(no subject)
A friend and I are discussing things we learned at WFC (World Fantasy Convention) in San Antonio last month.
One of the panelists mentioned seeing a child with skin burning with Napalm being rushed to a clinic.
I replied that reminded me of how I was introduced to war, and suffering, and tragedy, and the horrific events around the world. (And how safe, and nurturing, and simple my own childhood was.)
I remember watching the War presented on my grandmother's color TV in the living room. This wood-encased box containing a CRT, positioned eye-level with anyone sitting in a chair, squatted mutely in a corner by the fireplace most of the day. But come 5:30 p.m. (or whenever national news came on back in the 60s), that box fired up. I still remember the whine of it (old TVs and some fluorescent lights really pierce my brain and make me crazy, well, I'm already crazy really). The family would huddle in their chairs, glued to the evening news. I couldn't stand to watch the news, though I'd sometimes peak through the doorway from my bedroom where I hid during news time, or through the front window when I was on the porch socializing (we called it playing back then) with my BFF Judy from across the street).
I couldn't figure out why my family wasn't crying their eyes out at the images on the news. I was convinced, since nobody cried or showed any emotion as the Vietnam War paraded across the screen, that war wasn't real. Most of the images from the Vietnam War were black and white, even the film, but that was enough. In my mind, blood was blood no matter what color. And pain and suffering didn't need RGB to be real. Yet, they'd just watch, what I now realize was them being stoic, perhaps hardening their hearts against the images they viewed. (I keep thinking of things I should have asked my grandparents before they died.)
That was the first time that "real war" was shown in such a mass media like television. By the 60s almost everyone had a TV or lived next door to one (my girlfriend wasn't allowed to watch some shows on their TV at home, very fundamentalist, (but lovely) parents, so she'd come to my house to watch The Ed Sullivan Show). And almost everyone watched what was unprecedented news coverage for the time. The Vietnam War was covered extensively like no other. It's only rival probably was Ed Sullivan and thankfully it didn't air simultaneously, because then Ed would win and much of the nation would be uninformed, but perhaps that'd be a good thing in my case, as then I wouldn't have witnessed such atrocities at such a young age. (One might say my brain is still young, but we won't go into that here.)
It was many years until I realized there really was pain and suffering to such an extent in the world. My child mind just refused to accept that my world, MY world, would incorporate anything so sinister except in fiction. (Like all of y'all, I was a precocious kid, reading and learning way beyond my age group. that's what makes us such great SF fans--readers and writers, I think. I was reading Rand and Kafka and all that back then. I was almost smart once upon a time LOL. It wore off, no worries. There's a pill for that, I'm sure.... more about that later.)
For many years even as an adult, I refused to watch national news. Local news I could handle mostly. Local news is a lot about stupid people doing stupid things and either getting caught, or dying because of it. I can handle stupid people, but real war.... I was even courted by the military. Had all these tests run. blah blah. But I couldn't handle the thought of so much death, like I saw on my grandmother's TV set, or that I might have to kill someone. (squirrels, coons, deer, sure, when needed, but people? real people? no way I'd willingly do it.) It would have probably been a great career. The War was almost dead by then (almost). I'd of had fun I bet. But I think I'd also have become crazier than I am now, real life crazy, worried every day if I'd be transferred out.
Anyway.... I say these things cuz I realize that many people in our group don't understand just what the Vietnam War did to people. Sure, it was war, but I mean all the way down to the kids growing up in that decade. How technology shaped "the baby boomers" and everyone else, in so many ways, some minute at the time but affecting and shaping people in different ways. Which is a little what writing is about, right? What affects our characters? How was our protag affected by childhood trauma? Or what if it was normal for everyone else, but ... Just all kinds of things.
My point is, our characters suffer in many ways. Some events may have influenced them in silent ways, setting a sort of time bomb in their personality and actions. And we have to really get into that. We have to feel it so our characters can feel it too. If we don't feel it, aren't affected by it, then there's NO way we can put that on paper.
I'm probably preaching to the choir, right? But sometimes, a little preaching doesn't hurt, much.