Anti-Gravity Sequel (Spoiler, It’s Trash)

I must admit I’ve done a terrible thing. 

That got your attention, didn’t it? (That wasn’t the terrible thing. That was just a systems test.)

As I was saying, in a recent post I committed a disingenuity. In Did I Miss Brave New World’s Anti-Gravity Boots, I positioned Mary Shelley, George Orwell, and other stellar sci-fi creators against psychologists’ claims that science fiction is a genre of the delusional. My error? I am guilty of cherry-picking. Specifically, I drew examples only from the so-called “literary” side of the sci-fi family. 

After I hit “publish,” I felt uneasy. Over a few hours it evolved into outright guilt. As I re-read my words, I realized I had fallen into an easy trap. I had avoided the so-called “trashy” side of the sci-fi family, feeling it would play in the psychologists’ favor.

Many commentators have covered the complicated relationship of literature and science fiction. For a great discussion, check out JD Byrne’s post “Another Literary Writer Discovers Speculative Fiction.” Rather than reiterate what has already been well said, today I want to highlight a much less sophisticated topic. 

Here’s a crucial question. Why did I instinctively avoid the pulpier side of sci-fi when making the case that science fiction powerfully (and positively) shapes society? 

What is it about the critical label “trashy” that has the power to condemn an entire genre by association – so that we rush to rescue select works from it, carefully Sharpie-ing “Literature – Not Trash” across their covers and pages? 

What, exactly, is so wrong with trash? 

Merriam Webster defines trash as “something worth little or nothing,” synonymous with “junk, rubbish.” It is “inferior or worthless writing or artistic matter (such as a television show.)” 

I love trash.

Most of what I write is trash. 

It’s not limited to writing, either. I’m multi-talented. Most of what I think and say is also, objectively, trash. It’s worth nothing, at least from an economic perspective. When it comes out of my head, it’s unfinished, mostly unoriginal, and, frankly, not brilliant. And I love it when I create trash. I know that the best way to make something that isn’t trash is to produce as much trash as I possibly can, each and every day, no excuses and no breaks. When I’m not making trash I’m reading, uh, a lot of things, some of which are … trash1. 

Here’s an apparent non sequitur: art is the playground of the sciences. Here’s another non sequitur: my mother is an artist, and when acquaintances snub “modern art” she insists modern art is essential because it means artists are no longer “a slave to what is in front of them.” 

Here’s a logical leap. Trash and trashy genres2 free writers from enslavement to “good writing.” It’s possible that 99.999% of the trash produced is actually trashy. The remaining 0.001% is an infusion of life – a seepage of completely original ideas that could only arise from playing around in a trash heap, where everything mixes regardless of origin or value. The bookshelf might look like a Superfund site, but sometimes brilliance emerges.

Of course, devotees of not-trash may still reach for the Lysol. But the most enjoyable response to overly hygienic criticism is found in the words of Chilean-born multihyphenate3 Alejandro Jodorowsky, regarding his controversial film El Topo: “If you are great, El Topo is a great picture. If you are limited, El Topo is limited.” 

If you limit yourself to good writing, you’re limited. (Not even to good writing – just limited.) If you spend a lot of time letting yourself write trash, eventually you won’t write trash. You’ll write something great. The one redeeming value of trash is that it makes great soil. All the nutrients from really bad ideas, unfortunate metaphors, bland characters and scrapped sub-plots eventually recycle into rich and valuable experience. You can plant anything in it and watch it grow. 

Given that, I propose we re-label trash. Instead, it now exists as its own new genre: Compost.

Oh, and if anyone has recommendations for a good dumpster company or cleaning service – let me know in the comments. Thanks. 

1 Newspaper comics, for example. They are probably trash (or at least recyclable) – but there are strips from Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, Non Sequitur, Mutts, and Lio which have taken up permanent residence in my mental catalog. The characters and plots – even the colors and visual style – shape reactions and decisions I make to this day. There are plenty of “good” books about which I cannot say that.

2 I know, this started out with science fiction, but trash is bigger than that. It’s a conglomerate of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and sometimes romance. 

3 Alright, he’s mostly a filmmaker. But he’s also a lot of other things, including a writer, “psychomagical realist,” spiritual guru, and sometimes bit of a nut case. I highly recommend this documentary of his never-released film version of Dune.

Did I Miss Brave New World’s Anti-Gravity Boots?

A couple days ago, an article surfaced in my news feed. Its title: Fan of Sci-Fi? Psychologists Have You In Their Sights.

After ducking in case they meant “laser sights” – I was wearing a red shirt, after all – I read further because really, who doesn’t want to dig into a title like that. Submitted for your approval, the highlights are as follows.

Exhibit A: Author Ian McEwan “dismissed science fiction as the stuff of ‘anti-gravity boots’ rather than ‘human dilemmas.'” To which I say: Sir, if you have never experienced a human dilemma while wearing anti-gravity boots, yours is a sad and lonely life. The full range of human emotional is heightened to extrasensory peaks and troughs when one is elevated solely by one’s footwear several yards above the planetary surface. It gives new meaning to the phrase “pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Continuing on to Exhibit B, which is something psychologists call the “great fantasy migration hypothesis.” Yes, please, read it again. One more time for good measure. Now, doesn’t that sound like something that needs an epic soundtrack? I’m thinking a bird’s-eye-view shot of mountainous tundra. As the camera pans across the majestic landscape, the viewer sees a troop of tiny human figures trudging onward. We zoom in. Their faces are rugged yet noble. Their eyes are fixed on the far horizon. Everything they have ever called home is behind them, everyone they have ever called family is with them, everything they hope for the future is before them in…THE GREAT FANTASY MIGRATION HYPOTHESIS. COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU. Sequels definitely included, merchandising guaranteed.

We’ll assume the fandom has already abbreviated the above to GFMH, which is how it will be referred to henceforth. The plot of GFMH runs thusly: a group of young people are crushed beneath debt, underemployment, etc. Unable to bear this harsh world, they “…consequently migrate to a land of make-believe where they can live out their grandiose fantasies.”

Last I’d checked, a living wage and economic stability weren’t considered grandiose fantasies. I’ve probably been frozen in carbonite too long. The hibernation sickness is real, folks.

Ah, well, enough fun. Gavin Miller, the article’s author, is a senior lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Glasgow. His overall view is that psychologists were a bit overboard in their criticisms of the science fiction genre, and that science fiction creators’ robust responses to this criticism made science fiction better. He concludes that science fiction has become a “…literature that faces up to social reality” – a development partially owed “…to psychology’s repeated accusation that the genre markets escapism to the marginalized and disaffected.”

Mary Shelly. H.G. Wells. Jules Verne. George Orwell. Aldous Huxley. Begum Rokeya1. All of these writers were expanding science fiction as a literature of the mind, a literature of societal potential and caution, long before the psychologists started to diagnose rampant cases of sci-fi-itis2 in the 1950s.

Psychologists certainly did influence the development of the genre. All the great science fiction writers were broad in their reading and shameless in their borrowing of other fields’ best and brightest ideas. Huxley and Orwell in particular drew from contemporary psychological theories.

But good science fiction has always done more than simply “face up to social reality.” Science fiction isn’t meek. It’s not for the faint of heart (maybe that’s why the accusations of insanity fly fast and heavy around it). Read the authors above, and try not to view your fellow humans (or fellow social experiments, or fellow aliens, as the case may be) differently. Good science fiction shapes the world. It shapes humans, it shapes societies, it shapes technology. It shapes the types of government we’re able to form and willing to accept. It shows us what we could be. It teaches us childlike enthusiasm and critical self-skepticism, both necessary to move towards the future. It paints a path in words and stars. And slowly, the world wakes up, looks around, and rubs the space dust into its eyes.

As for the anti-gravity boots, I admit they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. All it takes is one loose shoelace, that’s all I’m saying.

1 Begum Rokeya was a Bangladeshi author, thinker, feminist and political activist. She is most known to English-speaking audiences for her story Sultana’s Dream, in which the traditional roles of men and women are reversed.

2 Prescription: Take two soma and call me in the morning.

Let The Cat In

When do you write? When you can’t ignore it any longer. When it sits on your keyboard like a determined cat, then trips you up about the ankles when you try to walk away. There is, in fact, no difference between a piece of writing and a cat. Both are utterly convinced of their place in the world. Both are determined; both have nine lives; and neither needs you nearly as much as you need them*. Both have claws. 

Both have that small-universe trick of turning into the thing you’re running to, when you’re running away from them. Just when you get used to having them around, they leave. Without comment, they’re gone for days or years, while you wait and wonder. 

They reappear with no explanation. They’ll never tell you where they’ve been. They reappear with strange dust in their fur, a few more scratches, and maybe one less eye. 

And sometimes, late at night, you hear birdsong. You hear whispers, scratching, sighs or sobs; it doesn’t matter, because there’s no time to wonder. You get up to let the cat in. 

Now if anyone has tips on cleaning cat hair out of a keyboard, I’d be much obliged. 

*Unless a can opener is involved; then all bets are off.

Frankenstein Writing

My friend the deli cook picked up a dead chicken and accurately jammed it down on the prongs of a metal roasting rack. 

He listened as I fumbled for words. 

“The trouble is that not everything comes at once or in the right order. It’s just bits and pieces all over the place, it’s just…a mess…it’s just…” Description failed.

He nodded sympathetically and turned back to the cart holding 23 more chicken carcasses waiting to be prepped. 

“…”

“…It’s just like Frankenstein!” I finished, triumphant. Now the words were working! “You start out with, with one kidney and an eyeball, and you have to make – the rest of the body! You never know WHAT it’s going to look like! None of the pieces seem like they’re going to match up!” 

He carefully reached into a chicken and pulled out the neck, and then a second neck.

“Sometimes I start out with one piece of writing and by the time I’m done editing it’s a completely different piece of work! You have to cut off anything that’s not absolutely essential. You have to be really ruthless, especially with your own work.”

A gushing sound interrupted my thoughts. He was draining a tray full of bloody liquid and marinade spices into the drain in the middle of the floor. 

“…Do you need help with that? No? Great. Uh, what I mean is if you haven’t planned stuff out it’s not always obvious to readers what you’re trying to say, so you have to just really get in there and work with it.” 

Chunks of ice from inside a half-defrosted chicken hit the floor drain, joining the remains of the marinade. He held up another chicken, cautiously checked inside, then pulled out more ice. 

“And there are just some pieces that never really take off.” 

“Did you remember to attach the legs?” he asked, apparently out of genuine concern. 

I looked at him. 

“Now that’s overextending the metaphor,” I said, and went back to minding my own business. 

I left him with his chickens. I’m so glad I don’t have a messy job like that. 

Thorns & Faces

The thing I love
Has thorns and faces
Endless appetite, matched by patience
Endless hearts, though the beat is off
And ellipses in Origin of Species.

Nets don’t keep it
Poison fails –
Feeds the thriving limbs, scales,
The glimpse of a grin that outgrew mirth
And its joke at eternity’s expense.

Trickster’s Bouquet

There have been times when a garden
Was the thing no one dared to say.

Chaos, endurance, change and chance – 
These grow here, a trickster’s bouquet.

What can I make out of this? It’s the question of artists and anyone who doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from; the prayer of anyone whose place in society is not secure. When you have nothing, there is exactly one thing to do: make something. 

The act of making things is a dangerous discovery. Gods are defined by the act of creation. It’s not only that they can make something out of nothing; it’s that the act of creation starts to tip the world in your favor, as if you suddenly acquire more gravity. In a way, you do. You are filling up the world with your presence, your will, your vision, and your soul. The thing about souls is they don’t get weaker from being divided. They’re more like amoebas: ripping in half is an excellent path towards strength in numbers. 

Of course you can’t just make anything. Half-hearted term papers and unwanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches won’t cut it. It has to be something you mean, something made with intent. If the rest of the world ignores it or puts up a barricade, that’s fine – as long as you make something that’s got enough depth and strength to build a world on. You will, in fact, be building a world on it: yours. So don’t make something you don’t value enough to trust with your life. 

Eventually, after enough time spent making things out of nothing, you uncover another secret. There’s a word for people who make things out of nothing. Here it is: trickster. 

When your world says you’re worthless, how do you name your own worth? Become a trickster. When there are monsters under the bed, how do you play hide-and-seek? Become a trickster. And when you look at the scales and realize they’re hopelessly stacked against you, here’s the trick: you laugh. Tricksters know that stacked scales can make an excellent catapult. 

Whether your monster is society or poverty or trauma or expectations, creation is a crucial tool with which to subvert it. Make it a caricature; turn it into a poem. Make it an abstract, and cover it up. Violate its boundaries and distort its horror into humor. When you have nothing, your world is yours to create. 

Now, what brought all this talk of tricksters out? I’ll tell you some of it. There are two culprits – both artists, both viewed with askance by their societies.

Kateryna Bilokur was a Ukrainian artist born in 1900. Her lifetime overlapped with both world wars and multiple dictatorships in a part of Europe that has always been tumultuous. The government-issued artistic aesthetic was social realism; her inspiration was flowers. Therefore she was viewed as subversive. 

But she kept painting. She made works full of such perfect color that your brain feels like singing, like the perfect harmony that comes from a resolved chord. She painted a beetroot and it glows like a treasure; her flowers fill the paper with unearthly detail that holds you mesmerized in such a way that social conformity and propaganda campaigns can’t compete. No wonder the government was afraid.

I see Bilokur’s work as a different facet of the same type of trickery put forth by the American artist Georgia O’Keefe. O’Keefe is almost comically famous in comparison – yet her outsized flowers were also viewed as subversive, worthless, audacious, and, frankly, pornographic by critics and social commentators. Like Bilokur’s work, they hold a fascination that belies their “simple” subject. It’s a glimpse at another world, a world built on the intent of tipping gravity, just a bit, towards the artist’s vision. Both artists’ work has the sort of power that comes from intent, integrity, and a belief that the power of creation will have the last laugh. 

These artists are the inspiration for the verse at the start of this post. 

For more trickery, here are some links:

Bois de Jasmin introduced me to Kateryna Bilokur’s art with this post.

View all of Kateryna Bilokur’s paintings online here.

My thoughts on tricksters, artists, and acts of creation owe much debt to Lewis Hyde and his book, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art. It’s a richly enjoyable read, especially the chapters on the Winnebago Trickster Cycle. 

Oranges Or Secrets?

I can give you oranges or secrets – 
Frankly, the orange is a better pick. 
It glows like a treasure when it’s opened
But secrets only look like treasure when they’re kept.

Not A Comfortable Beast

My Emily says “Hope is the thing with feathers,”
But my rage is a thing with teeth. 
It eats the news for breakfast –
Not a comfortable beast
Nor known for good conversation. 
The neighbors stay away
But it howls the tune I’m dying to say,
Shreds the papers dictating the day,
Scores the walls –

And growls, there’s work to be done. 

Would you argue? 

Two exceptional writers pointed me in the direction of these words. 

First, I owe a debt of thanks to Emily Dickinson for her poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers”. View the original here.

Second, Siri Hustvedt argues for the use of the first person possessive to claim artists’ intent in her essay “My Louise Bourgeois” (A Woman Looking At Men Looking At Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind). In her words, quoting (appropriately) Emily Dickinson: “When Emily Dickinson read about the death of George Eliot in the newspaper, she wrote the following sentence in a letter to her cousins: ‘The look of the words as they lay in the print I shall never forget. Not their face in the casket could have had the eternity to me. Now, my George Eliot.’”

Emotions are simple creatures and not to be trusted. Also, emotions are complex creatures and not to be trusted. 

Both of those are true, to the extent that neither is quite true. Truth and trust aren’t necessary for something to motivate action, though I wish it were so.

Some people, I hear, are motivated by emotions like love, compassion, and kindness. It is an understatement to say I would like to be one of them. My life would be a calmer place. As it is, I have apathy, isolation, and rage. Of the three, anger shows the most promise for getting anything done. But it is not known for its peaceful coexistence with good judgement. Therefore, the great question I face each moment is: How do I create something constructive out of this?

In myths, the act of naming something tames it. In life, the act of speaking something shapes it. My particular creature is not a comfortable beast to live with. But we know each other well. When it growls, I’ve learned to listen. When I speak, it gives me some sort of truth. And when we hear singing, we both sit still and listen to the thing with feathers.

Blame Writers, It’s Safer Than Blaming the Dragons

Dragons and writers can’t escape each other.

It’s not just that a dragon is a reliable addition to any story. It’s that writers and dragons are the same thing. They collect bits of the world*. When someone – an editor or English teacher or upstart hero – finally wrangles the mass of accumulated stuff away from them, the whole is recognizably different than the sum of its parts. With luck, it’s now classifiable as “treasure” (or “a first draft”).

In their quest, both seek unknown territory. Dragons are synonymous with those parts of the map where the cartographer gave up. Oh that’s good enough, they said: “Here be dragons.” Writers, unlike cartographers, can’t just add some colored shapes and go home**. They have to write themselves out of whatever corner they wrote themselves into – and where better to look for an unexpected plot device than the unknown? “Here be dragons” indeed. 

But the last two paragraphs are just a roundabout way to get around to the idea of treasure, and all the things treasure stands in for. I blame dragons and writers because, in my experience, they’re usually where the trouble starts. The writers make the dragons and the dragons make the treasure. The treasure ends up in children’s books, and the children perk up their ears and listen because children love dragons. 

Children love dragons for two reasons. Dragons are Cool – which is another way of saying their powerful ability to reshape the world is the stuff that every child craves – and they are indelibly linked to treasure. And children also love treasure***. 

It’s not a mercenary reaction. Children understand that treasure is not defined by market value. The idea of “treasure” becomes meaningless once you separate out the individual pieces; it’s allure comes from the aggregate, the endless juxtaposition of textures, colors, and shapes in which to immerse yourself. 

The people who write children’s books understand this, and I can prove it. Picture a treasure chest. I can tell you exactly what’s in it: a pile of gold-colored coins, loose gemstones and jewelry scattered throughout, and at least one gold chalice partially visible. There may also be a crown. The whole thing emits a vaguely gold-colored glow, like a nightlight. 

That’s the treasure chest you saw in your mind every time someone said “treasure” in a book. That’s the treasure chest in the picture books your parents read you. Writers understand that one way to ensure a rapt readership is to include a treasure. And do you want to know why treasure is such an undeniable hook?

Picture your treasure chest again. I bet you thought about finding it yourself, and I bet you thought about keeping it. Maybe you planned how your life would be different if you had that treasure: you could live in a castle, or with dinosaurs. The point is, every good treasure is made up of four parts. 

First: gold. Lots of it. Self explanatory, really. 

On to the second part: treasure is indivisible. No one pictures “a piece of” treasure. “Treasure” is always composed of things massed to the point where the individual items are subsumed into the richness of the whole. 

Third, a treasure is a thing to be wanted. That’s deceptively obvious, and I’ll return to it in a moment. 

Fourth, people want treasure because it has the power to transform a world. Once you hold treasure, you hold the power to transform the world into your world. That’s why every child wants it, why every writer wants it (dragons, remember), and why every adult wants it too. Everyone wants to shape the world in their favor.

The reason everyone wants to shape the world in their favor traces back to the third point, the one about wanting things. 

In stories, treasure is the thing everyone wants: the focus. In real life, treasure stands in for the things people want, the things they can’t quite focus on because of the life around them. Call it greed, call it desire; neither is really correct. It’s more of an urge and a compulsion, and it isn’t about an object at all. I’d say the feeling is like sugar ants under your skin****, but it’s less of a defined itch, tickle, or tingle, while having characteristics of all of those. It’s more of a diffuse-but-definite state of being. It’s a crazy frustration and sadness at all the things for which you’ll never know satisfaction, and sometimes, secretly, you don’t mind it at all. Sometimes, secretly, you know it’s the best proof you’ll ever come across that you’re alive. 

Treasure stands for the things people want. That’s obvious. But what’s not so obvious is this:  people need to want things. Specifically, people need to want unfulfillable things. Treasure is the perfect stand-in because it actually does seem fulfillable: we all have a picture in mind, a perfect treasure chest that glows like a nightlight. We’ll know it when we see it. And in the meantime, we’ll learn how wide the world is, how many places treasure could be hiding. We’ll learn how to look for things, and we’ll learn how to see both what’s in front of us and what’s a million miles away. 

Did you ever read the Calvin and Hobbes comic books? They’re for children, and they’re written by a dragon masquerading as an author named Bill Watterson. The title of one of the books is There’s Treasure Everywhere.  The trick is to know how to look without finding it. 

*Further proof: both are noted for their tendency towards grumpiness and drastic reactions to being disturbed.

**I spent the summer taking a cartography course, and this is so far from true I choked as I typed it. Writers have a far easier time of it. All they have to contend with is writers’ block and editing, whereas cartographers have to make sure stuff is actually where they say it is in case someone, you know, checks. 

*** Most children are, in fact, tiny dragons. Anyone who has met a two-year-old understands this. 

****Don’t Ask.

If You Give Me Your Words

If you give me your words I’ll make them a galaxy;
I can’t help it. I hear nebulae in your voice
And a supernova in every consonant.

And if you ask if my head is in the clouds
I’ll just smile and write it down.