Yearly Archives: 2021

Cannot be together

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When she says we cannot be together I am looking at the trees. The yews remind me of death, but maybe they also symbolise resurrection in other forms, other lives.

She is smiling and I cannot help feeling happy despite the rejection because I think that she will be happy without me. It is not so bad. The world is full of people who do not need me. But her hands are so beautiful I want to bury my face in them and I know that every touch would bring forth a new part of me, something forgotten and lost.

She has dark hair with orange streaks like gentle flames covering her head. I reach out my hand as though trying to pick up something high in the air. I never touch anything, maybe that is the problem. Feelings are not there to be touched directly and it feels so cheap to try and charm anyone with casual touching.

But now her smile is transforming, it is a lake into which I wade. I start sinking but I am not afraid of drowning. Do all people feel this bliss right before dying?

There must be new life, new hope in the waters. The darkness of her eyes makes me shiver. I do not see my reflection, only the place where life began, the puddles of primordial soup, the depths of the ocean. The end of life is also there, the eternal darkness. For we were born in the eyes of others, in their personal darkness. We were shaped by prejudice.

I have given my everything to her, I have given the end of the world but we are still smiling. She says it is a really nice day. I can only agree, the sun is burning through my skin and the wind is making my lips crack.

She asks what else is new. There is nothing to say, certainly there is nothing new about this situation. I bury my grief. She might be unhappy to see it. I want her to keep on smiling, even if it means denying myself. The tears can wait.

The purpose of these stories

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I wrote all the stories in this section between 2011-14. After all these years I no longer feel happy with the styles, yet it seems worth it to record them somewhere, since people have enjoyed the way I tried to explore different emotions in each piece.

Each story was originally written as just one paragraph. For readability I have split the paragraph into several more only now, several years later.

The idea was to have a short piece that hints at a larger story. Describing emotions or a situation like a snapshot I tried to imply what the main characters were like beyond the constraints of the paragraph. Sometimes there is a clear narrative, other times it’s more expressionist. There are a few allegories. I also experimented with the kind of detached style which is quite popular among authors today, as well as purple prose which is often ridiculed but fun to write.

The stories don’t describe my own life or mentality at the time. While writing I was always trying to inhabit the skin of a character, even if the narration is in first person. I find this aspect of writing difficult to explain. Of course when you write about emotions, you must have some experience of them. But the more you write, the further away from your real life the text gets, because ordinary life doesn’t have enough variation to make the writing interesting. Even when a story looks more like a blog post, it is still fiction. There are a couple of exceptions, when the mood of a story has clearly been affected by something in my life. I’ll point out those exceptions when I get there.

Michael Martin Murphey – Wildfire

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Mystery and longing, aching and passion. Michael Martin Murphey’s Wildfire is a story about a woman who lost her pony called Wildfire, but it is easy to hear the song also as an allegory of love that was either lost or has never been. The melancholy piano and the lilting guitars also contribute to the feeling of indeterminate longing.

It is not exactly clear what is lost, what Wildfire signifies, but it is important. The night is empty, the call of the hoot owl sounds meaningful as the farmer is still working when the moon comes out. Life is hard as the narrator is sodbusting (breaking the sod to make fields), and thinking of a way out. Not necessarily a physical change, but getting “these hard times right on out of our minds riding Wildfire”.

I think of the pony itself as a symbol of love. The woman comes at night with a whirlwind by her side, she’s been even presumed dead because she went out into the blizzard looking for the pony, calling for it, yearning, risking her life. For Wildfire was more important than her safety. It is her companion, her meaning.

And the narrator understands. He is waiting, hoping that the woman comes for him too, and they’ll both be riding Wildfire. The image of just waiting in solitude for the woman and Wildfire is touching. One could argue that the narrator is being too passive, just longing for happiness amid his toil. But where could he go? He does not even know whether the woman is real anymore. Maybe she is dead, just a ghost from the mountains. But he must believe. Love is real, and one day Wildfire will be here.

Murphey has himself stated that he doesn’t know what the song is about, and he’s heard many interpretations. That is what makes sparse storytelling fascinating; it leaves room for the audience to insert their own meanings into it.

The song came to him in a dream, and it reminds him of a ghost story he heard as a kid. In that story the horse is a symbol of Jesus carrying people through hard times. While that interpretation could somehow fit also the song, it would make the lyrics even more mysterious. If it was a religious allegory, who would the woman be? It is her, after all, who’s the focus of the narrator, though Wildfire is also essential to the story. Nevertheless, even taken like this, the song is about love, albeit a different kind.

The song was actually finished with the co-writer Larry Cansler, which may explain the discrepancy. If the third verse was removed, it wouldn’t be a love song at all, but more in line with what Murphey is saying. So I think it’s possible that the verse that actually explains the narrator’s position was added only after the second songwriter came onboard. Still, the way the story is told now, I consider it to be a love song, if only for a woman the narrator doesn’t even know to be real.

A Beastly Comedy Summary

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A poetic journey through contemporary mindscapes, A Beastly Comedy is a modern, independent sequel to Dante’s epic. From visions of despair to scientific pursuits and sensual pleasures, the story is a quest for morals and meaning in a world of doubt.

The modern day pilgrim is guided from ignorance to understanding by Dante, himself disillusioned to not have reached paradise, while images of hell torment and corrupt any seeker of wisdom who must ask when punishments deemed just are just another evil.

By turns dark and ecstatic, visceral and romantic, the distinct parts of the poem – The Underworld, The Sea of Science, and The Mountain of Arts – chart the wide range of approaches used in seeking knowledge, purpose, and happiness. While suffering is common and numbness seems like salvation, the poem is a testament to human curiosity, resilience, and capacity for love.

In this section of the site I will be posting the epic as an audiobook with 100 parts, one canto each Wednesday.

Connie Stevens – Sixteen Reasons

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I have selected this song for my first post since it serves as an example of the complexity of the love song as a phenomenon despite their apparent simplicity. My aim is to post songs that can be taken at face value, enjoyed for their purity and ostensible sincerity. And yet it can be difficult, because distrust has permeated the western culture, whatever that may be. I do not necessarily mean distrust toward relationships and the permanence of romance. That may be a reality as well, but in the context of love songs I’m going to focus more on the distrust toward narratives that claim to be earnest, especially if they’re deemed positive, or viewed critically, sentimental and saccharine.

Sixteen Reasons was released in December 1959. Connie Stevens has been known mainly as an actress, and later she dismissed the song, saying it was a kids’ song for 12-year-old girls. Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a 12-year-old girl. Certainly the song has the kind of charming naivety that serves as an escape from the reality of relationships, the incompatible views and goals that always exist until they are resolved one way or another.

The song has also been featured in the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive, and one of its functions is to bring forth the artificiality of the entertainment industry. What first looks like a recording scene then turns out to be a movie set, and the performance an audition. It shows a reality constructed in layers, and the movie itself is yet another layer, another narrative that is just as much a construction. Even the criticism of values is another narrative, which brings us to an endless cycle of critique. In the end I have grown tired of how futile it starts to feel, when all this talk of narratives only leads to emptiness.

Moreover, the overuse of innocent songs as an ironic contrast to scenes of violence in modern cinema has made me tired of the trick. And yet the “sincere” use of such songs often makes me squirm as well.

As a writer I have a bad habit to examine the structure of the works I am trying to enjoy. If I feel touched, it is tempting to immediately ask: how was this effect achieved? And unfortunately the answer is a realization that I am being manipulated by really simple means that are used over and over again. Certainly when it comes to love songs, the melodies and lyrics tend to choose the tried and true formula. Yet what makes a song different from a text is of course the performance, the emotion that a human voice brings to it, transforming what now would seem like kitsch (and let’s face it, most love songs are kind of musical kitsch) into something heartfelt with which we can identify.

And that is what Connie Stevens brings to the song. She may not be technically a great singer, having been just 21 years old when recording, but performing the song she is being a great actress, and that is why the song is still popular, at least considering it’s more than 60 years old.