Creation and Storytelling

Hello again, audience, and welcome back to the Fox Den. I've had a lot of spare time in the last month, so I've been catching up on all the reading I haven't been doing in the last year or so. I also discovered that the fines on my library card were not high enough to have my account locked, so I've even been able to check out books with my own card. :D Exciting stuff, I know. What's important is that all this reading has gotten me in the mood to write, and with that comes enough thoughts to write a blog. So here I am.

When it comes to books, I'm a pretty discerning reader. Before I will even read a book, I have to A) find the title and the font on the binding pleasing enough to want to pick it up, B) find the cover art appealing enough to want to learn more, C) find the back/inside cover copy interesting enough to want to open the book, D) find the prologue or introduction interesting enough to want to read the first few chapters, and E) find the first 50-80 pages interesting enough to care about the characters, the plot, and be curious as to what happens next. As a result, I've started a lot of books and never finished reading them. 

However, the books I do read cover to cover are the ones I end up owning and reading again in the future. Like The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer, which I read twice in the first week and at least three more times since then. My most recent discovery of that sort was The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King, a direct extension of his Dark Tower series. This particular book is a story within a story within a story, which is a first for Stephen King as far as I'm aware. It takes place between the fourth and fifth Dark Tower novels, and tells of the main characters of the series taking shelter from a huge storm. Roland, the totally awesome gunslinger, is talked into telling a story to his companions. He decides to tell a story from his youth, during the course of which his younger self tells a Mid-World fairy tale to one of the other characters. Now, Stephen King's Mid-World is already one of the most interesting worlds I have ever read about, and getting to hear a fairy tale that the young children of that world would have been told was an interesting and incredible opportunity. It was around then that I went to the bathroom and came to a realization as to my personal philosophy regarding storytelling, and the act of creation in general.

As an aside, for anyone who doesn't know, the bathroom is actually the best place in the house to think. I have had countless incredible ideas while going about my various daily activities in the bathroom. It never fails to amaze me that the kitchen or the bedroom or the other rooms of the house fail to have such a magical enchantment about them that seems to emanate from the cold porcelain and laminate tile in the bathroom.

Whether you're a writer, an artist, or a musician, you're creating something out of thoughts in your head and expressing it through a tangible medium. There are thousands and thousands of musicians and artists and writers in the world who create things, and then present them to us consumers to hopefully trade our money for. Many of them are not incredible, but they sell anyway. Some of them are pretty amazing, becoming household names and making a decent living off of their creations. A select few are fantastic, blowing minds and impacting people for generations after they've created something, and even after they're long dead. And for all the writers and musicians and artists in the world, there are a very select few that I really love, and a slightly larger number that I even consider worth noting. Until the other day in the bathroom, I had never been able to figure out why that was. But now I've got it.

In music, art, or writing, what I really love and prize upon is finding things that I've never seen or heard before. One of my favorite bands these days is Periphery. I discovered them a year or two ago and I've been hooked ever since. What really got me about them is that their style comes from a fusion between the brutal, heavy feel of technical metal and the lighter tones and strong melodies from both the guitar and the clean vocals. Before them, I hadn't found a band that fused the two in such a way as to create songs that were both heavy and technical, and yet ultimately full of singable melodies and memorable guitar lines, while still keeping a groove that you can bob your head to. They were a unique gem among all of the progressive metal and hardcore bands that were plaguing my earholes. Between The Buried and Me's most recent releases, Parallax: The Hypersleep Dialogues and Parallax II: Future Sequence were interesting for a similar reason. They tell a complete story about two men dealing with self doubt and regret for past actions and eventually being driven to their own doom through technical riffs and melodic themes that sent chills down my spine. I'm proud to own a copy of the special edition lyric and art book from Parallax II, as it gave the meanings of the lyrics and the overall plot of the story, as well as the themes the group was trying to present in each song and through each lyric.

A similar trend exists in my taste in books. The Dream of Perpetual Motion is unlike any other book I've ever read, and it stole my brain away for a full five readings. Even now, I'm still pulling more thoughts and ideas and themes out of the thickly layered plot and ideas presented in an incredibly unique and interesting manner. I could write another two or three blogs about it (in addition to the one I already have, found here) and still not cover everything I've learned from it. Stephen King's Dark Tower is full of lifelike characters with all their own goals and ideas and plans that get totally thrown off track when they meet Roland, a man whose determination to reach the Dark Tower has left many corpses in his wake. My most recent series of fascination is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which presents a full, living world with interesting characters and a compelling story that binds them all together.

Looking at all of these ideas, I realized that the common theme among the presented examples (and all of their peers within my book and music collections) is that they all present thoughts and ideas in ways that I had never seen or heard used before. Each story told of a world unlike any other I had read about, full of interesting characters who did things and had to deal with problems I could never face, but were real enough for me to become emotionally involved in their story. Each song had a definite point and theme that was supported by the music surrounding it, music that was woven together in ways I had never thought of before. Melodies that still ring in my head, days and weeks away from my last listen-through of the album. Songs that I will love for many years to come and hope to be able to one day share with my children.

I can now define good storytelling as telling a story that no one has ever heard before in an interesting and compelling way. Teen Supernatural Fiction has become a specific genre at the bookstore, and it hurts my soul every time I walk by that shelf. Because every single one of those authors specifically wrote books revolving around the same three or four premises and then made money selling their crappy, overdone, trite, and overall uninteresting stories. They did it because Teen Supernatural Fiction is what was selling well (thanks to Twilight for helping push on that one) and they wanted to make oodles of cash selling books to teens. The Science Fiction/ Fantasy section is less polluted, but is still full of authors who took incredibly similar plot skeletons or story elements (like robot uprising, zombie apocalypse, dragon riders, schools for young magicians, prophesied heroes coming into their own, etc. ad nauseum) and then built their own world around it. 

Tolkien will be remembered for many generations to come, not because he wrote fantasy novels, but because he created a fantastic world full of different cultures and characters spanning across hundreds and thousands of years that inspired generations of fantasy writers (and six big budget films, ahem ahem). Jack Vance created countless peoples and cultures and worlds that spanned his novels, while telling compelling stories with impressive vocabulary and highbrow wit. Stephen King doesn't just write horror stories. He creates living, breathing, thinking, feeling characters that we sympathize so much with that we can share in every single moment of their horror, or their descent into madness. Pet Sematary, IT, and The Shining are some of the best novels I've ever read. Not because they were terrifying and full of monsters. Because the stories revolved aroud characters that were more realistic than many others I've ever read about.

My point is that true talent in creation comes in creating something new and original out of what has come before. The Wheel of Time was definitely not the first fantasy story ever written, and it's far from the last. But it is one of the biggest and most creatively built of the genre. There are dozens of other fantasy series that surround it on the shelves of bookstores and libraries worldwide, but none of them will come close to touching its legacy, because none of them had that same uniqueness and creativity at their core. The Devil Wears Prada is at the end of a long trend of groups that descended from punk, and they were not the inventors of the newer hardcore scene. But, their playing style and guitar techniques set them at the head of their subgenre. In the years following With Roots Above And Branches Below and the Zombie EP, the entire subgenre morphed to sound more like TDWP, taking influence from their groundbreaking sound. Periphery has actually had a similar impact on the new hardcore scene in the last few years, interestingly enough, and now progressive metal has left its mark on hardcore. Now dozens of bands sound like bastardized versions of their sound, and it creates a giant field of sludge in the internet music community.

Musicians and writers alike 'take influence' from their peers and those that came before them, but a lot of times all that comes of it is a poor ripoff of the original. I'm one of those weird dreamer kids who wants to write fantasy and science fiction, as well as be a musician, and I could spend hours talking about writers and musicians who have influenced me. At the end of the day, though, I'd be most proud of my work if I didn't sound anything like my influences. 

I'd be happy to relate back to the music I enjoy to listen to, or the books that I really love, but I don't want to be put into a category with those creators' names listed at the top, labeling my work as another Tolkien or Periphery copycat/wannabe. I just want to write like me, and make music that sounds like my own creation. I want to stand apart from my peers and my predecessors because I did something no one else has done before. Because I told a story that no one has ever heard before, full of sights and sounds and smells they've never experienced. Because I wrote a song with a combination of words and notes that no one else has ever used, with a unique melody that sticks in your mind and lyrics that really mean something to someone.

What songs or books do you really love, audience? What authors and artists stand out as the creators of something new and unique that no one else has done before? I'd love to hear what you read and listen to. Until next time, dear audience. 

Egoism and Arrogance

Hello, audience. It's been a while since I've written last. A lot has transpired; much more than I'm willing to post willy-nilly all over the internet. Let's just say that the entire structure of my world has been collapsing at a pretty rapid pace lately, and it has changed things a lot. There has been lots of confusion and hurt going around, and it seems that i'm to blame for a lot of it. But, despite all of that, I still found the time to sit down and read. And the book I read, ladies and gents, is one of my very favorite books.

Can you guess?

It's this one.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Close to 700 pages of amazing literature that draws a picture of Rand's philosophy, egoism. Now, before you all freak out and call me an egotist, let me explain what egoism is.

The philosophy revolves around placing the self as the highest thing of value in your life. All of your decisions and choices, everything you do, revolves around what you want for yourself. The idea is that you remain true to yourself and stay in control of your own life by refusing to submit pointlessly to others wants and needs. An egoist does not feel obligated to help someone less fortunate, does not feel obligated to give others things they want, does not feel obligated to give up anything. Unless they want to do so. Everything depends on their personal opinion. If they do not want to give a beggar change, then no one can make them do it. No amount of guilt or sense of duty can make them change their mind. They will not be swayed by the opinions of others, unless they decide for themselves that it is the course they wish to take. Egoism is about freeing your decision making process from other people and taking it upon yourself.

The idea is that people today sell themselves out and try to be who other people want them to be. They spend all their time trying to look fashionable and watch the right movies and say the right things to fit in with the people around them. It's all about being who people want you to be so that they will like you. Public opinion decides who you are and who you'll be in the future. And it makes me sick to think about.

I've have worked for several years now on developing myself as a person, and as an individual, set aside from the public opinion mindset. I am by no means a pariah in this, as plenty of other people strive to do the same. I don't think this makes me special. I just think it makes all of us who choose to live by our own rules much smarter than the rest. Because we don't live to please others. We don't live to make other people feel happy or comfortable or content. We live to make ourselves happy, to do things that please us, that make us feel comfortable or content. And that's all that matters.

The Fountainhead is about a man named Howard Roark, a modern architect in a world that doesn't want to move forward. He is an architect because he loves buildings and designing structures. He designs buildings based not on what will look pretty or please the public, but based on what is the most efficient design for the building. The shape is created by the rooms, and the rooms are created by their purpose. The entire building is shaped and designed to fit a specific purpose, and only to meet that purpose. No added ornamentation or additions that have no actual purpose. He dropped out of school after he failed most of his classes for not completing the requirements of the assignments. He designed the buildings he wanted to rather than the ones the professors wanted him to, simply because he saw no point in it if he hated how they would turn out. Roark is driven completely and totally by his passion for architecture, and nothing else matters to him but what he wants. This is the image of the egoist.

"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you, everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable--and unimportant?"

"No."

-Peter Keating asking Howard Roark

On the opposite side is Peter Keating, another architect who designs exactly what people want. In fact, his entire purpose in life is to please other people so that they will like him. He wanted to be a painter, but instead, he became an architect in order to please his mother. He sucked up to all of his professors so they would like him, graduated head of his class, and joined a big firm so that he could become famous. Everything he says or does is to please someone else. His entire self is empty, containing only a mirror, because that's what he wants to be. Exactly what you want him to be. He relies on Roark's ability on many occasions, because Peter isn't good enough on his own, and he needs help from someone who is.

Peter is what Rand calls a Second-hander, someone whose lot in life is to feed off of the ability of another. All he knows is how to be a parasite and devour the fruits of someone else's labors. He does everything and anything he can to be liked, because he has no self-esteem. He derives his esteem entirely from what others give him, because without them, he would be nothing.

Roark is the Prime Mover, or the force that creates the world. He is one of many over thousands of years whose sole purpose was to find what they loved in life and to do it to the best of his ability. They are scientists, architects, musicians, industrialists, tradesmen, poets, authors, engineers, people who create things for the sole purpose of having created something. They do it because it brings them pleasure, not because anyone told them to or requires them to.

"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean that he won't die some day. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard--one can imagine him lasting forever." 

-Steven Mallory, about Howard Roark


The Second-handers feed off of the Prime Movers, taking their creations and using them for their own purposes. They can not create anything of their own, so they must take from those who can to survive. Otherwise, they are lost, and their world would end quickly. The Prime Movers are the reason they exist, because without someone to create or produce, the Second-handers wuold starve and die out.

Egoism is about doing what makes you happy, about finding something you really love and sticking to it, no matter what. Throughout the book, Roark faces hardships and trials that test his resolve, but through it all, he never wavers, never falters, and never gives a single inch in the face of adversity. He is solid all the way through to his core, and it is beyond anyone's ability to break him, or to even know where to start trying. And it's not that Roark finds it difficult to stick to what he believes and do what makes him happy. It's just his nature. He can't conceive of a person doing anything but exactly what makes them happy. He doesn't concern himself with impressing people who don't matter or changing himself to make others comfortable. He's completely arrogant, but is completely innocent about it, because he doesn't do it on purpose. It's just the way he is.

Needless to say, I admire the hell out of Howard Roark, and I want to be like him. I want to be so dedicated to what I want from life that no other person on the planet can ever drive me from my course. I want to live for me, to do the things that make me happy, to reach my highest potential in life, and do if for no other reason but that I wanted it. I don't want to live to please others or to meet their expectations. Damn their expectations. If I meet them, then it was by coincidence while on my way to please myself. That kind of passion and dedication would make me unbelievably happy.

Now the downside to all of this is that it's incredibly hard to do in real life. Roark, as a fictional character, was written to be hard and cold all the way through. But in most real people, being hard and cold isn't something that comes naturally, nor is it something most desire. Arrogance and egoism are considered undesirable traits. I'm still confounded as to why wanting to make yourself happy is a bad thing, though the decision to consider everyone else as less important unless determined otherwise by one's own mind is less mysteriously undesirable. It makes some small sense that people are offended when their opinion is not taken into consideration. 

Here's the deal, though: Nine times out of ten, I genuinely do not give a crap what anyone else has to say about what I think or say or do. Those things are my own personal business, and outside opinions have little to nothing to do with it. So I don't apologize for doing things my way or for thinking or saying what I want. It's my right as a human being. I won't tread lightly in order to keep from hurting someone's feelings, and I won't refrain from saying what I think when I deem it appropriate. Within reasonable bounds of common respect, I will hold my tongue. But not every minute of every day. As an INTP, my personality type makes up a very small portion of the population, and I am therefore outnumbered greatly in everyday life. This means that in all but a very select few social situations, I am expected to submit to the way other people would prefer things be done. I have to do things the way others want in order to keep them happy and pleasant. But that's just not how things are going to go.

I'm not going to submit every single time I am faced with another human being so that they can be comfortable. I'm going to continue being who I am and doing exactly whatever I want, and everyone else can get out of the way or get stepped on. It's not exactly a nice or polite way of doing things, but I never said I was either, and I never intended to be.

"Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand." 

-Howard Roark
That's about all I have to say for now, audience. The Being Angry portion came without notice at the end of my discussing Ayn Rand's wonderful book because I'm sick of always having to submit and it was time for me to yell about it. If you haven't read The Fountainhead, I recommend it, though only to those mature and understanding of you readers. It tends to be dense at points, and there are some controversial and complex themes running through the whole book that must be read with an open mind in order to be understood fully.

So, until next time, be whoever it is you want to be without question. Good day, audience.

Books books books books books...

Hello again, audience! How are you today? I'm pretty swell myself. I've still been feeling useless lately, but I've also had this mysterious streak of thoughtfulness. Twice in the last three days, I've had spontaneous conversations about philosophy and human nature with my soultwin Poncho, and it has been really exciting. That added to being pushed to write another blog has led me to the keyboard where I am now typing this.

I've decided that this blog, as indicated by the title, is going to be about books. I've read two in the last five days or so, which is actually a slow pace for me, but still carnivorous nonetheless. I love to read, and I can usually pick apart books in a single afternoon, as I have done with a couple books I'm about to mention. So, this time around I'm going to talk about some of my favorite books and the authors who made them a reality. First though, I'm going to talk about the books I have been reading lately.

I'm a Star Wars fan, and more specifically a fan of Old Republic events, way before the movies happened. The good old days when the Sith were running rampant trying to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic and rule the galaxy through the Dark Side of the Force. So when Poncho's boyfriend handed me a book titled Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, I couldn't help but be excited. It's about a miner named Des who, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, ends up on the run from Republic soldiers and joins the Sith army as a last resort. Through further circumstances, he ends up being chosen to be a Sith Apprentice at the Academy on Korriban. Now, I don't want to spoil the plot, because my hope is that you will go pick up this book and devour it like I did. But, I want to get this across: Darth Bane is unlike any Sith that has ever existed. He not only tracks down three Sith holocrons from planets across the galaxy and learns ancient secrets forgotten for generations. It was his idea to narrow the Sith order down to only two members at any time; one master and one apprentice. That way, the order couldn't be undermined and weakened by ambitious apprentices teaming up to kill their master. He also does mind blowing things through the Dark Side. Absolutely mind blowing. I read the entire trilogy over the course of two weeks, I think, and it only took that long because I had to wait to get the next book from Poncho's boyfriend. I love those books.

Next up is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I have been told repeatedly by various people to read this book, and I got my hands on a copy earlier this year, but I didn't read it till the other day. And I must say, I'm disappointed in myself for not reading it sooner. It's about the third child Andrew, a rare event in this future, in a family of apparent genius children. Andrew and his older siblings are intelligent in a way that people now only see in movies and tv shows. Andrew gets picked to go to Battle School at age 6, younger than anyone before him, to train to be a fleet commander. The humans were attacked by Buggers, an alien species, twice in the past and survived thanks to Mazer Rackham, a genius strategist. Now the humans are preparing for a Third Invasion, and it's up to Ender to be trained and prepared to lead the fleet. Except that he doesn't know he's being conditioned. Everything is done in secret, so that he is not given the opportunity to refuse the plans they have set out for him. Now, i'm a fan of science fiction and space battles and the like, but a book about school has never really appealed to me. It even took me till I was 15 or so to touch Harry Potter because it never really sounded that good. But this is more than just a book about starfleet academy or whatever. It's a story about a boy being shaped and molded by events, a boy who is a better strategist and commander at age 8 than most adults are, a boy who is destined to save the world from an insurmountable enemy fleet and become a legend. It's fantastic beyond anything I can describe.

Now, onto my favorites. First off is Stephen King, and just about anything he has ever written. I was introduced to him when I borrowed The Gunslinger off my dad's bookshelf. It's the first in Stephen King's longest and biggest project, The Dark Tower series. It's a 7 book series, but unlike Harry Potter, this one is targeted to a more mature audience. It's a dark fantasy fairy tale about a man named Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger, in search of his nemesis, the ever mysterious Man in Black. This is one of the books I read in a single evening. From the first sentence, Stephen King kidnaps you to a world that has 'moved on', decaying from old age and the efforts of someone trying to bring about the end of the universe as we know it by destroying the fabled Dark Tower that lies at the center of everything. Over thirty years and seven books, King defies all storytelling that has come before him and completely blows away every other fantasy series I have ever read. And the end of the seventh book, The Dark Tower, will FOREVER be my favorite ending to a book or series, though The Dream of Perpetual Motion comes very close.

Now, The Dark Tower series is not the only King i'm a fan of. One of the conversations with Poncho was about Needful Things, another book by King that explores humanity and the idea that everyone will sell their soul if given the right price. I've also read The Eyes of the Dragon, 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, Dreamcatcher, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Skeleton Crew, and i'm currently working on Everything's Eventual. The thing I love about King is his mastery of his genre. He knows what scares people, what's creepy, what haunts your dreams and nightmares, and he knows how to bring those things to life with words. Not only do you fall in love with his writing, you eventually grow to love the man himself, through the little bits of himself he leaves in introductions and afterwords. And the short story collections are even better, because he often tells where he got the idea for each of his stories and the strange or weird tales behind their publishing. I've barely scratched the surface of his 40+ novels, but I intend to continue reading until I catch up.

This is the part where I go into obsessive fan mode and talk about my very favorite book, The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer. I mentioned it before, but now I get to really talk about it and how much I love it, rather than just praising it and giving you a link to buy it. Harold Winslow is locked aboard the good ship chrysalis, powered by a perpetual motion machine built by Prospero Taligent, the mechanical wizard and father of Miranda Taligent, the girl whose face has haunted Harold's dreams for most of his life and whose voice now haunts the metal halls of the Chrysalis. Harold recounts the tale of how he came to be trapped aboard the zeppelin and his tragic history with Miranda and Prospero.

The book is set in a steampunk world where Prospero has invented all sorts of wonders and the sound of machines is never far off. It's heavily based on the plot of Shakespeare's Tempest, and I highly recommend it to anyone who liked the original, but it's not just a cheap copy. Palmer reinvents the story and brings it to a whole new universe, while adding his own underlying themes. There's something haunting about the parallels we can draw between Harold's strange world and our own, and the slow decay of everything that once meant something to people. Not only does reading this book have the side effect of understanding better the depression of old people when confronted with this newfangled technology and the changing of times, but the ending literally makes me giggle with excitement every single time. I highly recommend reading and re-reading this book until you can't help but bring it up every single time someone is talking about books or Shakespeare or steampunk or anything at all. You just have to talk about this book once you've read it. I made Poncho read it so that I could rant about how much I loved it to her.

That's all for now, but I'll surely have more installments about books in the future, because I love them way too much to not rant about them every once in a while. In review, Poncho is my soultwin, she is a female, and she has a boyfriend; my girlfriend made me write this blog and now i'm kind of happy because I have a lighter topic to return to and be excited about on occasion; Darth Bane is the greatest Sith ever and his books ruined the rest of the Star Wars books about normal characters or Jedi for me; Ender is a super genius destined to save the human race and his book made me double take at the climax; Stephen King's Dark Tower series makes me an inordinately happy person, and is soooo worth reading despite being impossibly long; and Dexter Palmer's very first novel made a lifetime fan out of me at the drop of a hat. I think that I may have gotten something done today.

So! Until next time, ambiguous audience, I order you to run down to your local bookstore and buy a hard copy of one of these books and read it and then tell me what you think. I'll have to rant about hard copy versus eBook another day...