A Jane Austen Sex Scene?

One of the perennial jokes among Austen fans is her frequent use of the phrase making violent love.  As in, "He was making violent love to me!"

Standards change over time, of course.  As does usage.  To Jane's way of thinking, making violent love is when a man picks up a dropped handkerchief and returns it to its blushing owner.  Or, perhaps, when a would-be suitor offers a ride home in his carriage (elderly matron accompanying the two as escort, of course).

Still, as a novelist, I've often thought what a fascinating conversation it would make to ask Jane, were she still with us, whether she would choose to include a modern sex scene in one of her novels.

I mean, sure, in a modern thriller, a rousing and (hopefully) erotic sex scene is a staple.  But in the sort of thoughtful fiction that Jane wrote?

In Fighting for Eden, I found myself grappling with the same dilemma.  Here I have my main character,  quite thoughtful and often hapless Andrew, forced into the media spotlight when his best friend is killed fighting in Iraq.

Not the kind of story where one would expect a love scene.  Still...

His door quietly opened.  And, as if another one of his dreams, she floated like a spirit without stepping to the edge of his bed.  Her legs, he saw for the first time, were quite shapely in their musculature, stretching down in fine detail under the flannel nightshirt she was wearing, a musky heat shimmering around her in the night air.

Why did I include such a vignette?

I'd love to say that I was stretching myself as an artist.

No, at the time, it simply seemed like the kind of thing my fiery Jessie would do.

Happily, it still does.

Fighting for Eden is available on Kindle and from Lulu Publishing.

The Mists of Consolation

Christianity continues to decline as a consoling, and guiding, force in modern American culture.

There is little hard data to document this trend.  (I've looked.)  Not that I have any particular axe to grind.  Far from it.

No, since childhood I've genuinely been interested in all the major faith traditions that cultures (ie people) have developed throughout time and place to make sense of their suffering.

How they developed.  What particular questions they addressed.  The varying answers crafted.  And, my most compelling interest:  The unique role artists play in crafting those answers.

Still, any comprehensive reading of history shows that when one faith tradition fades, another must spring up to take its place.

And, since I cannot help but ask thoughtful people I come across what they are doing about the problem, the general consensus appears to be...

• No longer believing in organized religion because of its hypocrisy (or, phrased more gently, the untenability of its mythology)
• Yet, not willing to give up on belief in a higher power by whatever name (God, Higher Self, Divine Power, Creator, The Universe, Chi, etc.)

Nevertheless, as we move forward, and we have no choice but, it often seems to me that we are grappling with murky mists of spirituality.  Phrased more prosaically, we struggle to precisely define just what it is that each of does believe these days.

At home, as we honestly grapple with this question, I've been noticing a pattern emerging between us.  Because of all that reading, as murky as the mists may grow, I find my mind sharpened enough to articulate with words of some precision wherever we currently stand...

So, I guess we don't believe in Hell anymore.

(later)

I suppose this means we no longer believe in Heaven.

(later still)

What are we praying for, then?  I mean, we're not reducing God to some sort of Divine Vending Machine, right?

(yet later still)

Why are we even bothering to say Grace before meals, then?

(ultimately, even if some time past)

So, we don't believe in God, then?  Or, put more precisely, we believe that humankind dreamed up a God because we find it almost crushingly difficult to navigate the vagaries of life.

...Moreover, just as I am able to articulate where we currently stand, I am also able to see far enough ahead - through the mists - the contours of where we are going.

(I guess it stands to reason.  All that reading up on how the world's faith traditions have developed had to come in handy somehow.)

Still, and this is the most whimsical part:  Even if I am able to make out where we are headed, at least in theory, it is Manya who bounds ahead with glee to that new ground.  Just about every time.  

At which point, she looks back at me and shouts, "Hurry up!"

Two Artists Under One Roof (II)

I'm often asked the question of how Manya started as a jewelry designer.

There were the childhood influences of course, one of which I actually wrote into my first novel, Fighting for Eden.

Jessie looked over the sewn patterns of red, blue, yellow and white beads, and easily caught it.  Long ago, when Nora had first begun beading, she had explained that in every Yakama beadwork, no matter how beautiful and complex, there was always one bead deliberately set askew, destroying the purity of the piece because, Nora had pointed out, only Creator could make something perfect.

And there were the Asian influences, too.   How could a jewelry designer not be inspired when surrounded by so many stones and precious metals as one seemingly trips over in Asia?

Nevertheless, the true start was when she began beading her first works and taking them down to the night markets of Taipei.  The night markets of Asia are (in)famous for their noise, their heat, their vibrancy and their shadows.

It used to freak me out when she would do that every Friday night: sitting there on the sidewalk in the middle of a night market, flanked by other locals hawking their wares, happily selling her jewelry

Needless to say, she blithely ignored my concerns.

For a while, anyway.  And, looking back now, I can easily see that her night market adventures were one of the first compromises ever made in our courtship.  Should have known it would involve an artistic decision.

The point was this:  I was freaked out that the police would routinely shake down sidewalk sellers, terrified that she would be deported.

So, she finally agreed to 1) carry her jewelry in a suitcase, 2) make friends with the locals on either side of her so she'd have advance warning and 3) when word came down the line that the police were moving in for a shakedown, to close up her suitcase and blend into the crowd.

I breathed more easily after that.  And Manya?  She got valuable experience designing and selling her first works of jewelry design.

Yet, there is more to this story.

Having known Manya for well over twenty years, I suppose it was inevitable that I would come to influence how she sees her art, just as she has assuredly influenced mine.

I remember her early works being rather chunky.  Clunky.  And, I might as well admit it (she does), there was little consistency in the theme of each piece.  

Indeed, it's probably not too much to compare them to a garage sale.  Higgledy-piggledy collections of glass, stone, trade beads, metals and other whatnot, strung out at various lengths of wire, chain or thread.  

In fact, a couple of Thanksgivings ago, her Mom wore what both our mortified eyes immediately recognized as one of those early pieces.  In vain did we plead with her to put it away.

(Nothing doing.  Now realizing a sort of perverse maternal pride in wearing what her accomplished daughter is embarrassed to admit as one of her own creations, her Mom flaunted it quite happily throughout the rest of that very long day.)

Needless to say, Manya's works don't look like that at all, anymore.  These days, they are sleek, elegant, delicate, harmonious in theme and design, showcasing often surprising, sometimes breathtaking combinations of colors in gemstones and metals.

What changed?  Whence chunky to elegance?

Manya tells me it is my influence upon her.  That I got her to notice the elegance of a line.  Even if the line is a simple one, properly handled, one sees a purity there.  

She was a bit scared of committing to such a simple line.  At least, at first.  

However, gradually, she began to see that the elegance of the line, no matter how simple, becomes the frame.  The frame around which the entire beauty of a piece is constructed.

Nice thought, that.

PS.  (Fighting for Eden is available on Kindle, also in softcover from Lulu.)

Where Do Artists Go When They Hurt?

This is always a bit of a touchy subject.  Yet, it is one that touches all artists most intimately.  It is a matter of the heart, battered or broken.  Where do we go when we hurt?

Well, all kinds of places.  It depends on the artist.

For example, the greatest setback I've suffered in the last years was a coup a few months ago.

I was invited in to help a high school rebuild its broken theatre company.  After five successful shows mounted over fifteen months of hard work, and the first acting award the company has seen in years, another teacher and a group of parents decided they wanted to run things.

They charged me with precasting shows with my favorite students (thereby cheating all other students of a fair shot).  They refused to allow me to defend myself.  Then, when I called their bluff and agreed to work with the casting committee they insisted upon, they refused to answer.  In short, I was out and they took over.  That they did this two weeks before the fifth show opened only rubbed salt in the wound.

(I know that some will say it was only a high school theatre company.  Yet, those kids meant a lot to me.  They still do.)

Regardless, when hurt, where do artists go?

I went to Mu.

But that's me.  I truly think that each of us must choose our own way.  We must each choose that explanation of the unseen that makes the most sense to us.

The point, then, is not so much where you go, but that you go there.

You go there, and you stay there.  For as long as it takes to heal the battered or broken heart, no matter what anyone else has to say about the matter.

After that, you pick up your art, and get back to work.

Those Dry Spells

I was talking with a young photog the other day.

In fact, to my critical eye, he is one of the most talented photogs we have currently residing in Edmonds, regardless of his youth.

Which is ironic, for I first met him while working with a high school to rebuild their theatre company.  He found himself as a (set) dress designer.  Indeed, he quickly became our lead dress designer.

Many was the time, in the five shows I directed there, that I would ask what he planned for some aspect of the set dress.

He would throw out a remark or two which, while clearly making sense to him, I simply could not visualize.

Nevertheless, I had grown accustomed to the quality of his work.  So, I would swallow hard and wait to see what transpired.  Of course, it always met and quite often exceeded all our expectations.

Yet, as talented as he is as an artist, he ran into a dry spell this spring with his photography:  He didn't jury into a show that he had expected to.  He didn't make the cut at a local summer market.  There were other disappointments.

All artists know this awful time.  Resources get taken away.  People get ill.  Programs get canceled.  Funding dries up.  Coups happen.  Or, worse, the artist loses inspiration.  The Muse no longer speaks.

And then, worst of all, a constant drip, drip, drip of thoughts begin eroding self-confidence:  Maybe I should give this up.  Maybe I'm being ridiculous here.  Why did I ever think I could be an artist?

Yet, awful as these dry spells are, they always end.  So, knowing this, we just have to get through them.

The alternative is giving up our art.  And that, as every artist knows, is experiencing the death of a loved one.

Two Artists Under One Roof

Right around this date, twenty-two years ago, in a dark and mysterious bar in China,  I asked a woman if I could buy her a beer.

She completely dissed me, but that's another story.

Yet, I persevered long enough to gain a first date a few weeks later.  There we sat, in a seafood restaurant on Sungjian Nan Loo (ie Sungjian South Road) in Taipei, Taiwan, making awkward conversation.  

The most intriguing part was that we eventually settled on the topic of jewelry design.  (There are several sources at hand in that part of the world for breathtakingly beautiful jade of various colors, sumptuous amber, and intricately worked silver.)

Now, if someone had tapped me on the shoulder at the time to let me know that within ten years, we would own a small gallery just north of Seattle, I would have immediately asked what he was smoking.  I have to be honest here:  I wasn't talking jewelry design with her because I was interested in it.  I was saying whatever I needed to say to get to a second date.

And, I did.  Which led to a third, a fourth, followed by countless ups and down, emotional highs and lows, the Chinese wedding, the American one, a gallery and - somewhere along the way - two slowly growing artistic careers.

Which begs the question: I've known and loved this woman for over twenty years.  Just how much, if at all, has she affected my art?

Quite a lot, actually.  When we met, I had no idea whatsoever of becoming a writer, whether novelist or playwright.  In fact, I was so far from appreciating writing of quality that - typical of my upbringing - I read only spy, military, and crime thrillers.  One after another.  

To read a thoughtful novel, instead of an action one, was to my mind a sign of the effeminate.  Only a "limp-wristed guy" (as we put it back in the Midwest) would ever do it.

And that's just reading such a novel.  How about writing one?

Here's a bit from my first novel, Fighting for Eden...

It was a beautiful ride.  In fields along the way, with a hawk soaring high above for company, they could see the lazy ballet of line after line of sprinklers throwing out their offering to the parched earth, their great ten foot high wheels rusting quietly in the morning's heat.  Pausing to watch a rainbow doing its sparkling dance over a water line, a sight she never tired of no matter how often she saw it, she spotted a coyote in the distance skulking along the side of an irrigation ditch and, glancing quickly at Jake, thought a prayer of thanks that he wasn't carrying a rifle.  Whip danced a few steps herself, rousing Jessie from her reverie...

Clearly not a passage you'll find in your average thriller.

Whence the change?  As I recall, Manya's greatest influence on me as a writer came down to one question that she asked me long, long ago.  We were discussing the merits of my typical reading fare, and she asked...

"You've read so many of these thrillers.  How many of them do you remember?"

Almost none, I had to confess.  They all just tended to blur, one into another.  I thought that was the point, actually.  Read to escape for a little while.

But, now, suddenly, this whole new world opened up.  Why settle for the routine, the common, when I could reach beyond them for those who had gone one better?  After all, if you've only so much time before the big curtain descends, why not spend it on the best?

And the rest, as they say, is history.

PS.  (Fighting for Eden is available on Kindle, also in softcover from Lulu.)

If Only...