The Ultimate Christmas Stockings

Saturday, November 27, 2004
11:48:00 AM MST
The Ultimate Christmas Stockings

I seem to have confused John Scalzi about the Christmas stockings. Let me explain, then.

Of all the holiday traditions I try to observe, the one that my husband John really gets into is the preparation of the Christmas stockings. John and I each have a stocking that's been around for most of our marriage, so long that old "D-in-sewing" Karen has had to sew them back together a couple of times. We've also had stockings at various times for each of our dogs, Jenny (1979-1989), Noodle (1987-2001) and Tuffy Toro (1996-present); John's sister Martha; my Dad and my Ruth; and my Mom and Aunt Flora. Jenny Dog used to get balloons in her stocking. Part of the fun at Christmas was John blowing up balloons and our batting them around with Jenny. Once in a while she would pop one, and then run up to John, demanding that he blow up another one to play with. Unfortunately, Noodle did not share this enthusiasm, and Tuffy is afraid of strange objects and loud noises. Maybe someday we'll have another dog who likes balloons, and revive this part of the Christmas stocking tradition.

Mostly, though, we focus on the John and Karen stockings, which we decorate and fill for each other. Every year, John and I each put a new button, pin or other bauble on the other person's stocking, to the point where we're starting to run out of room now. Then we fill it with fun stuff. I insist on having a tangerine in the toe of mine, another tradition left over from my childhood. Other than that, there may be batteries or other intriguing accessories to go with some other non-stocking gift; silly toys like a Santa Claus bendy or a Santa clicker, ball bearing mazes and other useless gimcrackery; candy and/or nuts, the exact composition of which varies with that year's dietary situation; Disney comics and trading cards; pens, razors or other small, practical stuff; and usually one nice gift that's small enough to be crammed in there.

I usually go to Yike's Toys to fill John's stocking. You may recall that I mentioned the place in connection with buying little toys to give out at Halloween. Same principle here.John still has the Budda-with-a-cell-phone squeaky toy I got him there years ago. Last year I gave him a little plastic mermaid. This year it may be a hula girl to go with the cool pack of retro hula postcards I got him before. We'll see.

So, John Scalzi, when I tell you to blow $70 on two of the best Christmas stockings ever, I'm talking about doing the stocking thing right, inside and out. Get a couple of good, sturdy stockings, and decorate them with the names Krissy and Athena. Put something silly and personal on the outside, too, some little decoration that means, "I, Santa Claus, know and love this person whose stocking I'm filling." Then fill it up with fun stuff. If you do it right, Krissy will enjoy her stocking just as much as Athena does--and you'll be under pressure to top yourself next year.

Karen

Photo by John Blocher, Christmas, 1987; the only White Christmas in Tucson since 1916.

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 2 comments:

Strange. Your real life, as told in the entry above, sounds vaguely like Joshua Wanderer. Maybe that is not strange, after all, with the author being one and the same.
Anyway you've given me ideas for Christmas. I am usually clueless But the really magnificent, amazing magical technicolor super-stocking for everyone is inspired. If I can pull it off I'll let you know how it comes out.
Let me see... start with a gold coin in each one. Not a gold foil-wrapped candy... a REAL gold coin, a hazelnut, a loquat, a cumquat, a tin cricket, a penny whistle, .. well, that's a start.
Comment from chasferris - 11/28/04 3:31 PM

I have fun stuffing Christmas stocking too! Comment from alphawoman1 - 11/28/04 6:14 AM

Haunted By the Mansion

Saturday, October 16, 2004
4:21:00 AM MST

Haunted by the Mansion

I knew from the start that the eBay auction to be the 1,000th Grim Grinning Ghost at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion would be out of reach financially, but I'm a little startled how quickly the high bid amount has shot up. In just over a day and a half, it's gone from a minimum bid of $750 to $30,306.66, with another five and a half days to go.

For those of you who may not know what I'm talking about, or what the big deal is, the Haunted Mansion has been, for 35 years now, one of the best and most beloved attractions at Disneyland. Long before Eddie Murphy walked into a movie that was better at special effects than at having sympathetic characters or a coherent plot, Disney fans were standing in the Haunted Mansion's foyer at dusk, chanting the opening words of the attraction: "When hinges creak in doorless chambers..." and happily anticipating what would come next. From the tombstones in the pre-ride area to the dramatic words of the unseen Ghost Host, from the jerking forward of each Doom Buggy past an endless hallway to Madame Leota's seance, from the endless duel and party in the ballroom to the beating heart of the jilted ghost bride, from the singing busts in the graveyard to the exhortation of Little Leota to "Hurry back! Be sure to bring your death certificate!" -- it's just a wonderful time for all. Well, almost. It's probably not wonderful for the guy in the coffin, eternally shouting, "Let me out! Let me out!"

Part of the storyline is that there are 999 happy haunts here, but the place has room for 1,000. Now, at last, someone will be able to answer the Ghost Host's call for a suitable volunteer to fill the quota. The qualification: that someone will have to spend considerably more than I make in a year for the privilege of a tombstone with his or her name on it.

Disney fans can tell you that the voice of the Ghost Host is that of the late Paul Frees, who played cartoon characters ranging from Ludwig Von Drake to Boris Badenov, among many others. His voice can also be heard in that other great Disneyland attraction nearby, Pirates of the Caribbean. The deep voice in both the Haunted Mansion song Grim Grinning Ghosts and the Pirates song Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) is that of Thurl Ravenscroft, best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger. With and without his group the Mello Men, he can still be heard in many Disney projects of the 1950s and 1960s, including the Zorro theme and the dog chorus in Lady and the Tramp. He also sang You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch in the Chuck Jones / Dr. Seuss cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Hardcore Disney fans will also happily tell you about the late Marc Davis, one of Disney's Nine Old Men, an animater and imagineer who came up with many of the most memorable images in the Haunted Mansion (the hitchhiking ghosts, for example), Pirates of the Caribbean (remember the dog with the keys to the jail?) and the Jungle Cruise (the expedition in the tree and much more). X. Atencio (the X. is for Xavier) wrote the lyrics and the ride narration for the Haunted Mansion, and provided at least one of the voices. Rolly Crump, Claude Coats, Yale Gracey, Ken Anderson and Leota Toombs also a played a role in the Haunted Mansion's many years of development. Although the project was announced by Walt Disney as early as 1958, it went through many stages in story and design (at one point it was going to be a Museum of the Weird), and stood in New Orleans Square for years before the doors finally opened in 1969. It was worth the wait.

Ah, well. I can live without being counted among the honorary dead. I wasn't at Disneyland for the 30th Anniversary celebration, with live spooks and a panel discussion featuring Marc Davis, X. Atencio and others. (I do have bootleg video of it, though, somewhere.) I also haven't been to Disneyland for Christmas since they started letting Jack Skellington take the place over for a Haunted Mansion Holiday. Come to think of it, I haven't even written fan mail to Thurl Ravenscroft yet. I hope he's still alive by the time I get around to it.

But Halloween will be here soon. When kids come to the door, they'll hear bits of my Haunted Mansion 30th Anniversary CD: unearthly organ music, the unsettling assurances of the Ghost Host, Madame Leota's seance in rhyme (the second time through it's in French and English), guest appearances by Vincent Price and a Japanese Ghost Host, and many versions of Thurl and others singing about the grim grinning ghosts who "come out to socialize."

Karen

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 1 comment:

Amazing! I want the job of the person who can afford to pay $30k for a headstone and trip to Disney!
~JerseyGirl
Comment from cneinhorn

Legacy

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Legacy
For nearly forty years now, I've been carrying things around in my head that nobody else alive today is likely to remember, with the possible exceptions of my brother and one or two former members of Syracuse Little Theater. My mom, Dr. Ruth Anne Johnson Funk, was a composer and a lyricist, a director and a satirist. (She was also a clinical psychologist and an educator.) I still remember most of the songs and some of the dialogue from her 1960s musical revues, DeManleyville (1964), DeManleyville '65 and They'd Rather Be Right (1968). Here's a sample from one of the songs in DeManleyville / DeManleyville '65:

excerpt from John Burp Marching Song

Let's take the Red out of Red, White and Blue;
America, we'll be true!
The only patriots left are me and you -
and I'm not too sure of you.
--from DeManleyville (1964)

This was the Cold War era, remember. Joe McCarthy was no longer a major force, but there were still accusations that a peacenik (for example) was a Commie Pinko, or whatever term was in vogue that year. That first show satirized a few carryovers from the 1950s, including the Happy Homemakers ("We adore keeping house; it's the thrill of our lives/And we freely admit that we're all perfect wives") and the Beatnik Mama ("In matters intellectual, she's strictly nowhere.") Other targets for the satire were automation, bridge players and General Electric ("But now you've gone and transferred him/And your light in our heart's growing dim").

By 1968, the political and social climate had changed a bit. The former Beatnik Mama was now Rockin' with the Viet Cong. Mom included a slide show memorializing Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., accompanied by Requiem for the Masses by the Association. (One night a member of The Association showed up for the performance, and Mom was thrilled.)

They'd Rather Be Right included a new satirical song for each of the surviving major candidates: Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace. The songs were The Newest Richard Nixon ("Has he changed since Checkers was a pup?"), Saint Eugene ("A man of monumental calm/Except on Viet Nam"), Lonesome George ("But would you let your daughter marry him?") and the Hubert Humphrey Blues:

When he's not on tv, I hit bottom.
Tell me, is it fair that Johnson's got him,
And Muriel is stuck with her cigar?
I would gladly share him with another,
singing praise to apple pie and mother.
Tell me how to shake this hang-up, brother,
For I've got the Hubert Humphrey blues!
--from They'd Rather Be Right (1968)

Here's a sample of the dialogue, from a sketch in which a female suburbanite is accused of being middle class ("Oh no! Not that!). I've been thinking about it since I wrote last night's entry about guilt that I'm not out saving the world:

Prosecutor: Do you lie awake at night on your silk sheets--
Defendant: Percale. I got them on sale at--
Prosecutor: In your silk sheets, knowing that thirty million people in America live below the poverty line?
Defendant: I gave to the Salvation Army.
Prosecutor: Thirty million people!
Defendant: And the Community Chest.
Prosecutor: Do you or do you not read William F. Buckley?
Defendant: Whenever I can find a dictionary. You're right. I'm guilty!
--from They'd Rather Be Right (1968)

Over the years there were also love songs, a song about the empty nest syndrome (I think that was in DeManleyville), and even a ballet about a lame little girl who was able to dance with her doll-come-to-life when the clock struck midnight. My doll, Tootles, played the inanimate version of the doll, and I, in a matching outfit, played the doll come to life. I was eight years old, and at least as clumsy as I am now. Trying to learn and perform the simple choreography just about killed me.

Now, here's the point of all this nostalgia. For all these years, I've treasured my mom's music and her comedy, with the possible exception of some material she wrote for my school drama club when I was in seventh grade. But looking back now, I'm suddenly finding I have a slightly different perspective. I've always thought of my mom as a Johnson Democrat - pro-Viet Nam War, pro-equal rights, but perhaps a little to the right of my own political views (and believe me, I'm not exactly a Deaniac myself). But thinking now about the out-of-date satire, I'm seeing underlying attitudes that I didn't notice at the time, and don't necessarily share now. I would have voted for Humphrey over Nixon too, as my mom did, but I don't quite approve of a sketch in which a teacher is arrested for saying a childish prayer.

Hmm. Weird. All these years later, I'm reassessing the legacy. I'd like to discuss the old satire and the old politics with my mom, but it's too late for that. She died in 2002.

Karen

Ruth Anne Johnson

The Aging Lottery


Written by mavarin.
This entry has 5 comments:

Hello....it's my first time here and I read all the entires on this page. I'm going to come back when the Man has finished the bill paying and read some more. I love what I have seen; depth, style, charm and honesty.

Good job.

Christina

http://journals.aol.com/ckays1967/myjourneywithMS/
Comment from ckays1967 - 8/11/04 8:24 PM

I love your memories, I find myself doing the same. What we lived through in childhood...when you dissect the memory as an adult it almost becomes Corinithean... seeing in a mirror darkly....I enjoy your writings..thanks
Comment from sdoscher458 - 8/11/04 5:55 PM


Your Mom sounded like a smart Lady. I too, wish that I could sit and talk with my Mother.

I noticed a John Kerry site on your page. If you are a Kerry supporter...You're a Smart Lady Too! Kerry for President!

I enjoyed reading your journal!

Mary Louise of Watching

http://journals.aol.com/mlrhjeh/WatchingMySisterDisappear
Comment from mlrhjeh - 8/11/04 10:23 AM


I lied. Drama Queen Blog. (I get so confused!-- see previous comment)
http://journals.aol.com/mae120866/1stPersonPOV/entries/579

~~mumsy
Comment from cyberdancer1008 - 8/11/04 10:06 AM

You're a Johnson? me too! By the by-- I linked you in my latest entry under this screen name.

happy for ya again--your entries have been neat-o keen-o this week of glory!
Comment from cyberdancer1008 - 8/11/04 10:03 AM

The Aging Lottery

Tuesday, July 6, 2004
7:49:00 PM MST

The Aging Lottery

I don't have a picture of my friend Eva, so you'll have to settle for pictures of my parents. The distinguished man on the left is Dr. Frank E Funk, former Dean of University College, former Director of Continuing Education at Syracuse University, former president of the Wilmington Railroad Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, and former WW II navigator who spent some time in Stalag Luft 1. He's in his eighties now, still doing work for the railroad museum, still an elder and recording secretary at his church, still working out in an upstairs room at his home, still active, reasonably healthy (albeit a little deaf) and happy.

Exhibit B is my mom, Dr. Ruth Anne Johnson, as she was in the late 1980s. Having had polio, hepatitis C and encephalitis at various times in her life, she wasn't in great health when I was growing up, and was in rather lousy shape by the time she moved to Tucson in the early 1990s. Sometime around 1990, she gave up teaching speech and drama at the Brevard campus of Barry University after a series of small strokes. She was troubled by multi-infarct dementia and diverticulitis, worried about Alzheimer's and her 2001 ostomy, fell fairly often toward the end of her life without ever breaking anything but a tooth, and suffered from depression and other psychiatric conditions. She smoked and was sedentary, but those were just secondary causes of her difficult final years. She was just 75 when she died--a good run, but not at the end.

And then there's Eva. She's not a relative of mine. I've only known her a little over a year. I pick her up for church at St. Michael's most weeks, if she's well enough and doesn't have something else going on that morning. After church we sit at coffee hour and gab. Some weeks she invites me and my friend Kevin over for ice tea and some kind of high-carb dessert. Eva turned 99 years old on May 18th. She's a retired nurse with several generations of offspring, dead and alive. She grew up in Seattle, lived in Alaska, divorced one husband and buried another, and has generally had a full and interesting life. Her hearing isn't great and neither are her eyes, but her sense of humor is intact and so, for the most part, is her mind. She's grateful for the ride to church and appreciates our friendship; but really, Kevin and I benefit from Eva's friendship at least as much as she benefits from ours. She's a joy to be around.

Since my mom died in December, 2002, I've been very aware that my dad probably doesn't have a lot of years left; but you wouldn't know it from his busy schedule of charity work, travel and social events. And here's Eva, laughing at Kevin's witticisms and seldom complaining about anything, health-related or otherwise. Eva and my dad both won the aging lottery. Yes, they both kept active, they don't smoke (although Dad did when he was younger), and they both have a good attitude, which helps a lot. Even so, I'm sure that luck and genetics are involved as well. It's impossible to say which factors matter more, the ones they control, or the ones they don't.

When I talk to either of them I can't help thinking about my mom, especially her last couple of years, which she spent in and out of rehab facilities and the adult care home. I'll never forget calling my dad on Thanksgiving and crying, because my mom was so out of it that day (we never knew whether it was a psychiatric problem, a medical one or overmedication) that she consistently failed to get any food on her fork before bringing it to her mouth. (I also can't forget the day, many years earlier, when my dad cried because his mother no longer remembered him.) I wonder: how much of my mom's poor health was bad luck and bad genes, and how much was bad habits and bad attitude?

Do I have the discipline--and the genes--to live like Dad when I'm in my 70s and 80s, rather than like Mom? Is every day without working out, every dietary indiscretion, leading me inevitably toward strokes and dementia, no matter how hard I work at keeping my brain active? The answer is less than 30 years away.

Karen

Written by mavarin . Link to this entry
This entry has 1 comments: (Add your own)

Your father sounds like one of those people I wish I could be, with energy and drive and positive thinking. But your Mom sounds more like me. Fighting depression since I turned 30, Graves Disease, then getting MS at 50. I'll tell you one thing though the MS cured my depression, well not really Prozac helped, too. LOL .But MS has given me the gift of finally being able to sit back and smell the roses. It sounds like your Mom was one of those creative types (like me). But she did a lot with her life, too. Songwriting and all and teaching. My daughter goes to Barry in Miami Shores. But the dementia thing worries me, too. I forget a lot already and I wonder is it MS or Menopause or ME? Thank Goodness for this journal...keeps me connected.
Comment from gypsytrader49 - 7/7/04 12:40 AM

Guilt; Vocations

Wednesday, April 28, 2004
10:21:00 AM MST
Feeling Angry

Guilt

I'm all discombobulated today because of my disproportunate response to a pair of unpleasant emails from a man claiming to be a minister and longtime friend of Madeleine L'Engle. He accused me of promoting saccharine falsehoods on my L'Engle pages, said I should be ashamed of myself, and called my site fawning and obsequious. I eventually figured out that he was objecting to certain items on my L'Engle FAQ page. That page had not been updated since March, 2001, and was so labeled. The man was apparently incensed that I hadn't always known that some of L'Engle's reported details of her life were not entirely accurate, and said so, in the most perjorative terms possible. Or, failing that, that I did not update the site to include the most negative details of the New Yorker article on the moment I read them, or the moment he told me of them.

This whole thing has been distressing to me, especially this attack from a stranger who expects me to believe every word he writes, but does not provide his last name. Readers of this blog and the AOL sf writers' boards are aware that I've agonized about the New Yorker article and my best response to it.

Well, I've updated the FAQ page. I acknowledged most of the points raised in the article, but not all of them, and I've done my best not to attack either L'Engle or her family. Still, I'm not comfortable about all this. I have no perspective at all. That explains why I'm wasting time at work writing this when I have so much work to do (I'm terribly behind!), and why I got virtually no studying done last night for my accounting final tomorrow night. I need to stop worrying about this and get on with my life!

This is much worse than obsessing about the Mâvarin prequel.

Karen

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 1 comment:

What I would do you mostly did. Update the FAQs and post that I've done so, that mea culpa, I hadn't earlier and I should've. Thanks to someone for pointing it out. I wouldn't name him.

If the emails were nasty, I'd block him from emailing me or posting on my journal and I wouldn't answer him. I don't think people who are nasty deserve a response.

Since you didn't state whether or not you responded to him directly--or I missed it--I can't comment on that. But if I did feel I should respond, I'd simply say, Thank you for pointing that out. And I'd leave it at that.
Comment from shellys555 - 4/28/04 10:25 AM

Friday, April 30, 2004
11:14:00 AM MST

Vocations (no, this isn't a religious entry)

Last night I used all four hours of scheduled class time struggling through a final exam in Advanced Accounting. Afterward I told Fred, the CPA and UoP instructor, "Another four hours and I'd have nailed it. As it is, I'm not happy."

Even on the open book, open laptop test, I simply couldn't do all that work in the time allotted. My spreadsheets didn't balance. Good thing Fred gives partial credit for getting most of a problem right. Maybe I'll get a C on this; if I'm really lucky, a B.

Until my previous course, Intermediate Accounting III, I hadn't gotten less than an A for a course at University of Phoenix. Now it looks like I'll be A-less for two courses in a row. Rats.

It matters, because all this is a warm-up for taking a CPA exam next year. I have to learn this, or $20,000 worth of student loans will be for nothing. I was so good at this stuff in the early stages, but it's getting harder, and I'm getting slower at working it all out. I keep reassuring myself, Stewart Smalley style, that I'm good enough and smart enough. But my confidence isn't, shall we say, at an all-time high. Still, I have to keep going. It's a bit late to study for some other profession, even if there were something better suited to my talents, interests and personality. Accounting is a good profession for an introvert, and that's what I mostly am.

All I want to do, really, is finish the final edit on Heirs of Mâvarin, and work on To Rule Mâvarin and Mages of Mâvarin. But there's no money in that, especially if I don't submit anything anywhere. I haven't sent out a query in 18 months.

So this weekend I'll do a little Mâvarin stuff, and start reading downloaded chapters for the tax accounting course. It's supposed to be an easy course, and the instructor is really good.

Maybe after that course, I'll feel less desperate about whether I'm really up to this accounting stuff.

Karen


Written by mavarin.
This entry has 2 comments:
for a while before revising

I've been told that only 7% of people without postgrad degrees pass the CPA on the first try. Pretty daunting! --KFB
Comment from >mavarin - 5/1/04 10:56 PM

My hubby's one-time pass on the CPA exam, notwithstanding, I've been told this is hard to pass on the first try, at least in NYS, sort of like passing the bar the first time. It's do-able, but many folks don't do it. Your grades aren't as important as understanding the material. Good luck!
Comment from shellys555 - 4/30/04 11:48 AM

Testing Capabilities; Living the Fictional Life

Sunday, April 25, 2004
12:02:00 AM MST

Testing capabilties

Aha! I've been wondering how Shelly got pictures into her entries without those big ugly white boxes around them. Cool. I've now got the journal set to wrap the text around the big white boxes when I do use them, and now I know I can do the little clip art thing, too.

I also added the "not Rani" picture to the About Me box, and added Wil Wheaton, of all people, to the journal list.

As long as I'm using the book quote gif thingy, I'll go ahead and recommend the book I'm reading now, Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. I'm not fond of the title, but the book itself is excellent. (In case you've missed the minor hoopla about it, it's a British bestseller about punctuation--really!)

Karen

Written by mavarin . Link to this entry

This entry has 4 comments: (Add your own)

To Shelly: Nope! I found a camera icon near the text controls. (Was that there before? I don't think so.) Clicking on that gives me a chance to type the URL of the clip art I want to appear in the same box as the text.

To HG: In the early days of eBay, when John and I cruised the yard sales every Saturday morning, we were frequently annoyed at the sight of printed metal signs advertising estate sales run by a couple named Brown. "The Brown's Are Selling" was a slogan on the signs, and on Mr. Brown's smock (apron?), I noticed, when I attended one of the sales. John and I always derisively call the couple "the Brown Is," not to their faces, of course, but from the privacy of our car. The happy part of the story is that the signs were changed a year or two ago. The offending apostrophe is gone. I like to think that so many people gave them grief about the error that they finally changed the signs, either for the sake or literacy and professionalism, or just for the sake of peace. - KFB
Comment from mavarin - 4/25/04 10:08 PM

It will be interesting to see just how big a sensation E, S & L becomes over here -- and whether it has real impact. A half-million Brits have read it; is that nation becoming any better punctuated?

Actually, I believe the panda on the cover visited a Goodyear auto service shop in Lynn, Mass., sometime last year. The sign out front read "GOODYEAR WELCOME'S COMMUTERS" for a year or so. Last year, somebody (or some Asian, bear-like mammal) painted over the apostrophe in a not-quite-matching shade of gray. I can only hope that scores of customers and passers-by, not just one nagging grammarian, complained.


Comment from eeyorehmg - 4/25/04 8:06 PM

I guess I should add that I have Eats, Shoots and Leaves on my To Buy list. And I love Wil Wheaton's blog. It's an award winner, I believe. I found out about it when I saw his book in B&N.
Comment from shellys555 - 4/25/04 7:13 AM

Actually, someone on the Journals message board explained how to copy and paste after you upload graphics to My FTP space and when you do that, there's no white box. Is that how you're doing it now? It looks good.
Comment from shellys555 - 4/25/04 7:11 AM

<> Sunday, April 25, 2004
9:56:00 PM MST

Living the Fictional Life

I've interviewed dozens of actors, writers, producers and other creative people over the years, mostly in connection with Doctor Who and Quantum Leap and, decades ago, Star Trek. Celebrity tends to accrue more to on-camera types than behind-the-scenes people, so it's the actors who turn up most at conventions and golf tournaments. The writers are more easily found in production offices or at home, and there are fewer opportunities to meet them unless they're named John Vornholt or Ed Bryant or David Gerrold. Consequently, most of my interviewees are actors. That's fine with me.

When I talk to an actor, the question I'm always driving at, usually without arriving, is this: what happens in the actor's mind at the moment of performance? When I do ask the question, I get a variety of answers.

Some actors claim that it's simply a matter of hitting their marks, saying their lines and not bumping into the scenery. But is that truly all they're doing? Is it as calculated and external as that, just a matter of saying the lines convincingly, without ever feeling them?

The next level goes along with the cliche, "once more with feeling." In this scenario, the actor uses his or her own feelings and experiences to inform the performance. It's a relational thing. The actor has not been through quite what the character is going through. The character is upset about the death of a sister, but the actor isn't upset about the character's sister. The actor remembers the death of a dog, or a mother, or a friend in high school. It's enough to put real feeling into the lines about the death of the sister, but they're not the character's feelings.

One level deeper, and one gets to "being out of your head," as Richard Herd puts it. This is the level of controlled madness, or, perhaps, loss of control. This is the edge of, I suppose, the Method, but I've never read An Actor Prepares, only a short story by Harlan Ellison ("All the Sounds of Fear," I think it's called.) The actor actually slips into the personality of the character, and maybe, in some fashion, experiences what the character experiences, lives bits the character's fictional life.

I'm not sure whether that really happens, or whether it''s just another way an actor chooses to look at the process. It may be that the line-sayer and the method actor are doing pretty much the same thing, but perceive it differently. It could also be that the idea of an actor becoming the character, however temporarily and vicariously, is just my flawed interpretation of what Scott Bakula and Richard Herd and others have said.

I'm not an actor. I took an acting class at the age of five or six, and appeared on stage in Syracuse in 1965 in one of my mom's musical revues. In school I played a skunk, was a narrator several times, and beat Dan Cheney as "Bobby Fischer" in a sketch that marked my last stage appearance ever. I have no feeling for acting, no drive for it. The closest I get to acting is when, like today, I get to read a passage to the congregation in church, especially if there's dialogue in it, or read a passage from my novels aloud to a friend.

What I am, aside from a bookkeeper and student and wife and all the other things I am, is a writer. My creative process that isn't the same as what an actor does, but in a way it's similar. Like the actor who has an inkling of what it's like to be an alien or a member of the opposite sex or Lee Harvey Oswald by virtue of playing and embodying that role, I have an inkling how a tengrem thinks because I've written from a tengrem's point of view. It doesn't matter that there's no such thing as a tengrem. It doesn't matter that Rani and Del and Crel and Fayubi aren't real. It doesn't matter that Scott Bakula and Willie Garson probably don't really know what it was like to be Lee Harvey Oswald, and that nobody really knows what it's like to have two hearts and twelve regenerations. It's still an important and valuable thing, bringing these people to life, on stage or page, big screen or small. Knowing how Crel feels about power, how Fayubi feels about playing the fool, and even how Rani feels about rabbits, gives me a chance to experience and feel and, most of all, think about concepts and principles and emotions that I'd never come across while balancing credit card accounts against vendor payables--at least, not unless my mind is seriously wandering at that moment!

There's one more level, one more step in the process. That's when the reader or viewer reads the book or watches the performance. If the creative people have done their jobs well, the reader or audience will also have some inkling what it's like to serve on a starship, be shot in Philadelphia, escape from Castrovalva, or catch a rabbit and eat it raw. Whether the experience itself is a good or a bad one, the consumer of the entertainment will enjoy it, be shocked or inspired by it, learn from it, or all of the above. Some of those consumers will then create or embody fictional people of their own, and pass those real emotions and unreal experiences to further audiences.

Neat, huh?

Karen

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 0 comments

The Inconvenience of Inspiration; Character Profiles

Friday, April 23, 2004
2:39:00 PM MST
The Inconvenience of Inspiration

Okay, now I'm in trouble. I just spent part of lunch working on my prequel, Prince of Mavarin, which will probably be renamed To Rule Mâvarin. The book will take Jor from teenaged prince to widowed prisoner of the tengremen. Most of the characters from his generation - Fayubi, Sunestri, Lormarte, Genva, Jami, Lokvi, Pol, Wil, and Harisoni - will be in it. I think it opens with Fabi (the future Fayubi) writing his most important prophecy while Hari/Harisoni hums in his sleep. It will probably end with some version of the scene with Jor shown here as Otherworld Journal Entry #5.

Why now? I have no time for this!

Karen

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 0 comments

Saturday, April 24, 2004
10:59:00 PM MST
Character profiles on mavarin.com...

...have all been written and uploaded. Each character page has a portrait by Sherlock, a brief introduction to the character, a brief quote by him or her, and either a fictional "journal entry," a book excerpt or both. The journal entries are the same ones posted here, and do not appear in the books themselves. Eventually I hope to have both an original entry and a book excerpt for each page.

While I was at it, I reordered the "next character profile" links to cover all eleven pictured characters with no orphans. (At least one page was accidentally "left out of the loop" before.)

A propos of my earlier musings about writers, privacy and family relationships, I made a link from the Rutana page to the Ruth Anne Johnson page, but not from my mom's page back directly to the Rutana page. People can just use the back function or go to the index page.

My mom, Ruth Anne Johnson, was a Renaissance Woman of sorts, a psychologist and singer and playwright and composer-lyricist and teacher and administrator and all-around overachiever. Her page doesn't really go into all that, or what she meant to me; and really, you probably wouldn't be interested in such details unless you knew her. What is on the page, the part that may be of interest to people who care about music and writing, is the lyric to one of her best songs. Take a peek sometime, if you feel like it! Perhaps one of these days, I'll post lyrics to Merry-Go-Round or The John Burp Marching Song. And if anyone has cheap-and-easy ideas for transcribing my mom's handwritten, faded sheet music from 1964-1972, please drop me a line. Mind you, there's a lot of it, so transcribing it all is probably not something you want to volunteer to do for me!

Karen


Written by mavarin.
This entry has 0 comments.