I had a conversation
with my Mom last weekend in which I was reminded of something I
probably knew at one time but had forgotten. It was a reference to a
moment in time that, had things worked out differently, would have
led to a completely different life than the one I have lived. Given the
theory of multiple universes, somewhere out there in the infinite
Multiverse, I led that life. I can’t say I’ve been obsessing with
this, but I have been sort of fascinated for the past few days.
I’m going to
attempt to tell this story without using any names. There are people who are involved and have no idea about any of this. It’s not a
bad story, just not something that needs to be brought into their
life (at least I don’t think so).
I’ve never had a
lot of contact with my Dad’s side of the family. He only had one
brother who was much older than him. His kids, my first cousins, are much older
than I am and never lived near me in my lifetime. Their kids are my
age and I have met them once at their grandfather’s funeral
twenty-five-plus years ago. It’s pretty safe to say I wouldn’t
know them if I saw them. There were other cousins, children of my
grandmother’s siblings, only one of which I ever have any contact
with. It was a strange contrast for me, because my Mom’s side of
the family is huge and I have lots and lots of cousins I have spent
my life with and feel incredibly close to even though we rarely see
each other.
When I was little we
used to take my paternal grandmother to visit her youngest sister. On these
occasions I would see her grandchildren, my second cousins. There
were a pair of sisters who were four or five years older than me, so
it was difficult to really play with them when I was there. In 1967,
when I was six, a little sister was born in their family. I only
vaguely remember this.
Not long after,
probably within the year, their Mom died while in the hospital,
leaving the two girls and a newborn baby with their father.
So, the story Mom
told me this weekend, is that during the time that the widowed father
didn’t know what to do, she briefly discussed the possibility of
adopting the baby and raising it. I don’t know how detailed these
discussions were or how far it went, but needless to say, it didn’t
happen. He eventually remarried and over time, after the deaths of my
grandmother and her sister, we gradually lost touch with most of that
family.
But somewhere out
there in the Multiverse I had a little sister come to live with me.
And, I realized,
somewhere out there in the real world, is a forty-something woman, my second cousin, who
could have been my sister, who I don’t know at all and who has no
idea I exist.
Fascinating.
So, I went internet
stalking. I have a friend who went to the high school I was sure she
would have attended. She was younger than him, but it was a small
country school, so I thought he might have some connections. I was
right. He didn’t know her personally, but he was able to figure out
who she was and give me her married name. She’s on Facebook. Lives
in West Virginia. I’ve seen her picture. This was all to sate my
curiosity. I won’t name her here. I have no inclination to contact
her at all. She’s a stranger who I probably shouldn’t invite into
my strange land.
This past weekend I was privileged to participate in two different panels at the first Wizard World comics con held in Pittsburgh. One was listed in the program as follows: 1940: WORLD WAR II AND COMICS: THE JOKER, ROBIN, THE FLASH, CAPTAIN AMERICA, CAPTAIN MARVEL, AND THE SPIRIT! With FINGEROTH, WISE, HASTINGS, GAVALIER & MAVERICK 75 years ago, in 1940, as the Nazi conquest of Europe continued and the Battle of Britain raged, the United States watched from the sidelines while instituting the first peacetime draft. At the same time, the world of comics was experiencing an incredible sustained period of invention, as The Joker, Robin, Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman, the Spirit, Catwoman, and Captains America and Marvel all debuted! (Not to mention the debuts of pop culture icons Bugs Bunny, and Brenda Starr, and classic movies Fantasia and The Great Dictator!) Showing and discussing historical and cultural factors that made that year so important is a panel including moderator Danny Fingeroth (Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero) as well as an array of history and pop culture experts including Wayne Wise (Chatham University), Waller Hastings (West Liberty University), Chris Gavlier (Washington & Lee University) and Chris Maverick (Duquesne University of Pennsylvania). Given the topic I was surprised at how well attended this panel was. The conversation went really well. I was pleased to join these other academic professionals. The other panel was about the Independent Comic Book Scene in Pittsburgh. The panel was moderated by Dan Greenwald from the Comic Book Pitt Podcast. I was joined by Scott Hedlund, Jim Rugg, and Marcel Walker. You can watch it here.
I recently watched
some episodes of the television series Northern Exposure with a group of friends, a couple of whom had never seen the show. We watched four
episodes: the first two as introductions to the characters, and then
two of my top picks from the series, Burning Down the House
and Cicely. I
was a huge fan of this show when it was on, and in my memory it still
ranks very high on my list of all-time favorite television. I’m
happy to say that, for me at least, it holds up. The newbies became
instant fans as well. I believe that it was a seminal and
transformative show, one of many that helped shape what serial
television has become.
Northern
Exposure was always thought provoking. Watching it now, twenty-five
years since it premiered, it’s still provoking me to think. What
follows here are just some random ideas that popped up while
ruminating on the show, these episodes, and my love of it.
Burning Down the
House is arguably the most
famous and well-known episode. In it the character of Chris Stevens
(portrayed by John Corbett), the town DJ, philosopher and artist,
wants to create a work of art, a performance piece, what he refers to
as a pure moment. He builds a trebuchet (a type of catapult), with
which he plans to fling a cow. When he discovers that this had
already been done in the movie Monty Python and the Holy
Grail he was despondent. His
idea had already been done. The cow had been flung. Ironically it was
Maurice (portrayed by Barry Corbin), the town millionaire and the
person there with the least interest in or understanding of art, who
talked Chris into pursuing his vision.
As
Chris famously says, ‟It’s not what you fling... It’s the fling
itself.”
Here’s
the clip...
While watching this
my friend Ziggy (one of the newbies to the show), leaned over to me
and said, ‟It’s Beanish!”
Without context that
doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but she was completely right.
What’s more, Maurice is totally Mr. Spook in the this scene.
The context I’m
speaking of is the wonderful comic book series Tales of the
Beanworld by Larry Marder. I’ve
written about it at length HERE, so I’m not going to go into all of
the details again, but here’s the context.
Beanish
is the artist of his community. He creates pieces of art that he
calls ‟The Fabulous Look See Show!” He builds art installations
and then shares them with everyone. The scene in the above clip could
have been taken straight from the comic.
To
further the analogy, Maurice takes on the role of Mr. Spook. In the
Beanworld Mr. Spook is the protector of the community. He is not very
imaginative and he alone of all the Beans, simply cannot see
Beanish’s art. Though he never discourages Beanish from doing it,
Mr. Spook cannot comprehend what art is for or about. Watch Maurice’s
reaction at the 0:44 mark in the video and compare it to this scene.
I
don’t really have any grand insights into this, I was just struck
by the similarity between two pretty disparate things I love. I do
think both capture the feelings of artists everywhere. Here’s this
fabulous thing I did! Look! See! I’m trying to say something
profound about the world we live in, and I don’t know if I’ve
been successful or not but I want to share it!” I think it also,
gently, captures the experience of those who ‟don’t get it.”
Maurice and Mr. Spook stand outside the artistic experience, but in
these fictional communities they do not hinder the artist, nor are
they ostracized by the artistic community. There is acceptance of
both points of view.
Which
leads to another similarity between Cicely, Alaska and the Beanworld;
they are, in many ways, idyllic communities. I won’t go so far as
to say Utopian because that implies perfection and a lack of
conflict. There are conflicts galore in both Northern Exposure and
Beanworld, but they typically do not include the same type of story
engines that most of our genre fictions employ. But they are places
you would like to live.
Cicely,
specifically. I think part of the success of the show (and there are
many factors), is that it was a story of a community, one we would
all like to be a part of. For me it reflects the ideas of diversity,
of people and ideas, of ways of living. It’s about finding your
place and needing to be accepted in your chosen community for who you
are. That’s something I believe everyone craves for themselves,
even those who are opposed to the same idea for others. Even those
who can’t accept other points of view want to be accepted. We all
want to find our home. There’s no place like it, or so I hear.
But
strangely, our fictions don’t often address this. We seem geared to
narratives based on conflict between competing points of view. The
most popular entertainment these days seems to be the dystopian.
A
friend of mine recently shared the following quote on Tumblr, within
a day or so of my first musings about the semi-Utopian nature of
Cicely.
‟You gotta remember, and I’m sure you do, the forces that are arrayed against anyone trying to alter this sort of hammerlock on the human imagination. There are trillions of dollars out there demotivating people from imagining that a better tomorrow is possible. Utopian impulses and utopian horizons have been completely disfigured and everybody now is fluent in dystopia, you know. My young people’s vocabulary… their fluency is in dystopic futures. When young people think about the future, they don’t think about a better tomorrow, they think about horrors and end of the worlds and things or worse. Well, do you really think the lack of utopic imagination doesn’t play into demotivating people from imagining a transformation in the society?”— Junot
Díaz, Art, Race and Capitalism
This really struck
me. I don’t know that there is any type of conspiracy in media to
make this so, but I do think it’s an accurate depiction. What does
it say about us that we can’t imagine a future that is positive?
I’m certainly guilty of this in my media consumption. I’m a fan
of The Walking Dead, both the comic and the TV show. I loved Stephen
King’s The Stand. Mad Max: Fury Road was the surprise hit of the
summer for me. I’m not alone in any of these. None of these
represent a future I want to live through. I don’t think anyone
really does.
The point can be
made that these, and other post-apocalyptic fictions, are about the
triumph of the human spirit in the midst of terrible catastrophe.
Still, they seem to say that we can only expect terrible catastrophe
in our future. Referring to Maslow’s famous Hierarchy, there’s
not a lot of room for art and self actualization when mere survival
is at stake, a situation far too many people in the real world find
themselves in daily without the threat of Zombies or irradiated
mutants.
Odd then that our
fictions often present a world where there would be no opportunity
for fictions to exist (though maybe visions of a Utopian future would
thrive in a wasteland).
The early days of
Science Fiction, and I’m speaking in general terms here because
there are always exceptions, regularly portrayed the future as a
positive thing. Technology was going to save us from drudgery. Flying
cars and teleportation and the elimination of death and disease were
recurring themes. But somewhere our relationship with technology
changed. It brought us cars and TV and medical advances but it also
brought us the Atomic Bomb. Suddenly the possibility of mass
destruction was a reality instead of a fiction.
So our fictions
changed to make our fears manifest, and fear is always more palpable
than hope (which explains a lot of our politics, but that’s a
separate blog I’ll probably never write).
Star Trek is one of
the hopeful SciFi futures that has endured. It predicts a world where
science has solved the world’s problems and people live in a
diverse, multicultural society where actual progress thrives. The
original Enterprise, and to varying extents the all of the subsequent
settings, was a community where you wanted to live. There was the
same sense of belonging and acceptance there that we see in Northern
Exposure. They are communities where you are valued for who
you are, not discriminated against because of who you are.
It’s not just
Science Fiction and visions of the future. To come back to television
a lot of the most popular shows carry an element of the Dystopian
Present. Looking at examples of things I watched and thoroughly
enjoyed I can see the pattern. The motorcycle club of Sons of
Anarchy was a community, but certainly not one I would want to
belong to. For all of their ideals of the freedom of the road and
freedom from societal norms, the rules of belonging to their
community were incredibly limiting and stepping outside of those
rules could have fatal consequences.
The cast of Northern Exposure, all alive at the end of the series.
The cast of Sons of Anarchy. 8 of these 10 characters died.
There was a patina
of brotherhood that covered them, and as a viewer I could respond to
these bonds on a visceral level. But time and again one of these
‟brothers” would have to be eliminated ‟for the good” of the
club. There was no real acceptance of differences or diversity. There
was a pretty strict party line that had to be followed. There was no
room for true individuality.
Which holds true for
a lot of subcultures that claim to be about individuality.
So what am I saying
with this rambling set of connections? I’m not exactly sure. The
image of the artist and those who don’t understand him can be seen
as metaphor for anyone who simply wants to be seen and heard by his
community. It’s something everyone can relate to, whether they are
an ‟artist” or not. Maurice and Mr. Spook want their places in
their community to be respected as much as Chris and Beanish do.
To quote Chis from
the Burning Down the House
episode:
‟Look
at this – This is beautiful! We are standing at the center of the
primordial ooze. It’s like the world at the dawn of creation...
‟This
is the answer, right here. Destruction and creation. The scarred
battlefield of life. From the ashes rises the Phoenix! From the skin
rises a new snake!
‟You
look and you look and it’s dark and you don’t even know what
you’re looking for, or if you’ll even see it, or if it even
exists. And then, all of a sudden...”
On Friday night, June 19, 2015, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce of the original Alice Cooper Group, along with Joe and Albert Bouchard, founding members of Blue Oyster Cult, played a house party at the infamous Evaline Hotel in Pittsburgh. I wrote an article about how the whole thing came together for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. You can read it HERE. I plan on writing about the actual party and experience here soon. In the meantime, here's the rest of the short interview I did with Dennis.
How was the
experience of writing the book? Did you keep a journal back then or
was a lot of this an excavation of your memory?
DD: Like everything
I do, I approached this book as a creative person that believes that
all art forms are related. As a kid, I learned to paint, then as a
teenager, I learned to play bass, and how to conceptualize lighting
and staging. So writing a book was just another outlet for me to be
creatively passionate about. Throughout my years with the Alice
Cooper group, I jotted things down that I thought were interesting.
At the end of each tour, I'd have piles and piles of notes in the
bottom of my suitcase. When you write things down, you tend to
remember them, even though every few years I'd flip through them and
see things I'd forgotten. And my wife Cindy kept diaries.
From what I’ve
read over the years it seems that you and Cindy had a lot of
influence on the look and thematic elements of the Alice Cooper
Group. It was a mix of the shiny glitter and glam with darker imagery
coming through in the lyrics and stage show. I would like to hear
your comments on these elements.
DD: Cindy grew up
loving glitter and sequins, and always liked the shimmering
razzle-dazzle of Hollywood films like Busby Berkley. I had a
different take on it. I loved the shock value of guys dressing in a
way that shook up society. And I loved the concept of spotlights
reflecting off a stage so brightly that it would be difficult for the
audience to see everything that was going on. But perfect sequin
outfits wouldn't do. That was too happy. Ours had to be ripped and
stained and threatening.
So I know you’ve
been working with Blue Coupe for the last few years, and I know that
you and the rest of the original band briefly carried on as Billion
Dollar Babies... what other projects have you been involved with over
the years?
DD: Neal Smith and I
had a band called the Flying Tigers. The great Jerry Wexler took us
in the studio for a 4 song demo. Then personal issues side tracked
us. Later on, as Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith, we did a couple of CD's
with Joe Bouchard of Blue Öyster Cult fame. Then I had a band called
Dennis Dunaway Project that released Bones From The Yard. Ian Hunter
was involved with that. Blue Coupe is a trio with Joe Bouchard and
his brother Albert. The Bouchard brothers wrote a lot of the BÖC
classics. We've been friends since they toured with the Alice Cooper
group in '72. So we have tons of songs in our respective catalogs.
We're all songwriters, and we love playing live. We released a couple
of CD's of new songs. Tornado on the Tracks and Million Miles More.
Our backup singers are Tish and Snooky of Manic Panic, the famous
hair dye company.
At the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame induction performance you looked like you were having
the time of your life. If you can pick one, which of your
contributions to Rock are you most proud of?
DD: I really was
having the absolute time of my life. After years of feeling like I
had been erased from my own history, that night validated my
contribution. And more importantly, I was on stage with my favorite
musicians, who happen to be my lifelong friends. I'm infinitely proud
of our lasting music, and our pioneering achievements in bringing the
feeling of danger and spectacle to rock shows.
How did Dereck talk
you into coming to Pittsburgh and playing this event?
DD: After years of
looking for the right publishing deal, Dereck showed up and, with his
girlfriend's expert help, everything fell into place. Dereck had told
me about his amazing concert parties. Then when he heard that the
R&RHoF would be hosting my book signing event for Snakes!
Guillotines! Electric Chairs: My Adventures in The Alice Cooper
Group, he mentioned having Blue Coupe swing by his place. I hope he
was serious because I took him up on it! And now he's gone hog-wild
on making it into a blow-out extravaganza. As the Alice Cooper group
would say, he's setting his chickens free!
This blog entry is
full of some rambling thoughts and ideas from the last few days,
tenuously tied together by a thin metaphor. It's the way my brain
usually works.
I've been playing
Portal recently. For all of my Pop Culture interests I am woefully
behind the curve on videogaming. For those who haven't played the
game the basic premise is that you are a test subject in lab, armed
with a Portal Gun, a device that allows you to create portals that
allow you to teleport between different areas of the game. It’s
essentially a puzzle game where the player uses this one idea to
navigate increasingly difficult maps. It’s a portable hole.
I first encountered this idea in a Saturday morning Warner Brothers cartoon.
And then with a silly Marvel Comics
villain called The Spot.
I'm not going to
talk very much about the game of Portal. If you’re interested I'm
sure there are tons of internet articles discussing and
deconstructing it in far more detail than I can. I bring it up
because of other things that have happened in the last couple of days, interspersed with playing Portal.
Here’s where the
thin metaphor kicks in.
Out of the blue I
pulled my old paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance by Robert Pirsig off the shelf yesterday, the exact
same copy I read thirty years ago. This book is considered a classic
for many reasons. It is about many things, including motorcycle
maintenance, but in brief it is a discussion of the differences
between a Classical understanding of the world (Science), and a
Romantic understanding of the world (Art), and the attempt to
reconcile them. This description couldn’t be more basic or less
explanatory of what the book is really about, but I’m not going to
attempt to summarize what took Pirsig nearly 400 pages to discuss. Go
read it.
I have often said
that this was a very influential book to me, but quite honestly,
other than some of its main highlights, I couldn’t have told you
very many details about it. My memory (there's that topic again), has
convinced me that this was an important book to my personal growth,
but I couldn’t elaborate with any specifics.
I don’t reread too
many of the books in my life. I know some people revisit favorites on
a regular basis. I have nothing against that practice, but with rare
exceptions I just don’t do it. There are way too many books I
haven’t read yet to spend time with things I’ve already
experienced. I’m particularly hesitant to reread those books that I
think of as significant and life-changing. What if they don’t live
up to my memory? Will that taint my formerly positive assessment of
them, or will I just be able to accept that I’m not the same person
in need of those lessons at this point in my life?
So, with a little
trepidation I opened the book and began... and was immediately sucked
into the narrative and have been devouring it again. Within the first
thirty pages I read a couple of paragraphs that floored me. Here it
was, that thing that made this book life-changing for me that I could
never remember precisely or explain to anyone. There’s more to the
book than just these two paragraphs, of course. But the point is what
I experienced was reading something that I now take for granted as
one of my primary ways of viewing the universe, a way of being in the
world that is so second nature that I don’t even think about it
very much any more. This book is the first place I ever encountered
these ideas that now form a core of my way of thinking.
In that moment a
Portal opened and I was in touch with Wayne in his early 20s, being
blown away by these ideas and wrestling with what they meant and
incorporating them into his life for the first time. This hole in
time allowed me to relive those informative moments through the eyes
and mind of someone older, more experienced, and hopefully wiser. It
was different than simply remembering something. It felt like an
insight into the path of my life, a direct connection from the person
who first read those words to the person I am, reading them now.
Books are Portals.
That's probably not the most original or insightful thing I have ever
said, but it’s true. In this specific case it was a very personal
sense of connection, but it happens with books all of the time.
Whenever you open the cover of a book you are creating a Portal,
allowing you to see another world or another point of view. You step
through and are transported to a new mental location, coming out the
other side in a different place than you were before.
Like I said, not
particularly profound, but there it is.
After the initial
revelatory experience afforded me by the time travel of prose I
continued to read, and while that experience didn’t repeat I
continued to be engaged in the story. I am reading it as a different
person than the one who first encountered it. Whatever affinity I may
have with 20-something me, that experience and many others have
changed me. I am different and so is the world. While the words on
the page are the same they are being absorbed through different eyes
and carry different meaning.
Part of the problem
in addressing the Classical/Romantic split is that each of them not
only have their own language, but each has a different way of
processing information. One’s a PC and one’s a Mac, to use a
recent metaphor. It’s difficult to find a cross-platform common
ground without degradation of information.
Which is true in so
many of the issues of the world. Part of our problem in understanding
others is that we often have incompatible operating systems. It’s
true on the personal level and when multiplied out to include large
groups it gets worse. Religions obviously have different operating
systems. So does the Conservative/Liberal split in politics. Same
underlying commands written in vastly different language codes. No
wonder we get so many error messages when trying to make a point with
someone who believes differently than we do. It’s not just the
language, it’s the entire underlying architecture of the system.
At one point in the
book the narrator is unable to reach some old friends because they
have a different phone number than the one he remembers and is afraid
he will not be able to find them (this was first published in the pre-internet
70s). He does find them, but muses about changing technologies:
“It's not the
technology that's scary. It's what it does to the relations between
people...”
Which made me think
of Facebook, which is another kind of Portal.
Our newsfeeds are
full of little windows into other people’s lives. I know a lot of
people who are not comfortable with Facebook, or social media of any
kind. I think, like anything else, it’s how you use it. I don’t
post anything very personal there, using it as a place to promote my
various projects, to keep in touch with what’s going on in friend’s
lives, to see what events are going on around me I might be
interested in, to find links to articles and news stories, to be
exposed to new music and books.
But there is a
danger to it as well. Those little Portals into other peoples lives
can cause some consternation and misunderstanding. “It’s what
it does to the relations between people...” I know a lot about
people who I don't really know. I get glimpses into their lives
without being a part of them. This can lead to a completely false
sense of intimacy, as if I know them much better than
I actually do. These Portals can create a sense of connection that
doesn't exist. It can, of course, lead to knowing people better in
the real world, but what we see is a curated version of that person.
I guess the argument can be made that that is what we see when we
first meet anyone, but this feels different. Somewhat voyeuristic.
The other piece of
this that I find problematic is discovering things about old friends
that changes the way I feel about them. I often see posts from old
friends expressing opinions, usually in the realm of politics or
religion, that I find radically different from my own. I don’t like
my reaction when I see this. While I want to respect the opinions of
others there are times I just shake my head in anger and
disappointment. It makes me sad to realize how far we’ve grown apart.
I still love the people they were, and I like to think that in one on
one, face to face conversation those things really wouldn’t matter.
But it also makes me wonder that if I met them today would we have any
common ground to build a friendship on.
This is the
equivalent to rereading a favorite old book. What if this person
doesn’t live up to my positive memory of them?
Which brings me back
to the Classical/Romantic division Pirsig talks about. Not that any
human relationship is that easily categorized. The binary is too
simple. But I think some of it comes back to our different operating
systems. Some of the disagreement and inability to genuinely discuss
some of these issues is that our entire underlying informational
structure is different. I think it is important to recognize that,
though maybe it's just me throwing up my hands and giving up on
actually communicating with anyone with a different mindset.
So I have to ask,
what has this technology done to my relations to other people. I look
through a Portal of time and see the person I used to know, filtered
through memory and the stories I tell myself about them. I look
through the Portal of Facebook and see something that challenges
those memories and stories as filtered through my current state of
observation and interpretation.
As
I write this DC Comics is once again planning an event called
Convergence that will change, in some way or another, the nature of
the continuity of its universe. This is only a little over three
years since the launch of the New 52, which threw out (in my opinion
anyway), seventy-five years of history and legacy. Over at Marvel
Comics they are hyping their new Secret Wars event, and while the
details of what this will eventually mean are vague it looks like
Marvel will also be doing some restructuring of their continuity.
And,
of course, the fans are losing their minds. Not everyone. A response
I'm seeing a lot of is the eye-rolling, “here we go again” kind
of exhaustion that goes along with these big events.
But
that's not really what I want to talk about here. Not really. I've
been through reboots and Crises and Zero Hours and Incursions enough
to know that, in the world of Marvel and DC Comics, this too shall
pass. What I want to talk about is the larger issue of the idea of
“Continuity” in comics (and to a lesser degree in other media),
and why it's so important to fans, and I want to do it in the context
of my previous post about memory and recapitulation.
First,
some background.
Continuity
wasn't really an issue in comics for many years. Throughout the 40s
and 50s readers were content to read self-contained stories that had
little relationship to each other from month to month. We knew
Superman's background and his supporting cast. As long as these were
maintained, anything else was fair game. DC would actually label any
story that broke these very basic and simple guidelines as “imaginary
stories,” meaning, stories that take place outside of continuity.
It
was in the Silver Age of comics (roughly the late 50s through the mid
60s), that continuity became important. Marvel certainly pioneered
this concept by making all of their titles exist in the same world in
a much more coherent way than DC had done prior to then. Events in
one story would have lasting ramifications. If Aunt May had a heart
attack in one issue she would still be in the hospital in the next.
It created the illusion of the passage of time and reflected the real
world more accurately.
This
was easy enough to maintain when there were only a handful of books
and a few years had passed. It became much more complicated as time
went on. Tony Stark created the Iron Man armor while a prisoner in
Viet Nam. The Fantastic Four launched a rocket into space to beat the
Russians in the space race. Things like this made complete sense for
a number of years. Not so much fifty years later.
These
sorts of issues have usually been addressed obliquely by Marvel with
a sliding time scale. It wouldn't be mentioned for awhile and next
thing you know Stark is building his armor in a cave in Afghanistan.
Continuity,
the sense that there is a canonical storyline, is important to many
fans. I am certainly guilty of this. As much as many of us say that
all that matters is that we are told a good story, part of our
definition of good story is dependent on how well it fits in with our
own sense of the continuity of the characters. Whether fans say they
care or not, it has an effect on what books they read and what kind
of emotional investment they have in the characters. We all have a
head canon of what “actually” happened to these characters and
what didn't.
In
my personal head canon Hawkeye is morally opposed to killing no
matter how many stories Brian Michael Bendis wrote indicating
differently. The DC New 52 makes no sense to me if Dick Grayson
didn't grow up with Wally West and Donna Troy and become adults while
they were in the Teen Titans, none of which is true according to
current continuity. And yes, these are some of my personal bugaboos,
but we all have them. As much as I say I want change and different
points of view and these characters and universes need to grow and
change, the truth is I always have a certain knee-jerk reaction
against anything that contradicts my version of what took place, and
I'm ready to pull out the back issues to prove my point. It's all
right there in black and white and four-color printing. This actually
happened. It's canon!
Which
makes me ask the question, “Why?”
In
my last blog I talked about the unreliable nature of our personal
memory, about how none of us have access to the reality of any past
event, simply the story we tell about it. I can tell an anecdote from
my own life that other people who were there will remember completely
differently. The truth is, we're never sure of what really took place
in any definitive way. There is no official canonical version of our
past. We live our lives with the illusion of continuity but all we
really have is our own personal head canon of what we believe
happened. The stories of other people may contradict our version, or
add a different dimension of information. This current moment is
defined by the story we have constructed about our previous lives,
but if any or all of our memories are suspect, then who the hell am I
right now.
Welcome
to Existential Angst 101.
No
wonder a definitive continuity is important to us in our fictions.
How nice it would be to pull out a back issue of our lives from
twenty years ago and check to see what happened exactly the same way
we experienced it then. Then we could argue with someone with a
different opinion with some degree of authority.
Even
if it is unconscious, we long for certainty in our lives. It's part
of why we write fiction and tell stories. In our search for order
amidst the chaos we create a narrative. We attempt to impose plot and
structure on the random events of our day to day, to make sense of
the many unrelated aspects of our existence. When something breaks
our sense of continuity in comics we feel betrayed. I remember Peter
Parker and Mary Jane Watson being married... what do mean that never
happened? But it's easier to argue over this obviously imaginary
story than it is to reconcile conflicting narratives about our own
failed relationships.
In
the introduction to his story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow (Superman #423), Alan Moore, in direct reference to
the aforementioned practice of labelling out of continuity stories as
Imaginary Stories, famously said, “This is an imaginary story...
Aren't they all?” At the time this was seen by many as a negative
reaction to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, which consigned
much of Superman's previous history to non-canonical status. None of
those stories were real any more, as if any of them had any
reality beyond the printed page anyway. I think it was more than
that. I think it was commentary on the breadth of the imagination.
The
old stories don't go away when the official continuity is changed.
They're still there anytime someone picks up a back issue or a trade
paperback collection. Grant Morrison addresses this overtly in the
pages of Animal Man where a group of old DC characters who had
been consigned to Limbo by the Crisis discover, “Every time
someone reads our stories we live again!”
Unless
you have been keeping a running diary of your life, written as events
happened to you, you probably don't have a canonical history that you
can refer to. Even if you do, maybe it's time to start questioning
the back story you've been telling about yourself. Maybe not. How is
the story you tell helping you live life to the fullest? How is your
story limiting you? Maybe it's time for a soft reboot and a retelling
before a Crisis makes it necessary.
“Every
man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the
very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the
world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.
That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is
why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature,
is wondrous, and worthy of consideration.”
– Demian:
The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth by Hermann Hesse
I
have started a project that probably has no end, and no real
immediate goal other than the process itself.
Because
I don't have enough to do, apparently.
I
recently read an advance copy of The Sculptor, the new graphic
novel by Scott McCloud (of Understanding Comics fame). My main
thoughts on the book will appear in a review for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, so this blog isn't meant as an examination of the book.
But The Sculptor was a springboard for thinking about a whole
lot of stuff, primarily the nature of memory and how we construct the
story of our lives.
The
main character in the book, David Smith, is a sculptor. Most of his
work is an attempt to capture the small moments of his life, to
immortalize his memories in stone so that fleeting impressions will
not be lost. The story is also about the reality that death awaits us
all sooner or later. The classic idea that when you die your entire
life passes before your eyes is used to great dramatic effect in the
narrative. I think the essence of this notion is that in that last
moment we will find some kind of clarity as to what all the small
events and memories of our lives meant. What was the structure and
theme of this life I've led? What did I learn from all of this?
Which
got me to thinking about my own memories and life. Parts of our lives
“flash before our eyes” every time we have a memory. So, I
thought to myself, why wait until I die to try and see the whole
picture and see what I can learn?
In
the series of books written by Carlos Castaneda, books that were very formative to me at one time, he introduces the idea of
Recapitulation (The Eagle's Gift, 1982). Recapitulation
consisted of “recollecting one's life down to the most
insignificant detail.” The purpose of this was to engage the past
in an effort let go of the things that held you back, to escape the
demands of ego. Recapitulation is “genuine laughter upon coming
face to face with the boring repetition of one's self-esteem, which
is at the core of all human interactions.”
In
short, it is used to heal. This idea isn't new or exclusive to
Castaneda. It's part of most forms of psychotherapy.
I've
been watching the Showtime series The Affair this week. No
real spoilers here, but the conceit of the show is a “He Said, She
Said” sort of dialectic. Both of the main characters are relating
the memories of what took place, and the differences are significant,
indicating not that they are lying (though they may be), but that
each of them perceived the events through their own subjective
filters (what some friends of mine have been referring to as Reality
Tunnels). Events had different meanings and significance for each of
them, based on their own experience and perceptions. They are both
unreliable narrators.
Memory
is the most unreliable narrator we know. Any given event is a moment in
time that passes, only to be relived through the subjective memories
of those who experienced it. No two people ever remember things
exactly the same way. The difficulty in getting to the truth from
eyewitnesses is evidence of this. What we end up with is a consensual
reality, a version of the world we can all agree on even when it
doesn't really mesh with what we remember. Over time, the story, if
told well enough and often enough, replaces the actuality, often in
the face of overwhelming evidence. The historical reality is always
replaced by the story we tell about it.
And
we all tell different stories.
I'm
fascinated by this. It's one of the themes in my Arthurian novel,
Bedivere: The King's Right Hand. The tale is narrated by Sir
Bedivere in the later years of his life, and he is very aware of not
only the failings of his own memory, but of how the stories and
legends of King Arthur have already supplanted what he remembers as
the truth.
I've
read that our memory of an event is an ever-renewing process as well.
When we have a memory of something what we are actually recalling is
our previous memory of it, like rewriting over an already existing
file. Each time we have a memory we are different people than the
last time we remembered it. So now it is filtered through different
layers of understanding, changing its meaning, therefore changing the
actual memory every time.
So,
that project I mentioned... Yeah, I'm trying to log all my memories.
All of them. I know. It's impossible. That's okay. There's no
deadline. This isn't for public consumption or any kind of project I
ever intend to put out into the world (though some of the more
interesting or funny stories may make it into a blog or a Facebook status update occasionally). This is navel gazing at it's finest.
I'm
trying to be somewhat organized with how I do this. I do just jot
down random things as they come to me. Not everything, of
course.There's simply not enough time for that. It's amazing how many
little memories you can have in a single day when you just start
really paying attention to how you think. I've created files organized into various categories, like specific school memories, broken down by
grade, or describing everything I can about the house I grew up in.
I'm working on a list of every concert I've seen (I've seen a lot),
and trying to track down dates and venues and who the opening bands
were. I have some old ticket stubs and of course the internet helps.
I have specific memories of all of these, some more vibrant that
others.
The
process is a rabbit hole, of course. When I focus on one topic, say
first grade, it's amazing how many things come back that I haven't
thought of in years, like snow forts and head wounds and the time the
teacher broke the paddle on Kathy's butt.
So
why do this? To get a better understanding of my own story and look
for the recurring themes. To let some of it go, I suppose, though I
don't have a lot of regrets. I'm one of the lucky ones who had a
pretty happy childhood. To get ideas for stories. To enhance my
creativity. To record my memories before they're gone (for whose
benefit after I'm not sure).
One
of the problems that David Smith has in The Sculptor was that
he was so invested in capturing his past that he had problems living
in the present or making new memories. I don't think that's a
problem. My recent bout of hibernation and introversion aside, I have
a pretty full life, and will hopefully continue to have one.
In
the meantime, Once Upon a Time, that reminds me of a story...
