Ken's Blog

Pretty much everyone experiences intense emotional experiences, of elation or sadness or just about anything in between. One thing that distinguishes artists (in whatever medium) is that they mine these very real emotions to create their art.

In many cases, some large group of people finds their lives enriched by this endeavor. Think of Mozart’s “Requiem”, or Plath’s “The Bell Jar”, or “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge.

But what then is the relationship between the artist and his/her own personal life? Does the artist have sole ownership over this source material? What about the other people who were part of whatever emotional turmoil was mined in order to create this art? Why don’t they have a say?

The artist might say to these people: “Because it is art, and art belongs to the world.”

It’s an odd sort of conflict. Perhaps if Shakespeare or Austen had been a bit more circumspect about exploiting the emotional crises of people they knew (and perhaps loved), today we would not have “Much Ado about Nothing” or “Emma”.

I’ve recently started writing songs. And was immediately struck by how much more user friendly they are than prose. A story requires each reader to actively participate, and the reader generally must do this alone.

A song, on the other hand, transmits its message on the wings of melody and harmony. It pleases the ear and soothes the mind, while requiring no effort at all to enjoy. And listening to a song is a really fun thing to do with friends. Best of all, people sometimes start singing your song, and then they become carriers for its message.

Think about it. When was the last time you memorized a story you had read, so that you could go around reciting it to other people? For songs this sort of thing happens all the time.

One could argue that songs have more limited idea bandwidth, since all thoughts must be compressed down to fit the severe constraints of the lyrical form. But sometimes that can work to increase the power of the message.

For example, it seems that every other day, when I walk into a store or a restaurant in Manhattan, they are playing John Lennon’s “Imagine”. This is a song that trashes religion, espouses atheism, disparages the concept of allegiance to one’s country, and even takes down private property and rights of ownership.

Yet everyone who listens to it gets a nice dreamy look on their face. After which, they sometimes walk around for the next few hours singing it, thereby repeating the song’s radical message for all to hear.

Try doing that with a story.

Today, upon looking up a quote I had read in the newspaper, I discovered the wondrous and deeply thoughtful poetry of Stephen Crane.

For some reason, we were never taught Crane’s poetry in school. I knew about him only as the author of “The Red Badge of Courage”.

This might be just as well. When I was in school, the below poem might have appeared incomprehensible. Now, of course, this poem makes perfect sense to me.

      In the desert
      I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
      who, squatting upon the ground,
      Held his heart in his hands,
      And ate of it.
      I said, “Is it good, friend?”
      “It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;
      “But I like it
      Because it is bitter,
      And because it is my heart.”

It is well known that socks eat other socks. That is the only logical explanation for why socks disappear whenever I do laundry.

Sometimes they disappear in the washing machine, and sometimes in the dryer. My theory is that there are two distinct phases of the food cycle of soccus domesticus, a “wet” phase and a “dry” phase.

On the evidence of today’s laundry results, I have finally realized what should have been obvious all along: Socks are not merely cannibals, they are beyond cannibals. For a sock will only devour its own kind — a sock of the same color. So in a sense, socks are to cannibals as cannibals are to other carnivores.

How else to explain why, no matter how many socks I purchase, sooner or later I end up with one of each color?

It might be interesting to create a story, or a collection of stories, with a hidden structural back-story borrowed from some other medium. This might be an intriguing way to infuse a story with the aroma, as it were, of another work — say, the lyrics of a popular song.

For example, the emotional beats or merely key details of a narrative might trace the imagery of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, or Jonathan King’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”.

The story would not literally represent the lyrics of these songs, but would merely use their mysterious imagery as a series of touch points.

Of course it would not do to be too obvious about this. If you are immersed in reading a story, and you suddenly notice that you’ve just read about a mulatto talking to an albino, and now a mosquito has shown up, I would consider that a fail. 😉

Today I was on a panel — one of those panels where people talk about ‘the future’. At one point the moderator described how odd it felt to come home and see his fifteen year old kids and their friends all sitting around using two thumbs to type onto their smart phones.

“It’s strange,” he said, trying to describe how it felt to encounter this incomprehensible new world, “They are talking with each other, watching TV, doing all these things. They are clearly `present’, yet at the same time they are also continually sending text messages.”

He asked the panel “What do you think kids will be doing twenty five years from now? Gesturing with their hands to conduct things in space?”

I volunteered to answer his question. “Twenty five years from now,” I said, “When one of your grown children goes into their living room and sees their own fifteen year old kids, whatever those kids are doing will be equally incomprehensible to them.”

My childhood was filled with stories by Ray Bradbury, who sadly passed away today at the age of ninety one.

Yes, like any geeky kid, I was obsessed with science fiction — Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, all the greats — but Bradbury was in a different category entirely.

Yes, there are the obvious successes, such as “The Martian Chronicles”, but there is also so much more. Many of his stories — “The Veldt”, “A Sound of Thunder”, “All Summer in a Day” — resonated with something deep in my soul and forced my young mind to look at the world around me in a different way.

In particular, his masterpiece “Dandelion Wine” was, as I saw it, the perfect example of what might be called “inverse science fiction” — ordinary life seen as a thing of wonder. Absolutely nothing happens in defiance of the laws of reality, yet the reader is left with a feeling of delight and magic beyond the reach of any mere space opera.

There really was no other writer like him. We will miss you Mr. Bradbury.

I did not see the transit of Venus today. Alas, the sky in Manhattan was overcast. Not to worry, another transit will be coming through in 105 years.

But I did wander around in Washington Square Park during the transit. Somehow just knowing that an extraordinary event was occurring somewhere behind the clouds made me see everything differently. I noticed a man in a large Wizard hat, serenely sitting before a small table that contained a miniature version of himself. I saw another man on a bicycle smiling with delight as he clutched a bouquet of impossibly large black-eyed susans. I saw a large dog gazing soulfully at the fountain, and then lean over and appear to whisper something into the ear of the human sitting next to him, and I saw the way she appeared to listen very intently and nod in agreement.

These and many other things probably happen every day, but most days I would have walked through the park without really seeing them. Today though, I was wide open to all of it, life in its delightful weirdness taking place before my eyes.

It’s a shame that Venus herself did not make an appearance in downtown Manhattan. Oh, the transit was easy enough to follow, thanks to the wonder of the internet. There were plenty of websites showing a live stream of the event, in gorgeous detail and thrilling color. But getting your information from the Cloud just isn’t the same, even on cloudy days.

There is something magical about forgoing cyberspace altogether, and just strolling around a park to witness life as it is lived in person, in all of its infinite and delightful variety. In such moments it becomes clear that everyone, in their way, has a little touch of Venus.

When I improvise on the piano, I have the sensation not so much of creating music, but rather of channeling music that comes from somewhere within me that is a bit mysterious. The simple act of moving my fingers over the piano keyboard brings up a kind of emotional resonance distinctly different from the feelings I experience in other contexts. It’s almost as though there is an alternate personality in my head, one that speaks not in words but in music.

Just as there is a kind of split in our brains between the left side and the right side, perhaps there is a similar split between the musical and the non-musical parts of our mind, reflecting some schism that began long ago in human evolution. When we create music, or sing along to a favorite song, or simply listen as a beloved tune comes on the radio, maybe we are actually experiencing a kind of identity shift, becoming — for a time — this alternate version of ourselves.

Who is this person that I feel inside me when I improvise on the piano? What existence does he have outside of musical expression? I get the feeling that he feels emotion more deeply than I do, and that I might have much to learn from him. It would be great if we could one day just go for a coffee and have a good chat.

But that is unlikely to ever happen, because we don’t speak the same language.

When I was little, one of my favorite things was to tag along with my dad on weekends as he went about his day running errands. It didn’t matter whether he was picking up something from the store, fixing something in the garage, paneling the basement, or raking leaves out back, it just felt good to hang out with him. No matter what the context, his calm reassuring presence always made me feel safe.

I have long remembered that he would often sing a song as he went about his chores. Yet only recently did I realize there was a common theme: All the songs he sang featured colors.

For example, some of my dad’s favorite songs were “The Red Red Robin”, “The Autumn Leaves (of red and gold)”, “Bye Bye Blackbird”, and of course “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. These were songs that were fun to sing, and also fun for a little kid to listen along to. And every single one featured colors.

The funny thing is, my dad was color blind.