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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: January 2018

21st Century Brontë #32: The First Low-Residency Semester

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in 21st Century Bronte

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21st Century Brontë #32 by Brontë Bettencourt

The First Low-Residency Semester

Hello, Readers!

Last May I finished my first semester at Hamline University.

Every month, I submitted a packet of my work to the amazingly talented Phyllis Root. My packets consisted of twenty pages of new material, twenty pages of edited material, ten annotated bibliographies about books on a required reading list, a critical essay where I examine certain themes or writing elements, and a letter addressing my status during this marathon. Sometimes, the personal work changed: in the first month, I wrote forty pages of material, while in the last month I wrote twenty new pages, and two children’s picture books.

During the weekend of a friend’s wedding, I drafted my critical essay. I missed another friend’s birthday party after it was postponed once, because of approaching deadlines. One night I came home to find Sammie and Sally hanging out on the couch, neither of whom I’d seen for weeks.

Sammie lives on the floor below me. Sally is my roommate.

The work load was excruciating.  I loved it.

In that work mode, I am tunnel-visioned on my craft. Between reading and writing, I thought of little else. I didn’t see these assignments as work. And I didn’t unwillingly throw myself into this program. I am good enough to be here.

Picture1.png

I could do this.

With every submitted packet, Phyllis responded with several pages of positive comments, questions pertaining to worldbuilding, and book recommendations. I would base the following essay on an element of craft that I was unclear on. I’ve written essays on YA and Children’s literature story structure, magic as used by certain authors, and pacing. Anytime I felt exhausted or insecure I reread her letters, because even the critical parts were handled through inquiry, not vicious appraisal. The Facebook group I’m in with my other first semester friends helped, because despite having different mentors, we’re all undergoing the same issues. Every Monday we checked in with what we were writing and what books we were reading.

The semester ended in May. The summer residency began on July 7th. I’ve turned in another piece for the next set of workshops. But here I am, dusting off my blog. I’ve written 100 pages of an Urban Fantasy novel, as well as two picture books. I’ve already finished my second semester with the fantastic Swati Avasthi. I’ve already submitted 40 more pages among other assignments, and I’ve learned graphic novel writing.

In those rare moments of free time, I’ve free-written on and off about another idea, involving Ellie and her family.  I shouldn’t want to take breaks from writing if this is my occupation.

I’m never taking a break.

Before my first deadline Phyllis recommended Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. On page seven, Lamott says that as a writer “you are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It’s a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well go ahead and get started.”

Bird-by-Bird

My friend Charles asked me if I’ve seen an improvement since starting my first semester.

I think I’ve improved in terms of persistence, faith, and hard work. I would have to sit down and scrutinize an older piece versus a recent one to really see a difference.

I have a better eye on understanding what makes a stronger piece of writing, as well as differentiating my preferences.

If you have any questions regarding the Master’s Program for Writing Literature for Children and Young adults, please let me know in the comments. An update regarding my second semester will come soon.


Brontë Bettencourt at Hemingway House

Brontë Bettencourt (Episode 34, Episode 221) graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelors in English Creative Writing. She’s currently pursuing an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University. When she’s not writing or working she’s a full time D&D enthusiast and YouTube connoisseur.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #2: Junk Genius, Ghost of Electricity (1999)

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Lost Chords & Serenades Divine, Music

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Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #2 by Stephen McClurg

Junk Genius, Ghost of Electricity, (1999)

Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off …

The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face

     ~ from “Visions of Johanna,” By Bob Dylan

 I’ve been haunted by this Junk Genius recording for almost two decades. The next record that Junk Genius never made, but that I badly wanted, haunted me, too. I suppose we all have a secret playlist of the soul.

The Ghost of Electricity

During the ‘90s, I had an obsession with Bay Area jazz and free improv recordings. Junk Genius was a Bay Area quartet of serious and exploratory musicians. Both of their records take on large song and music forms and then use their personal and group interests as filters to de-code and recombine the elements of the genre traditions they happen to be tackling.

In both instances, these musicians spent a lot of time playing from a particular tradition (bebop for the first record, the American folk tradition for the second) and then they used that musical knowledge as inspiration for sets of new tunes that explore the tones and textures of the precursor compositions and recordings. It’s not homage or throwback music.

I’m still processing their first record, but Ghost of Electricity immediately spoke to me. The photo on the cover is perfect to complement the music. This was released during the CD-era and vinyl hadn’t found its way back, but if it had, this would have been a beautiful record cover.

I like dense music, but I also like it when musicians let sounds breathe, when they use silence and space as much as knotty, note-filled passages. There is a lot of breath on this record and a spareness, maybe, again, that haunting quality. Melodies flicker and cough, and are frequently played softly.

John Schott and Ben Goldberg are precise musicians, with intelligence, wit, and soul, and this record is often about how their musical voices interweave, fray, and meet again. It’s a small version of some of the traditional American themes of there-and-back again: hobo boxcars, road trips, migrations, homecomings, rags to riches to rags.

“Gone Away,” the opening track, begins with a lilting, plaintive melodic line that captures what so much American music is devoted to: loss. What makes Junk Genius’s approach different is that they are not trying to echo these themes in lyrics or in getting a string section or toy piano, or even trying to be Ye Olde String Band. They filter that past through their own contemporary approach to improvisation that is influenced by Bill Frisell, Albert Ayler, late-era Coltrane, and angular jazz from the Chicago Art Ensemble or ECM recordings.

“Long Way” opens with the earthy, dark tones of bass and clarinet. Then the percussion rhythms are echoed by guitar arpeggios. Schott plays snippets of melodic pieces that recall the melody from “Gone Away,” though the tone is more restless, more lost. If “Angle,” the third track, were a kind of descent, “Long Way” is a floating in the darkness.

“Aberdeen” reminds me of the moment in a noir when a down-on-his-luck man wanders the streets, dusty or rain-beaten, no hope. A slight lilt here hints at the Tramp or Harold Lloyd’s Man with the Glasses.

“When” resounds with dreamy hopefulness, and with dissonant guitar chords backed by soft, malleted percussion. Goldberg plays long tones over the rest of the group. There is a buoyancy that has enough brightness to be hopeful that spills over in cymbal washes. It’s possible the title is a reference to how the American Dream seems to be something not in the present, maybe even that possibility of reaching a “when” provides some sort of hope, no matter how small or quiet.

“Indication” contains a lyrical, tuneful melody and also opens with the duo of Goldberg and Dunn. The tune finds a darker tone towards the end when after a short drum section, Dunn plays arco long tones that slide and descend. The interplay throughout this section is interesting because you can hear all four musicians pick up threads of melody or rhythm from each other and reconfigure them back out into the group. There is a restlessness, a searching quality, in the performance that realizes an ideal Americanness.

You can get Junk Genius’s records from online distributors and their label Songlines.


McClurg

Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Episode 295: Charles Simic & Richard Blanco!

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Memoir, Poetry

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Episode 295 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s program, I talk to Charles Simic about James Tate, Kansas surrealism, humor in poetry, and embracing the unconscious,

SIMIC

Photo by Richard Drew.

plus I talk to Richard Blanco about the accidents that turn us into artists, the grind of editing, and the joys of finding new forms and challenges.

Blanco_press_327-Edit

TEXTS DISCUSSED

scribbled-in-the-darkThe Prince of los Cocuyos

NOTES

Be sure to check out the music of David Rego, whose songs “Rings Ring” and “Sapphire Showers” appear on this episode.

Dave Rego

Dave Rego

Episode 295 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #69: Twelfth Night (1996)

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Shakespeare, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film

69. Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996)

Songs in Shakespeare can be a tricky thing since his texts share lyrics, but not melodies. The normal theatrical approach to these songs is to keep them brief, and not to commit to melodies that are catchy or especially even musical, which kind of defeats the presumed delightful fucking purpose of songs to Shakespearean dramaturgy. Musical creativity is not generally a priority for most troupes, since few could have a budget for commissioning a composer.

That’s only one reason why Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night is thrilling: Ben Kingsley sings!

Twelfth Night poster

Trevor Nunn is one of those rare figures in Shakespearean adaptations: someone who belongs to both the Shakespeare and musical theater communities. This may be why Shaun Davey was enlisted to compose music that could creatively compete (and so complement) the poetry and prose of Shakespeare’s text.

Twelfth Night 6

This is crucial for Twelfth Night, whose very first lines begin with an emo complaint from poor, love-stricken Orsino:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Another reason why music is crucial to the spirit of Twelfth Night: the play was written to be performed as a revel for an actual Twelfth Night (AKA, the twelfth day of Christmas–seriously).

I leave it to you, gentle reader, if you wish to look for the semiotic/symbolic traces of the holy associations with Twelfth Night in the play. (Please leave your analyses below in the comments. Remember that the play begins with shipwreck.)

Twelfth Night 7

The elevation of the music of the play coincides with the elevation of Feste, the clown, in this adaptation, with Ben Kinglsey playing the part. Feste is interpreted as not only as a sardonic commenter about the society he lives in, using his wit and lowly status to convey more truth than is otherwise socially tolerable—this Feste is also like a chorus and the conscience of the play.

The song with which the play closes—a lilting meditation on the role of entertainment in the meaning of our lives—becomes a framing device for the whole story in this film:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Without imagination, we would not be able to endure life. Shaun Davey’s undulating melody works as a leitmotif with enough theme and variations that the film gels miraculously.

As the other song in the middle of the film will demonstrate, music can also articulate our sorrows, which is also a consolation, if temporary, and helps us to understand ourselves. Orsino, in particular, is looking for answers.

The cast is stunning. Helena Bonham-Carter plays Olivia. Nigel Hawthorne plays Malvolio. Sir Toby Belch, one of Shakespeare’s greatest drunkards, is played by Mel Smith, who you may remember as the torturer’s assistant in The Princess Bride.

Twelfth Night 8

Richard E. Grant plays that caricature of an upper-class twit, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, with delicious abandon, as if to put such a typecasting of himself away for good. Imogen Stubbs manages her Viola to gender-bending poignancy. Imelda Staunton plays Maria to matronly perfection. Toby Stephens actually makes Orsino compelling despite the character being something of a High Romantic tool.

As I have said too often in these reviews, Shakespearean comedy resembles Shakespearean tragedy with the exception of the pile of corpses that ends a tragedy. This film works wonders with that dialectic. It can save your life.

Twelfth Night 2

Imogen Stubbs, Helena Bonham Carter.

But this play, and this version of this play, are wickedly funny. Shakespeare’s critique of gender, social class, and the social norms by which we express our emotional lives is more contemporary than ever.


1flip

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #1: Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band: II (2016)

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Lost Chords & Serenades Divine, Music

≈ 1 Comment

Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #1 by Stephen Mcclurg

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band: II (2016)

Music has all encompassing merits,
its worth is of a city, it can be as useful as you wish…
—from Phra Aphai Manee, by Sunthorn Phu

Certain sounds are familiar, but as a whole, this music has a welcome strangeness. Melodies like surf ballads or slightly delayed minor pentatonic electric fiddle tunes rise over the thuds and clangs of marching band percussion and groovy electric bass ostinatos.

I’m introduced to this on YouTube, which reminds me of being a kid and seeing, as much as hearing, new music on MTV. The musicians wear matching red vests and sit in plastic white lawn chairs surrounding a booming pillar, a column of amps and horns wired together. The handheld camera wobbles around them and skims across a table topped with beer and whiskey and tip buckets. Unclear and at a short distance away, under a pavilion, A young person holds hands in prayer at the center of a gathering. Someone seems to snip locks of hair from the young person. 

I’m not sure what celebration Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band is playing for in the video, but over the last few years, I’ve listened to Thai music around the New Year, when we’re prone to thinking about new projects, new selves, and wishing for more happiness, more love, or maybe just for more. I’ve found Thai music brings me joys that other New Year’s rituals don’t, and rather than trying to create a new self, this column will be more about connecting with an older one.

I’ve spent decades as a music lover and musician. When I had my first child, the time I could spend playing music disappeared. As someone who enjoyed the pre-internet dives into dusty bins of used vinyl, library discards, and flea market castaways, I’ve found little reason to explore music online until now. In some ways, this column is a return to a former life as an independent music store clerk. I now have access to more music than I did in that mom-and-pop, and I’ve found my interest in all things increase along with my urge to have something like the conversations I had in that little store. Khun Narin’s music instantly resonated with whatever musical soul I could be said to have and reminded me of pricing new trades, picking something I’d never heard, and after the silence of pressing play, the flash of unexpected sonic joy.

A similar thrill has been finding music played on the phin, a three-stringed lute, often elaborately carved with dragons or serpents, and now frequently run through amplifiers. One of my favorite groups is Narin’s Band, whose recent album II is available on Innovative Leisure Records.

Khun Narin_s Electric Phin Band II

“Rin,” as the bandleader is known, also carves his own instruments and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s responsible for their electric amp icon.

The music is frequently described as psychedelic, sometimes even (eye roll) Thai-chedelic. While I can hear that, it resonates as dance music in my mind. It’s music to move by. And I can listen to it with my children, who are still too young for The Fugs or the other music I like which I’ve been told sounds like household appliances. But when we have dance parties and I get tired of Taylor Swift or “The Hot Dog Song,” and they get tired of James Brown or Talking Heads, we can dance and be wild with Khun Narin. This is party music.

Though less noticeable on the records, the repetitiveness that makes the music danceable makes some of the live shows that stack up at two-plus hours difficult to absorbed. I imagine that this is less bothersome the more one is enveloped in Dionysian pursuits. Good news for writers out there, though, I’ve found that the repetition has the same effect as works by Steve Reich or Philip Glass in making a music I can write to. Such music creates a mood that keeps my thoughts and feet moving. When I was growing up, I did almost everything with music. As I get older it becomes increasingly more difficult to do that, and I never read with music these days, but occasionally I like the energy music gives my writing process.

Ultimately, Khun Narin makes perfect tracks for a party mix. They divide often into two types: the shredder and the slow jam. Many of the songs do both—begin slow and increasingly shred. This gradual tempo increase is a part of some traditional Thai folk forms. Melodic hooks, tremolo picking, and trills make up much of the language of the melodies. Occasionally, they will throw in a descending set of Iron Maiden-esque riffs or disco-octave bassline accompaniment.

I’ve been struck how when Rin switches tones, from delayed to distorted and back, he has the effect of multiple lead guitarists or voices, not simply someone stomping on an effect and changing one voice. I’m still not sure how he pulls it off.

You can listen to the Khun Narin albums on the label’s YouTube channel or Bandcamp page.


McClurgStephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

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