VinceT

A friend of mine is raving at the moment – RAVING – about Jonah Tolchin – it seems like every conversation of the past few weeks has included some mention of Jonah.

And, rightfully so, he’s very talented.

But this post isn’t about him.

It’s about me. And my friend.

More to the point, it’s about you.

See, earlier this week, after weeks of her recommendations, my friend asked me “what do you think of Jonah Tolchin?”

And, in all honesty, I replied that I hadn’t got around to listening to him yet.

There was a moment. One of those moments. We looked at each other, her with some measure of shock and hurt in her eyes, and me feeling that prickle of discomfort that I’d somehow done something wrong. The moment held, and then we got back to doing what we do best, blending energies to make everything move forward for the better.

But, as ever, I’ve been mulling it over.

We live in a recommendation-saturated world.

To build your online profile, to become “known”, is to draw eyeballs to your website, or band page, or gigs, regardless of whether those people stick around, whether they listen, whether they read. We’re being inculcated to equate passing interest with abiding care.

[and, yes, I did just use the world inculcated]

They’re not the same thing.

Is it better to have 20 people at a gig who are giving their full attention, or 40 who are talking all the way through the songs?

After the gig, in the telling, it’s always the higher number that wins out – but in the moment, I’ll take the 20 who are listening than the fat geezer at the bar holding court with his band of wankers, lording it over everyone’s conversation…

But I digress…

Fact is, I hadn’t said I’d listen to Jonah, so hadn’t broken any commitment, nor do I ever commit to following a recommendation, unless I fully intend to follow through.

I wish people were that honest and clear-cut with me.

See, one of the hazards of the online world is that artists can get, if they’re that way inclined, near-immediate feedback on listens, sales, reads, eyeballs, visits and probably, with the right skills, the mental health of visitors.

Put it simply: I know how many people listen to my songs, how many people buy my books, how many people read this blog post. Immediately.

And I know that those numbers are FAR lower than the number of people who say they’ll listen to my songs, read my books or visit the blog.

I wrote about how that feels last summer, and I don’t intend to rehash that here.

But I will say that, I think people have a knee jerk when speaking with an artist, of expressing interest and excitement, some of which is driven by wanting to be “nice”

[and the very American leaning towards passive-aggressive superficiality]

but most of which, I truly believe, is in very, very good faith – i.e. people say “oh, I’d love to hear you” and they really mean it. But then something happens, life intrudes, whatever, and they never quite get around to it. No biggie, right?

But it is, because now, the artist can see that you haven’t followed through. And when that one becomes ten, becomes twenty, none of whom follow through – well, you can see how that begins to feel like an insult, right? It’s not just me. I know it’s not.

I’ve lived with this long enough now to have recognized the pattern. It goes like this:

Me: “Yes, that’s right… I have published a number of books.”

Them: “Really?! How exciting! What are they about?”

Me: “Contemporary fiction, stories….”

[for your sake, we're hitting fast forward on the description, but just know it's to the point and makes me feel awfully like I'm over-self-promoting]

Them: “I’ll definitely check them out!”

Me: “Cool, let me know what you think, OK?”

Them: “Definitely.”

[weeks pass - I know they didn't act - every day when I check the numbers - our paths cross]

Them: “Oh, I didn’t get around to it. I really do need to read your stuff!”

Me: “Great. Let me know what you think, OK?”

Them: “Definitely.”

[weeks pass - no, scrub that, rinse and repeat the above for several cycles]

Eventually, I don’t even mention it. The deflation is mine. Completely and utterly mine.

Though sometimes, they do follow through. And they let me know what they think, like I asked. And guess what? Words like excellent, a story that tells itself, couldn’t put it down, difficult to tell if it’s fiction or reality the characters are so real. I feel elated and, as ever, blissfully thankful that I have art in my life and that people have cared enough to have shared in the journey.

And for a little while, that elation erases the bitter taste of so many broken promises. For a little while.

I said earlier, this isn’t a whine, but can I ask a favor – if you’re not a reader, please don’t tell a writer that you’ll read his books; if you don’t listen to anything but top-40 radio, please don’t tell a musician that you’ll spend some time at her website. It hurts more when you do that than just saying, “best of luck, I’m sure your stuff is really good, but sorry I won’t get chance to check it out”. Honest, it really does.

If you tell me you sing, or you write, or you have a website and I meet the news with a poker face, please know that it’s nothing personal.

And, please, if you are madly in love with an artist’s work, and can’t hold back from recommending them, don’t expect anyone to follow up on your recommendation. Recommend by all means, but if someone is honest enough to say that won’t follow up, or that they haven’t followed up, know that they’ve been honest from the outset and unwilling to lie to your face while reverting to their truth behind your back.

Thank you for reading. As ever, you have my love.

Vince

PS: by the way, you really should check out Jonah Tolchin – he’s very, very good. After all… he comes with the highest recommendation )

… Elton John said that. Or, more likely, Bernie Taupin did.

But I digress.

A good friend of mine was browsing my online profile t’other day

[thanks, Dianne!]

and dropped me a Facebook comment:

I like “You Say”, but Vince, why all of the darkness in your songs? Your life is extremely full, awesome and positive. MOST of your songs are dark. “You Say” has more of an upbeat melody, which I like, even though the words are still a little bit dark. Is it that sadness, in general, writes better music? Just wondering what drives your music.

It’s such a great question, and not the first time I’ve been asked – by others and, more importantly, by myself.

I’ve been writing songs for upwards of 30 years now and, while my capabilities have improved, my muse has proven pretty consistent. I didn’t always know how to say/sing what I wanted to, and when I listen back to earlier songs, they feel clumsy, indistinct, unrealized. But the core of them is true to what I wanted to share.

All of which is a way to say that I don’t know that I so much choose to write songs as much as these songs move through me and out into the world. Any musician, actually let’s expand that to artist, who has travelled into and through their muse, has given themselves up to it, will know what I mean here – the muse works through us.

As BB King said about Stevie Ray Vaughan – “Stevie doesn’t play the blues, the blues plays through Stevie.”

So, what do I know of my muse?

First of all, it reflects – I spend most of my time watching the world, watching people, sensing patterns within the chaos, gradually piecing together my ‘grand theory of everything’. It’s lonely over here – a thread about connection and belonging shows up all over the place in my songs.

All of that stuff, drops down into my subconscious which just chews over and over. Eventually something burps up to my front brain – I can usually sense it brewing; in dreams or idle moments. Sometimes it’ll be a song fragment, or a story idea, or a blog piece, or whatever form it takes.

Having done this for my whole life, I’ve got pretty good at letting my subconscious be, and trust it’ll tell me when it’s ready. I’ve also learned to give it a kick every now and then – my poetry prompts at Facebook, using Plinky, forcing myself to write on a given subject, all ways of keeping the wiring alive.

To Dianne’s question, though, why does my music tend toward the dark?

Well, firstly, I’ve come to believe that certain chords and progressions resonate with me – when I’ve spent time thinking on it, or discussing it, I wonder about physical resonance, the length of vocal chords, resonant cavities in the head

[you know, the ones that fill up with snot when you have a cold]

and know that certain tones just work for me – A minor, for example, shows up all over the place in my songs. Some of that, though, is the form-factor of the six-string guitar in standard tuning. A minor is part of a walking set of chords, C, F, Em, G, Dm that just work for most songs.

So, physically, I ‘get’ minor chords and they’re natural for me to play on the guitar. That leans my music towards the dark.

But it doesn’t cover lyrical content, does it?

Dianne is right, my life is full, awesome and positive – and has been for as long as I can remember – I am truly, truly lucky in life and love. But my muse knows that, even then, I experience doubt, sadness, and fear. And that dreadful loneliness. We all do. It is the human condition – all those survival instincts and neurons don’t disappear just because life is good. We’re wired to respond to threat.

We’re also painfully aware of our own mortality.

“Even if time is just a flicker of light, and we all have to die alone” (The Finn Brothers, “Won’t Give In”)

And I think, when it comes to my muse, that’s what shows up. Most of my art has a yearning for life – it’s touched by wonder of what is, and the crushing sadness that one day it won’t be there any more. Each moment looking in my kids eyes, knowing that moment can’t be lived again. There is so much life to be lived and so little life in which to live it. And, though I never want to lose a single moment, that next moment looks oh so enthralling.

So, Dianne, that’s the core of my muse, the yearning and melancholy of my own mortality. But I’ll throw the question back, maybe I’m lucky in this life because my muse let’s me discharge the things that could sabotage me? If I play out my neuroses, anxieties and stress in my songs and stories, aren’t I removing them from the enormous hopper that is my subconscious? If I connect with anyone who listens or reads, aren’t I looking that loneliness in the face.

But there’s more. When I say my muse reflects, I also mean that it means something to my audience. To take a personal experience, emotion, sensation and turn it to universal meaning is the ultimate artistic act. Think of U2, who took a personal reaction to intra-band tensions during the Achtung Baby sessions and turned it to the truly universal anthem, “One”.

For this reason, I don’t often describe what’s going on in songs, or more specifically the writing of them

[except For Granted, which is dedicated to Jo Short, a dear friend who we lost to cancer]

I’m always trying to expand my muse to encompass and engage others’ experience. I don’t always get it right, but when I do I know, because people tell me.

And so, we come to the final part of this extended answer. Why do I write these songs, with their melancholic dark edge?

Simply because, no matter how the surface may seem, how much people exist in their story, everybody experiences some of what I’ve been describing and if I can offer even a moment of understanding, solace, reflection, or sympathy – to let people know they’re not alone with it – I will. That’s my muse, that’s why I sing, that’s what I offer to the world.

There, D, now you see why I couldn’t fit it in a Facebook comment!

And, as ever, thanks for being here, you have my love.

For too long
these shapling
structures
consumed our air
and swallowed
our
best
hearts

Drowning
out yearning
disavowing all
desire
for freedom
to choose
our
best
paths

Finally abandoned
obtuse orders
constrictions
fighting free
yielding promise
our
best
ideas

Our muse swelling
creative
“Here we are!”
Yelling at bonds
Those pitiful
objectionable
meaningless
fear-driven
tethered restraints

“These!”
we cry
“These are
our
best
hearts!”

Flooding
dungeons
Emitting
Radiant
Exultant
Breaking
senseless bounds

We screamed
emergent…

Emerging
from
the shroud

I was interviewed at The Examiner over the weekend as my last formal stop on the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… I can, and do, write pretty much anywhere. At home, my office is chaotic, but I fall through the computer screen pretty quickly and all the junk and paraphernalia on my desk disappear.

I always have music on when I write, and I count that as the most important part of my writing environment. I usually write to what I call ‘transport music’, floating away from my own moment and into the landscape of the story. For Family Rules, and especially the redraft, I was listening a lot to the Scottish band Mogwai, who make epic heavy instrumental rock, very powerful stuff.

So, I tend to think of my writing environment as my MacBook Pro, a screen and transport music, all taking me into the heart of my stories…”

I was humbled to read this review of Family Rules at Word Up Nerd Up today:

“… I picked this up for a casual afternoon perusal, intending to read the slim volume over the course of a couple of days. Within the first few pages I was lost in the time warp that is brought on by a really good story. There was no way I was ending the day with Family Rules unfinished.

The story ricochets between the UK and New York, the 1980′s and present day, all narrated [sic] in Kenny’s plaintive voice. He was at once a child who had to grow up too quickly, and an adult who never did grow up, suspended in a state of perpetual discomfort and discombobulation.

Kenny’s life as a child actor is central to the story, but surprisingly it is not accusatory. Throughout it all Kenny is damaged, but he is not deviant- a small, but important, distinction.

My biggest problem with this book was the inconsistent use of American and British spellings and colloquilisms. Quite truthfully, it is exactly the kind of inconsistency you would expect from a young man who spent his first years in the UK, then moved to the US with his British parents. I know this, yet I still found it distracting. What can I say? I’m nerdy that way.

My verdict: Read it! One thought I had as I raced through Family Rules is that it is what A Million Little Pieces could have been, had it been good. For all the over the top angst and drama spewed by Frey, he didn’t get it right. Tuckwood has managed to create a believable story that leaves us feeling both saddened and hopeful for the main character. It is still early in the year, but I have a feeling that Family Rules may very well end up on my list of top reads in 2012…”

Today, I’m interviewed over at As The Pages Turn as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… To understand Kenny, it’s really important to know that he spent the first five years of his life raised by a television-family, often being treated as little more than a prop or dummy. It’s also worth noting that his addictions began in those years, his minders giving him Valium in honey to keep him calm between scenes. The upshot is that psychologically, Kenny runs away from reality whenever it gets too close. He’s quite a poignant, tragic character; as a writer, he feels very real to me, more-so perhaps than any character I’d written before.

Ivvy is like the Yang to Kenny’s Yin. She’s a junkie cop, working undercover for Vice. Older than Kenny, she’s drawn to normality like a moth bashing its head against a porch light. This push-pull between Kenny and Ivvy is key to understanding their relationship. She’s clinging to him for some sense of a normality she can attain, while he’s repelled by her neediness because it feels too real.

The joy for me in writing Family Rules was to take these two damaged people and make them ‘parents’…”

Today, I’m guest blogging at Idea Marketers as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… To write to an outline or by pure intuition?

Ah, the artist’s endless dilemma!

With structure and plan, we know where we’re going, so get to travel easier, safe in the knowledge that there is a destination; comfortable that we will arrive, even if the journey meanders.

Riding the intuitive lightning? It’s a mercurial roller-coaster of channeled creativity, while in the background, the whispering critic challenges us that we don’t know enough, aren’t clever enough, aren’t worthy enough to bring this crested wave to fruition. An extreme activity for sure, and it carries its fair share of highs and hangovers.

In the past twenty years of writing, I’ve written books at both ends of this spectrum…”

And, before you even think of calling me

[Mum]

I’m not thinking of starting up again.

I just finished Certainty, the screen adaptation of Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and am very pleased, and humbled, by how its turned out.

That last may strike you as odd, to be humbled by a story. But if you read Memento: 2001- My own time and space oddity, you’ll remember that the novel was written against a backdrop of seismic shift in my life. Most of the writing still feels like a dream to me.

In the 8 years since I published the book, I’ve tried to start writing the screenplay a number of times but never gained traction with my muse. And, as ever with my novels, all the time I’ve had readers telling me that they can see the movie when the read the story, and that I should really think about adapting it.

Last year, around the time I started work on Team Building, I took tentative steps to begin Certainty, but all the other stuff of last year held me off any serious work until December.

And when I did turn my attention to the adaptation, I realized just what had been holding me back.

I was stuck in the how of telling Ray’s rebirth.

For those who haven’t read Sparrows, it’s told in first-person, present-tense – i.e. what happens to Ray happens to the reader in real-time. By necessity, there’s a LOT of internal dialogue and Ray’s weighing up of events, and of his reactions. This lends pace to the writing and, truly, is what brings people into the story so deeply – we experience Ray’s rebirth, we don’t observe it.

All of which is great in a novel but, frankly, crap in a movie – unless we’re making 1960′s French art house, which we’re not.

[believe me, if I'd written and published this in the 60's, there's a good chance that's exactly what would have happened]

There was a real risk that this would be a) a boring film, b) completely lost in self-analysis, and c) totally unworthy of the original novel. This is a story I love, filled with characters I know intimately, and I couldn’t let myself do that to myself.

So I was stuck.

Until, one day in the shower

[oh, how the movement of water, and idle reflection, opens my sub-conscious]

I had a very clear and vivid snapshot of how to bring the internal dialogue to the screen.

[and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is]

Tentatively, I started carving the screenplay – lifting the whole book over, chopping out all the unnecessary, and porting the internal dialogue into the vehicle I’d imagined. And boy did it work! In the space of a couple of weeks, I reworked, tightened and shaped this story for the screen. A couple of days back I registered it for copyright and it’s already heading out into the world.

And, yes, I was humbled by the process – as I often am. When you give yourself to your art, and allow it to flow through you, it can feel other-worldly – a scary feeling, a joyous feeling.

Once again, Ray’s story has told itself and, though the hard work of getting it out there now begins, right now I feel like a post-coital cigarette.

If only I still smoked.

Which I don’t.

But you get my drift anyway, right?

I’m being interviewed over at Broowaha today as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… I read voraciously, both fiction and non-fiction, so it’s difficult to pin down specific books.

Some books that now feature high on my list didn’t make sense at first, mainly because I think I read them when I was too young. A good example of this is George Orwell’s 1984, which I tried to read several times as a teenager, and could never get past the first few chapters. I read it again recently and was stunned by Orwell’s prescience – especially given the idiocy of modern politics, the shock doctrine and double-speak media, where it feels like 1984 is being used as a “how to” manual. I guess I needed the maturity of the intervening years to be able to open myself to its political insights…”

Today, I was interviewed at Blogcritics as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… Of The Tribe was a vampire tale, Jeremiah Whispers a metaphysical homage to Clive Barker, and Jumbo a take on the media and its fascination with quasi-messianic characters in the midst of tragedy. The triggering event in Jumbo is a 747 crashing in Central London and, bearing in mind this was written six years before 9/11, when the planes struck the twin towers, I just gave up any idea that it would get published. With a complete rewrite to reflect 9/11, it could have current credibility – but, to be honest, I’ve not got much energy to revisit that path, not when there are new stories to tell…”