Ken's Blog

About 340 million years ago, all four-limbed creatures – the ancestors of today’s amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals – began to “standardize” to five fingers/toes on each limb. Yes, many birds seem to have only three claws, and the horse seems to have a single big hoof, but when you look closely at their anatomy, these variations all turn out to be the result of fused or vestigial digits.

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that this development in the Lower Carboniferous age had resulted not in pentadactyls, but in tetradactyls – creatures with four fingers or toes on each limb. And suppose that in this alternate universe we humans had evolved anyway, giant brains and all.

I’m thinking we’d have developed binary arithmetic a lot earlier in our history. After all, historical development of mathematics has been hobbled by the need to count in multiples of five and ten. The ancient Babylonians found themselves stuck with base sixty. Such an unwieldy counting system seems quaint until you realize that traces of this system survive today – such as in the number of minutes in an hour, and the number of angular degrees around a circle.

The ancient Romans were hobbled by their need for a number system that had symbols for 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000. The resulting way of counting rendered as simple an operation as multiplication all but impossible.

But if we had four fingers on each hand, eight fingers in all, sixteen digits between feet and toes, we’d already be well on our way to thinking in binary. Perhaps, in such a world, computers would have been developed far earlier. The whole notion of building complex structures of meaning out of sequences of binary bits would have made sense to even the smallest child.

Of course when you start to play this kind of game, you begin to uncover some disturbing questions. For example, in such a world would there still be Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or would there be only three? Would the Holy Trinity become a Holy Duality? Would a picture be worth two hundred and fifty six words, and would Snow White really still be hanging out with seven dwarves? Would there have to be a science fiction series names “Babylon 4”? Could the Beatles still be the Fab Four, or would Ringo have to go?

And then of course there is the question I’m sure you are all asking: In such a world, how many fingers would Homer Simpson have?

Alas, these questions may forever remain unanswered. 🙂

One day a number of years ago I visited my cousin Ben – who works in movies – while he was filming some scenes at Walt Disney studios in Orlando, Florida. Between takes we hung out on the set, talking about this and that. But when cast and crew resumed shooting, there wasn’t really much for me to do.

So once the cameras started to roll, I wandered around and explored, taking in all of the components of a modern film studio – prop department, dressing rooms, video preview rooms, sound stages of all shapes and sizes. It was endlessly fascinating to see the story behind the story, all the practical brass tacks that go into making the magic we see up on the silver screen.

But then, after turning a corner at the end of a corridor, I could see into one room that wasn’t at all like the others. It seemed to be completely abandoned, run down, with paint chipped off the walls in places. The room was bare except for an old formica table, a metal folding chair, an empty coat rack in the corner with some wire hangers. In short, it was just about the least interesting room you could imagine.

Completely nonplussed by the contrast between this drab space and the well-tended studio behind me, I ventured into the room. Only after I was well inside did I see that there was a door, half open, out of sight of the corridor I had come from. Walking through this second door, I found myself in Walt Disney World.

I knew that I was supposed to think “Wow, cool, I’m in Disney World!” But that’s not what went through my mind. Rather, my first thought was “I was in a real movie studio, and now I’m just in Disney World.” It definitely felt like a step down in coolness factor. Meanwhile, all around me were tourists, a huge swirling throng of them, on their way from one attraction to the next. And not a single one of them seemed to notice the door I had just come out of.

And that’s when it hit me: I was witnessing a masterful example of negative architecture. Of course the people who work at Disney need to be able to get in and out, slipping unnoticed into the Magic Kingdom, and then slipping away again just as quickly and unobtrusively. And they need to do this very fast, often in full costume – as if through a magic portal – without having to bother with locks and such.

What I had discovered was one such portal. Any restless kid visiting for the day with his parents, stumbling through that half-opened door, would see a place that looked far less magical than the glittering theme park outside – probably a storage room, he’d think, or maybe the janitor’s hang-out. It would never occur to him to venture any farther. Rather, he would take one look at this boring little room and turn right back around, returning to a place where he could spend the day with Mickey and his magical friends. And that curious kid would never know, or even suspect, that genuine movie stars were to be seen in the rooms just beyond.

Which is exactly the point. There are doors everywhere leading from the Magic Kingdom to a place where even stronger magic is made. These doors are all wide open and you can walk right through them. No guard will stop you, and nobody will block your way.

But they are protected by the power of an even stronger magic – the magic of negative architecture. And so, my friend, try as you might, you will never find them.

In 1981 Raymond Carver published a collection of short stories called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” – also the title of a sad and powerful story in the collection. Carver’s theme, as you will know if you have read his work, was the abyss between people, the yearning to reach out, to love each other, and the difficulty we humans have in doing just that.

But now, nearly three decades later, we have entered a new age. Emotional expression has been boiled down to sound bytes – tweets, texts, blog posts, scribbles on facebook walls and all the other modern tricks we employ to fill in the vacuum of life’s random moments. This constant chatter in short electronic bursts can give us the feeling that there is no distance between one human soul and another, no alienation at all.

I wonder whether we as a culture are gradually mutating as a result of Twitterization. I don’t believe for a moment that we have found a magic cure for alienation, for misunderstanding, for the essential distance between us all. But I do think we may have found a drug that dulls our perception of these things. If you can send and receive dozens of little messages throughout the day, post your moments to Facebook, type out 140 character epiphanies into the aether, then perhaps you can create the illusion that the demons are at bay – the demons of loneliness, the demons of sorrow.

The demons of mortality.

In Carver’s world, people regularly found themselves face to face with their essential loneliness. But now – thanks to the miracle of modern technology – we can create walls of chatter throughout the day that shield us from those feelings.

Perhaps this is a good thing – maybe the drugs help.

Who am I to judge?

Sometimes it comes as a surprise to realize that things we’d been thinking of as completely different are actually quite similar. In films we are used to this sort of revelation. After all, students of the films of Alfred Hitchcock have realized for years that most of his thrillers are actually somewhat disguised boy-meets-girl romances, in the sense that the romance (whether between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly or between Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll) is actually the engine that drives the audience’s interest.

Of course there are exceptions, but the Hitchcock films that are primarily romances at heart by far outnumber those that truly break the mold, such as “The Birds” and “Lifeboat”.

Similarly, many computer games are essentially variations on the same game, when boiled down to their essentials. One of the most popular of these “essential games” is what might be called the “maze with prizes and killer zombies” game, more popularly known as a “dungeon crawler”. In this game, exemplified by the games from Id Software such as the 1993 Doom and 1996 Quake, your avatar runs around in a claustrophobia-inducing labyrinth trying to collect treasure while hungry killer zombies continually appear from around the corner, wanting to eat you.

Like any sensible individual in such a situation, you are supposed to use your high powered futuristic weapon to blow these zombies to smithereens and spatter their undead blood-soaked body parts against floor and walls, before said zombies approach near enough to rip open your chest cavity like a bag of corn chips, noisily suck out your brains and feast with rabid hunger upon your still writhing flesh.

All good clean fun.

Many games have appeared in the intervening years that continue in this hallowed tradition, such as Half Life, Diablo, Demon’s Souls and many others. These games are largely thought to be inspired by Doom, with story elements taken from Tolkien by way of Dungeons and Dragons.

But in this past week I had a revelation: The gameplay of such games is actually derivative of a game generally thought to belong to a completely different genre. Think about it for a moment: Your avatar must navigate a labyrinth, picking up valuable prizes to accumulate points, while avoiding death at the hands of autonomous monsters that roam around in the maze with no purpose other than to kill you. The first game to follow this paradigm came out well before Doom – in 1981 to be exact.

I speak, of course, of Pacman.

The only essential difference, from a game-play perspective, is that you get to see the entire maze when you play Pacman. John Carmack’s innovation in Doom was to show only a small, ground-level view of the maze. This increased the level of paranoia, as well as incorporating the task of learning and remembering the dungeon’s layout into the game itself.

One could also argue that the true progenitor of the “deathmatch” multiplayer mode of Quake, in which participants play against each other within a maze-like dungeon, is even earlier – the 1973 Atari game “Gotcha”.

Over these last days I’ve been making more of a push on a new direction for this blog. For the first time I posted a complete original short story – “Farewell” – written just for you, dear readers, in “real time”, as it were. And of course I’ve also been sculpting the “Tea ceremony”, a sort of digital still life in words.

Given this backdrop, imagine my excitement and shock of recognition, upon perusing the weblog of my dear friend Kaelan, to come upon her reference to http://www.nanowrimo.org, a site devoted exclusively to promoting a simple idea – members of the great unwashed public write a complete novel in one month.

In a nutshell, November is novel month – in the form of a contest. Upon entering this contest, you have one month – from 00:00 on November 1 to 23:59 on November 30 – to create a complete 50,000 word novel. It’s ok to have devised plans/outlines/sketches beforehand – as well as any scene ideas conceived while playing with plastic toy dinosaurs or small household pets and kitchen utensils – but the actual prose itself must all be created within this thirty day window. This last requirement would rule out, for example, the “Scenes from the Novel” that have gradually emerged on these pages from time to time.

I’ve been thinking I might devote the month of November this year to taking up this challenge, flinging the gauntlet, taking a hefty bite from Euterpe’s apple, so to speak.

I suppose if I were truly invested in the cutting edge potential of this novel cybermedium, then I would go all the way and Twitter my way to the finish line. I’ve run the math: There are thirty days in the month of November, and just about fifteen words in the average Tweet. For a 50,000 word novel, that comes out to 111 Twitter posts per day, or somewhere between seven and eight Tweets per hour (or about 0.12 t.p.m.), assuming that (a) one sleeps an average of eight hours a day, and (b) one does not actually have a life.

OK, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea.

But it might be interesting to take a monthlong detour from our regularly scheduled program in order to write a novel in these pages, and see where it all leads.

You are the readers, and I value your opinion on the subject. So, what do you say? I’d love to hear from you, to see what you think of this idea.

The young man awakens in the bed. At first he looks around wildly, as though at an unfamiliar place. Then he sits up on the bed, clad only in boxer shorts and a tee shirt, and his gaze systematically takes in the details – the silk lampshade, the alabaster flowered wallpaper, the Edwardian writing desk upon which an old silver tea service stands beside an empty bottle of champagne.

He stands up unsteadily in his bare feet, walks to the nearest door, opens it and peers through, seeming to realize only gradually that he is looking into a walk-in closet. He stares down at the row of women’s shoes, and a look of understanding crosses his face.

Silently he shuts the closet door.

He puts on his jeans and socks and pull-over sweater, which had been scattered on the floor off to one side of the bed, and walks out into the hallway, making his way silently as he carries his shoes in one hand.

He begins to descend the stairs, one by one. Halfway down, he peers furtively from the landing into the room below. Two figures sit upon the couch, a man and a woman. They do not appear to see him. He pulls back silently, until he is just out of sight. He stands stock still for a moment, his head bowed as though deep in thought, and then slowly he sits down upon the stairs.

From the back pocket of his jeans he pulls out a bedraggled drawing pad, opening it to a fresh and unmarked sheet. He reaches into his other pocket, rummaging around until his fingers emerge clutching an exceedingly old looking fountain pen.

He stares intently down at the blank paper, holding the pen absently between thumb and forefinger. Then quickly, with practiced strokes, he begins to sketch a picture.

She set out due north, making her way through the narrow streets, past the village outskirts where lone houses lay scattered like forgotten toys, until at last she reached open country. The sky was darkening by the minute, and she knew she needed to make haste. It had been many years since she had journeyed this way, but her feet knew the route as though they had walked it but yesterday. She felt the old spring coming back into her step, a lithe energy she had last felt as a young girl, climbing rocks with her brother.

Her brother.

She still blamed him, even after all these many years. Blame had grown, become hardened with time, until it was the only thing between them. Yesterday the thought of him would have brought nothing but a bitter dry taste to her mouth. And yet here she was, traveling north, along the very road she had forbidden herself, even in her thoughts.

The entire sky was now a dark and ominous purple, all traces of sunlight gone. She glanced up with apprehension. In this eerie light the stars seemed somehow menacing. It was not enough that they had devoured the sun. The meal had merely awakened in them a fiercer appetite, perhaps a taste for any mortal souls foolish enough to fall within their hungry gaze. She hurried onward.

The landscape seemed transformed. Dark purple shadows licked and danced around once familiar terrain, like drunken creatures risen up from hell. “He will not want to see me, even now,” she thought bitterly. “I am a fool – a fool on a fool’s errand.” Perhaps the end of the world was not reason enough to breach the wall that had come between them. Perhaps some walls are higher than such trifles as the fate of planets.

She realized she would not come even close to her destination in the short time that was left – she was still just halfway there, and the wind had already started to blow, the dark wind that the poets had foretold. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her.

Suddenly she felt lost. In that moment she realized it was no use – even had he wanted to see her, there was simply no time. Wearily she sat down upon a rock by the side of the road, to wait for the end. For the first time in many a year she could feel a tear trickle down her face. “At least I have this,” she thought with a bitter satisfaction, “I had lost my tears, and now one has come after all this time, to keep me company in my foolishness.”

Lost in her thoughts, she did not even realize she was not alone, until she felt a hand brush against her cheek, wiping away the tear. It was a familiar gesture. How many times had he wiped away her foolish tears, all those years ago?

“You came,” she said.

“So did you,” he replied, and then he smiled. She felt the years of bitterness fall away, as if a dream. Looking at his face, she saw he was different than she remembered, more careworn, and yet the same, just exactly the same. The light in his eyes was as it had always been.

“Farewell,” she said softly.

He laughed. “You were always so serious. What could possibly be so serious?”

She stared at him, appalled. For a moment she felt a stirring of the old anger. He had not changed at all. She opened her mouth to speak, a bitter retort already on her lips. But instead she found herself starting to laugh. “Yes, you’re right,” she said with a giggle. “I am too serious. Much, much too serious. I’ll change from now on, I promise.”

Suddenly they were both giggling together, like children, far too lost in laughter and sheer delight to pay any heed when the dark wind, cold and furious, rose up at last to usher in the endless night and sweep the world away.

One fine summer afternoon the stars came out.

A cool breeze was floating through all the villages, down from the mountains. A purple haze had settled over the horizon, and there was a moon slung low in the sky, hovering just above the treetops.

The people came out to look at the stars. They stood in clumps of two and three, on hilltops and village squares. Children climbed the trees and laughed, making bird noises until their parents told them to be quiet.

She had been cooking when the light had started to change. With a sigh she put out the fire beneath the pot, wiped off her hands and ventured outside, where a crowd of sky watchers was already gathered.

The poets had written of this day long ago, but nobody had really believed. It was a story from the old tales, from the time before time, and these days nobody paid much attention to such things. Until now.

She thought of her brother. It had been a long time since she had let herself think of him. She realized that she still saw his face in her mind’s eye the way he had been then. Surely he must look different by now. But perhaps not.

She went back inside, turning away from the flaming stars arrayed against the eerie darkness of the afternoon sky. Briskly, efficiently, she packed a sandwich, a pear and a small flask of wine – something to keep her belly fed, and something to keep her belly warm. She grabbed a shawl – the green one, the one she used only for traveling – from its place behind the door, and set out on her journey.

A dream – I’m pretty sure that’s when it first entered my head.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream with a phrase or sequence of words still reverberating around in your brain. It might even take a while to realize it’s been nestled there for hours, lurking somewhere in the back of your thoughts. Today I realized that for the entire day a little snatch of dialog from a play by Shakespeare had been rattling around in my mind, just ever so slightly out of conscious awareness, apparently a last remnant from a dream of the night before.

Now, in the quiet of the evening, after the hubbub of the day has subsided, I realize what it was – one of my favorite speeches from “The Tempest”, spoken by Prospero in the first scene of Act IV. It’s an odd – and oddly beautiful – little monologue. Ostensibly he is speaking about the artifice of the play we are watching, observing that what we have seen here is nothing but illusion, papier-mâché and greasepaint. And so he starts out:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:

But then Prospero continues, and the impact of his words carry far beyond the stage proscenium:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

This is so much lovelier and deeper than the famous monologue in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” that begins “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”. That passage speaks only to the tragicomic pageant of an individual life, whereas the speech from “The Tempest” is nearer to the Hindu concept of Maya – that this apparently solid world we perceive around us is in fact only an illusion. Shakespeare is suggesting that the very fabric of reality around us may itself be only a sort of fleeting and illusory performance. The sentiment reminds me quite a bit of this dourly playful excerpt from Fitzgerald’s translation of the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (the original was written in 1120 in Persia):

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

It’s a profound idea, and yet one which many of us first encountered in early childhood:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

🙂

I’ve been giving some serious thought today to the points raised by Troy about achievement and personal responsibility. They were good points, even if he and I disagree on some of the particulars. As it happens, while I was thinking about this, the White House released a transcript of the speech the president will be giving to our nation’s school children in Virginia tomorrow morning, on the occasion of the first day of the new school year.

What strikes me about the speech is that President Obama makes exactly the same points that Troy does. The two of them are aligned on this issue to an eerily precise degree. Here is one excerpt from the President’s speech:

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

One thing that people who succeed seem to have in common is an early belief – starting back in childhood – that diving in and getting good at things is going to pay off for them. I think this is a quality shared by Troy, Barack Obama, myself, and all of the high achievers I know. Somehow there is the confidence – the certainty, you might say – that one is up to the task of attaining the level of mastery required. For me, for as far back as I could remember, there has always been a joy in mastering certain kinds of things (mainly things connected with art and words and music – and only later with math and technology).

This is a joy that perpetuates itself. You get those first modest successes, and it gives you even more confidence to try more ambitious things – to put in even more time, if necessary. But I think somewhere in your soul there needs to be that kernel to start with, that fierce belief that you’ve got what it takes, even when those around you do not yet have much reason to agree.

It’s clear to me that Troy and Barack and I share a goal of wishing to plant into the minds of young people that seed of self-confidence – of finding their own unique way of expressing their true potential.

Given this common cause, I find it disheartening that a weirdly hostile (and, I suspect, cynically dissembling) group of people in this country are trying to prevent their kids from hearing the speech – ostensibly in defense of some sort of right wing principles. The irony of this particularly inane form of political gamesmanship is that this president is about to give a speech to our nation’s children that is the very model of good old fashioned conservative principles: A fervent exhortation toward individual responsibility, hard work, and self-betterment.