But only for now. I'll be back next week to tell you how all this shit turned out.
Also, tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be turning 36.
Wheeeee.
In case you noticed I didn't blog yesterday and were worried, fear not! I have not run out of things to say. I'm just having one of those weeks where I spend all my time far away from the computer, sewing pouches and making costumes and having a cold and cramping menstrually and cooking and cleaning and I just can't fit one more thing in my day.
But only for now. I'll be back next week to tell you how all this shit turned out. Also, tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be turning 36. Wheeeee.
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When I was six years old, my mom and I lived in a split-level with another single mother whose daughter was just my age. Karen was a real estate agent, and Nova was my bestest friend.
Nova had more toys than me, but I got to spend more time with my mom than she did with hers, so if there was envy in our friendship, it was all on her side. My mom worked hard, but when she was home, she was home. Whereas, as I recall, Karen was very, very focused on her work at all times. Of course, I got the best of both worlds. I got attention from Mom, AND I got to play with Nova’s toys (when she was in a generous mood) and we got up to all sorts of shenanigans. Karen had an enormous collection of makeup and sometimes we’d sneak into her room and make ourselves Pretty. Sometimes we’d go out to the greenhouse which was attached to the kitchen and eat the clover-shaped “sweet-and-sours” that were the only things that ever grew there. And sometimes we’d hang out in the living room, where Karen had a top-of-the-line stereo system, with speakers that were waaaay taller than me. Pop music stations were our favorite. Whenever I hear Phil Collins, it puts me back in that house. I got invited to go with Nova to her father’s place at least once, and the toys there were epic. He’d also attached a rope of inner tubes to the ceiling, so we could swing from them. The Boingy, she called it. Of course, one time he let us stay up late to watch The Fly (the ‘80’s version) and that scarred me for life, Thank you. Wherever you are, Nova’s dad, be it known that when we started shrieking at you to turn off the movie, and Nova ran up to the screen and hit the Off button in desperation, but we could still hear Jeff Goldblum making horrible noises because you had surround sound, and you started laughing your ass off; if in that moment you thought “Oh crap, they’re gonna remember this forever” well…I did. I forgive you, though. The Boingy was awesome. I remember the day Karen hired us to stuff envelopes, and how grown-up it felt. I remember Nova’s Teddy Ruxbin, and how I never quite trusted it. I remember the day Karen found out that we girls had been playing with our Girly Bits, and sat us both down to earnestly explain how wrong that was (I didn’t masturbate again until I was 19 because of this episode. Sad.) I remember Nova convincing me that, if you sucked on your toes in the bathtub, you’ll turn into a mermaid but only if you don’t tell anyone why you were doing it. That had my mother confused… I remember the incontinent puppy and my asthma attack and the decorating of the Christmas tree. But I do NOT remember their last name. I can’t search for them on FaceBook. No new memories can happen. However… I have all the old ones. And now, so do you. So. Harry Potter.
I’ve never been a fan, and I’m a little tired of feeling sheepish about this. I tell people I just don’t get it, in the same way that I don’t seem able to see those old “hidden picture” graphics that were so popular in the ‘90s. But it’s time for me to finally ‘fess up: Not only do I dislike the series, I think it has actually damaged our culture. This is where I admit that I read the first three and a half books before I realized that I didn’t give a crap about any of the characters, and stopped. But I have had the rest of the plots described to me, and am confident that they don’t get any better. I’m not going to parse the books and point out all the things Rowling stole from E. Nesbit or C.S. Lewis or Lewis Carroll or any of the other writers I have always loved and therefore recognized, badly mishandled, within these pages; I might be snarky and mention how the scene with the sentient car rescuing the boys from giant spiders could have been subtitled, “Herbie Goes to Mirkwood.” But all of this is really beside the point. All authors have the right to borrow from each other, and if I think that in this case it was done clumsily and disrespectfully, oh well. Not the hot issue. (I could even declare that the success of Harry Potter, despite its shoddy writing, paved the way for dreck like Twilight and Fifty Shades, either of which makes me wonder if book burning is really such a bad idea after all. But again, not the point of today’s rant.) No, what irks me is the subliminal message these books contain: What you were born as, is what you are. Period. You have no choices. Were you born a muggle? Then nothing you ever do will change that. Born a wizard? Then that defines you, and, what’s more, we’re going to circumscribe you even further by putting you in one of four “houses,” which are pitted against each other in more ways than sports. Are you a Malfoy? Then you’re an asshole. Are you a house-elf? Then you’re a slave, and no one in this magical culture seems to mind. Did you make the heinous mistake of actually thinking you can change your destiny? Then you will inevitably stand accused of a crime, and once you’re accused, the Nazgul--Sorry, Dementors—-are coming to take you away. But that doesn’t happen often, because so few of these people make any choices. They can’t, because none of them have more than one dimension to their personality. Harry starts, and finishes, self-obsessed and out of his depth. Hermione is the over-achiever, Ron is the sidekick (“Holy whomping willow, Batman!”); Neville is the butt of every piece of slapstick, Draco is a little shit. The list goes on. They’re not archetypes, which would be fine; they’re just boring. Snape and Sirius are interesting, which must be why they had to die. And let’s not forget to mention the xenophobia that is an accepted social norm in this world. Everything is defined in terms of Us vs. Them. Starting with the school’s inter-house warfare, and working up to the “Hide from Muggles at All Costs” attitude, there is no such thing as diplomacy. Even the most admirable adults in these stories would rather keep secrets than promote trust. Why? Again, it’s just built into the culture, like the slavery and the sinister, terrifying police force. What are the recent problems OUR cultures have had to face? Why, a swelling tide of xenophobia, distrust, oversimplification and (at least in the States) police corruption. Brexit on one side of The Pond, Trump on the other. Of course this isn’t Rowling’s fault, but since half a billion of her books have been sold, and Harry Potter is touted as “the only book my book-hating children would read” by ever so many people, and the kids who grew up on these books are now old enough to vote, it’s fair to say that there has been an influence on our mass consciousness, for good or ill. I can see the appeal of the books, albeit in a looking-at-the-surface-of-the-moon sort of way. I can see how attractive it is to imagine yourself as Harry, transported on a flying motorcycle to a magical world where you’re a lifelong celebrity and you didn’t even know it. I can see delight being taken in the shops in Diagon Alley, in the thought of there being a wand out there somewhere made just for you, in having a Patronus and wearing your house colors and getting letters delivered to you by an intelligent owl. Moving staircases, paintings you can walk through…Hogwarts is, to the majority of people, a favorite place to visit. I just wish they didn’t bring back such troublesome souvenirs. I'm pretty sure this ISN'T what I planned to do today, but my muse shanghai'd me and I was powerless to resist. Before I post this as a product on Threadless, though, I need to decide which version is better. Audience participation time! Peanut gallery, please chime in! Shoot me a message or a tweet or whatever. And thank you for your input. Today is Napping Day. I'm off to snooze on the sofa.
Tomorrow I'll rant about Harry Potter, how's that sound? I attended a Waldorf preschool in Denver back in the early mid '80s, and I vividly recall the lantern walk we went on. It smelled like snow and we went past trees that were those huge old pines, you know? With the branches that touch the ground all the way around? The shadows jumped and shivered in those branches.
My hands were cold. My mom carried me part of the way. We sang a song, but I don't remember the words, just the feeling of singing when the air is cold enough to squeeze my vocal cords. The world was a whole lot bigger then, and I know I'm supposed to feel like I've grown. But I haven't. Everything else has shrunk. . . I have a new beast fable in my head! It’s about Samhain! It’s gonna be great. I also have a long, long, loooong to-do list for today, yet somehow I really just want to sit down and hash out this story. It’s percolating madly. I must go do this thing! But I don’t want to leave you hanging, so here’s a picture from my archives to fill in for me: There! Blue Goddess, circa 2001. Its actual title is A Study in Radiation, Texture or Anomaly, because that was the assignment. I did all three; my fellow Fundamentals of Design students wanted to kill me. But it was worth it, because even now, I think she's pretty darn nifty.
Anyhow. Beast fable wa hey! Tomorrow is Ekkom’s Fest, the feast day of the Therrolean Lemur God of Travel. I’m sure there was a reason why we chose to make a travel god out of a creature that exists exclusively in Madagascar and never goes anywhere, but I sadly cannot remember what it was. No myths have survived to tell us, if there ever were any.
Quick, my fellow Therroleans! Make a reason! Make a story! Perhaps the travel god is a lemur because Madagascar is such a remote place to travel to; or maybe once lemurs were ubiquitous, and Ekkom is a relic of those glorious days. Or maybe he chose the lemur form in an effort to encourage his favorite creatures to get out more and see the world… It’s Schrodinger’s Myth, people. Until you write it, it could be anything. A few years ago, I illustrated an early chapter book my mom had written. The book was the first of four; the series was called The Magic Pet Shoppe Chronicles. They were about a pair of eight-year-old twins who go out rescuing mythical animals under the supervision of Professor Nilrem, who owns the shoppe in question. There were eight black-and-white pictures per story, plus full-color cover art.
The pictures sucked. No, really. The twins look like 14-year-old elves drawn by an enthusiastic but unskilled Wendy Pini fanatic. The backgrounds were sloppy, the line weight all over the place, and the hands were embarrassing. And it wasn't like I was twelve; I'd been in art school for three years. There really is no excuse. The reason I dragged my feet on the follow-up books is that I was so dissatisfied with what I'd created. All artists are critical of their own work, of course, but these objectively stank. This was back when self-publishing a book meant using your own capital and buying hundreds of copies from the printer, all at once. It was madness to go through this with sub-par work; yet I allowed those damn drawings to go to print, because I didn't know how to fix them. Well, time brings wisdom. A year ago I started to redraw each picture, and this time around I think it's looking MUCH better. And with CreateSpace being so user-friendly, we have an easy way to republish the whole thing, without needing to spend an arm and a leg, and hopefully we can then bury the remaining copies of the old version in a deep hole somewhere. Wanna see some before-and-afters? Here you go: I have a few confessions to make at this time. *Deep breath* I thought for years that Alanis Morisette’s You Oughta Know was directed at the deadbeat father of her special-needs child, because I believed the lyric was “It’s not fair to deny me/ Of the cross-eyed bairn that you gave to me.” A few weeks ago, I blogged about my habit of doing sit-ups in the evenings. But the next day I stopped, and haven’t done them since. One of my earliest celebrity crushes was on Warwick Davis. Not only is he handsome and talented, but his hands are peculiarly graceful. I have always had a thing for beautiful hands. (Mine aren’t.) I’ve been watching This Old House zealously for ten years now. And I’m still not certain how to pronounce “cupola.” I wasn’t a Tolkienhead until after becoming enamored of the LotR movies. I was so obsessed with them, in fact, that I wrote the birthdays of my twenty favorite cast members in my day planner for 2005. I call myself, primarily, a painter; but I sometimes go weeks without painting anything at all. When that happens, I get dreadfully depressed, but I’ve never known which is the cause and which the effect. Deep down, I feel like it’s possible that everything I do, especially online, is just navel-gazing. That I, my process, my thoughts and my creations don’t matter in the slightest to anyone but me. *************** There! Glad I've got all that off my chest.
I'll see you tomorrow, beloveds. |
ArtistHi there! Stick around! Kick off your shoes and have some tea. I'm Robin, and this is my place. Archives
May 2019
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