The Tolkster Bio
The Tolkster Bio
The Tolkster Bio
The Tolkster Bio
The Tolkster Bio
A Short Paraphrase of The Tolkster, both the artwork AND the inspiring author...
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973
A lot of people just don't get Tolkien, but it is true that most in this group have never tried to get him. I mean just the name Frodo, or better/worse yet Bilbo, is enough to close the door on the Tolkien opportunity forever, and for forever. I mean, come on, Tolkien is weird, with all those fairies and hobbits and elves. Plus there are the uninformed and too the ignorant (always them) who concoct that Tolkien was a secret pagan devil-worhipper, that he rolled odd-shaped dice with C.S. Lewis in beer-laced games of Dungeons and Dragons, their pipes flaring with "pipe weed" (gasp). Or perhaps even worse, Tolkien was a confirmed Catholic (double gasp, and dead faint).
I never actually heard anyone say: "Frodo Lives!" back when people were actually saying such a thing, but it was around that time (1977 or so), when I was in bed for a week with the flu, that I pawed through a stack of books a friend had snuck me (I was attending a religious boarding academy that instantly confiscated novels, when any such spawn of satan was sniffed, and trained dogs patrolled the corridors, sniffing them out, let me tell you), and I found a very odd looking two books in the jumble of paperbacks, one of which was The Hobbit, the other being The Two Towers. I was a sophomore in high school, and extremely homesick, and the unusual covers made me nauseous (okay, so it was the flu making me nauseous, but at the time I more associated it with Tolkien's spidery artwork, then again I didn't know it was Tolkien's artwork, only that it was odd). This was about the time I was enthralled with Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, for the first time anyway, and also into reading anything that was "adult," or at least risque, definitely forbidden (the dean of the academy actually confiscated my paperback copy of Mark Twain's A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), and I definitely didn't appreciate stories which featured dwarves, I mean come on, cute little critters with handles such as Humpy, Dumpy, Sleazy, Creepy and so on, those evil Disney cartoons with all their Da Vinci Code sexualities, uh uh, not me, I was a good boy (uh, except for reading spawn-of-satan novels, of course, yeah, I admit it, I was a fiction addict, but please don't despise me, we are all human, ain't we?).So I missed out on Tolkien, probably when I could have used him most, but I fully embraced him just about two years later, during the summer prior to my senior year of high school (and I went to a more liberal boarding school, one that allowed novels -- GASP! what is that, the school of satan?). And reading Tolkien turned me onto fantasy as a genre, although there wasn't too much to get turned onto at that time, I think I picked up Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara immediately upon finishing LOTR for the second back-to-back reading, and the amazing thing was that I thoroughly enjoyed Shannara (probably if I'd known how it was actually, pronounced, "Shannara," I probably would not have finished it, probably, well probably not, as I probably was not all that discerning at 17 years of age; I pronounced "Shannara" in a very romantic way, phonetically it would be Shuh-nah-rah, poetic and flowing, like "Shenandoah," long vowels, ain't that purty? Whereas Brooks' actual pronounciation is Shan- [rhyming with "pan"] uh-ruh, sounding something akin to "pandering" or, oh, forget it, anyway if someone had suggested it to me and pronounced the title in its proper way, I probably never would have read it, as I guess I'm just more romantic than that; Shannara is, to discerning readers, kind of like McDonalds, or if you will McTolkiens -- hey, its tasty, fun, filling, um, I guess you could say it is very American, kind of Dan Brown before Dan Brown; I remember even upon my first reading, when one of the characters is "acting like a robot," I stopped and had to ponder, come on, this is a fantasy, you can't have the word "robot" in a fantasy!) (sheesh, that was a long aside, please forgive me) (where was I? who cares, really). I guess the point was, I loved Tolkien, quite a lot, even from the beginning. (And I'm not intentionally putting down Sword of Shannara, as I really did love the book, way back when, and up here now in the present I've redisovered Brooks in his Knight of the Word series, which appears to be looping back to be the "ancient days" in Shannara, and he's developed really quite a lot as a writer, that Terry Brooks, although I think, for his own good, he should pronounce his title properly.) (Okay, if I do another long aside like that, or a digression upon a digression, you can offer me a choice raspberry.)I couldn't look up Tolkien on the Internet, not back then, mostly cuz there was no Internet, I wouldn't even get my paws on an Atari 800XL for another 3-4 years, but from the old addition of the paperbacks I read, Tolkien was still alive, uh, virtually, at least to me he was, even though he died in 1973, about three months beyond my 11th birthday. I only learned he had passed away when I purchased my first Tolkien calendar (ooh, one of the original Brothers Hildebrandt, I think it was the 1978, I wish I still had it!).That's an interesting one, the Brothers, who kind of did the mirror reflecting the mirror deal, after illustrating Tolkien, they illustrated Sword of Shannara (beautifully, they did), and then they produced their own fantasy, if I remember right it was called Urshurak, and was almost a graphic novel, full of fantastic full-color paintings and oompa-loompa loads of black-n-white full sketches. The Hildebrandt Brothers really did the best elves, almost better than Orlando Bloom, and pretty much spoiled me for later guys such as Darryl K. Sweet and a few others.(Believe it or not I just finished rereading Sword of Shannara for the second time, almost 30 years after the initial reading, and I did enjoy it, very much -- I listened to it on books on tape, and I gotta tell ya, STILL, that pronounciation of "Shan-air-uh" really bugged me, plus choice use of words like "robot" [used about 5-6 times] and even "plastic" jars the sensibility, but that Menion Leah is still a great character.)I read The Hobbit first, and very much like someone deciding whether or not to enter a cold swimming pool, I stuck the tipsies of my toesies in first, wriggled them about, and it all seemed very weird, these dwarves which seemed very much like Disney dwarves, and the Hobbit, seemingly decidedly British with tea and scones and biscuits and such, and I didn't at all relish the childish tone in the storytelling (something completely vanished in LOTR), but even then, after about 50 pages or so, I was hooked, and I cared about pudgy little Bilbo. A humorous sidenote is that even before I finished my first reading of The Hobbit I stumbled on a copy of Bored of the Rings, a Tolkien parody, which I found hilarious (what 17-year-old wouldn't? I mean its rank and dirty, juvenile but in a few places highly witty), even though I didn't get half the jokes or elbow juts.Tolkien made me care about that chubby, rabbity character, Bilbo, despite the critter's name. Come on, Bilbo gets a cold and when speaking to the wood elves he has to say: "Thag you berry buch!" (I'm paraphrasing, I'm sure, but it was remarkably close to how I sound when I have a cold, which regrettably is quite often.)Upon completing The Hobbit, which somewhere in the middle seemed less and less like a children's tale and more and more like a great adventure, I snatched up The Fellowship of the Ring and was upset to learn that Bilbo wasn't even a secondary character, and not only that, but I had to get used to the name FRODO (it soon became a name I knew, and cherished, like that of a trusted, fat friend). But Tolkien, who told and then wrote The Hobbit for and to his children, wrote The Lord of the Rings for himself, and it is now famously known that most of the story he read to the Inklings at The Eagle and Child, or as the Inklings referred to it: The Bird and Baby. Quaffing beer and ale, puffing black tobacco in briar pipes. By his own admission in many places, C.S. Lewis was enthralled, and it was during these readings that a certain lion began to take shape in his noodle, and witches, and magic, and all the things that Christians -- especially then, but now especially as well, okay, only when the name J.K. Rowlings is associated -- get heated and grumpy about. Poor Harry Potter, C. S. Lewis would have loved Harry Potter, and actually Harry owes a good deal of his existence to C.S. Lewis, and by proxy John Ronald Reuel Tolkien as well.It makes you want to find a Brit, and give him or her a big squeeze.* * *Well, that is a sad thing, as I just learned that Tim Hildebrandt passed away two days before my 44th birthday this past year, on June 11, 2006, from complications due to diabetes. When you appreciate someone's artistic expression, you love them, in a sense, it is almost as if they are a part of you, even if they never knew your name, or if you never met in person. With his twin brother Greg, Tim was an artistic genius.In very much the same way, I lived for quite a long time with the impression that Tolkien was alive, even though he passed away long before I "met" him.* * *I read LOTR three times in my teens, twice in my twenties, once in my thirties, and once (so far) in my forties (whereas I've already seen all three movies three times, and will probably be watching the trilogy, the director's cut, at least once a year in the coming years). Reading one work seven times isn't that much, I suppose, although I doubt I've read any other work that often (especially of that size).In my younger years I probably read Call of the Wild and White Fang five times each, and The Sea Wolf (admittedly, all of these are very small novels) probably ten times (come on, do you blame me? Wolf Larsen is even spelled correctly, a big Dane, perhaps not a Great Dane, London probably shaped my development a bit, with Sea Wolf). In my twenties alone I read Alexandre Dumas fils' Camille in the neighborhood of four times (yeah, but then again, I am a romantic sap). Trevanian's Summer of Katya it must be five times (Shibumi trailing at a distant two). William Goldman's Princess Bride about five times (and the book is much better than the movie, and I like the movie quite a very much, thag you berry buch), plus his Control in the neighborhood of seven times, if you're gonna read just one William Goldman, I'd heartily shove Control in your face, and then sit on your chest and tickle you until you swore to read it). I read David James Duncan's The River Why the first time well after I turned thirty, and I've already read it four times. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, four times, and the last time I read the full and complete unabridged version which had been unavailable until about 12 years ago or so, over 1,400 pages of it (plus, I listened to all the various famous soundtracks from the plays during the contiguous reading, including the Broadway version which is the most polished, the London which has the best Javert, let me smell ya, and the best of the best version, I think it was called the "International Version," Jeh-sAy, nuh-now Juh-ROME!) (I'll try not to let that happen again).I read in a very immersive kind of way, getting lost in the story, or getting found, depending on how you look at it. Most of the works I've read are more like memories of actual experiences than lines I read on a page. Put that down to the way my neurons woik. I'zeknowzit by Oz Moses. Movies, too, at least what I consider the best of them, really bring me back time and again; if I admitted to you how many times I've watched . . . oh, let's say Somewhere in Time (starring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve, yes I listed them in that order), I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say I've seen it over 30 times (including about four times while it was in the theater, I think it must have been in 1981), but at least I ceased copious amounts of unmanly weeping along about the time of my second marriage, when I could finally desist in weeping for the lack or loss of true love, ah true love, many sighs I do sigh.And the fact is, watching good art, or reading good art, INSPIRES good art, so I say lay it on thick, buddyroo. Some of my bestest ever stuffing came while watching Amadeus (enough juice in the very first watching, to produce a complete trilogy of novels, which will go nameless here, to protect my good friend Rodolphus, may he rest in peace, or pieces), and even watching it today (I watched the director's cut just a few weeks ago) can kick in some creative juices galore, baby, creative juices galore. (Okay, I admit it, I've watched Amadeus a few more times than Somewhere in Time.)I keep coming back to Tolkien, again and again, not on purpose. The guy just draws me in. I want to plod along with Frodo and Sam. I can't look away from Gollum's slithering, slimy glossalalia. I want to hear the elves sing. I want to run with Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli. I wanna take a crack at a Urukhai (I swear they came up with hip hop, probably at Saruman's instigation, that filthy, filthy old man).No, I'm serious, can't you hear the orc drums buh-bangin' while the Harukai wail:Guh-gonna GIT dat Undah-hi-YILLGuh-gonna smay-yuh-hith hay-YAIDGuh-gonna puh-lun-dah 'n ki-KEE-YILLSuh-suh-smuash duh puh-par-TAY duh-DAY-YAD!(Okay, sorry, in english: "I am going to slay Underhill, I am going to smash his head, I am going to plunder and kill, smoosh the party dead.") (Buh duh-dump BUMP.)You can't fault Terry Brooks for writing Sword of Shannara, despite the even blatant parallels and borrowings, as Brooks obviously adored Tolkien, and it shows. Art inspiring art. It not only improves the reflected art, but it puts a spit shine on the artist as well. Think of the long line of marching Tolkien rip-off people, some of them horrid, others mediocre, a very few highly effective, and one or two greats . . . the fellowships stumble together, the party sets out on an impossible quest, one of the bestest characters gets killed and comes back later for a flashy surprise, and the good guy gets a little nudge from the bad guy in doing the right thang. Duh-duh-doo dat, doodat thang.My first novel, Vanya Song, is probably more a blatant send-up of Tolkien than is Brooks (don't EVEN check, it's yet in the trunk, actually about 90% of it is on old Atari 800XL floppy disks, I mean the humungous old floppy disks, the ones that are the size of a Yellow Pages, so I gotz-tuh gotz-tuh figure out THAT one before poor old Stosha Overway ever gets to see the light of day), with more than a little Alexandre Dumas thrown in (Stosha ended up being a whole lot more like d'Artangan than Strider, in truth, a second cousin to Menion Leah), but it was inspired writing, a very much of it was, I poured all my early self into it, all my yearnings and star-crossed loves and such. Angst. Frustration. Suicidal tendencies. All that.Tolkien was so very real to me that even up to my mid-20s, whenever I was on a long hike, I always half-expected to fall through some passageway, and find myself "in the Land of Frodo" (which is how I always thought of it). I remember sitting silently, miles from anyone, in the middle of a pine forest, thinking, half dreaming, that at any moment, a company of elves might pass me by (I admit it, I STILL think there really might be elves out and about).But to his credit, that is one of the deepest things Tolkien did, was to pour himself, so very much of himself, all his dreams and romances and yearnings, into a work that in and of itself almost smashes its way into real life, at least into the "what if" musings of countless teenagers, even more 20-somethings, and probably double that 30-somethings, and half again as many 40-somethings, and then it is probably there that the curve begings to recede, yet I'm positive there are a very many fifties and over who obsess on Tolkien more than do I.You ever hear anyone say: "Tolkien is so cultic?" Almost in 95% of the cases, it's going to be some ding dong that has never read the book, but has it on "good authority" that it is cultic, if not downright occultic. Still, there are a goodly number of Christians that have looked into Tolkien, and have found the gold. Sadly, your knee-jerk reaction is to KNOW, that only a "Christian" would make a fuss about Tolkien, or Lewis, or George MacDonald, or really even J.K. Rowling, Madaleine L'Engle, or even back to Hans Christian Andersen (another Dane) and those grimmies the Brothers Grimm. It's fantasy, and fantasy is naughty naughteroonie.Then there are those confused few or many that accept Tolkien (Catholics tend to like him) and hate Lewis, what with all the half-dressed fauns (why DOESN'T Mr. Tumnus throw on some sweats? I keep dreading that poor little Lucy has stumbled into the posh lair of a pedophile -- hey, do you think this was intentional?), magicians, wizards, sexy witches, um, and talking animals (those DAMNED talking animals). Them evil guys. Children might really get interested in magic, and they might get on a magic train, and go away to a magic school, meet half-decapitated ghosts, half-giants, half-blood princes and mud-bloods and such. The noive.Almost without exception, those that deploy Tolkien are dripping heavy with their own cultic beliefs and practices, if not occultic. They sneer at LOTR, oathing about the Bible and "magic," and then they take a big steaming bite of a ham sandwich, all the while bumping about in the darkness.Thick irony being, both Tolkien and Lewis were pretty good Christians, in my book, with Lewis being probably the most oft-quoted Christian writer (and generally out of context), of all time. But they were boys who lived the creed, in the worst of times, and they never stopped hoping and dreams of a best of times.The biggest, fattest, most bloated of bloated ironies is that in America public schools have continuously thrown any kind of novels that hint at Christian themes into the dustbins, and yet there is Narnia, with all its only half-veiled Christian symbols and shadows and sions jutting up out of the snow like literal, purposeful stumbling blocks (Tolkien thought Lewis was an absolute DORK for leaving everything so blatantly obvious) -- HERE IS NARNIA, in every public school library! And every high school offers Tolkien galore, if not actually reading him in class.And the two writers' loudest detractors? Yeah, but the saving fact is, not everyone who claims to be a "one of them," is. At the very least, they certainly do not follow Christ, and um, isn't that the best definition for who is and who is not a Christian?Ain't that ironic?Christianity, is at its best, real and true, and permeates love and emanates love. And Tolkien, a Christian, permeated and emanated all the best that there is to emanate and permeate, as did his writing, as does his writing.But Tolkien is as Tolkien does, all that, in and of itself, for better or worse. And in my book, Tolkien stands right next to Victor Hugo, and my homely friend Fyodor."A box without hinges, key, or lid,
yet golden treasure inside is hid."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done
since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Where many paths and errands meet,
Until it joins some larger way,
And wither then? I cannot say.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"He who breaks a thing
to find out what it is,
has left the path of wisdom."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
The starlight on the Western Seas."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"Still around the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"All we do know, and that
to a large extent by
direct experience, is that evil
labors with vast power
and perpetual
success - in vain:
preparing always
the soil for unexpected good
to sprout in."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
DUH DOODLES.
I was doodling in grade school. To be honest here, I didn't learn a thing (well, maybe a "damn" thing here or there) in school, not hardly in the standard curricula . . . and only my first two years of school were public, well, and my last two college years, so I can only imagine just how really worthless I'd be if my "education" had been set up differently. Almost everything I've learned has been in books, mostly novels (okay, in the fourth grade, public school, I DID learn TSMIE, a mnemonic from Mr. Haas, which stood for Trophosphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Ionosphere, Exosphere, so I guess I did retain something).
As the various teachers droned on and on, I doodled (hey it really does look good, I mean it looks studious, as it is supposed that I am taking copious notes on the wisdom I am hearing). All my workbooks would fill up with doodles, generally twisting, twining mazes, or jagged angles, little puzzle pieces, adding to adding to adding to adding (ah, the madness!), and so on.
Even in grade school, the general comment my "artwork" produced was: "Huh. What is, um. Huh. Yeah. That's a mess, ain't it?" Even today, busily woiking on a "doodle" on a break, a coworker will glance over my shoulder, scratch his head, and then say: "Suh-weet." And that's about as good as it gets.
I've been compelled, all my life, to WRITE. My whole identity has grown organically around my overwhelming notion that I don't have a choice, that I have to write, that I AM a writer, even if nobody likes or understands what I write (oh the repetition of the man, the endless asides, a pox upon him, a POX upon him) (thank God I've never actually HAD a pox, at least nothing beyond the little speckle from the innoculation on my left shoulder when I was a wee bairn) (see what I mean?).
But the thing of it is, I've never LIKED writing. I've compared it to vomiting. How you HAVE to vomit. Hardly anyone actually ENJOYs vomiting, not even your most hard-core bulemic model. But you DO feel better after you empty your guts. And that's the best description of me as a writer, I don't like doing it, I hate doing it, but I feel so much better when the job is done. Whew, I'm so glad I got THAT over with.
And I adore art, I love doing it. I get lost in it. It is fun.
But therein lies the rub, uh, dub, uh dub. Writing has always seemed the hard path to me, while art of the graphic kind, the "fine" type has seemed the easy (nature or nurture? my father is a renaissance man, and his father before him, another great Dane). But I always do things the hard way, it's my nature. Most people who know me will say, yeah, he's an idiot for sure (of course, they, these people who know me, use the term "fer sure," so how am I supposed to take them seriously, hmmm?).
What it took me years and years and years to learn, and millions of doodles (that probably ain't much of an exaggeration), is that while I'm "doing my doodles" I'm feeding the writing side. As my pen makes these irritatingly vague puzzle pieces, my mind disengages, drifts free, and all these creative ping pong balls start ricocheting all over the place (dis noodle starts uh jumpin'), and before I know it, all the work is done. I have this knack of concentrating for 2-3 hours at a time, hardly looking away from the project at hand. Then awareness pops back in, and suddenly I find that I have created a work that predicts the future (oh wait, um, that's a character on the great TV show Heroes). But yeah, like that (but definitely no heroin, as coffee has always been my drug of choice, and for many years cigars, oh, even today, I WANT a cigar, and it's been over six years, or a wee bit more, since I started using my expensive humidor as a neat box that holds junk).
For about seven years I had this horrid job as a graphic artist (but they upgraded the title to a tres chic graphic designer), which was maddening, which killed the soul, which daily beat me down. The good thing was that I discovered you could listen to books on tape (okay, CD, generally, but a few tapes got in there anyway). And since I've always been a reader (since the first grade, I remember sounding out the words: "Suh-eeeee, th-th-THE buh-oyyy, um, See the boy? See the boy rrrr-ruh-run-RUN -- SEE THE BOY RUN! I can read! I can read!" and after an initial flurry of perhaps 100 books a week, I settled down into a cozy one book per week, preferably a fat one, which has lasted until this day) I got into it right away, deeply.
Up to this point, books on tape were just for trips. I have this maddening propensity for driving across the country to visit people (yes, I've heard about airplanes, but do you think they are really just a hoax?) and books on tape are literally a form of salvation, if only the moment-by-moment kind. But doing graphic art in no way impedes listening, and listening no way impedes visual arts. In fact, they distinctly compliment and complement each other (well, I do say, mr. book, you make my artwork fly by, yes indeedydo. Thank you so much my fair lady art, I love to whisper sweet nothings into your ear as you bend over your task, thank YOU so much!).
For seven years or so I averaged three recorded books a week, doing this JOB. I think in a fate kind of way, it was the ear-reading that was the whole point, sure I wasn't making much money, I had two bosses that adored tormenting me, threatening to fire me, but I was reading "how to" books and "self help" books and biographies and genre and history and novels novels novels. Three books a week, faithfully, for seven years. That works out to. OH YOU FIGURE IT OUT. Sheesh. It's a lot of reading, anyway.
And I mastered Photoshop. That was a good thing too. But as far as the job went, it seems artists in India are better educated than me, and what I can expect $25 an hour to do, they can turn around the same exact stuffings for $1.25 in the same timeframe. Yeah, we don't even have to do the math.
The doodles turned into pictures, of a sort. And then I thought about trying to do a portrait of my wife in what I had begun to think of as "virtual shattered glass" (quite a few people, and these are supposed to be friends, mind you, would comment: "Yeah, it DOES look like broken glass. But who in the hell WANTS broken glass? You throw the stuff out! You might as well call it virtual garbage!") and I didn't even know if it would work, but I started building her face in these tiny colorful puzzle pieces (I've always been fascinated by stained glass, still am to this day) and after three full days of this I called her in and showed her the piece(s) and she looked, then SCREAMED. She instantly recognized herself.
What I picked up, in a sensory kind of way, was that the artwork MOVED. There was some odd kind of life in it. I fully understand it is an optical illusion, the way 3-D glasses work on our wee eyeballs, and I've always recognized that in stained glass. I actually used to focus on the glass and watch the reds shoot forward at my eyes, the purples drop back just a tad, and the blues fall away like the mountains majesty (oops, that's PURPLE mountains' majesty, sorry about that). I should have said: "And the blues fell away like the Misty Mountains..." (Get it? Get it? AWWW, just FORGET it.)
That's when I thought to give a try to The Tolkster. I immediately began to call him that, The Tolkster (even though I know Tolkien was never called such a thing, I was quite aware that his nickname was Tollers). But the guy developing under my hand was a separate guy entirely. The Tolkster. What a guy, The Tolkster (and he always like his beginning "T" capitalized, even if it IS only a "the"). His whole face was in movement, during the whole creation process, zooming in and out, blurring, frying my poor orbs.
But he seems alive, his "skin" seems to move. I kept expecting a smoke ring to come billowing up out of the pipe. Close up, The Tolkster is all chaos of zipping purples and blues and pinpoints of flashing red, all chaos, disorder, confusion. But you get back from him, just a way, and the chaos comes together, and in some bizarre way purple and blue and red starts breathing, in concert, it is fairly freakish (but pretty).
As is everyone else in the universe, I am always captivated by rainbows, even the kind cast from sprinklers. They are illusory miracles, right here, right now. And I gotta say, they freak me out. I can't stop staring. Sure, I look utterly stupid, my mouth hanging slack, drool kerplopping off my chin. The thing is, rainbows cannot be accidents. They are messages. I think rainbows started the whole deal with people staining glass. The shimmering colors, a chaos of color, coming together, twining in and out, the scales of mermaids irridescing just beneath the glowing foam, the glint of diamond fire winking sparks a unicorn horn.
Ever stop to consider that a unicorn is just a horny horse? I digress.
So I got six weeks to engross, to obsess, to apply my time, ply my trade, smear down my concentration for six weeks, day in and day out, nine hours a day, six days a week. I set myself the goal of finishing by the day before St. Patrick's Day, and I ended up beating my self-inflicted deadline by 10 days. My wife thought I was crazy. The technique itself, insane as it is, would NEVER allow me to bring The Tolkster to life in such a short period of time.
For six weeks I thought perhaps I was crazy. WHY in the world was I even doing this? Fact is, people just don't get it. They say, "Wow, what a mess." Six weeks of not making money (and this is after 23 years of consistently making money, always and ever attempting to juggle the family with the art, slog off to work, come home and do art, slog, slog, slog, soldier on, just soldier on).
But you know what? I was happier in those six weeks than I'd been in the previous 23 years. My recorded books cranked (yes, after blah blah blahing about Terry Brooks, I finally listened to Sword of Shannara on cassette tape, yes I did say cassette tape, they DO still exist, sadly; going through the 17 tapes in two days, and that's how I learned I had been pronoucing it wrongly for about 25 years, and I am still pissed about it, let me smell ya). My mind focused, hands active, lost in The Tolkster's hair, or switching to his undercarriage, or tweaking his hand, ah his hand it never turns out right, deleting his forehead time and time again because it is coming forward, now it is zipping backward, ack, can't his forehead behave and stay where it is supposed to stay, or is it all my eyes, my weak, weak eyes.
I'ze loved it, my preciousss, I'ze loved it. That was six weeks of bliss.
(Of course, technical note -- note, this ain't an aside, well, THIS is, here inside the technical note, but don't hold THAT against me, I had to explain, didn't I? -- I started The Tolkster about 1.5 years ago, did the scarf, the collar, part of the forehead, a little bit of the hand, then picked it up and put it down for a goodly year, then this last six months I've gotten agitated, inspired, excited, and I really don't know WHY, I just did, and so for about two months prior to the six weeks, I was really attacking The Tolkster in every spare moment. So if I were to start The Tolkster now, work on it every day, six days a week, I could probably polish off the whole business in five or six months, tops, that's barring pnemonia, of course.)
But unlike writing, I don't get much pleasure out of the fact that I did it. Yeah. I did it. We all do it. You know you wanna do it. Oops, that's Mel Brooks, I just slipped into Mel Brooks. But izz good to bee duh king. I mean the wolf. It's good to be the wolf. You know the drill.
Back to the writing/art balance. I hate DOing writing, there is absolutely no pleasure in it. Sweat beads upon my bony brow. But I love DOing visual art. It is not hard work. I get lost in it. I don't have to pause and ponder, I don't have to read back. I do step back from the art, to look at it, and there is pleasure THERE, in seeing it as a whole. But in having finished it, it's like: "Yeah, so what's next?" Whereas with finishing it's a novel, there is weeping, possibly some gnashing of teeth.
Finishing visual art is like having sex. That was great. Let's do it again, just maybe differently. Finishing literature is like making love. You want to stare into each other's eyes, you wanna be goofy, glow (which is not to remotely suggest that I do not enjoy making love, in the moment, while I am involved in the miracle, it's just that making love is not about the moment, it is generally about much bigger, much more sweeping things, and thus is literature). But to me they complement each other, and compliment each other, for me I can't have one without the other, the athelete and the artist, spinning and spiraling, the whorls and whirls of a seashell, in and out, recycling, born again, dying and resurrection, sweating and cuddling, intellectual and spiritual, thinking and feeling, birth and death.
Um, so, what's next?
Can't we just cuddle for a little while?
"There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over... Faint to my ears came the gathered rumour of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
