Accidental Historian

Weird Summer's Comin' On, Yes it's Comin' On

Things I'm looking forward to, summer 2012 edition:

Redshirts, Scalzi's new one that looks like it's back to his style for The Android's Dream, a/k/a Christopher Moore decides to try his hand at true sci-fi.

Caliban's War, by James S.A. Corey, the follow-up to Leviathan's Wake, which was total awesome sauce.  If you like Arthur C. Clarke-style high concept sci-fi mixed mil sf, a monster story, and a detective noir-style personal journey, Leviathan's Wake is totally your thing.  If you don't want that, I don't want to be friends with you.  Anyway, yeah, Caliban's War, looking forward to it.

Blackout, by Mira Grant.  I can't tell you how much I loved Feed and Deadline.  I've talked about them before, though.  Anyway, Deadline ended on one hell of a cliffhanger.  Wait, no, two hells of a cliffhanger.  Three, maybe, if you count the overall story behind the two cliffhangers.[1]

Meanwhile, between now and then, there's a prequel-ish short story to Leviathan Wakes and a prequel novella to Feed. I'm actually planning on re-reading the books during the month of May, too, which is pretty unprecedented for me.[2]

Also, too, there's new Lost Immigrants on the way.  And the new Scott Lucas & the Married Men stuff is set for June 5.

RCPM are doing their Wisconsin swing at the end of June.  That means Madison, Milwaukee, New Glaurus beer, and Fuzzy's Tacos for this guy.  Hell, yeah.

Oh, and did I mention I bought a house?  I'm hoping it will be move-in ready in three weeks.  So that'll be nice.  The stuff I thought would take a long time is way ahead of schedule.  The stuff I didn't realize was a problem, though, is going to delay things just a bit.

Oy vey.

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[1]I'm still a not-fan of the whole zombie apocalypse thing.  I enjoyed Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead because they were hilarious.  As for the main trope, meh.  But I still can't get enough of Mira Grant's stuff.  I also strongly recommend Colson Whitehead's Zone One.  Both are post-zombie apocalypse and both use the idea in the standard sci-fi "meditation on life as we know it in a very different world" concept.  Grant goes for a systemic look at how we build society and disseminate information.  Whitehead uses a stream-of-consciousness approach and uses the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for how we create walls around ourselves and settle for mediocrity.  Whitehead actually gets really low marks on Goodreads, but the stuff he gets marked down for is exactly the stuff that I think he does really well: it's a more-or-less emotionless, stream-of-consciousness meditation on life as we know it set in a zombie apocalypse.  If you want Left 4 Dead, this isn't for you.  If you want something with substance and a totally immersive setting, this is an amazing book, especially since there's one totally crazy reveal at the end that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of the book but is a kind of, "Holy shit," moment that wouldn't exist if the book was written any other way.

[2]I think we're hitting a critical mass for books in the same way we hit a critical mass for music about five to ten years ago.  The eBook platform is allowing authors to release a lot of interesting background material in the form of short stories and novellas directly to people who can then get it immediately and without, say, having to find it in a random copy of a magazine somewhere.  That, plus the ability to self-publish and actually get the material out to a wide audience, is going to rock the publishing industry in the same way that the internet, mp3 players, and iTunes/Amazon have brought the traditional recording industry to its knees.  Long-term I think it will be good.  Short-term it's going to hurt a lot of people but bring success to a lot of people who were otherwise kept out of the game.

Burgle...Flickle...

I really, really need to stop reading Slacktivist.  He keeps putting up posts that lead to plot bunnies and I JUST DON'T HAVE TIME FOR PLOT BUNNIES.

But look at this. JUST friggin' LOOK at this.  Various aliens from around the universe showing up on Earth to stop the Rapture?  Really?  Really?

How can I resist an idea like that?

Stay tuned.  I'm working this thing up.  Chances are it will heavily crib from various other sources, since, y'know, I don't have a hell of a lot of time.  But it won't be plagiarism, no way, no how.  We call this a "homage."

In which Geds solicits advice

My first post at the old Accidental Historian blogspot site came in March of 2007.  At that point I just wanted to write and I didn't really give a shit who, if anybody, bothered to read what I wrote.

In the nearly five years I've been doing this I've rarely gotten a sustained circulation of more than 50 or so hits per day and I don't really have a large number of regular readers and/or commenters.  For the most part this doesn't bug me.  C'est la vie, really.  I've always seen that as a bonus: I can write anything and don't have to answer to anyone.  It also contains the blog's biggest weakness: I don't feel like anyone gives a shit, so why bother?

Don't take this the wrong way, my dozen-or-so regulars.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you.  I'm just saying, "Holy crap, I've been writing a goddamn blog on the goddamn internet for nearly five years and I have a circulation of basically NOTHING."  I read a bunch of blogs that started well after I did that get more hits in a day than I get in a month and more comments on a post than I...um, than I ever get.  Then I check my stats and see that part of the problem is that about half of my hits come from people Googling "why coldplay sucks" and ending up at a post I crapped out a year ago because I felt like making fun of Coldplay.

It's disheartening, is what I'm saying.

While I've got spare time and I just feel like it, blogging is an interesting diversion.  I've had copious amounts of spare time for the better part of the past half-decade.  As I see my time getting more limited, though, I'm seeing less and less need to maintain this particular, time-consuming hobby if all I'm doing is engaging in long-form talking to myself.

Thus, I find myself at a fork in the road.  Either I stop blogging more-or-less entirely because of the whole concept of diminishing returns or I change the way I blog.  The "way" might end up being shorter, but at the very least it would be tighter and more focused on flogging a few hobbyhorses.  Believe it or not, but I have developed a fairly keen sense of what's worth writing about and what isn't over these last few years.  I've also developed a fairly keen sense of what is and isn't working whilst writing.  The number of posts that I've started but haven't finished has increased dramatically over the years.  At least, it had up until recently, when I started throwing crap up against the wall just for the sake of doing it.

That's neither here nor there, though.  What I write will, ultimately, be what I write no matter what.  How I choose to write about it will be my responsibility, too.  It's time for me to actually acknowledge the issue of why I write this blog, which I've ignored for quite some time.

Anyone who blogs does so because they want to have a voice.  I, personally, feel that I have something to add to a larger dialogue.  I feel that when I'm actually putting effort in to said additions to a larger dialogue I do so in an artful and thoughtful way.  And, to put it crassly, I'm getting really fucking tired of putting a lot of time, thought, and effort in to a post, then seeing that almost no one reads that but a shitload of people are reading my "thoughts" about why Coldplay is a terrible band.

And so but anyway, all whining aside, we get to the whole bit about soliciting advice:

I know that several of my readers are, themselves, proprietors of blogs that have footprints larger than mine.  It's almost impossible, really, to have a blog that doesn't get more readers than I do.  I've not spent a whole lot of time thinking about promotion or circulation or any such thing, but I'm thinking it's probably time to start doing that.

As such, dear readers (who didn't come here through a Google search for Coldplay, as I'VE TOTALLY GOT THAT COVERED), how the hell does one go about increasing circulation?  Seriously.  I'm stymied by this one...

Some of My Best Friends are Trains

There is one overarching truth of human nature that is made absolutely crystal clear by continual use of public transportation:  people are creatures of intense habit.  They tend to arrive at the train platform at roughly the same time every morning, carry the same things, stand in the same spot, and get on the same car to head towards the city, where they undoubtedly will do about the same thing they did yesterday and will do tomorrow.  In the evening, meanwhile, a different collection of the same people get on to a different same car on a different same train.

In realizing this aggregate habit it is possible for the observer to then see an additional overarching truth of human nature:  I am a create of intense habit.  The observer, after all, must be in the same place at the same time every day in order to habitually observe the habits of the observed.  The divide between subject and object is then obliterated and the observing self becomes the observed other.

Of course if that gets too complicated, too post-modernistically deconstructionist, there’s a different option.  Sometimes you can simply think about trains.

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The train is a fascinating artifact of the human experience.  It is both an object and a subject in and of itself.[1]  When the train arrived it brought with it the full potential to change the world in ways that were impossible before that moment.  The train, after all, obliterated distance.  As long as there were tracks a train could run on them.  It was no longer subject to the speed of man or beast and no longer subject to the simple fact that even the most robust of creatures becomes tired after a time.  It was also not subject to wind and current in the way the previous forms of mass transit were.

The train, instead, made a subject of all.  It destroyed space and, in doing so, created time.

See, time was a wonderfully imprecise and subjective thing before the train arrived.  Noon was not twelve o’clock, but the time the Sun was at its highest point in the sky.  So noon in one town was 11:55 in the next town west and 12:05 in the next town east.

This made scheduling a train difficult.  Trains only make sense if people know where and when to meet them.  The where is simple:  go to the tracks, find a place where the train stops.  The when becomes complicated, though.  If the train stops in one town at noon, then travels for five minutes to the west it might make another stop at noon.  If it travels five minutes east it instead makes another stop at 12:10.

This is not a problem for the person waiting to meet the train.  If you know when the sun is at its highest point then you know the train will be in the station at that time and you can meet it.  Time is a completely subjective thing, after all.

This is a massive problem for the person sending the train.  A succession of noontime stops becomes unwieldy and complicated.  It also invites the potential disaster of an eastbound train and a westbound train on the same stretch of track meeting at a noon neither knew existed.

Time, then, needed to stop being a subjective thing, depending on the perspective of the individual, and instead become an objective thing, subjected to the needs of the mass population.  Noon in one town, in short, needed to become noon in the next town over and the next town back, regardless of the actual, physical location of the sun.  After that avoiding tragedy and obliterating distance simply became a matter of making the trains run on time.

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“Make the trains run on time.”

It’s a concept with a sinister connotation in the modern world.  That was, after all, the promise offered by the nascent fascist movements of Europe in the lead-up to that orgy of senseless violence and destruction that defines the 20th Century.  But the promise, as anyone who was listening no doubt knew, was not to actually make the trains run on time.  It was to enforce order and create orthodoxy.  For in order there was certainty.  In certainty, so the theory then must go, there is strength.

The train, then, became the object once again.  It was the mere abstract symbol of the human yearning for order, pace, and blessed, unthinking habit.

The train, that wonderfully constructive and destructive force, became the very tool and symbol of the banality – the habit, if you will – of evil.

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The Nazis made the trains run on time.  They made the trains with their long lines of cattle- and boxcars loaded down with the damned run from the ghettos to the gates of Auschwitz and Dachau.

Without the train the Holocaust would have been impossible.

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Making the trains run on time is a promise that doesn’t make sense, really, since time itself was re-created to run on trains.

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Perhaps, then, it’s best not to think about trains and to, instead, attempt to follow that rabbit hole logic of the subject becoming object and observer becoming observed.  It’s best, too, to do so at a tea house, away from the office and especially away from the trains that take you to and from that obsidian monument to human habituation.

Preferably an infrequently or never before visited tea house.  That way the decision at least carries the veneer of spontaneity.

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I do not trust people who refuse to appreciate art.

This is a statement, I suppose, of snobbishness.  It separates the world in to “my people” and “those people,” the subject and the objects.[2]  It imagines a world where I only want to spend time with those who stand in silence before a Rothko, considering the deep meaning of a red square on a differently colored red background.  It implies that I spend my time watching dense films, probably in French and with subtitles.

This is because we’ve taken the concept of “art” and sealed it off from the world.  We have deadened art, made it into the sort of thing that implies Old Masters or densely impenetrable post-modernists pulling a fast one on the world by slapping random splotches on a canvas and calling it “art.”  We have, in short, attempted to separate that which is artful from that which is human.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  Art is still very much a human endeavor, created by and intended for humans.  What we’ve done is something more insidious.  We’ve created tiers of art.

We have endeavored to define art as “high” or “low.”  There is that which is “art” and deserves to be hung in museums, discussed in low tones by serious people.  There is that which is “popular art” and deserves to be tossed out to the madding crowd, torn apart, and discarded.

That barrier between the high and the low is absurd and artificial.[3]  Popular art is still art.  It’s that simple.[4]  We tend not to realize that, though, because we lack historical perspective.

We regard Shakespeare as one of the greatest writers and playwright in the history of the English language.  Students are required to read his plays in school.  Entire festivals, hell, an entire town in Canada, are devoted to the production of his plays.  It must be the case, then, that Shakespeare was regarded as the best playwright of his own time.

Not so much.  He was simply one of the most popular.  That popularity, it should really be no surprise, came from the fact that he was one of the most accessible playwrights for his generation.  We have declared him one of the greatest when the truth is that he is actually probably just one of the most memorable.[5]  Not that the “just” there impinges, in any way, on the Bard’s ability.

That’s simply the Darwinian nature of cultural memory.[6]  Survival goes to the fittest, not the best.  The consolation prize is the same for everyone.

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The first time I encountered Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers’ album No More Beautiful World I thought it was an uncharacteristically depressing album title, considering that Clyne’s songs are almost always about finding the happiness and light in life.  It was an album title that seemed to wallow in death and decay, despair in the hopelessness of a better world gone past.

Eventually I realized that it was a koan.  The album title could be read as a dirge to a better, past world.  It could also be read as a celebration of this, the Panglossian world that is relentless in its goodness, nay, its best-ness.

It asks a question on the nature of perspective.  It asks us to make a choice.

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Mike Doughty’s “Rational Man” ends in a strange coda of, “Don’t shoot Donna don’t don’t shoot Donna Donna don’t shoot Donna don’t don’t.”  At first encounter the coda seems to plead with Donna.

“Don’t shoot, Donna,” he pleads, “Please don’t pull that trigger.”

Listen long enough, though, and it changes.

“Don’t shoot Donna,” he pleads, “Please don’t pull that trigger.”

That comma, that simple bit of punctuation, changes the idea completely.  In one Donna is the subject, acting upon this beautiful, arbitrary world.  In the other Donna is an object, being acted upon by this beautiful, arbitrary world.  In one she has all agency.  In the other she has none.

This little episode contains no context.  It simply exists, following the words that preceded it with no explanation, no citation.  It is a tableau, a word picture painted by three words.  It is an observed event that changes depending on how it is observed.

It is an object, in short, that can be observed in different ways depending on the observer’s state of mind.  It can be observed in different ways depending on the observer’s understanding of language.

To put it another way, it is art.

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Art is both object and subject.  It is something that is created with one mind and observed with another.  It is something that is partially, if not wholly, dependent on being observed in order to exist.[7]

But in being observed that which is art invites the observer to also become the observed.

Thus, we have come full circle.  Perhaps it's best to pause here, look out the window, and just watch the world slide by for a bit.

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[1]This, of course, is not strictly true.  The train lacks consciousness and so is rendered forever inert, an object.  We, however, personify the train, project its designed functions in to a self-determining goal and personality.  It is the core of human nature to objectify the subject and subjectify the object.

[2]While simultaneously making “my people” an object as well.  It defines people according to my external classification.  Simultaneously, too, it makes the newly objectified into subjects.  But they are not subjects in the sense that they are subjective observers, but subjects in the sense that I am saying, “These people belong to me.”

This is the joy and frustration of that wonderfully imprecise thing we call language.

[3]This, I believe, is the point that Andy Warhol was attempting to make.

[4]This is not to say that all art-like things intended for popular consumption deserve to be called “art,” however.  I would, instead, say that we can (and should) draw three broad categories: “art,” kitsch,” and “propaganda.”  We can then draw the lines between these categories not with the question, “What is it?” but, “What is it intended to be?”  This question then makes the differences clear.

You would not, after all, open up a new wing in the MOMA and hang a Rembrandt between a Thomas Kinkaide painting and a poster exhorting people to buy war bonds.  One is proper art, one is kitsch, and one is propaganda.

To look at it another way, while Britney Spears and Lady GaGa both fit under the broad umbrella of pop music, the former is a purely manufactured entity presented to the world to sell records while the latter is an individual who has intention and a message.  We’ve already seen a dozen Britney Spears clones, but will never again see another Lady GaGa.  As such, Spears is a purveyor of kitsch and Lady GaGa is an artist.  I can say this in spite of the fact that I don’t actually much care for either one.  The question, “Is this art?” is, after all, a completely separate question than, “Is this good art?” which is, in turn, further removed from, “Do I like this?”

Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, Toby Keith is a propagandist.  At least, he is when he’s not being a purveyor of kitsch.

[5]On the off chance this seems counter-intuitive, consider something more recent.  If you’re in a place that sells second-hand games for the original Nintendo console, the game you’re most likely to see is the original Super Mario Bros, probably the one with Duck Hunt on the same cartridge.  That game is also most likely to be the least expensive game on the rack.  Why?  Because everyone got a copy of that game when they bought the console, so thousands upon thousands of copies still survive.  You can probably get one for a buck ninety-nine.  If any original Nintendo game survives for the next five hundred years, it stands to reason, it will probably be Super Mario Bros.

Does that mean it’s the best Nintendo game?  Absolutely not.  It simply means it’s the most prolific Nintendo game.

The most expensive Nintendo game, meanwhile, is an extremely rare demo cartridge.  It’s not even a complete game.  But its rarity is what makes it expensive.  And since there are probably less than ten copies of that game in the world, it probably won’t last five hundred more years.

[6]This throws my art/kitsch/propaganda argument in to chaos and reveals it for what it is: a convenient artifice.  It forces me to ask the question, “Would I have dismissed Shakespeare as a mere purveyor of kitsch or Jaques-Louis David a mere propagandist?”

Put another way: five hundred years from now will the Art institute be mounting Thomas Kincaide retrospectives and serious musicians assembling elaborate stages in order to recreate the Britney Spears concert experience?

[7]For this we can advance another koan, a variation on question of trees and forests that has been repeated so many times it has become trite and meaningless:  If a painting is placed in an empty room does it exist?

Scalzi!

Man.  Reading this guy is like a clinic on how to combine the awesomest possible words in the magnificentest possible way.

He is just so damn good that I don't even think I have the energy to try to write my own stuff any more.  It just looks like complete crap by comparison.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the corner, quietly weeping with a bottle of bourbon.  Turn the lights off, the book writing industry is closed...

Peel that Skin Away

After all this time I’m still on the line
With a case to prove and a public to move
After all my turning this fire is still burning
And I’m back on show
With a mile to go
With one more mile to go
--Mike Scott, “Sunrising”

I’m working on my escape plan.

There are certain songs I just want to crawl inside of and listen to over and over again.  They’re almost never songs about love.  The idea of love, of intimacy is, to me, a momentary abstraction.  It’s something to contemplate, but as an object of art to be set back on its mantle or returned to its hanger.

I don’t identify with the songs that make me want to love.  I much prefer the ones that make me want to leave.

The problem is, though, I’m always afraid to leave.  I seek out things that make me feel safe and comfortable.  I seek out routine and familiarity.  I seek out stability and the mundane.  I seek…well, I seek the life I never wanted.  All the while my dreams slowly fade toward obscurity.

I fear my dreams.  They beckon me, call me to bare my soul, to struggle mightily, to risk failure, to prove that I am not as small and as weak and as pathetic as I sometimes seem to be and often think I am.  My dreams, in short, are worth pursuing.  But it is that worthiness that makes them so very terrifying.

I’m at the point where I have literally everything I want and am looking for excuses to want more.  I have become the ideal American: flush with disposable income and in love with the consumption of random gadgetry for the sake of consuming random gadgetry.  I have an iPhone 3GS, a new enough laptop, and a brand-new desktop computer, all of which more than suit the needs for which I purchased them.  Today I was looking at the Asus Eee Slate.  I’ve also been thinking of getting a Motorola Atrix.  Why?

Fuck if I know.

This is what happens, though.  This world we live in strives to kill our dreams.  “You don’t want to follow your muse,” it says, “You want this new toy.”  And so we do what we need to get that toy only to find that it does not offer us the same satisfaction we’d sought.  But getting that toy was easier.  It took less time, less work, cost a lot less.  Well, assuming the soul has no value.

What did the wise man say?  It does you no good to gain the world and lose your soul.

So I find myself on the cusp of 30 making money a lot of people my age would love at a company most people would kill to count as their employer.  It has allowed me to accumulate all the toys I want.  But those toys have cost me quite a bit more than money.  They’ve cost me my freedom.  They’ve cost me my soul.

It feels like such a horrible thing to complain about this, my good fortune.  It’s unsightly, untoward.

My company has a little ritual.  At the beginning of any department- or company-wide meeting there is an announcements section.  People who hit service milestones during the previous quarter are recognized.  People with five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty years of time, work, and experience get named and the crowd applauds.  There are always a lot of names, too.  It comes on the heels of the new hire announcements, so those newly-acquired folk are told, “This is what you can expect here.  This is what you can look forward to.”  It is, for most, a good thing, a positive thing.

I’m always depressed by the end of those meetings.  I can’t imagine being here for ten years.  I’ve already almost got three under my belt and imagine five will be inevitable.  I also hope I’ll manage to not have a nervous breakdown when my name is announced at the company-wide meeting.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with my life.

It’s that this isn’t the life I want.  This is the life I lead because I am terrified of the life I want to lead.

So it’s time for me to make my escape.

More precisely, it’s time for me to stop putting off doing the things I know I must, so when the time comes I can actually make my escape in a methodical and well-planned series of actions.  But that second way of saying it is incredibly unwieldy.

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Here’s the thing.  My greatest desire has also been relatively easy for me to ignore, as I want to be an author and, holy hell, that’s a tough thing to be.  I’ve never, to the best of my knowledge, gotten off the slush pile.  No one knows who I am and no one apparently cares too much.

Over the last year, however, I’ve noticed that this has changed.  The revolution that has destroyed the music industry as we knew it ten years ago is now in the process of doing the same thing to the publishing industry.  Thanks to the Kindle, the Nook, iBooks, and Google Books, self-publishing is actually something that a lot of authors can turn in to a worthwhile venture, rather than a costly hobby for people with more money than brains.

So here’s my (well-considered and methodical) plan:

Sometime this summer I’m going to run an experiment.  I’m going to run out an anthology of short stories that have never been published for a low, low price just to see how to do it and if I can figure out marketing.  By this time next year I plan to take what I will most certainly learn from that experience and publish a novel.  There’s a good chance it will be the re-write of Second Chances I’ve been claiming to work on, but haven’t done much about because I couldn’t see the utility in doing such a thing.

I’m not planning on changing the world here.  By the same token, I would like to be able to make some money off of writing and at least have the option of not feeling trapped and hopeless whenever someone’s thirty-year anniversary with the company is mentioned.  Most importantly, I’d like to feel like I’m not growing older while my dreams are slowly dying and I’m doing my best to ignore them and hoping they die quietly in a corner.

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Odds are, though, I’ll need some help.

First off, if anyone knows a good copy editor who’s willing to work freelance for a reasonable sum, let me know.  I’m assuming I’ll need one.

Second, if anyone actually knows anything about how this stuff works from personal experience or knows anyone who does, I’ll take any help I can get.

Third, any advice on self-promotion would be really, really helpful.  As everyone who reads this knows, I am not big on self-promotion.  Chances are good that I’ve spent more time alienating than welcoming you if you are a regular reader over here.

That last one is probably key.

Oh, and fourth: random encouragement would probably help, too…

Art and Authenticity, Part 4

There is, sadly, still a dark underside to the idea of art in the church as espoused by The Line.

[The Line church planter Aaron] Youngren, the son of church planters in Ecuador, began to see artists through a missiological lens, thinking of these “misfits” and “extras” as a lost tribe.

This I can see.  This I actually agree with.  The church as I knew it had no real grasp on what to do with artists.  Sure, if you could play an instrument or carry a tune they’d love to have you lead worship.  But beyond that…well…

I ran in to occasional instances where church services would try to incorporate art.  They’d encourage the congregation to add something to a canvas in the back of the room in an attempt to illustrate their walk with Jesus or some other such random activity.  But that’s not really something that gets to the heart of what art actually is.  It is expression, yes, and expression in an artistic medium.  But artistic expression does not necessarily create art.[1]  At the very least it does not begin to explore the depths of art itself.  It is superficial and self-referential.  It is also directed and constrained by the fact that the creation is a community activity in response to a specific set of instructions.

Whether or not the actual end result of such a task is art can be discussed.  I’m sure that someone already has.  But let’s take away that larger discussion for a moment and focus on the fact that it most certainly does not create any sort of depth of artistic experience or achievement.  Leaving a table full of watercolors at the back of the sanctuary will not result in a David Hockney-esque exploration of what it means to focus and perceive.  Further, it won’t result in the sort of work that we got from Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, or any of the other masters whose work we still study hundreds of years after they were created.  Quite simply, it’s not worth it.  Such art, if it can even be called art, doesn’t really add anything to the discussion of the human experience that is art as a whole.  It is a collection of short sermons on feelings as opposed to a story about what it means to feel.[2]

Really, if any organization wants to incorporate art in a serious way it must incorporate artists.  But, again, the incorporation of artists is scary, as art is subversive.  Art is at its best when it’s about all those aspects of humanity that we’re otherwise hesitant or afraid to address.  Consider that Dante’s Divine Commentary was really a political polemic disguised as Biblical cosmography.  Or consider that pretty much every Renaissance painter put distinctly extra- or even anti-Biblical themes in to their work.  This is what the artist does.  The sacred becomes profane and the profane sacred in the hands of the skilled laborer.

So, again, we have a problem.  But this is a logistical issue.  I have a much, much larger conceptual issue with this article and, well, the central viewpoint of the people involved.

“Modern missiology says you don’t value a tribe or people group until you go in and preach the gospel,” [Youngren] said. “But at some point you have to hand it off to them and then sit under them and learn about God.”

Let me re-state the money quote here:

Modern missiology says you don’t value a tribe or people group until you go in and preach the gospel. But at some point you have to hand it off to them and then sit under them and learn about God.

Any time you start out by with a pre-emptive, “You don’t value [people] until [event],” you’re doing it wrong.  You start out with the assumption that people are inherently valueless until they are the specific sort of people you want them to be.  Any time you say that people aren’t worthwhile until you can infuse them with some aspect of your own beliefs you are officially doing a Bad Thing. And I feel like this paragraph was repetitive, but I cannot stress this enough.

The sad thing is that I would like to offer the benefit of the doubt here.  I’d like to say, “You know what, that might have been a bad choice of words.”  I really have a hard time doing that, however.  Remember, I grew up in the Evangelical church.  There was an implicit – and often explicit – message that people just weren’t worth all that much.  It had a very “us and them” mentality.  People outside of the church were simply placed in to the category of “mission field.”  The really lucky ones were just declared to be enemies of the church and dismissed outright.[3]  If anyone bothered to learn anything about these poor, unfortunate souls who were so in need of Jesus it was to specifically learn all of the reasons that they needed Jesus.  If a decision was made to meet their other needs then those needs were met specifically as an excuse to witness to them about Jesus.[4]

So when someone says that the attitude in missions says not to value people until they’ve received the gospel I can say that the speaker is doing a bit of truth telling.  It’s usually not stated in such a bald-faced way, but I’m guessing that this is either a case of someone preaching to the choir or something that’s so ingrained that they don’t really think through the implications of what they just said.  When you live in Evangelical Christianity you are constantly reminded that what the world really, really needs is more Jesus, after all.  You’re also constantly reminded that without Jesus the world is, like, five seconds away from going completely and totally down the shitter.

I don’t like this modern missiology bit one bit.  Of course I also recognize that it’s been a strain throughout all religious missions work.  Consider the huge numbers of religious wars over the years and the White Man’s Burden.  Devaluing those who don’t share a specific set of beliefs and dogmas is a feature of missional religion, not a bug.  If your goal was to go and sit down and learn about and from another people group you’d be an anthropologist, not a missionary.

But let’s take that concept as a whole again.  The idea behind the mission of The Line came from an idea that you don’t value people until you teach them to believe the same things you do and then you learn from them.  If this is your plan what, precisely, are you intending to learn from them?

See, this is the other inherent problem in Evangelical Christianity.  There is an actual underlying belief that god is of a single, specific nature and that nature has been revealed in the text of the Bible, an inerrant document that is to be interpreted literally.  As such, god is more of a series of proof texts than a being worthy of complex theological or philosophical discussion.  The discussion of god is more of a collection of discussions about how to make god happy or at least keep god from getting pissed off.

Given that conceptualization of god, what is there to learn from someone you taught everything to?  I suspect that I’ve put more thought in to the concept and nature of god since I left the church than I ever did when I was a regular attendee.  When I was in church it was all about what god did or didn’t want people to do.  This really doesn’t teach me much of anything about the nature of god at all, though.

Think about it.  Imagine that you’re working at the drive-thru in a fast food restaurant.  I pull up and say that I want a Big Mac Value Meal with a Coke.  This is a very simple and straightforward instruction that tells you something about me.  It tells you, specifically, that I’m hungry and I want a Big Mac.  It tells you that if you want to make me happy you should probably not give me a Filet-O-Fish and a Sprite.  But that tells you absolutely nothing about me other than the fact that I want a specific food and I want it now.  It does not tell you where I’m going, where I’ve been, why I’ve stopped at your particular McDonald’s, or if I make it a regular habit of eating Big Macs and drinking Cokes.  It doesn’t tell you what my job is, what I like to do when I get home, or if I think “The Little Drummer Boy” is the worst Christmas song ever.[5]

It would be a mistake to assume you know me because you know what I want for lunch.  Similarly, in conception if not scale, it’s a mistake to think you know god just because you think you know what god wants you to do.[6]  Of course if you assume you know me I can always walk up to you and say, “Hi, I’m Geds,” and proceed to do things which will either prove your assumptions right or prove them wrong.  God has a rather annoying habit of not doing that.  So we’re left with as many different interpretations of the nature of god as people who believe in god.  And we’re forced to deal with people who are willing to fight, maim, and kill in order to prove their interpretation is right and another one is wrong.

So, ultimately, I think we need more art in church.  We need more artists creating art in church.  They might be able to turn a few of those sermons back towards stories and reawaken the subversive nature of art in the process.  That’s what we need more than anything.

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[1]Seriously.  Why the hell did I set out to define art in this little project?  I feel like I say something massively and pointlessly inflammatory with, like, every other sentence.

[2]By the same token, attempting to find convoluted explanations for esoteric concepts that are difficult to conceive of, let alone conceptualize, is a lot of fun.  Also, notice that I’ve drawn a bright-line distinction between the story and the sermon.  Sermonizing fits in to the category of propaganda while storytelling fits in to the category of art.  I can go to jessa’s comment on the last post to properly conceptualize the difference: “Perhaps current Evangelical Christians no longer understand the parables as art, but as object lessons, because they have been relying on pastors to interpret the Bible for them, and those pastors have closed off the questions offered in the parables and turned them into object lessons.”

When a story becomes a sermon the story ceases to be art.  It is reduced to a morality play that is trotted out to tell and retell the intended morality of the story to its audience.  As such the story has now lost its power to shed light on other aspects of the human experience.

Consider the ever-popular tale of the Good Samaritan.  It gets endlessly told and retold in Evangelical churches and the moral is always the same:  Christians should help anyone and everyone, for they are your neighbor.  This is actually a really, really good lesson and it’s too freaking bad that so many Christians in America have been suckered in to a message that says the best way to help others is by fighting to permanently eliminate the “Death Tax” and by forcing gay people to stay as far in the closet as they possibly can.  Either way, it was still shorthanded thusly in every sermon of which I am aware: Christians should be the Good Samaritan.

But if we were to take this out of a sermon and interpret it as a story we would need to ask a series of follow-up questions.  Why does Jesus tell this particular story?  Why does Jesus choose the particular cast of characters for it?  Why do the priest and the Levite avoid the traveler?  All of these questions require an examination of the culture of the time.  They also require an approach to the story that doesn’t look for simplistic moralizing, but an actual attempt to better understand the world and what it means to be an actor in this world.  But, you know what?  I’ll let the Slacktivist take this one, as I can add absolutely nothing to his interpretation at this moment.

[3]I’d rather be consigned to hell than pestered in to heaven.  At least with the former I have peace.

[4]I saw something the other day about a ministry that was trying to raise, like, $90,000 to print send picture New Testaments in Russian to needy Russian kids for Christmas.  Do you know how much needy people need, like, food and shoes and winter coats?  Do you know how much food or how many coats $90,000 could buy?  I mean, seriously.

I also honestly think this is somewhere in the attitude of a subset of the people who want the government to get completely out of the charity business.  If the government hands out welfare checks then that means that people can actually get things they need without having to be browbeaten for their horrible, sinful lifestyle.  And they don’t have to sit down and listen to sanctimonious sermonizing about how the Lord provides, either.

[5]I do.  It is.

[6]Especially since the Evangelical definition of what god wants pretty much revolves around pestering people in to praying the Sinner’s Prayer.  Which appears nowhere in the Bible.  And the Great Commission is the closest I can come to a version of that.  You know, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit for the remission of sins.”  Other than that most of the instructions Jesus offered were more along the lines of, “Don’t be a dick.  Seriously.  That pisses me right off.”  And that’s a commandment I can get behind.

Art and Authenticity, An Interlude

In all things there must be a reckoning.

Well, this is not actually true.  I believe that in a properly just world there would be a reckoning, however.  I feel fortunate, then, to not live in a properly just world.  For while it is so easy for me to look at someone else’s mistakes and faults and screwups and say, “There should be a reckoning for that,” it is not so easy for me to look at my own mistakes and faults and screwups and say the same thing.

This is the biggest problem with the world, really.  I would much rather be given credit for my successes and a pass for my sins than the other way around.  I make that happen by focusing as much as possible on that which I have gotten right and avoiding allowing too much light to shine on that which I got wrong.  I prefer to think the same way of my friends and the opposite of my enemies.[1]

Still, I think that it is important to ask the question, “Why did you do that?” from time to time.  Especially when I find myself in the throes of a multi-part entry on art created by a specific person in a specific church I have not attended and probably won’t attend any time soon.  I must ask myself one all-important question: “Why do I care?”

That…well…that is a rabbit trail if I’ve ever seen one.

I read Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil today.  Quite literally.  It’s a small, breezy book, the sort of book that would be considered light fiction were it not for the fact that the subject at hand is so heavy and the tears in my eyes at the end were so very real.

I hesitate to explain the book.  I fear it is just one of those works of art that must be approached with innocence to be properly understood and appreciated.  It must confuse and bewilder that it may take you by surprise and destroy that innocence.[2]  So I will say this: I have been reminded yet again that art is the only weapon we have in the fight against cruelty.

Art is the leaky vessel in to which we pour empathy.  This is why the first step to destroying people is, of necessity, the destruction of art.  This is why any time art is replaced by propaganda we must set ourselves on guard against violence and hate and death.  No one can call for help whose voice has been silenced.

The price of freedom, Jefferson said, is eternal vigilance.  In our limited sense of how the world works we mostly visualize that through the prism of armed guards and stout walls.  But freedom isn’t always taken by external enemies bearing guns.  It can just as easily taken from within, as the 20th Century taught us time and again.

Creating art and experiencing the art of others is, in a very real way, an act of vigilance.  It is a reminder that while I am aware of my humanity and my desires, another may not be.  It is a reminder to me that someone I wish to call my enemy is a person just like me, too.  Art is a common language, a common currency through which people who see the world in different ways can interact and coexist.

So when I see art emerge from a place that has been primarily interested in propaganda I consider it to be a Good Thing.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have reservations, but that is not a discussion for this interlude.  For now let us just rest here.

Better yet, let’s not let it rest at all.

To love art is to love humanity.
To love humanity is to love art.

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[1]Well, to the best of my knowledge I don’t really have enemies.  But I am certainly aware of people in this world who I think should be forced to admit to their terrible deeds and be publicly flogged.

[2]I really wish I’d finished my On Writing series by now.  Part three is about this very idea and it would be helpful to reference it.

Art and Authenticity, Part 3

A small cache of art was recently dug out of the soil of Berlin.  The pieces were survivors of the Nazi’s war against “degenerate art,” unremarkable in anything other than the fact that it was secreted away to save it from destruction.  Sixty-five years after the horrors of the Second World War we have learned, yet again, that art imitates life.

In their quest for a perfect society the Nazis sought to eliminate undesirable people.  But they had to go much further than that and eliminate undesirable thoughts.  The only way to do that was through the elimination of expression outside of a narrow band.  Art was twisted to become propaganda.[1]  All art that was not propaganda, then, had to be degraded and eliminated.

The Nazis did not simply throw the art out in the middle of the night, however.  That would not have accomplished anything.  What they did instead was display the art for all the world to see, then make everyone complicit in the art’s destruction.  This was the inspiration behind the book burnings.  It did no good to simply ban books.  That just makes finding and reading those books worthwhile.  There’s a certain voyeuristic thrill that comes from reading that which should not be read or seeing that which should not be seen.

This is why the pen is mightier than the sword.  Art cannot be destroyed by an external agent and remain destroyed.  Art can only be destroyed from within.  It is only when we want art gone that it disappears for good.

But even that isn’t really enough.  Not everyone who participates in the book burning really wants to be there, after all.  Some, most maybe, will only be there because they had no choice.[2]  Something, then, must replace the art that has been removed.  Enter propaganda.[3]  Remove art, place propaganda, and wait for a while.  People will eventually simply forget.

Of course you don’t need a fascist takeover of the government to create this scenario.  If you simply create a subculture that sees itself as somehow different from the larger culture, then convince them that the larger culture’s art is somehow degenerate you can get people to symbolically burn their own books.  And they will call themselves courageous warriors of the counterculture while they’re at it.  Then all you need to do is start churning out your own propaganda and you can capture an entire group of people and get them to do their bidding.  If you’re good, you can also make a quick buck selling shoddily made crap.

This, as much as anything, is why I continue to find the article about The Line and its artist-in-residence fascinating.  See, in turning an artist loose on its world, this church risked losing control of its message.  Art, as I’ve already said, is by its very nature subversive.  It should leave us with more questions than answers.  Those questions aren’t necessarily interpretative in nature, either.  The most important question that art leads us to ask is and always should be, “Why?”

“Why?” is a ravenous beast of a question.  “Why?” is never fully sated.  “Why?” is a dangerous question to permit people to ask, let alone encourage.

“Why do I like this piece?” becomes “Why do I like or dislike anything?” becomes “Why am I this way?” becomes “Why is the world this way?”  “Why do I consider this beautiful and this ugly?” becomes “Why do we call this the ideal not this?”

“Why?” encourages us to seek to understand the very mechanisms of our world.  “Why?” then has the power to topple those mechanisms which do not stand up to scrutiny.  Authoritarian systems are, by their very nature, incapable of standing up to scrutiny.  As such they cannot withstand “Why?”  They therefore must eliminate any and all avenues which invite the question.

Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity in America is a strongly authoritarian subculture.[4]  As such, the unfettered artist is the enemy of those who wish to maintain order and control.

This is how we reach the very first comment on the original article:

Yeah, this is all over the New Testament: “Artists ought to be central to any church body, because they can reinforce these unseen truths in people’s souls. Guerra is well aware of his responsibilities as an artist and does not hold their power lightly.” The Gospel Coalition is becoming less & less of a media outlet I turn to as a pastor. Nicely written article, however.

Concern troll, it should be noted, is concerned.[5]  Here we see the entire smorgasbord of internet-based stupidity.  He begins with an argument from assertion, proof texts his entire argument with a somewhat-out-of-context quotation, and finishes with an appeal to authority and tosses in a backhanded compliment to not seem totally dickish.  Although I will say that the comment itself is a lot, well, more grammatically correct than the trollish garbage in the corners of the internet I usually haunt.  So a hat-tip to the Gospel Coalition for that one.

Later on another commenter says, “I couldn’t ditto enough. I mean really, where is the Biblical emphasis on this artistic push within the church?”

Another says, “Tim’s tone is rather sharp, but he has a point – all the way through I was asking myself, ‘Where does the NT vision of the church fit in here?’ The church is to go and make disciples, not to use a ‘tight church-planters budget’ to fund something which is great in itself but is not at the core of the churches mission. The church is to make disciples and then I hope and pray those disciples that are artists will make great art to the glory of God.”

Then there’s this one:  “That all sounds very clever, but what’s your biblical basis for bringing these things into the corporate gatherings of the church? Paul seemed to expect the early church to hold these things together without an artist-in-residence – in fact we don’t even know if they used musical instruments to accompany their singing! There is a gaping hole of relevant NT data in this article and discussion that no one seems to want to address.”

Now, this is all a part of a larger discussion of the role of art in the church.  There were plenty of comments that defended the role of art in the church as used by The Line.  However, I want to highlight a specific thread of the conversation.  It is stated and re-stated in the comments thread that the New Testament says nothing about the role of art and, therefore, art should not be given a central role in the life of the church.  Those who state it basically create a tautology of the notion, too.

For them the entire role of the human being is to make other human beings believe the same thing they believe.  This is a common refrain in Evangelical circles and, really, the logical end result of American exploration of hyper-Puritanism.  It’s also fundamentally stupid.  If it weren’t for the fact that I know that world intimately I would assume it’s all part of some cynical plot to destroy the church by making Christianity look like a terribly drab and boring thing to do.

Human civilization is built on two things: art and beer.[6]  In order to build a civilization we need to have a common goal and a common language.  Beer (agriculture in general, really, but people figured out beer at least as early as they figured out bread) is the goal and art is the language.  Art then communicates all of those things that are necessary to get along and understand each other.

I could point out, too, that there was this fellow named Jesus who Christians claim to follow.  When people came up and tried to get Jesus to tell them how to be his response was, inevitably, “You want to know what the Kingdom of Heaven is?  Well let me tell you a story.”  Art.  The answer to the question was not a sermon, but a tale of a man waiting for a wayward son, an unfortunate traveler, or an absentee landlord.

To respond to the idea of art with the question, “But where does the Bible talk about that?” is to admit that you do not read the Bible.[7]

It also means that you have to look out at the world and say, “I have nothing to offer you.”  Because if you’re going to tell me that you want a world that has no place for art, you’re going to tell me that you want a world that has no place for people.  You’re also telling me that this eternity you promise will be of no particular value.

What is an eternity if there is to be no art, after all?

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[1]This brings up a problem.  In seeking to create a working definition of art I termed it, “That which exists to illuminate the human condition.”  In bringing this idea up in the last post I also pointed out that it’s both too limiting and not limiting enough.  In drawing a distinction between art and propaganda I have added another level of complication through the question, “Does that mean that propaganda is not art?”  I would say that, yes, propaganda is art, but it is art twisted.  Rather than being descriptive, as art often is, propaganda is prescriptive.

But this, in turn, adds another level of complication.  Because it does not take more than a moment’s thought to realize that art concerns itself with ought as much as, if not more than, is.  Greek and Roman statuary, for instance, is concerned with the ideal.  It spoke of glory, of triumph, of arête as a way of saying, “This is what it means to be great.  This is what all should be.”  So does this mean that the statuary becomes propaganda and, therefore, not art?  Absolutely not.

The difference, I believe, is in that distinction between descriptive and prescriptive.  Art, even that which encourages pursuit of an ideal, is aspirational.  Propaganda is not aspirational.  Instead of saying, “Let us try to reach this level,” it says, “You must be like this.”  The goal is to make life mimic art and not the other way around.

[2]During the fights between iconoclasts and iconodules that raged across the Byzantine Empire there were periodic icon smashing parties as the iconoclasts gained the upper hand.  When the iconoclasts were kicked out the icons were then re-allowed.  Previously “destroyed” icons would miraculously reappear back at the churches where they belonged overnight.

[3]And I believe I’ve just rendered the first footnote obsolete two sentences.

[4]Oh, dear.  I seem to have Godwined myself…

[5]There’s nothing that I love more than when someone gets all in a huff and threatens to stop visiting a website because they talk about things that the concern troll doesn’t want them to.  Is there any way of not seeming like a jackass when you say, “Do what I say or I will stop patronizing this website that I do not pay to read?”

[6]I am not joking.

[7]I totally felt like Mr. Fred Clark right there.

On Writing: Observation

A while ago I wrote a post called “On Writing: Empathy,” that was basically a one-off thought exercise.  But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  “Empathy” was a discussion of characterization based on the massive mistakes made in books like the Left Behind series.  But there’s more to the problem than simply creating terrible characters.

In short, an author can create a wonderfully three-dimensional character.  They can surround this character with other characters who are also well thought-out and who are described in all necessary detail and who react in the way anyone would expect them to.  But that character needs to then be placed in a world that makes sense.  This, in short, creates a need for appropriate world building.

That’s a tough concept.  It’s used by those who write and discuss writing in a very limited sense and mostly left as the purview of the science fiction and the fantasy writer.  It is through world building, after all, that the speculative fiction writer creates the rules of technology or magic that drive the created world and draw the maps and boundaries of the created universe.  World building is a necessary step in order to create the necessary mechanics and limits and capacities of everything and everyone.  Without world building the characters would behave randomly and the reader would be lost.  But I would argue that world building is an absolutely necessary task in any writing endeavor.  Even if it’s completely mundane.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are writing a story.  This story takes place in your home town.  The characters go to real restaurants that exist in your town and drive down real streets to get to them.  It is, in short, your world.

But it’s not actually your world.  This world is different specifically because the characters of your story occupy it.  This is where world building comes in.  This, too, is where world building becomes an act of empathy with your character.

I went home over Thanksgiving.  I was in Glen Ellyn, IL driving down Lorraine Road when it occurred to me that, as far as a map was concerned, Lorraine isn’t any different than Lambert or Kenilworth or Elm.  To a map all of those roads are just residential roads.  To me, however, all of those roads are quite different.  They all took me somewhere specific or allowed me to bypass something else.  Even after being gone for nearly a year and not spending too much of the previous year and a half driving the side roads of Glen Ellyn the important roads were still fresh in my mind.  They might have just been grey lines on a map, but some of those roads were colored in brightly on the map I carry around in my mind.

There are other roads, of course, that I never even drove down.  To me they, too, are just lines on a map or side roads that I occasionally looked down.  To someone else, though, those roads are brightly lit, too.  Driving down that road I ignore may take someone else to their childhood home.  Driving down a road I don’t know exists may take someone else to that blue house with the big front porch where on one magical night he shared his first kiss with his first high school love.

This is what world building is all about.  We take for granted that it only matters if there are mechanics and magic that need to be described.  But world building is something much more fundamental than that and something that we often take for granted.

Consider, for a moment, that the world we live in is a science fiction world to someone who lived a century or more ago.  Hell, it’s pretty much a science fiction world to anyone from about 1960.  Everywhere I go I carry a device that allows me to gain access to the world’s knowledge at a moment’s notice using entirely wireless communications systems.  And it fits in my pocket.  Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov could have pretty much written novels about my iPhone.  Hell, they probably basically did, as instant access to knowledge was a key part of the Foundation Trilogy as well as the Space Odyssey series and the Rama books.

But there’s a problem that comes from thinking about this in the way that sci-fi writers think about it.  See, Asimov and Clarke were forever focusing on the mechanics of their technology and the societal effects of it.  But to me, as a character in reality’s sci-fi adventure, while the technology of a 3G network is interesting and while the societal ramifications of my phone are certainly something worth thinking about, my main interaction with the device involves checking my email or playing Angry Birds.  This is the essence of my thoughts about the iPhone.  I simply do not think about what goes in to the technology behind it very much because it is an integral and mundane part of my existence.

Were H.G. Wells’ time traveler to pop out of a vortex from Victorian England he would undoubtedly be amazed at my iPhone.  And my TV.  And my laptop.  And the airplanes that land over at DFW every couple minutes.  Hell, my refrigerator, dishwasher, washer/dryer, and hot water heater would probably invite amazement.  He would probably want me to explain all of those things.  But in the absence of such a need for exposition I do not give that stuff a second thought.  It is as normal to me as it is exotic to someone else.  And I give it no more thought than I give gravity or air or sunlight.  It just is.

It doesn’t matter how good a writer is.  It doesn’t matter how well constructed the world that writer creates is.  If they cannot properly convey how characters interact with their world they have not done a very good job of world building.  Or, at least, the writer hasn’t done a very good job of thinking out how to convey that world to the reader.

Often lost in the idea of the larger activity of world building is the smaller idea of building the character’s world.  This is strange, as we are usually aware of the fact that there are different ways of looking at the world.  Consider the attitudes of those who watch Fox News compared to those who watch MSNBC.  Consider the differences between a Wiccan, a Pentecostal, and an atheist.  Consider the differences between a theologian and a scientist.  But even that doesn’t get deep enough.  Someone who grew up in Tulsa, OK lives in a different world than someone who grew up in Portland, OR.  Someone who went to one high school in Tulsa probably lives in a slightly different world than someone who went to a different school in Tulsa.

This is because we all live in a world that we interpret and interact with in different ways.  The mechanics are the same.  We all experience gravity and wind and rain.  So when telling a story in our world there’s no real need to worry about that.  The world the writer needs to worry about, then, is the specific world of the character being written about.  That’s where the really tough world building comes in.  Consider all the stories written about supposedly normal people in a world that is supposedly our own that come across as unbelievable due to the lack of that key concept of empathy.  It doesn’t matter how well a writer describes a room or a couch or a girl.  What matters is how the writer describes how the character feels in that room, on that couch, with that girl.

You and I do not live in a world of endless explanation and exposition, after all.  We live in a world of experience and emotion and memory and anticipation.  To ignore this is to ignore the world itself.

All of this, of course, is not to say that the mechanics of a different world must be short-changed.  Again, part of the reason that good world-building works is because the world makes sense.  The great writers are the ones who figure out how to build that world and describe it to the audience in a way that fits a narrative.

Consider Neil Gaiman.  The plots of American Gods and Neverwhere revolve around an otherwise normal person living an otherwise normal life suddenly learning that it is possible to pull back the curtain of the mundane and see a whole other world.  In both cases Gaiman reveals that world to the reader through a combination of exposition and experience.  Another character tells the recent transplant what to expect.  That person then slowly begins to fill in the holes and figure out where one world ends and another begins.

This, of course, goes back to the bit about empathy.  Gaiman understands Shadow and Richard.  He empathizes with the their confusion and with their desire to understand what has happened.  He understands their desires and their goals and how those desires and goals will be shaped and changed by their new realities.

As such, we don’t just experience the worlds that Gaiman built.  We experience the worlds that Shadow and Richard live in.  These two places are subtly different, but inextricably linked.

On some level, though, it’s easier for Gaiman in the example.  If he misses something or writes a character who is hard to understand the reader can easily chalk it up to the confusion inherent in another world with another set of rules.  So as long as there’s consistency there’s a cushion.

It’s actually much harder to do the world building if the character could be your next door neighbor.  If a writer describes, say, a life-long Chicagoan who calls the city’s mass transit system “the subway,” anyone who has a passing knowledge of the El[1] will know that mistakes have been made.  If the writer describes a character eating Chicago-style hot dog with ketchup or a traditional deep dish pizza with BBQ chicken and pineapple,[2] you also know that the writer is getting it wrong.

The fastest way to take your audience out of the story is to create a situation where the audience stops and says, “Wait.  That’s not right.”  The easiest way to do that is to get something wrong that the audience sees every day.  And that’s why world building matters.

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[1]This is a potential minefield, too.  It’s mostly called the “L.”  I call it the “El,” due to the fact that the term originally comes from “elevated train.”  I’m a pedant like that.

[2]I’m assuming that it’s possible to get such a thing somewhere.  But it should really be against the law.