I ♥ NPR

I can't believe how fast the time has passed since I last wrote here! I've been planning everything around the week-long vacation I'll be leaving for in 3 days, and my work and personal lives have been busy!

I've spent a lot of time listening to NPR, largely because of two things: 1.) The CD player in the truck is possibly possessed, and therefore completely unreliable and mostly unusable, and 2.) There aren't a large variety of radio stations available that suit my...eclectic music tastes. While I can pick up about 15 different stations, they all revolve around the same 4 genres: rap, country, talk/religion/Braves games commentaries, and Spanish. No joke, there's at least 4 different Spanish radio stations I pick up. While I do enjoy a little of all of those genres occasionally, it just doesn't suit my day-to-day listening needs. So I started listening to NPR, and got completely sucked into this whole other side of story telling.

For those of you who are unaware, NPR is National Public Radio. And while they do have a lot of interviews with different people, they also play a TON of classical music and opera. I understand that neither of those appeals to the general masses, but let me tell you...I LOVE IT!

I've always loved classical music; it's been a constant part of my life, starting with the movie Fantasia, a childhood obsession of mine, to someone always playing on the piano at my granparents house, to the couple years I spent playing the violin.

Now that I'm concsiously thinking about it, I think I could probably blame, or thank, Fantasia for my current state of semi-maddness when it comes to classical music. Seeing the stories told without words gave me the palette to draw from I guess. Because any time I hear classical music, a story forms in my head. It doesn't matter that I don't know anything about the actual story the composer had in mind; that the beauty of it - IT DOESN'T MATTER!

I love the fact that the music is so strong that it tells it's own story. And believe me, strong is the right word. I've actually missed my turn after work because I get so wrapped up in the story in my head, whether it be a mad horseback chase through the forrest at midnight, rain pouring down, flickers of incandescent lightening showing you brief glimpses of the hunter chasing you, or if it's that first moment when he sees her, and the crowd disappears around them, until it's just him watching her, and her wrapped up in her own little world, unaware of anything but the music and the way her body moves as she dances...when she finally looks up, she sees him and something happens between them, across a dark room full of other people...each recognizes the shock, and as he takes a step towards her, and she unthinkingly takes one towards him, a big man with a scar on his face appears at her elbow and wrenches her out through a side door - her boyfriend. The man is frozen in place by the monumental shift in his life when he saw her, and before he could take more than one step, she's gone, taken...by a man he now recognizes as the leader of a street gang he believes is responsible for the death of his father at a gas station hold up years ago, never proven, but always believed none-the-less. First his father and now this girl, this girl he doesn't know but is suddenly aware that he'd lay his life on the line for her, taken from him by some street thug? No. Never. As he turns away, his brain is already planning, already discarding and sifting through different courses of action...because he's going to end it, once and for all.

Um, yeah.

That last one is the one I saw in my head last night when I was listening to a Japanese piece I'd never heard before. As you can see, I get pretty wrapped up in it, hence missing the turn to my house.

But it's just so amazing to me that music, unseen, only heard, can produce these amazing movies in my head, ever crescendo and pause telling me the next thing that happens, each poignant violin solo proclaiming it's love or death or tears or joy...seriously awesome.

After so much mad ramblings, I have to get back to reality, because I have a feeling while I was lost in my action/romance flick my son has probably gotten into something he's not supposed to...it's reeeeeaaaaally quiet out there.....

So until I get back from vacation (yay!), if you get bored, check out 89.5 fm, and see what kind of stories you see. :)

Smoke, Rain, & a Crown Vic with Peeling Paint

I'm still amazed at how wrapped up I can get when I'm writing. And at how limitless writing a story can be.

As I was writing a few days ago, I noticed both these things. My character has a brief encounter with someone who has a much bigger effect than they realize; in telling one story, I have to tell another.

And after I stared writing the person who is just "passing through", I wanted to just jot down a few things about her story, who she is, how she came to be that way. Twenty minutes later, I realized that I had forgotten about dinner, (burnt), my kids, (covered in milk from purposely spraying each other with it), and the fact that I was just writing a basic outline for a minor character. Her story just wrapped my up and spirited me away. There I was, sitting next to her in an old, second-hand Crown Victoria, smelling that old car smell, watching the rain hit the glass, the road ahead of us...I could smell her cheap ciggarette, which she chain smokes, and see the bug bites on her skinny knees. I noticed the way she constantly kept shifting her eyes to the rear-view mirror, like she was worried someone was following us; even though the idea was ludacris, I began to look at the rear-view more than was neccessary.

I became so wrapped up in her story that I forgot MY story...the one I was writing, until she came along and took over things in her quiet, intense way. Which is actually fitting, considering who she is: a quiet, intense, occasionally scary person, full of holes that once were full of sun and life, holes she tries to fill with too many ciggarettes, and a jaded outlook that somehow doesn't seem to fit her young face and her skinny knees.

Once again, dinner and my children are waiting, but now I'm itching to get back to where we left off....a lonely highway, a sky like old parchment, niether sunny nor cloudy, simply greyish-white and blindingly bright...the rain keeps falling, and the tempo of the windsheild wipers matches the tempo of her tapping foot....most of the smoke pouring out of a crack in her window, but enough of it staying in the old car to make it a little hazy, a little unreal seeming...and her story, spoken in her harsh voice, her old eyes staring out of her young face, making and being unmade at the same time...

Semi-Charmed Kind of (Social) Life

I can't believe how long it's been since my last post! Again, I'm sorry for being completely random and irregular in my postings, but in actuality, this is a good thing.

The reason for my occasional only posts is because I kind of have a semi-social life. While I've restrained myself from typing that line in all caps, and possible making the font larger, and making the whole thing bold, I'm still very excited about this.

Some mysterious force in the universe set me down in the one job in the whole county with the two people I would most easily become friends with, and I've taken full advantage of that fact. So now, instead of waiting 3 months for a night out, I've had a few already this month. Granted, I do get to count Mom's Day, and my birthday, but still...

And last night, I even had a game night, and invited people over to my house. Incredible, I know.

Anyways, to get back to the root of what I was saying before I drifted off on a tangent, as I so often do, I HAVE actually been writing also. I just haven't been writing about writing here. But things are going well, and I've been expanding on one of my ideas. The growth of those idea's never ceases to amaze me.

It starts with the littlest thing, one line in my thoughts maybe. And then things just build and build on that one little thing, and there's suddenly the groundwork for a novel. Freakin' amazing.

But I must leave you with that, fine readers, because my kids are asleep and I don't want to use all my time writing here, when I have to write there.

:)

Death By Drowning (in words)

It feels like things have been conspiring against me lately when it comes to writing. After having some issues with the computer, which I've fixed (I hope), and then being way too tired after a very tough week with the kids, I just haven't felt it.

I sit down at the computer, and the thought of sinking myself into my fictional world seems like too much work. And that kind of makes me sad, but it also kind of makes me understand further what it is that drives me to write.

I have to really let myself sink into the world I'm creating; I'm standing next to my characters, riding in cars with them, singing in the shower with them, whatever. If I don't submerge myself that way, then what I end up writing just feels like crap to me, like I didn't give it 100%. And I can't have that.

Now that doesn't mean I have to be in a silent house with no distractions. Geez, if I had to have that, I'd never have started writing again! No, I actually listen to music while I write, and I have certain songs for certain things, certain feelings and plots and whatnot. And I have to be able to dedicate at least 30 minutes at a time to it. Getting up every 5 minutes irritates the crap out of me, I lose my train of thought, and spend the next 5 minutes getting back into the groove. And just as I start to write again, I have to get up. Usually to rescue one of the kids from the other.

But this past week, by the time I get the time to drown in my words, I just don't want to. I just want to fall in bed and turn my brain to mush with DVD's.

But after this weekend, and my much needed reprieve, I'm diving back in, head first.

Into the deep end. ;)

Passions

Passion is a word that goes both ways. Loving someone passionately, hating someone passionately; opposite ends of the spectrum brought together by the same word. A word that incites all sorts of madness, whether in love or hate, or anything in between.

Passion is really fun to write about. ;)

The Hundred Secret Senses

I recently finished reading a book that was somehow incredibly simple, and at the same time breathtakingly beautiful. I know the image in your head is something akin to a closeup photo of a flower or something; something very plain yet still able to convey infinite beauty. But that's not quite what I mean. Think more like...concrete sidewalks. There is nothing really beautiful about them. They're basic, boring, and functional, always there and mostly unnoticed.

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. Sounds familiar right? She also wrote that other tiny little book that you may have heard of...The Joy Luck Club. I wasn't completely absorbed by it in the first ten pages...it took all of twenty.

And she is one of those writer's whose prose is just pure and stunning and every single word has meaning. The book is an art gallery, and every sentence is a Van Gogh, Klimt, Picasso, and Michelangelo. In that sense I compare her to Patricia McKillip, but only in that sense. There were sentences I read over and over, just in and of themselves; they needed no context, no plot to follow, and lost nothing of their impact. Some of them had more, if that's possible.

They were the kinds of words you can just meditate on. Let them marinate, growing more flavorful with each bite, each re-reading.

"With each passing day, I didn't lose hope. I fought to have more."

Amy Tan manages to somehow paint a portrait of a world I have absolutely no familiarity with, and make it feel like my own history. Each character was somehow immanently relatable, while still maintaining their own complete identities.

Best of all, I felt satisfied when I finished it. Bliss.

Read this book, if you want to lose yourself in another world...or two.

Attack of the "life"

So I realize I've been slacking off on posting here, and I'm sorry. I've just been trying to keep up with my life, in general, much less my computer life as well. But things are going well, and it seems like every time I start to write down an idea, another one pops up. In fact, I sat down to start writing a story inspired in part by my blog buddies, but after I went back and re-read, I realized it was going in an entirely different direction. So just like that, there's a new story. I'm actually getting worn out right now just thinking about it. I need a nap, and solid week to just write, write, write.

Maybe in my next life, right?

Until next time :)