Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus Stripped

Posted on February 17, 2013 by McPhedran

My screenplay Sister Prometheus is a reworking of the Promethean myth, utilizing elements of the Oresteia. I realize that this is a dangerous and foolhardy pursuit, as any modern work is likely to pale in comparison with the work of Aeschylus, exemplified in the passage below, describing Iphigenia’s death at the hands of the priests of her father Agamemnon:

Rough hands tear at her girdle, cast/ Her saffron silks to earth. Her eyes/

Search for her slaughterers; and each/ Seeing her beauty, that surpassed/

A painter’s vision, yet denies/ The pity her dumb looks beseech/

Struggling for voice; for often in old days,/When brave men feasted in her father’s hall/

With simple skill and pious praise/Linked to the flutes pure tone/

Her virgin voice would melt the hearts of all/

Honoring the third libation near her father’s throne/

The rest I did not see/ Nor do I speak of it.

This sacrifice is said to have appeased the gods and given the Greeks fair winds to Troy and eventual triumph in their bloody quest for Helen. My Prometheus is female. Her name is Virginia Adamantine, and she’s furious with the Agamemnons of the world, ready to fight anyone in her way. And she’s a stripper. That’s the part I doubt Aeschylus would have appreciated.

Understanding The Bachelor: Tierra LiCausi’s Sparkle and Brow

Posted on February 15, 2013 by McPhedran

There is something remarkably terrifying about the ABC network reality TV show, The Bachelor. A man searches amongst 26 pre-selected women for the one who is on the show for the “right reasons” and wants to “take it to the next level”. Adding to the difficulty of this quest, all of the candidates proclaim their love for this man and their desire to be with him for the rest of their lives.The process itself is laborious, involving group dates, cocktail parties, hand-holding, heart-to-heart talks and awkward sequences of kissing. Although the show is predictably structured – with pathetic story arcs, villains and insidious repetition – there are some moments which amuse and surprise. Tierra LiCausi, the villain of this season, blurted out a ground-breaking deconstruction of the self near the end of last week’s show. In defending her position on how she might have been seen by others when she raised an eyebrow in an insulting manner, she explained: “Raised eyebrow? That’s my face! I can’t help that…I can’t control my eyebrow. I cannot control my eyebrow. I can’t control what’s on my face 24/7.” There was no sense of irony, no sarcasm in her position; this was in fact a bold statement attempting to establish a startling new possibility that the face is an independent entity. Dissatisfied with the simplistic notion of the duality of mind and body, Ms. LiCausi sought to shatter the self into billionths, every cell and corpuscle independent of each other, only of itself, self-governed, self-determined, rarely, if ever, attuned to the body and mind as part of a whole. Ms. LiCausi continued, “I know in my own skin that I am not rude…If I could walk around with a smile on 24/7, I would. But my face would get freaking tired.” In other words, it is a virtual impossibility for another to understand the consciousness of Ms. LiCausi, or as she refers to it, her “sparkle”. Other selves, or “sparkles”, can only assume and thus interpret; they are incapable of capturing the essence of another sparkle simply because of the face’s independent notion of self and potentially abrasive manner. Predictably, Ms. LiCausi’s revelations left the other faces and bodies on the show dumb-founded, including that of the Bachelor himself, who decided to reject Ms. LiCausi, eyebrow, face, sparkle and all.

Coping with another Storm: Make a Fire

Posted on December 26, 2012 by McPhedran

The miserable weather is back in New York.

Another storm, more rain and wind, and more flood warnings. Good God, enough already! Okay, well, at least we can make a fire, right? Not the crazy pyro-kind, kids, but the sensible lovely kind, the kind that soothes and makes all things right…for a little while anyway. First, you need your paper. Ball it up tight, page by page, and place those into the fireplace as your first layer. Then put in a layer of junk paper packaging things, whatever would be normally mounting toward more landfill. Next it’s the branches, the small and the big. And then a couple of small logs. The trick to a good fire is the oxygen. Make sure there’s gaps between everything. And then set it ablaze! Light as many places as you can without burning your fingers and make sure that the flue is open. Let it burn for a few minutes and then, once it has burned down, pile on another log or two cross-ways. Keep pushing the logs around. Make sure the oxygen gets inside. Once it’s going, it’s time to listen to the winds howl, the cold rain and snow batter against the windows or some favorite music. And, yeah, have a drink…ginger ale, tea, whatever. You deserve it. My goodness, we just made fire! Keep an eye on it. Stoke it. And get ready to do it all again soon. Another storm is forecast for Sunday.

Survival Guide: The Last Day

Posted on December 20, 2012 by McPhedran

Today is your time for measured reflection. During this, the last of the seven stages before this apocalypse, you must learn to accept the reality of your situation. Acceptance doesn’t mean happiness, but rather a way forward…even though the world is going to end. There is no better guide than Martin Luther King Jr. His final speech in Memphis, Tennessee (April 3, 1968) is an incredible collection of ideas and moments, all of it delivered without notes. Another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. He was assassinated the following morning.

Watch My Dinner with Andre, written by Wallace Shawn and directed by Louis Malle. Two men talk over dinner, just that, but remarkable so, reminding us that a good story just needs to be told. I wouldn’t put on an electric blanket for any reason. First, I’d be worried if I get electrocuted. No, I don’t trust technology. But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that kind of comfort just separates you from reality in a very direct way. Read the poetry of William Carlos Williams. Yes, poetry! He was a doctor by trade, which provides great insight into the good old human condition. It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time. It’s time. Take stock of your life. Are you good? Until tomorrow then.

Apocalypse Survival: We Must Change

Posted on December 17, 2012 by McPhedran

“We must change.” So pronounced President Obama at a memorial service on Sunday for the families of victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He is right. There is no doubting that. We are an extremely violent species with an unconscionable past. And we must change that. But can we? Is there really any way to do this? My money is against. The fourth stage of accepting the oncoming apocalypse is a day on which depression, reflection and loneliness dominate. This is supposed to be a long period of sad reflection, but you’ve only got the day. You realize the true magnitude of your loss, and you isolate yourself on purpose. William Basinki’s The Disintegration Loops is ideal for this state of mind. Created in Brooklyn on 9/11, these CDs document the disintegration of sound on reel-to-reel tapes. There are five CDs in all, but Disintegration Loop 5 is 52 minutes well worth trying. Michaelangelo Frammartino’s Quattro Volte evokes a similar feeling; it is a film with a disintegrating narrative of sorts, using an old shepherd, a baby goat, a tree and smoke, in that order. It’s a remarkable film for contemplation. Jose Saramago’s Blindness is far more harrowing, starting with a plague of white blindness that gets worse and worse and worse. It is next to impossible to put down. President Obama concluded his speech with the following: “We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we are powerless in the face of such carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” What are you prepared to do? Genuinely. What? It’s something to think about and act upon. We must change.

Funk on: The over-write

Posted on October 19, 2012 by McPhedran

I’m still in limbo, still waiting to get back at the book, another week to go, maybe more, but I have to admit that I have slipped in and messed around, adding details, taking them out, putting them back in.

One scene I have spent the last few days over-writing is the night of Dee’s Grad Cruise. It’s a background moment, something I hadn’t fleshed out previously, and now in which I’ve added a classmate and dialogue to the counselor. She’s alone on the deck and then joined by a classmate who she doesn’t know. He gives her a cigarette, and the supervising counselor shows up.

“Your cigarette.”

“I thought we were allowed.”

“You thought wrong.” He looked back, almost like he was smiling; he wasn’t.

This last line is what I’m going back and forth with at the moment. I’ve tried each of the following:

He stared back, like he was smiling, but he wasn’t.

He glared back, close to smiling, although he wasn’t.

He waited, almost smiling; he wasn’t.

…and a few variations in between. I keep going back to the first because it’s neutral and still expressive. I don’t know. I know I should just leave it alone. And I will…very soon.

Funk

Posted on October 15, 2012 by McPhedran

It’s a weird place to be, awaiting permission from myself to start the next draft. There’s a calm to it, but it’s inert and purgatory-ish; more than anything, it’s a funk.

In the meantime I’ve been mulling over a couple of background characters for the book. First, there’s Derek’s great-grandfather, who farmed in upstate New York and drowned in a marsh when he wandered off from the house in the middle of the night. The family believes that he was undiagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And then there’s Teddy’s sister (Teddy is Dee’s co-worker at the Animal Rescue Agency), a fund manager in New York. She is round-faced and wide-eyed, but she is distant, especially for Teddy, and hasn’t see him in almost a year.I don’t know what they’re doing hanging around the fringes like this; maybe I’ll write a short story about the two of them.

Writing Rule #2: Stick with it.

Posted on October 12, 2012 by McPhedran

There are the good days…And there are the bad…Indeed it is often the bad that help the most. They make you question the work. You have to stop and think. Who is she? Is this worth anything? What the hell is the point?And then you think of something. Anything. Her hand is broken. She’s scared. She loves Jabberjaw. You think a little more and work on that. Just her finger is broken. She’s scared of her past. She wasn’t allowed to watch Jabberjaw. Whatever it is, that thing is a piece to the next. And you continue on, one step at a time, and maybe go back, because back can be forward too, whatever comes next.Or you don’t…and start something else.

The Freaking Fog

Posted on October 10, 2012 by McPhedran

Writing is a compulsion. My days start like this: I wake up. I remember where I am. I think about how to write that down. It’s a simplified version, I admit, but it conveys the basics.

I’ve been working on My Bad Side for four years now, and I’m close to being done. The third draft is finished. One more read-through, and I’ll move on to another thing – maybe my giant sci-fi film! And that’s good. I did it. Yeah. But there’s a bad side (you’re damn right!!) to it as well. I’m in a freaking fog right now. My fingers hurt. I sleep too much. Nothing makes much sense. I’m a bit grumpy too. Ugh. That’s all I’ve got. I don’t like this. No! I need the constant fix of working through plot details, going back and forth, putting it in and taking it out and putting back in again, writing, writing, writing, deleting, deleting and writing again. Her arms are long. She chews her nails. She has a memory bracelet and small diamond ring. She is elegant but she’s done something she can’t understand. She abandoned her mother.When it’s done, it’s done. I have to leave it alone and be stuck with random images and ideas and wondering, “What if the polar caps really did melt? What then?”

Writing Rule #1: Don’t Get Cocky!

Posted on September 26, 2012 by McPhedran

I had a pretty good writing day yesterday. After a dozen or so attempts, I had finally worked my way through a scene that had been a morass.

I felt suddenly clear, not angry, nothing like that. I was in the moment. I only had to fill it. “You remember when we were on the dock?”

I made significant headway after that, another 15 pages, rocketing through it all. Everything was making sense. I had found my way. I knew the next day would be easy, more of the same, clear sailing until the end. I was on auto-pilot. And then I ran into this:

I accepted his sudden blindness for nothing but his need of this. I knew there was nothing else to it, holding my hair back and kissing his neck, my practiced breath, my shoulders forward, and had a feeling of being held there and then all of me sloping down through me…

There was more of this, a lot more. It was a wall of awful. I stared. That was all I could do. I had gotten cocky. I had screwed up. I had thought I had it, when I had nothing.

I sat and stared. My mind was blank. I was beaten. I started to write and stopped again. I got through maybe a sentence and stopped again, until finally I had insect momentum and went at it again. I clawed through maybe a page, and then did another, went backward, went ahead and then maybe three more.

I used to dream about flying, almost every night. And then I bragged about it. “I fly every night.” It ended there. I’ve flown maybe twice since then, over 15 years ago. What an idiot. I must be patient. I believe that I’ll have it back tomorrow. I’m building back. I just have to think about yesterday and remember that I can fly…if I want it.

my bad side

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