What I totally meant to write about yesterday, but didn't, because the entry got waaaay too long
Highlights of my weekend included such diverse activities as:
-the first writing party since September. Pizza, socializing, some gift exchanging, and writing/drawing. I'm progressing on the Jack Rabbit story, though I'm hitting a few bumps in the road (or should I say Road?). I guess the lesson I'm walking away from with this is that it ( Read more... )
-the first writing party since September. Pizza, socializing, some gift exchanging, and writing/drawing. I'm progressing on the Jack Rabbit story, though I'm hitting a few bumps in the road (or should I say Road?). I guess the lesson I'm walking away from with this is that it ( Read more... )
Okay, so that's absolutely *not* it, verbatim, but that's the gist.
Or, from Into the Woods:
"The roof, the house, and your mother at the door.
The roof, the house, and the world you never thought to explore.
And you think of all of the things you've seen,
And you wish that you could live in between,
But you're back again, only different than before,
After the sky... "
I always <3 that part of stories, too. *wipes tear*
Also, sometime we should watch this movie I have on VHS tape called "The Navigator." It's this indy film that involves people from an early middle ages Celtic tribe (or somethin') coming through to the present day on a mission to prevent a dark vision they received from coming true... I don't even recall it that well, just that I liked it and wanted to share it. And that, instead of going for comedy schtick, or action-adventure, it was such a genuine creative imagining of what it would be like for those people to arrive in this world.
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And you've pretty much quoted my favorite part of the entire Into the Woods soundtrack. I <3 "Giants in the Sky"! My second favorite party is when the Baker's Wife sings "Moments in the Woods," which has pretty much the exact message. Those times "in the woods" change you, and maybe your home seems a little smaller when you come back, but you appreciate it so much more. Sondheim and Lapine really hit that idea spot-on in that musical.
When I was a kid, I didn't quite understand the appeal of coming home from a fantasy experience. But now that I'm older, I find myself frustrated by stories that have the heroes staying in whatever fantastic world they're in, and never receiving closure in the real world (like in the "Dragon and the George" series of Gordon R. Dickson, or that roleplayers-sent-to-fantasy-world series you gave me, Anne). Well--I should clarify: Harry Potter is going to stay a wizard and will probably live in the Wizard world, Daniel is going to remain Inspired and therefore outside of 'normal life,' and so will the Walkers, to an extent. They're not going to go back to their old bedrooms and look around and yell "Outrageous!" But they're all going on particular quests to meet their respective destinies, and when their stories are complete, I'm pretty sure there's going to be a reckoning with their old lives, some kind of apotheosis and closure between who they were and who they are, the world they were born into and the world where they now live. Which is a lot different than "My life sucks, I don't know where I'm going, I have no friends, so I'm going to run away to D&D land and become a warrior and slay bad guys for the rest of my life, and never think about my old life again! Woot!"
Hmm, this is really turning into a ramble! ^.^; As for "The Navigator," I'm always up for a movie :)
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Yeah... I recall us having a really good conversation in college, one time, about this subject, and the difference between reconciling the otherworld and the mundane world versus just leaving one for the other. I remember Neverwhere, The Neverending Story, and The Dragon and the George all being mentioned. :)
The key to how Harry Potter, Danny, and the Walkers all work, in my mind, is that all of them *do* straddle both worlds. Harry (I hope) will not forswear the normal world forever, and cease to interact with anyone other than wizarding types, nor will he abandon the aspects of his mundane life like his friends or pet or hobbies in favor of being some kind of superwizard.
From the start, Danny is walking in both worlds, and although he has a literal "going and a returning," his 'return' is internal as well as external. It's the comparison of how he ends up, versus who he was when everything started -- realizing not only what he's gained, but what potential he had all along, with or without his 'otherworld.'
And the Walkers also walk in both worlds. That's the very nature of the road, that it rides the line between the two; and it seems to me that the Walkers have a calling to find their role *in relation to* the world, what they have to offer it, what their stories give back and how it enriches the mundane. When they first start out, they're plunged into the fantastic, but I think they all gravitate back towards a middle ground where they still touch base with the real.
And I think you've also put some thought into the negative aspects of being a Walker, the fine line between diverging from the normal world versus turning your back on it. It's all tied up in X's argument, that the Walker world can easily end up with a lot of dissatisfied escapists who haven't made any kind of peace with the way the conventional world works, who've chosen to ignore their own issues rather than come to terms with them, to run from reality rather than Walk alongside it.
In addition to 'the return,' I also have a huge soft spot for the part of stories that reflects on the very nature of storytelling, or artistic creation, and what it has to offer the world -- the idea that the journeys people go on get turned into stories that are passed on to others to give them strength and hope and direction and support. Actually, I think what I just said is a specific aspect *of* 'the return.' What bothers me about the stories where people just take off for the otherworld and never return is that they never give back; it's not just that they don't make peace with the world, but that they don't give anything back to it, they don't create or support or speak to... well, at the base level, they don't *love* the real world or the other people in it. They just abandon it.
Which is, I think, a big part of the Walker... controversy, if you will. The Mae POV versus the X one. Do Walkers have "a going and a returning," or do they just take off and never come back? And I think a very important aspect of their lives is that, by living out stories, they're *giving* to the real world. They're giving it gifts of love and hope and courage and excitement and humor and catharsis and beauty and a promise that there are good things out there, reasons to keep moving forward. So in that sense, they're not doing the escapist, one-way journey thing I hate so much. Rather, they "return" each time a story is completed. They just live a life of journey after journey.
I think that Mae's part with the family at the end of the book is sort of the peak of her return from that particular journey. It's where she herself realizes what she lost, what she gained, and what she can give back. I think that experience really solidifies her own knowledge of why a Walkers Walks.
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Your thoughts on giving back to and loving the real world really hits on the point where a lot of Walkers vs. Ironshods diverge, in general. Anyone who gets called to the Road is, to some extent, going to be a person who's dissatisfied with their current 'normal' life or their 'normal' identity. All the same, Walkers who've recently been called to the Road have it taught to them that their job is to be a hero and to protect and give back to the world that they've rejected or that has rejected them. And some of those people are going to decide that they don't want to do that. "Why should I protect the ignorant jerks who picked on me in high school?" or even "Why should I give the world something beautiful when I can use my new power to make people fear me?"
The more I type, the more this reminds me of Bastian's journey from wish to wish. He gains power and strength and endurance and forgets that he was ever weak; and his desire for power and respect turns selfish so that he wants to be "dangerous and feared," even by his friends. He forgets about the real world and doesn't want to go back to fix it, forgetting that the real world needs to be healed in order for Fantastica to be sustained.
And then there's the Jack Rabbit story, where the main conflict is that Jack Rabbit had his fantastic plunge (i.e., his time as the Name Peddler), but doesn't want to embrace or even acknowledge whatever he might have gained from that experience. Metaphorically, he's come back from the woods but is trying to pretend he never went in.
You know, sometimes I feel like my own life has followed these journey patterns. My trip to England was a major one; I really do feel like I came back changed for the better, and a lot more open and aware of the world. But metaphorically, there's also the fact that I spent all my time as a kid reading and writing secondary-world fantasies, and 'escaping' into books. But as I got older, my reading and writing became less about escaping into somewhere else, and more about finding the fantastic in this world, drawing inspiration from my experiences here and trying to see things in a different light--'straddling' the border, I guess. I'm curious to know if anyone else has gotten this feeling?
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Have you ever read Lilith? It's by George MacDonald, whom C.S. Lewis cites as the writer who probably influenced him the most. George MacDonald wrote a lot of Christian fantasy (sorta allegory, sorta not), as well as other straight fantasy and fairy tales. After reading your comment, I sort of did a mental compare/contrast of The Last Battle and Lilith, because Lilith struck me as an allegorical fantasy that really worked according to the Campbellian monomyth. And what I realized is that Lilith actually ends on a note of return: a very solid return, in which our narrator is sent firmly away from what may literally be the gates of heaven (I swear, this is no spoiler...the book is on tasty fantasy crack, it's very unpredictable) to return to the mundane world until it's the appropriate time for his journey to move beyond it. The whole book is an account of the supernatural experience he has. It's implied that the narrator's life is 'normal' from that point on, and that he's supposed to take with him what he learned from his journeys, that it will somehow be vital to the rest of his mortal existence. I have a feeling, actually, based on the situation and some turns of phrase, that Lilith had a direct influence (possibly subconscious) on the way C.S. Lewis ended the Narnia chronicles. Only he seemed to miss the point that the main character had something very important to learn in the otherworld and *enact* in the real world. Aslan telling the children what had happened actually had some lines that struck me as close to those of the angel (?) at the end of the narrator's journey sending him away until a later time. It pretty much shows up the difference in a nutshell.
In children's writing, you're often reminded to let the children solve their own problems. Just as an adult writer is supposed to avoid deus ex machina, a children's writer should as well -- but it's trickier, because children have literally less power in the world, and it's hard to avoid letting the adults solve all the problems. I'm sure that was a challenge for C.S. Lewis, having a world with Aslan and magical creatures, and needing to make the children at least co-central movers of the plot. I think that's another part of what bothers me about The Last Battle: it seems like for that whole book, they've lost their centrality, like the plot is spiraling away out of their control. And at the end, they seem permanently robbed of their freedom and control. Which, I realize, probably isn't actually the case, but the way it's written came off a little unsatisfying, to me. Probably why I read that book once and Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew like... a million bajillion times.
Agh, work time! I spent too much time typing! :-p
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I haven't read Lilith. The only George MacDonald I've read was "The Golden Key" and "The Horde of the Gibbelins" (I think that second one was by him? Could be wrong...). I'll add it to The List ;) Incidentally, one of these days I have to dig up the chart I drew up in Rochester that connected the influences of people like Tolkein, MacDonald, Lewis, Coleridge, Auden, etc.
So, on a slightly related note, I was just listening to "The Long Way Around," by the Dixie Chicks, which is such a good Mae song. And among my favorite lines are "I fought with a stranger and I met myself / I opened my mouth and I heard myself..." Reminds me of the monomythic elements one encounters in the Otherworld, the conflicts that teach you to know yourself, who you are, what you stand for, what you need to do.
Oh man, I could sit here all day quoting poems and songs that really capture the essence of the journey and what it all means and how it relates to creation and art... *shivers with glee!*
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