Confessions of a Pop Fan

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

I'M JUST A HORNY DEVIL, BABY, BUT I KNOW HOW TO TREAT A LADY

"Yoga Girls" continues apace, with part VI going up today (with any luck). The pace of the writing is suiting me well. I'm also pushing myself for a challenge I haven't yet written about here. A friend and I were discussing a theory she had read about modern literature, how the "it's all been done" attitude has given way to protagonists who react more than act, who are buffeted by their surroundings. Sometimes, as in most of my work, there is a wake-up call that eventually makes the character more proactive. In The Everlasting, there is actually a lot of talk about how Lance was once known as a "doer" and now he doesn't really do anything. Given that this is post-Everlasting Lance, whom I envision as more of a Lothario, he's got to be active in "Yoga Girls." I think this is a direction my work has to take in general after Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?

Additionally, I have to be wary of where any relationships in this story go, how they succeed or fail, lest I tread old ground. It can be hard writing about dating without it being like a sitcom.

And another song whose melody has been haunting the back of my mind whenever I think of the title has now come to the forefront: Aztec Camera's "Orchid Girl."

In stores this week:

Honey Mustard vol. 1, by Yeo Ho-Kyung

I did the script for this sweet little Korean comic, and it was a lot of fun. The story and the art have their rough patches, but for the most part, it's an endearing romantic comedy that sets itself apart by giving us a glimpse of Korean manners and the social system. Rich grandfathers, mean stepmothers, misunderstandings, the works.

Is it possible that the internet has ruined the idea of my beloved eccentric recluses? I'm not talking the mad magpies who can't function in normal society and would never log on to a computer because they fear the government and alien invaders are monitoring their porn activities (besides, I stopped dating her about a year ago *ba-dum-bump*). I mean guys who in the past would have spent their entire lives writing what I post to you in some overstuffed journal they never show the world. Instead, these days, we get a blog.

I am put in mind of this having just watched In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger last night. I was unfamiliar with Darger before this film. He spent his years between 1917 and 1972 locked away in various rooms around Chicago, speaking with no one, trundling back and forth between his inner sanctum and his menial janitorial jobs. He had been kicked around orphanages as a child, and eventually diagnosed as "feeble minded" and put on the work farm he ultimately escaped from. But he wasn't really crazy. Someone in the film says that if he was considered such, it was only because he was poor; only the rich are allowed to be "eccentric."

When Darger died, his landlords discovered a mountain of material in his tiny apartment. He had stacks of clippings and photographs pasted into old phone books and kept around as reference along with classic children's storybooks. He also left behind an autobiography, piles of paintings (some up to twelve-feet long, on butcher paper, painted on both sides), and a 15,000 page manuscript for a novel about two warring nations. One was a land of people who hated little children, the other was Christian and loved children. Their army fought for youth and was often led by little kids, with the most famous being seven blonde sisters, the Vivian Girls. And one of the main heroes in defense of childhood in the story was Henry Darger himself.

Thankfully, Darger's landlords were also artists, and they saw the uniqueness of his life's work and chose to preserve it, even keeping the apartment intact through 2000. Darger only left behind three photographs of himself, and the filmmakers do an excellent job of showing how nobody really knew him by juxtaposing conflicting testimonies about how he lived his life. (For instance, he was known to attend mass nearly every day, but one person swears he always sat in the front row, another says in the back, and an altar boy attests that Darger always sat dead center.) I often lament how the way many people no longer believe in heroes, I no longer believe in anti-heroes in an era where rebellion can be faked for millions of dollars in profit. I put someone like Darger in that special category of ones I can believe in. He was the real deal, but he died over three decades ago. So, it still stands: could he exist now? Could he continue to toil away in secret, or would I be checking out his art in his MySpace profile? Would his uniqueness be eclipsed in a chatroom for loners writing children's epics in their spare time?

Current Soundtrack: Luke Haines, Luke Haines is Dead <br />

Current Mood: searching