Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation) https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/t1161 Runboard| Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation) en-us Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:54:15 +0000 Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:54:15 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15153,from=rss#post15153https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15153,from=rss#post15153Not exactly sure why I'm resurrecting this thread. Only excuse is that I woke up this morning thinking about the poem with which it ends, 'Stepping Out II.' Why? Earlier in the week I had a brief exchange with a gypsy, a romani. Guessing he lives in Europe but can't be sure. Certain he really is a gypsy. Too passionate not to be. Too filled with rage at the treatment gypsies have received, continue to receive, since they arrived on the Western scene about a thousand years ago. No one knows exactly why they left India. Never will. The best hunch is that they fled from the onslaught of Genghis Kan. The problem, however, is that they have never fit in, even when they've tried, which has been rare. I made the mistake of correcting the gypsy in his take on flamenco. He simply doesn't know the provenance of its roots, insisting it is wholly Romani, which it is not. But I did respond to his passionate stance. He believed in something that absolutely mattered to him. His gypsiness. I tried to tell him that, though not gypsy, I belong to the same class of poetry flamenco belongs to. The outrider class. But he couldn't hear me. I had challenged his understanding of something in his blood. His last defense was to call me a gadjo. The worst insult a Romani can hurl at someone not ethnically gypsy. Simply means non-gypsy. My point is this. There really is an outrider class of poets and it amounts to a tradition. The best definition of this class I've found reads: "There exists in poetry a tradition of outriders or night cadres, of nomads, exiles and rebels of song. Throughout history, within every literate culture, poets belonging to this lineage have emerged to articulate a brave and defiant opposition to unjust distributions of wealth, religious persecution, oppression of women, racial discord, and aggressive military exploits. Marauding armies, abusive governments, exploitative churches - these come and go across the planet like storm clouds, and in their passage cause grievous suffering. Somehow the poets who sing within the outrider tradition stay with us." The author's comments come as an introduction to the Indian poet, Mirabai. At its best the poetry of RnR belonged to that tradition. At its worst, just like the gypsies I encountered in Spain, it got commercialized. Living by the logic of the emotions is what characterizes this class. My poem points to that tradition. I made my novel to demonstrate my thesis. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:32:32 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10362,from=rss#post10362https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10362,from=rss#post10362Having posted the novel, I've been thrown back to remembering all the smaller works that led up to it in the preceding year or so. It is as if I had to chisel away at a certain thematic parcel until I could finally commit to getting the whole of it down. From memory I count at least five shorter pieces, vignettes and stories, and one poem. Here is the poem that came just before starting in on the novel. It served as a template. Stepping Out II I'm walking streets again, the night time streets of a city, in the way I walked them before I knew young life could ever hatch out the mistakes, or that dead ends and detours have the knack for bringing you back to night time rounds first set on spin. And the years must be older if the contrast concludes the sense. So long as I could say no wrong turns were taken, no first promises foresaken, no springtime presses turned sour, no sweet summers suffered to walk unwanted into cold autumn's shower, so long as these fingers could worry the shiny dime story then I could sign my name "Yours forever, truly young." It's these streets again, and walking under neon lights of a seaside city, walking in time to a rock n roll heart when tonight the heart goes hurting. And when I'm kind of wishing it would wrap itself instead inside the draperies of some school of conceit. Like maybe in poets' company of other dark-in-shadow dreamers who've followed similar streams of asphalt or brick, who have gone the way looking for parallel, even outlawed roads to more natural destinations. History manuals have them by name, if no one else seems to. Or not out here, at least, where the knowing becomes too intimate, even smacking of authenticity, not to mention a certain amount of soulful duplicity. And there is no real need to ask after these light-in-shadow lovers, since they are here beside me on another narrowing street, egging me to join their company in the low amber light of another bar. The wandering Goliards, and terrible Villons, the moon thirsty Baudelaires, the more modern Apollinaires. Those outrageously Christ-like livers of love and good times, with outraged livers pickled in wine, who've laughed at the masses from their crosses of pain, while crying in rivers over sweet cheats kept dangling before the same. And it's done no good to tell them, as we've stepped deeper into the town, they've made a mistake in tracking me down. "I'm terribly sorry, Gentlemen, but you've cornered the wrong clown. This generation, you see, has had its compliment of Christ-types, of equal opportunity moth flights, of Morrisons, Joplins, and Hendrixes, and of kings never just left alone to leave the stage with grace." It's done no good to tell them these things as we keep our conversations out on the streets again, the night time streets where first we met not all that long ago. And they've never actually listened as I've tried to show them how stupid are propositions of either/or conditions. Or of how tragedy by any name, be it Hegelian, Grecian, star stricken, even for the sake of richer Republicans, is still like putting boys in a jungle to fight a father's battles. It's as if they know it all by heart, and they'd rather try to surprise some lovely, long tailed cuckoo from behind a blind. They've just smiled drunkenly, pulled closer on the cloak of poetry and steeered us inside another rock n roll bar. It admittedly hurts my case to be seen with them on streets again. And even when we're leaving the deep dancing and deeper thinking they doggedly lead the way as we're reeling for the door. And while walking along the bayfront wall made to slake the towny fear of water, or when crossing the bridge that spans the cocaine hour before dawn, or even when we've turned back down this narrowest street like the cold and cutting sheets turned down at home, it becomes clear to see they've kept with me inside the years; and that what first had seemed like a passing conceit is the earnest game, instead, still played for keeps. And I don't really mind these streets, these night time streets of another steamy city, where fast cars speed to desperate destinations, where street people sleep beneath newspaper habitations, where businessmen waddle like geese from pond to pond, where parks are haunted by lonely men-fauns hunting spectrals of other lonely men, and where budding young girls carefully lay on their charms to carelessly make of themselves more moon-in-face than they are. It isn't that I mind these streets, walking down these streets with neon shoulders bruised and bare, except for the indigo lady I've met in whose rainbow garden a dreamer could till in dreams back under. Terreson, 1985 There it is. The novel's template. More precisely its abstract. With the notable exception of Hugh, the story's salient characters are reflected here. Certainly the novel's logic is. Both its ethos and pathos too. I remember the night the poem came to me. I was walking home from a laundromat, crossing the Bridge of Lions that connects the mainland in St Augustine to Anastasia Island. By the time I got home I had the whole of the poem's narrative visualized. I think it was the night I realized I had fallen in love with the waitress who would become the novel's Melissa and for whom I wanted to make myself clean in some stupid ass way. It's been years since I've taken the poem out of its box. I don't write like this anymore, haven't in a couple of decades. All that end rhyme and gerunding and short line stuff. The whole spectrum of poetry makers would find fault with the poem. But I know the poem works in the rules of R n R lyric poetry. And I know it thinks and feels its way through a problem. Just like the novel does. Tere nondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:56:54 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10014,from=rss#post10014https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10014,from=rss#post10014A little bummed. I should have asked for a proof reader while posting the installments. Finding typos I missed and that spell check could not have caught. A, for example, instead of And. Not many, but even one is one too many. What a drag. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:15:03 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10001,from=rss#post10001https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p10001,from=rss#post10001Last installment made. Complete novel posted. Chapter Nine. I think I am as much in love with my Melissa as I was in '87. Post entered at 2:30 A.M. It's now 6:07 A.M. Tropical Storm Lee is near abouts. Rain is general. I just watched an old Zoro movie with Tyrone Powers and Linda Darnell. I've been taken to task more than once and by more than one Fem Crit for speaking, writing in a woman's voice, as I've done here in the novel's last chapter. Crit is always the same. In words somewhat less than honest, amounting to the disingenous. Complaint always the same. How dare I speak in a woman's voice? I dare to because I know yearning and confusion and doubt and wanting. My guess is that Melissa does not go back to Richard. Not because she doesn't love him. She just might love him too much for her own good. But because she knows she needs to find the woman behind the name, Melissa. Terresonnondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:43:13 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9997,from=rss#post9997https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9997,from=rss#post9997Okay. Next installment of the novel made. Today, 2 Sep. '11. Chapter Eight is now posted in its entirety. I promised two prizes out of the chapter. Today's is the second. Every chapter has been organized around a band or performer on the stage at Tara's Place. Mostly as back up to novel's actions. This chapter is different. Band becomes the action. Band's music becomes a character. I don't know of any writer or poet who has tried to put word to sound, sentences to music. It might be impossible to do but I tried. I think it possible I succeeded. If my reader can hear the music on the strength of my words I succeeded. If not I failed. But I tried something no one else has. So far as Richard is concerned the story is over. Chapter's last paragraph makes that clear. He even goes squirrely, he who likes to think himself so clinical, a consumate observer. Just an idea he says about the story. No big deal. No shame, no blame, no hurt, no pain. What an asshole he can be. Especially when he is looking to cover himself in retreat. But I am the author of this novel. All final decisions are mine. I decided in '87 that Richard, a bit too much in mine own image, does not get the last word. I force this scrivener to read a letter over which he has no control. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:33:23 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9983,from=rss#post9983https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9983,from=rss#post9983I had meant to go to work today. I would have but for these flu-like aches. But the moment taken advantage of. Another installment posted. 1 Sept. '11. Richard's fishing scene is one of those conceptions you know you got perfectly realized. For the second time this novel has worked in the range of the objective corelative, and before I knew the term. I first worked the scene in a short story about a man coming to terms with that his wife, a woman he dearly loves, has fallen in love with another man, a good friend of his. Coming to the novel I realized it is the perfect scene for Richard coming to terms with losing Melissa. But more. For how it is any man or woman in love with beauty has to give beauty freedom. In the last post I promised a prize. This is the first of two. Chapter has 7 pages left and a second prize. After that, a sur-prize, an alternate ending. Early on in the postings Kat said she thought this is how a poet might make a novel. She is right. Terresonnondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:46:16 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9957,from=rss#post9957https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9957,from=rss#post9957There were two hard chapters to write. In some ways harder to revisit. The present chapter and the one in which Dennis gets killed. But here is the thing. How do you tell the story of living according to the rules of rock n roll emotions without taking on the blues with all defenses down? You don't. You can't. Proceeding otherwise would be both a cheat and a betrayal. It is like Saint Ringo said: you got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues and you know it don't come easy Here is a personal note with a funny twist. In the year before I started the novel I had a double loss occurring within weeks of each other, both devestating: the death of an only parent and a finalized divorce. So in a letter I am complaining to an older sister. It is one of those pity pearl me letters. Older sister writes back, in effect says: 'Cowboy up, buddy. You say you want to be a poet. How can you be if you don't live the blues?' There is no rock n roll, no music, no poetry that is not drawn on the full emotional spectrum. Just remembered something else. When finishing up the novel I wrote a poem intended to explain the novel's premise, its logic. I sent the poem to my same older sister. Mind you she does not read poetry, probably hasn't since forced to in high school. She wrote back and said it gave her a shiver. Here is how a poet can say what a novelist is forced to say in many, many words and keeping to a story line. The Greening The test, the trial, the dangerous gamut: even the perilous way. It's flinging back the sealed door and walking back down slippery stairs. It's getting lowered inside that place of incest where everything has a dreamy meaning, where meaning has the dark and dirty side; where living layers of what stays before, what must come after, keep within livid columns of fleshy time; and where, once in, a journeyer sees there is no help from the reasoning, pleasing, the self-connecxted safety leash that kept things tied in distant manner to faltering first steps taken into the bottomless hour, her midnight mansion. And so the reward: the hope: the only promise to keep said searcher going sometimes, even backing into the greening catacomb; well, it's just a slender finial, just a perfect kiss, the prize of her in morning, the unsaid sweetness. Sometimes I think I should send the novel to the morgue file and keep with the poem. I would except that I wanted to tell a certain story involving my generation for my generation. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:42:09 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9950,from=rss#post9950https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9950,from=rss#post9950Tere, Novel winding up, winding down. I don't wonder that you have put off posting this chapter; lots of loss and sadness there.nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:29:10 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9943,from=rss#post9943https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9943,from=rss#post9943I so hate a cold, almost as much as I hate the flu. I don't have the capacity for lying in bed, no matter the aches. Anyway, story telling helps to take the mind off the old body. Another installment made. The morning Richard wakes to Melissa having slipped out and to Sean's goodbye visit on his way out of town. In my experience things can, often do, happen in twos. Every step of the way my story has been built on something scared up by Rock n Roll, primarily by the emotions RnR can bring to the surface. This is true even of chapter titles. The present chapter is called Friends and Lovers. Anybody remember an old band called Bread? Before they got slick, went commercial and easy, they had one authentic album. I think it was in '69. There was a song called just that, Friends and Lovers. It is what I had in mind. friends and lovers, ever apart from the each other. They're way, your way, closing the doors and then climbing the stairways; and its over. Novel closing in on the prize. Almost there. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:34:48 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9876,from=rss#post9876https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9876,from=rss#post9876New installment up. A paragraph. A segue. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:11:00 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9809,from=rss#post9809https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9809,from=rss#post9809Thanks, Kat. Kind of glad the story catches you unaware. Up until now Melissa has almost been a chorus line kind of gal. Think on it. She isn't. It is plain she incited the story even before the reader met her. Now it is clear she has her own mind. And what about Hugh? Richard's spiritual father. That seems pretty clear. A case of double betrayal. So how is this Richard to process a case of the blues? Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:57:20 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9799,from=rss#post9799https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9799,from=rss#post9799Hi Tere, I have read your latest installment. Will need to reread it. It took me a few minutes to enter into the writing and make the connection to music in the way I think you intended. First connection made here: "or when he sets the strings of his guitar to mewing like a seagull, while all the time circling in the plainsong of his imagination until the whole room finally swallows its vertigo and can go circling with him." Then I lost the rhythm but picked it up again here, in the paragraph beginning, "A Duck Blind has already made its way through the different schools of R&B.": "the sounds that have taken them through the broken back streets of any of a number of windy cities, and out onto the freeway where a blues tune can become a steadily driven thing." Kept it then to the end of that paragraph, which is my favorite part in this installment. Ah, the ending of this section: "And Richard figures he is ready to come out of their musical thing, pick up on the skein of what went down, today, before he came into Tara’s Place. Not that it is so difficult a tale to tell, since, it only needs a few words. It is just another one of those double duty things that keeps on happening, that Richard has started to think of as a carpenter’s kind of tongue and groove fitting. Sean left, today, and Melissa is gone too. Sean made off for somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Melissa left on a refitted sailing ship, the Lord Jim, headed for the islands with Hugh. An earth turned beauty left town, today, having barely come in on a wet west wind. Gone now. Sailing out on a sailor’s jib boom." So Melissa sailed of with Hugh? I didn't see that coming.  nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:22:19 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9691,from=rss#post9691https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9691,from=rss#post9691Okay. Having procrastinated since the middle of July I've made the next installment. Chapter 8 has begun. The installment is longer than has been the case up until now. Length unavoidable. Viewed as a movement it is of a piece. If anyone is still reading I have a question. Again, novel was first penned in '87. Neither before or since have I come across a writer who has tried to transcribe music into word and image. Vachel Lindsay adopted the rhythms and cadences of jazz to punctuate his poetry. Langston Hughes sometimes did the same. Herman Hesse approached the sounds of jazz in his Steppenwolf novel. E.E. Cummings painted the sounds of jazz. But I don't know of any writer who has, so to speak, transliterated music. Or at least tried. I remember coming to the chapter. I remember thinking that talking about music is not close enough. I had to somehow express the musical means themselves. It wasn't just an ambition, though it was that. It was a matter of honest expression. Of all the music makers I followed then, my fictional band, Duck Blind, I followed closest. Decoy was the band's real name. Between breaks I got to know each of the three members. I told them what I was doing. They all knew I would use them as models. Before long, everyone in the bar knew what I was doing. In otyher bars too. If anyone minded they never said. I got to be friends with everybody. But I knew that mine was an anthropological study of sorts. While tempted nightly I never crossed a certain line. Not even with the woman whose name here is Melissa. Then, I congratulated myself for a sense of professionalism. Now, I have regrets, have to remind myself that that way of life can kill. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:05:52 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9501,from=rss#post9501https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9501,from=rss#post9501And Plutarch? Just checked. I still have a copy of his "Lives". His idea was to draw parallels between the lives of great men living in different epochs. Hey Tere, Thought you might be interested in these translations of Plutarch by A. E. Stalling, "Laconic Women": http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_plutarch.php  nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:08:30 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9430,from=rss#post9430https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9430,from=rss#post9430Well, Kat, hold onto to that sense of coming full circle. I don't know if anyone has noticed a recurring image. Tara's front door is a swinging door. It opens out and it opens in. It lets out and it lets in. I cannot think of a better metaphor for living by the rules of rock n roll emotions. And thanks for the info on the epistolary novel. Guess I hadn't traced the antecedents of the form back far enough. Not at all surprised that it was originally French in provenance. You really are missing your calling, you know. You should be a research librarian in the employ of the CIA or M15. If China woos you we are clearly screwed. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:35:28 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9425,from=rss#post9425https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9425,from=rss#post9425Hi Tere, Finished reading Chapter 7 today. Richard meeting up with Melissa again at the end gives the chapter a feeling of coming full circle. I looked up the epistolary novel in the Oxford Companion to English Literature: "A story written in the form of letters, or letters and journals, and usually presented by an anonymous author masquerading as an 'editor'. The first notable example in English was a translation from the French in 1678, Letters from a Portugese Nun. In 1683 A. Behn published Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, and many similar tales of illicit love and love manuals followed. Thus when Richardson, the first and perhaps greatest master of the form, came to write Pamela (1741) he felt a duty to to rescue the novel from its tainted reputation." So, it looks like you were right to attribute the form to the French. Looking forward to the next Friends and Lovers chapter. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:56:41 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9402,from=rss#post9402https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9402,from=rss#post9402Kat, somehow I missed your informative post involving Richardson and Lessing. Reading it only today. Sorry about that. I had forgotten about Richardson's novel. Published in 1748 pushes it back in time. I have assumed the epistolary novel to be a French invention, but maybe not. Would your friend who teaches Clarissa know? I am curious. I cannot speak to Lessing, mostly only knowing who she is and what she does, knowing also she is a thinker to be taken seriously. Interesting the comparison you make between her Golden Notebooks and the much later post-modernist experiments in narrative. It has been discussed before, perhaps too many times, but continually I think I find there is very little new, if anything at all, in those same (self-consciously?) new post-modernist experiments. You present me with another point in case. Again, sorry for the oversight. Anyway, my next chaper is called Friends and Lovers. It might be the novel's best. Always save the best for last. If not the best, certainly the most ambitious. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:10:54 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9401,from=rss#post9401https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9401,from=rss#post9401 Okay. The last installment of chapter 7 is posted. Damn hard it was to type out again, at least until after Dennis is killed. I heard something that tickled me the other day. In an interview the author says she cries everytime one of her characters die. One day her husband says to her: you mean it makes you sad when one of your characters die? She says yes. He then says to her: but you're the one who kills them. I get his point. I also get her truth. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 10 Jul 2011 16:10:15 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9394,from=rss#post9394https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9394,from=rss#post9394Okay, damn it. Kat, I don't know if I should thank you or not. I've thought on the ommitted passage tracing a cetain parallel between Sean and Richard, the two bartenders and pretty boys gotten older. I really don't want to return it to chapter two. It compromises Richard's authorial dominance of the narrative, his position as observer. But I get that without it the dynamic between Sean and Richard, the parallel that draws Richard to Sean in the first place, gets stripped. I don't want to do this. The passage makes Richard entirely too human for my taste. Let me finish the story in progress. Then I will go back, put back in the censored out pages. Sure don't want to do this. Have no choice. Well, anyway, even Goethe exposed himself in his first novel. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:40:50 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9388,from=rss#post9388https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9388,from=rss#post9388And you just touched on one of the story's puns. How can Richard get the absorptions of a late night scholar, Mr. Plutarch, if he doesn't know the ancient Plutarch's big book? A parallel. Then the parallel between Annie, pregnant and about to abort, and Sheila, pregnant and about to deliver. Between Monica and Melissa I see a parallel. Between Tara's Morning Star and the diner's sister of mercy, another parallel. I took out several pages describing the parallel between Sean and Richard. It struck me as too discursive. I might decide to put it back in. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:03:10 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9387,from=rss#post9387https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9387,from=rss#post9387And Plutarch? Just checked. I still have a copy of his "Lives". His idea was to draw parallels between the lives of great men living in different epochs. Very interesting, Tere, I did not know that. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:59:08 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9384,from=rss#post9384https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9384,from=rss#post9384Allow my language, please. But good God damn! I had not once thought of the interactive possibility! How many songs are alluded to here anyway? Dozens at least. This might drive me crazy, Kat. A dimension, being too writerly, I hadn't considered. I see you caught the other allusion. I've known that Cohen song since the early '70s. I had it in mind when making this particular diner scene. And Plutarch? Just checked. I still have a copy of his "Lives". His idea was to draw parallels between the lives of great men living in different epochs. Thank you for the input. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:12:00 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9380,from=rss#post9380https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9380,from=rss#post9380Something else. Not to give too much away but Mr. Plutarch is one of my more serendipitous creations. That Richard understands such a character rather gives him away. I am guilty of being inordinately fond of my sister of mercy too. Both characters have their models down in old St. Augustine. As I was reading the latest installment, but before I read your comment, I was thinking about the parallel between Richard and Mr. Plutarch, thinking that the reason for Richard's hesitancy in interrupting the man is the recognition of his own similar concentration and solitude when he is in a barroom writing. So, yes, "That Richard understands such a character rather gives him away." The sister(s) of mercy reference reminds me of Cohen's song, one of my favorites by him. Was thinking, too, that with the advent of the internet and youtube, this novel could now go interactive, i.e., links to the songs referenced could be put into the online text for readers/listeners to click on for context and enjoyment. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:58:02 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9363,from=rss#post9363https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9363,from=rss#post9363Thanks, Chris, for keeping with the story. Palpable? That is a high thing to say. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:54:41 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9362,from=rss#post9362https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9362,from=rss#post9362Last post was a pleasure to read, Tere. The atmosphere and the characters are palpable. Chrisnondisclosed_email@example.com (Christine98)Mon, 04 Jul 2011 19:29:18 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9359,from=rss#post9359https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9359,from=rss#post9359Something else. Not to give too much away but Mr. Plutarch is one of my more serendipitous creations. That Richard understands such a character rather gives him away. I am guilty of being inordinately fond of my sister of mercy too. Both characters have their models down in old St. Augustine. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:38:29 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9358,from=rss#post9358https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9358,from=rss#post9358Another installmet typed, then posted. One more installment finishes off chapter 7. Then one last full chapter, followed by a sort of postscript. I said last week I borrowed, or stole, from James Joyce his late night scene of two men, one older, walking the streets of Dublin. I remember how Bloom was out late that night, knowing his wife, an opera singer, was bedding with a man. And Daedalus is out late, walking, because he is young, restless, and about to leave Dublin in his self-imposed exile. Here, Hugh is out late needing to decide if he will keep on keeping on. Richard is out late, walking, trying to keep in front of pain. I've decided these many years later I've made the idea and schematic my own. I've decided something else too. This Saturday night of theirs is one hell of a night. And all true to form. Just as I remember how a Saturday night can be, can turn on itself, go unexpected. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:18:33 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9315,from=rss#post9315https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9315,from=rss#post9315Thanks, Kat. Yeah. What is behind all of Hugh's posturing comes through, I hope. A man who is built around all the beautiful scabs he has drawn in order to cover the pain. Most of us are like that, yes. I've decided Richard has a huge fault line running down the middle of him. When he starts to understand motive his tendancy is to forgive action. Tere nondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:21:30 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9308,from=rss#post9308https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9308,from=rss#post9308Hi Tere, Glad to see Hugh reappear and to get a glimpse of an unexpected side to him. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:55:31 +0000 Re: Open Faces, Opening Places ( an explanation)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9296,from=rss#post9296https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p9296,from=rss#post9296Funny, Chris. I was thinking tha same yesterday while typing it up. It is almost a story in itself, isn't it? It's got that French thing, a certain je ne sais quois. But I have to be honest about it. Once again I borrowed, or stole, from Joyce's Ulysses. From the scene when Bloom (older man) and Daedalus (younger man) meet up late in the night and walk the streets of Dublin together. Anyway, any one get how complicated the character of Hugh really is? The dumpster sequence tickles me to no end. I was in my mid thirties when I created him. I'll be 60 in a few months. Thirty years of some pretty hard living later and I have a different perspective of the man. And you ain't seen the last of him yet. Thanks again. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:53:23 +0000