The Baltimore Ravens Won The Super Bowl
It’s nice to just type that out, and to read it.
“It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t pretty. But it was us,” said Baltimore Head Coach John Harbaugh. That sure as hell sums up not just the Super Bowl, but just about everything the Ravens do.
The team has a tendency to blow large leads. Their quarterback (and Super Bowl MVP) Joe Flacco during the regular season had a bit of a consistency issue. He’d play like Peyton Manning one week, and a week later play like Mark Sanchez. (A great quarterback, and a lousy one, respectively.) For a while there the team was quite injury prone. (Even in the big game last night, vital defensive component Haloti Ngata got injured and didn’t return.) They were one of the most penalized teams in the NFL this year.
In short, watching the current Baltimore Ravens can, for a fan such as myself, be a nerve-wracking, heartbreaking, indigestion-inducing affair. It sure as hell was right up until the end last night, when during their biggest game of the year, and of perhaps the decade, the Ravens displayed each of the flaws I mentioned above at some of the worst possible moments.
The light itself seemed to work against them. For 35 minutes the game was delayed because of a power failure at the Superdome. Paraphrasing Coach John Harbaugh, how could it be any other way for this team after the season it had?
But as I write this, the Ravens are NFL Champions. Something that tends to erase a lot (but not ALL) of the exasperation I feel with their mistakes during the regular season. Their victory is even featured on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today, paper of their arch-rivals, the Steelers.
They almost went to the Super Bowl last year, if not for two serious, inexcusable foul-ups on the part of two people that are not even with the team anymore, and who shall remain nameless in this post.
The vast majority of pundits did not predict a Ravens victory, and some of them are still making the story more about the San Francisco loss. Baltimore, as I told some of my friends last night, just isn’t the sexy, poetic, lucrative, marketable story that many people wanted from the Super Bowl. It wasn’t in 2001, (the last time they won it all) and it isn’t now, and the media is trying to adjust to a Ravens victory.
From a media standpoint, it simply isn’t sexy for the Ravens to win the Super Bowl. Not outside of Maryland, anyway. The world wants to see the Patriots win their next one. They want to see Pittsburgh climb their bogus “Stairway to Seven”. They wanted Peyton Manning to come back from a year off and win everything.
It seems appropriate that I root for the Ravens. For my own life in a way mirrors their last few seasons. Much potential, some outstanding, memorable moments, and getting exceptionally close to big things, only to have fate, or my own dumb errors blow it for me. Few people seem to think I have what it takes.
But then I come back sometimes and nail it anyway. Possibly because I’m too much of a stubborn pain in the ass to give up totally. I’ve had some plans that meant a lot to me go up in flames in the last few years, but I keep making plans.
Which I know from every feel good platitude that ever was spat out is key to success. I also know that most people will continue to doubt that I am the best person for the job, or what have you. (Outside of those that truly know me.) And even when I do shine through with my obvious victories, there is usually someone nearby that points out it isn’t as impressive as someone else. (I actually once had someone tell me after a good karaoke performance that I wasn’t as good as Freddie Mercury. For god’s sake who is?)
In short, I am not usually considered the sexy option in what I do.
Yet, like T-Sizzle, Ray Lewis, Coach Harbaugh, and the rest of Ravens Nation, I usually don’t care. I know when I’ve nailed it, and I’ll know the next time as well. It usually isn’t pretty or perfect when I do things, but it is me. And when I get it right, I really get it right.
Forget Evil. Annoying Characters are the Most Difficult to Write.
I don’t believe any particular type of person must be present within the canon of someone’s fiction writing. If I don’t choose to ever write a story about a child-molester, that’s my prerogative as an author. I’d be uncomfortable delving into that character and his actions, so you’re not likely to find such a person in any of my fiction. It isn’t wrong to write fiction about such a person committing such acts, but it’s not for me.
All of this is by way of saying that unlike some writers, I don’t believe it ‘s somehow an author’s duty to explore every single unpleasant situation and personality through their work. That’s fine for those who take up that cause, but I reserve the right to not go into any particular type of world with my fiction.
That being said, I have created people in my fiction that would be rather unappealing to me if I encountered them in real life. And while I maintain that someone could indeed still write good fiction without ever creating a character they would dislike in real life, my guess is that such an approach would put severe limits on a person’s creativity. It’s one thing to never want to write a rape scene. It’s another to populate all of your fiction only with those characters with whom you’d love to have lunch. It can be done, but I’m guessing it won’t take one far.
I won’t write a child molestation scene. Yet on the whole, writing villains isn’t problematic for me. Not much of my fiction has required a straight up evil villain at this time, but I’d have no qualms about writing same. One reason is probably because as far as I know, I’ve never personally encountered a true villain. A bigger reason is that I can control how much detail of his crimes I illustrate in my writing. I can control how and where I’m exposed to the evil of any given villain in my fiction.
Not so when I create a character with everyday quirks that I find unappealing, though not evil in their own right. I’d rather write a scene with a violent criminal attacking a cop then write a scene about a man who derives great enjoyment from cutting loud farts in public.
I didn’t even like typing the phrase “cutting loud farts in public” into this blog post.
That’s just an example of course. I don’t need to write a character who does that specific thing. Yet as an author I’m going to have imbue some of my characters with tendencies that would be distasteful, annoying, rude, or scary to me in real life. And it’s these small traits that make me grit my teeth as I write more so than writing about the large transgressions in many cases.
What that says about my psychological profile I leave up to you to determine. Suffice to say there is a litany of negative, or even neutral personality traits and quirks that I sometimes need to force myself to wade into as I write, in order to bring about conflict or at least diversity in my fiction. Quirks that in real-life make me want to run away screaming.
I have to remind myself that in a story we can find those who are slobs, stupid, haven’t watched the news a day in their lives, are still obsessed with their favorite boy band well into their 20’s, fold their slice of pizza before eating it, or will only date taller men. All traits that bug the piss out of me. But sometimes I must be willing to get intimate with characters who display at least some of these traits if my fiction is to have the depth that I want.
And when I get tired of spending time with the motorcycle rider that revs his engine while going through small towns just because he can, I can always give myself a break and switch to someone not as difficult to write about. Like an evil mastermind plotting to take over the Earth, but is at least polite about it.
A Private Vigil
This year, I’ll be posting some creative non-fiction pieces here on the blog at times. Names in this one have been changed, but otherwise represent facts.–Ty
***
Dr. Harrison was dead.
The legendary professor, a part of my alma mater’s community for decades, had died a mere few weeks into the first school year following his retirement. A professor for almost 50 years, he’d been an ex-professor for little less than four months before shuffling off this mortal coil. Or, in his case, he probably rode a ten-speed bicycle, as he was seen doing so often in life.
It would be obscene to claim that I was in mourning. For though I did know the man, having taken two of his courses, (the second of which turned out to be the final in his long career), I didn’t enjoy a personal relationship with him of any depth.
Oh, I was gratified to learn that the gruff intellectual giant had regularly read my editorials in the campus newspaper. I smiled a bit in class the few times he directed his bone-dry humor right at me. Yet I would never claim to have been as close to him as many of my fellow students, particularly those in this history department had been. Second of course to the man’s family, it was those students that suffered the greatest personal loss at Dr. Harrison’s death, and I’ll not take that from them.
Still, I was affected by his dying. The diminutive, sandals-wearing, bike-riding academic icon with the ever so slight Carolinian accent had, in more than one instance, indicated in his subtle ways that while he may not know much about who I was, he appreciated what I was. (A leftist “radical” much like himself, he indicated in class one day.)
Red-faced and puffy-eyed former students of his were a common sight on campus in the day or two after the news broke in mid-September. Word began to spread of an impromptu memorial for the late professor, to be held on the mall either that first night, or the following night. All were welcome.
I gave it strong consideration. His lectures, at times far too long and too dense for my personal taste had nonetheless been a part of my college education, and a recent one at that. I asked myself whether or not this truth, coupled with the few personal acknowledgments he’d shown me would oblige me to attend the gathering. In the end, I decided it would not, and I didn’t go.
Not to the official vigil, anyway.
Near the center of my alma mater’s campus, there was a building, with a small balcony on the front façade. Below it, the artisan bricks of the walkway, leading to this building, and several others on the mall. Not long after news of Dr. Harrison broke, I was on one of my frequent middle of the night walks when I found myself approaching this building from the side at around 1:30 in the morning.
An unfamiliar shimmer darted in and out of my sight through some bushes across from the building as I walked. I rounded the small corner to investigate this, and found what was left of a small, unmanned candle, reduced to little more than a flickering wick in a spreading puddle of wax. Scores of other abandoned votives, clinging to life hours after being left by there former owners.
Draped over the balcony in front of them was a large drawing of a ten-speed bicycle, a distinctive helmet hanging on the handlebars of same.
I was now flanked by the components of the Dr. Harrison memorial ceremony. A profound scene to simply stumble upon as I had. Yet both the simple but wholly appropriate banner, and the haphazard rows of tribute candles encrusted into the bricks of the walkway were enhanced by the utter silence.
My college, a bit of a party school, wasn’t known for its monastic quiet at night, though during the week things were much more peaceful than on weekends. Sometimes, such as on this night, there’d be no buzzing of college police golf carts. No fruitless hollering. No car horns from the nearby highway. No huffing of leashed townie dogs being walked at odd hours. Just silence.
I found it somehow both eerie and comforting.
For a moment I stood, hands in pockets, watching the candles burn further away into soundless oblivion. I wondered if the emotion of the gathering, and the profundity of its remnants could somehow attract the attention of the good professor, wherever he was. I determined that even if they could, he’d likely be off lecturing somewhere, or riding a bike through eternity instead. He’d given all he needed to give to this place, I thought.
Once my lack of movement began to chill me in the autumn air, I looked up at the banner and nodded. Then I started off back to my dorm, my private vigil complete.
Shaking Hands with Change
I keep a small notebook with me at (almost) all times. In it, I jot down ideas for future writings. Posts to this blog, an article I may want to pitch someday. Ideas for fiction. I haven’t tackled most of those ideas yet, but I’m making an effort to get around to all of them in 2013.
By “getting around to them”, I mean exploring them specifically. Beyond just a jotted down concept in that little notebook. In a few cases, exploring what I jotted down has led to a new work. Or at least the first stages of a new work. But exploring those ideas in my notebook sometimes means that the idea I jotted down just won’t work when light is shone upon it. (Or in some cases, it won’t work for me.)
Then sometimes it works, but begins to change in some ways as it goes along. I don’t just mean the inevitable rewriting and editing process, though that does bring about change. But I mean a change in concept, genre, or even a change in medium early in the journey.
One of the ideas from the notebook is a one-man show I ‘m working on for the stage. It started as a concept, and in the last two months I’ve been making it a reality by outlining it, brainstorming, and engaging in all of the things a writer engages in with his ideas. A key element of the structure of this show had alluded me, until one day, as is so often the case with creative types, I was in the middle of something else when a structure presented itself in my mind. (Good thing I had that notebook nearby at the time.)
The structure, which seemed to reveal itself from behind a lifting cloud, served as the basis of much of the subsequent work I had done on the piece. I had a compass. A direction. A skeletal structure on which to attach the flesh of what I was researching, creating and considering. Things moved in a much more efficient manner during the creative process after this skeleton appeared than they did before.
Last night I was working on that project again. And in the most casual of ways, a consideration about one small aspect of the play brought forth the idea for an alternate structure. And the idea isn’t bad. It may in fact be better than the original that came to me under equally organic circumstances.
Will I switch the entire project into this new structure? It would mean abandoning the type of show I thought I was writing, and going in a different direction with the exact same material. Am I willing to set aside the road map that came to me in such a mystical manner a few months ago?
Maybe, since its alternative came to me in a manner nearly is mystical. Or perhaps I won’t use it, and stick with my original plan. I don’t know yet, and for now I don’t have to. I’m still in the material collecting stage right now, and I may not know which structure to use until much later in the process. But where I had one definite idea as to how to proceed, I now have two.
This is a disadvantage in the sense that I’m not as close to concrete as I had been. However, I now have two potential structures that I can compare and contrast. That friction may just make the other better. Or give birth to a third structure.
It’s not the only recent example of this experience. As readers of this blog know, I’m in a local writers group. I hadn’t put anything of mine into the mix for several months, so at the last meeting. I offered to write something for the next meeting. I knew right off which idea from my notebook I’d use. The motivation of the deadline would be quite useful in bringing it to fruition.
Guess what? The story, which I initially thought would be rather straight forward began to reveal several layers. More complex characters. A certain theatricality that I knew probably could be portrayed in the ten page length limit, but with a lot more work than I’d thought at first.
To accommodate this, I began outlining the plot on paper to a greater extent than usual for my short fiction. Relationships, plot complications, even speeches and lines of dialogue were appearing at this brainstorming stage.
One day I looked up and realized I had four days to write the story. I hadn’t written a single word of it. And do you know why? In the process of outlining and exploring that short story, it became clear to me I wasn’t building the foundation for a short story at all. I had a stage play on my hands. (In all likelihood a one-act.)
After some gnashing of teeth, I pulled another jotted idea from the notebook and wrote what I think is a solid short story for next week’s writers group.
Life is unpredictable, I realize. Which is why I prefer my writing process to be predictable. In truth, I’m not always happy when a creation departs from my original vision.
But I’m better than I used to be. In years gone by, I’d probably abandon a project that wasn’t quite going the way I wanted it to go. While as I said I do toss some ideas away, more often now I try to make something out of them after that unexpected curve in the road shows up. And I have had to admit to myself that good things sometimes come from this acceptance of deviation from the map.
I still prefer structure and outlines over flying by the seat of my pants when I create something. That will probably never change. But these days, Change and I have, if not a best friendship, at least an amicable working relationship. I can see the potential advantages to a whole new structure presenting itself a mere few weeks after the first structure showed up. I’m willing to consider letting a short story idea become a play instead, if it “feels” like a better “fit”.
Why? Because in the end, I’d rather have more ideas out there which I started, even if the unseen forces alter them, then to leave the majority of ideas I have unrealized when it becomes clear they can’t take on the exact form I’d envisioned from the start.
So, accept unexpected changes in your creations. If you can’t be like some and embrace them, at least give them a firm handshake and invite them out for lunch. Sometimes they can help you after all.
How do you react when projects take a different turn “spontaneously”?
Your Own Inauguration
On this day we celebrate the peaceful and ritualistic transfer, (or in this case, maintenance) of great power. President Barack Obama, just hours ago, gave his second Inaugural Address, ushering in his second four year term as the nation’s Chief Executive.
Despite the fact that the reins of power remained with the same person today, the concept of this quadrennial ritual is a potent and dare I say beloved one in the American psyche. Perhaps the only bi-partisan day remaining in our highly polarized political society, Inauguration Day, even the second one for the same president, remains a fixed point upon which we as a people attach the ideas of starting new, resetting some of the clocks, and healing from a contention year of constant electioneering.
The Inaugural Address, and all of the pomp that surrounds it is not required by law. All that is required of an incoming president is the taking of the presidential oath of office, as laid out in Clause Eight of Article Two, Section Five of the United States Constitution. Everything else: the bands, the speeches, the convocations, the parade, the hundreds of thousands of people, Beyonce, are gravy. And with the exception of Beyonce, it’s gravy that has been a part of every Inauguration since the very first in 1789.
So why all the gravy? That peaceful transition of power I spoke of, unique in history at the dawn of our nation and still rather unusual to many parts of the world today, could and would transpire without all the trappings. Yet we surround that simple, two minute oath with a specific ceremony that lasts about an hour most years, and with a whole day of prayers, meals, speeches, parades and balls. I ask again, why?
Far be it from me to assert with certainty all of the reasons people do what they do at such time. However I do feel justified in theorizing. One reason of course is to celebrate, perhaps welcome to an extent, a new president. It may serve somewhat as a “welcome back” or a “thank you” to a re-elected president. All of the fanfare no doubt also serves as a sort of secular Eucharist at the altar of democratic government and the transfer of power by deliberate, scheduled, non-violent means.
Yet I don’t think it’s a stretch to say a lot of it springs from the same spirit with which we annually celebrate the New Year. True, the changing of presidents has more real-world, tangible consequences than does the quasi-arbitrary shift in one type of calendar that we in the West go nuts over every January 1. Yet don’t both days, Inauguration Day and New Year’s Day have something in common? Embracing what is new…getting beyond the unpleasantness of the recent past…reaffirming commitments to certain universals. The two days aren’t identical, but they’re cousins.
As people we enjoy symbols of starting over. Beginning again. Having another go. Clean slates. Refer to it in a million different ways and the message is the same; there’s hope that from here on out we can do better.
Need we wait for a New Year’s Day or an Inauguration Day to enter this mindset? Of course not. It can merely be your birthday. It can be Tuesday. It doesn’t much matter, so long as you’re dedicated to the idea that some things end, but other things begin. Some aspects of your life may be leaving office, but unlike an outgoing president, some aspects of you are just starting to take over. You can, in short, inaugurate a new presidency within your own life whenever you like. You can make an oath to yourself to faithfully execute your own goals in your own image to the best of your ability. I struggle with doing that myself sometimes, but I do try, and eventually I imagine I will do what needs to be done.
What about you? What will you inaugurate today?
Ty Unglebower 