his home in Berkeley on a very mild day in February 2012.  I arrived early and read Jules Witcover’s 1968: The Year The Dream Died in my car until our 11:10 appointment rolled around.

At 11 Joe and a woman left his house.  He looked at me as he started to get into his RAV 4, walked over, and asked if I was waiting for him.I said I was but that I’d arrived early.

He said that he needed to drive his mother-in-law home and that he’d be right back.At 11:10 he returned and invited me in. We sat at a table in his kitchen with several of his large scrapbooks resting on it. That’s where this interview took place. If you listen carefully you can hear the paper rustling throughout the interview as he flips through the books.

Joe was involved in founding four Vietnam Memorials in California, including what may be the first online memorial. For this podcast I’ve excerpted Joe talking about this memorial which honors those killed who came from Alameda County, CA.

He lent me a physical copy of that Alameda memorial which I’ll be including in my upcoming exhibit on Veterans Day.

The Story of California’s Vietnam War Memorials

 Most Creatives I know are inspired to work on more projects than can ever be completed.  To find the balance of which projects to choose, to seek those projects that are truly important, to know which call to answer (as mythologist Joseph Campbell might say), is remarkably difficult.

When it comes to choosing, I like to think of Odysseus (or “Brave Ulysses” if you listen to Cream).  If you don’t recall, to return to Ithaca, Odysseus and his crew had to row past the Sirens’ island.  Those who heard the Sirens’ call became enchanted, so Odysseus used beeswax to plug the crew’s ears. He lashed himself to the mast so that he could hear the song without responding.  Although Odysseus wanted to answer the call, he couldn’t.  His crew wouldn’t let him and kept rowing until the song faded.

Too often, we become distracted by the Sirens in our life and our journey to Ithaca is obscured.  That’s what happened with my Vietnam War Memorial project.

I first became interested in the memorials around the turn of the century when I learned that one of my professors, Robert Coleman-Senghor, had founded the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Grove at Sonoma State University.  Although Bob was a Vietnam veteran (I’ve since been told that Bob was not a Vietnam Veteran.  My memory must be faulty), he founded the memorial because of one of his students.  It’s a moving story that I’m researching further and, when he told me the story, I knew that I wanted to uncover the other stories behind these memorials.

But, as happens, I started the project, became distracted, and failed to follow through.  The project floundered until Bob passed away earlier this year.  His passing came at a time of transition for me and I realized that now, although late, was the time to complete this project (at least as much as I could without Bob).

So far I’ve located 52 memorials in California, though I’m hoping to uncover more.  Some are modest, others elaborate, and I’ve found all that I’ve visited to be moving in their own way.  When it comes to memorials, I’ve learned that size doesn’t matter:  Each has its own voice and gravitas.

In the coming weeks I’ll be posting images of the memorials in this blog.  I shoot black and white film and I don’t scan until I’ve made a final print, so there’s a lag between when I shoot and when I post.  I’ll be interviewing the founders of the memorials or those close to them, and post excepts from those discussions, too.  Finally, I’m speaking with curators about exhibiting the images in 2012, with the hope of opening on Veterans’ Day.  I’ll post that information as well.

Check back here often.  I’m shooting memorials and/or printing weekly.

The Beautiful Light in Petaluma

A friend inherited this wonderful farmhouse on the outskirts of Petaluma. The floors are wood, the glass antique windowpanes are filled with swirls and bends, and the ambiance is delightful. It has a mood that feel immediately when you walk into the door.

When another friend asked me to photograph her, I thought of this house. The second floor is open and bathed in light. As we shot, we both found ourselves gravitating towards the windows, playing with the light; one side of the home had harsh sunlight, while this side was enjoyed something softer and more moody. In that light this image came easily.

Robert Sawyer and the Meaning of the Text

I’ve never read Robert J. Sawyer, but after hearing his interview on the Sword and Laser podcast I’m looking forward to reading his work now.  Mr. Sawyer seemed affable, intelligent, and someone who reflects carefully upon the role of writing and the role of the writer.

However, while I enjoyed the podcast, I want to explore some comments that Mr. Sawyer made.  Near the end of the interview he (and the other panelists) were asked how they determine what a book means.  The question was a sound one since, on several occasions during the talk, Mr. Sawyer assigned a specific meaning to a book or a film:  Frankenstein is about the dangers of allowing men to get involved in reproduction, The War of the Worlds has nothing to do with martians invading the earth, it’s all about British colonialism, etc.  Although I agree that these interpretations are available, even valid, I think that assigning a single meaning to a text is dangerous.

I’m always concerned when someone says a book is about a single thing because it limits the other interpretations available.  That’s why literary theorists prefer to speak of themes in a book, because a book, unless ridiculously simple, is never about one thing (although, conflictingly, Mr. Sawyer says that the novel is a Rorschach test and your response to it tells him a lot about the reader but not the person who wrote it).

After listening to the podcast I sat down and read H.G. Wells’ The War of the World for the first time. Previously the only work I’d read of Wells was The Island of Dr. Moreau. The War of the Worlds was wonderful and reading it was a unexpected delight. Despite being short it’s very rich and I encourage everyone to read it, regardless of whether you’re into scifi or not.  The book is rich with themes and Wells, as Mr. Sawyer observed, was attending to issues beyond the idea of aliens invading the earth.

But rather than discussing to the text in general, let’s attend specifically to two claims that Mr. Sawyer makes: first, that The War of the Worlds is about British colonialism and second, that the author is the primary adjudicator of the meaning of a text.

To support his claim that The War of the Worlds is about British colonialism, Mr. Sawyer cites the following passage:

“…destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”

The reader, says Mr. Sawyer, is being asked to identify with what it’s like to be colonized.  This is a perfect quote, and there’s no question from this quote alone that colonialism is one of the main themes of the book.  Whether consciously or subconsciously, Wells is sending that message.  But are we to accept that this passage proves that the book is about colonialism?  No, I don’t think we can, first for the reason above about meaning and second because I don’t quite agree with Mr. Sawyer’s interpretation of this section.

Inviting us to identify with the colonized doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re being invited to sympathize with them.  If Wells wanted to drive the point home he would have used the same technique several times.  And, although Wells did use that approach again, the second time he used it identify with rabbits.

“For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel.”

It seems to me that if Wells intended the sole meaning of his book to be about colonialism, he wouldn’t have used this technique a second time, and certainly not in relation to animals.  This seems more a literary device to keep the reader engaged with the story, and sympathetic with the protagonist instead of an indictment of colonialism.  If Wells wanted to raise sympathy for the oppressed, I think he would have used the opportunity to reference colonized cultures again.

That’s not to say that Wells didn’t intend for his story to carry a message (I argue he intended several), but to say that the first passage is a hint rather than a smoking gun.  A more conclusive example of authorial intent can be found in Jack London’s letters about his book Martin Eden.  London complained in a letter to a friend that his message had been lost amongst his readers.  He had intended Martin Eden to be a criticism the Nietzschean superman while his readers instead found it a glorification.  Letters, lectures, conversations, podcasts, etc. are the best way to determine authorial intent.  Textual support is unreliable.

But let’s go a step further and discuss the importance of authorial intent, since it was raised in the podcast.  Let’s assume Mr. Sawyer’s view that H.G. Wells intended The War of the Worlds to be about colonialism.  Does that really matter?  Sure, if you’re a Wells scholar or interested in Wells’ motivation in writing the novel, but for the rest of us I think that Wells’ intent is irrelevant.

Mr. Sawyer gives us some clues earlier in his talk about why that would be so.  The first is that all texts are fixed in time, meaning that they’re a product of the moment and conditions that they were created under.  Once the conditions under which a story or novel is consumed changes, then so does the meaning. Walter Benjamin, in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” puts it this way:

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

Benjamin is saying that the meaning of a story shifts (described linguistically as a floating signifier) as soon as it’s read at a different time and space.  We might even be able to go so far as to say that the meaning of a text begins to slip as soon as it is written down.  The War of the Worlds was published over 100 years ago.  Its meaning to readers back than is completely different than its meaning to readers today.  That’s because we’re consuming the book, as Benjamin observes, in a different “time and space”.  It’s meaning, or signification, shifts.

So British colonialism may not be important today but American colonialism might be.  Although I can’t imagine Wells intending to write about American colonialism, I can certainly take the schema that he uses and apply them to America.

But the experience of reading and making meaning goes beyond time and location.  The true experience of reading occurs, as Husserl (and Tom Merritt at the end of the Sword and Laser podcast) observed in his theory called Phenomenology, between the reader and the text.

Husserl notes that meaning isn’t contained within the text alone.  Instead, meaning is made or created when someone reads a book; it is a blending or a fusion between the reader and the text.  Put another way, we create the meaning of a book as we read because we each have unique experiences, viewpoints and even moods which we project onto the text.  Since there is so much slippage in the reading experience, it makes no sense to assume that there is a single or right interpretation (though we can say that there are interpretations that valid because they can be supported by the text and those that are invalid because they lack support within the text).  Mr. Sawyer acknowledges this when he says that he feels that a reader’s interpretation of his book says more about the reader than it does about him (and leaves me perplexed about why he definitively assigns meanings to other author’s texts).

But in saying that, he leaves us to ask one final and important question: why should we care about authorial intent at all?  Assuming we’re not doing scholarly research, I think there’s only one reason.  Because knowing the author’s intent gives us another dimension or lens through which to view the work.  But knowing the author’s intent is no more or less valuable than the opinion of another careful reading.  Let’s return to The War of the Worlds so that I can explain what I mean.

After reading The War of the Worlds I don’t agree that British colonialism is the primary theme – I think that the primary theme is a broader one, which is the fear of the “Other”, though there are a host of other themes that I also found, which include:

Colonialism, Darwinism, Social Darwinism,  Orientalism, how we view other cultures, gender roles (particularly the role of masculinity), fear that England’s power and reach were waning, overoptimism, nature v. science (science doesn’t defeat the aliens, nature does), wealth and privilege, war (including chemical warfare) and military strategy, divine retribution (punishment for sins), transportation (wagons and trains), and the consequences of greed.

I’m sure I’ve missed many others that I’ll catch in another reading. I also feel confident that Wells didn’t consciously include all these themes.  Some are apparent because the book, being 100 years old, also functions as a historical document, so wagons and trains stand out, while other themes were included subconsciously.

In light of all of these considerations, why would we privilege authorial intent?  As I’ve said previously, the author’s intent is important as trivia or to offer a broader interpretation, but it’s no more valid than other supported claims. So it’s important to consider all supported claims and themes when looking at the meaning of a text, whether it’s the author’s, a scholar’s or you’re own.  With your unique background, you may find something that everyone else has missed.