Musings

I spent part of Thursday and all day Friday in Portales New Mexico, site of Eastern New Mexico University, and the Jack Williamson Lectureship. Jack would have been one hundred this year. Alas, we lost him at ninety-eight. An amazing life, and he was writing almost until the end of his life.

I made the long drive to the south east corner of the state on Thursday afternoon. Once I crossed I-40 and turned east at Vaughn I was on the eastern plains, heading toward Texas. The wind was howling at a steady forty miles an hour with occasional gusts up to sixty plus mph. The landscape is dry and flat adorned with scrub brush, sand grass and cholla cactus (a sign over overgrazing). In the distance the wind was lifting the salt flats high into the sky. It looked like a plume of white smoke. Fortunately it was just salt and dirt. I passed a place where a grass fire had left it’s black mark, like spilled ink, on the ground. The cholla were seared and black, but still defiantly upright. Everything else had burned away.

After Vaughn there are no real towns until you reach Fort Sumner, the sight of Billy the Kid’s death in 1881. But between these two small towns are a number of small dead or dying villages. (I can’t really call them towns.) I drove through one where a strip motel stood sadly on the side of the road. The windows were boarded shut and the roof was collapsing. Next door was an abandoned gas station with gaping holes where the windows used to be. I found myself with a tightness in my throat. Once upon a time this had been someone’s dream. A little business on the road to Texas. But it became a road to nowhere when the interstate went in, and the dreams shriveled and blew away. I saw only one domicile that looked inhabited — a beat up doublewide perched in the dirt.

At Melrose I headed took the cut off south and east. Alongside the two lane highway stood a line of gigantic metal towers carrying power to this southern corner of the state. They look strange and unearthly because they balance on a narrow point, and are supported by guy wires. They made me think of alien robots marching past the peanut fields, and they sang as the wind swept through the wires. Next was the town of Floyd with the graveyard right next to the highway. Grey granite headstones, and beyond the small fence — prairie. At last I saw the dome of ENMU’s gymnasium looking like the ship that had disgorged the robots all those miles behind me. I was on the main street heading toward the university, and the two hotels in the town — The Super 8, and the Holiday Inn Express. I passed my main landmark for Portales, a jet aircraft impaled on a pedestal.

Walter Jon William, Steve Gould and Connie Willis were at the public library doing a presentation. Walter gave me what passes for directions in a small New Mexico town — “come to one of the stop lights, and the library is across from the old hotel. You know they one.” I did know the hotel. It was four stories tall, I had stayed there once with Robert Silverberg was a guest at the lectureship, and it was one of the first hotels built by Conrad Hilton. New Mexico is filled with these odd little bits of trivia — Billy the Kid and Conrad Hilton.

Dinner was at the usual place — The Cattle Baron. The menu is meat — lots of meat. Fortunately they have a very nice salad bar. Dinner was fun, crowded and lively. I showed off my book cover, and pictures of Vento. (I really am like a little girl with her pretty white pony.) After dinner we went back to the hotel and sat in the breakfast room talking. I was exhausted from the drive, and the sense of loss had hung with me. Jack Williamson was gone. Rick Hauptmann was gone. I went to sleep remembering.

After my riding lesson I ran a few errands, and then treated myself to a movie. I’m an Anglophile and I love the nineteen twenties and thirties so I wanted to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day before it disappeared. It’s a slight little movie, and I don’t think it’s going to be around for too long.

It’s a great cast — Francis McDormand, and my personal heart throb from Persuasion and Rome, Ciarán Hinds, and the delightful Amy Adams from Enchanted. There’s some great music, and wonderful evocation of period. The director reminds you nicely that this is 1939 and the war is coming. The story is very predictable, but it ends up being comforting rather than annoying. It’s funny, sometimes when you can predict every step it becomes like a story the audience is telling along with the characters, and it creates a sense of community and shared experience. That’s what happened for me with this film.

My biggest objection is that they didn’t really take enough time to develop the three boyfriends who are pursuing Delysia. They became cut out figures, and stand-in’s for familiar stock characters. Perhaps they did that so the Cirán Hinds character would stand out more.

If you aren’t expecting too much this was a delightful way to wile away a couple of hours. I’m hoping to get to Leatherheads in the next few days. Guess it’s my week to sigh over very attractive men.

I had a great riding lesson today, and when I got home I decided to tease myself with dreams of a trip to the Golega Horse Fair in Portugal. I can’t got this year, but perhaps the dollar will recover, I’ll sell a script, my book will become a best seller, or some other pipe dream will occur, and I’ll have the money to attend this event. Anyway, I found an article in Horse and Hound that gives some background on the event. www.horseandhound.co.uk/stallionsandstuds/419/70497.html

I also went wandering around in search of video of a Portuguese bull fight, and found one. It’s scary how close those horns come to the horse and rider. I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to computers so I wasn’t able to get set up on UTube to send over the video. I’ll keep working at it until I get it figured out.

A big section of my novel THE EDGE OF REASON is on my website. Tell your friends and family. If you’re inclined pop over and take a look. The book’s office publication date if May 13th. I don’t know if it will be available before that.

It’s starting to become real. Yikes! Guess I’ll go eat some Tums.

I’ve just spent two days riding in a clinic with Christine Traurig. She was on the U.S. Olympic team, and won a bronze metal, which was the best any American rider had ever done up to that time. Dressage at the World Cup and Olympic level is dominated by Germany and Holland. Our Olympic team has also been dominated by German riders — Christine, Gunter Sidel — and now we’re starting to win. Great cars (both my cars are German cars), great horses, great riders and great composers. But I digress.

My coach rode Vento on the first day because she wanted some help with his flying changes. He has a single change, but some days they get muddled as if he can’t figure out what to do with his legs. Christine watched the ride and her conclusion was that he’s just a baby (he just turned six on March 11th), and he doesn’t have the strength yet to hold the canter in a balanced way so he can effect the change. We just need to do more strength training. At one point she had Lauren slow the trot and he started to do a baby passage without any training. Christine says the Spanish horses just take naturally to the piaff and the passage.

But before Lauren rode into the ring we had a little psychodrama. Vento had had a belly ache on Friday so we stopped working him after fifteen minutes, and had the vet out to give him some pain killer. After he got to feeling better I gave him a bath, and walked him dry, then put him in his blanket. Well, Saturday morning the workers at the barn took off his blanket. I checked him and he was still nice and clean. Then I got fascinated watching several of the rides, and when I went to get Vento he had turned himself into a chestnut. The dirt out in El Dorado is very red, and Vento had found a real dust place and just wallowed.

I vacuumed him, I brushed and brushed, I tried spot remover and all that did was turn him into a red muddy horse. There was no time to bath him or even hose him off again. Lauren was furious. Fortunately it’s dark in the indoor arena so he didn’t look too awful unless you got up close to him. Then he was just gross. I was about to run into town to buy him a stall sheet when my friend mentioned she had a sheet that wouldn’t fit her horse anymore. She gave it to me which was very generous, and Vento and I went back into the wash rack for another session of bathe the horse. He pouted — a lot.

Once again I walked him dry then put him in his blanket. Sunday morning I raced to the barn at 7:30 so I could be the one to take off his blanket and put him in the sheet. Again I got the horse giving me the elongated upper lip, because rolling in a sheet just isn’t as much fun. It doesn’t lead to me bouncing up and down and making squeaking noises.

Sunday was my ride. I was nervous because Christine never yells, but she is very, very blunt and she never pulls her punches. We really worked on the canter/walk transitions which teaches a horse to balance on their hind leg and not just fall onto their front end. We also took the outside leg out of the equation as a cue for the canter, and just used the inside leg and seat(hip) to lift him into the canter. By the end of the fifty minutes we were really doing well. I also learned something about the half-pass which is that you send your weight straight down the inside leg into the stirrup. I was trying to push my inside seat bone forward and it was interfering with his movement.

There were a number of people observing my ride. (All women, of course. A straight man in this community would make out like a bandit). They all wanted to see the amateur rider on the six year old stallion. At the end of my ride they all applauded, and one woman told me she wanted my horse. Everybody wanted my horse. They can’t have him.

I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’m a really good rider. There was a young woman riding in the clinic who has set up as a trainer and instructor. She’s a fearless rider, and will hop on any young horse, but she really doesn’t know very much. Yes, you can get a horse to accept a rider, but if you don’t understand the outside rein, throughness, elasticity, acceptance of the leg, moving from the seat, etc. etc. you’re not really training the horse. Unfortunately this young woman had a bad weekend. I talked with her some, and offered sympathy and recommended that she ride with my coach. I totally understood how she felt. I’ve had some bad weekends too in clinics.

I probably have said this before, but dressage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve sung opera, and danced point in ballet, studied piano, and got through law school. This is the most intense combination of physical strength and coordination and mental agility. I love it, but I swear it’s a sport for people with OCD.

But my boy was a star and I learned a lot. I also learned he trailers like a dream, and that’s a big relief. Fighting to get a horse in a trailer is the worst thing in the world.

So tomorrow I’ve got to take part in a meeting to decide what to do with one of the gas wells, and get to work on my story for the Rio Hondo writers workshop, and of course, keep riding.

This post is in answer to Sam Butler requesting that I reproduce a conversation we had back in November. Of course I have absolutely no memory of what I said, but according to Sam it was thoughtful, so I’m going to try and remember that, apparently, I was once brilliant.

As I recall this was in answer to why characters on television shows will make a choice that seems totally out of character, or against their best interests simply to keep them in a relationship, or on the island, or working as a cop when you’ve won the lottery, etc. Basically why television characters are static.

I think it’s a question of the need that television fills in our entertainment lives. Watching a TV show isn’t as intense as watching a movie. The events in a television series take place over weeks, months, even years. Most successful movies cover a very limited amount of time.

We don’t bond with movie characters as deeply as we bond to our TV friends. People tune in week after week, year after year to see if House ever stops being such a bastard and finds love, or if Buffy and Angel will ever find happiness, or Lee Adama will ever come out of his father’s shadow, etc. etc. Not that we every want House to find love, or Buffy and Angel move in together. We have an emotional connection to these people, and as viewers _don’t want them to change_.

Our lives are stressful and chaotic right now. It’s comforting to come back to a situation and a group of friends that are always going to be there for you. Tony Soprano isn’t going to become a priest and dedicate his life to working among the lepers. Buffy isn’t going to decide to go to work for Exxon-Mobile and become an executive.

Daniel Abraham www.bram452.livejournal.com has a theory that readers/viewers bond and identify with the first characters they meet in a book or a TV series. I think he may be on to something and that’s why it’s very hard to replace that first beloved character. When Linda Hamilton aka Catherine left BEAUTY AND THE BEAST the viewers never accepted the new leading lady. (Whose name I’ve completely forgotten. Indeed, I’ve forgotten everything about her. But god help me I remember Vincent and Catherine.)

So, here’s my bottom line — television is comfort food. It’s a plate of pasta or a piece of chocolate cake after a really bad and stressful day.

Some of you may have seen the Clinton/Obama struggle seen through the prism of Frank Herbert’s DUNE courtesy of Snarkyboys.com via Walter Jon Williams www.walterjonwilliams.blogspot.com. (I’m not linking to the Snarky Boys because I’ve been searching for their website and keep getting an error message and I don’t want to pass it on to any readers. If anybody has the correct address for the Boys, please share it with the class.) Anyway, I’m going to reproduce it here

The Dune Theory of Democratic Politics, Revised

We were wrong; Barack Obama is the the Democratic Party’s Kwisatz Haderach. He is the shortening of the way, the one who shall give meaning to our lives and make our planet anew.

Like Paul Muad’Dib, his youth was shaped by the untimely loss of his father, who was not of this land. He has been rigorously trained, and recently endured a painful test at the hands of a Bene Gesserit Witch. He achieved a surprise victory in his first combat and it is said that his greatest power is his voice. By some reckonings, he has come before his time.

His enemies consider him a lightweight and dismiss his followers as religious fanatics, prone to chanting his name over and over. Though he has inherited powerful advisers, his wife is counted as a liability.

His true enemy is accused of launching a preemptive war to secure a precious resource in a desert land. Though this enemy has now left the stage, he has been succeeded by a battle-tested champion. Soon, they shall meet in single combat, and the victor shall take the reins of power.

So, on Thursday morning Ty Frank and I were chatting over cups of coffee and I happened to mention that it sure would have been nice if Bush and the NeoCons had read DUNE before they started on this Quixotic mission to remake Iraq. And we were off to the races. We started riffing over how Iraq could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion a la DUNE. I said Bush would have to go to Iraq expecting a victory, and end up captured and have to offer one of the twins. To Muqtada al Sadr, Ty sang out, and I had to struggle to keep from doing a spit take with coffee.

So, now every time I hear some talking head pontificating about old Muqtada, and start to giggle, though god knows he’s no laughing matter.

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to make for a couple of weeks. It’s riffing off a wonderful post on Ian Tregillis’s blog www.iantregillis.com where he compared and contrasted The Sarah Conner Chronicles and New Amsterdam. Go check it out, because he makes some amazing points about good storytelling vs. trite storytelling.

I thought I’d amplify a bit as a long time screenwriter about how hard that is to accomplish. There are a lot of reasons you keep seeing the same scene (with different character depending on which show your watching) over and over again. The first, really nuts and bolts reason is money. When you are making a television show you have a number of permanent sets — the bridge, the bar at Ten Forward, Picard’s office. Giles library, Buffy’s house, the club. Well, you get the idea. As a writer you set as many scenes as possible in these already constructed sets because it saves time and money not to have to build a new set or go out on location. Also, the production is amortizing the cost of these sets against the budget.

When Ian and I set down to create our world for our spec pilot OUTPOST, we thought a lot about what would be standing sets. How often would we use them if we got lucky and the show went to series? Could we pick places that would be visually interesting.

The truth is your going to have scenes where information has to be transmitted to the audience. The captain’s office whether you’re on the Enterprise, or at NYPD headquarters is a standard, conference rooms, etc. As Daniel Abraham often says — the control of information delivery is critical to a good writer — and that’s true whether you’re writing prose or a screenplay.

There are techniques to keeping this kind of imparting of knowledge fresh and interesting. Sorkin in the West Wing used the “walk and talk” brilliantly. That sense of movement, people who are busy, sharp, quick dialogue got you over what could have been a turgid recitation of “what you need to know” in a very smooth and effective manner.

If the budget can afford it setting a scene in an unexpected place can also help. When the first cops talking in the bathroom scene occurred it was really cool and different. The director got to show of his/her chops by shooting using the mirrors, and you had guys unzipping their flies, etc. I don’t remember where I saw this for the first time. Hill Street Blues probably, but if somebody knows of an earlier incident, let me know. Anyway, it was different, it was new, it was cool and exciting. Now, of course, it’s as trite as the conference room. So, maybe you have the cops come to report to their captain while he’s taking his kids to the amusement park, and they’re talking while he supports his little girl who’s riding a carousel horse. (I’m not saying these are _good_ ideas, just examples).

Another trick that can help make a scene seem less boring and familiar is giving the actor some “business” to perform. They’re kneading bread while the conversation takes place, or hanging drapes, or feeding the cats, paying off the pizza delivery kid.

There’s a danger to “business” too. Sometimes business can undercut the power of a scene. Sometimes the actor’s faces and the words can carry a moment. I had a critical scene in one of the Reasonable Doubts scripts ruined by a less than good director. This was a scene where a rouge DEA agent is warning Dickie (Mark Harmon) that they’re going to kill Mark. It should have been a tense moment between two men who are threatening each other. Instead the director made it a scene about making coffee, because he had the bad guy busily putting in a filter, measuring in the coffee, pouring in the water, etc. etc. When I watched the scene in dailies it was as flat as a fallen souffle.

So, here’s my two cents added to the discussion begun over at Dr. Tregillis’s blog.

We’ve become an MTV culture. We aren’t taking the time to get the full story about anything, and when the problems that face us are vast and complex it would be behoove us to make a deeper study of issues. As evidence of that I’m posting a couple of links that Daniel Abraham has posted on his blog. You’ll find them interesting, and a clear example that things are rarely just black and white. (A phrase that can be viewed as unfortunate or right on the money, depending.) ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-rev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/ And here is the second link ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-wright’s-“god-damn-america”-sermon/

I’m not posting these because I’m an apologist for the Reverend Wright, but so people can see the full context of what was said rather than an endless loop on the Fox network to push their agenda. Some of the more heated remarks, were deplorable, but far less deplorable when read in the context of the entire sermon. And Obama was right — context is everything. The context of a life spent first under Jim Crow and then the fury and violence that followed integration.

Also, as I’ve posted elsewhere. There have been times when I have been so deeply ashamed of my country, and wanted to curse it too. Watching film of policemen in the South loosing dogs on peaceful protesters, and blasting them with water cannons, the McCarthy hearings, Chicago in ‘68, the bombing of Cambodia, Abu Ghraib, the My Lai massacre. The reason these events infuriate me and break my heart are because I know the promise and greatness of this country. I want to see us match our ideals. But I will not just blindly support my country. I’m going to challenge myself and my leaders to live up to our those ideals.

I should of worked this morning. Instead I watched the telecast of Senator Barack Obama’s amazing speech about issues of race in these early years of the twenty-first century. I think it was one of the most amazing speeches I’ve ever heard, and I think it will rank with King’s “I have a dream” speech. It was both thoughtful and practical and soaring when it needed to be. He did not play it safe. It was a gutsy speech both as a black man and as a Democrat. He invited people to have the discussion — to talk about their anger and resentment _one both sides_. He acknowledged the anger of whites against busing and affirmative action. He acknowledged the anger of blacks, particularly black men, against decades of Jim Crow

Just as we’ve been fighting the Vietnam war over and over again between Bush and Kerry, we’ve been fighting the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s over and over again. Obama is inviting us, urging us to see how far we’ve come, accept that we have a distance to travel yet, and join forces to make that journey.

You can read the speech, but I urge folks to watch it and read it at www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html