A father tries to explain...

Dear Children:

By now you must be wondering what pushed me over the edge and into the solitude of the Zen monastery.   Before I enter the vow of silence, I want to share this note with you so you can understand how my literary endeavors finally broke the psychic straw that once made me functional in this emotionally handicapped society.  

It reached the point where I simply could not take it anymore.   You are probably asking how the words I crafted with love could lead me to withdraw completely from communication and swear a vow of silence in the Zen Sangha.   For now the only stories that exist for me will be the image fragments floating through my head at our 5:00 AM meditation sessions.   I will be emptying the bowl of my consciousness.

You may wonder how my total retreat could have started with fiction.   To understand it, you have to look beyond your typical popular, bookstore fiction, and understand the process of creativity.  

I'm sure you know about my struggle to pursue the craft of writing stories in an information environment where television has won the contest for domination of  human consciousness.   It didn't help that I kept saying, "If I had only been born fifty years ago in the golden age of short stories."

To catch a glimmer of insight into my journey here, you have to understand the other part--how our writer's group evolved into a rival to encounter therapy as a way of assaulting my psychic well being?  

To help you understand, I want to share with you a typical exchange with some of the members of our little group.   Here are excerpts from my short story, The Surprise and some of the comments which drove me to withdraw completely from communication.     I have put comments from the group members in italics and to avoid anyone feeling personally responsible for my complete withdrawal from what passes for contemporary civilization, I am identifying them by the initials GM for group member.   Needless to say I am not offering comments in my defense although the exchanges did get heated as I argued my points.

Here is the story and some of the comments:

The Surprise

by Sam Love

 I didn't expect a little video edit job would change my life.   This one started like all the others – the client called early one morning and said, "We've got this deadline and we're running a little behind.   This may need an overnighter.  Can you help us?"

Even though I had just come off a really grueling job editing a turgid technical meeting and I had had almost no sleep for days, I needed the money so I took it.  

--Your opening is vague.   Who are you?   You haven't established your credentials.   Why should I believe you have the credibility to write about this?   I'm not convinced.   – GM (Group Member)  #1

When I got to the producer's edit room I was relieved to find the job involved underwater photography of fish; really nice fish from some unexplored area of  the Atlantic.   And it was destined to run in an exhibit at the Smithsonian that profiled the work of a woman oceanographer/biologist who looked great in a wet suit as she explored the depths of the unknown with her deep dive scuba gear and pressurized submersibles.

--You missed the point that the pressure is so high in the trenches that exploration is accomplished either by robots or by small manned submersibles not by "lookers" in tight wet suits.   Horniness has its place in fiction, but this ain't it.   –-GM #2

To show her work, I had to go through hours of footage to find a fish with a story—you know something like "Charlie flashes his colorful scales, fights for a little piece of reef so he can get the cute girl fish and raise a family."   And of course creating the show segment required tolerating the nature script writer's silly technique of giving human names to individual fish because she thought the audience could identify better with fish that had familiar names.   

After hours of scanning the video, the pieces started to come together.  

"Frankie", a beautiful azure fish chased his mate, fought off a worthy adversary, staked out a pocket in a reef and successfully planted his reproductive seeds.   Then "Julie", his mate, settled in to lay the little fish eggs.  

--This Frankie and Julie stuff seems like a cover-up for a lack of research.   Come on, get over the laziness that plagues your fiction.   I hope you are more energetic in the other parts of your life.—GM#4

 But then one day Frankie had a surprise.   Out of nowhere this large clear plastic pipe dropped down and vacuumed him up – all in the name of scientific research.  

--Sucked up to where?   If anything sucks, it is your writing. I hope the rest of your life is going better than your writing.—GM#3

 --What species are they?   Even when you talk about equipment, you're vague – a large clear plastic pipe.   Things have names.   You really should take the trouble to look them up if you want us to believe you have any credibility.   -- GM#1

Poor Frankie, he'd been happily living and breeding, undisturbed in the ocean  and suddenly he is sucked up by a marine research ship taking "specimens" from the ocean floor.

--What is the point of this?   It fails to engage me on any level – emotional, intellectual, or literary. This is pure intellectual drivel. It is hardly worth my time to read it, but I am doing you a favor so that maybe one day, when you get serious, you can actually be a published writer. – GM #1

 --You seem not to know anything about oceanography so why are you writing a story about it?   Do your research first. – GM #5  

 --Good writing is in the details and you failed to do the research to make this compelling. You failed to tell us what kind of fishes these are in the trenches. – GM #4

The whole scene amazed me so much I wanted to see it over and over so I set the computerized edit system to loop the clip.  As I watched it play back again and again, I kept thinking about the odds of Frankie being the first fish of his species to get sucked up for science.   Over and over I watched the pipe startle Frankie, the shock in his little fish eyes and then, SLURP he was gone off to some pressurized research container.

I don't know how many times the clip played over and over before Janet, the producer, stuck her head in, "Is everything OK?   This is the same shot you were looking at last night when I left."

--When Poe or Dostoyevsky give us a madman's version of things, they steep the narrative in details to make us aware of the high-strung, sensory overload that these characters are experiencing.   Good descriptions are almost hallucinatory in their intensity, and yet the characters in each case are convinced of their own sanity and clarity of vision.   Take a look at "Crime and Punishment" – that's the sort of detail your piece is missing. – GM # 4

 --I hope the rest of your life is filled with richer detail than this piece of writing.   – GM#1

Somehow the fish shot triggered other memory snippets of close encounters with chance – like the program I saw the night before when I got home late and flipped on the TV to see a station's screening the entire unedited surveillance footage of the bust of Marion Barry, the mayor of Washington, DC.   His honor was sitting there with a woman, smoking crack, and spouting off about how he is the "luckiest guy in the world." Then the hooker signals the cops and within minutes the feds break in and bust him.   

--This Marion Barry/Frankie Fish analogy is a real stretch.   I don't feel there is any comparison there at all. You're stretching it too far.  I hope the rest of your life is better connected.–- GM#1

--You wander back and forth between past and present tense.  

Barry is sitting there with a woman (present).   But next, my memory is blank (present) until I heard this heavyset nurse say (past)—GM#2

All these questions about chance got jumbled into some type of infinite mental...a philosophical questioning loop – like an intense obsession that wouldn't allow anything else to break in until something made sense.    Then like a bolt of lightning it became clear – yin and yang rule. Positive and negative waves flow through the universe and we ride them up and down like a cosmic surfer.   Hope and unhope.   Fear the good times because...

But next, my memory went completely blank.  

Until I became aware of a white light above a hospital bed and this heavyset nurse saying, "I think our video editor is coming out of it.   The anti-psychotic stopped his babbling about how the Marion Barry principle rules the universe.     He's been quiet for a while now."

--Just because you claim Ken Kesey crashed in your apartment gives you no right to try to rewrite "One Flew Over the Coo Coos Nest".   He's already done it much better than you can ever do it.   Give up this psycho tract while you are ahead. –GM#4

 --As a registered psychotherapist who left the profession as a screaming madman, I can tell you, you have no idea what you are talking about. – GM#2

"I know it's strange," the doctor said as he shined a little pen light in my eyes, "I first suspected a drug overdose, but he didn't test positive for any we know."

"It's amazing the stuff these psychotics come up with," she said.

"Yeah, particularly the ones that watch a lot of TV."

--This ending doesn't get it.   Was this a dream?—GM #4

 --You've copped out from really making this the life changing event you promised in the opening.   This has less surprise and more let down.   Where is the emotional engagement with the reader?   It didn't get a rise out of me.—GM#1

 --You are unfair to your readers.   I'm not a hottie in a wet suit, but I know this is still surface stuff.   You've got to get deeper if you want to convince me. – GM#2

 So there you have it – this was typical of the soul wrenching intensity of our destructive literary criticism sessions.   Imagine week after week exposing your hard earned literary pieces to this criticism.   Clearly the group evolved into a form of sport like ultimate literary sparing.   It all started innocent enough, but I felt it became a game of psychological destruction to see who would be the last literary master still standing with their so-called sanity in tact.

Well I'm not giving them the pleasure of pushing me over the edge like the guy who left the group screaming. And now I am off to be conveyed the Zen "Teaching of Silence".   Don't bother to respond, we aren't allowed any contact with the outside world.

Sincerely,

Dad

Copyright 2005 Sam Love

Return to Home Page