To Achieve Succulence

I have a new way of baking a cake. Well, actually it is not new, my great grandmother used to bake cakes like this, my mother told me. But this new way, this new process, creates fantastically fluffy, light and very yummy cakes. The ingredients are the same only the process has changed. And while I was stirring the batter, trying to screen out my sons desperate pleas that he wants to lick the spoon, I thought that maybe this could be applicable to other fields than cooking (or baking).

When writing stories I find it sometimes that it isn’t the idea that is lacking, but a good, inspiring way of getting the story down on paper. I write something, it doesn’t correspond to the idea nor does it inspire me to develop the story in a different way. So I get myself entangled into the whole thing and then it is time to do something else (as a mom of a 4 year old I never own my own time).  I try and sort it out, or as my professor always said “keep banging on the door on imagination, and soon enough it will let you in”. But what he wasn’t saying was what to do when the imagination is there but the craft of getting it out is out of practice? Is there something like a craftsmanship when it comes to art? Yea, according to my late father, of course! No, when you ask the ruling arts elite of Sweden and other such western countries, anybody has the right to express themselves and all expressions are interesting.    ?

But if there is a craftsmanship involved in Art, then surely there should be tricks of the trade, ways, systems to create a more fluffy and succulent story/script/etc?

Rummaging through a local charity story (my latest entertainment (ohh I really know how to kick it!!!)) specialized in book and sheet music, I found a little book (for £1, isn’t it sad?), it was “Aspects of a Novel” by E M Forrester from 1944. Now if Forrester knows anything it is how to construct a novel. But how can somebody that wrote in the first quarter of the last century, teach me who to write stories for the readers of the 21^st century. Soon there will be a whole century between us, his readers still wore hats and behaved elegantly, my readers (I know it is me and the next door cat but I am speaking theoretically!) are people who communicate using machines. But reading the book I came on to the chapter where he compare different authors from different eras in human history, presenting that they are exactly the same.  The emotions are the same, people are really the same and their life’s are materialistically different but not different in profound matters. He went so far as to present a short “bon mot” – “History change, Arts stand still” Glorious !

But how does this help me with my writing? Well, it gives me hope, hope that someone before me has been through the same thing, hope that I can maybe learn how to write. Hope that says, that if I have the ideas, the rest is technicality and something that can be exercised.

Now my baking is second nature, and the cakes are really yummy. I should now exercise this with the writing.  But there is one last problem. Making cakes has a side product which is a spoon and a bowl full of cake dough, that can keep my son’s attention for a good half hour while he with serious concentration licks clean. Writing doesn’t have that side product!

Unless I bake a cake every time before I sit down for writing? That’s a lot of cake! ....Yum!

Say what ?

Yesterday evening I watched, for the first time since months or dare I say years, an old re run of a film (I usually manage to read a couple of pages before I fall into oblivion let alone watch an entire film). It was the Somerset, humoristic cop thriller Hot Fuzz, a film I last saw still living in Sweden. Then I laughed, enjoyed and nodded understandingly to the plot, but I actually didn’t have a clue that this film is a piece of soc. realism with a humoristic tone. Now after living 5 years in Somerset, seeing that film again made my laugh choke in my throat. Because, the crazy ideas, I thought then, of the director have proven not to be invented, the genius of character, as I thought then, are replicas of true characters in the Somerset country side. It was so precise that we could, my husband and I, set names from our lives, on the characters “look that is Frank, look that is exactly like Karen, look that is so like . . .” And even the relationships in the film, or the different groups, un canny !

Unfortunately, what that has done is to strip the poor director from his laurels and expose him not as a brilliant, astute story teller of a director, but as a humoristic documentary film maker, not that it matters but it matters when it comes to the piece of film, art you might call it, and what it wants to communicate.

To take an example, do we, as Westerners really understand Kurosawa’s films? How can we understand the art work of a director who doesn’t speak the same symbolic language as us? How can we understand the issues raised in these films since our lives are so different to those of Kurosawa? And does this matter?

Well it does matter when a director has a singular point to make, when the whole film is based on that point and only on that point. Those tend to be the simpler forms of communication (read South American soup operas a la Esmeralda !!) and then you need to know exactly what is being meant or you get hopelessly lost. But when there is a giant of a director (read Kurosawa)  with such a profound storytelling, with such epic way of telling the story, even the blind would find something to relate to him.  His story telling transcends all cultural and philosophical hindrances (how is another story and something better left to the more clever) and goes into the realm of beauty.  And beauty is the language of the heart and not the mind. The mind will find its story no matter what, and no matter what the director intended. And the heart, as we all know, is blind and will not adhere to dictate.

So where does this leave us? No, we can’t understand Kurosawa, I do not think, and no it doesn’t matter. What we get from his works of art is beauty and a message that our mind puts together for us based on our lives and our world. Kurosawa speaks to us in the language of truth, profoundness and sincerity and those are universal, human virtues, and that we can understand no matter where we come from. And when it comes to Hot Fuzz, I enjoyed it in Sweden when I saw it and I enjoyed it now, but on other premises.

I do not, I feel I have to state, for one moment imply that Somerset is as remote as Japan (although sometimes speaking to the local farmer, I feel like I’m coming from the moon, and I find myself searching desperately for a dictionary) but it does take a while to learn the ways of communicating and the ways of living in this similar, yet, very different culture. To be honest, it takes the same sort of effort meeting new friends or relations as well . . . and some of my friends still do not know what I am saying when I speak. Maybe I should change my name to Esmeralda ?

The Unknown Entity

There is something so innocent with a new year. Untried, never before encountered, never before tried. No one knows what to expect since no one has been here before. Some make plans, some promises, some have great belief in the New Year, like a new start a new chance.  I am that someone, I admit. I make great plans (sometimes I suspect that this only gives fate a direction where to best mess up things for me . . . but nevertheless I cannot help myself.) and I tend to view the new year as a physical being, like a work colleague, someone who spends a lot of time with you, someone you share your life with to some extent but someone you keep at a slight distance since he can, whenever he gets the opportunity, betray you.

But now, when the New Year is so young and when I still feel I have the upper hand, I find myself engulfed with great enthusiasm. I make wide plans (how I, single handed will change the word and while I am at it I will rebuild my pond), I can’t wait for the next day, I can’t wait for the ordinary work day, when I know that people will  be sitting at their desks and I can pursue my new born plans. And I cannot wait to be a year further on, knowing all the great things that had happened. All again filled with enthusiasm and hope.. . .

Anyway, all the best to you all, and may all your plans be successful and all your dreams a step closer.

Veronika