The New Zealand Chronicles

Posted on January 28, 2012 by msb
I’m going to change a few things with this post: I will (try to) adhere to proper cap­i­tal­iza­tion. I will be case sen­si­tive, some­thing you can dis­cuss with your shrink to test the waters before fully open­ing up. I will also break my ram­bling posts into chunks and I will give each chunk a proper head­line. Lastly, I will not swear (as much).

 

As a boy I saw a film where Asi­mov wrote SF on a TRS-80. Set me up for a life in com­put­ing & pos­si­bly SF too.

FINALLY, DAMN: FOUNDATIONS
I’ve just finally begun to read Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Series, begin­ning with the vol­ume “Pre­lude to Foun­da­tion” (writ­ten last). Enjoy­ing it very much. Every once in a while, Asi­mov breaks away from plot and sur­prises with occa­sional escapes from pure plot into lit­er­a­ture. An exam­ple: (ch 5) 

«He thought of the gray day out­side when he went to see the Emperor. And he thought of all the gray days and cold days and hot days and rainy days and snowy days on Heli­con, his home, and he won­dered if one could miss them. Was it pos­si­ble to sit in a park on Tran­tor, hav­ing ideal weather day after day, so that it felt as though you were sur­rounded by noth­ing at all—and com­ing to miss a howl­ing wind or a bit­ing cold or a breath­less humidity?»

Not too shabby, eh? But the plot isn’t impor­tant for this bit, it’s the build­ing of atmos­phere lead­ing up to what the reader sees com­ing: the loss of home; at the same time we’re used to the wan­der­ing mind of the pro­tag­o­nist, Hari Sel­don (given that there’s lit­tle by way of char­ac­ter build­ing, this is pretty good for Asi­mov). The series seems to be a mas­sive under­tak­ing, I have some emo­tional ties to Asi­mov from my youth and I’m look­ing for­ward to learn­ing more about writ­ing a mas­sive series of some­thing mas­sive and futur­is­tic like a city that cov­ers an entire planet (taken—Trantor) or a think­ing ocean cov­er­ing a whole world (taken as well—Solaris), or…

A good begin­ning to my next blog post at Noth­ing To Flawnt about New Zealand. How we got there, how we left again. What it all meant so far.

My work place in the 1990s until I quit. Looks kinda fierce.

FUCKING HELL A NEW CENTURY AND A NEW COUNTRY WHICH IS ACTUALLY AN ISLAND
At the begin­ning of the 21st cen­tury, I’d had enough of the cor­po­rate yoke. Admit­tedly, it hadn’t been too much of a yoke: I had enjoyed enor­mous free­dom; I had cre­ated my own job, but in order to stand spend­ing what felt like the best part of my life in the bee hive of busi­ness, I had to walk around in down­town Lon­don for hours shop­ping, chat­ting, writing.
A decade later, I’m still enjoy­ing the best part of my life, that’s mir­a­cle no 1, and I’m still writ­ing, more than ever, that’s mir­a­cle no 2, and I partly owe it to New Zealand, in not-so-very-direct ways of course. Any­thing really worth telling that’s not also on TV comes in those indi­rect ways: life’s criss­cross­ing until the texture’s just right, and then it’s sud­denly not right any­more and you have to cut it all up again and start over. At least that’s what hap­pened to me.

Nep­tune foun­tain Berlin by R Begas (1888)

So I left my high-powered posi­tion, climbed down from the high­riser into the nut­shell New Zealand. We arrived in spring and my body which had read­ied itself for our North­ern win­ter (what­ever Lon­don knows of win­ter any­way, which isn’t too much) couldn’t believe where it was for a while. I kept get­ting colds. Because we had sold our Lon­don house, we were swim­ming in it and feel­ing richer than we were, we moved into the high­est high riser I had ever lived in, over­look­ing the har­bor of the pret­ti­est har­bor town, Auck­land. When you entered the flat, there was one win­dow on the left cov­er­ing the entire side of the build­ing on Short­land Street. There was noth­ing between you and the sea but that sin­gle win­dow: I could hear the mer­maids singing through it. It wasn’t much of a pro­tec­tion against Posei­don. And as a stout fol­lower of Odysseus since my youth, I was weary of the old water god.

The oppo­site of cor­po­rate: first iBook. It made me want to dye my hair.

Hav­ing got rid of my job, any job really, for a while at least, I spent the first hours of every day writ­ing in a back­room with lit­tle light. I wrote on my first ever Mac, an iBook that looked like a lady, white and inno­cent. I filled that thing with sto­ries, a bag full of sto­ries; most of them didn’t go any­where but finally, after months of steady root­less rot­ten riotous ram­bunc­tious work, I grabbed the tail of one of these sto­ries and fol­low it to some form of con­clu­sion. It still wasn’t much of a novel but it looked like one at least and it was my first longer work in Eng­lish. Then I went back to work, now at the Uni­ver­sity of Auck­land, and for­got about the writ­ing: there was a whole island to dis­cover. Except we never did. Apart from the beach, we never ven­tured far: I still only know of the spec­tac­u­lar scenery of the South Island through the movies—LOTR.

“100% Pure New Zealand.” Pianos at the beach. Vic­to­rian rules. Foam. Barely restrained passion.

TWO BLOODY OCEANS ON THE SAME DAY, BLUE AND BROWN & ART DECO
Our spe­cial indul­gence was going to two oceans in one after­noon: one blue, one brown. There aren’t many places on Earth where you can do that. We got used to Korean food, and my stu­dents got used to me. By now, we had moved to Grey Lynn, a sub­urb not far from down­town with gor­geous Art Deco houses. We lived in one of them—here’s a story from that time—good friends lived next door, and our daugh­ter learnt to walk. I rode my motor bike all around town feel­ing dandy and Euro­pean, and my wife rented a shack on a hill as a stu­dio. We felt like set­tling in. There were Bar­be­cues with­out end. Plenty of Ger­mans, too, and the New Zealan­ders got them talk­ing. New Zealan­ders can get you talk­ing about any­thing. When you’re so few, it’s impor­tant to know how to talk. And then there are the sheep, but you don’t talk about the sheep.

“We don’t want you here!” Rejec­tion at spear point.

At home, we fought a lot. It was hard that first year in a new coun­try. The alien island felt like an out­post to us, like one of those plan­ets you always read about: Mars to the first set­tlers in the “Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles”. We felt lonely even though there was no short­age of social events and friend­ship. We had fallen into one big heart, but some­thing was pulling us. So despite much friend­li­ness given to us and given back, too, we left after one year—there also were other rea­sons: my father was old and he wasn’t feel­ing well. When­ever we spoke, he offered to board a freighter as a ship doc­tor: this was going to be his last big adven­ture. But he knew he wasn’t up to it—and I wasn’t up to let­ting him die alone. It was a good, but a hard decision.
Later, it turned out the gov­ern­ment didn’t think we, as a fam­ily, were as hot as I felt: a few months after our return to Europe, I received a notice that we weren’t allowed to immi­grate. They didn’t give a rea­son: I had never shown them my writ­ing, or had I? Had I bro­ken any unwrit­ten laws? It was, and remains, a mys­tery to me, because we’d have fit­ted right in. I’d even joined a writ­ing group and a men’s group (my first, and one of the most impor­tant expe­ri­ences of my life, stuff for another story).

 

The Last Mar­t­ian: “Hello, Cap­tain Wilder. Will you take me back to Earth with you, please?”

MARS, SOD IT
I’ve only scratched the very sur­face of my own mem­o­ries here. The crust. I’ve not even added my wife’s and my daughter’s. It’s too much even though it was only one year. Maybe there’s some­thing about that island, New Zealand, that cre­ates strong mem­o­ries, mem­o­ries that go as deep as the Mar­i­ana Trench, one of the deep­est loca­tions on Earth and a pos­si­ble final rest­ing place for all of the island in a dis­tant geo­log­i­cal future. Maybe we’ll all be on Mars then. The peo­ple of New Zealand how­ever, they’ve already tasted what it’s like to live on Mars and make it hab­it­able. Not that the island looks any­thing like the Red Planet: it’s lush, it’s wet, there’re four sea­sons in a day, or five. But there’re Maori ghosts and the ghost of the Kiwi walks there, too, like the Last Mar­t­ian. Enough said for now. Over to you.
See also: Frank­furt Book­fair 2012—an Aotearoa Affair, Blog Fest orga­nized by Dorothee Lang and Michelle Elvy. Weekly High­light 24 Jan­u­ary: my story The Families/Die Fam­i­lien (English/German) with an author’s note. Fol­low the car­ni­val on Twit­ter.

Auck­land sky­line by night. The tower is a blue rocket bound for Mars, of course. You can board it any time.

 

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The Man In The Mirror

Posted on January 11, 2012 by msb

 

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Death. Decay. Doom.

Posted on December 29, 2011 by msb

My dad. Draw­ing by my daugh­ter. (Click pic for story)

A few years ago, I missed my dad’s death by a few hours. I had busi­ness not far from his house, but I decided not to see him. Later that day, he fell over and died, just like that. It was a mer­ci­ful death, I imag­ine. That night, para­medics were thump­ing his wide chest, the chest that I had laid upon many years before and that I will always remem­ber as the safest place any­where. On the next day after his death, we all went to see what was left of him. He was cold and yel­low in the face then, both there and not there. I hadn’t been able to see my mother in her death a few years ear­lier so this became the first time (I was 43) that I ever came face to face with a dead per­son who wasn’t a corpse yet. The dead turn into corpses later, I think, when the soul has prop­erly left. In my father’s case his soul was still hang­ing around look­ing at us from above. I couldn’t see it but I could feel it. My daugh­ter, who was only 5 then, showed sci­en­tific inter­est in the body, mixed with a nat­ural reverie that I hadn’t quite expected. She seemed to ask ques­tions not of us and get answers not from us either and I pre­sume she could still see my father’s soul and com­mune with it. Of course she doesn’t remem­ber any of this, all she remem­bers is that her grandpa shouted at her when she broke one of his Vien­nese porce­lain fig­urines and that he called her “Mümpi”, which doesn’t mean any­thing (except to him).

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A Professional Good Man—Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Posted on December 10, 2011 by msb

Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed Sin­clair Lewis’ novel “Elmer Gantry” (as an audio book, beau­ti­fully read by Anthony Heald [1]) and it took me a while to fig­ure out why. Pub­lished in 1926, this is the story of a “pro­fes­sional good man”, a preacher and pas­tor in those first decades of the 20th cen­tury before the Great Depres­sion. In the book, Gantry rises to near-national fame as an evan­ge­list expos­ing “vice” while being vicious him­self through­out, des­per­ately so. [Spoiler:] Though his hypocrisy comes close to being found out sev­eral times, he con­tin­ues to escape and emerge each time more suc­cess­ful, while his antag­o­nists and oth­ers who cross his path wither, van­ish or per­ish altogether.

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The Serious Writer Occupies Wall Street

Posted on November 20, 2011 by msb

Som­er­set Maugham, paint­ing by Gra­ham Suther­land (1949); Tate Collection.

[lis­ten while you read]

When think­ing of the com­mo­tion sur­round­ing Wall Street, the seri­ous writer gets very upset. But he is dis­tracted by his per­sonal life:  a let­ter reminds him to pay his taxes, which makes him want to go back to sleep every time. His helper, her­self in her mid-eighties and there­fore barely younger than the seri­ous writer him­self, reminds him to throw in the yel­low pill “every hour on the hour, if you please.” She says this sit­ting on the side of his bed in the morn­ing. She says it again later in the day when he has moved from the bed to the chair by the win­dow, look­ing at the lat­est news from the ongo­ing occu­pa­tion of Earth. “We used to do this stuff,” he says to his helper, “and if nobody came to beat us up we knew we hadn’t hit a nerve.” — “Don’t for­get to take the yel­low pill every hour on the hour,” says the helper. “Thank you,” says the seri­ous writer, “the yel­low pill does calm me down. It paci­fies the effects of all the other pills in my sys­tem.” The helper looks out the win­dow. There is noth­ing to see. All the action is on the small blueish screen where a young, fat man is now being led away in hand cuffs. He shouts a poem at the police­men. It’s a funny poem and even though he teases them they smile. You can see the police­men relax their grip. The seri­ous writer thinks this is heart­en­ing and wants to tell his helper but he can­not find the right words just then. He often can­not find the words these days. He thinks and feels in col­ors and sounds rather than let­ters. “Who knows,” says the helper in that moment, “if they’ll ever invent a happy pill. That’s the one I’d like to take.” — The seri­ous writer points at a row of black bound books in a shelf next to his bed: “I’ve been read­ing my grandfather’s jour­nals,” he says. “he wrote them in Neuengamme con­cen­tra­tion camp where he was impris­oned at the end of the war. He explic­itly says that there is no ‘happy pill’.”—“But sci­ence has moved on so much since then,” she says, “things have changed.”—“Yes they have,” says the seri­ous writer. He care­lessly drops the yel­low pill behind the chair where all the other yel­low pills lie already like a con­fused army of yel­low ticks, and makes a fist under his blan­ket. “Yes, they have indeed.”

Pub­lished at Occupy Writ­ers. See also: panel dis­cus­sion on the Occupy move­ment and the arts at Six Degrees Left. Also posted at Fic­tio­naut, at Kaffe in Kat­mandu and at Red Lemon­ade. [pod­cast]

 

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Time Will Tell But We Must Speak Up Now

Posted on November 15, 2011 by msb

It looks as if even the crown sup­ports the peace­ful occu­pa­tion of Lon­don. Click to get to the panel discussion.

“You can’t cross the sea merely by stand­ing and star­ing at the water.” ― Rabindranath Tagore

I was very happy to be asked by Atti­cus Books to par­tic­i­pate in a panel dis­cus­sion of artists, writ­ers and one musi­cian, pon­der­ing ques­tions of respon­si­bil­ity around the OCCUPY move­ment. The dis­cus­sion is pub­lished in three parts, and I believe if you’re tick­led by OCCUPY, you’ll enjoy the ride. Please spread the infor­ma­tion & leave a com­ment. Don’t just stand there and stare at the sea!

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appealing to angels: a london travelogue

Posted on November 6, 2011 by msb

lost among the lights on pica­dilly circus

went to lon­don last week where i lived for ten years until after our daugh­ter was born & where i hadn’t been in four years. walked a lot. noticed how much fuller the city seemed though i have no idea how that’s pos­si­ble. how many more peo­ple can you squeeze into this town? no more tower records on pica­dilly cir­cus, but instead another soul­less mega cloth­ing store. how many clothes can you sell to peo­ple who’re already clothed? how much food to the fart­ing fed? every sec­ond per­son now car­ries a smart­phone in their hand and looks at it, types on it, swipes it while they walk; that move­ment, the touch screen swipe, used to be reserved for leaf­ing through a book or slap­ping your mate.
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What makes good writing?

Posted on October 22, 2011 by msb

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger who once famously wrote about “The End of Phi­los­o­phy and the Task of Think­ing” (1969), look­ing doubt­ful & rural.

.… is one of the ques­tion dis­cussed at Fic­tio­naut in a thread on the “Phi­los­o­phy Of Writ­ing”. There were many fas­ci­nat­ing answers to this challenge—ranging from “the goal should always be orig­i­nal­ity” (Ivan R.) to “write what your heart dic­tates” (Shel Comp­ton)… I sim­ply could not resist weigh­ing in on the debate:

«Obvi­ously every­one should write when and how s/he pleases. But there’s a but, a big, fat philo­soph­i­cal butt to this ques­tion, unless phi­los­o­phy and the his­tory of intel­lect is dead once and for all & we must fully and solely engage with a real­ity that knows lit­tle of the past & indeed only cares about enter­tain­ment and style.

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What Music Inspires You To Write?

Posted on October 16, 2011 by msb

Not for the faint hearted: score from “Eng­lish Coun­try Tunes” by M Finnissy. Click on score for audio.

Sally Cooper asked a great ques­tion on her blog: “What music inspires you to write?” Here’s what I think.

I’m always look­ing for new music to write with…I’m usu­ally lis­ten­ing to min­i­mal­is­tic stuff (Riley, Reich, Cage, Feld­man), or to new clas­si­cal music. these last few days, it’s been Alfred Schnit­tke’s com­plete string quar­tets (played by kro­nos quar­tet) which have me all but hyp­no­tized; it’s also been Michael Finnissy’s “Lost Lands” (played by topolo­gies). A hun­dred years ago, I stud­ied com­po­si­tion with Finnissy & I still hear his actual voice and see him move around the piano when I lis­ten to this. (He’s like his music: most gen­tle, witty, immensely informed.) It influ­ences my writ­ing in ways much deeper than I care to know. When my stu­dents ask about what music I like I ask them to imag­ine cats being tor­tured & that it’s not a pretty sound. They invari­ably say “Aww, surely you’re jok­ing” but when I play them a sam­ple, they real­ize I wasn’t.
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Consulting Your Own Oracle

Posted on October 9, 2011 by msb

Out in the open: bul­letin board interview.

Being inter­viewed really means inter­view­ing your­self. Inter­view­ing your­self really means con­sult­ing your­self as if you were an ora­cle that doesn’t speak with any­one else.

I’ve given inter­views before, but when Open Salon mem­ber and poet Lucien Quincy Senna hung her ques­tions for me up for pub­lic scrutiny at the Red Lemon­ade com­mu­nity site, I knew I was in for a spe­cial treat.

Over at Red Lemon­ade, the inter­view slowly unfolded inter­ac­tively allow­ing for a pub­lic dia­logue, which is so much more inter­est­ing for every­body than just pub­lish­ing yet another writer’s van­ity record. As for the con­tent: I don’t think I’ve ever given myself so much time and space to answer—but I’ve also never quite had ques­tions like these.

(Update: the fin­ished inter­view now appeared at the very snazzy look­ing nth word in closed form, too, for those who still read lin­early, you know, from first to last line etc. with a cou­ple of extra ques­tions by nth word edi­tor Ryan O’Connor.)

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