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When the Parts are Greater than the Whole

 

 

That the parts of a piece of music, a work of art, a novel or poem can inspire more than the whole won’t likely come as a surprise for those of us who see a story in everything. I was lucky enough to catch two exhibitions in London recently. While they were completely different in nature, what they had in common was that they were prime examples of the parts being greater than the whole.

 

The first exhibition was Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greeceat the British Museum. Presently some of Rodin’s most famous works are being exhibited side-by-side with a selection of the Elgin Marbles. Though Rodin never made it to Athens, his work was profoundly inspired by the art from the pediments that had once adorned the Parthenon.

 

“No artist will ever surpass Pheidias … The greatest of sculptors, who appeared at the time when the entire human dream could be contained in the pediment of a temple, will never be equalled.” Auguste Rodin

 

“The entire human dream … contained in the pediment of a temple.” Has there ever been a better description of what we as writers, as storytellers try to do in the pages of our work? And after seeing a photography exhibition at the Museum of Londoncalled London Nights, I couldn’t keep from noticing that theme played out over and over again.

 

Rodin’s temple with its pediment of the human dream is his Gates of Hell, a work I knew nothing about before the exhibition. The Gates of Hell, was to be a representation of Dante’s Inferno. Sadly only a small clay replica of that masterpiece was on display. For a better view and more details about Rodin’s Gates of Hell check out the YouTube link.

 

The sculpture was commissioned in 1880 for a museum that was never built. But Rodin was so pulled into the effort, so inspired by it, that he continue to work on it on and off until his death in 1917. Many of his most famous sculptures, including The Kiss and The Thinker (who originally represented Dante sitting in the tympanum of the sculpture) were inspired by and taken from his original work.

 

“None of the drama of Life remained unexplored by this earnest, concentrated worker … Here (in The Gates of Hell) was life, a thousand-fold in every moment, in longing and sorrow, in madness and fear, in loss and gain. Here was desire immeasurable, thirst so great that all the water of the world dried up in it like a single drop.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (Briefly Rodin’s secretary)

 

The following weekend I found myself at the Museum of London standing before two images that, like Rodin’s Gates of Hell, invited me to dwell on the intriguing details and secrets of the parts, rather than the whole. Since there was no photography allowed, I ended up frantically taking notes on my phone. The images were both temples, of a sort, both attempting to contain the human dream in their “pediments.” One was a photograph from Rut Blees Luxemburg’sLondon: A Modern Project. The image, taken in 1999, is of a London high-rise apartment building in what looks to be a lower middle class neighbourhood. I was pulled in because I could see into people’s windows, into their lives. I wondered about their stories; the bicycle sitting on the balcony of the top floor, the Christmas lights visible in several windows, the dark flat with “shadow monsters” from childhood dreams pressing to the balcony windows seeking entrance. At the center of the photo is a stairwell illuminated in garish florescence, bisecting the building from top to bottom. It’s the only apparent connection to the stories in the apartment framework. This building is a container for the human dream played out in a thousand different ways with a thousand different outcomes.

 

The counter to Blees Luxemburg’s high-rise of flats is Lewis Bush’s high-rise office building. The particular photo that drew me was taken at night when the offices should have been deserted. The image itself is slightly distorted in perspective, a view from below, but not from the ground. The glare of light reflected at certain angles obscures the view in some of the floor to ceiling windows. When I looked closer, I realized there were a few people still inside. And none of them looked particularly happy – though that could have been my imagination, because to me, this was a story waiting to be told. This “pediment” was a perversion of the human dream. There was nothing personal about it and very little human. Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to the few people who were there. What was written on every face, at least to my observation, was the terrible cost of living that dream. Here are a few of my frenetic notes.

 

Soul captured in a photo. People still in the high-rise office at night? Why? What are their stories? What’s the guy at the bottom looking at? The one looking out the window, does he see the photographer? Would anyone stuck in the building believe him if he told them?

 

The one with hair hanging in his face — what’s he looking at on his screen? He looks frazzled. Woman with head down on desk? Why? And is there a man sitting in the reception area? Why’s he there? What’s he waiting for? 

 

Is there a guy in a priest collar???

 

Is that a gym?

 

Reflecting on the two photographs now, it seems interesting to me that there were no people visible in any of the windows of the flats, as though they might be able to hide in their private world. But there is nothing private about the office high-rise. The photo seems all about being exposed in the darkness.

 

The enclosures, the containers that hold the stories we long to tell, are high rises, homes, tunnels and caves underground, spaceships, battles being fought, beds being fucked in, and long roads travelled. We write them voyeuristically, as we look into the windows of our experiences and beyond. The stories we pen are the pediments for human dreams. They contain our Gates of Hell, our gods and goddesses and their epic toying with humanity. They contain our monsters in the dark and our unexplored lives. They will remain always only in the pediments where we can see them, and take them out, and explore them, and be uncomfortable with them, or aroused by them, or frightened by them, or totally pulled in to their tale. Their tale is always our own retold, and yet never quite like we’d planned it, certainly not the way we lived it out. What holds us within the framework are the once upon a times and the happily ever afters, the what ifs and the whys. What keeps us coming back for yet another look is the hope inspired by a dream kept alive when death looms ever larger.

 

 

It’s an overwhelming task we take on as writers, as artists. How could we endure it or
explore it if all we ever saw was the high-rise or the temple? It’s too much to take in.
It’s the secrets in the pediments, in the office at night, in the curtains not quite completely drawn that keep us telling our stories. In our imagination, in our urge to create, we’re drawn to the pediments for the dreams, the vignettes. We’re pulled in
by the questions that reveal themselves and startle us into realizing what they might mean. But we linger there because of how they surprise us when they’re suddenly the center of our focus — those things we didn’t notice before.

 

Sex, Chaos, and Story

(From the archives)

I’m in the air over the Atlantic somewhere as this post goes lives. That being the case, I’m doing seasonal re-runs with a the screampost from the archives on one of my favourite topics — sex and chaos and their effect on story. Enjoy.

In my opinion, there are few things a writer can do to a story that will kick-start it quite as much as creating a little chaos. A calm and happy life in the real world might be just the ticket, but in story, there’s one word for it – BORING! A story is all about upsetting the apple cart, breaking the eggs, turning the bull loose in the china cupboard and — heart racing, palms sweating – seeing what happens, while we’re safely ensconced on the other side of the keyboard/Kindle/book. Oh yes we do love that adrenaline rush — at someone else’s expense!

One of the best tools for dropping the character smack-dab into the middle of the chaos – and the reader vicariously – is sex. And the more inconvenient, the more inappropriate, the more confusing, the more SO not what the character was expecting, the more delicious the chaos will be.

The thing about those big brains that I spoke of a few posts back is that they like to make us think we can control all the variables. The thing about the biological housing for those big brains is that it doesn’t always want to be controlled. Oh and that big brain, well that means there’s all sorts of stuff going on up there that can lead us down the havoc-wreaking road to sex and chaos. It wants what it wants. And the ole grey matter can be so damned stubborn at times. Oooh! I get goose bumps just thinking about what happens when the big brain gets a hankering and the biological soup starts overheating and sex happens.

If we look at Western history from the point of view of religion and its effects on culture, there are few things the religious powers that be have made more of an effort to control than sex. And in story, in myth, there are few things that have caused more chaos than a little rough and tumble in the wrong place at the wrong time. Troy lost war and was destroyed over it, King Author’s realm fell because of it, David had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed because of it.

The resulting chaos that sex unleashes in a story can be nothing more than to create self-doubt in a cock-sure character, which is always a delight to see. Or the resulting chaos can be world-destroying, and anything in between. Sex can cause the kind of chaos that will make the reader laugh, or the kind of chaos that will make the reader say, ‘if only they hadn’t done that.’ However, the one thing sex should never do in a story is leave things the way they were before it happened. Can it be used for bonding? Of course! But the tighter the bond, the more chaos can be caused if that bond is tested or broken. I shiver with delight at the thought.

And because our big brains don’t give a damn if our sexual thoughts and fantasies are ‘socially acceptable,’ nor is it discriminating about who we might have those thoughts and fantasies about, the resulting internal chaos can be almost as delicious as the external – maybe even more so. That lovely mix of guilt and desire and self-loathing and arousal and denial and shear over-heated lust. OMG! It’s a total writer’s paradise there for the taking.

I’m sure I’m like most writers in that I analyse what I read for pleasure in terms of what worked and what didn’t, what I
would have done if I’d written it, and what I’ve learned from the author’s writing skills that can be used to make my own writing better. I have to say one of the biggies for me is how well the author uses chaos to move the story forward
at a good pace; and especially how effectively sex is used to create chaos. I’m sure I pay a lot more attention to how sex is used in a story (or not) now that I write erotica, but it’s the resulting chaos that fascinates me and keeps me reading Botticelli_Mars_and_Venusin almost any kind of novel. The world is not a static place, and especially the world of story should not be static. Happy endings are called happy endings because they are at the end. They follow the chaos and happen when the story is finished. There is no more story, or at least none the reader wants to follow. It’s the chaos that pulls us in and keeps us turning the pages, and when that chaos is directly tied to sex, hold on to your hat!

Doing Lip Service

Lipssugar-lips-kisses-hd-desktop-wallpaper-widescreen-backgrounds-for-mobile-tablet-and-pc-free-images-download

(From the Archives)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like it’s a proper sex scene, or even a proper PG love scene, unless there’s some serious lip action. Here are a few fun factoids about the lip lock from Psychology Today , How Stuff Works and Random Facts:

 

 

 

  • The science of kissing is called philematology.
  • Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers. They’re even more sensitive that the genitals!
  • The most important muscle in kissing is the orbicularis oris, which allows the lips to “pucker.”
  • French kissing involves 34 muscles in the face, while a pucker kiss involves just two.
  • A nice romantic kiss burns 2-3 calories, while a hot sizzler can burn off five or even more.
  • The mucus membranes inside the mouth are permeable to hormones. Through open-mouth kissing, men introduced testosterone into a woman’s mouth, the absorption of which increases arousal and the likelihood of rumpy pumpy.
  • Apparently men like it wet and sloppy while women like it long and lingering.
  • While we Western folk do lip service, some cultures do nose service, smelling for that romantic, sexual connection. Very mammalian, if you ask me, and who doesn’t love a good dose of pheromonal yumminess?
  • Then there’s good old fashion bonding. It’s no secret that kissing someone you like increases closeness.

 

While all that’s interesting to know, what really intrigues me about kisses is how something seemingly so fragile can become so mind-blowingly powerful when lips, tongue, a whisp of breath, perhaps a nip of teeth are applied in the right porportion at the right time on the right part of the anatomy. And with the size of the human body in proportion to the mouth, the possibilities for a delicious outcome are only as limited as the imagination.

 

Kissing-LipsOne theory is that kissing evolved from the act of mothers premasticating food for their infants, back in the pre-baby food days, and then literally kissing it into their mouths. Birds still do that. The sharing of food mouth to mouth is also a courtship ritual, and birds aren’t the only critters who do that. Even with no food involved the tasting, touching and sniffing of mouths of possible mates, or even as an act of
submission, is very much a part of the animal kingdom.

 

The sharing of food is one of the most basic functions, the function that kept us all alive when we were too small to care for ourselves. The mouth is that magical place where something from the outside world is ingested and becomes a part of our inside world, giving us energy and strength. Not only is the mouth the receptacle for food, it’s the passage for oxygen. Pretty much all that has to pass into the body to sustain life passes through the mouth. I find it fascinating that the kiss, one of the most basic elements in Western mating ritual and romance, should involve such a live-giving part of our anatomy.

 

But the mouth does more than just allow for the intake of the sustenance we need. The mouth allows us voice. I doubt there are many people who appreciate that quite as much as we writers, who love words and the power they give us. And how can I think about the power of words without thinking about the power of words in song and poetry? Our mouths connect us in language, in thought, in the courtship of words that allow us to know and understand each other before those mouths take us to that intimate place of the kiss. And when that kiss becomes a part of our sexual experience, it’s that mouth, that tongue, those lips that allow us to say what we like and how we like it; that allow us to talk dirty; that allow us to vocalise our arousal; that allow us to laugh or tease our way to deeper intimacy.Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss

The fact that the mouth offers all those wonderful, life-giving, life enhancing things, AND can kiss,

makes it one of my very favourite parts of the body

 

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 5

William Shakespeare

Best Summer Memories: Coast to Coast with Holly Revisited: Part III Soggy Farewell to the Lake District

Best Summer Memories Giveaway: A Romp through the Archives & Our Coast-to-Coast Walk:

Welcome to Part III of Coast to Coast with Holly, my best ever summer memory.

I’ve been wanting to share the Coast to Coast walk Raymond and I took with Holly two years ago once again, I suppose as much for my pleasure as I hope for yours. But one of the best things that happened on that walk across England is that I blogged it. I walked in the day and sat in pubs or at our B & B in the evenings and blogged our adventures. Raymond took masses of pictures, so the blog record could be as visual as possible, because the views were fabulous and the experience was amazing. Some of my very best summer memories are from that fantastic two weeks as we walked in all kinds of weather from St. Bee’s Head on the Irish Sea all the way to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea.

All this week I’ll be revisiting that fabulous journey by posting those travel blogs again. During that time, I’m hoping that you’ll drop me a comment and share your best summer memories. And to encourage you to share your fun, I’m offering a copy of one of my back titles — winner’s choice. All you have to do is comment for a chance to win.

Update from Reeth

We have a good connection, so I’m taking the opportunity to send you the next two days of Holly’s Coast to Coast. There’ll be more to come.

Don’t forget to send the photos of where you read your Holly to the Where’s Holly contest to win cool stuff. Here’s the link

Day 4 Rosthwaite to Grassmere 8 ½ miles 11 August 2011

Bog walking was the order of the day. Today we walked the walk that we should have walked on day three, which was from Rosthwaite to Grassmere. We didn’t walk it yesterday because of the bad rains. We were afraid there would be swollen streams we’d not be able to cross. And as we finished off today, I’m very glad we made that decision. We had several streams to cross that were still quite swollen, even though we got minimal rain today. On top of that I can’t imagine walking the boggy descent we had today in the wind and rain we had yesterday. Having said that, the scenery was spectacular, as always, and the combination of streams and boggy descent made for a different kind of walking.

The first part of the day’s walk culminated in the ascent of Lining Crag via a rocky scramble that was more like scrambling up a vertical stream than a path. The second involved a long, boggy descent that was the cause of several falls during the course of the walk. Luckily no one was hurt. The descent into Far Easdale was rocky, muddy and boggy with several swollen streams to cross. By that time most of us were long past caring if our already wet feet got a little wetter, so we were a lot less careful to look for the crossing stones and just waded on through.

On a more personal note, everyone seems really tired tonight. Raymond and I retired to our room early to do a little catching up with email and hopefully go to bed early. I’m tired. Today, at least the second part, seemed to me to be the hardest we’ve walked so far. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll wake up and be ready for another long day. Joints are holding up. So far I have no blisters, though Raymond has a couple from his new boots. He’s resorted to walking in the old reliables. My worst injury to date is stubbing my pinkie toe on the wheel of the suitcase when I got up in the middle of the night to look out the window at the rain. Can’t afford too many careless injuries to my feet when there are still almost 150 miles to go.

Day 5 Patterdale to Burnbanks 13 miles 12 August 2011

Today was the hardest day by far for me. I started out tired, stayed tired, got even more tired. We should have had a lovely walk from the village of Patterdale up over Kidsty Pike, the highest point on the Coast to Coast, then down along the whole length of Hawsewater to Burnbanks on the dam at the end of the lake. Instead, early in our ascent the rain started with the mist following shortly thereafter. We did get one last respite from the mist along the side of Angle Tarn, where we had our coffee. Angle Tarn looks like it belongs in a Japanese garden with its little islands in the middle and lovely wind sculpted trees. After we enjoyed the gardenesque view, the weather began in earnest. A cold south wind battered us most of the walk in driving rain. The mist became so thick that it was impossible to see the back of the group walking on the trail from the front. We had to be extremely careful to keep everyone in view.

We lunched in the wind and rain near the top of Kidsty Pike, the highest point of the Coast to Coast, and I slurped back tea from the flask just to keep warm. It was lunch at speed, then the forced descent began down the back side to Haweswater.  Though Haweswater is a very beautiful lake, it is a little bit sad and eerie to me because I know that beneath the mirrored waters lie the ruined villages of Mardale and Measand, flooded out when the dam was built to provide water for Manchester. The stone fences that disappear into the water  along the shore are a solemn reminder of the cost.

I’ve always known this nasty little secret to be true, but never really fully realized it until today. There are two K Ds that walk whenever I hit the trail. There’s the K D who laughs and jokes and delights in the lovely detail, in the jewelled droplets of water on the grass, the K D who takes everything in and walks the story. Then there’s the K D who is the drama queen, whinging and whining and making a mountain out of every molehill. She is miserable and surly and hates everything and everybody. She comes out when I’m really tired. Usually nobody else but poor, long-suffering Raymond sees her, but there’s no denying that today was her day in spades.

Even as I thought about the dichotomy while I walked, I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. All I could think about was how tired I was and how my knees hurt, and how I wanted to be warm and dry. There was no convincing myself that this too would pass. Of course it did, and the evening’s celebration with friends after our last walk together was a joyful reminiscing of our five day’s adventure. It wasn’t marred by what had gone on quietly inside of me all day while I walked. While everyone wished Raymond and I the best on our continued journey, I couldn’t keep from wondering if tomorrow would be as hard.  Tomorrow, and for the next nine days, we would be out on our own.

Tomorrow we leave the Lake District and strike out on our own across Eastern Cumbria and into the Yorkshire Dales and the 133 miles ahead of us before we reach the North Sea and Robin Hood’s Bay.

More to come from the Yorkshire Dales National Park!