"Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words."

1" Miniatures

Blogging Angst (#FirstWorldProblems): What to write? The week is a blur. The holidays approach and I strive to live in the moment, but the moment keeps showing up in the form of sleeping in, and wasting good lighted hours that could be spent growing my fatigue. Inspiration, Literary Heroes, Freedom, Control, Truth... Ack! I tried to explain to my mother what this blog is for... sorting out the mishmash of "stuff" in my noodle. I am not sure if it is working, but I am having fun trying... but it is madding... like three cups of coffee and trying to paint detail work on 1 inch miniatures. Thank goodness I am only trying to paint figuratively right now. The soundtrack for the moment is One Hundred Years by The Cure. If you wish to listen, read slowly as there is a an acceptance speech that you need to watch below and the song is almost seven minutes long. If you are talented you can get the audio balance right and have the soundtrack back the speech. That would be cool...

On Freedom and Childhood: When I was young I was afforded a lot of freedom by very caring and mostly hands-off parents. "Where are you going?" My mom might ask. "Bike riding," my reply, before taking off for hours to some construction lot or wooded space in the city to try stupid stuff (that rarely caused more injury than that to my pride).

We always returned home for food: Sometimes I would make my way to an unexplored space and sit down to watch the people from another neighborhood, imagining... wondering if their experience was different from mine several miles away in a different part of Baltimore. I am not sure how these scenarios appeared to my parents, but my perception was that I could pretty easily come and go as I wished with little or no interference. Each excursion was a mini adventure, exploration, experiment. Impulsive at times, dangerous occasionally, mostly harmless... We always made it back home in time...

Damage and growth: My use (abuse?) of freedom created a few major problems at times as I exercised poor judgement in exploring the world; but my freedoms also formed in me a successful independence that I value even more than the stumbles I endured (and inflicted on others) along the way...

Safer Adventures: My father would often finish his work at his desk in time to sit on the bed and watch the evening news. The TV announcer would ask "It's 11 O'clock. Do you know where your children are?" Meanwhile my mother, the night owl, would be doing her own thing downstairs, dishes? budgeting? reading? needlepoint? (I should ask her at some point... I have no idea.) I would be in bed reading as late as I could manage. My mom would head up to the third floor where I slept, long after my father had given into his own fatigue, and say "It's time to turn off your light soon." That was it. I could go for another hour if I wished, as long as I didn't draw attention to myself. And I would usually only make it a few more minutes before crashing into uneasy darkness...

But sometimes I had an adventure that could keep me tuned in long past the usual time that sleep pulled me under. The safe adventures of a great story told on the yellow pages of an acidy paperback; 4" x 7".  You know, that story that you read more times than people believe if you confess it? That story that gets better the more you are familiar with it? That story that you give to your girlfriend (read wife now), and push on your children the minute you think they are ready for it? For me that story is the Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin. Any attempt I try to sell it further would do it disservice. Let my review rest with the statement that few works early on shaped my understanding of the world and beyond, and although hers is one of magic, I read more truth in Le Guin's world than in most other worlds (including our own) that I have read about.

Today: And so in a mid-morning conversation with my mother today, literally just after I began trolling the inter-webs for inspiration, I stumbled upon this... Choose to listen to one of my literary heroes, or read her words in print, but please do not tune her out. She specks truth and is honest in her truth. "Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words." 

parker higgins dot net: The following post is reproduced from a blog parker higgins dot net. The specific post, “We will need writers who can remember freedom”: Ursula K Le Guin at the National Book Awards: The video is from youtube.

Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped. As far as I know it’s not available online yet (update: the video is now online), so I’ve transcribed it from the livestream below. The parts in parentheses were ad-libbed directly to the audience, and the Neil thanked is Neil Gaiman, who presented her with the award.

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.)

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.)

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

Thank you.

Wow! Should anyone feel the need to comment, please do so on Ursula K. Le Guin's words today and not mine. :)