Change is coming

Another week where I’m unsure what to write about. I’m in somewhat of a rhythm these days of writing fiction in the morning, working on Day Job stuff in the afternoon, trying to relax in the evening. I feel very fortunate, really, that my situation is such that it’s easy for me to isolate and stay clear of a lot of the stuff that’s happening in the wider world.

I also know that this pattern will not last. We’re about to tick over into August, and by the end of that month I’ll be back ‘in the classroom’, although exactly how that classroom will operate is still a bit hazy. I can say that every educator I know would love to be back literally in the room with students, operating the way we know works best for everyone. I think we all know by now that it isn’t going to happen, to some extent or another, and we’re waiting to see what the reality will look like, trying to plan for contingencies. That’s part of where my afternoons are going.

When teaching starts back up, that will be less time for writing, and then we’ll see how this fragile momentum I have built on a fiction project lasts. I’ve written over 30,000 words in a little under a month, which is the most productive I’ve been in ages. I have no idea if I’ll be able to maintain anything like it when I have lectures and students needing a much bigger slice of my time.

We’re into the later days of summer, the cicadas are yelling at each other in the trees, some of the spring flowers in my garden are past their best, and the shortening days are starting to be noticeable. I’m writing this on my little deck and the light is starting to fail a bit. Before I’m done the bats may be out.

Changes are coming.

The thing is that this is always the case. If studying history taught me anything, it is that there is always change coming. Some will be good, some not so good, some we see coming and some we don’t. We have to figure out what to do with them all just the same.

It’s already almost a cliché, but 2020 feels like a year when future historians may talk about a lot of change. It seems inevitable that the societies that come out of the pandemic – whenever we can call it ‘over’ – will be different from the ones that stumbled into it. Demands for social and institutional change resonate very loudly. There is an election in the land of our neighbours to the south that will – however it works out – have effects that cannot be avoided or ignored.

So changes are coming. Some are not under our control, but some are. History is the product of human actions, choices made by individuals. Very often, the choices made by ordinary people add up to carry more weight than decisions taken by the mighty and powerful. (Another thing that history has taught me, although here not everyone would agree.) We are in control of at least some of the changes that we are in the middle of, and while that’s kind of scary, it is also a great opportunity, it seems to me.

Every day, the world is a little different. We can try to nudge it in a better direction, each time.

That’s about it for this week. I have changes to prepare for.

Thanks for reading.

Perry Mason

I’ve been watching the new Perry Mason miniseries recently, which is a bit of an odd choice for me because it was reputed to be very dark, and (as noted many times herein) I tend not to enjoy super grim stories these days. I have also never watched any of the earlier iterations of the Perry Mason character, or read the books. But on the other hand, it has two actors I admire a great deal (Matthew Rhys and Tatiana Maslany) in it, and so why the hell not.

The first episode, I have to say, did not fill me with optimism. It was indeed extremely bleak, almost to the point of becoming self-parody. But, I am not one of those who needs a book to win me over in the first line, nor a show in the first scene or even the first episode, so I gave it a go. And boy, am I glad I did. It has stayed a dark story, but it’s one that I’m enjoying very much now.

Partly I think it’s just (well, ‘just’) the quality of the writing and the performances, which are nearly uniformly excellent. <SPOILERS AHOY> The unravelling of the E.B. Jonathan character from this dapper, confident, successful lawyer we are first presented with to the rather sad mess we learn he really is was carried of really well. And in the just-aired episode, the scene where Perry Mason starts transforming into a lawyer in Della Street’s kitchen was remarkable. <SPOILERS END> So the writing and acting is very good, and of course that helps with a great many things.

But there’s more to it than that, for me anyway. Because, although this is a very dark and bleak tale, it isn’t entirely so. Perry Mason, as we meet him, is a drunken mess of a human being who isn’t doing well at all with basically any aspect of his life – but we also come to learn that underneath the car crash exterior he is a person who basically wants to do the right thing, or stop the wrong thing from happening. So we (or at least I) can unapologetically root for him, flaws and all.

To me this is where some grim takes on stories (or ‘realistic’, as they are sometimes billed) get it wrong. If every character you’ve got for me is some variety of awful, then my problem is that I don’t really want to follow any of them around long enough to hear your story. I get enough stories of awful people doing terrible things already by turning on the news, for one thing, but even so I don’t believe that if you want a story grounded in realism you do it by making everyone awful. There are people who want to do good things in this world, imperfectly though it almost always is. Anyway, for me you’ve gotta give me a character whose corner I want to be in.

Perry Mason has done that, even in their gritty, corrupt, bleak vision of 1930s Los Angeles. Perry Mason is basically trying to do something good. So is Della Street, and so (it appears) is Paul Drake. Flawed characters, all of them. But the writers have given me enough that I am hoping they do well, and I’m enjoying this grim story they’re telling me.

Thank you for reading.

On Oka, and Convictions

A little unsure precisely what to write about this week, but I was reminded that just a few days ago was the 30^th anniversary of the Oka crisis. I remember it, imperfectly – my family was on vacation and I remember watching the barricades and the police looking very much like an army and the standoff on a motel television. I’m not sure how much the events of those days are taught and learned about in Canadian schools, or if as a nation we’ve decided to forget this one too.

Perhaps if you don’t know what I’m talking about, referring to Oka, you’ll take a moment and read it up. I think it’s important for Canadians to know, and remember, of another moment when the shamefully broken relationship between Canada and First Nations was clearly manifest. It was 30 years ago, and many would argue that things have not changed that much, if they even have at all. First Nations people were seeking justice for 200 years before the Oka crisis, and they still are.

Now, I also remember that Past Me would not have agreed with what I just wrote. (Past Me, as we’ve noted earlier, would probably have been fairly exasperating to know, at least some of the time) I remember at the time my first reaction to what I saw on that motel television was shock – this was surely not the sort of thing that happened in Canada, or at least not the Canada I had been taught up to then.

My second reaction, I recall without any pride at all, was to fairly unproblematically accept the narrative of police restoring order against unreasonable protesters against whom violence was a regrettable, but understandable, last resort. A sort of familiar argument that we see being deployed again today, against other protestors.

I like to think I’ve learned a lot since then, and my understanding or interpretation of what happened at Oka has more or less turned inside out. The state crushed a peaceful protest by people asserting their claim over land that had always been theirs, the decision to use barricades and the rest of it their last resort against powers and institutions that would not hear them.

Maybe I would be able to persuade Past Me of this, I’m not sure. But the last thing I’m thinking of as I write this is that I regret that it seems very hard for lots of people, these days, to ever say ‘you know, I was wrong about that’, or ‘I’ve learned some new stuff and now I see it differently’. That’s all I did with the Oka crisis, and a lot of other things that Past Me and I would not immediately agree upon. To me, the willingness to take on a different point of view, a new interpretation, a fresh (to you) set of facts, and reconsider what you think and perhaps change your point of view is not a sign of weakness or lack of conviction, it’s a sign that you’re still actively thinking about things.

Far too many people seem inclined to dig in to a position come what may and refuse to consider another point of view on it. I’m not claiming any special virtue for myself, here – I may well have had more to learn than most, and I’m sure people who have known various iterations of Past Me would tell you that I haven’t always been quick enough at it. I hope that’s something I’m getting better at, like a lot of other things. And I think we would be a great deal better off, in these fractious days, if more people were prepared to say they were wrong from time to time.

Brain Alchemy

Ok it’s like a thousand degrees here, and has been for a while.

I exaggerate slightly, but we are in the midst of a very hot, very dry stretch of weather. Not my favourite. I find heat and humidity utterly energy-sapping and generally just look to hang on until things get better. As you will of course know, this is also against the background of the pandemic and a variety of other stress-inducing things that appear to have chosen to join us in the Palace Hotel ballroom at this time.

Despite this, I’ve had my most productive writing stretch in a very long time, just over 20,000 words in a little under a month. (Not, it is true, on either of the projects I had previously bestowed the ‘WIP’ title upon, but even so. Writing!) Some of this is because my day job is done for at least a little while, and I have more time and energy.

But mostly, I have no idea why. I feel a little guilty about it sometimes, because I feel pretty great, writing-wise, and I know a lot of people are really struggling in all kinds of ways right now. If I knew the answer for how this is working for me right now, believe me I would bottle it and share widely.

The more important point is that sometimes, even it what seems like ideal circumstances, we don’t do very well, and who can say why. And then at other times, even when the world is being a bastard, we do very well indeed. And who can say why. Sure, if we had a team of psychologists and like workflow specialists and so on it’s perhaps a solvable problem. Or perhaps not. Brain alchemy!

What I’m trying to concentrate on right now is to 1) not dwell on the why of things working at the moment, but to keep striking while the iron is hot and 2) not congratulate myself overmuch for the production that’s happening now because it’s just as important to 3) not be too hard on myself during the times when despite my best efforts and intentions, I just can’t get anything done.

We do our best. Sometimes, it works out great. Sometimes, not so much. Obviously there are ways to learn whatever craft we’re at and improve our odds of landing in that ‘great’ zone. But sometimes it doesn’t work out, and that needs to be ok, so that we can take another shot at it later and maybe find that it does end up great, even when we don’t understand why.

This is getting a little woobly, so just to say: enjoy the successes, and if things aren’t going great, don’t be too hard on yourself for maybe deciding to try it another day. These things don’t always make any goddamn sense to anybody.

Brain alchemy!

Thanks for reading.