Sherlock Holmes VS Sherlock Holmes

Basil Rathbone's Sherlock

            My wife and I have virtually identical taste in TV and films.  If we've rented a stinker, we'll both know it within a few minutes. We don't have to talk about it.  Usually Fox allows me to state the obvious.  "This pretty much sucks, doesn't it?"  She'll agree and we'll move on to another DVD.

            We're fans of Sherlock Holmes.  Fox had never seen the Jeremy Brett episodes from BBC, so I ordered all of them and we addictively rolled through the classic Conan Doyle stories.  We enjoyed every minute of the Brett/ Hardwicke team of Sherlock and Watson.  Brett was electric.  His gestures were superb.  We couldn't take our eyes off his lanky, asexual figure as he paced the cluttered rooms on Baker Street.  Edward Hardwicke's Watson kept matters somewhere near Earth.  With his face buried in the pages of The Times, he maintained patient vigil over his eccentric friend.  In the background, a sprightly Mrs. Hudson kept the gentlemen fed and reasonably presentable.

            The 80's versions of Sherlock Holmes with Brett and Hardwick updated and overshadowed the  40's renditions that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.  I didn't care for them, and I was especially galled at the portrayal of  Watson as a bumbling clown.

            "Quckly, Watson!", commanded Rathbone, "The game is afoot!".

            Portly Nigel Bruce as Watson would struggle from his easy chair. "Well, er..ahem..." he dithered, "if you say so, Holmes.  I don't know the point of all this hurly burly...brhem, brhem...wait till I get my umbrella."

            Times change.  Cinematic styles change.  Interpretations of classic popular stories change.

            Sherlock Holmes has been played by fifty four actors in English language film or TV productions.  Every couple of years there seems to be a new version with new actors and directors, new special effects and new approaches to the scripts.

Jeremy Brett

            Robert Downey and Jude Law played Holmes and Watson in the 2009 film "Sherlock Holmes."  I've forgotten the film but I remember enjoying it.  Downey and Law turned it into a buddy movie.  There were tons of special effects, explosions and acrobatic tricks.  The plot was strong enough to hold our attention. The film resembled a Jackie Chan flick with a huge budget and box office superstars.  The dialogue was cheeky.  The movie was fun.

            In 2010 the BBC produced a revisioning of the Sherlock Holmes myth.  Titled "Sherlock", the TV episodes star Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson.  These are references to the old stories built on a contemporary framework.  Holmes and Watson are now pitted against Professor Moriarty in the age of the internet.  The scripting has shifted forward in time and technology has became intrinsic to the plots. "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" involves biological warfare labs.  Holmes must of necessity be a superb hacker as well as a genius in the art of deductive reasoning.

            These episodes break the mold.  Benedict Cumberbatch has so much charisma that he can loan bricks of it to his fellow actors if need be.  As Holmes he stands outside the run of ordinary men.  He's hurtfully abrasive, ruthlessly honest, an out-of-control manic-depressive.  He has a bottomless appetite for intellectual stimulation and a pathological terror of boredom.  Common courtesy is alien to his character.  If he weren't Sherlock Holmes he would be just another irritating jerk.  Lucky for Sherlock, Doctor Watson runs interference for him in the world of normal human beings.  He writes the Sherlock Holmes blog, which has many thousands of fans.  He's the offensive lineman to Holmes' quarterback. The chemistry between Cumberbatch and Freeman is beautifully realized.  Freeman's Watson understands that, in spite of everyone else's opinion, Holmes is not a sociopath.  On the contrary, Watson knows that Holmes is a vulnerable man who can't afford to leak the slightest touch of sentimentality. Watson respects Holmes' privacy.  He doesn't need to know the reasons behind Holmes' impenetrable armor.  They exist and Watson has the wisdom not to pry.  It is an unconditional love that Watson has for a  compelling but very unlovable character.

Benedict Cumberbatch

            Cumberbatch has an eerily feminine physical beauty.  As Holmes, his combined grace and arrogance are contrasted with Freeman's short, blockish Watson, the military surgeon wounded in Afghanistan.  Watson is brave yet unpretentious.  He's loyal and smart but has no need to compete with his friend Sherlock.  He leaves the competition to Professor Moriarty, who is played with terrifying gooeyness by Andrew Scott.  This is the scariest Moriarty, if not the scariest VILLAIN I have seen anywhere.  He mocks like a grade school bully with an I.Q. of 200.  He sings, dances, throws kisses off his fingertips in utter contempt as he pulls off world-changing, brutal crimes. The moral and intellectual duel between Sherlock and Moriarty propel these stories to a precipice of suspense.       

            It is Moriarty's contention that he and Sherlock are the same, that they work for the same overlord and are made of the same stuff.  Sherlock is an easy target because he is so horrible to friend and stranger alike.  Cumberbatch's Sherlock struggles with this question.  Who is he?  Angel, devil, scum or prince?  The entire series works through this ultimate dilemma until the shocking ending of Season Two.

            The suspense keeps us hooked.  This is a fresh interpretation of a pop culture workhorse. The Sherlock Holmes franchise has been so overcooked that it would seem to be dried out.  BBC's "Sherlock" has infused it with new vitality. 

            This brings us to the second Robert Downey/Jude Law film, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows." 

            I had said something to my wife about how much I looked forward to this film. "This ought to be good, the first one was a lot of fun." For some reason Fox thought I had invested some feeling into this film.  Yes, I had enjoyed the first pairing of Downey and Law.  I have high respect for both actors.  I suppose I could call myself a Robert Downey fan.  He's weathered his personal horrors.  He's alive, he's working, his films are good.  Even his comic book films are good.  "Iron Man" was great fun. 

            Jude Law won me over in "Cold Mountain."  He's been a high caliber super star and he hasn't made too many mis-steps in a profession fraught with all the pitfalls of grandiosity, wealth and fame.  Show business can turn the most grounded personalities into self-caricatures.  Hollywood has a tendency to tear up actors and turn them into absurdities.

            Okay, okay.  The film starts.  I note that Downey's accent is somewhere west of Portsmouth....say....mid-Atlantic.  Not good.  Why is Robert Downey, THE Robert Downey, struggling to deliver a sufficiently plummy English accent?  This is Sherlock Holmes, for goodness sake.  He must speak in the most precise upper class  British accent.  Downey's accent is mush.  Either he's phoning it in, or he just flat out doesn't care.  Er...those are both the same thing, aren't they?

            The dialogue is flat as a homeless recycler's Fanta can.  The action is nonsensical and non-stop.  There is no story to move forward.  There is frantic speedy zooming around, with Downey showing up in deliberately unconvincing costumes.  His fake Chinaman's whiskers are coming unglued.  His bald-cap is obvious as a giant latex condom, wrinkling at the back of his head.  The Moriarty character is about as scary as a pink marshmallow bunny in a wicker basket.

            Fox and I watched.  We emitted mirthless laughter at the stunts and the strained dialogue.  Fox didn't want to say anything.  She thought I was enjoying the film.  I thought she was enjoying the film.

            Our usual telepathy had broken down.  I thought it was a terrible movie.  I began to have the creeping sensation that Fox was being polite.  A half hour passed and I finally said, "This is incredibly boring, isn't it?"

            Fox sighed with relief.  Time to bail on this mess and watch some quality BBC mystery.

            This is a capsule history of the evolution (and sometimes devolution) of the Sherlock Holmes ouevre.  When it's bad, it's very bad.  When it's good, it's superb.

The major point in this analysis is that one can watch Sherlock Holmes productions from several eras.  As they move forward in time they reflect deeper psychological awareness.  At present the culmination of Holmes stories are the new Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman productions.  In these stories the Watson/Holmes relationship is nuanced and profound.  They are products of our times and our expanding psychological curiosity.  They are full of subtext, and that subtext is about love and sacrifice.  These may not be the Sherlock Holmes stories as written by Arthur Conan Doyle but they are faithful to the intent.  Doyle created a character who was a misanthropic genius, a towering intellect who saw himself as beyond the common lot of mankind.  The original Holmes was, however, a hero.  The modern Holmes is not quite sure what he is and is uncomfortable with simplistic labels like hero and villain.

            This places the new Holmes in our modern reality where labels don't fit,

where people no longer see themselves in such easy categories.  Cumberbatch, Freeman and the cast and producers of the new BBC series are on their journey with their audience.  We are all trying to revision ourselves as new kinds of people.

            Good TV and film are entertaining.  Great TV and film not only entertain but stimulate insight and are perhaps even inspiring.  The latest BBC version, "Sherlock", provides all of these qualities. 

Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone

            

How To Make Your Characters Come To Life

Making Your Characters Come To Life

Aug 7, 2012

            Have you ever seen a woman who brushes a wisp of hair away from her eyes, over and over? Every two or three seconds, her hand goes up, swats the hair off her forehead and returns to its original position.  She doesn't know she's doing it, nor, for that matter, does anyone else.  It's one of  thousands of unconscious gestures that exist in the ongoing silent dialogue of body language.  When I'm near one of these hair-compulsives, I want to reach out and stop the endless pendulum of arm to forehead and back.  Of course I refrain.  It's not my business to interfere with other people's tics.  These habits are revealers of character: of self awareness, vanity, personal boundaries.  Did President Clinton know what he was doing with his downturned lips, that indicator of defensive anger?  I don't think so. 

            Fictional characters can share these catalogues of gestures.  Lips and eyes project vivid signals of feeling.  The tilt of a head, the size of a character's pupils, the set of shoulders are all useful devices to express the state of a character's emotions.

            Developing a character's unconscious gestures is a fruitful tool in writing fiction.  Foot tapping, knee wiggling and finger movements can show

tension, anxiety or a lack of self control. 

            When I'm writing, I often practice gestures to see how they work in the context of a character.  My wife is now used to this exercise.  She might see me at my computer waving my hands, wiping my brow, raising and lowering my shoulders.

I'm working to see if these gestures fit my characters.

            This attention to the detail of unconscious gesture is one way of infusing characters with believability and vitality.

           I often catch myself repeating these gestures from one story to another.  Some of my heroes like to sit with their hands hanging loosely over their knees.  Some of my villains bite their lips or chew the insides of their cheeks.  By observing the people around me, I've acquired a list of body language indicators.  I translate them into the context in which my fictional characters operate.

           Adjectives are out of fashion.  Modern writing tends to be more spare with description than the fiction of other eras.  Economy is a great virtue in writing. I seldom describe a character in more than the most general terms.  I prefer to let the reader develop the character's appearance in his or her imagination.  I am partial to the use of gesture, conscious or otherwise.  Everyone has their tics, squinches, pouts, head-bobs, shoulder shakes, hand wrings and "tells" when they're bluffing.  .  If a writer wants to enliven characters and give them dimension, it's good to take note of the immense vocabulary of human body language.

A Poodle's Take On Life: Animals Are More Subtle Than We Think.

            My dog barks.  All seven pounds of Bear the Poodle barks at any dog he can see through the screen door.  His barking has been driving us crazy, but lately there's been a real improvement in this behavior.  When he was younger he would bark relentlessly until the passing dog went beyond his boundary limit. Bear is a fierce and loyal guard dog.

            Bear's bark isn't so much shrill as it is explosive.  In his first year he would bark when we were deeply asleep.  He would bark  when a dog entered his zone-of-protection, which began at the house on the left  past the house on the right.  Or vice versa.  This bark would send us flying from the bed, sheets and blankets scattering.  "Wha..what...what?  What the hell?!!!".

            It took a few moments for us to collect our wits and in those few moments the temptation to drop kick Bear across the room was very powerful.  But we are not

dog drop-kickers.  We are not rolled up magazine hitters, nor are we stick-their-nose-in-their-booboos-and-snarl-BAD DOG BAD DOG! people.

            We are not electronic-shock-collar-users, we are not lock-him-in-a-box or exile-him-to-the-garage type people. 

            We're civilized.  We found that the best thing to do was to say "OW! THAT HURTS!"

or "YOU WOKE US UP!" because that's what is real, the blasted bark is like an ice pick into my ear drum.  It really hurts!

            Bear understands emotions, and he quickly understood this one, so his night time barking diminished to virtually nil, as did his day time screen door barking.  He does, occasionally, slip up.  In our neighborhood there lives a dog that is a mix of mastiff and pit bull.  The monster weights a hundred forty pounds.  When this Godzilla of brindled canine testosterone drags his master past our residence, Bear charges the screen door and lets out a single mighty "ROOOOFF!".

            Then he looks at us, a bit shame-faced, and we know that he's dying to do it again, just once, at least once more, but it would hurt his people and he doesn't want to hurt his most beloved humans.

            To stifle this impulse, he goes to the kitty's food dish and takes out a single piece of kibble and either eats it or pretends to eat it and drops it down the heating vent when we're not looking .  Then he returns to his spot and settles down.

            He does it every time.  He does it when he makes that penetrating detonation of a bark at the screen door.  He does it whether it's a passing monster or a sweet little Bichon or the prancing Pomerianian that is, in his opinion, a stuck up little asshole.  He looks an apology at us, he pushes his next bark back inside his wolf-like soul and he eats a piece of kitty kibble.  Or he hides it somewhere until we can't see him and he drops it down the vent.

            This is pure sublimation.  This is emotional sensitivity of a high order, and neurosis of classic Freudian nomenclature.  Our seven pound poodle, Bear, has learned to sublimate his atavistic impulse, the better to exist in society among people

he loves.

            Tell me, then, how deep is an animal's emotional life, how subtle are the registrations of empathy and love?

Bear's son Gabriel

            We hate that brindled mastiff, and we hate his owner even more, the asshole, strutting down the street with a hundred forty pound killing machine on a leash.  He looks like Reinhard Heydrich before the Czech Resistance blew him out of his armored Mercedes.

            The owner doesn't bother to clean up the dog's shit.  He leaves it steaming wherever it falls, huge as an elephant turd but without the earthy odor of grass and leaves.  It smells like bowel-processed Pedigree Lamb Cuisine, and believe me, that stuff stinks bad enough before it is turned into shit.

            So, if I could, I would give Bear a "get out of jail" card for barking at this particular combo but Bear would get a little confused if we took things to that level of detail.

            He's a dog, for god's sake.

            

A Review of TV Series FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

            FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn't about Texas high school football.

            It's about Texas high school football.

            I admit to writing this stupid/cutesy opening and I don't even have a good reason for it.  I suppose it expresses my surprise.  I expected a sports drama.  I anticipated a series about a scrappy low-ranked team overcoming its difficulties and moving on to the semi-finals and then the finals and then.....you know the story.

It's been done to death.  Underdog Triumphs Despite Impossible Odds.

            Peter Berg's masterwork about Americans at their best and their worst is way beyond football scoreboards.  The game dramas we're given, the playoffs and championships, are almost footnotes.  Do they win or lose the nationals? Yay!  Boohoo!  Oh well...the story moves on.

            In case you haven't heard, Texans have a local football culture like no other.  Its passions fill in the great empty spaces of the land.  It entertains, it distracts, it involves, it sucks people into its politics, it's a tornado and it leaves nothing untouched.

            It's serious.  The aristocracy of star players have perks beyond belief.  They are scouted by major college teams and the NFL looms in the background for a few  talented athletes.  The perks have to be within the bounds, so to speak.  There's no buying and selling of games and players (or, at least, there'd better not be). This adherence to the strictures of amateurism doesn't preclude assigning a virtual harem to the stars, the quarterback, the tight end, the wide receiver and so forth.  These guys stride the halls of school like gods.

            FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS  isn't about Texas high school football because it's really about character, relationships and community.

            The true star of this drama is a relationship.  The marriage of Eric and Tami Taylor is the spine of this narrative's skeleton.  It's the beating heart at the center of the town of Dillon, Texas.  Without the marriage of Eric and Tami, there is no story.

Actors Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play their parts with such natural grace that their marriage should receive an Emmy.  It is one of the great marriages in television history.

            Eric is the new Head Coach of the Dillon Panthers.  Tammy is the high school counselor.  Their marriage is subject to pressures that would crush most commitments.  If Eric and Tammy can survive this alchemist's crucible, they will be peerless.  They will  be jewels.

            If they can't, they'll be another sad divorce that leaves behind a shattered family.  Their daughter Julie is at that age just before she starts to rebel and roll her eyes.  We need to wait until Season Three for the foot-stomping,  eye rolling and the whole alphabet of gestures of teenage contempt for adult restrictions.  Meanwhile, she's a nice cute kid with a training bra.

            Eric and Tammy have tough jobs.  If you think coaching high school football

Aimee Teagarden as Julie Taylor

is small time stuff, think again.  This is Texas.  Eric needs all the qualities of a drill sergeant, a general, a shrink, a priest and a politician.  He has to raise his voice and deliver a fifteen minute harangue to a team of wall-sized athletes until they are reduced to terrified little lumps of jelly, quivering on the locker room floor.  Or he can put his arm around a confused, demoralized quarterback, pull the boy's head onto his shoulder and choose the right words to unleash a deluge of tears.  He must puncture the macho armor of these arrogant teen prima donnas and make them, FORCE them, to live in the real world where they are not God's gift to women and football.  Creating better athletes is secondary to creating better people.

            All across the country, the name of Eric Taylor is being discussed.  He's a young, new coach, he's just emerging and he's the man to watch.  He may be next year's High School Coach Of The Year.  He's at the beginning of a career that may some day take him to the Super Bowl.

            Eric is, by nature, a man of few words.  At home, he's a firm

but gentle presence who doesn't make a lot of noise.  He's busy.  He's working, watching playback of games, evaluating his own calls and his players' moves.  He works ALL the time.  He lives football.  His wife understands this, she has grasped it from the very beginning of their marriage and rather than pout and grow disillusioned, she creates her own life.  She uses her own strengths and interests to engage the world.  She's a high school guidance counselor.  This makes her the equivalent of a prison warden and The Great White Hunter on an African Safari.  She is stimulated by challenge.  She is one of those goddess mothers full of lush strength, red-maned, sexy and very tough.

Connie Britton asTami Taylor

            What makes a marriage between two such powerful people function so well?

            Honesty keeps the marriage strong.  Tami and Eric are always honest with one another.  Even when they lie, they're honest about lying.  Neither is afraid to admit being wrong about an issue.  They support one another with unbreakable consistency.  If they have a fight, they cut through the bullshit, find the central issue, and look for compromise.  They don't resort to yelling and name calling.

            There are times when an irresistible opportunity appears before Eric or Tami.  The problem is, accepting the opportunity would require changes in the marriage or the family lifestyle.   One of them, Eric or Tami, is going to have to make a sacrifice.  Who is willing to see a lifetime dream fade away?  Who is wise enough to see that opportunity does NOT come only once in a lifetime? 

            The town of Dillon, Texas is neither large nor small.  It's like a town with a hundred thousand people that has been absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Houston or Dallas.  It has an identity.  Much of that identity is drawn from the supremacy of the Dillon Panthers.

            The power brokers, the mayor, the oil moguls and the owner of the Cadillac dealership are Panther alumni and sit on the board of the Booster's Association.

They know which strings to pull, how to schedule games to the advantage of the team, how to acquire players from other teams who might be Panther-killers if they're not brought into the fold.  They're the guys who play dirty, behind the curtain.  A little pressure, maybe some mild blackmail; it gets the job done and the team is none the wiser.

            It's amazing how much of the human condition can be collected into a single file cabinet with the same labeled situations.  There are aimless kids on drugs, there are abandoned old people, cheating husbands, bankrupt businessmen, pregnant cheerleaders, corrupt officials, natural disasters, infatuated teenagers going suicidal over a romantic setback....all these potholes in the road of life are much the same, no matter where you go.

            The things that can't be pigeonholed, that can't be stuck in a file, are the lineaments of character.  Which one of these people can overcome the temptation to shirk?  Which one can step up and make an effort to change?

            I ask, because I think Friday Night Lights is a narrative about that power in human beings, that ability to see their own trouble and solve the problem, and then move forward.  There will be another problem, and another.  No matter.  By the time Season Three begins, even the people we learned to hate have become different, better.  They are tougher, yet softer.  They have something that we all wish we had:

a supportive community.

            I was amazed, over and over again, at the way the people of Dillon turn to one another.  Coach Taylor's door is always open.  If the phone rings at three in the morning, he will answer it.  "I'll be right there," he says, sliding out of bed and looking for his pants.  If some sopping wet weeping teenager having  a crisis knocks on a door, there will be a soft place to fall.  A motherly hand is extended: "Why, come on in, sugar, you look awful, and you're just SOPPING wet!  What can I do for you?  Let's get you dried off."

            In my dreams I live in a place like that.  Dillon is special because Southern Hospitality is not only real but it includes everyone and it understands that shame is the enemy of communication.  As a community, Dillon expands its definition of humanity and grows like an amoeba to absorb shame so that being ashamed is not shameful.  Lying about the cause of the shame, THAT'S shameful, so it's better to unburden the heart, to come clean and let someone help you, someone with a wiser mind like Eric or Tami Taylor, or a hundred other people.  What's sad is that this

town is a television fiction but it gives me hope.  If someone can imagine such a place, someone can create it in the real world.

             

Bad Poetry Is Good

Pushkin recites. A painting by the great Repin

June 3, 2012

Only I understand my own poetry.

If I read another poet

and get to the end of the poem

without being bored,

that makes her

a good poet.  People tell me that William Butler Yeats

was a great poet but I'll be damned if I understand him.

There are poets who play games with words

in such a way that the poetry bends the wind so that it ties knots in itself.

Listeners are embarrassed at their lack of comprehension.

So they applaud, to hide their gullibility, and the poet goes on to become a great poet with audiences at colleges and books on shelves at stores.

Another kind of poet writes in plain English                    

but, god help us, the poems rhyme, or they
use words like Wind, or Clouds, or Geese,
or Mountains.

For god's sake write in plain English. Or French.  

Or Serbo-Croatian. 

Let's start again.

I love MY poems.  I love Pablo Neruda's poems, just because I do.

e.e. cummings?  Hey, come on.  What a goofball.  

And Bukowsky; that's as close to real as poetry ever gets.

Mary Oliver is obviously wise;

Wise poets fill me with envy.  I'd like to be wise and not just barking mad.

I don't read very much poetry.  There's such a to-do over it, but poets rarely get paid. 
Rich poets are always terrible.  It isn't about the poetry.  It's about the poet.  We need poets,

badly, desperately.  But we don't need poetry at all.  So I guess the best thing

is to be a poet who doesn't write. 

Just don't tell anyone about me.

A Writer Has A Lover's Quarrel With The Internet

           

            Internet and I were at a Starbucks and it was one of those weekdays at two o'clock when the place was quiet.  People were softly chatting at a couple of tables.  One young man, about seventeen or eighteen, typed quietly on his laptop.              Internet was in my Toshiba Satellite, and I pulled her closer so we could converse through the camera and speakers.

            "We need to talk," I said.

            "Those dreadful words, 'We need to talk'", mocked Internet.  "But it's true.  Things have been changing between us."

           Internet put a face on the screen.  It was one of those video game Lara Croft type faces.  I knew she was teasing me, but it revealed her anxiety.

            "Cut it out," I said.  "Use your real face...the one we agreed on."

            Internet changed to a convincing human visage.  She had red-brown hair and freckles and looked like a student at Cambridge or Oxford.  I've always been a sucker for smart English girls.  Internet was still teasing, though.  She was wearing round Harry Potter glasses.  She was trying to be funny, but they looked good on her and she didn't know it.

            We both started speaking at precisely the same moment.

            "Well...I, uh..."

            "You go first," Internet said, in her upper crust English accent.

            "We've been together a long time," I said.  "Ever since my first Mac Notebook."

            Internet appeared to shudder and for a moment there was a screen with little green battleships scooting back and forth.  Then she regained her "face".

            "It's me," she said.  "Not you.  I'm the one who's changed."

            "We've both changed, and it's good, it's great...," I said, "but something has gone away, something has been lost."

            "What?  What?  There's nothing lost.  My god!  Look what I can do now, look at the size of the files you can upload into me.  And, ....well...I can download into you..."  Her shoulders wiggled with a sensual shimmy.  "I love it!"

            "That part of our relationship has been better than ever," I said.  "Our...uh...connection speed has been fabulous.  It's uh...uh..."

            "What?  It's what?" She was getting impatient.

            "This is hard to say," I waffled.

            "Just come out with it!"

            "Okay, okay.  I think you've become all about money."

            "Oh bullshit!" Internet's face turned a shade more red.  Her complexion was already rosy, but I knew I had hit a nerve.  "I make money, you make money, everybody makes money on the internet.  What are you complaining about!  Come on, tell me the truth."

            "All right, all right.  It's kind of hard to explain....but I'm always confused now.  I don't know what the heck you're doing and it makes me feel...well...suspicious."

            "I have to change with the times," Internet said.  "You know that, everyone knows that."

            "It's true, but I feel like I'm walking through some of those sticky cobwebs that you keep brushing your head to get the stuff off but it never comes off.  I  don't know what's happening any more."

            My hand trembled as I drank a swig of lukewarm cappuccino.  It was all closing in on me; I felt confused and embarrassed.  There was a silence.  Internet looked guilty.

            I don't know why I blurted out the next words.  I had promised myself not to act jealous.

            "It's Google, isn't it?"

            Internet looked even more guilty.  "What do you mean, 'It's Google'?

            My mind was beginning to clear.  The cobwebby feeling started falling away from me.  "You've sold out to Google.  Everything is owned and run by Google.  There aren't websites any more.  There are web colonies that are being run by web empires.  Everything I post shows up on a hundred other websites.  I can't scratch my nuts without a link appearing on Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes or Twitter: Art Rosch just scratched his nuts.  Do you want to be his Friend?"

            Internet's face dissolved into chaos, then put itself back together.  Maybe the connection went down.  Maybe Internet was laughing.  There was a shadowy figure of Winston Churchill on Internet's forehead.  Down by her chin was the monster from "Alien" but it was quickly disappearing.  .

            "Okay, I have to come clean, get this stuff off my chest," she said.  "I've been bought up by a handful of corporations.  Tell you the truth, I don't know what's going on, I don't have a clue.  I'm getting new software thrown at me so fast, I can't handle it."  A tear slid down her cheek.  "I'm crashing all the time!"

            I barely heard her.  I was reflecting on the experiences of the last few weeks.

            "Tell me about it," I said, at last.  "It seems like every day I'm asked to join another social network.  What the hell is Pinterp?  Or Floosbock?  Like an idiot, I join them and the software is a complete mystery.  All I want to do is write books and promote them.  But everyone's got a book!  My inbox is ninety percent book promos.  What do I have to write to get people's attention?  Seems like it's all

Harlequin Romance Vampire Private Detectives With Occult Powers.  Good God!

There are fifty million writers trying to sell their first novel.  If you can't get an agent, that's okay, E-Publish your book and let Amazon sell it!  And that works out great, you sell maybe ten copies and the book sinks into the abyss of forgotten novels."

            "Calm down," Internet said.  "Things will work out.  We'll get through this glitch. I'll help you promote your books."

            Her eyes were cast down and then she looked up at me with her head still lowered.  It was a very cute look, very seductive.

            "You got anything to upload?  A nice, big, fat file?  Got a new manuscript?

I'd like that."

            It had its effect on me, I'll admit.  I was tempted. 

            "I've got a new draft of a novel," I said, with a straight face.  It's called 'FANGS OF AN EROTIC VAMPIRE WEREWOLF: A LOVE STORY.         

            Internet gave me a salacious grin.  "Ooh," she said, "that sounds juicy.  What fun!"

            I kept quiet.  At last I saw Internet's expression change.

            "Dammit," she said, "I almost fell for that!  Come on, what do you really have?"

            "I have the second draft of my sci fi/ fantasy novel, THE GODS OF THE GIFT."  bit.ly/n8ynWp

            "That's more like it.  That's 'you'.  Has it changed a lot since the first draft?"

            "Completely different book," I said.  "I'm really proud of it."

            Internet stuck out her tongue. "Come on, mister, what are you waiting for?"

            I opened a second screen in the upper corner of my monitor.  I found my page for THE GODS OF THE GIFT, hit the EDIT button and deleted the earlier draft.  

            "Here I come, baby," I said.  "I hope you're ready for this."

            "From you, anything," Internet replied.  "You're a fine writer.  You're an original."

            I moused over to the UPLOAD button and clicked.  My new draft was a blue bar that crossed a rectangular box.  Percentage figures rode along the bottom.  It took about a minute.  Internet's face was rapt.  Her mouth was half open and her eyes glistened. The blue bar reached the end of the box and the new draft appeared on the screen.

            "OH!" Internet sighed.  "OH! OH! You're right.  This is a much better book.  I know it's awful to be a writer. It even more awful to be really great and still get ignored.  I know it breaks your heart."

            I didn't say anything.  I thought about all the work, all the years I spent working on the craft of writing.  "Yes," I said at last.  "It breaks my heart."

            Internet was recovering her composure.  She had read the new draft and I knew she was proud of me.

            "Don't ever give up writing," she said. "Never.  You MUST keep writing.  This is amazing stuff.  There is nothing else like it."          

            I opened the page on my book blog and filled my monitor screen with the cover.  I looked at my design.  I looked at the starry cosmos and the elongated objects that resembled fiery colliding worlds.  It was a work in progress but it wasn't kitsch, it was faithful to the spirit of the book.  It was a really cool book cover.

            "Don't worry, babe.  I can't quit writing.  I'm not capable of quitting writing, no matter how much it breaks my heart.  To paraphrase an old motto," I said, 'You'll have to pry my keyboard from my cold dead fingers.'"

            "That's my man," Internet said. "I know I'll go on changing, but great art is timeless.  I'll be loyal to you, I promise."

            I couldn't quite make myself trust the promise.  It made me sad.  But it left room for hope.

           

            

Notes on Losing A Job And Being Scared Shitless

 Notes on Losing a Job and Being Scared Shitless

            What made me decide during my teen years that I was going to devote my life to creating "art"?  Music, poetry, prose, photography, if it was "art" I was going to do it and no one could stop me.  My parents thought I was crazy and put me in a psychiatric ward for eight weeks.  I emerged no less an artist.  The medications I should have been taking had been hidden in my lower lip and spit out the window, drifting down five stories to land in a sodden mess of other spat-out medications at the back entrance to the hospital.

            It was just what I had to do.  I didn't see any choice in the matter.  I was driven.  I wouldn't listen to my father's imprecations to "find yourself a profession and do 'art' on the side". 

            What?  Do "art" on the side?  Jeez, what did he think I was?  Some kind of dilettante?  I was going to be immersed in music, writing, etc for my life, every day of my life, 24/7/365/80something.

            That's what I've done.  I've arranged everything in my life to be an "artist".

I use these quotation marks because at this stage of my life the words Art, Artist, Creative, Genius, etc have been so devalued that I feel like a complete fool.  I can't explain what I really am.  I'm in late middle age and I'm still doing it. I fit the classic model of the "starving artist", the impractical beatnik hipster free spirit who lives outside the mainstream and survives as a free lance everything.

            I've had the perfect job for twenty six years.  It's a part time janitorial contract, It's about fifteen hours of work each week.  When I combine that income with a couple other cleaning jobs, I'm an independent man with a subsistence income.  That frees me to be the artist and writer that I am.  I don't know how to do anything else.

          I create.  I do the cleaning job on my own time, no one pressures me, it's physical work and my mind can wander through my artistic universe while I sweep and scrub.

            Then the property owner died and this perfect job died with him. I got thirty days notice. The letter arrived yesterday.  The dead man's heirs are hiring a slick professional firm of janitorial shysters who pick up Latino workers, put them in blue uniforms, pay them minimum wage and pocket the rest.

            You know the kind of sickening gut-storm that happens when you find out your lover's been cheating?  You know that feeling? 

            I feel like that.  A nice chunk of income worth $1100 a month has suddenly vanished. It was my largest contract. I don't know how I'll pay my rent, care for my wife, keep the internet broadband connected.  I still have some work.  Just a bit.  I'm 64 years old.  My feet are in chronic pain.  I've never worked for anyone else.

            I've had enough experiences in my life to understand that one of the most basic structures of existence is this: death and resurrection.  Getting fired is a death.  I await the new blossoming.

            I've been going through years of heartbreak.  I'll be honest.  No one wants to read about my pain; there's enough pain.  Who needs some obscure writer to dump more pain?

            I think I'm a special writer but show me a writer who doesn't think he or she is special.  Writing is a landscape of self delusion, fantasy, hope burning, guttering, rejection gathering, courage failing.  This is a tough time for writers.  There's a zillion grandiose twenty five year old English Lit and MFA graduates who want to hit the Great Harry Potter Roulette Wheel.

            I'm scared shitless.  I'm old, I have a lot of unmarketable skills, my wife is

disabled and my dogs are neurotic as Alaskan Armadillos.  What am I going to do?

            Here's where the leap of faith enters the picture: It Will Come.  I've been stuck in the most colossal rut for seven or eight years.  I've been comfortable.

            Comfort can be deadly to an artist.  I'm going to have to ride it out.  Already, I've applied for two writing jobs.  Wouldn't that be cool, actually being employed writing? 

I can do other people's work.  I can do it well.  I've done it before.  I was a ghost writer for six years for a celebrity photographer.  My ghost written articles appeared in People Magazine, Teen Beat, National Enquirer, a host of tatty rags.  I got paid by the hour.  My boss was seventy five years old, and he was a tightwad!  That fucker paid me minimum wage and threw in a pallet upon which I could sleep in his equipment warehouse.  The hitch was that he charged me a hundred bucks a month rent!

            I'm going to get less scared as the days pass.  I know this has happened and that it will turn out okay.  If it doesn't turn out okay, that's going to be a drag.

          What's the worst that can happen?  I always ask this question when things are rough.  The answer: the worst that can happen is that I can suffer horribly for a long time, intimately observe my mind and body disintegrating, and then die alone in a ditch.

          So, if that's the worst that can happen, what am I worried about?