September 2007 Archives

Since his book (Re)Thinking Worldview is coming out on October 12th, I asked J. Mark Bertrand if he would mind talking to me about a wide range of topics. He kindly agreed. This is our conversation:

J. Brisbin (J): We post-moderns are forced to deal with a steadily-increasing amount of information every day. Much of it an everyday Johnane (politically-correct cross between a John and Jane…nevermind) would not have had access to a few generations ago. Discussing something as intricate as Worldview would have been conversation fodder for intellectuals and philosophers. Yet here we are, normal working stiffs, talking about it.

J. Mark Bertrand (JMB): You mean "talking" about it. We're still using the old terminology, but the process, as you say, has changed.

A little more revision and breaking the sonnet visually into its constituent quatrains and couplet.

Damn words won't sit still.
Keep moving around on me.
       sit
I put them in one spot
Now, stay where I put you!
              still

They end up getting themselves
Mixed up in odd combinations
That don't make sense any.
I didn't put them there.

They moved around in secret.
       (sneak)       (sneak)       sit
Made a mess out of everything.
Beat the hell out of them
       Sit still!
They just cry (sniff) like a whiny-baby. (sniff)

I pick them up and hug them
And put them back where I had them.

I'm experimenting with this notion that us cubicle workers could benefit from working standing up, instead of slouching in our cushy office chairs all day. They (the proverbial ones) say that it increases your productivity, helps with your circulation, and sundry health-related bennies. We'll see about that. I moved my desk up so that I can work standing up (yes, all day):

I do feel better at the end of the day. I actually feel tired, instead of that crappy malaise one gets after all day spent slouching in a chair and getting sleepy. It's not easy, I will say that. I move around a lot to keep my knees from hurting. My back is still getting used to it, too (I'm used to hunching over).

All-in-all, I'd say the experiment is going well. I know this is not for everyone (some folks' knees wouldn't allow it), but for me, anyway, it seems to be working out fairly well. I figure I'll give it a month before I make a decision to either keep going with it, or go back to sitting down.

My wife and another lady were selling magnets for a PTO fundraiser at the bank's Customer Appreciation Day. People who may or may not have accounts at the bank show up to eat free hot dogs cooked by the men who run the bank. An old man hobbles over to her card table. In the box are the paw-shaped magnets. Our school mascot is a tiger. The magnets say "Tiger Pride" on them.

"Tiger Pride? They don't have much to be proud of," the old man says. The football team has barely broken a dozen points so far this year.

"There's other things, too. Basketball, track," my wife says.

"Well, nothing as important as football," the old man says.

We all stand up and look past the south goal posts at the flag hoisted to the top of a polished pole that sits atop a pedestal that, if I remember correctly (it's been many years since I've read it), has a brass plaque that honors the community's veterans of World War I. The marching band plays the national anthem and the school song. The football team runs around behind the band and plows through a banner that, in keeping with the evolution of society, is no longer paper and made each Friday before a game, but made once out of heavy material and the edges velcroed together so it can be used over and over again without having to expend the effort required to make a paper banner every time one is called for.

We kick off. The other team returns the ball eighty yards or so for a touchdown within the first seventeen seconds. The short, stout boy with the ball runs past us. One of the coaches is screaming already. Instead of an extra point, the other team tries for a two-point conversion and succeeds. Don't want to despair too early. Don't want to expect them to do badly and have that expectation met. Three touchdowns for the visitors by the first quarter and five by the end of the half. Only one for our team by the end of the game and the extra point goes wide.

Our boys come by for money to get a bottle of pop and the girls want a paw print painted on their faces. We talk to my wife's cousin for a while. He's a youth minister at the Baptist Church. His dad has cancer but looks great, plays golf every day, and will go back to work soon. People I know go by in front of us. Some I know names for, some I only know their face.

It's dark now, but still warm. Not football weather yet. Pleasant. Plenty of advice from the stands on what needs to be done. Better defense. Just catch the ball and run it. Don't fumble the snap.

The game ends. Thank you for coming and supporting your Tigers. The Baptist Church invites you to the fifth quarter. The band files past us and we wait for the kids to find us. We walk back out to the van. The paw-print magnet on the back says "Tiger Pride."

So I re-worked my ballad a little bit. Trying to make it more of a ballad:

Who walks into a bar?
Guy fatsky and guy thinsky

Thin one gets a martini,

Guy fatsky orders whiskey.

Who is it got brains?
Asks guy fatsky. You?

They say it ain't me

Guess it must be you.

Guy thinksy: You're ignorant.
Only the enlightened deserve

To have any substantial say.

But guy fatsky holds brains in reserve.

Who is the smarter?
The flinger or the stung?

I guess it all depends

On who it is gets hung.

The flinger gets hung
(or hangs himself).

Not the stung.

Speaking figuratively, of course.

Note: For this exercise, I had to take the fourteen ending words of a Shakespearean sonnet from our textbook and reuse them in a sonnet of our own. Turns out it's really, really difficult to create something that makes any kind of sense when you're forced to reuse another poet's words at the end of your lines.

Mosquitoes the hammer, an anvil the sun.
I between them, my hatless, bald head, red.

Miserable and lathered: mare sorrel, colt dun.

Chasing a bee, the youngster flicks his long head.

Mare comes near me, takes the hay with a bite.

Humidity slaps me and leaves red on my cheeks.

Her colt bounds toward us. A mother's delight

For any mother but her. I dig out the treats.

Someone should see this. But no one would know

What to make of a mother who hates the sound

Of her son coming near. I turn and I go.

Dry crunch under feet. Desiccated ground.

I force them to be together. The nuzzles are rare.

To what can this mother's disdain compare?

I've been digging into the depths of Delta Blues lately. While I like some of the electrified blues that came from Chicago in the 1950's and '60s (what most people think of when they think of "the blues"), the more pure form known as Delta Blues has always drawn me in more than than the blues' later, urbanized, cousin. I've been scouring the ‘net looking for early recordings of the greats of Delta Blues like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Mississippi Fred McDowell (who was actually from Tennessee). These scratchy, primitive recordings from the 1920's and '30s give a window into that time and a connection to the bluesmen and their world that I know nothing about but am interested in anyway.

I can't identify with that world because I wasn't born in 1900 in the Jim Crow South. I haven't experienced segregation, mistreatment by the white world, and I don't despair for my life and want nothing more than to cross the river Jordan to that home over yonder. I'm drawn to the melancholy of those mumbled, sometimes nonsensical tunes because of their authenticity. Music that is truly authentic is hard to find these days. It's all polished and commercial and devoid of life. Delta Blues is simple, all about the hardships of everyday people, and truly authentic to the human experience.

In my opinion, that's the part writers skip when they craft their own art. Authenticity is almost impossible to manufacture. If you don't seek out authenticity in human nature on your own, outside of your writing, how can you expect to understand and therefore capture it when you sit down to create a world outside of your experience? I think surrounding yourself with authentic forms of artistic expression can infuse you with that intangible part of creating an artistic work that you just can't explain. You can't quantify what makes something honest and transparent and what makes writing feel glossy and plastic-wrapped. You just know it when you see it.

For me, Delta Blues is one thing that connects me to authentic human beings outside my normal circle of acquaintances. For an introduction to what I'm talking about, try subscribing to the Delta Blues Museum's podcast. You'll either know what I'm talking about when you listen to Fred McDowell sing his mournful rendition of "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind On Jesus" or you won't. If you do, then you're on your way. If you don't, then you've got some digging to do to find that expression of authenticity that you can relate to so it can make you a better human being and hopefully, a better writer.