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MacGreg

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  1. MacGreg
    I've been reading translated poems of Rilke lately, who is recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets. In the early 1900s, Rilke wrote letters to a young German military cadet who sought his guidance on his own poetry. These letters were poetry in their own right, dynamic and inspiring. The following is an excerpt from one such letter, which galvanizes the creative process, not exclusive to poetry or writing in my opinion, but for all forms of artistic self-expression:    “Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
    This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...
    ...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”   ― Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet
  2. MacGreg

    Suspending Judgement

    By MacGreg,

    Recently, I've been delving into the philosophy of Stoicism - an ancient Greek philosophy that teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions. It refers to living in the moment, retaining emotions, but using logic, clear judgment and inner calm to express and react rather than anxiety and fear.
    I am guilty of being judgmental. It's something within myself that I work on daily. I no longer want to jump to conclusions or assume a situation is the way it is because it appears to be a certain way to me. There are two sides to every story. I want to approach life with more compassion, less cynicism.
    Below is a piece from The Daily Stoic, an online community dedicated to the Stoic philosophy. It hit straight home for me this morning. Maybe it will enlighten you, too. 
    We live in a culture where people sit on the sidelines and pass a lot of strong judgements. We look at people we don’t know and decide whether they’re good or bad people. We look at complicated situations and difficult projects and cleanly label them successes or failures—despite having little understanding of what went on behind the scenes. We take an instance of behavior or a tiny interaction—the way someone talked to us at the grocery store or a decision that they made—and extrapolate out who that person is and what motivates them.
    As we’ve talked about before, the result of these snap judgements is not just misery for us, but an overwhelmingly negative view of humanity and of the world. It’s no way to live. Which is why when you feel that urge to decide—as an outsider or an observer—that you know who someone is or what it means, you should stop yourself. Stop yourself and consider this prompt from Epictetus:
    “Until you know their reasons, how do you know whether they have acted wrongly?”
    What Epictetus is not saying is that you should sit there and try to think about why Hitler and Stalin murdered so many people. He’s not saying that right and wrong are relative and that truly awful things can be excused. He’s saying, in the vein of Socrates, that we need to take a minute and really think about what we don’t know in a situation. We need to consider that, with the exception of mental illness, (which is its own kind of reason), most people have a logic for their actions—and that logic is usually not to try to hurt you or anyone else. They are just doing the best they can.
    David Foster Wallace speaks about this in his famous “This is Water” speech, after several allusions to his frustration with bad drivers:
    It's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am—it is actually I who am in his way. And so on.
    You don’t know that someone acted wrongly or is an asshole or that they totally screwed a situation up, because you don’t know the full story. You don’t know their reasons or their side of things. And what do the Stoics tell us to do when we don’t have all the facts about something?
    They tell us to suspend judgement.
  3. MacGreg

    Cellar Door

    By MacGreg,

    In phonaesthetics, the English compound noun cellar door has been cited as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful purely in terms of its sound, without regard for its meaning. It has been variously presented either as merely one beautiful instance of many, or as the most beautiful in the English language.[1]
     
    In a 1955 lecture, J.R.R. Tolkien stated that “Most English-speaking people ... will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful.”
     
    It’s been suggested that Edgar Allen Poe chose the word ‘Nevermore’ for the refrain of The Raven because of its similarity to the euphony of 'cellar door.' I recall that even Drew Barrymore’s character in the film Donnie Darko makes reference to it when asked why she's written it on the chalkboard: “This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that cellar door is the most beautiful.”
     
    As early as 1903 - and possibly its point of origin - a Shakespeare scholar, Cyrus Lauron Hooper, wrote in his novel Gee-Boy: "He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door..."
     
    I’m not a linguist, but language fascinates me, and certain words energize me purely for how they sound when spoken:
     
    ·         Fuselage
    ·         Metamorphosis
    ·         Sanguine
    .         Disposition
    ·         Asphyxiation
    ·         Paprika
     
    (the list could go on)
     
    Cellar door belongs on the list. I understand its resonance. As a writer, I never just write a sequence of events to move the plot forward. I intentionally choose to arrange words that create flow, even if that means stepping outside of some standard grammar rules (a reason I enjoy writing poetry, too) and even if it's just to please my own ears.
     
    Are there certain words that do this for you? Roll off the tongue nicely; cause an emotional response simply for how they sound when spoken?
     
    I'm curious to “hear” yours.
     
     
    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellar_door
  4. MacGreg
    I haven't posted a blog in a while, but I was compelled to share my thoughts on this.
     
     
    Recently, someone shared an amateur porn video with me. It was of a supposed “Dom” taking his sub over his knees and spanking him. Normally, that would be good subject matter, but this one, like so many similar ones I’ve had the displeasure of viewing over the years, is about the Dom causing the sub as much pain as possible, alternating between bare hands and a paddle, while the sub squeals and squirms beneath his weight.
     
    During the entire spanking session, this “Dom” focuses his attention solely on the webcam that is filming the scene – obsessed with how he looks as the World’s Most Awesome Sadist. The narcissism and egotism projected is astonishing. And extremely disappointing. Meanwhile, the sub he’s dominating is subjected to pain without any purpose, clutched in the stronghold of a man who cares more about how he looks on camera than about the boy in his arms.
     
    Do I know who this couple is, or how they are together when the camera is off? No. Maybe they only just met. Maybe they've been together for years. If a Dom and a sub mutually choose to film a scene like this, then I suppose I can’t argue with that choice. However, this is the type of online manure that confuses and misguides what D/s Life is about.
     
    Inflicting pain without purpose is pointless. Choosing to use a sub like a rag doll – or, in this case, a prop for a homemade movie – grates against my every nerve. There’s an inhumane, torturous aspect to this kind of scene. It’s also gravely inaccurate. At least, to most of us in the Life it is.
     
    The deep emotional connection that a Dom and sub can share is something to be celebrated, not portrayed as a power play with only one winner. There is little room for egotism in a Dominant person, and a sub should be revered as a partner, not a puppet. Not to mention providing proper after-care, which means being kind and nurturing and supportive to a sub as he/she comes back from the sub-space you’ve transported them to.  
     
    A Dom who cares little to nothing for the sub in his arms doesn’t deserve to have one, in my opinion.
     
  5. MacGreg
    Yesterday afternoon, I had the day off and spent a couple of hours at the contemporary art museum here in town. The latest exhibition showcases a raw, vibrant display of street art, including graffiti, photography, and a rare collection of Jean-Michel Basquiat scribbles/doodles done a year before he became famous.
     
    Just a few weeks ago, I saw Julian Schnabel's film "Basquiat" at a local theater (on original 35mm, complete with snaps and pops and blips on the screen), followed by a Q&A panel with one of Basquiat's friends and bandmates who was also the screenwriter for the film, Michael Holman. Seeing the film this time around, after watching it 21 years ago when it first came out, was just as moving for me now as it was back then. (On a side note: David Bowie played Andy Warhol in it, which was a remarkable performance. All of the actors were remarkable.) Hearing Michael Holman's tales afterwards about Basquiat and the crazy life they led brought back a cloud of memories for me.
     
    When I was in junior high/high school, I had lofty dreams of running off to New York to hang with Warhol and the Factory crowd and to immerse myself in the art scene. I knew such a lifestyle would come with a truckload of challenges, but it held a certain glamour for me, and the creativity that was being produced out there was alluring to my much-younger, naive self. I never made it to New York, and after Warhol passed in '87, there was little point in doing so. However, that itch to live a Bohemian, street-art lifestyle never left me. To some degree, I did live it, but my version wasn't glamorous or productive - just a lot of fucked-up. If nothing else, I walked away with some serious life experiences under my belt, and I met some interesting people along the way - some who didn't make it out, and some who did and are now enjoying successful lives. For me, the direction could have gone either way, but that's for another discussion.
     
    So, this art exhibit yesterday compounded the influx of memories that had already been swirling around after watching "Basquiat" again. But, beyond the Basquiat exhibit itself, there was a whole floor of the museum dedicated to thousands of photos by a New York artist named Ryan McGinley. These photos, taken when he was in his early 20s, exemplify street-art life, with raw, realistic portrayals of himself and his friends - many art students, many living on the streets - shown countless times in very stark, unflattering situations (a post-punch bloodied mouth, someone snorting coke, someone passed out, someone naked and bruised, someone with cum-splattered pants, someone spewing vomit, and so on.) This entire exhibit is stark and in-your-face, similar to Nan Goldin's photos in the mid-80s, and seeing it brought flashback reminders of so many things for me, including people and circumstances that I could relate to.
     
    The photo below, titled "Red Mirror", particularly moved me, because it embodies Ryan's sexual discovery about himself and an intimacy and energy that pokes at the heart no matter what your preference is. I can see myself in this photo. I can see friends in this photo. I can see many in this photo. Can you see yourself? 
     
    In a new chapter that I'm currently working on for my story Dissonance, I mention art imitating life... or is it life imitating art? I feel that way often. Just last night, while attending an art opening for a friend of mine, I saw a man wearing the exact 1950s vintage western jacket that I'd just described in this current, unfinished chapter. I couldn't fucking believe it. The exact one. I had to go over and discuss the uncanny coincidence with him. Art imitating life... or life imitating art? The lines are blurred. The exhibit at the contemporary art museum perfectly illustrated that for me yesterday.
     
    I feel more enlightened and inspired today because of it.

  6. MacGreg
    I saw this floating around social media today and thought it would be a humorous exercise for GA authors to participate in.
     
    http://www.boredpanda.com/and-murders-began-first-line-book/?page_numb=1
     
    "The opening line of a book is extremely important, as it has to be intriguing and powerful enough to capture the reader's imagination. Then, the second line has to intensify the intrigue. Coming up with these lines can be pretty difficult, yet one writer came up with a second line that would almost always heighten the intrigue to its peak, and the Internet is going crazy. "And then the murders began" - that's the clever line Marc Laidlaw came up with. Add it to almost any opening line and you've got yourself a hell of an intriguing book opening."
     
    So here's the exercise for you: In the comments, write the first sentence of one of your GA stories or poems, followed by the second line of "And then the murders began."
     
    I'll start with my own contribution, from 'Backstage Tryst':
     
    "I rubbed nervous palms across my denim-covered thighs, trying once more to exhale the breath which remained stuck in my throat, unable to escape. And then the murders began."
     
    I look forward to seeing yours!
     

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