Archive for November, 2011
The Trouble with Irony
Posted by jmstevenson in Uncategorized on November 17, 2011
What do you think of when you hear the name Machiavelli? If your like most people, and like I was until only recently, you imagine a devious plotting egotist who is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve power. Someone willing to cheat, steal, and even kill in his relentless drive for power. You know, someone like me! (Did I say that outloud?)
You know what Machiavelli really was? A writer, and he was a damn good one (also like me). So good, in fact, that his name is to be forever linked with corrupt politicians, opportunists, and psychopaths.
To be fair, he does kind of looks the part.
So how did this happen? I’ll tell you. He was a master of Irony. Now stop right there! If you just started singing Irony by Alanis Morisette, you are wrong! That is not the irony to which I’m referring, that’s cosmic irony, but I’m talking about a different kind of irony. Namely, this kind (as presented to you by Bender the educational robot):
You see The Prince by Machiavelli was written after the corrupt Medici family hired some thugs to reduce Machiavelli into a fleshy bag of broken bones. The Medici family had recently overthrown the Florentine Republic, a o that Machiavelli both worked for and found incredibly sexy. Nothing turned him on like a good beaucratic process. In fact most of his writings dealt with the the inherent superiority of republics over dictatorships. Well when Medici took over again, the first thing they did was torture and exile Machiavelli for his dangerous ideas of liberty and such. Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a giant literary middle finger to the Medici government and tyrants everywhere. Unfortunately for Machiavelli, the context of The Prince was lost over the centuries and became a how-to guide for tyrants, completely unaware that the satirical work was actually mocking them.
And that’s the trouble with Irony, the risk of the reader taking it literally. With sarcasm, spoken irony, it’s easy to understand because we can detect the mocking tone of voice. Though even then people sometimes take it literally. However there is no sarcasm punctuation mark, and putting sarcastic quips in quotations just makes you look like a pretentious ass. So your left having to very carefully word your ironic statements and try to make it clear that your being sarcastic. Mark Twain was a master of irony, in fact his books are irony distilled into a perfectly refined oil. You could liquefy Mark Twain’s books, inject it into someone, and instantly transform them into Jon Stewart.
The trouble I’m having is that obviously I know when I’m being sarcastic, but in order to tell if anyone else will be able to tell I need to let them read it. But of course isn’t that the point of writing? To let others read it?
Well yes, at a certain point. However, I’ve made the mistake of letting people read roughdrafts of my stories, friends who have insisted I let the read it, who then swear they understand what roughdraft means. Only to find that, after they’ve read it, they’ve renounced all their worldly possessions and moved to Tibet to pursue a life of quiet tranquility.
Half these people are here because they read a roughdraft of mine.
So, with these experiences in mind, I’ve taken to not letting anyone read anything until its a second or third draft, which takes loads of time and work to actually get to. By the time someone gets around to reading my story, it might end up that half the story didn’t come across right because the irony was lost in translation. Which is a royal pain in the ass because I then have to go back and rewrite half the story (yeah I use irony alot), but that’s just part of the writing process. The real trouble is when the irony backfires so horribly that I come across as an arrogant and pretentious asshole.
Working on It’s Always a Sunny Day I’ve found myself using irony a lot to provide juxtaposition from some of the darker moments in the book when I talk about my depression. After all, the point of It’s Always a Sunny Day is that things get better, and to give people suffering from depression hope. Last thing I want to do is drown them in 100,000 words of crushing despair. But, I also don’t want to come across as bragging or preachy either, and I find irony is often a great way of getting a point across without appearing to be either.
So what’s my solution to this dilemma?
Well I may just have to bite the bullet and let some people read the early drafts of this story. In all honestly, it’s not just a fear of subjecting people to a horrible first draft that I fear. This book represents something I’ve never done before, exposing my flaws for everyone to see. To let people inside my mind and rummage around to figure out what makes me tick. I wasn’t a very pleasant person when I suffered depression, and of course no one suffering from a debilitating illness is expected to be pleasant, but to reveal my unpleasant past to friends who have only known me post-depression and to complete strangers, makes me apprehensive to say the least.
I may end up posting excerpts on here and testing out my Irony skills on y’all to see if it holds up. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Memoirs of a Stagehand
Posted by jmstevenson in Uncategorized on November 10, 2011
When I closed the curtain on the last Aeterno Elementum show for the year, it was the conclusion of the most stressful, intense, and downright scary experience I’ve had in years. It was also the most enriching, and downright fun experience I’ve had in years. Paradoxical? Yes. Would you expect any less from me?
First of all some background for those of you not reading my blog regularly: Back in August when I wrote the review of Aeterno Elementum, I was contacted by Ara’kus Productions and asked to help them out writing their newsletter as well as possibly helping out with their script, a task I was only too happy to help them with. Then they mentioned they needed a stagehand, a job which was described to me as mostly doing curtain cues and maybe moving some props. Sounds easy right? That’s what I thought too and agreed without hesitation, which is unusual for me since I’m usually conflicted in even the most simple of decisions.
Demonic mind control may have been involved
So last Wednesday I was asked to help out with building the set, and it was there I learned my first, very painful lesson about being a stagehand: building a set is hard fucking work. And if there’s one thing my big flabby body doesn’t like, it’s hard work (and leafy greens.) I didn’t even really build it, the Ara’Kus carpenter/creepy effin monk Steve did most of that, all I did was help lug the pieces up the stairs (a lot of stairs). After a couple of hours of that every muscle in my body, which for years had lain dormant and unknown to me, were screaming in outrage at this sudden burst of physical activity. Fortunately I’ve been going to the gym the past couple of months, otherwise I have a feeling my body would have just refused to work any longer, leaving me flopping on the ground like a dying fish. Though if this burst of activity taught me anything, it’s that I’m clearly not doing enough at the gym, since even now I’m still feeling pain in muscles that clearly haven’t seen use in years. My muscles did not suffer in vain, however, because the stage was completed after a few hours and we all began a rough run through of Aeterno Elementum.
The second thing I learned about being a stagehand: It was a lot more complicated than I thought. Not only was I going to operating the curtain, I was going to be pulling props on and off the stage, operating the smoke machine, and actually appearing in the play as a member of the legions of the damned. Luckily it was a non-speaking role otherwise I would probably have descended into a jabbering, stuttering mess of an actor that would have made Elmer Fudd look downright eloquent. Still, the idea of me, a shy reclusive writer, going on stage in front of dozens of people was a daunting one. Scarier still, however, was just how important I was to the overall production. I wasn’t the lynchpin of the operation by any stretch of the imagination, but if I screwed up something it would leave a noticeable effect on the rest of the show and that alone was enough to put the pressure on me. I certainly didn’t want to be the one to turn a magnificent show into a show of amateurish failure. After that first run-through I thought that was exactly what was going to happen, every mistake that could be made, I made it. It’s a good thing I wasn’t handling any of the pyrotechnics that run through or I would have managed to burn down the entire city block.
"Oops...my bad"
I forgot my cues, which were difficult to follow since we weren’t working with the full cast, so it was sort of like trying to read a book where every other paragraph is missing. I also kept getting in the way of our sound engineer, no matter where the poor guy went I seemed to be there, knee deep in the wires he was trying so hard to tape down for the show. Finally, I had to engage that curtain in vicious hand-to-rope combat every time I opened or closed the curtain. I know, leave it to me to screw up something as simple as a curtain cue, but I’m telling you that damn rope had it in for me! You see, instead of one solid piece of rope for the curtain, it was actually two ropes tied together, meaning there was this giant baseball sized knot in the rope and every time I pulled the curtain, that knot would get stuck at the pulley. It was like trying to wrestle an anaconda who had just swallowed a moose. Luckily it was something I could solve with brute force, I just pulled on that rope like I was trying to rip it out of the ceiling and never gave that knot a chance to get stuck. It was a small victory, but at that point I was clinging onto whatever victories I could get.
The second run through, the next day, went a lot better and yet I couldn’t see past my own frustrations enough to notice. You get so caught up in your own troubles, sometimes you can miss what’s going on around you, and that almost happened to me. I would criticize myself for not doing something faster, or give myself a hard time over even small problems. I felt like the entire cast was carrying my dead weight. Sounds pretty miserable right, what could I have possibly gotten out of this experience?
What I got out the experience was one of the most amazing, and enriching experiences of my life, because I had the chance to work with some of the most amazing people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. Whenever I felt the stress getting to me, all I had to do was look around me: the Seattle Knights practicing their fights, Jeremiah and Randy playing with the rest of the band, BJ practicing his speech, the entire cast working together to put on the absolute best show they could. Whenever I saw that, my stress transformed into a calm determination, because I too wanted to make this the best production I could and I wasn’t about to let something like a crippling fear of appearing on stage stop me. More importantly I wasn’t about to disappoint all the great people that made this show possible.
Many of whom gave their lives for it! (Picture courtesy of Asraiya Deyo)
And that was truly the best part of the whole thing, the people and the memories. Jeremiah handing out fist bumps before the show. Richard flitting around the stage making me laugh. A reassuring handshake from Karl the Archbishop. Chatting with Susan while she applied my makeup. Watching Randy kick ass in his classical guitar solo.
It would take another entire blog post to list all the great memories I have of those two amazing nights, but let me just send out a huge thanks to everyone there, because you are all amazing people. And I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for allowing me to be a part of it.
