tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21101248415900976852024-03-12T18:42:52.305-07:00SLOGAN Blog - Claire McDougallClaire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.comBlogger371125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-64134055331779210112024-03-11T10:01:00.000-07:002024-03-11T10:01:42.137-07:00Publishing<p style="text-align: justify;">In the year 2008, Paul Harding, musician and sometime author, sent his manuscript Tinkers to a very small publishing house in what had once been the Bellevue mental hospital in New York City. This wasn't his first submission, but dogged rejection after rejection had followed all the others. Authors of all stripes know how this story goes: the optimistic envelopes that go out, the dreaded months of waiting, the judgement by faceless gatekeepers that "your book is not right for our list." Stupid lists. It's a gruelling process, second only to the endless lines of prospective divas wrapped around audition halls in New York. The underlying irony of all of this, you realise sooner or later, is that you can't get noticed if you haven't already been noticed. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouSdZvYGVs9455PqBYNx2Yg9dumROIVX79G9ebi6UkQzvIUri7tWNUdObOHnmvtS4ClOCDE6wc8vE1j3d6eipFI7cS7BTwy94nedPl_swV5czFb3OvjN7F6VpFjdvmnlaYmpWCYln7GEuqfmgDxFqrSQPARVbaQ7bP0XlORkcY0_fUNA92ynpglvVOCvd/s162/images-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="98" data-original-width="162" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouSdZvYGVs9455PqBYNx2Yg9dumROIVX79G9ebi6UkQzvIUri7tWNUdObOHnmvtS4ClOCDE6wc8vE1j3d6eipFI7cS7BTwy94nedPl_swV5czFb3OvjN7F6VpFjdvmnlaYmpWCYln7GEuqfmgDxFqrSQPARVbaQ7bP0XlORkcY0_fUNA92ynpglvVOCvd/w296-h178/images-1.jpeg" width="296" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">So, imagine Paul Harding in one of these lines, having his expectations cut off at the knees. Doors slammed in his face, and all that jazz. I have been in these lines myself for much of my writing career, most writers have. And anyone who has seen the portrayal of publishing houses in the recent film "American Fiction," understands how accurate the portrayal of the whimsical powers that order this. I can see them taking a look at "Tinkers" and tossing it aside. Not right for our list, or more damning: no market for this book. Because this kind of puts the period at the end of your aspirations: not only is your great literary effort not worthy of this publishing house, it doesn't stand a chance within the literary world as a whole. </span></div><p>I studied with Paul Harding one summer, because I had read Tinkers and knew I had something to learn there. I barely ever pick up contemporary literature, but this one had me hook, line and sinker. The craft was outstanding. But it was a little too stream-of-consciousness, a little Faulkneresque, perhaps, for modern tastes. It wasn't like anything else on the shelves at the time, and those editors in fancy or not even fancy publishing houses no doubt judged it held no click bait value. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3fDiYjgJoBdISuxaQolIrMsyrVvFbrgtkH_fPpyc9GUUByFP7oMbrPM8wTCnP43KXU9ImVMeDW3ERdQak-XWND5s2E4Q0Z7d90lvH3yVhOziRc31YMUdxx-1KguhDxBdXrsQa8JgLSsFMhpbA2jXGyF1NQoRB02_GfUDT-AYGBM-av0pu2eRM9svp1f9/s140/images-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="140" data-original-width="140" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3fDiYjgJoBdISuxaQolIrMsyrVvFbrgtkH_fPpyc9GUUByFP7oMbrPM8wTCnP43KXU9ImVMeDW3ERdQak-XWND5s2E4Q0Z7d90lvH3yVhOziRc31YMUdxx-1KguhDxBdXrsQa8JgLSsFMhpbA2jXGyF1NQoRB02_GfUDT-AYGBM-av0pu2eRM9svp1f9/w237-h237/images-1.jpeg" width="237" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">My story is that I have stood in all those queues for an opportunity to publish my books. I would get to the front of one line and then have to try another. And another. After a while, a person just runs out of steam. My big break came when an editor at Simon and Schuster thought I was going to be the next Diana Gabaldon and took me on with Great Expectations. However, I was not the next Diana Gabaldon. I could have told them that if they had asked what auience my book was aimed at. Publishing day came and went. The numbers didn't stack up, and so I was turned from prospective big bucks into an author that had failed the algorythm. They wouldn't entertain the sequels to the first book. The door had opened for a moment, and now it was shut. Thank you, ma'am. Not a sob story. That's just the way it goes in the world of corporate arts. </span></div><p>Just to say, I understand the despair, the dispondancy Paul Harding must have felt when no one in the publishing world would give him the time of day. Until, one day, five years later, they did. Not corporate publishing, but a tiny publishing house in a building that used to house what society deemed its refuse. The irony is not lost here. But that was a very good day for Paul Harding and an even better one for Bellevue Publishing. Before it even came out, Tinkers was being noticed. Fifteen months later, it had won the Pulitzer prize. </p><p>So, there you go. A success story, a little display of literary justice for someone who has spent most of her career gazing through the publishing shop window. I have a book coming out in October called "Mrs. McPhealy's American." It had failed with the publishing powers that be, just like Tinkers. In fact, in my book, there are even Tinkers (of the Scottish variety that lived on the shores of Scotland when I was growing up, not the kind of tinkerers in Harding's book.) I put my book back on the shelf I reserve for my unpublished works, and there it sat for years until last year Sybelline Press picked it up and opened their door. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlhQTzqHP0mW-rQ9Arz7eYr4-luL7GiRE_Izxg-UlTXKz93qFFMr4lcHShET5PfvNzX1SWJFJhY_euFprGC-iqgmqSG2P66ZdzBOR18c19hzeHYBOYx_YgOds-2SuwHYCGM0OjFAxXYzUc6eEtuX49Vs5hyphenhyphen2BbxVsWs0SHy2IryrVXmVxsKXwir1SpwOz/s140/images-2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="140" data-original-width="91" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlhQTzqHP0mW-rQ9Arz7eYr4-luL7GiRE_Izxg-UlTXKz93qFFMr4lcHShET5PfvNzX1SWJFJhY_euFprGC-iqgmqSG2P66ZdzBOR18c19hzeHYBOYx_YgOds-2SuwHYCGM0OjFAxXYzUc6eEtuX49Vs5hyphenhyphen2BbxVsWs0SHy2IryrVXmVxsKXwir1SpwOz/w171-h262/images-2.jpeg" width="171" /></a></div><p>I am not saying that "Mrs. McPhealy's American," is on its way to a Pulitzer. The powers that govern that universe are as whimsical as the publishing world itself. Just to say that despondent authors shouldn't be blinded by the bright lights. Corporate America has made a mess of most things. The arts is only one branch of that destructive outgrowth. So, thank God for the small publisher, the independent book seller, the people with integrity who are trying to keep the flame of good art alive. Every writer with something to say and the craft to say it owes them a great debt.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKimvart2vEALulGIkhpbKHGDKCc3J1KghrFmxnA6zYLEnoXxunLb7hyD1f3jufYcZvLfGjWWuBP9mYUoHAtUsnYtE9llSs6r8c8FAFvPL2tuONHk-tCowP0qCNkAzdT3_RDmprh5ka3sBPazYZoHYEuAz11Zk63lNYclzYSNk1mUTkTRACJjP3WtsBij6/s600/300962035_114775684676344_6166777760659963709_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKimvart2vEALulGIkhpbKHGDKCc3J1KghrFmxnA6zYLEnoXxunLb7hyD1f3jufYcZvLfGjWWuBP9mYUoHAtUsnYtE9llSs6r8c8FAFvPL2tuONHk-tCowP0qCNkAzdT3_RDmprh5ka3sBPazYZoHYEuAz11Zk63lNYclzYSNk1mUTkTRACJjP3WtsBij6/s320/300962035_114775684676344_6166777760659963709_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-84020392639036304302023-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:002023-09-22T12:34:43.188-07:00Cyprus Part Two<p>After a fair amount of island hopping in the Caribbean, I have come to the conclusion that I have had enough of post colonial islands. Presumably they once all had an indigenous population and a culture of their own but that was before the British Empire marched in and robbed them of both. But the cultural wasteland of the caribbean in the wake of colonial takeover is not unique to the Americas. Cyprus bears the same hallmarks. These days, like its cousins in the Caribbean, Cyprus doesn't seem to know who it is. In the restaurants you can order hummus and souvlaki, not to mention fish and chips.</p><p>Like these other wandering island identites, it has come down to a dependence on tourism. In days of yore, Cyprus was the copper center of the ancient world. It used to be a Mecca for devotees of Aphrodite. Now it is home to a large British ex-pat population that likes foreigness to a small degree but is much more comfortable with creating its own Little Britain of the Aegian. Thus, it joins Mallorca, Tenerife, Malta, all these former territories struggling to remember what they were before. Scotland enjoys something of the same dilemma. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRTQ08qNOKyFK9TwJXTB4lbwG2oIHu1VMISOKhk6zkotvuRhx3_ua4MD7dMzR4xEoD3mKzn4ZlbdsTVY40sgSJyMzfMaKl-86P_VSIekqnS47bn7bERffITe8EXDxu2GbyTH-Iq5XJIHEHDGykgN0jVxI-ok_z5WmQMLhJkJbz7iH9mJetNvxeUEZ2bge/s140/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="112" data-original-width="140" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRTQ08qNOKyFK9TwJXTB4lbwG2oIHu1VMISOKhk6zkotvuRhx3_ua4MD7dMzR4xEoD3mKzn4ZlbdsTVY40sgSJyMzfMaKl-86P_VSIekqnS47bn7bERffITe8EXDxu2GbyTH-Iq5XJIHEHDGykgN0jVxI-ok_z5WmQMLhJkJbz7iH9mJetNvxeUEZ2bge/w284-h228/th.jpeg" width="284" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I didn't know what to expect when my plane touched down in Paphos, Cyprus. In my youth, I spent a few months wandering around the Greek isles, but this was not that. Greece has never doubted its own worth . If you go to Greece, you get Greece. Of course, my youth was a long time ago, and things may have changed, but there is so much uninterrupted history there. Wherever Greeks roam, they take Greece with them. The blood is strong.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhHNcl5Lc7htTaSsDKyVb95l3V21g5nJXnSeQyweY-dxl7X0VDPL5-Y4GD_dTyjM35TEJ7XDT9-fD0RyyuzpRn4cYm8nnthoREv-Z5Ytj64yFgbyv9Yz3vszL1R6Jl2StmhK0H7t1H3jMGgR2NEk6SDJUFsdy0l5IJGOGMwU7fWwLfY13eEcd4gf-cCJgX/s166/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="98" data-original-width="166" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhHNcl5Lc7htTaSsDKyVb95l3V21g5nJXnSeQyweY-dxl7X0VDPL5-Y4GD_dTyjM35TEJ7XDT9-fD0RyyuzpRn4cYm8nnthoREv-Z5Ytj64yFgbyv9Yz3vszL1R6Jl2StmhK0H7t1H3jMGgR2NEk6SDJUFsdy0l5IJGOGMwU7fWwLfY13eEcd4gf-cCJgX/w348-h205/th.jpeg" width="348" /></a></div><br /><p>But Cyprus, in the spaghetti junction of East meets West, has, through the ages, passed from hand to hand, and no one really knows anymore who the first hands belonged to. Some say the Minoans, others some pre-Greek culture with remnants scattered in language and vestiges left in some traditions. The pre-Greek religious icons are of a different type: their goddess is not what would morph into Aphrodite of the sexy bum. The ancient icon is more primal, a nurturing mother figure with outstretched arms. A sort of cross. Perhaps the first.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBgwwf7AmEhQhQu7pBb-z6-9abNhXAM83pG6HzbI-0fCN8nXraRvHfav5BB_iv_ozdI-MURBpLkkpBzzCU3X9fHOHKY2tU10WAslmDZYw9yxxrAN-VtJNgDQY6c22ZUIKfBY5gbvsq5xXIWSooNhIgDmDcpXXawewEAxj5pU3tW49HcX4pIl_FOf3xA19S/s180/th-2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="120" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBgwwf7AmEhQhQu7pBb-z6-9abNhXAM83pG6HzbI-0fCN8nXraRvHfav5BB_iv_ozdI-MURBpLkkpBzzCU3X9fHOHKY2tU10WAslmDZYw9yxxrAN-VtJNgDQY6c22ZUIKfBY5gbvsq5xXIWSooNhIgDmDcpXXawewEAxj5pU3tW49HcX4pIl_FOf3xA19S/w169-h254/th-2.jpeg" width="169" /></a></div><br /><p>Empires are a very regrettable development in human civilisation (or lack thereof.) The more recent ones were made possible by a 15th C papal bull that encouraged subjucation of the heathen. An empire, by its very nature, has already taken the arrogant step of declaring superiority over anything that is not itself. For this, Christianity has a lot to answer for. Not that takeovers didn't happen before, but the British one was more extensive, and, backed by the church, went under the guise of a type of nobility. These days the wastelands of the former British Empire suggest otherwise. Once a colony, it seems, and like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never really leave.</p><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-11964967321149375742023-06-14T08:30:00.000-07:002023-06-14T08:30:04.362-07:00CYPRUS Part One<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I was just in Cyprus, doing research for a book. Every time I go to a place to do this type of research, somewhere along the way, I seem to lose one protagonist and gain another. This book is the second in a series. The first took place in Israel, so I went to work there a few years ago to get a sense for the place. I was going to write a novel about Mary Magdalene, so I signed up to work at a Catholic mission on the shores of Galilee in the very town of Magdala where Mary, or Miriam in her native Aramaic, lived. I am not a Catholic. Neither am I a Christian of any stamp. But in my youth, I was. My father was a minister, and so I grew up entrenched in the Christian narrative. That is something very hard to shake, even when you are a radical student and you believe Nietzsche is nothing if not a misunderstood prophet. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VfmXIRwrH6-DHwLmQd8kPIuBIH03b0CfD27XTE9g3lma5yD6jpK9LeLpVN2dbcPCSrdfc8HaB7CpIo3tyyPp-CdeJx0BxcCLeSx__Bps0f8JKC04VjunsrZkqD4XtzF3yV6vbzzjk8r_Ltcv_OvLsniSF542p5ISGW1GPjF1f-Y9DPgoUnn4kzn9Lg/s115/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="115" data-original-width="85" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VfmXIRwrH6-DHwLmQd8kPIuBIH03b0CfD27XTE9g3lma5yD6jpK9LeLpVN2dbcPCSrdfc8HaB7CpIo3tyyPp-CdeJx0BxcCLeSx__Bps0f8JKC04VjunsrZkqD4XtzF3yV6vbzzjk8r_Ltcv_OvLsniSF542p5ISGW1GPjF1f-Y9DPgoUnn4kzn9Lg/w165-h224/th.jpeg" width="165" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But Mary Magdalene is interesting. In the gospels, she is one of the wealthy women who supported the ministry of this Jesus character. Let's call him Yeshua, because that was his name. Yeshua Ben Yosev. The church, in its inimicable way, managed to take this woman and equate her with a prostitute in some other story. She was a woman in a patrarchy, for God's sake, and therefore suspect. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6nWiBH27mwcKN4DP6TihIjXTE7s7HWWw32d7-0m4dSt1XrDx4uA-stFj-iBlP0ik0FBuJISXmUkrFdwhualIi_50Rkvnw-RyuZrbyEY-IsC1luSS2wX2C2Z_KfyHjVy7P9pV3LT0r4RB7zoicHevew8_WXDCzRWTjF8Kqri2AL4bED-v4rWIKgEuXQ/s180/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="128" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6nWiBH27mwcKN4DP6TihIjXTE7s7HWWw32d7-0m4dSt1XrDx4uA-stFj-iBlP0ik0FBuJISXmUkrFdwhualIi_50Rkvnw-RyuZrbyEY-IsC1luSS2wX2C2Z_KfyHjVy7P9pV3LT0r4RB7zoicHevew8_WXDCzRWTjF8Kqri2AL4bED-v4rWIKgEuXQ/w148-h208/th-1.jpeg" width="148" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><p>I digress. This Catholic mission did not allow me, as a heathen protestant, to attend mass in Magdala, which took place every morning for the workers and the consecrated people that lived in the compound. So, instead, I would wander down the path through tall reeds to the shores of Galilee and walk along the water's edge. You know, it was surprisingly like a Scottish loch, with hills and a few houses. And even though I didn't find Mary Magdalene there, I did find Yeshua, and so I wrote a novel about his life, as much as possible trying to discard the religious dross and come up with a human story.</p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That was that book. Now I am embarking on a serial, because I can't let this thing go, my need to make sense of how we came to this juncture in the West (but really more than just the West, because Islam might not have happened if it hadn't been for this other evangelical religion expanding at full speed on the wings of the Roman Empire.) How have we come to a place where Jesus has become an instrument of division, when the mission of Yeshua was precisely the opposite? Really, very quickly Christianity went off the rails. It wasn't very long before people were killing in the name of this "mountain, field and lake preacher." This man who taught the primacy of compassion has become a paradigm of "us against the rest." A violent paradigm at that.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwiKfLWGA1U4X3MYhy9HdBMIV9qnhgu2ozjo2Kf1xpCHrOyhcjQxD_JSYV0dmJac4yJtGlUQaN1GwmeIhLp-PjMsR7y4YwPJLBjm1LCOs6-l0HH_Cdcu_QOZHCNFysyORrDwL9PB6ATV_9mgHZh7MLFZfrYW8HYdpaDEvrLojruSK7wweyGBoInK0FOA/s157/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="118" data-original-width="157" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwiKfLWGA1U4X3MYhy9HdBMIV9qnhgu2ozjo2Kf1xpCHrOyhcjQxD_JSYV0dmJac4yJtGlUQaN1GwmeIhLp-PjMsR7y4YwPJLBjm1LCOs6-l0HH_Cdcu_QOZHCNFysyORrDwL9PB6ATV_9mgHZh7MLFZfrYW8HYdpaDEvrLojruSK7wweyGBoInK0FOA/w232-h174/th.jpeg" width="232" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><p>Scripture can take some of the blame for this, and here's where my new novel comes in. Take the first gospel in the New Testament, which is widely agreed to be Mark. He wrote it around 75 C.E. He had not known Yeshua. He spoke Greek, not Hebrew. He didn't seem to know about the geography of Israel. He didn't come from there, but he wanted to put in writing all those stories about Yeshua that had been circulating for decades. Mark doesn't have a virgin birth in his narrative. No shepherds washing their socks by night. No We three kings. Mark ends his story with three women (our Miriam being one) coming to the tomb, finding it empty and fleeing. They tell no one. End of story. Later scribes stepped up and put that right for him. </p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I went to Cyprus to find Markus, the writer of the first gospel (no-one knows where he wrote it, so Cyprus, the crossroads of East and West, seemed as good a place as any.) Who I found there was someone else from that time period, an older woman who tends the shrine at Aphrodite's Temple in Paphos. Marcus is going to be woven into the story, of course, just as Miriam was in the first book. The shrine to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, had been there since 12thC BCE, until the Christians came in and replaced her with their own symbol of Love, a male figure. The ruins of the shrine remain for tourists to wander among, which is what I was doing in Cyprus, knowing that somehow, with words as my only tool, I was going to have to rebuild it. </span></p><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-80137153971555945672023-02-21T08:44:00.000-08:002023-02-21T08:44:02.800-08:00Getting Out of the Way of Your Own Writing<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">February 2023</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">There is a romantic tradition predominant in the West that favours seeing the artist (not just writers but artists of all types) as this:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzd2azhNnRGAxtbK7ObDrDhcwcu6_bL_JZTemd7F0BDGMy6oSAmg7QXROo7MJ3cixpJZThZo5Xj4GGPK81KAbZwfXkvQkF7nDzdTGotsIaCkimOcVmkWPlX0kkNTy-7G60Qn_F6Hs_TF-aR5aIh5xAxJDIHvNUHS4RYYRx00ICCNn9QX2eqy_UPUTXA/s474/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzd2azhNnRGAxtbK7ObDrDhcwcu6_bL_JZTemd7F0BDGMy6oSAmg7QXROo7MJ3cixpJZThZo5Xj4GGPK81KAbZwfXkvQkF7nDzdTGotsIaCkimOcVmkWPlX0kkNTy-7G60Qn_F6Hs_TF-aR5aIh5xAxJDIHvNUHS4RYYRx00ICCNn9QX2eqy_UPUTXA/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>It is a picture of the solitary artist, stripped down to the grimmest self, tearing art out in the way a harakiri warrior rips out his own entrails. The author in this paradigm is divided within himself, tormented and always trying to dodge the oncoming train of writer’s block. The unbearable weight of dragging art out of him or herself takes its toll and thus we have the tradition in the West of writers and heavy drinking.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Examples are legion: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Twain, Steinbeck, Poe, Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver, John Cleever, Hunter Thompson, Anne Sexton and Dylan Thomas who literally drank himself to death in one sitting. </span><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">“Write while you’re drunk,” Hemingway famously said, “Edit sober.”</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">But to look at art in this way is to disconnect the artist </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">from the creative process itself. The desired result is seen as out beyond the self and only under unusual circumstances (as with the help of a bottle) do the two come into happy coalition. It is my contention that t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">he very first step into writer’s block is this disconnection of the writer from the field of creativity, what we sometimes call "the flow." It is out at this distance, that the Hemmingway cycle kicks in.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2-W7JAFqmPZGT1qfk7H2fFB1nfsM3rCC7nFaPAKCfw_UnHVZwjnvx3AGY26Q-Qr213brIHwG55fjTeCXNrUhK75NYzPiwZVdbVBcixfN4NcrkbSLMFrXuXT0T9w3fGLYQpxiEunoIvXaz9ZHQ3ppqXvJjZgsdGLenD5a_MUAA7ds8n_KL_p1nUIkKgg/s474/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="474" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2-W7JAFqmPZGT1qfk7H2fFB1nfsM3rCC7nFaPAKCfw_UnHVZwjnvx3AGY26Q-Qr213brIHwG55fjTeCXNrUhK75NYzPiwZVdbVBcixfN4NcrkbSLMFrXuXT0T9w3fGLYQpxiEunoIvXaz9ZHQ3ppqXvJjZgsdGLenD5a_MUAA7ds8n_KL_p1nUIkKgg/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">"Edit sober." But, out here, we are easy prey for a type of creative schizophrenia. We compare ourselves and our work to others. We even compare ourselves to ourselves: to how we have sounded before, how we ought to sound. We encounter the dreaded block because we start reaching for an outfit </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">instead of settling into our naked selves. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">There is a different way to view the creative process, however, a better paradigm:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> <i>“The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “mensch” in a higher sense – he is “collective man” – one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.” </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Carl Jung wrote this many decades ago, but it is an approach that goes a long way to dispelling the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">image of the tortured artist. If the creation of art is not all up to you and your “creativity,” then a huge burden is lifted off your shoulders. On this model, if you’re facing writer’s block, you’re simply standing in your own shadow. What you have to do is to step around, face the sun and not block it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">I think that through the ages musicians have recognised this model of creativity better than their literary counterparts. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Beethoven saw the role of the artist as “disseminating divine rays among mankind.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Brahms claimed that he received his art in a flow direct from God. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Elgar wrote the main theme for his cello concerto on a napkin after waking up from surgery.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Paul McCartney claims he dreamed the melody for “Yesterday,” the most recorded song in history, and it took him a while to allow himself to claim it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">James Taylor describes songwriting as a “Mysterious and uncontrolled process.” “I don’t know much about God,” he says, “But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjpS3PoIpJf0MwMNS_94LkB84OYbng02-bdt1ty6cG3xyVr74gIidR0Aryq3a8w0OlqYNGXlxlRlTe6z9p0_YcJFrbWd68HvAK1MrXVrspIQAjGRe6nR9yknV_qrEzpnLOitVsNHZ1mtUGPMkoNJOidZ4pdfMcjwkG5Z9ueLmV2HwNfvspxwb144wbQ/s474/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="474" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkjpS3PoIpJf0MwMNS_94LkB84OYbng02-bdt1ty6cG3xyVr74gIidR0Aryq3a8w0OlqYNGXlxlRlTe6z9p0_YcJFrbWd68HvAK1MrXVrspIQAjGRe6nR9yknV_qrEzpnLOitVsNHZ1mtUGPMkoNJOidZ4pdfMcjwkG5Z9ueLmV2HwNfvspxwb144wbQ/s320/th-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">So, if this underbelly <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">of what James Joyce called </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">“The uncreated conscience of my race," is</span> available to all and particularly to the artist, the question becomes: how do we go about connecting ourselves to it?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">First of all we have to see that we are not separate from it but are an integral part of the field itself. Everything we need to write down or slap on a canvas or put into song is already contained within us. I think the key here is listening, deep listening.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Of course, in our culture we are bombarded with sense stimuli and so we have learned to surface-listen, just as we surface see and surface evaluate. What is lacking is stillness, not something our culture favours. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuDgsZnPL2w1ZOE-He5CWMiEtA3bpbA2VthY5dRWVbEEOmSy3_vnX56uOjCQb727YwJF915m9iOGSndq5oT0nWLGleE9p6-Y7JtlmWOrMLXMy4IxGF4WzKTDYAS3RmEZT0voc-sx0D5HbBVJfvMS94yB1QmteXfOZvuBbhb6JjWhMF0d1tJZIHCGvecg/s474/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="474" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuDgsZnPL2w1ZOE-He5CWMiEtA3bpbA2VthY5dRWVbEEOmSy3_vnX56uOjCQb727YwJF915m9iOGSndq5oT0nWLGleE9p6-Y7JtlmWOrMLXMy4IxGF4WzKTDYAS3RmEZT0voc-sx0D5HbBVJfvMS94yB1QmteXfOZvuBbhb6JjWhMF0d1tJZIHCGvecg/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>Creating art is not i</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">nvention, but reflection. You hav</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">e to let go of the reins, and, when things go quiet, listen, and then listen even harder. It is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">not a lack of skill </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">that is missing in the sufferer of writer’s block. It is the art of listening. When you open yourself and listen, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">you are becoming the kind of channel that Jung is talking about.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Let me cite a couple of trivial examples of recent writers who have done this (even without realising it) : <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">When JK Rowling was sitting in that dingy little café in Edinburgh Scotland writing down what must have seemed at the time this whacky story of muggles and wizards, she had no notion at all of what this story was going to amount to. The key was that she was following what arose spontaneously out of her. What she was channeling was “the uncreated conscience” of her race.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">Wonder and magic are so innately human, that you can only suppress it for so long. JK Rowling sitting in her Edinburgh café was willy nilly tapping into this Vesuvius of feeling; what she was countering was the long-held Christian fear of the pagan. But who would have thought? She wouldn’t have thought it, when Harry Potter was getting rejection after rejection from publishers. Who would have thought that this silly story about wizards and speaking hats and flying cars would go on to sell 450 million copies in 73 languages? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Q-nBsOsBki_U7MqT8dFaUUt-50mOnf-n-DCsHszaCNElM1GRZBzvCbBH12__-DkYs_3W7Dz_OYLYtyBgLWMu43lBGgknPP7rkYjh2jrBaXle84k8y3Q0Yx3_d_rBDEE0kaZtG7eaP2eu1awt74fdK1LFdlyoVHmSqbM2eXUkW6MWrVvsjwgCpM9ZBA/s727/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="727" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Q-nBsOsBki_U7MqT8dFaUUt-50mOnf-n-DCsHszaCNElM1GRZBzvCbBH12__-DkYs_3W7Dz_OYLYtyBgLWMu43lBGgknPP7rkYjh2jrBaXle84k8y3Q0Yx3_d_rBDEE0kaZtG7eaP2eu1awt74fdK1LFdlyoVHmSqbM2eXUkW6MWrVvsjwgCpM9ZBA/s320/th.jpeg" width="209" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">And then there's The Da Vinci Code. In 2000 Dan Brown published a book entitled “Angels and Demons,” which introduced the protagonist- crime-solver Robert Langdon. Brown was unknown at the time and the book sold poorly, which was disappointing to the publisher and presumably to Dan Brown himself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">At this point, Dan Brown could have given up. But he didn’t. Three years later he went on to publish The Da Vinci code. It was very similar to its predecessor </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">in structure, in writing style. The protagonist is the same Robert Langdon solving a similar kind of intrigue in the same impossibly short time. What’s the difference? The difference can be summed up in two words “Sacred Feminine,” another area (though not unrelated) that the church throughout the ages has systematically repressed. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">Dan Brown's </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">expectations were low. But little did he know: The Da Vinci Code became a best seller in the first week and has gone on to become one of the best selling books of all time, selling 81 million copies in 44 languages. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsGcz0wCIBjPCV9uDzuXq5o_OzG-q0Vq52-RNkXNkTg7DfIHYMlXUhyAe9sn_bRjjBvk4OJEmL8_wNhjUPjaUUFxYYUtXGZ35Le0zSZa-ljHuLOH2ogLkE7ohp4rp13Ocdz32H3PgoNf2bpwJy4oLyk_QxgayTpL_1cFbVH0ezEz-JE7qKzUTO0YjWw/s794/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsGcz0wCIBjPCV9uDzuXq5o_OzG-q0Vq52-RNkXNkTg7DfIHYMlXUhyAe9sn_bRjjBvk4OJEmL8_wNhjUPjaUUFxYYUtXGZ35Le0zSZa-ljHuLOH2ogLkE7ohp4rp13Ocdz32H3PgoNf2bpwJy4oLyk_QxgayTpL_1cFbVH0ezEz-JE7qKzUTO0YjWw/s320/th-1.jpeg" width="191" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">So, Art from the Heart, deep listening, re-connecting yourself to a field of energy and creativity that you are already a part of. This is certainly a much more helpful paradigm than the one of the solitary individual in a pre-set and unforgiving universe pulling meaning and art out of a machine encased within the cage of the skull.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">The model of the tortured writer needs to shift. You can lay down your arms, let the battle cease. It is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">not up to you and your creativity. The muse is your friend, but she's </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">not a person who takes hissy fits and deserts you. Being tied to your own solitary brain is the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">equivalent to being tied to an Iphone (much like my teenage daughter is) but without service. There is no use in shaking the phone when it isn’t receiving service, no more does shaking yourself when you can’t think of what to write. Just wait a while, listen deeply until you are connected again. More precisely, get out of the way of yourself (or again as my teenage daughter would put it – get over yourself!) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;">“<i>You do not even have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, remain still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small; line-height: 28px;"><i>Kafka</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 28px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 24px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p></div>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-32096202249609465452023-01-12T09:44:00.000-08:002023-01-12T09:44:38.490-08:00SALMAN RUSHDIE<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In August of last year</span>, just as he was being introduced to give a talk at a small upstate New York conference, an assailant rushed the stage and attacked muslim author Salmon Rushdie with a knife, presumably intending to kill him. His "sin" in the eye of the perpetrator (and in the opinion of the Ayatollah in Iran who placed this fatwa on him) was that a book he wrote 34 years ago cast aspersions on the authenticity of the Qu'ran. </p><p>Salmon Rushdie did not die, but has lost the use of one of his eyes, and also one arm. The author survived this tale perpetrated by an idiot, but I wonder where he is in his own mind and emotions on the matter. Does he wonder, as I do, if this incident of stabbing disqualifies him from the fatwa, or must he stay now forever out of the public forum? In dark moments, does he ponder whether it has all been worth it? </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYpycpXiQWDMqWrMNoiYAmYY11e4FwY8rP4pPyn5EfMccWih6WvTgmAZGmEKbURmFppVQDp5c529CD0FSq0U-q9M0mMhvWZWHs0EY7aprDk39ZGzHjJR-D28Yii1s3kQnIWiMW5T_PXjq_Kb14-39GRmDAf_CzG08unhCzX5Rx15EkcoOohYTZM8OnoQ/s474/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="474" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYpycpXiQWDMqWrMNoiYAmYY11e4FwY8rP4pPyn5EfMccWih6WvTgmAZGmEKbURmFppVQDp5c529CD0FSq0U-q9M0mMhvWZWHs0EY7aprDk39ZGzHjJR-D28Yii1s3kQnIWiMW5T_PXjq_Kb14-39GRmDAf_CzG08unhCzX5Rx15EkcoOohYTZM8OnoQ/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I am not alone in my outrage that he should ever have been put in this position. He is an author, for God's sake. Not a politician. Not an idealogue. Not a preacher in a pulpit. He is a person who had an idea. His idea was, as it is for anyone starting to write a novel, "What If?" It is a question that conjurs a Neverland and bids the reader come along for the journey. </p><p>In 1955, Nikos Kazantzakis asked the reader that same question when he began "The Last Temptation." "What if," he asked, "the dying Christ on the cross reviewed his life and wondered if it could have played out differently." The Greek Synod in Athens excommunicated him and the Catholic church banned the book. In 1988, when the film version came out, good American Christians burned it. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiytw4Mpf7eUiRm5kmzybD3KDUKPn1tAM2auFG0eJx6AxEFqmljyPlPPFkdRQvaMQiqHKBBR4yCmHTo8ffBZffLaxRhzlltHl7y_WhX7aEtw9KqZRhrnSNzIrrME7nlaA2w4SRlqMO-939QRMbu6yctLR7nhnMdlTyNX4XwQYdiV6EnBVFnDjCcwXY9Ig/s663/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiytw4Mpf7eUiRm5kmzybD3KDUKPn1tAM2auFG0eJx6AxEFqmljyPlPPFkdRQvaMQiqHKBBR4yCmHTo8ffBZffLaxRhzlltHl7y_WhX7aEtw9KqZRhrnSNzIrrME7nlaA2w4SRlqMO-939QRMbu6yctLR7nhnMdlTyNX4XwQYdiV6EnBVFnDjCcwXY9Ig/s320/th-1.jpeg" width="229" /></a></div><br /><p>But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what art is. The reader doesn't have to go on a journey with any particular author. If you don't like his or her Neverland, then don't go. These artistic journeys are fantastical - they are not claiming to be a treatise. Kazantzakis is not saying, "You know that Yeshua Ben Yosef - he wasn't really what he said he was. He wasn't really for celibacy, but in actual fact, entertained ideas about having a wife and children." Kazantzakis was doing what everyone in the arts in any free society does, just laying out a vision, a what if? It is telling that when free societies collapse into authoritarianism, the first thing that disappears is art. (An aside, just look at all the censorship of literature going on in USA right now.) Art requires that space to wander, and that is not the kind of freedom that sits well with top-down control. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZc-n5XxvZCmMIvstEXm3OyZu65UDvezGvb7CXnlUSksTmdvwUqKCYDyuMFCGB0_0mMQpmDWCvvtZptr1AbO05Fe8y6ad4Ia2WmU0f2gVTNcyDn_x65ROaVeuU_d929nYJPv5I6_RNkgDFp3hEPxxUB_oMmByxC5yq3b067S9mE1SenmNQO-T4jA3tbw/s626/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZc-n5XxvZCmMIvstEXm3OyZu65UDvezGvb7CXnlUSksTmdvwUqKCYDyuMFCGB0_0mMQpmDWCvvtZptr1AbO05Fe8y6ad4Ia2WmU0f2gVTNcyDn_x65ROaVeuU_d929nYJPv5I6_RNkgDFp3hEPxxUB_oMmByxC5yq3b067S9mE1SenmNQO-T4jA3tbw/s320/th.jpeg" width="242" /></a></div><p>There is a well-respected professor of Early Christianity, Bart Ehrman, who, when Dan Brown published his best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," went after the author. He in fact wrote an entire book putting Dan Brown right and excoriating him in lectures. His point of contention was that Brown flat out misrepresented what was decided at The Council Of Nicaea. Ehrmann did not call out a fatwa on Dan Brown (though he did call for outrage ), so, it makes it different in kind from what was going on that evening Salmon Rushdie was stabbed. (In the spirit of transparency, I should add that I am a paying member of Bart Ehrmann's daily blog. He is an accomplished historian. I appreciate him.) Still, Ehrmann fails, like the others, to really grasp what the artist is about. A novel is in pursuit of an idea, this "what if?" I have been talking about. The reader can either go with it or not, but the reader is in no position to say they won't accept the what if, whether for historical or political or religious reasons. </p><p>Salmon Rushdie once, in 1998 went on a journey. It took him a few years to accomplish. Random House had faith in his journey and published "The Satanic Verses." This novel, like all novels, stands or falls with how many decide to go to that Neverland with the author. It is a piece of art, and its creator should never have been placed under a death threat (nor the many translators who were stabbed for their trouble, including one who died.) I hope Rushdie gathers his courage and goes on other journeys. It's probably what keeps him going. As a writer myself, I will vouch for that. As the author of an upcoming book re-imagining what the Jewish visionary Yeshua Ben Yosev was all about, I suppose I must gird up my own loins and expect a torrent of similar voices who don't really understand the quest.</p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-84902564554917859212022-09-20T19:08:00.001-07:002022-09-20T19:08:50.890-07:00Her Majesty's a Pretty Nice Girl<p>At the back of my cutlery drawer, my fingers graze the tarnished coronation teaspoon that was the sugar spoon in my family for all my growing up. My mother came by it in 1952 upon the accession of Princess Elizabeth Windsor to the throne of England. I sincerely doubt that my ever-thrifty mother went out and bought the spoon. It was probably a freebie handed out in the kind of forced celebration we have been witnessing this week upon the death of said queen. Yesterday, to commemorate the queen's funeral, the entire UK was shut down - no airplanes, no doctor's visits, no chemo appointments, no weddings, no other funerals. If they could have sutured pregnant women's vaginas shut, there would have been no births either. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjps86yI7_QUu-7nixYd91RsV4dXZY-_eY8QHjFYp6l8G_r_4EL1dkFk-tLtLgzKm0IPWduneYtzKNSxJg-gKKxYt9jvnQ45W5iyrB3FSayzvJPXNEmlvTI5iqu76OeXI70sTuBeQWucS6ebaahmTODDy29oDtDphz77NEwYWpzTtX44rqd7ivA0mdkag/s474/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="474" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjps86yI7_QUu-7nixYd91RsV4dXZY-_eY8QHjFYp6l8G_r_4EL1dkFk-tLtLgzKm0IPWduneYtzKNSxJg-gKKxYt9jvnQ45W5iyrB3FSayzvJPXNEmlvTI5iqu76OeXI70sTuBeQWucS6ebaahmTODDy29oDtDphz77NEwYWpzTtX44rqd7ivA0mdkag/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>You would be forgiven for thinking this kind of state control smacks of the deaths of dictators in more repressive regimes, but in some ways it is worse. You can force a reluctant populace to go through the motions of grief, but in London at Westminster, there were subjects lined up for miles and many hours, wiping their tears as they walked past the queen's coffin (whether or not there was an actual body inside.) The last couple in line told reporters that this was the biggest day of their lives, surpassing the births of their three children. </p><p>The BBC, which used to have a reputation as an upstanding purveyor of news and quality television, has shifted in recent years to toeing the government line. So, once the death of the queen was announced, the beeb went into overdrive, covering the queue past the coffin at Westminster twenty four hours a day. </p><p>I understand that we live in desperate times, that the three year pandemic has taken its toll on the minds of humankind. If you want to dig deeper, you could recognise this mental instability as a result of the breakdown of the Empire and or of Christianity which is on very loose footing these days on the British island. The ebb of a moral compass that has governed the hearts and minds of a populace back into the misty shades of recorded history is no inconsequential drift. </p><p>But the hysteria surrounding the passing of a ninety-six year old monarch in England (judging by the sparse attendance in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park, the Scots felt differently) was, well, hysterical. The Left Bank TV production The Crown has in recent years displayed for all to see the depth of dysfunction that lies at the heart of this royal family. I won't go into the untimely death of Diana (though satirist Trevor Noah did), but the proscriptions for who should marry whom, the poor children left to the care of nannies, the pathology of the "stiff upper lip," the strangeness of lives lived to the drumbeat of a past (and brutal) empire, would give any good psychologist a field day. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjF3rtqmlr5S6sKvSuYZONWT4Bih6L9GJf2p3K0g-R23RVPWLgIO2Y1U8iqQdnc5Fn1I-XTQYHoQXCeTACJJ3FXaXiN9NIWVcq2lUsNwKa7cLulOz4f26UZqOTbdC8sCMdDwx0JhCjFfzRPwmddMpSUXNpoZ1XkVrY8yxu0RU0MrDRQUJ3LwQcSFdWg/s474/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="474" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjF3rtqmlr5S6sKvSuYZONWT4Bih6L9GJf2p3K0g-R23RVPWLgIO2Y1U8iqQdnc5Fn1I-XTQYHoQXCeTACJJ3FXaXiN9NIWVcq2lUsNwKa7cLulOz4f26UZqOTbdC8sCMdDwx0JhCjFfzRPwmddMpSUXNpoZ1XkVrY8yxu0RU0MrDRQUJ3LwQcSFdWg/s320/th-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p>It's hard to topple icons. It is proving near impossible to indict obviously criminal former American president Donald Trump. But when that icon lives rent free in the minds of its subjects, the task is even harder. We all grew up wth Queen Elizabeth as the model of decorum, as the height of a social ladder that only the pedigreed few could climb. When I was a girl, I marvelled at royal speech. No one else quite speaks like that. It requires a certain quality of pole in the rectum. But back then I didn't want to be another anonymous Scottish girl with a Scottish accent. In the sixth verse of the empire hymn, the National Anthem, is a line about crushing the rebellious Scots. I didn't want to be in the way of the crushing engine that levelled my agency and left me no credence.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNhEu6A6xlAP1sRZvVxzRajVmTvGRKByjDD67QI1Sg4I9vHcdsjeVXLF25l4yKSZfz-j0lHIOMY76xLtWKBAPFdOogIQlmPyvE4Y0q6bFLxAs8VI9wpMrEdmIVe3cB1m0E6k5cRq8XiKtrTVDDzmlnCUBuR8YGqEX1viWKJV0P05sDDp9o24F7Ze_JQ/s762/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="762" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNhEu6A6xlAP1sRZvVxzRajVmTvGRKByjDD67QI1Sg4I9vHcdsjeVXLF25l4yKSZfz-j0lHIOMY76xLtWKBAPFdOogIQlmPyvE4Y0q6bFLxAs8VI9wpMrEdmIVe3cB1m0E6k5cRq8XiKtrTVDDzmlnCUBuR8YGqEX1viWKJV0P05sDDp9o24F7Ze_JQ/s320/th.jpeg" width="199" /></a></div><br /><p>Many, many years later, royal speech, like royal authority, rings hollow in my ears. You cannot ignore the steam roller that accompanies the march of the Empire and everything the royal family represents. The younger royals have tried to look more accessible, have tried to present themselves as just anther family. But what does it do to the mind of a little George VII that he will one day ascend to the throne of England? The best of the royals have tried to get out, but there is never enough time to escape the swipe of the steam roller. Princess Margaret, Princess Diana, many others who were hid from sight, and now Prince Harry have tried thrusting through the thorny forest to escape the shadow of the castle. </p><p>In the past week, I have had to look away from the spectacle of a week-long funeral pageant in the name of such an obviously flawed institution. As a Scot, coming down from ancestors who were moved off their land in the Highland clearances and who were disregarded by the powers that have since 1707 resided in London, it all leaves me with a nasty taste, a bitter pill, and not one that even a spoonful of sugar from my mother's royal spoon will ever dispel. </p><p>The queen's death at Balmoral in the highlands of Scotland was well orchestrated. She famously feared the break up of the Union, and this was her final gesture. But, as a Scot by birth, it is my hope that this symbol of the queen's death in Scotland will carry into history a different weight. Just as the icon of the British Empire gave out her last breath on Scottish soil, so let the union follow swiftly behind.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0TnFqdd8sv7d3d5jWcAlM13FC3jWXPRO-V-quJPtaBuGvOCemGw-0Hk92M9yih5ZkGyPwnYz_S8_T2ejLxUU1Y_MfQ1Xy-ILvR5grkIJDlTU5sVRGBUAKCPjs_gQ13HQkdAJx0MSx2WPA9dDNj4Qd7TAstqQOjjMSMvOBUXE2SBoC01nz1QqwiFFNg/s1600/Claire%20Edin.%20March.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0TnFqdd8sv7d3d5jWcAlM13FC3jWXPRO-V-quJPtaBuGvOCemGw-0Hk92M9yih5ZkGyPwnYz_S8_T2ejLxUU1Y_MfQ1Xy-ILvR5grkIJDlTU5sVRGBUAKCPjs_gQ13HQkdAJx0MSx2WPA9dDNj4Qd7TAstqQOjjMSMvOBUXE2SBoC01nz1QqwiFFNg/s320/Claire%20Edin.%20March.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-3374265286516887832022-04-22T07:48:00.000-07:002022-04-22T07:48:34.716-07:00THE DIVIDE BETWEEN A WRITER AND HIS/HER CHARACTERS <p>Years ago, I studied for a week with author Paul Harding. His book Tinkers is one of those books I keep going back to, because the language is so rich and the images so captivating. I rarely find those qualities in a modern book (though another is James Galvin's The Meadow.) Harding won the Pulitzer prize for Tinkers, and nothing he has produced since has come close. I think he got self-conscious, as tends to happen when great accolades are thrown at an author. I remember him saying to me that he was afraid all the attention would just disappear. And it did. But, as I told him, the book that won the prize is still worthy, still in print, ever more worn and thumbed through on my shelf. </p><p>I recently came across a diary entry I made during that period of study, and I wanted to blog about it, because I think it raises an interesting question about how much of their own self a writer interjects into their characters. </p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">One last harp on having studied with Paul Harding a couple of weeks ago and then I'll let him go: I had a question I was bursting to ask him or any other significant writer which had to do with how much the author inhabits his or her characters. See, when I started my own book Veil Of Time (which then became a trilogy) I thought to myself that for once I would have a protagonist who wasn't sort of a mirror doppleganger of myself. It's not that I'm an especial egoist or overly vain (though I might also be both of those things), but just that somehow my protagonists mostly are me with my set of values and ideas, my cosmology. I called this character Maggie Livingstone, who was a childhood friend of mine (still is, in fact, and lives now in the exact location of my book.)</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGsq9NAipHTm5Z-g4wkEc5KLgZnelwL3nj1Fg1FBMBOEgEl_27xiHZhtO10Pq2_45ddELbCVC1PpenCx3DZggpf46fAp6VwoMxOEznL5Lpcx5VeQrd_ji7djxckZKlqqFh68uMRuoJXxwmzFsJiCFiWv9J8NKrBj4EzlkaxpfiVqcJ3B4DbWcyCjuIHA/s2169/Front%20cover%20w:reviews.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2169" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGsq9NAipHTm5Z-g4wkEc5KLgZnelwL3nj1Fg1FBMBOEgEl_27xiHZhtO10Pq2_45ddELbCVC1PpenCx3DZggpf46fAp6VwoMxOEznL5Lpcx5VeQrd_ji7djxckZKlqqFh68uMRuoJXxwmzFsJiCFiWv9J8NKrBj4EzlkaxpfiVqcJ3B4DbWcyCjuIHA/s320/Front%20cover%20w:reviews.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I wasn't going to make my protagonist Maggie Livingstone, who is a veterinarian and sort of a no-nonsense type of person, but I thought if I gave her that name, she wouldn't end up spouting my religious beliefs and my longings and my moral values. I kept that up for a while, but the more my character moved through the scenes and the book came to take shape, there I was in the middle of the action, masquerading as my friend.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">So, my question to Paul Harding was just this: how can you keep yourself out of your writing and create rounded characters who aren't you. (I put this to him when the rest of the class had gone on coffee break.) I was a little bit surprised by his answer, because (being an egoist and vain) I had thought this was a problem unique to myself. But no, he said he had struggled with the same thing and that every author did. He said from time to time he wondered that if he were a better writer, he might be able to write protagonists that weren't him, but ultimately the author is putting his or her self on the page and that's the way it should be. (I'm not talking about genre writing here - John Le Carre didn't need to be a spy himself, though he did need to have an overwhelming interest in the subject. Formula novels don't run into this problem so much because the characters are more cookie cut out of material that is already made to a certain recipe.) </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">I was looking at Elizabeth Strout's new book "The Burgess Boys," her follow-up to "Olive Kitteredge." I wasn't surprised to find another Olive Kitteredge between the pages doing business under another name. Location was the same, character almost the same. It's just that our psyches are populated by certain characters or archetypes and the author would have to twist him or herself into all kinds of contortions to make this inner world come out on the page as something else.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">So Herman Hesse wrote a large number of books and basically they all come with the same message, the same set of values and the same array of characters. (I read them all nevertheless.) DH Lawrence, the favourite of my youth, wrote the same book over and over. The point is, in the words of Martin Luther in the fifteenth century, "Hier stehe ich. Anders can ich nicht" (the famous, "Here I stand, I can do no other.") </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">So I got my question answered, and I feel better about Maggie Livingstone turned Claire McDougall (though she may not!) Paul Harding said that the opening of "Tinkers," where his protagonist hallucinates that the ceiling is cracking and falling in on him springs right out of his own history with his grandfather. </span></p><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-88902746066993143362021-10-15T09:33:00.002-07:002021-10-15T09:33:30.097-07:00BEARS N' THINGS<p> October 15th 2021</p><p>I have spent much of my many years fighting. That's not the way I started, though. I am told I was the most laid-back of babies, always smiling, never disgruntled. Somewhere along the road, and I think fairly early on, I started trying to go through walls instead of around them. Just last week, pain in my chest and a racing heart took me off to the hospital, where everything settled down quite quickly, and I was given the all-clear. In retrospect, I am wondering if these were symptoms of anxiety. </p><p>With English PM Boris Johnson trying to run Scotland into the ground and after four years of Trump corruption in USA, most of us have learned to walk a fine line between resignation and despair. If you're like me, it has turned you into a nail-biting news junkie. In my case, a Twitter addict. After all, the best line of defense has always been offense. Finding myself up at 4 am, checking the latest round of Breaking News, should have sounded some kind of alarm. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wa_Xglf0qko/YVs0OO21cKI/AAAAAAAACw0/ctrXI6Y_IMYDVBrUqQsHxe0qbKwhrPsmACLcBGAsYHQ/s356/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="356" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wa_Xglf0qko/YVs0OO21cKI/AAAAAAAACw0/ctrXI6Y_IMYDVBrUqQsHxe0qbKwhrPsmACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/th-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Then came Covid, another platform over a dinky swimming pool for the clowns that run the world to dive into. I had Sars2 early on, even before it had been named in the popular press. Over days of 104 degree temperatures and what felt like a sickness unto death, I was forced to fight. </p><p>Another thing I stay up in arms over is my country. Like a persistent bagpipe drone, Scotland's struggle to free itself from "servile chains," to regain its own self, is mine by dint of birth. Scotland wants out of the United Kingdom, because this union serves only the overlords in their mink and pageantry. </p><p>Because of these things, life often feels more like a battle field, with me in the middle in a state of profound amnesia about how I once looked out on a calm sea from these sea green eyes. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7fI7COl5fSs/YV3G8hWFTRI/AAAAAAAACw8/-fbWus_QGsYIBvbB8fGc8HkkK5Ow1ByyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s853/thumbnail.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7fI7COl5fSs/YV3G8hWFTRI/AAAAAAAACw8/-fbWus_QGsYIBvbB8fGc8HkkK5Ow1ByyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/thumbnail.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><p>Two nights ago, under cover of dark, a bear came into my garden to raid my apple trees. It broke branches and shat all over the grass and even in my raised strawberry beds. One bear can produce one hell of a lot of scat. By daylight, I walked around, stepping over the piles, weary as I am these days, with no inclination to cut down the broken limbs or scoop up the piles. </p><p>Later, however, I noticed the magpies picking out half-digested apples from all that bear poo. And in that moment of epiphany, I saw something I have been apparently slow to take on board: it is easier to see the glass half empty. It is hard to navigate around the wall, when complaining about the wall requires nothing but standing your ground. </p><p>I have always had great eyesight, but perhaps my inner focus has been too honed in on the next standard to raise, the next fight. Perhaps I should unlearn my adult self and become more like the bear that smells ripe fruit, climbs over a fence, eats apples, shits and leaves. The bear that is not disgruntled by the fact that it soon needs to find a place under the snow to exist in limber close to death until the earth cycles round and begins again to feed it. </p><p>Perhaps it's time to let go of Tyger Tyger Burning Bright, and look instead for the bear-necessities. It would make for fewer walls, more open space, more oxygen, even a little clarity. And no doubt a steadier heart rate and better sleep as well.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GTGS86otGMw/YVszqs5rE1I/AAAAAAAACws/FTl1B6JXVR0_g_KfK07dM576BaXlrg86QCLcBGAsYHQ/s318/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="179" data-original-width="318" height="179" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GTGS86otGMw/YVszqs5rE1I/AAAAAAAACws/FTl1B6JXVR0_g_KfK07dM576BaXlrg86QCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/th.jpeg" width="318" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-55951873745234654872021-05-28T14:28:00.003-07:002021-05-29T11:22:16.131-07:00Travels With Steinbeck<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><p> May 28th 2021</p><p></p><p>Time was, I would write a blog every week. This is the first blog since December 2020. But I just got back from Monterey, California, a sort of Mecca for me, because it is the home and muse of John Steinbeck, and I have this to share: as far as writers go, they don't come any better than Steinbeck. </p><p>I feel a bit guilty about this, because in my own country there are fine writers. Lewis Grassic Gibbon is at the top of the list. I have been to the countryside in the North East of Scotland he wrote about; I have been in the little museum that shows the film about his life. I have been to see his gravestone in the nearby church. <i>Sunset Song</i> is one of the finest novels in any language.</p><p>But there is something about Steinbeck that calls to me, and when I am in the places he lived and moved, I drift into a different space altogether. The hotel I picked was in Pacific Grove, a town that Monterey merges into and where his family had a summer cottage by the sea. Here he gathered his anecdotes and stories for what would become <i>Tortilla Flat</i>, <i>Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday</i>. <i>The Grapes of Wrath </i>came out of<i> </i>his experience helping desperate migrant workers exploited by California's fruit growers. He said, "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this." I love Steinbeck for his social conscience and because he cared about the people he wrote about. Perhaps he wrote about them because he cared.</p><p>During the school year, Steinbeck's family lived half an hour inland in a farming community called Salinas, and where these days his childhood home has become a museum. Stepping into the hallway of that house, walking through the rooms with some of the original furniture, I come under a spell. Here were the stairs that led up to the room, where he wrote small offerings for magazines when still a child. (None was published. ) Here is the spot in the dining room where as a grown man he set up his writing station and tinkered with what would become his celebrated story "The Red Pony," while his mother died slowly in the bedroom opposite. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n-oIv5-MtCI/YKq_oq_cAXI/AAAAAAAACug/iPrspx6cyzgf7CO63uEWJmEYqdg6UwmawCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ddea4294-60e4-4ff0-b3c4-1da90b5571d1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n-oIv5-MtCI/YKq_oq_cAXI/AAAAAAAACug/iPrspx6cyzgf7CO63uEWJmEYqdg6UwmawCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/ddea4294-60e4-4ff0-b3c4-1da90b5571d1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>In Monterey itself, there is barely anything to suggest it was an author named John Steinbeck that made Cannery Row famous. The Cannery Row of today is a bustling tourist trap, with T-shirt shops and tacky restaurants. He is not remembered much here, because the people of Monterey resented Steinbeck for bringing attention to "the poem, the stink, the particular quality of light" that was this town in its fishing days. In Salinas, they burned his books for their supposed obscenity and because he stood up to the landowners. When he was driven home, he would have to lie on the floor of the car so that no one took a shot at him.</p><p>In America, there is much hullabaloo about Steinbeck's contemporary, Ernest Hemmingway. Everything this author ever touched has been enshrined and immortalised. America's Public Broadcasting Station just came out with a six hour documentary on the man. But then, this is what Ernest Hemmingway was after. Before Hemmingway ever wrote a book, he was looking for an entourage, for fame. Steinbeck, on the other hand, had no time for publicity. He understood the threat that acclaim can pose to an author's authenticity. </p><p>Steinbeck wrote about the people and places he knew. I don't think he ever ended his stories particularly well, but between the covers is a rich feast of words and images, crafted sonorously as only he knew how. And, too, there's always a strand of humour in Steinbeck's writing, always the oddly funny character, even when he is plummeting the depths. His facility with the sentence, especially with those spoken, is unmatched.</p><p> When Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature, the American press crucified him. They said he was not worthy, and he agreed. But he never recovered. Although he was not yet an old man, he never wrote another word of fiction. Still, the speech he gave at the Nobel ceremony is tight and singing, wonderful and profound: Literature was not promulgated by a pale emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.</p><p>He wasn't a perfect man. He probably died a couple of decades early from the toll he exacted on his body. But he was a man of heart, a man who saw deep, but was never caught up in his own image or in his own importance. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jhWj19qtECA/YLFd1KXplPI/AAAAAAAACus/krVhwgd-Axc8K5pTP0GKRt0CyA4E0MMGACLcBGAsYHQ/s806/IMG-4482%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="806" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jhWj19qtECA/YLFd1KXplPI/AAAAAAAACus/krVhwgd-Axc8K5pTP0GKRt0CyA4E0MMGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG-4482%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>For all these reasons I am an unashamed fan. I will keep going back to Monterey and Salinas because it feeds something in my own creative process. You can take your Hemmingway and the cult that surrounds him, and leave me on the steps of the Pacific Biological Laboratory that belonged to Steinbeck's much beloved friend Ed Ricketts. He ran up that staircase many, many times in pursuit of ideas and what was true about the world. It is magic here on this step. The wooden railing is peeling now, and the place looks odd, towered over by the bustle and the modernity. But it is the only spot on Cannery Row that still has a hum, a peculiar quality of light. It is here, I encounter John Steinbeck, the very best of writers.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-18003986752004987172020-12-21T10:05:00.000-08:002020-12-21T10:05:36.207-08:00The Age Of Aquarius<p>December 21st, 2020 </p><p>I have been in labour three times, all home-births, all unmedicated. There is a moment or two on the other side of that life-changing event, once the baby is out and just before you fall in love, when you are in a sort of death zone: in the tunnel, still waiting for the light.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YIs4s4hPHbk/X9vl7IKxOAI/AAAAAAAACsc/dmIi81oY_CIgyLp_w146G9HlJ_k0gCq3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s213/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="213" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YIs4s4hPHbk/X9vl7IKxOAI/AAAAAAAACsc/dmIi81oY_CIgyLp_w146G9HlJ_k0gCq3gCLcBGAsYHQ/w299-h225/th.jpeg" width="299" /></a></div><p>Things feel a bit like that now, hunkered down in a pandemic, waiting in the dark with Joe Biden as president-in-the-wings (and if you're Scottish, on the edge of independence with Nicola Sturgeon!) Life in general at this moment in history seems to be teetering on the brink. </p><p>Today is the winter solstice. Astronomers tell us that in the night sky tonight we can see the convergence of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, a once in an 800 year alignment. According to astrologists, what we are witnessing is the passing of the age of Pisces an age of ego, deception, power and money, populism, authoritarianism; interestingly enough, also of world religions. The new Age of Aquarius has instead qualities more readily associated with woman: ying, rather than yang; the soul; individual freedom; humanitarianism, inclusion, "me" in the service of "we." </p><p>Birth is a process, and so too the passing of an era. The male dominated age of war and authoritarianism was never going to pass without a final raised fist, a last flail of its dragon tail. It has been a rough show from the poor players that are Boris Johnson and Donald Trump fretting and strutting their hour upon the stage. Crouching in the wings, this woman is ready to see the curtain fall on the sound and fury and accept the offer that humanity has better heights to scale than Rule Britannia and "bombs bursting in air." </p><p>Every mother knows that <span>the most intense part of labour comes very close to the end. It's called <i>transition, </i>and I hope that we will get through these birth pangs, to a better place, where </span><span>the tight fist unfurls at last and eases a new life into the world. </span> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ALTKYH3KcXY/X9-U4zzJDHI/AAAAAAAACss/lnZCx-7l8x0AGqRGyFLe42XEgbC1JPtIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s821/birth_-_pulling.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="562" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ALTKYH3KcXY/X9-U4zzJDHI/AAAAAAAACss/lnZCx-7l8x0AGqRGyFLe42XEgbC1JPtIQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/birth_-_pulling.jpg" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-77937194625844832872020-10-30T10:16:00.001-07:002020-10-30T10:16:25.147-07:00Sailing the Covid Sea<p><span style="font-size: large;"> 30th October 2020</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I caught Covid way back in January, got very sick for a few weeks, and this was months before "the official" first case. I know I had Covid because once antibody tests were available, I tested positive. I am not the only one with a story like this. Also not unique to me, as a person who makes her life among the arts, is that Covid has forced me into something of a reckoning. It's not that anything has changed much in my daily life: I live rurally; my desk still sits in my office; a superstitious collection of feathers and other lucky charms still hangs over my chair. For me, this hasn't been a time of great privation. The things I miss, I can do without: travel, an evening of theatre or cinema with a bite to eat after, interactions with whomever, whenever I choose. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-onkT3hJyaew/X5mT_rxRGVI/AAAAAAAACrI/xpfaL1bhIVceUEj2Ooc0KcbsfhfeomoUACLcBGAsYHQ/s215/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="215" height="242" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-onkT3hJyaew/X5mT_rxRGVI/AAAAAAAACrI/xpfaL1bhIVceUEj2Ooc0KcbsfhfeomoUACLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h242/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-size: large;">But oddly something has changed. That handy little button on a Smart Phone that flips your phone camera round to your own self, is kind of permanently on these days. I have been looking at my reflection, and I have been seeing what I perhaps haven't up until now been willing to tackle: without the near death experience, a sort of life review. And I see what has motivated me through my many novels and screenplays, has been too much the lure of fame and glory, that shining something always waiting round the next bend. It's why I have written nine novels - if I finished one and it didn't immediately sail into the glory sea, I would start another. It has always been the next one, and then the next one, and no surely this one will make it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Famous dufus comedian Jim Carrey describes this endless circling succinctly when he writes, "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large; text-align: center;">But what is the answer? That is what I have been contemplating during my Covid introspection. I have been asking myself: if fame and glory and their trappings were never to come, would I be content with what I have produced, and even be inspired to keep on writing? Is the art in and of itself enough?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-etSSi_YPHUY/X5mVm3fpYOI/AAAAAAAACrU/tnBKG7A18KAq09XVeabHCTgJGxJa1Ah1QCLcBGAsYHQ/s251/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="169" data-original-width="251" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-etSSi_YPHUY/X5mVm3fpYOI/AAAAAAAACrU/tnBKG7A18KAq09XVeabHCTgJGxJa1Ah1QCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h215/th-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><span style="font-size: large;">The answer is: it has to be. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Jim Carrey again: "The peace that we're after lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself." </span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span face=""PT Serif", sans-serif" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm going to spend this Covid time going through my novels again, get them in order. I will come to look at that canon as my contribution to posterity. Perhaps that is all it ever was and the best we can hope for. I can watch these paper ships I have created. They don't need to reach China. All they need to do is float. </span></span></div></div>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-87182340722414367872020-09-04T16:38:00.000-07:002020-09-04T16:38:42.190-07:00Mucking Around In The Ashes<p> September 4th 2020</p><p>To all intents and purposes, this era of COVID is something to be endured, an historical event that has upturned the apple cart. People (myself included) have become sick, some have died; schools have closed, businesses have had to close up shop, events have been cancelled. My trip to NYC in March got postponed until May and then to November, but now that isn't going to happen either. My performing arts children are all out of work. My husband's small business took a hit. We spend half of our waking lives behind masks; we can't hug (and I don't even like hugging - strangers that is); we are not permitted to sing in public; we're all acting like sociopaths, crossing the street to avoid each other.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GwT6SQAYSTc/X0_zOBeda5I/AAAAAAAACqo/lH0b11PzUBQgWYKuOjB8pI0K_bCr6VhEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s281/th-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="281" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GwT6SQAYSTc/X0_zOBeda5I/AAAAAAAACqo/lH0b11PzUBQgWYKuOjB8pI0K_bCr6VhEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/th-1.jpeg" /></a></div><p>But if you put your ear to the ground, something else is happening beneath all these privations. People are re-assessing their lives, their locations, their priorities. As trauma tends to do, it is forcing us into the rarified atmosphere of fine-tuning the things that matter most in life. And they are hardly ever "things." </p><p>In my small community of Aspen in the mountains, there's a sudden influx of people who initially came to kill the time during quarantine but now don't think they can go back to their regular lives. A hundred new students have registered at the local school. Ketchum, Idaho, a similar mountain resort, is seeing a similar increase. The same thing is happening to small towns in Vermont. Real estate sales in the New York suburbs are going through the roof. Who wants to live in Manhattan when you don't have to? </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0TYyfQKavNc/X0_y1terDoI/AAAAAAAACqg/4eGEtlOYjf8X05xu24wMm_jHeNJFA75TwCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/th.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0TYyfQKavNc/X0_y1terDoI/AAAAAAAACqg/4eGEtlOYjf8X05xu24wMm_jHeNJFA75TwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/th.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><p>With time on our hands, we are thinking outside of the box. People are beginning to wonder if an economy based on mass production supported by workers who studiously clock into their 9-5 jobs might not be the only way to go. What if a gig economy might even make people happier? What if this division between caring for our children and earning money doesn't need to be so stark? What if money is not the be all, after all? </p><p>As Carl Jung famously wrote, "In all chaos there is cosmos." Perhaps cosmos is even engineered to cyclically fall into chaos. As much as human beings like to think they order their little universes, from time to time we are thrown into a chaos that underlines the fact that we do not. Perhaps it is good, though uncomfortable, that the structures we thought of as solid are now showing signs of erosion. We are being freed to consider why we buit those structures in the first place. </p><p><br /></p>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-84512959000765295392020-07-10T17:10:00.001-07:002020-07-10T17:10:58.545-07:00Creative Ebb and Flow 10th July 2020<br />
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The best experience for a writer is sitting down at your desk, glancing at the clock and then not noticing the time again until several hours have passed. What is that? All day long you glance at your phone for the time, or if you grew up with watches, then you glance at your wrist. And then there are certain timeless zones you step into. Sex is one. Religious ecstasy is another. Where is this timeless country, and why when we have been there do we feel as though we have been home?<br />
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People who have experienced Near Death experiences recount how the moment they come back into their physical bodies, they feel an overwhelming sense of regret: they resist the heaviness of the body; the restriction, the struggle. Emerging from the creative zone is a bit like this. The shackles are back on; we are forced again into the surly bonds of earth.<br />
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Eckhart Tolle describes the creative life as mirroring the ebb and flow of the universe itself. We go out of ourselves in the creative act: literally the meaning of ec-stasy. That's why those missing hours of the creative moment have a religious quality to them. Perhaps this is why it can often feel like things are being created through us, sometimes in spite of us.<br />
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James Taylor says: <i>I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do.</i><br />
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Paul mcCartney's song "Yesterday" is the most covered song in music history. The act of writing it, he says, "was fairly mystical when I think about it. It was the only song I ever dreamed."<br />
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Neither of these musicians is unique in feeling at times like they are merely the vessel, and the creative product a gift.<br />
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Albert Einstein wrote, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant." In our predominantly cerebral culture, we often get that equation the other way way around.<br />
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The writer sits down at the desk to write, and, having glanced at the clock, the mind goes into surrender. Trying to control what comes out is anathema to the artist's way. It's the difference between Mozart and Schoenberg, between cosmos and chaos.<br />
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Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-44631860088416741302020-05-29T16:01:00.002-07:002020-05-29T16:01:33.671-07:00Writing for LIfe29th May 2020<br />
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I always cringe watching instructors encourage people to write: "Come on, you know you have a story somewhere in there. Dig deep. Pull it out. Fill the page." I want to scream "No! Leave it in. If there is anything in there worth coming out, it will do so on its own." Likewise, I have no tolerance for the romance of writer's block. If you have something to say, then say it, and if not, find something that inspires you more.<br />
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Writers' block! Give me a break.<br />
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This lockdown business in the face of a global pandemic, has you staring at your reflection. Not the one in the mirror, which these days is doing me no favours. I mean, the one you have to look inward for. The one that has you in tangles in the middle of the night, wondering if all the years of type and sweat have been worth it. Seven people bought my book this week - not bad for a book that was published six years ago (by Simon and Schuster, I have to add, because the literati look down their bespectacled noses at any book that doesn't have a "name" on its spine.) Seven books, drip drip drip. Six years of drip, and I still haven't paid off the damn advance. That's because publishers operate according to the law of diminishing returns, and the joke is on the author, because they keep splicing the money you owe down to the nearest farthing. Up the hill we go, and up the hill we go.<br />
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Writers' block!<br />
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If I had a penny for everyone who said to me, "I know I have this book in me, but I just don't seem to be able to find the time," I would have paid off the damn advance by now.<br />
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A wise woman, perhaps Eudora Welty, once said, "If you can do anything else other than writing, do it."<br />
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J.K. Rowling probably doesn't feel this way, and I am sure I wouldn't either if I had made enough money to buy a small country. If I had, I wouldn't, like JK Rowling, be lodging in my homeland of Scotland, I would buy it. Those capitalists in London have their price - it's the nature of capitalism.<br />
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But my drip drip isn't going to amount to any kind of real estate, whether countries or a wee cottage in the old country. The chief difference between me now and me in my twenties when I was launching myself into the writing world, is that back then I thought writing was the answer, and now it's just a very large question.<br />
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<br />Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-81828019295214202932020-05-08T19:32:00.000-07:002020-05-08T19:32:16.104-07:00Bending Towards JusticeMay 8th 2020<br />
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Martin Luther King famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."<br />
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2020 has so far been a downright disappointment. I had such high hopes. As a Scot, it seemed that the 700th anniversary of Scotland's charter of independence should be the year for ushering in a new and independent Scotland. And then, as a "resident alien" in another country teetering on authoritarianism, I had hoped for a Trump day of reckoning. 2020 seemed like such an auspicious year. The British State and the American government have been getting away with too much for far too long. And where is Martin Luther King's curve of justice, I want to know.<br />
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In the UK and the USA, we have two corrupt governments that are built on greed and cronyism. The rich are pulling out all the stops to ensure they get richer and installing sycophants in key positions to make sure the dynasties stay in power. Conservatives of the old school in America, though thin on the ground, will have nothing to do with the current GOP, just as there must be some Tories who refuse to follow Boris Johnson off a cliff.<br />
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In England, that cliff is called Brexit.<br />
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In America, the cliff is Trumpism. </div>
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But they are both the logical progression of unfettered capitalism. They both have hard cold cash at their core. It's hard to see how, so far into this souless territory, we back off the critical edge. I guess it depends on whether or not the universe we live in is moral, or at least fair. As we are in a holding pattern with the coronavirus, so we wait on the brink to see if a curve, whose name is justice, is waiting to catch our fall. </div>
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<br />Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-48172299106953218792020-04-01T08:47:00.001-07:002020-04-01T08:47:49.816-07:00Rebooting the GrinchApril 1st 2020<br />
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It doesn't take long living in America to conclude that it is a very cultish place. It's no accident that, from Jonestown to Waco, cults rise and fall with regularity in this country. Nowhere else in the developed world would a white supremacy cult like the KKK be considered part of the culture's fabric. Fraternities in colleges abound, and for the older man, there is the well engrained but exclusive Mason societies.<br />
A good argument could be made that it is the misplaced fervor of a cult that has currently taken America by storm. It is almost indistinguishable from the right wing evangelical Christianity that props it up. The governing body of the USA right now under the authoritarian leader Donald Trump, is quite rightly referred to as Trumpism. Because it isn't government as usual; it is an "ism." A cult, by definition: an emotionally whipped up following around a populist leader. America has been going in this direction for quite some time, probably as far back as Ronald Reagan. Nietzsche said that when actors start becoming political leaders, watch out. But America didn't watch out, and now it has a TV personality, a mega-star wannabe, calling the shots, somewhat more dangerous than a mere actor. Jafar has come to the palace, and he is close to getting his most ardent wish, which is to become the all-powerful cosmic leader.<br />
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In the Disney movie, Aladdin, the hero was always going to save the day. That's why he is in the story. For a long time in America, it has looked like no one was going to save the day. Mitt Romney kind of faded in and out of that role, but he's no hero. Now we are in a global crisis, a pandemic, and the movie looks even grimmer. All the evil little trolls, evil little Mitch McConnell and his minions, are running around behind the curtain, installing their judges and their supreme court candidates, disenfranchising voters, syphoning off money to the corporations that support them. All is lost. For a long time, that's the way it has seemed.<br />
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And yet. The optimist in me keeps looking for some silver lining. The world has gone into lockdown because of an insidious little virus, smaller than a human cell that is floating around and replicating itself in a kind of minute megalomania, an almost perfect allegory for the American political landscape. Everyone is losing money, people are locked away in their houses, people are dying.<br />
And yet, and yet, our air is now far less polluted; the canals in Venice are running so clear, dolphins are venturing there; families are together; children too young for boarding school are back at home with their parents. Babies in daycare are in the arms of their mothers. People are helping each other, singing to each other. It's almost like the morning after the Grinch stole Christmas.<br />
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Perhaps the world needed a reboot, like when you unplug the computer entirely to try to fix a problem. Perhaps that organizing Gia principle made us stop and look around at what our lives have become, the better values we have lost. Perhaps what we have to learn here again is a little humility. A little humanity. Not an "ism" of any kind, just whatever o'ertook the Whos down in Whoville and had them singing whatever inexplicable nonsense Seuss had his Who's sing on their Christmas morning without any gifts at all.<br />
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So, there might be a hero in our story after all. Not another overweight, overblown, authoritarian male leader. Not another "ism." What we need and perhaps what we are getting, if we turn the prism just right, is something with heart, a new light. That's what is going to save the day. And maybe, just maybe, that something is us.<br />
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<br />Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-30536785921065778202020-01-24T07:55:00.000-08:002020-01-24T07:55:44.283-08:00The Writing PatientJanuary 17th 2020<br />
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The art of Writing means resigning yourself to being a vox clamantis in deserto. When the writer picks up her pen, she steps out of the throng and into the desert. Lines from the English Patient, when Almasey has left his beloved Catherine in a cave in the middle of the desert and gone running for days to reach help, flit through my head often. Katherine is injured and has nothing in that cold cave but a flashlight, a pen and the journal she keeps. After the batteries in the torch run out, she says, "I am writing in the darkness." <br />
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In a sense the writer is always writing in the darkness, with her creative life hanging in the balance. It is a conundrum that the writer wants his or her creation out in the sunlight, but to get it there, there have to be hours in the dark place, a staring off into the middle distance, the desk in the closet (as mine once was) or up against the wall so that there are no distractions. It is the dark night of the soul that works itself out in words on the page. Dark doesn't have to mean depressing, but you can expect an eruption of something that was buried, a projection of the artist heart splat into the artistic product. We are creatures of the dark, little luminscent beasts scurrying around the bottom of the ocean of consciousness.<br />
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We take our flashlights and poke with them into the dark forest, trying to map out a trail, able only to see as much as the flashlight will illumine. We are writing in the darkness, and the risk always hangs over us that at the end of the day we may get through that forest or out of the dark cave, but the flashlight is dead, and no one even knows we were missing.Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-57021068353944277122019-12-29T08:44:00.000-08:002019-12-29T08:44:03.986-08:00Standing On The Edge Of Tomorrow 29th December 2019<br />
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History seems poised on the brink. I hope it will come through unscathed. America just impeached the most corrupt president backed by the most corrupt government in its short history. England just voted its own Trump, Boris Johnson, in as its Prime Minister. Scotland said, "Thanks, all the same," and is standing up for its Claim of Right that sets sovereignty with the Scottish people, not with any government, English or Scottish, monarch or otherwise.<br />
Scotland was way ahead of the democracy game, even in the fourteenth century.<br />
When Sir William Wallace was asked in the midst of a protracted execution to swear allegiance to his king, he answered that this King Edward, was in fact no king in Scotland. Twenty years later, after continuing efforts by the English to subsume Scotland under its aegis, a group of Scottish lords sent the Declaration of Arbroath to the Pope, as a reminder that the country of Scotland was indeed sovereign and not ever to be regarded as part of the Kingdom of England.<br />
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If you take all the arguments proffered by Westminster before Scotland's 2014 Referendum as to why Scotland should not regain its independence, there you have a profile of the pressure that was exerted back at the beginning of the 18th C for Scotland to give up its independence in the first place.<br />
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Three hundred years later, Scotland is now in the odd position of having to "ask" Westminster for "permission" to hold another referendum, and the same old arguments are being wheeled out. Last time, they targeted the old folk, those who have been especially well-trained in the doffing of caps. Breaking the traditional norm of Purdah, prime minister David Cameron rode post haste to Edinburgh and offered all manner of baubles if only Scotland would not take itself to itself, as any country, of course, has a perfect right to do.<br />
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This time, history is not on the side of the usurpers. In this case, the young people are wiser than the old. Some of them have even been educated in Scottish history. We have to thank the Hollywood machine for helping us out there. But increasingly it is so in Scotland that while you can fool some of the people some of the time, we're not going to fall for these lies any longer.<br />
On the brink of 2020, seven hundred years to the year after that ancient and stamped Declaration of Independence was sent to the Pope, my country stands to become truly, though not for the first time, the land of the people, the land of the free.<br />
<br />Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-31627292969166530482019-11-08T20:14:00.000-08:002019-11-08T20:14:02.950-08:00High TimeNovember 8th 2019<br />
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When I left academia after my post graduate degree, I had read so many academic papers that my brain would just shut down every time I launched into a new one. I would pick up the manuscript, and my eyes just wouldn't track it. It was an overdose of intellectual argument; it was the point of no return for my career of teaching more of those intellectual arguments. I was in the process of applying to colleges for jobs, but something behind my eyes was slamming on the brakes.<br />
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I moved countries and had a baby, and then slowly I came back to the written word. Not C because A and B, not <i>All Men Are Mortal</i>, no syllogisms, but something my eyes could embrace: a dance. I started out writing poetry, because it was as far in the play of words from logic as I could get. And then, after a few years, a friend made the observation that all my poems, though different in form, were essentially saying the same thing, something to do with heart over thought, and since I no longer lived in my own country, longing. He suggested I try weaving those emotions into a longer piece, and I have been writing novels ever since.<br />
So, my first novel was about a girl from a rural Scottish town who won a place at Oxford University, leaving behind her a boy whom she loved but considered beneath her. In my own life I hadn't done that exactly, though I did trade in my lovely country for the stone walls of a British institution I could never in a million years fit into.<br />
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All of this was years ago, of course. In the meantime I have written something like nine novels, always reaching for the one that would run my story forward to the part where I was showered with accolades and enough money to pathe my way back home. I never thought it would take this long. Yesterday it was my birthday. I hung one more year on the line. I am one of those pesky, passionate but annoying Scorpios, but these traits have given me the grit to hang on over the years. Nowadays, I don't think about the accolades so much, but that longing to go home grows stronger.<br />
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Time, as Stevie Nicks wrote, makes you bolder, and it also distills things down. The things that matter to me now have to do with fighting for my country to get out from under the colonial hold of Britain. More importantly, it centers around my three children, all purveyors of the heart, dancers all.<br />
Yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life. Perhaps I have learned a thing or two along the way: the life of the mind is all very well, but not without the counterweight of the heart. Belonging somewhere counts for a whole lot. Any writer has ambition, but it is a mistake to let it direct your story. I am a better person for the twists and turns along the road, because life, as is so often said, is not about the destination. Life, like the dance that imitates it, is about steps, one foot in front of the other. As the French say, "C'est tout."Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-7674263917019354942019-10-03T09:10:00.002-07:002019-10-03T09:10:45.087-07:00Hazel And The Chessmen3rd October 2019<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Amazon: </span><a href="https://amzn.to/2lrR6zY" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; font-family: "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">https://amzn.to/2lrR6zY</a><br />
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It's enormously gratifying to take the option of publishing (via my agency Aevitas Creative) straight to Amazon. You have all the say in matters of presentation, cover picture etc. And most of all, you don't have to worry about being given a publishing date in the misty future, one in this case which would be way out of range for such a time-sensitive story. <br />
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HAZEL AND THE CHESSEMEN is set between the last Scottish independence referendum and the next. I was in Scotland for the first referendum which took place on a foggy day five years ago on 18 September. The interim has only shorn up support for a free and independent Scotland, while the catastrophe of Brexit has helped things along. Here's me five years ago doing my bit in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.<br />
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In the last few years, marches like this have been taking place all over Scotland. At the end of this week, there will be another in Edinburgh that promises to be twice as big as the last. Being an ex-pat (for now) it can feel frustrating to be so far from the action, but while I am away, I can do what I do best and spin a story about it.<br />
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In HAZEL AND THE CHESSMEN, Boston artist, Hazel Crichton, is left a croft on the west coast of Scotland by her colourful Scottish grandmother. Hazel has fond memories of a summer she spent in the croft as a teenager, but her life and career are now elsewhere, and so with five year-old son Aengus in tow, she goes off to sell the rural property. What she finds instead of an empty cottage, is Andrew Logan, a radical Scottish poet with a lease and a crazy scheme to steal back Scotland's Lewis Chessmen from the British Museum in London.<br />
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I went through the process of putting HAZEL up on Amazon so that it could hit the shelves as soon as possible. I had to laugh when I saw the projected publication date was 18 Sept 2019, the five year anniversary of the first independence referendum. As Hazel in my book discovers, some things are simply out of our control.Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-62689717095764733212019-08-16T11:56:00.000-07:002019-08-16T11:56:00.855-07:00This Little Light15th August 2019<br />
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The German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously wrote, "Two things fill me with wonder: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me." The combustion engine in Kant's time was still a century off, and reliable telescopes were still being developed by clergymen, so his reaction to the night sky was visceral, unsubstantiated by the kind of knowledge we have today.<br />
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I live in Colorado at such a high altitude that every inch of the night sky is shiny with points of light. It fills me with wonder. So if you take me away to New York City for a month, as recently happened, where street lights fog up the lens of the night skies and the din of human habitation obscures our best impulses towards wonder, I begin to lose perspective. In our times, life is lived at such a rate, it is hard under any circumstances to keep a sense that each life, each individual scuttling across the floors of Eliot's ancient seas, belongs to anything but the grit and grind of one damn second plastered onto the next.<br />
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So, I remind myself and those on the brink of a life-changing moments, those whose life has untangled into meaninglessness, those who cannot take the next step: This little blue globe we live on spins on its own axis at one thousand miles an hour; The solar system in which it spins is itself spinning at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. And as if that wasn't enough to get your head in a whirl, the Milky Way galaxy as a whole is moving through the universe at 1.3 million miles an hour. (If you live in the Windy City, all I can say is, you have no idea!) This galaxy, not even a very large galaxy, measures one hundred thousand light years across, which means that any photon that has just reached us here on earth, actually entered our galaxy at a time when Homo Sapiens was just migrating out of Africa.<br />
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You would think that all of this daunting perspective might make you want to expunge yourself, that any iota of self simply vanishes in a puff of insignificance, but strangely it doesn't. Oddly enough, and perhaps because this is the truth of our lives on this little blue planet, we only lose a sense of meaning and purpose when we focus on our own little corner. That's when we lose our sense of wonder. Cynicism is the absence of wonder, and we live in cynical times. But go out and look at the starry heavens. Or if you live in a city, stop a moment and ponder the flower pushing up through a crack in the concrete. Shakespeare had it right that life is but a passing shadow, but he had it wrong to infer therefore that it was a poor player on a stage. Life's not a box of chocolates either, but it is a unique opportunity to live for the brief span of a candle as a microcosm of something infinitely greater than this one life and these seemingly unsurmountable problems. It's short. Let it shine.Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-36253881628771532712019-06-14T13:28:00.001-07:002019-06-14T13:28:58.648-07:00Publishing: The Road Less TravelledJune 14th 2019<br />
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Publishing News!!<br />
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It took about two years from the time Simon and Schuster signed me up to get to the point of <i>Veil Of Time </i>showing up<i> </i>on the book shelves, physical and virtual. I am happy to report that <i>Veil Of Time </i>is still selling, but for the next two books in the series, I decided to go a different route from traditional publishing and use the arrangement my agency, Aevitas Creative Management, has with Amazon. It's called White Glove Publishing, and the really great thing about it is that from start to finish it took about two months! It's not a vanity press - I paid nothing, though Amazon put the book together and worked with me on a (admittedly rather limited) choice of book covers (I actually love the cover for "Iona," and think it very apt, those monks hovering above the standing stones.) <br />
Aevitas put me in touch with an editor (Elizabeth Heijkoop, owner of ARC Editing - check her out!) and then furnished me with a liaison, Maggie Cooper (my protagonist's name is Maggie, a neat serendipity), and we were off to the races.<br />
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Now, I did this kind of on impulse, and it is very satisfying to have the books in hand. Of course, I am missing the publicity arm that a major publisher like Simon and Schuster provided, but I figured that since the series was already established, if the link function on Amazon Books works, I will at least get repeat buyers.<br />
The publishing world is changing these days by leaps and bounds. I hope my own leap will be rewarded. I hope I make it to the finish line.<br />
<br />Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-22578187518856701362019-05-31T17:48:00.005-07:002019-05-31T17:48:41.351-07:00Scotch and Wry31st May 2019<br />
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Last week Europe held its elections for the European parliament. Here's what the United Kingdom map looks like after the people voted and the chips were counted.<br />
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The yellow indicates the Scottish Nationalist Party stronghold wth its pro-Europe platform. The green represents the Brexit Party led by Trump wannabe Nigel Farage. The next day, the newspapers in Scotland were not ablaze with this SNP victory, but then these are not really Scottish papers. BBC Scotland, again not really Scottish, did not cover the SNP party conference speech by its leader Nicola Sturgeon. Instead it covered the leader of the not-really-Scottish Conservatives, who command a whopping 12% of the Scottish vote. <br />
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England went for ultra right wing Bexit party in a big way and is poised to install either Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson as its next prime minster, or if not them, then some other Eton boy who will look after the interests of the old boy's club.<br />
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Here is a delightful little ditty penned by Trump look- alike, Johnson (Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, to be precise - methinks there is a foreigner in our midst!) :<br />
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>The Scotch - what a verminous race!</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Canny, pushy, chippy, they're all over the place</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Battening off us with false bonhomie;</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Polluting our stock, undermining our economy.</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees!</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Surpress the tartan dwarves and the wee Frees!</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Ban the kilt, the Skian Dhu and the Sporran</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>As provocatively, offensively foreign!</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>It's time Hadrian's Wall was refortified</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>To pen them in a ghetto on the other side. </b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>I would go further. The nation</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>Deserves not merely isolation</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(84, 84, 84);"><b>But comprehensive extermination. </b></span></span><br />
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So, no wonder that yellow country of the north prefers to stay within Europe than go the isolationalist route of the great British Empire-that-was. Yes, the ditty is supposed to be a joke, but it wouldn't hit any Scot (Scot, not Scotch, ye dunderheid!) hard, except that this is in essence what we have been taught all our lives. "The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road to England!" goes back to another fatuous upper class Johnson, Samuel this time circa 1750. This British narrative persists, trying to convince the "Scotch" that they owe their existence to the beneficence of the English (despite top economists now declaring that England will not survive its debts without Scottish revenues.)<br />
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Scotland, it's time to get off your knees and lift your head. As our ancestors wrote in the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320: <i>For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches nor honours that we are fighting but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.</i><br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">Any Scot still swallowing the empire line and recognising in their race a mere shadow of a people, is but a coof. It's all tinsel show, ribband and star. Ladies and gentlemen of Scotland, you have to believe that you are higher rank than a'that. Because you are. </span></div>
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Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-33852580654051286032019-05-17T16:34:00.001-07:002019-05-17T16:34:25.076-07:00Do Not Go GentleInternational Dylan Thomas' Day fell on the 14th of this month. To my mind, he is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, poets of all time. By his own definition, his poems rank as some of history's best: "A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."<br />
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Like most great artists, however, Thomas was an enigma: Depressive. Alcoholic. Self destructive.</div>
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But words flowed out of him <i>trailing clouds of glory,</i> to quote another poet. If you have lost the <i>joie de vivre</i>, if life hangs limply on a bough, then drink of this golden cup handed to you by the poet Dylan Thomas and be born anew. <br />
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"<i>Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea.</i>"<br />
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"<i>In my craft or sullen art, Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages, And the lovers lie abed, With all their griefs in their arms.</i> "</div>
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"<i>Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light</i>."<br />
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And yet the bard himself failed his own test. He did go gently into that good night; he went stupidly, wastefully. He did not put up a fight when death kindly stopped for him at the age of thirty-nine. He kept pouring himself another, kept poisoning his liver until it could take no more. It's the Salieri Paradox that Peter Schaeffer points to in <i>Amadeus</i>: There is the imparted wisdom and then there is the imperfect vessel.<br />
Salieri rages against God who has overlooked his piety and given the gift of genius instead to " a boastful, smutty, infantile boy...and give(n) me for reward only the ability to recognise the incarnation."<br />
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The heavenly chorus of words sang through Dylan Thomas; he was not the progenitor. He recognised the incarnation that was in him, an imperfect vessel, and that in the end was a fate too difficult to live with. </div>
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<span style="background-color: #efefef; color: #333333; font-family: "source sans pro" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2110124841590097685.post-72094393909489562692019-05-03T17:33:00.001-07:002019-05-03T17:33:35.241-07:00One More Shot3rd May 2019<br />
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Over the next week I will be in Israel finishing off some research before I take a final stab at the novel I have been writing this last year. After thinking of first century Israel for so long, it's an odd time-warp to be walking the streets of Jerusalem, or setting my pink toes in the sand along the shores of Galilee.<br />
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You need X-ray goggles to see past the the New Israel, the Muslim Israel, the Christian Israel. Never has such a small plot of land been overtaken by so many religious plots. I don't have X-ray vision, though. I have to just join the throngs of mostly scholarly writers trying to peal back the super structure and delve into what could possibly have been there before.<br />
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It seems like it was never very far from conflict. The Israelites under the leadership King David threw out the Jebusites, and then after exile in Egypt and under Joshua, took it from the Canaanites. The Romans moved into Israel in 63 BCE, and set up a puppet government which is what empires always do. And then after about 140 years, we enter into another period of exile for the Jewish people while the Christian era took off. Once Christianity expanded out of the Middle East, the vacuum was filled by the new religion of Islam. And then came the Crusaders, who took it upon themselves to giddy off to the Holy Land and defend it against the Infidels. Israel, past and present, is an unholy mess, made messier by the clumsy tromping around of US president Trump. The last thing Israel needed was the rise of the religious nutcase evangelical right in America.<br />
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So it is a lot of noise, a lot of voices from the past, all clamouring for their bully pulpit. All you can do is put your head down, eat your hummus, ignore the fearful patriarchy that finds a seat there, peal off the layers of lamb on your shwarma. and hope your ear plugs will hold out.<br />
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I'm taking another shot at telling the history of this place through the lens of a man who was supposed to be a Messiah, but who got himself crucified instead. In the Jewish mind, dying naked in the most humiliating of Roman executions disqualified the man from being "<i>Mashiach</i>," and the next two thousand years of human history has been Christianity's attempt to prove them wrong. The church that grew up in Europe under the aegis of the Apostle Paul came at it from one angle; the church in Jerusalem, led by this man's brother, had a quite different interpretation. Relatively recently modern scholars have been trying to push back the undergrowth to get a glimpse at what this all could have meant.<br />
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Me, I'm a novelist. The swirl of my thoughts falls into patterns like a spider filling in the corner of a doorway. I'm not interested in icons and certainly not in the spread of any religion based on fear and shame.<br />
The historical thread is pretty thin: there was a man once who started a movement around the Sea of Galilee, and he was executed by the Roman authorities for sedition. Historically, that's it. But let me fit this Yeshua Ben Yosef into the web I am weaving. Let's take another shot at this.<br />
My book is called The Second Coming.Claire McDougallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07524338053142493512noreply@blogger.com0