21. Last FM and the Writing Process

Ya, I'm the guy who listens to "Keane" radio while he tries to think of something to blog about.  At least today I'm that guy.

It's not really working for me. In fact, all it's really doing right now is delaying me from what I could be doing: shoveling the drive, riding the stationary bike and watching a rerun of the X-Files (ya, I'm the guy who watches reruns of the X-Files 3 or 4 times a week while riding bike), or grading some papers.

So what I'm saying is that "Keane" radio on Last FM isn't really "muse" music--it doesn't much inspire creativity, as you are plainly witnessing right now.  Allow me to change the channel and let's observe what happens.

There. "Elton John" radio.  "Your Song." 

Kind of makes me feel like writing a blog entry called "Your Blog."

"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind
that I put down into words
how wonderful life is
while you're in the world."

That didn't really inspire anything much after all, I guess.  Next song...

"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.

That reminds of a summer job I had after my freshmen year of college.  I cleaned the floors at the Kroger at Broadmoor Plaza in South Bend, six nights a week from 11 p.m. - 5 a.m.  I would dust mop, then scrub, then buff, then dust mop again.  It didn't take six hours, usually, but my boss wanted me to put in six hours.  So I did.  Once a week they would shut the store down for three hours and I would wax the floors.

One of the night cashiers there was named Maggie--maybe thirty, thin, light brown hair, pretty smile.  Nice.  I remember one night this song came on the radio that softly played throughout the store all night.  One of the guys who stocked shelves started singing, and before long, all five of the guys who stocked shelves made their way to the front of the store, belting the song at the tops of their lungs at her, to her great embarrassment.  Only two of them really knew the lyrics, and none of them could sing. 

It was beautiful.  I scraped stickers off the floor in the produce section, and smiled to myself.  Smouched (Huck Finn's word for "stole") one of those ginormous gumballs from the bulk food section, and hummed along.

Thank you Last FM.  I'd forgotten.

20. Friday Nights at 9:00 p.m.

It's "Gold Rush" time. 

I'm not the biggest TV buff I know, but I do kinda dig Discovery Channel's reality show, "Gold Rush." Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but each week I watch the show hoping these guys hit the motherload somewhere deep in the bowels of Quartz Creek, Alaska.  Instead, I watch for an hour and discover that when it comes to gold mining, if it can break down, fall apart, or go wrong--it will.  The show could be called "A Series of Frustrating Events."  So why do I like this?

I'll never be a gold miner.  I'll never know what it is really like to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness.  I'll never drive gargantuan dump trucks, dozers, or front end loaders.  But the show does give the impression that its showing us a little of what it might be like to mine gold.  It's intoxicating.  It's maddening.  It's enough to make you thankful that no matter how bad of a day you're having, you probably didn't have as many things go wrong as these guys did in any one hour show.

Yesterday I quoted from Rasselas. Might as well go for it again, since it seems relevant here.  Prince Rasselas is bored in the Happy Valley--bored because he has everything he wants. While it might seem like happiness is getting everything you want, the prince points out that he is unhappy precisely because he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to strive after, nothing to desire.  Rasselas says, "I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue."

I like this TV show because these guys are relentlessly pursuing gold. I'm not all that interested in relentlessly pursuing gold, myself.  But I do know that we all need something to pursue.  Every week I watch them endure disappointment after disappointment, and only occasionally a small triumph or a glimmer of hope.  And yet they press on.  They seem happy.  I think it's because they have something to pursue.  I need something to pursue, too.

So I keep on the lookout for little things that might awaken me from my contented slumber, and I pursue them.  A hundred free throws in a row.  Thirty unbroken pull-ups.  A doctorate.  A new humanities major. 350 blog entries in a year--one a day with a reasonable assumption that there will be a dozen or so days when I'm somewhere with no Internet connection. The entire Bible in 6 months.  That sort of thing.

There is that inevitable let down once you've reached some goal.  If these guys strike it rich by the end of the mining season, the show won't be quite the same for me any more.  I hope they do, but I also know that if they do, that's the end of the show.  I'll make a hundred free throws in a row again someday soon. Then what?  Do it again.  Hit 50 3 pointers in a row.  Who knows.  I just know I'm the kind of person who is happiest struggling and striving my way towards something.  Kind of like the guys on "Gold Rush," I guess. Call it restlessness if you want, but it beats the boredom of happy valley.

19. On the Paralysis of Perpetual Analysis

"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." (Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson)

One my strengths--at the very least according to the StrengthsQuest assessment--is "strategy." I tend to be a visionary and a strategic thinker, I like imagining possibilities, and dreaming about what could be.  But another of my strengths is "context"--meaning I "look back."  I look back because that's where answers lie.  I tend to see the past as something of a blueprint for life as I move forward.  The past provides me with a frame of reference.

Anyhow, there's something about what the artist says to Rasselas in Johnson's book that struck last night when I read it.  I'm totally frustrated by an academic culture that insists that all possible objections must first be overcome before we try anything new. I don't know if it's in spite of my strengths or because of my strengths that I find the endless nay saying about moving forward with some innovation (a new venture, a new course, new curriculum, a new structure, etc.) until everything is in its perfect place and we've anticipated every possible little thing that could go wrong to be enormously frustrating.

Nothing is ever perfectly in its place.   There's not going to be a much better time for me to start writing that novel, to start that new workout plan, to start eating more helpings of vegetables and drinking less coke.  There will always be reasons why now isn't such a good time to move forward.

I am strategic--it's true.  But I've realized my best strategies are often only half-baked plans that I can adapt on the fly to meet unforeseen challenges.  Because if I sit around waiting until I've answered every possible objection, I'll never get a blasted thing accomplished.

This quote from Rasselas is not without irony, of course.  The artist who says it is at work creating a pair of wings so that he can fly.  Prince Rasselas questions him about the pitfalls and dangers.  The quote above is the artist's reply to him.  As it turns out, the artist does crash into a lake and nearly kills himself.  The chapter closes with this delicious little gem: "His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water..." (ch. 6)

In life, there is the risk of crashing, but it sure beats the paralysis of perpetual analysis.  And you may not fly with those wings you've dreamed up, but they might actually save you from drowning.

I like that.

18. On Literature and Confession

Every semester I have to come up with some new idea for a literature seminar. Every semester I agonize over this decision--over choosing a topic to spend fifteen weeks with, over finding something that I'll be energized enough by to enjoy and to facilitate, and something that maybe a few students will find interesting enough to want to explore together. I'm not as successful in my choices as I'd like to be, and sometimes I'm surprised by the responses. There have even been times when I've feltl like something wasn't going so well, but it turned out by the end of the semester the students were expressing much more appreciation than I could had sensed throughout the term.

Anyhow, here's a list of seminar topics going back several years.

• Post-modernist literature
• Myth and Archetype in Literature
• Nobel prize winners
• Nietzsche and the novelists
• Clashes of culture
• Survival literature
• Love and friendship
• Literary Friendships
• Bringing life to literature
• Modern European masterpieces
• The Sermon on the Mount and Story
• C.S. Lewis, Samuel Johnson and the Great Conversation

A theme that has run throughout virtually every course I teach has finally surfaced in my mind and now I can't shake it.  This April I'm presenting a paper at a regional conference on Christianity and Literature up at Calvin College during the Festival on Faith and Writing.  The paper's title is "Bringing Life the Text and the Text to Life: Case Studies from the Literature Classroom as Confessional Space."

My own encounters with literature almost inevitably spark "confession."  And for a majority of my students who take the time to really engage the literature I assign for classes like these and others, it tends to have the same effect.  I'm not sure I know exactly why, but I aim to explore this in the paper I will co-write with a colleague. 

Meanwhile, I came up with a topic for the fall seminar in literature.  "Literature and Confession." 

So much for indirection.

17. What Sydney Ate After School

1 small bag of doritos
4 miniature reeses peanut butter cups
1 half glass of pink lemonade
9 baby carrots with ranch dip
Two thirds of a miniature ice cream sandwich
and... some baked goldfish crackers

She has put in a request for for mama to pick her up a "slurpee" on her way home from her meeting.

Ok. So am I a good papa for insisting that she eat some carrots--as if they would counterbalance all that garbage and ease my conscience a bit? Don't answer.

I do remember the feeling of being half starved at the end of a school day. I remember in middle and high school going home finally after a practice close to dinner time feeling woozy, grumpy, with a splitting hunger headache far too many times. I can't imagine that as the healthiest way of existence, either. I don't feel so bad that a famished little girl ate a bunch of junk food this afternoon. I suppose a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, an organic apple, and some of those baby carrots might be a snack Dr. Oz would want my daughter eating, but I also don't think she's taken any years off her life today by eating all this junk. And she's happy as a lark. :-)

16. Happy MLK Day

I've seen them perform this song in concert five times, now, and every time its felt like the Kingdom was upon us.

15. On Writing, Practice, and Discipline

This book is worth reading for anyone who has to write a book length manuscript.  A lot of books get started and never finished.  Not that I have all that much experience with this, but having written one, I can tell you that it is as easy to procrastinate as it is to utterly exhaust yourself with marathon writing sessions.  It takes discipline to write every day.  It also takes discipline to STOP, even when things are going well.

One of the best things I learned from this book was this: park on the downslope.  Stop before you've exhausted what you have to say, so that you have some momentum for tomorrow.

No, you won't write your book or your dissertation in only 15 minutes a day.  But try writing for 15 minutes and only 15 minutes for a week, and see what happens. What I found is that I began to develop a writing habit, and in week two I gave myself permission some of those days to write for more then fifteen minutes.

Now I'm thinking about writing a book (in 15 minutes a day) called "Write Your Blog in 15 Minutes a Day."