Anthony Clifton

Tonight’s write-in was at Cafe Milo in Ames, Iowa where our literary efforts were accompanied by a bluesy folk music band that, at times reminded me, in a vague way I can’t really explain, of one my favorite groups, Boa:

Bôa are a British alternative/indie band formed in London in 1993 by drummer Ed Herten. They are most widely known for the song “Duvet”, which was used as the theme song for the anime series Serial Experiments Lain. Because of this, they are popular among fans of that anime; they have also performed in a live concert at the anime convention Otakon in 2000.

As usual, having the company of live music helped my writing in a way that recorded music simply doesn’t.  It’s strange.  When I paint, there is certain music that I can listen to that will enhance the experience and heighten my sensitivity both to the image I’m painting as well as the physical and emotional experience of painting it.  Garbage, fronted by ultra-hawtie female vocalist Shirley Manson, is a favorite in this regard to the extent that I almost can’t paint without listening to them.  When I’m writing code, on the other hand, I find that I need something like techno dance music, anime theme songs, J-Pop or, on the opposite end of the rhythmic spectrum, something down-tempo like triphop in order to really keep clicking along.

But when I write, it’s completely different.  I’ve never been able to find any recorded music that does anything other than distract me from the process of formulating words and putting them down in some form worth reading by others.  Live music, on the other hand and especially if it’s very, very loud, seems to permeate my body, to overwhelm my physical senses in a manner that permits total focus on the writing process.  Sometime I really must try writing at a rave.  I’ll bet I come up with something so revolutionary that it will change the world forever.  Or not.  In either case, I’m certain to feel good doing it, get easily into a flow state and produce something unusual.

As for the write-in, I reached around 23,500 words tonight, enjoying the catharsis of writing in, pseudonymously, a woman who was extremely cruel to me a couple months ago.  I won’t say anything about her but suffice it to say that she bullied me in a manner that I simply cannot tolerate without finding some way to express my outrage, even if it is in a form that will never be seen by anyone but me.  The Demon, one of the protagonists of my novel The Demon’s Guide to Novel Writing, described a particularly vicious torment that would visited upon her.  It felt so good to get those feelings out of my mind and leave them, stripped of their power, in some fiction.

Returning home, I chose not to take I-35 back to Des Moines but, instead, to take a slower, darker route via Highway 69, the road that used to be the main connector between Ames and Des Moines before the interstate system was built.  Something called to me as I rolled down 30 toward the turn-off to 69, something about the vivid brightness of the stars and the rising half moon in the East.  Somewhere around halfway between Ames and Des Moines, I found a gravel road heading West and turned onto it, pulling over into a field when I found a spot where I could safely do so.

Then, with all the cars lights off, I leaned against the trunk and gazed up at the stars.  Orion was climbing up in the East, it’s nebula visible even without averted vision.  The half moon rose to it’s left, its glow so bright I could see my shadow on the gravel despite there being no street lights or houses nearby.  The orange sky glow of Des Moines obscured the sky to the South but in the Southwest, Cygnus was dropping toward the North horizon, circling beneath the pole, and straight up, near the Zenith, Cassiopeia hung from the Milky Way, glittering in a cosmic M that reminded me of my nights spent photographing it during college astronomy labs.

I’m not sure how long I watched the stars but, as always, they gave me a deep sense of connection.  It’s hard for me to see them at night without feeling that I and the entire Earth around me are not separate things watching them but are, indeed, part of them.  We like to think of ourselves as being on the Earth looking up into space.  However, despite standing on this rocky mass, we are just as much floating in space as the farthest star.  We just happen to be doing it near the bottom of a planet’s gravity well.

Standing in the dark looking up, I can viscerally feel the interconnection of all things and, somehow, this makes me feel simultaneously more connected with all the people of whom I am aware whether they are good and bad.  We are all like stars and planets, whirling around each other in a dance that has rules and rhythms that can be understood if only we take the time to study them closely enough.

All the stars are unique, each with it’s own particular history and attributes.  Some, like ours, may nurture life and others may have destroyed the life, whether through instability or simply not lasting long enough, that was struggling on their nearby orbiting planets.  They are all beautiful, however, and have the potential to do both good and bad under the right circumstances.

Likewise are people.  Standing under the stars, looking up at their various colors and brightnesses, reminds me that people too come in infinite varieties and, no matter our estimation of their character or judgment of their choices, each has within them a spark, however bright or dim, of beauty, of goodness and of the divine.