Sympathy for the….Phelps?
It would appear that prolific hater and bigot Fred Phelps is dead.
I’m not affected by it much. Maybe it’s because I explored the nature of such a man so thoroughly when I portrayed him in The Laramie Project, and am now done with being swayed too much by such people. Maybe it’s because I’m not that shocked by what people do anymore. Or maybe it’s just my personality. Whatever the reasons, as much as I despise Phelps and people like him, I’m not planning a party. Nor am I building a website that shows images of him in hell with his flesh burning off, similar to the one he created for his website depicting murder victim Matthew Shepherd. I’m certainly not going to spend time and money I don’t have to picket his funeral and applaud, laugh and celebrate loudly enough for his grieving family to hear as his body passes by on the street, in much the same way he and his Westboro Baptist cult have done for years.
But you know what? I’m not holding anything against anybody who does any of those things.
I won’t be doing any of those things because I don’t feel Phelps and his scumbag ilk are worth my time. But ever since his estranged son announced that his father was near death a few days ago, the internet as has been filled with calls to “not sink to his level”, and proclamations that “I’m going to be a bigger person than him, and not applaud.”
To begin with, people need to skip the “it tolls for thee” horseshit. Saying absolutely nothing at all about the death of Fred Phelps would be the best, most effective way to take a stand against responding. Posting about his death and than reminding the world just how moral you are by not being as bad as he was in celebrating a death is passive-aggressive sermonizing the likes of which makes nobody anywhere look any better. I’d rather someone throw a kegger to mark Phelps’s passing and show no shame for doing so. At least that position does not smack of being disingenuous.
Furthermore, I’m not sold on the position of silence as moral high ground in the first place. Phelps and his family have dedicated their lives to causing as much pain as possible to as many people as possible. They invite, thrive even, on the hatred they receive as a result of their actions. Whether they actually believe what they say or not, they have been a gangrene in the leg of civilized society for quite some time. If someone (like myself) chooses to feel next to nothing about his death, fine. If there are a few who choose to pray for his soul, and seek to shed love on his survivors in hopes of a prodigal son moment of redemption, that is fine. But are we really going to tell people that find the world is a bit of a better place today because the man who advocated genocide is dead that they have no leg to stand on? Dare we preach to someone who had to attend a funeral picketed by Phelps that they should mind their moral P’s and Q’s before they react to this news today?
I can tell you that I’m not going to do so.
Hitler. Saddam Hussein. Jeffrey Dahmer. Timothy McVeigh. The 9/11 hijackers. Adam Lanza. Dylan Klebold. Countless others. All of these people who committed atrocious, violent crimes against human beings are dead. I grant that there were probably people who felt neither remorse nor joy at the passing of these specimens either. And there were those who tolled that bell and mourned each of those souls. But far more vocal and visible were those who smiled a bit when it happened, and considered the world a better place after the fact. Are any of the people who felt relieved at those deaths of lesser moral standing? Were they scolded for “stooping to their level”?
What about the Italians who actually hung their dead dictator’s corpse up by the ankles for everyone to come take a look at? Was that stooping to Mussolini’s level? Were those that went to view the scene less moral Italians than those who stayed home that day?
You can say that that was during a time of war. Or you can say that McVeigh was a terrorist and that Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer. Fred Phelps, one may counter, did not actually kill anyone, start a war, institute a genocide. Both of these positions are correct. But if we are to take his speeches, pamphlets, actions and legacy seriously, Fred Phelps’s utmost desire from the depth of his soul was a hell on the face of the earth- a world filled with death, hatred, fear, bigotry and violence. An oppressive regime under which people who are outside the mean, or in any discernible way different from himself ought to, for the sake of moral purity, be sought out and slaughtered wholesale in the name of god. Sound familiar? Does he get different consideration at the end of his life simply because he lacked the resources and manpower to actually initiate his vision, as compared to others who for a time were able to do so?
More than that, are we truly committed to the declaration that someone who walks around saying, “good, it’s about time” is actually stooping to the level of Fred Phelps? From where does anyone summon the temerity to proclaim that he who so much as whistles a happy tune as a result of this news today is no better than a man who jeered at parents he never met as they tried to mourn and bury their children? A man who did it over, and over and over and over and over again.
Many people are called, by either their religion or their own personal morals, to rise above celebrating the death of any human being, and that is commendable. Perhaps it is even a goal to which we should all aspire. But then again, maybe it isn’t for everyone and the truly moral high ground for now, while the news is still raw, is to concede that though we personally choose another way, those that are happy today and throw a smiley face up on their blog or Tweet may just be well within their rights as moral people to do so.
At least for a few hours.
On Well Worn Notebooks, Occasionally Used
This is my current “go everywhere with me” ideas notebook that many people will tell writers they must have. It’s been around the block more than a few times. Or to be more accurate it has been in my pocket(s) more than a few times.
It’s quite distressed. It’s possible I will need a new one before too long. Yet all of its pages are not full. Yes, even after having this particular notebook for several years, it is not yet packed with ideas, character sketches, blog ideas or one-off stanzas looking for a poem to call home. There are ideas written in it, don’t get me wrong. Three kinds, in fact. 1) Ideas I have come up with and used since. 2) Ideas waiting to be used. 3) Ideas I have since lost interest in and will probably not use.
Still, one would think that for a writer, such a notebook would be stuffed by now. Maybe it should be. Maybe even posting this shames me in the eyes of some. To be honest, I’ve wondered myself as I flip through the worn and as yet unused tiny sheets in the back of the forlorn specimen of stationary you see in that photo above if I haven’t been paying enough attention to the muses. But then I consider a few things:
–I tend to work on only one or two projects at a time, and they tend to capture much of my creative energy. It seems that ideas for future works that are far removed from actually happening are somewhat deflected when I am brainstorming ways to make a current project better. (Many of the ideas in the notebook pertain to how to improve current projects as opposed to whole new projects to begin.)
When a new idea strikes me I do still write it down, if I think it has something to it. But my creative process for one project can be so long at times, I guess I’m not usually thinking about a project I might be starting next year or beyond. I realize that writing down an idea for a future project is wise, so that when I finally finish my current three, I can hop right into something, but since I don’t have an urgent need to write 18 things at once, I seem not to be compelled to write down ideas I won’t be getting to for a while. And what if an idea comes to me that is so urgent I stop in my tracks? In that case…
-I tend to work almost right away on something that has struck me deep. It doesn’t happen all the time, but if one of those great ideas writers hope for grabs me, I will write it down in said notebook, finish the next stage in a current project, and than start the preliminaries on the new idea. Put another way, if an idea inspires me that much, I usually find a way to start working on it in short order, and hence having it in the notebook seems almost redundant. If I’m walking at noon and a great short story idea hits me, chances are I am writing something about it later that day or the following day. A writer cannot always wait for lightning strike inspiration, and I don’t. But when I do have it, I tend to get on with it.
-I only tend to write down the more complete concepts as opposed to snippets. That little notebook and several others may in fact be full by now if I wrote down a few more things. There’s a hell of a lot inside this distracted globe. Is it meet I set it all down? My standard for what to write down in it is sometimes pretty high. Usually I will write something down if I have an idea of a main character and the central theme/conflict. Only once in a while do I write down a piece of dialogue that appears, waiting to be assigned to an unknown future piece. The image of a character or a building outside of a plot comes to me sometimes, but if I don’t know the context for same, I don’t usually put it in the notebook. Like I feel there is some sacred responsibility to only put down the most promising, most complete ideas, and avoid writing down ideas that will never materialize. As though I paid more than a dollar for this little thing, and need to economize or something.
-My memory is pretty good. I know those are famous last words, and I have sometimes neglected to write down an idea only to have it slip away later. This is more common with my non-fiction though.
-I internalize. I experience things, people, events, feelings, memories. They meld together to form a part of my creative psyche that remains in flux and yet serves as a relative constant which informs my work. A homogeneous mixture of potential tones, themes and moods. Those little snippet ideas sort of get sucked into this artistic maelstrom. They become part of a collective outlook within my soul that is reflected on the whole through my writing. Like mixing paints to form a specific base color, I suppose. I allow the constituent parts to blend into one, and then paint the canvass with that.
-Tiny bit of self-consciousness. What do people think of the guy that stops what he’s doing and writes something down in a beat up little mini-composition book? I do it anyway, don’t misunderstand, but would I do it more often if I didn’t care that people would see me doing it half a dozen times in one afternoon? This, I grant you, is the weakest of all the reasons, and doesn’t always apply. But it’s there sometimes.
-Physically writing something down is problematic for me. Most such notebooks are about quickly jotting things down. I literally cannot effectively jot down anything. If I do, it will not be legible even to myself later on. The smaller the page, the worse it is. It was ever thus with my handwriting, (I don’t even bother with cursive) as has been the ache in my hand and arm after a few minutes of writing things out. I can effectively write the basic ideas on such small paper, but I have to stop what I am doing and write it neatly, with thought, at a speed that is far slower than that of my mind. That can take time I don’t always have when an idea strikes, so I often tell myself that the idea is stored in my head for later. Often it is, but sometimes…
These are the conditions under which I operate naturally. They aren’t rules I must follow, and I’ve been thinking it may be time to be a bit more liberal with what I record in said notebook. I don’t mean to suggest that I or any of you abandon what works. Do not by any means start keeping a notebook with you just because conventional wisdom says you should. Nor should you feel pressured to fill a notebook, like mine, that is still half empty. Stay true to your own process, as will I. I am merely exploring the possibility of opening my process a bit more. If writing down more ideas more freely doesn’t feel right, I won’t keep doing it. But it may just make me feel more and not less tuned into inspiration or the Muses. Maybe. I’m not going to force anything, but I want to see what happens if I approach it differently.
Do you keep an ideas notebook on you? How do you use it? Let me know in the comments.
An Open Letter to an (Almost) Kindred Spirit
For the purposes of this open letter, the subject will be referred to as Melanie. —Ty
Dear Melanie,
I see comments from you on Facebook here and there, left on the pages of people we both know. People we have both known for years, in fact. I can’t call them mutual friends because it seems you don’t want to be friends with me after all this time; you turned down my friend request several years ago.
I wish I knew why you did so. I wish I knew why you find even the safe and, if you like, casual distance of Facebook to be too intimate for us, given what at one time we went through and did together. I wonder what the moment was when you decided I wasn’t worth it.
It couldn’t have been the mere passage of time without hearing from me before Facebook. We emailed periodically and besides, based on what you said those first few times I noticed you had shown up in my indirect news feed, you were happily finding all kinds of people for the first time after years apart.
If it was something I did in college that caused the rift, you did a fantastic job of hiding it. In fact I even saw you after you left college twice and all seemed well. You stopped by campus the next year for a few hours, I don’t remember why. And though I was busy with having a girlfriend at the time, we did get to talk. As for the second time, after the atrocious betrayal by that same girlfriend, I tagged along on a pretty long road trip from campus to see you perform in a show of some kind. Your husband, who also knew me in college, knew I was coming, though you didn’t. He never gave any indication I shouldn’t come. Seemed pretty happy with me being there, in fact. As did you, once you saw me. Like I said, perhaps it was all an act on your part and I in fact ruined your weekend by showing up. If so, that was the better of your two good performances that night. Perhaps your best ever, if I could be fooled to that extent. I doubt this was the case, but I’ll leave the possibility open.
But you are not, nobody is a good enough performer to fake the friendship I felt between us in college. I’m not perfect, but I didn’t overestimate what we were during those few months. I can’t say I haven’t ever overestimated my intimacy with someone or a group of someones, but I don’t buy it with you. The opportunity to reflect your actual views of me was too frequent, too easy, and yet you didn’t do so. And I didn’t force any illusions upon you from which you had to extricate yourself. I always knew the score. No, Melanie. I know that even if it was for but a brief moment in your life, you considered me quite important, because of the steps you took of your own accord.
Maybe it was the way you caught my eye and held it after my rare singing performance after a monthly talent show on campus. The nod of your head as I looked back and stepped off the stage. But giving the benefit of the doubt, you could have done that to any body.
So maybe it was the time I walked into the off-campus bar one Wednesday night, and the whole group turned as I entered and instead of saying hello tried to get me to do a body shot off of you. As though the idea of me doing body shots off of anyone in a bar wasn’t out of character for me to the point of stupefaction. Even more unlikely than that though, you didn’t wave any of them off. There were no body shots that night, by me, or by anybody else. Still one of the most bizarre moments I ever experienced at college, and it felt like someone, somewhere was forcing an issue. But, again, perhaps everyone was just wasted to such a staggering degree that they actually thought college Ty Unglebower and public body shots was something that not only should but could happen at that time. I’ll let that be a maybe. (Though I’ve always wondered what you would have done had I agreed.)
So forget those two times. I want to talk about two other times. These two can’t be explained away casually. In fact after years of reviewing them in my mind, I remain convinced to this day that they were indicative of one thing; I held a unique, even if not sexual place in your heart for those final few weeks on campus.
The first time, I happened to be on a walk and took a short cut through the lobby of the campus theater. I remember how striking it was that not a soul was there; that was quite unusual. An hour before an opening curtain, and not a sound. At least not until somehow you walked out of the house alone at that exact moment and saw me. You approached and said something to me about it being your final opening night on campus ever, and I told you to break a leg or something hackneyed. We talked a bit.
Before I processed what was happening, we were hugging. It was not the first time we had ever hugged one another, but it was the first time it felt like anything other than what a football player might give a team mate after a touchdown. You never were a particularly demonstrative type, and that’s fine. But you initiated that time.
Even more telling? I began to pull away, and you didn’t let me go; you held on to me.
Time stopped for me, and there was nothing else in the universe for a moment but you, me and that lobby in which we both had spent so much time. Even then I can’t describe what I felt as being in love because that takes time. Yet something as surprising as it was unique was happening and I couldn’t help but be moved by it. You just didn’t do those things, or at least you didn’t often, and certainly not with me.
That embrace between us may not have been the single most significant one in my life, but I can tell you that even all this time later it out ranks most of the embraces of people I have dated, slept with and even been in love with. If my intuition is worth a damn, and if I am looking back with enough distance now, I’d say in that extended few moments you wanted, no, longed for something that at that moment only I was able to provide. Not a marriage, or romance or a sex act, but a concept within me, an energy between us that clearly affected you in a way that transcended that of casual friendship. I have no definition for it.
Do you? Like me, do you ever sit up in the middle of the night and remember that moment and try to define it even all of these years later, long after we ceased being a part of one another’s lives? Or have you forgotten it somehow in the intervening years, miles and rejected Facebook friend requests? Or is it a moment you recall but try not to acknowledge to yourself anymore?
And do you feel the same way about the next big moment I refer to when I determine I used to matter a great deal to you? It was about two weeks later and I told you I loved you, and you replied with the cold and somewhat condescending, “thank you, Ty.” But I can let that pass. I have told plenty of other people of both genders that I love them, and not meant anything romantic by it. Certainly I found you attractive, most of the men did, but that was not the impetus for me telling you I loved you during what was to be our final encounter at college. I said it because that is how I felt; there are a million ways to love someone, and I loved you. If you’re one of those who just can’t ever say it to someone, fine. Frankly I think you could have mustered it up then, especially after our moment in the lobby, but oh well.
No, it wasn’t that deflection. It was why it came about in the first place.
Most well written stories about two people physically parting ways after a whirlwind friendship of seemingly great depth would have ended in that lobby. That’s the moment that made the most sense from a story arc standpoint. Surely as a dramatist yourself you sense the poetic perfection that would have evolved from that encounter being our last? Two performers sharing a moment unexpected in its tenderness and vulnerability before an opening night in the middle of an otherwise empty theatre lobby. It doesn’t get more ironic than that.
But then came the epilogue. The awkward, wonderful epilogue.
You came to my room two weeks or so later, during finals. Though you were in my dorm’s common room various times, you never came to my room before. And you certainly never before stood in my open doorway as I packed my stuff away for the end of the academic year, making awkward small talk about what I was doing. You never before searched for something to say after, “In case I don’t see you…” or whatever it was.
And a hug again. The appreciated but deflected, “I love you, Melanie” from me, and a sense that I shouldn’t pull away this time. I deferred that authority to you and once again several long moments later you utilized it. The you stepped out of my room backwards, and after some other words of little consequence left my room and the dorm. For all intents and purposes, you then stepped outside of our intimacy forever, I suppose.
So I regret whatever happened to cause this chasm. If it was something I did, I’d make it right. If it was your husband who decided he didn’t want us to be friends, I’d follow it (been there before with others) even though it would be insulting. But to go through what we went through and be met with the silence of the years and the rejection of the cyber-gesture is like turning around on the clearest, brightest spring day and getting punched in the shoulder. You recover, but you’re like, “what the hell happened?”
I guess you don’t think of me, or don’t think of me fondly. But I think I miss you anyway. Not because of two extended embraces during a May long ago. Those embraces were merely the confirmation and culmination of what I had known already for months; ours was a rare, perfectly balanced, like-minded mega-friendship for a brief, brilliant flash of time in my life. Born of mutual participation in a significant event in my creative history and fed thereafter by instant, inevitable, lasting laughter and joy whenever you were nearby. No human being in the history of anything has been so consistently able to make me laugh so heartily with so little effort as you. If ever a mind and spirit existed onto which my own connected so completely without judgement or fear, it was yours. It was so far beyond good chemistry, so much more than merely finishing each other’s sentences, (which we did more than once), so much more than finding unparalleled creative common ground and intellectual congruence that I entertained your very existence as proof of reincarnation; surely in a bygone epoch of human history during a life previous to my current one, you were the best friend I ever had.
At least that is how I felt in a lobby of a theatre and the door frame of my mostly empty dorm room for a few moments one May.
If ever you were to read this, would you say, “Thank you, Ty” again? Would it anger you? Creep you out? Again, all possible. But you know what, Melanie? As cynical as I have become by this point in my life there remains a fragment of my tired and scarred heart that can’t help but believe you would recognize every thing I’ve mentioned here.
Maybe one day you’ll let me know. Until/if that ever happens, be well. And if even the memory of me and my antics can still make you laugh in spite of yourself, maybe in some ways we really are still in that lobby together.
sincerely, Ty Unglebower
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
First Chapter Fixations: Giving Books a Real Chance
I recently read this post by one Blair Thornburgh about common reasons agents or publishers will stop reading a novel. The article even mentioned one professional who would draw a big red line under the moment they stopped reading. Though page and/or time limits for reading are not mentioned in the post, by the title I inferred that this action referred to a manuscript’s first chapter. Even if the professional in question with the red pen was not referring to the first chapter, I am going to in this post, because I think the writing industry and community have recently become somewhat obsessed with first chapters, and it’s time to reign it in a bit.
Now, I don’t know Blair Thornburgh at all, so I have no problem with her. Nor do I argue with the overall wisdom of the piece. On the contrary, it is the very applicability of her post to today’s writing industry and community that has me irritated. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the writing advice she gives, but the need for all of it to be present in the first chapter of a manuscript has me a bit edgy. That’s the market’s fault, though, not hers. In the end she just happened to have written the most recent post on this topic right before I finally felt the need to write about it myself.
Follow any agent or publishing blog long enough and you will eventually see some version of “Reasons Agents Quit Reading Your Stuff Right Away” type of post. They, too, are often filled with solid writing advice. But they perpetuate this first chapter fixation to the point that in some cases it becomes a first page or even first paragraph fixation.
Your experience will vary, but the thesis of most such articles can be summed up this way:
Agents/Publishers/Readers have little time or short attention spans, so you need to give them a reason to keep reading your novel beyond page one if you have any hope of success in this cruel writer’s world you’ve foolishly chosen.
What follows is usually a list of things one must do in order to keep an important person’s interest for more than 20 seconds. (Or ten seconds, or whatever minuscule amount the mean is today.) I won’t shoot the messenger,but the fact that the literary landscape requires such advice is in some ways pathetic.
Believe me, I realize agents and editors and publishers are busy people. Somebody tweets or blogs that truth within the writer’s community about once every 1.3 seconds. (Between reminders that writing and publishing is a business, of course.) So when you say agents and editors are busy people trying to make money, I do in fact get it. (Boy do I get it, already.) So I grant you that much, publishing industry; you can’t invest in a house with a leaky roof.
Yet within the writing community, this fact has been the genesis of a “hurry up!!!” mentality which reduces our first chapters to hooks, gimmicks and shiny object waving. So much is the need to keep someone reading for more than the first few pages that it may just be morphing into a code to crack as opposed to an encouragement to write strong openings. People are going to start, (and have probably already started) tweaking their first chapters to jump through all these hoops that agents insist upon in order to spend another five seconds on a manuscript. My concern is that such tweaking will be at the expense of quality of the rest of the novel. Big, gimmicky, sparkling first chapters to act as the “open sesame” to an agent or editor’s next precious 15 seconds. Then, even if the door opens, it’s Al Capone’s vault inside.
That goes for readers as well, by the way. Much of this advice is about “hooking” the reader quickly, because after all in this fast-paced digital world where…and so on and so on…at the speed of light… mention a Kindle in there somewhere. That point has been made a trillion times as well, and it too is part of the problem; everybody is scrambling to make their book worth reading within the first few seconds. The first few sentences. My response to all of this? How about we give books a few minutes to breathe before we jettison them into the slush pile, or hit ‘delete’ on our e-readers? How about we accept that sometimes a great story needs some exposition, back story and description? That may just be the price we pay for choosing that book.
Yes, you are busy, and the industry is busy. But if you need to be convinced a book is worth representing or reading within the first 20 seconds of reading it (or at least before the end of the first chapter), maybe there is a better way for you to make money or save time. Maybe it is that stubborn adherence to instant hooks and attention span dot-connecting that has degraded the quality of our published fiction over the last few decades. No one person is to blame, naturally, but can we expect an society-wide evolution towards better books when more and more people expect a hook, or a shock, or an unquenchable thirst to read up to page five, all within the first few moments? Can good come from generations of new authors spending more time worried about the “all important” first three paragraphs than about anything else?
I’m not discouraging quality writing. I’m merely suggesting that we aren’t defining quality in a useful, practical manner when we say we have to fall in love with a book so early. Of course a book that rambles on for 200 pages about nothing is not likely to catch fire in today’s market. (Though more and more of them are.) Yes, we can and should establish some semblance of quality control over what we read and what we choose to represent. (Though there is mounting evidence that quality is not the top priority.) But do we really in our collective hearts believe that we can determine the entertainment, literary, or marketing value of something after one half of one page? Two pages? Ten?
All right, perhaps sometimes we can. If you are into chapter 2 and nothing has happened or you’ve already introduced 46 named characters, you need an editor. But why not decide such things more on a case by case basis, instead of instituting a sweeping generalization about novels that take the first few pages to catch their breath? Because people in the book industry are busy? Because readers are busy? Writers are busy too, you know. Busy making something that doesn’t appear as though we threw it together in as little time as most people will give it to prove itself “worthy.”
Maybe we all need to be a bit less busy in the book world, and accept that it wouldn’t kill us and might just help us if we consider the pacing of other fields of quality endeavor. Deciding that a book is not worth representing, publishing, or reading before the end of the first chapter is not equal to passing on a house with a leaky roof. It’s passing on an entire house based on the ugly color of the front door. It’s leaving the cinema because we don’t like the font used in the opening credits, or giving up on a five-course meal because we didn’t care for the salad it began with as an appetizer. In short it’s choosing to ignore the fact that there is a certain craftsmanship in creating such complicated things, and that that craftsmanship cannot always be rushed into existence just because we happen to be too busy to consume more of it before passing judgement upon it.
I try to give every book I read at least 40 pages before moving on to something else. I encourage other readers to do the same, or else be potentially deprived of some excellent fiction that opted to set the scene for a bit longer. I accept that agents and publishers can’t do that, but I cannot accept that the best choices are being made by busy people (or their interns) when they give a novel a few pages or a few paragraphs to “wow” them with certain predetermined milestones. The first five pages isn’t the place to be wowed in most cases, but the industry has begun to cater to the types of books that do, I think. Then again, the industry would not, if readers were willing to accept that they need not be breathless by page five of my book as they read it on the morning commuter train.
We can do better than this, can we not? After all, the act of passing on a book itself is not more complicated if done after ten minutes of reading than it is after ten seconds of reading. And in the former case, one might just find a masterpiece that needed a minute to take its coat off and sit down-a masterpiece that did not pass any of the “hook me in the first page/chapter barometers floating around out there. And that would be tragedy worth writing about.
The (Audio) Play’s the Thing. Even Now.
I couldn’t sleep last night (which is nothing new) so I opted to try listening to some music. Usually in bed I use the CD player, so I don’t have to bother with headphones that the mp3 player requires. So I reached for my CD holder. But at the last second I decided to not go with music. I instead flipped to the back where I keep two CD copies of some old cassettes I’ve had since I was a child. The cassettes have great sentimental value, and are now quite rare from what I can tell online. So a few years ago I digitized them, so I’d at least always have the content.
The cassettes are of audio plays of a kind, about historical figures from American history. In this case, one tape was about the “life” of George Washington. The other tape contained the stories of Ben Franklin and Daniel Boone. Almost more suited for radio in the 1930’s, but captivating to my young imagination nonetheless. I would allow myself to travel by way of (overly?) dramatic incidental music, sound effects, and memorable subject matter back to the founding days of the nation to visit those I most admired as a child.
I’ve been a restless person with a curious, exploratory, and times wandering mind my entire live. Multiply that by being a kid who was awake when everyone else was asleep much of the time, and you get someone who didn’t rest as much as they should have on their own. So music helped me focus. Relax. Get lost in the sedate wonders of my subconscious, thereby opening the door at last to slumber. (Much to my kid sister’s annoyance at times, when we shared a bedroom.) Other times, these audio plays served the same purpose.
Last night I grabbed the George Washington one and played it as I sat there in the dark. In so doing I engaged in a process so deeply entwined with my formative years and beyond that if one could project a visual image of the deepest part of my psyche, one would probably see among the images a version of myself playing those tapes.
Not that this was the first time I had listened to one of these productions as an adult. Far, far from it. I’ve picked them up here and there to listen to for a few minutes over the years. I remember when I was sick in bed for two weeks with pneumonia as a senior in high school I listened to them in an attempt to relax a bit. It worked. They had, and continue to have a somewhat calming effect, I suppose. So much so, in fact, that is wasn’t even until high school that I ever heard the end of the George Washington tape; I had always fallen asleep before the end. How odd to hear something that old and that much a part of my childhood for the very first time. Even today I find the ending of that tape less enjoyable than the beginning, though there are other reasons for that I’ll mention later.
These audio productions held a dual fascination for me, though. There was the story and subject matter. But there was also the production itself. As a kid I remember trying to imagine where they were recorded, and the actors who played the roles. I could see them with the script in their hands in front of microphones reading their lines to one another inside some obscure hole in the wall studio somewhere. For some reason I always imagined them working at night, with few lights on in the studio, so as to enhance the story telling effect. I thought they were some kind of secret group of performers, since their names were not on the cassette or the packaging. I remember thinking how great it would be to be a part of making one of those plays myself for others to listen to. Given the resources I’d still like to produce an audio play like that, actually.
Some aspects of these plays hold up to both adulthood and to all of the years that have passed since the simpler time during which they were produced. A time that in many ways was more creative for kids. Back when attention spans would allow for even energetic children to sit or lay down for an hour or so and listen to a play. Then again, maybe no other children in the world but me did such things; I could believe that, frankly. Either way, some of it transcends the time and purpose of its creation, and can survive even my more mature theatrical/literary scrutiny should I choose to apply same.
Other aspects of it however, do not hold up, and it is only my deep sentimentality that allows me to continue appreciating them. To be more precise, the George Washington one is the weakest of the three presentations. Consider that it claims to be about his life, but skips decades at a time and ends with the conclusion of the Revolution, making no mention of his presidency. Granted, not every chapter of his life could be included in such a production, but even as a kid I thought that was a large chunk to leave out.
Especially when for about 15 minutes near the end of the presentation the script leaves Washington entirely to concentrate on two other historical figures of the same era, jumping from one into the other with virtually no segue whatsoever. Then again there may have been a better transition at one point in time; the entire thing feels like a longer production the fell victim to severe if not haphazard editing. Certain parts of narration fade out in the middle of a sentence and yield to something else. And the two narrators that had told the story for 90% of the cassette are suddenly replaced by a third narrator for one scene, who does not appear again afterward. (Jarring for a kid with as much attention to detail as me!) The regular narrators themselves play multiple parts within the narrative itself, as does the actor who plays Washington. As a child I didn’t notice this, but listening now it’s clear that one guy plays at least three different roles, one of them with an atrocious French accent. On at least one occasion, the incorrect name was used.
But these things don’t take away from it, despite the low production value. As a kid I did notice some of the flaws, but still enjoyed it. As an adult I notice all of the flaws, and still enjoy it. Truth be told in some ways I admire it more now, because I can sympathize with trying to produce something with no budget. Looking back on it now, it feels like it could have been a labor of love that well meaning but underpaid acting company with not enough time might have put together and produced the best they could out of someone’s basement. If they did so in the middle of the night, maybe my image from childhood about the creation of the tape wasn’t so far off after all.
The one about Ben Franklin is much better, as is the short one about Danial Boone tacked on at the end. Still simplistic, but with a tighter presentation and somewhat better acting. Certainly better editing. I’m not hear to do a product review, but the difference between the first tape and the second is palpable.
Whatever their issues, those plays, (which last about 45 minutes, but to a kid at bedtime seemed to last all night) have obviously done more than simply entertain and educate me. They inspired me. Focused me. Made me think about things beyond the here and now and made me think it was possible to produce that sort of effect on other people. It’s more than probably that those tapes, warts and all, planted both the seeds of writing and acting in my heart before I knew it was happening. It would not be silly to suggest that those audio plays are in large part responsible for who and what I am today.
Now if I could just find a copy of that third one I lost…
Ty Unglebower 