I love Chicago!

I'm in town for the World Science Fiction Convention, and my friend Cathy and I are already having a great time!

First, Those of a Certain Age may remember the Saturday Night Live sketch about the idiosyncratic hamburger place. Well, this is it (although I remember it being "No Coke, Pepsi"):

And here is my friend, the Bean (everybody's friend, the Bean). Its real name is Cloud Gate, but...really? No, it's the Bean.

Cathy and me, approaching the Bean.

Here's what it looks like from inside.

We also saw a show at Second City, which was fantastic!

Today, the con starts. It's going to be a very full weekend, as not only do I want to go to a lot of the panels, but I'm presenting a paper, moderating two panels, and doing a reading. If you're there, find me!

First Opera performance — bewdy!

It was a long path: story to libretto to opera, rehearsals, PR and media, logistics, more rehearsals, more logistics, more rehearsals, and finally — the first performance of The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders!

Friends, guests, and opera fans joined our three wonderful singers, our troupe of actors, our conductor, our technician, and me (librettist and producer) to hear the work for the first time. We got tons of valuable feedback, we got to hear the piece "in the air" (as they say), and we had a blast. The best thing about working in the arts is the chance to have adventures with amazing, superpower-equipped people.

The singers in the throes of performing our opera — they even LOOK like they sound terrific!

So now we're looking at the next phase of developing the project: revising the libretto in light of the insights from this performance; getting the score professionally performed and recorded; and commissioning the animations. (Yes! Animations! Multimedia! Spectacle! Wonder! Bedazzlement! This is going to be quite a show, once we're done with it — if want to follow its fortunes as we make it the best it can be, and then get it produced in full, please "like" its Facebook page.)

The very next morning after the performance I took off for the States. I'm in Chicago now, jetlagged but very excited indeed, both to be home in the first place and in anticipation of the World Science Fiction Convention, in which I will be delivering a paper and a reading, and participating on panels. The adventures are rumbling toward me like...like...juggernauts!

Well! That was an interesting experience!

My friend Corwyn does a lot of work in the area of virtual theatre in Second Life. Up to now I haven't paid too much attention to Second Life, having way too busy a First Life (or, if you prefer, Real Life). However, Corwyn recently asked me if he could read some of my work to a virtual group he's part of. I happen to know that Corwyn is a trained actor whom I could trust to do a professional job with my stuff, so I figured (and told him), "Sure!"

Then he said, "Why don't you be there, too?" Um. Okay. So I downloaded the software and logged on and created an odd, bald animation to stand for me on the visuals (my avatar, if you haven't encountered the concept before), and Corwyn helped me figure out what was what. So this morning, I shoved my avatar clumsily around the screen, bumping into people and twitching and flinching in bizarre ways due to errant mousings and clickings that I probably shouldn't have done, God knows who I offended by having my avatar twitch the wrong way, what even ARE the social rules in this space?, and finally managed to "sit" and listen.

Well! It was really quite fun! There were about a dozen people there, and I got a very warm reception to the work that Corwyn read (and yes, he did read beautifully), and there were even requests to hear more of my work sometime.

I admit I was dubious about the whole thing, but it seems to be an interesting and entertaining way to reach more readers. Will I sell anything out of it? At this point, that's sort of not the point. The point is to show my work to people who otherwise wouldn't have found it, and to let the word spread. If they like my work, great! It costs me nothing (because the stories Corwyn read have already been published, I don't mind their being performed), and it lets me explore the artistic area of performing one's writing (or having it performed; although I must say there's nothing stopping me from seeing if I can read some of my own stuff on that forum sometime). I've been devoting quite a bit of attention to the whole idea and practice of writing for performance (and the subsequent performance itself!); this whole Second Life thing is an interesting take on it.

I'm a longtime member of virtual communities — I got into the whole online-community thing in the early 80s, all you children out there, on BBSes *waves to any of my early-days BBS friends who are reading this*. I'm very familiar with how online communities can form and evolve and provide genuine friendship and collaboration. Only now they've got pictures! (In all honesty, I could probably do without the pictures. But I'm sure that for some, actually looking at the people you're talking to, even though they're avatars, is a major part of the fun.)

Sure, a Second Life reading is a little awkward, and a little gimmicky. And no, it doesn't match the passion and vibrancy of true, real-life readings and performances. But it's still the power of the spoken word, and it's still real-time, and it's still fun. And it's location-independent, which is its own intriguing thing all on its own, artistically speaking.

I may be trying some more of this virtual-reading stuff.

The story you tell yourself

It's a pretty standard technique of comedy, horror, drama: the story you tell yourself is going to be far, far funnier, scarier, more dramatic than anything I, the writer, can tell you. This is why a story that says as little as possible is almost invariably far better than a cumbersome, lumbering narrative...thing laden with achingly heavy sacks of description and staggeringly tedious monologues.

Look at the pictures below: same sort of joke, even pretty much the same wording. But the context, when accompanied by those very sparse words, immediately makes you generate two entirely different stories — effortlessly! Fabulous stories! Hilarious stories! Wondrous stories! And that's my job as a writer: to give you just exactly what you need — and no more — for your amazing brain to tell you a fabulous story. We're a team, you and I.

Suggestion is the height of the writer's art, regardless of the form, and it's pretty much the entirety of the poet's. The less I write, the more you get.

Focus versus versatility

Scottie Witt, intensely versatile and hard-working performer/trainer/all-around-theatre-geek, has written a blog post about versatility. I quote it, in part (with his permission):

I have now been involved in many aspects of drama for nearly thirty years as a professional practitioner. Versatility and adaptability have proved to be the root of my career’s sustainability. I have chosen not to focus on just one area of this industry and as a result I have not had to rely on a supplemental job to support my career i.e. being a waiter. My choice to create a dexterous career has created so many opportunities I feel very lucky to always be in work.

I, too, have been striving for versatility, writing stories, novels, plays, poetry; working alone or with composers, directors, and actors; performing my own writing; broadening my academic background and writing credentials. It has been argued to me that focusing on one aspect is better than this approach, which seems to some to be mere thrashing around. I'd get better results, they tell me, if I stuck to one thing relentlessly until it started to work.

Obviously, I am of a different opinion. To me all these diverse practices are not really so diverse. They share a common goal, a common "energy" if you will: to grab hold of what's wondrous and miraculous in the world, make it real, and share it. That unifying idea (broad and amorphous though it be) gives an overall direction to what I do, and helps me distinguish between projects and ideas that I desperately want to do and those that I "should" do. "You should send your stories here and here." "You should write about this and this." "You should follow precisely this path to publishing success, which is defined in precisely this way." "You should —" Well, you get the idea.

What gives me joy as a writer might not be what gives other writers joy. Their successes might not actually be successes for me, if they don't match my overall goal. Oh, yeah, sure, I'll admit to a healthy share of Writer Jealousy™; I don't know a single writer who's entirely immune to it. (Nor to its cousin, Writer Snarkiness™, which usually takes the form of "How come that sewage is getting published while my beautiful work languishes?".) But I'm learning, slowly, that others' successes may not even be what I really want. I'm happy for the people winning medals in the Olympics, but do I want one? Except in the vaguest, wouldn't-it-be-cool sort of way, not really.

There is the chance that this line of thought is only a pathetic attempt to convince myself that my not achieving the same awards, publishing deals, good reviews, etc. as so many of my writer buddies is no big deal, that it doesn't mean I'm not as good as they are. But there's also the chance that it's a healthier way to look at my writing: as something that aims to meet my goals and expectations, not someone else's.