Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Published!

It might be true, as it turns out, that some of the best ideas come to you in dreams.

Just before our daughter was born (almost two years ago now!!), I woke one night from a dream that remained clearly in my memory until the following morning. I knew that I had to write it down, because it was quite obviously the foundation for a story that needed to be told. We were in the early stages of planning our move northward at the time, and I think that’s what brought this dream about. In the dream, Karen and I were standing on a hill in our former city in Virginia, except the city had been abandoned, and we were looking out over the expanse of what used to be and remembering our lives there in whispers to each other.

A few seconds of dream, ultimately, but the ideas that followed took a life of their own, and I wrote as a labor of love in whatever free moments that I could find after our daughter was born, because she was forever connected to this piece of fiction in my heart. A few months later, it was edited and finished, and I’ve been shopping it around since. It was accepted for publication this week!

So, I’m excited to let you know that “Diaspora” is published in the May issue of eSciFi magazine. You can currently purchase a copy directly from Barnes & Noble, and I will keep you posted as it becomes available other places, as well.

I’d be honored to hear what you think!

Swimming up the Creative Stream

Poor Amazon just doesn’t know what to make of me.

That was the discussion that I had with a colleague tonight. She was talking about a book that she is reading about working with a specific component of the Autism spectrum. We work together doing applied theatre with an agency that uses theatre to work with students on the spectrum. It’s one of the several things that I do for a living. I like being diversified. The variety is, as they say, the spice of life.

I don’t actually buy much from Amazon these days, but it was my go-to supplier for grad school textbooks, and music for a while. I’ve talked before about how I continue to receive emails for suggested purchases, ranging from theology texts to counseling texts to fiction to web development guides. I wonder sometimes if people like me don’t threaten to make the algorithms explode. We’re spread about everywhere, exploring and practicing all manner of different disciplines and craft, loving the variety and eschewing routine wherever possible. We defy compartmentalization, which is quite abrasive to a culture that is becoming increasingly boxed in concerning roles, expertise, and skill sets.

I used to have issues dealing with this. Even when I came to embrace the wildly different aspects of myself, I still felt as though I was continuously swimming upstream. It’s been quite refreshing to live in an area where a lot of creatives live very similar lives, simultaneously exploring very different pursuits.

Except that I don’t see this as a “creative” thing, at least not as the word is typically defined in regards to people. Or, maybe more to the point, I see it as a creative thing in the sense that everyone is creative. I’m such a passionate advocate of an interdisciplinary mindset because I believe that “cross-pollination” of different disciplines enhances everyone’s lives. We all grow, and we all benefit.

Of course, it’s difficult when you’re encouraged to become overly specialized and to fit yourself into a box. Many things worth having, though, are not easy.

Spend the rest of the week defying your boxes.

Photo Attribution: lovlihood under Creative Commons

Bygone Era

Bygone Era

Wait? Where Was I?

I’ve heard people ask…reputable people, and in far too many places to link to here…why American authors aren’t writing novels of the calibre that we’ve seen in “classic” literature. Many think that the quality of fiction today just can’t compare to the great writers of our history. I push back on this in a few ways. While I don’t argue that there is an objective standard for good writing (or any other art form), I think that there’s also something to be said for subjective tastes. Though I can’t fathom why, there are a lot of you out there that don’t like science fiction or comic books, and may have difficulty appreciating even the best-written of the genre. That’s a matter of taste. There are still science fiction authors that one would objectively recognize a excellent writers.

The complaints that I list above, though, aren’t typically about so-called “genre” fiction, but rather literary fiction. They also tend to be made…and this is the second place in which I push back…by ivory tower elitists. I’ve certainly been accused of being a bit elitist at times, but literature, just like any art, is there for everyone to appreciate, engage, and discuss, regardless of vocation or educational standing. Sometimes analysis and debate of literature can cause us to miss the point of a wonderful story, and, again, we can say the same for any medium of creative expression.

I have to agree, though, that it’s more difficult to generate quality work of any sort today. And, while art should be there for everyone to engage, that assumes that everyone has the attention span with which to engage it. The issue in both of these statements is the same: we’re so invasively and so easily distracted by things that draw us away from our creative efforts. Fellow-blogger and author Michelle Argyle wrote about something similar just today, when she discussed how wearying it can be to put so much of yourself out there for the world to see.

Odd how we feel that we have the right to dissect our culture’s celebrities, while using social media platforms that can potentially make any of us small celebrities in our circles of influence.

A lot of others have written about this, as well. Nicholas Carr has written about the phenomenon of how the Internet’s structure re-wires our brains in a 2008 article in the Atlantic that received a lot of traction, and also in a new book that I haven’t read, but that looks fascinating, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. I’m familiar with different studies that indicate how difficult it is to regain focus on an important task following a single distraction (is that my phone dinging?), and how this negatively impacts productivity in a corporate environment.

How much more so in the creative process, which requires sustained, focused attention to the art which is so lovingly being crafted?

Or, the book that we find progressively more difficult to read? The painting that we can’t sit still long enough to to contemplate? The child with whom we struggle to provide our full attention because of the nagging tasks competing for us within easy arm’s reach?

In a more comedic way, this says it well. We’re losing a part of our humanity as we lose our focus:

How to be a Hero?

School has finished, and the career change that was a part of my New Year’s resolutions is underway. I begin a brand new position this week, and, in the transition time between being a full-time student and re-joining the world of the 9-5, I was enjoying a long weekend.

Monday evening, some errands drew me to a local shopping mall. I’m no fan of malls, mind you, but certain things (such as needing to pick up something from the Apple Store) are enough to motivate me to go there. I had our daughter with me, but Karen was otherwise engaged, so I was trying to do what any reasonable parent would do when going solo with their child to the mall: get in, get what you need, and get out.

Let me set the scene a bit by saying that the early part of this week held an event that I was convinced I would never see in New England: warmth. That is, my definition of warmth, not the definition of those who break out summer clothes at 60 degrees here. I was finally able to comfortably wear shorts and a t-shirt for a couple of days (it went away by Tuesday, just for the record). While I was walking into the mall, I noticed a girl walking through the parking lot toward the same entrance. I say that I noticed her because she was attractive, and was dressed according to the weather. I noticed her in the way that any warm-blooded guy would notice an attractive girl, and I went on with life.

I suppose it was coincidence that resulted in her walking back out to her vehicle at the same time that I was making my escape from the mall. She was on the other side of the lane of traffic, but I noticed her again, mostly out of recognition that I had seen her previously this time. That’s when it happened.

I was going through the process of getting my daughter out of her stroller and into the car seat, which also involves moving the backpack-diaper-bag into the car, moving the stroller to the back of the car, collapsing said stroller (I use a big stroller, complete with coffee-cup-holders…no little equipment for me), loading it into the back of the car, closing everything up and then getting in myself. Yes, it’s a long process. There was a car that spotted me going through this process and, recognizing that I was about to leave, turned on its signal to claim my parking spot, valuable real estate in a packed lot. I didn’t realize until the attractive girl walked by this car on the opposite side that there were three guys in the car. They noticed the girl, as well, except they decided to let her…and the world…know about, in the form of “cat calls,” whistles, and comments that I couldn’t completely understand but that I’m sure were suggestive and demeaning. The girl kept her head up, ignored the jerks in the car, and kept walking to her own car. The look on her face, though, grabbed my attention. She was steady, but humiliated, and wanted to vanish right there. She made it to her car, and got in.

I wanted… I so wanted…to get involved in this. I wanted to tell the three of those men to quit embarrassing our gender and respect a lady. I wanted to ask them if that approach had ever seriously worked for them, and when they planned to finish elementary school. I wanted to stand up for that girl who was humiliated and hurt, because she needed someone in her corner. And, honestly, with three of them in the car and one of me, it likely wouldn’t have gone well, but she needed it and I felt that it was what a real man…as opposed to the three boys in the car…should have done. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not advocating that anyone should have escalated this to violence, but someone needed to tell them to grow up.

But, I had a 19-month-old child with me. That sort of rules out anything that could turn even remotely confrontational on someone else’s behalf.

What did I do? I used a passive-aggressive approach, slowly and methodically stretching out the process of returning my daughter and her gear to the car into a nearly five-minute-long process, until the car with the immature trio moved on in frustration. The girl squealed her tires on her way out of the lot in her one sign of defiance to her insulters.

I wish that I could have done more. These are the moments in which every one of us have a chance to be a hero to someone around us, and I couldn’t find a way to act on it. What’s more, I want my daughter to see me stand up to this sort of thing, because she needs to know that a real man would never treat her that way, and that an honorable man stands against those sorts of actions. I just have no idea how to do that with her tiny little life in my care.

So, I want to hear from you. How should I have handled this situation? What could I have done differently that would have been the right thing for everyone involved? I want to hear your thoughts, because this is the stuff of a real world in need of heroes.