Speak of the Dead

My time in Mexico taught me many things: a beautiful language, the power of family unity, and marvelous ways to celebrate the presence of departed souls. The Days of the Dead are very special holidays. In Mexico, people build lovely altars that appeal to every sense. The colors and smells are there, and so is the spiritual connection to deceased friends on the other side. This year, in Jim Thorpe, we are holding a fourth annual Day of the Dead reading event at 1 PM on Sunday, October 30th.

At the "Speak of the Dead" reading, we will have a mix of readers and creative performers from Carbon County -- along with a special guest or two from my old Philly gang, the Liberties Scribblers. The event will be held at the Strange Brew Coffee House at 79 Broadway -- Jim Thorpe's main street. If you'd like to read or perform a piece in tribute to someone who has passed on, please contact me here or at the Facebook page for Pennsyl Pointe Writing Retreat.

We will also build a small ofrenda at Strange Brew. If you want to add an item in remembrance of a beloved soul, you can leave it for me at Strange Brew some time before the event. This is one of my favorite autumn rituals. Feel free to join us.

Parallel Stories of Walking the Tightrope

Creative people embrace fabulous dreams. If you have abandoned yourself to the charms of a creative idea that now seems impossible to complete, consider the work of Philippe Petit whose incredible feats were captured visually in the documentary Man on Wire -- and poetically in the book Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Petit is the French highwire performer who walked back and forth between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. McCann is Irish by birth, but his book captures the soul of New York City as lived by its socialites, artists, hookers, and priests. 

Petit, a Frenchman from Nemours, spent six years planning his walk between the Towers, a project that was dangerous beyond words and patently illegal. His dream of the tightrope feat came to him before the World Trade Center had even been built. He read a newspaper article about the WTC construction project while he was waiting in a dentist's office and immediately began formulating a plan for his unbelievable walk more than 100 stories in the air. 

McCann's book captures the excitement of Petit's performance by leading us through the lives of characters who occupy each rung of New York City's social ladder. Some of their stories are heartbreaking. But the book is written with such affection for the tumult of life, you cannot help but feel delighted by their efforts to seize the available beauty in life. The sight of the tightrope walker adds a dimension of greatness to a day that would otherwise feel tragic to some, mundane to others. 

A third level of artistic complexity is added by James Marsh's film Man on Wire. If you have never seen it,  it is worth every dollar of a DVD rental and each minute of your attention. The work of Petit, the novel by McCann, and the movie by Marsh wrap the tragedy of 9/11 in a tableau of meaning that is far deeper and more complex than any one story could express. 

There will always be days when your life or work may feel impossible. And there are certainly times when the events of our lives seem to weigh more than we can bear. But by comparison, no task could be more difficult than the goals these artists set for themselves. Steal a moment to enjoy their work. Then take a big breath and get back up on the wire. 

Character Education

If you can't predict what a character will do, you're more likely to stay hooked by a story. Complex characters take time to reveal their hidden motives and disruptive plans. Rampart, one of the best films I saw at the Toronto Film Festival, revolved around a corrupt policeman with loads of charm. Watching Officer Dave Brown develop and unravel was an extraordinary experience. Much of his behavior was awful, but his emerging desperation made you want to understand him more. It's hard to think of a character in literature with the same qualities of attraction and repulsion. Voracious readers: help me out!

Officer Dave Brown is not Raskolnikov -- but he shares some of the delusions that Dostoevsky's great character held about why he should be permitted to do some of the sickening things he does (e.g. bash in the heads of suspected criminals, kill those he presumes to be guilty).

Officer Dave Brown is not Gatsby -- but he has some kind of naive sense of entitlement and -- though he has no real skill for the endeavor -- he is prone to love.

Officer Dave Brown is not Salander -- he has a set of gifts that include bottomless irony and a penchant for disappearing, but his morals are not as clear as Lisbeth's and his taste for violence is less defensible.

The one thing that Officer Dave Brown may be is the clearest example of what a great actor Woody Harrelson has become. Watching this mesmerizing movie, I had to remind myself that Harrelson is the same person who began his career as the dumb guy everyone made fun of on Cheers. During Rampart, it is difficult to take your eyes off him because he seems to have control of every muscle, every pore -- and he uses them to reveal more about the character.

Any writer who wants to learn more about creating compelling characters should see this movie. It is as instructive as it is amazing.