Pen to Paper

In a recent episode of Dragon Page: Cover to Cover, J.F. Lewis was interviewed about how his recent novel Staked eventually led to the author “getting kicked out of [his] church.”  It’s a very interesting story, and I’d encourage you to give it a listen.  As soon as I heard it about a week and a half ago, I knew I had to write something about it.  I wanted to hold off for a bit, though, to make sure that I wasn’t just giving a knee-jerk reaction.

There’s a lot that I’m tempted to say, but a good chunk of it boils down to sweeping generalizations and name-calling.  For efficiency, I’ll summarize that part of my reaction: all of the jerks in the world are poopheads.

Moving beyond that, though, I think that the issue is one that people of faith (and from my experience, American Christians in particular) has always struggled with.  What are, or should be, the moral guidelines for art?  Should art reflect the world as it is, or as we think it should be?  Is anything fair game, or should religions get to say, “this is off limits”?  Is “authenticity” justification for showing characters sinning/doing bad things/engaging in morally questionable activities/being less than perfect, or should they always be perfect role models?  Should evil always be punished and good always rewarded?

I tend to think that the artist (and by this I mean any creative person) has to find their own answer to these questions.  Part of this process is to seek the counsel of friends, family, mentors, and religious leaders, but in the end no one but the artist can choose what to include or exclude in their work.  And in the end, no one but the artist is responsible for what they create.  It bothers me when people who have no role in a work’s creative process claim the right to censor it, to tell the artist “you can’t do that.”  If something offends you, don’t support it.  Vote with your dollar.  Don’t presume to try to force your way into an artist’s mind and change their moral convictions to match yours.

It’s interesting to me what people choose to object to.  If grandfatherly Morgan Freeman is playing God, that’s a movie for the whole family (despite questionable uses of power being played for laughes).  If it’s Alanis Morissette, though, that’s probably heresy (even if the film raises important questions about society and theology).  Not surprisingly, Dogma was banned by the college I went to, which also prohibited student actors from “drinking” on stage.  On the other hand, Thomas Kinkade’s works were perfectly welcome, and many of my artistic friends object to him for different reasons.

I’m reaching the point of this post where I feel like I should have an oversimplified conclusion, something like “Art = Good.  Excommunicating an artist because you disagree with their work = Bad.  The ‘Movie’ movies = Very Bad.”  But not only would something that clear cut be the opposite of my point, it would probably not be an accurate description of what I want to say.  Instead, I have two bits of advice.

First, if you’re an artist, give careful thought to the moral implications of your work.  If you can do something with a clean conscience, go for it; if not, maybe you should hold off for a bit.

Second, if you know an artist, don’t leap straight to “I need to tell them that they’re wrong” when you have a problem with one of their works.  First, ask if it’s you’re place to say anything; and if it is, do so as a friend or teammate, and not the morality police.

I wanted to bring a charity that I’m a fan of to your attention. Child’s Play is a great way to support children’s hospitals by donating toys, games, books, or (if you’re unimaginative like me) plain old cash. You might be thinking, “they’re sick kids – shouldn’t we be buying them medicine or equipment or really good food or something?”  Yes, by all means – I’ll pick up the open-sided MRI, and you get a year’s supply of tongue depressors.  The fact is, most of us aren’t in a position to make that sort of contribution.  What we are in a position to do is improve the quality of the experience for these kids and their families.  Give them something fun to do besides watching cable TV.

The importance of what Child’s Play does took on new significance for me a couple weeks ago.  A couple friends’ child was born early, and is now in one of the hospitals that Child’s Play supports.  When I went to visit, I saw that they do a lot of make the experience “child friendly.”  Instead of wheelchairs, a fleet of red wagons are lined up at the door.  The walls of the lobby are lined with over-sized stuffed animals, with a fountain along one side.  In the elevator, which feels like Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator, the buttons are over-sized and labeled with large, easy-to-read letters.  Clearly, I’m not the only one who thinks that something besides the medical supplies can be a valuable investment.

What I’m trying to say is, Child’s Play is a great way to help out some kids who really need it, and really brighten someone’s day.  Please, check out their website.  If you’re up to it, look at the wish list for a hospital in your area.  Consider it a present for someone else and for yourself.

Nominees for the 2009 Writer’s Guild Awards for televisions, radio, et al were announced today.  I just wanted to point out how many shows were on pay-per-view networks, or even standard cable.  I remember growing up with it being a given that anything worth watching would be on network television.  Since HBO and Showtime are essentially selling tickets directly to viewers, though, they’ve had to set the bar pretty high for themselves in order to compete.

As long as they keep giving me shows like Dexter, I’ll be happy.

It’s been a while, but I’m back. At lot has changed, a lot will change, and a lot has stayed the same.

As I said in the previous post (way back in the day), I attempted NaNoWriMo.  I didn’t come anywhere near 50k, but I did get some words down and worked on developing some regularity. Granted, it’s not where it needs to be, but whatcha gonna do.

I’ve made starts on a lot of the things I’ve been saying I want to do.  After about 5 1/2 years, I pulled my violin out again and tried to play it.  The hands remember how to play, but they need tuning and retraining.  It’s fun though.  If I can add piano and guitar to this, I could actually have fun with music again.

I went back to the climbing gym a couple weeks ago, and actually ran a couple miles on Thanksgiving day. Winter’s a hard time to start exercising, but just that taste of each was enough to make me want to jump back in.

There’s a “project” I’m working on, and have a general timeline for completion.  It’s rather stressful (I’ve got that excited/nervous feeling going on), but I’m really looking forward to seeing where this takes me, and what happens next.  I feel like I’m leaning in two or three different directions with it, and have no idea which way I’ll go.  I can tell this is the start of something big, though.

Which leads to the next point.  I don’t know what the future of this site is.  Odds are, I’ll keep posting here irregularly for the next couple months.  At some point, though, I want to re-purpose the domain, and replace the site.  There are a couple reasons for this – I know I can put it to better use is one.  Another is that instead of a simple Word Press drop-in (which was awesome because it was simple), it would force me to learn some website design, html, and maybe scripting tools – all of which would be good.  I have a couple things I’d like to try in the future, and if any of them work I’ll need that skillset.

So then, what happens next?  I’m not really sure, but I can almost guarantee it’ll be better than the past couple years have been.  Maybe I’ll see you there.