Just read a blog post about Evil Plans. Now I'm wondering...
If something is an adventure, isn't it by nature worth sharing?
And aren't we all involved in little adventures every day?
So shouldn't we be telling more stories?
I'm reading Philip Pullman, loving it, thinking about it in relation to (comparison with) the JRR Tolkien Middle Earth Project, and wondering about value.
I think Tolkien's work is immensely impressive in its imaginative scale and as a demonstration of accessible but ambitious storytelling, and I think it's educationally valuable in that it turns people into readers, writers, and explorers of the originally weird thoughts we all have. In my opinion, however, Tolkien's orcs are a very big worry. I think it's fundamentally unethical to tell war stories in which the bad guys don't have families. So. How do we teach Tolkien? (If we teach Tolkien. Which I'm pretty sure we do and I'm pretty sure we should. Because of the imagination, the fact that his work can be a gateway to literature and learning and love of stories, words, and communication.) Maybe we teach the man with the work? Explain his personal weirdness and how it contributed to his (in my opinion problematically simplified) vision of good and evil and the virtue in violence? Worth some thought I think. And then there's Pullman. I'm halfway through the second book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and, so far, I love it. So far, it feels questioning and complicated and real. So.So far, I say teach it. For imagination. For storytelling. And for truth.Yikes. Bold statement from someone that still has 500 pages to read.Comments [4]
What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.
David Foster Wallace wrote that.
I agree.
And sometimes I'm afraid that lots of people forget it. Not that what goes on inside is more than words can handle. Easy to remember that. But that it's fast and huge and interconnected. And unique. And awesome. So awesome, in fact, that even our most inadequate sketches are probably worth sharing.
Thank you D.T. Max and The New Yorker for the quote.
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I love the way Bob Dylan packs big stories into little spaces. Verses like chapters. Songs like novels.
Like Hemingway? Hmmm.
Visions of Johanna is track 3 on Blonde on Blonde.
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I love hearing little snippets that contribute new elements to old stories...
A few of Amory's friends slept over after a late night early last week.
Just after arriving (a little after 11pm), one asked Amory what was up with the dude lying on the couch.
"That's Hesh," said Amory, "Jake's friend."
"What happened?" asked the friend.
"You know that brownie you just ate?"
"Yeah."
"Hesh had three."
The next morning, the friend had to be somewhere early. Amory woke him up, and the friend sat up in bed. No good morning. No thanks for waking me up.
Just a bewildered: "Dude. Hesh. Three brownies. What a savage."
Amory laughed and went back to sleep.
Hesh hadn't eaten any brownies. I don't even think he'd had a beer. He's just a little out of late night shape. He's married. He lives in rural New Hampshire. He teaches high school. And he fell asleep early.
And we forgive him. This one time.
Next night he hangs out he's staying up. And eating brownies.
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I love the little story within the big story, the detail in the vastness, the blood in his eyes.
Origin of Love is track 2 on the Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack.
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Please click this link.
It's an article about two pounds of very old marijuana. Two pounds of very old marijuana found in a tomb in the desert in China. My favorite quote is from the caption next to a picture of a rubber-gloved scientist tweezing a bit of the weed into a container for him to bring home and "test" over the weekend:Scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it's evident that the man was buried with a lot of it.I only smoked the greens in China a couple of times. It was not locally sourced. It was American. A friend smuggled it back from a medical marijuana farm in Mendocino County, CA. And there is a very serious story behind it. One that involves a lawyer, outsourcing the manufacture of clipping and gardening tools to a factory in Shenzhen, political dilemmas, cash in buried mason jars, socially responsible investors, and a SWAT team.It's probably best told when everyone listening is stoned.
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This quiet little Pownce acquisition has me curious.
Six Apart bought the company, hired the founders, and gave all the users their (our) two weeks notice.
Just seems weird. Like there's a great story behind it somewhere, and we're not going to hear it for a long time.
But maybe that's just because I want there to be (and am pretty well convinced there is) always a great story to be told. In all situations. About everything.
But back to Pownce for a second.
I want to know what it's like to be Leah Culver right now. Pownce was her thing. She built it. As a founder and a developer. And now, unceremoniously, she's saying goodbye.
Why? How?
Is Leah crying or relieved or swimming in money or tired or sick of doing the entrepreneur thing?
Someday we'll find out I guess.
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The stories were plentiful on the drive to North Carolina. One started with one of my favorite opening lines of all time:
I outran a cop here once...
Sadly (and almost inexplicably, actually), the story went nowhere from there, but man did that line have me drooling.
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Eight and a half hours in the car with my grandfather tomorrow, and I want new stories.
I've heard millions. Hal and I have been close for longer than I can remember. But I know there are more.
And, tomorrow, I hope, they're mine.
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