While I am not sure if I can attribute it to this blog or not, I find that I do not need it anymore for the stated purpose. The ideas and thoughts are flowing freely despite what the infrequency of posting would suggest. Perhaps the infequency suggests the opposite. There is a considerable amount of notes and scribbles in my laptop that actually make sense – albeit only to me. While I believe that simply sitting down and writing something non academic for myself has been invaluable in facilitating my creative faculties I am not sure this blog records or explores the specific thoughts I had in mind to write about.

What I mean by that is that this blog rarely touches upon what I am writing in my novel. It often strays into the territory of the odd thoughts that normally bounce around in my head for a while, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

What I want to explore in my novel are more complicated ideas carefully considered over time. Some are revelatory as I explore them and many change for the better as I progress. Many are complex and not fully understood by myself which I believe is why it has been impossible to sit down and write the whole thing from start to finish on the first attempt as perfectionism demands. My novel ideas are non linear, interconnected and more closely resemble a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff.

In fact the closest I have come to discussing my novel here was the April 8th entry which I nuked from orbit because I felt very uncomfortable with it available to critical eyes. Obviously a valuable lesson to take away on how I eventually present the subject matter to the public. No real discussion on the issues in the novel exist and I’d like to change that, leery though I am.

I’m worried because, as I have previously said, every time I come back here and look on what I have written previously I have that ‘kill it with fire’ reaction. It is almost embarassing to read what I have written before, mostly because I can recall the intensity with which it was concieved, how important it seemed at the time and then I juxtapose that with how utterly insipid and crass it appears to me now. Again, valuable lessons but the novel is on topics very near to my heart and closely related to my personal identity. Can I risk seeing matters so important to me brought so low?

Of course I can and I must. It is still scary though.

On a final note, I tried to pick up the copy of God is Not Great I ordered last month. It still has not arrived. I can only presume the courier keeps being struck by lightning hurled by a thin skinned deity.

Perhaps I attribute to manners what I might more accurately link to curiosity. Not a curiosity to the core ideas they no doubt wished to proselytize but to how they went about presenting their case. The angle was an interesting one: “Given the turmoil around the world what is something you would like to see changed.”

I give them full marks for cunningly opening the discussion. They ask a question that has the effect of preparing a mind to think along the lines they find desirable – engagement with ideas of impossible scale. Simultaneously and through disguise they broach the subject of God (the kind of being that has the power to enact your response to the question) without using the word. This allows discussion of God without ‘giving away the game’ and generating a preconcieved negative response.

Bonus marks for asking a question that, if you chose not to engage with it or ignore it, provokes unconcious feelings of guilt. We are all citizens of the world and not engaging with the question conveys an sense of complicity through inaction and apathy for the misery and general unpleasantness taking place. A well developed sense of humanity is the foot in the door that they need to broach the subject of religion. All very clever.

The above are thoughts I’ve had in reflection. At the time I responded by questioning the premise of whether we have the right to effect such a massive global change and whether a singlular person has the requisite perspective to make such a determination – what works for me may not work for someone else and I am limited to my own frame of reference. With insight about how the question these Jehovah’s Witnesses asked functions I can see a strong connection to the agency of the question to the agency possesed by a divine figure. It is probably not surprising they switched to a new strategy at that point given my response.

I should probably provide some context for my observations as they are not made in a vacuum. After a long period of agnosticism I have found in the past few months that comfortable compromise no longer satisfied me in the way it once did. The complete inability of my rational mind to accept any form of theistic belief had long clashed with the animal impulse or longing for answers to some, lets face it, fear based questions about existence. I had long ago come to the conclusion that I had no idea what the answer was but since there was no clear evidence either way then the only logical thing was to compromise and sit on the fence despite the considerable misgivings of my reason.

Over the past year or so I’ve found myself, with increasing frequency, pulled into the orbit of people such as Penn and Teller, James Randi, Richard Dawkins and most particularily Christopher Hitchens. Clearly I’ve been hanging out with an intellectual ‘bad’ crowd. But through various presentations of their views they have imparted an awareness in me that fence sitting is wishy washy and a cop out for anyone who would like to consider themselves an intellectual or critical thinker.

I would encourage anyone who would want to explore that statement further to look into what the people above have to say about it. They are much more eloquent and have much more cohesive thoughts on the matter than I. You may discover that contained within those arguments is cause for concern that fence sitting on the issue is actually a dangerous and self indulgent activity.

So I come back to the clever question posed by my unexpected visitors. I am not entirely sure exactly what purpose my entry today has other than to put down in writing some of the thoughts that have been running through my mind a lot lately, particularily after seeing aspects of my thoughts manifest themselves and ring the doorbell to my ivory tower.

My increasing unease with my fence sitting made me seek out more of Mr Hitchen’s work. There are a great many interesting clips on Youtube but what I really wanted was to get my hands on a copy of God Is Not Great which I had repeatedly seen referenced. It did not hurt that Hitchens is incorrigible and unashamed in his promotion of the book which he will do at the drop of a hat.

If I admire Patton and his often repeated quote “audacity audacity always audacity” then surely I must reward Mr Hitchens for his frequent display of moxie.

So I went to my local bookstore to purchase a copy. I did not find it in the first store, but not to worry. This shopping centre has two more retailers to try. No luck in any of those stores either. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong section? Each store had considerable shelf space devoted to religious and new age texts. Some stores included atheist works in those sections. I also found atheist texts in the most unlikely of places but not a single book penned by Christopher Hitchens.

This was strange I thought. He had just recently appeared on the ABC and the more I looked into the God debate the more I found that you could not walk more than a few paces before you tripped over his name again. I put it down to bad luck and that the book had been out for some time. So when I found myself in the CBD of Brisbane during a trip to the dentist I thought it a great opportunity to raid the large, well stocked, multi level Borders that had never failed me before. Surely they would have the book.

No luck, but they did have a copy of a text of collected works that he edited. That wasn’t the one I wanted and I was determined to get my hands on God Is Not Great. I decided to use the store catalogue system to see if they had a copy. There was nothing in stock but I was staggered by the number of people (at least 10+) who had the book on order. I found that a little surprising – if the book sold so well why was it so hard to find? Again it might be bad luck and its availability a victim of its own success.

I tried my local shopping centre again. No joy. I was not surprised and resolved to order it in from my local store. I mentioned my troubles to the lady behind the register when I ordered it and she related to me that I was joining two other orders for God Is Not Great. Now I’m not going to attribute to conspiracy what could easily be explained by low stock levels but the difficulties irked me.

The Christians at my gates plied me with pamphlets and even had books to give away if I showed enough interest. They came right to my front door trying to give books away. I travelled far and wide and had difficulties giving away my money for the book. I find it remarkable the amount of discouragement and initiative I had to display to get my hands on a work of contrary opinion.

I am still waiting for my copy two weeks later.

It is a situation like the formation of lightning in a storm cloud where the right moment of positive and negative charge is found. All the ideas jump from one to the next in tremendous cascade ending in a great crash of creative energy.

Don’t forget the earth shattering kaboom.

I have my story and all that is required now is that niggling and seemingly inconsequental thing of writing it down. It is one thing to have a burning but unfocused passion to write but it is quite another thing all together when passion finds clarity and direction.

I am overjoyed. But…

Predictably having overcome the obstacle of not knowing where to start I now find new and interesting hurdles to overcome that I had never even considered before now.

The big issue weighing on my mind at the moment is the matter of length. How long is this story going to be? I’ve discovered that this is something you have to consider right away because if you intend to write a story that will take several books to resolve there is a degree of planning that must take place from the beginning.

This is not the only aspect to consider about length as brevity is currently very much in vogue. Now I am the kind of person who would stubbornly dig his heels in on this issue regardless what is popular with the masses but it is foolhardy not to pause a moment and consider it.

I should clarify what I mean by brevity. I’m referring to the age of Twitter and The cult of 140 characters or less. In my observation Twitter is a symptom of modern culture. For whatever reason, and there are many, people want things shorter, more in the moment and simplified.

I think this is something somebody writing in this age has to consider, or at least offer a casual wave to before resuming pretending the elephant is not in the room.

I suppose you could say at this point I am considering audience – but then again I’ve always found the process of manufacturiing broadest possible appeal as something abhorrent and vapid so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about this point at all. I think I have just talked myself out of worrying about this aspect of the length issue.

Another aspect to consider is that you can say more with less. I think there is a difference between saying more with less and saying something insignificant in a cramped space.

I have found there there are two main ideas I want to explore in this story and I do not believe I could successfully explore both ideas in a single book. So I have the choice of splitting those ideas apart, which I think is a shame, or I can write more than one book and therefore increase the length (and incur the additional complexity that comes with that as I indicated earlier).

Writing more than one book does have the downside of being less ‘literary’. Which is perhaps a narcissistic thing to be worried about but I can not help but be honest here. Almost without exception in my literary studies we have looked at single stand alone volumes and the concept of the trilogy seems to me, for all that I do love to indulge in a good trilogy, to be a base form of the art. The story that I wish to write is so important to me that to reduce it to the level of a penny dreadful is a painful consideration.

The idea would have the same inherent value, but because of the presentation it would be worth less. The difference being presenting a can of coke in an upscale hotel minibar and charging ten dollars versus selling an identical can of coke for a buck each out of a esky at a football match.

Of course some of the texts that serve as inspiration for what I want to write, The Faerie Queene and Le Morte D’Arthur, are composed of multiple books. While those books are somewhat smaller than what consists of a novel today, they do all add up. Particularily when compiled into a single volume like my copy of Le Morte D’Arthur (containing all 21 books) which is more than capable of knocking somebody out if grossly mistreated. The pen may be mightier than the sword but the illuminated hardback is a weapon of mass concussion.

Just as an aside, here is the story how I came by my copy of Le Morte D’Arthur. Or as the book would put it: HOW YOUNGE SIR GREGORY WAS TEMPTED BY THE BOOKE, AND HOW HE REGRETTED THE EXPENDITURE BUT NOT THE PURCHASE, AND HOW HE WAS VERY SORRYE AFTERWARDS.

I hauled the damn thing back from Warwick Castle during a trip to England as a boy and consequently went hungry for the remainder of the trip due to a little misunderstanding about the exchange rate. I could not help myself when I saw it, drunk on the experience of the castle, and due to mispent youth of knightly tales my teenage eyes lit up when I saw the name Arthur in big gold letters. Once I was satisifed the whole thing wasn’t ruined by being in French, and being duly impressed by engravings, I handed over a large amount of cash for it. It is hard for a 13-14 year old boy from Australia to grasp the exchange rate of dollar to pound – particularily when confronted with something so shiny. The money had the Queen on it just like ours so the differences were practically cosmetic right?

To give you an idea I still treat the dust jacket with reverence and I normally hate dust jackets. Damage my copy, obtained in the manner worthy of a grail quest and with much belly rumbling, and suffer the consequences. I survived and made it home with my treasure so it was a win and a very useful lesson in budgeting.

Getting back to the issue at hand, despite historical evidence (the examples I provided for instance) that the ideas contained in a lengthy work divided up into many books are inherently just as valuable, this does not appear to be contemporary practice. In my experience the shorter work, its themes thinly veiled due to space constraints, is considered greater to an equivalent work that is longer and more subtlely layered. Could this be attributed to laziness on the part of the readership or is it simply the fact that the push for immediacy and time sensative nature of modern culture naturally abhors subtlety and detail?

For example, and I realise jumping formats introduces new problems but hear me out, there are many television series that have done some extraordinary storytelling but because they are in the longer form they never seem to garner the same level of respect as the 1-3 hour short form movie. The nature of television programming often turns writing in this medium into a series of short form episodes that typically demand the status quo is maintained at the resolution and shows that resist the short form with long running arcs are atypical and frequently suffer premature cancellation and/or interference from executives.

It also seems to me that this is because it is very easy for the longer format work to have a lighter moment or a moment where the writing falters which incurs a permanent stigma. Because the longer form is unable to maintain an extremely high standard for hours on end (I might also go so far as to suggest that lighter moments in the long form are necessary as extended intensity is draining on the audience) the valuable and worthy aspects and ideas in the long form are stained by the weaker moments and judged with an unreasonable averaging mindset eager to pounce on percieved mistakes.

I think this disparity between forms carries over into literature, infact I think the disparity is inseperable between forms of writing, with the novel or even the wafer thin novella carrying much more literary capital than a series of books. Though I really do have to concede Robert Jordan’s long winded Wheel of Time series as damning ammunition for anyone wanting to launch a counter argument at me. I’ve given up on the series which has dragged on so long that the author died but the series did not even pause in its glacial assault. The first of the zombie additions to the series is coming out soon, the words melting from the pages and the spine of the book cracking with a sound that suspiciously sounds like a pained voice moaning ‘reaaaaadeeerrs’.

Because of this shortcoming of the longer form the shorter form is considered superior. I’m not sure that it is fair to dismiss the longer form because it has its weak moments because it can be equally strong, perhaps stronger due to more elements being in play. The longer form has a potential to be much richer and it also has a very strong human appeal for those who desire a persistant fiction to escape into.

Perhaps it is the childish desire for the story not to finish so soon that carries an addional stigma. While Shakespeare says that brevity is the soul of wit he wrote this line in Hamlet which is by no means a short play. He definately could have cut a lot out of Hamlet in the interests of brevity but a lot of wonderful detail could have been lost. Those details are still celebrated but modern work with the same attention to detail is shunned. That seems very strange to me.

So I really do not have an answer as of yet for how long I should make my story. There is the voice that says let it all unfold naturally but at the same time a great deal can be said for planning ahead and I really can’t do that until I have an idea on how long this story is going to be.

I’d definately like some help with this one.

Actually I first read about the coming strike in the paper and only learned about the possible date today but that offends my sense for a good clean opening. With this needless detour my desires for showmanship and accuracy are both served with only minimal inconvenience to you the reader.

Remember the phrase minimal inconvenience class we shall be revisiting the material later on today.

The lecturer went on to assure us that measures will be taken to make sure that our oh so important marks are not affected. I find I can not suppress my inclination to catalogue the cacophony of internal screams that get ever louder the more I think about this situation.

Why I feel so strongly about this is perhaps not clear on the outset, most likely due to the fact that, according to my idiom, I am talking in riddles and discordant phrases that I all think make perfect sense but do require some assembly for everyone else aged 3 and up. So let us go back to before the beginning.

I was reading the paper. ‘Which paper was being read? How irresponsible to just say the paper and assume we know what you are talking about’ the children of tomorrow wonder (assuming of course that the children will survive their education with their curiosity intact). A newspaper: a cheap, wireless, biodegradable, energy saving, renewable and secure method of distributing yesterdays news today.

Featuring large sections of advertising experienced users train their eyes not to register (so what is the damn point) the paper also comprises several poorly written articles which tend to repeat themselves with a ‘nails on a chalkboard’ level of skill that even Loki must envy.

They also tend to repeat what was said in the proceeding paragraph by rewording the previous statement and hoping you were not paying attention the first time. For an encore the paper invites us to turn to the earlier article that the story first appeared on. That article is then sure to redirect you back to where you started and vice versa.

I can only presume they do this in some bizarre attempt to create a moebius strip themed on a really crap choose your own adventure novel.

Phew! Where did that rant come from? I’ll try to salvage this entry by saying newspapers would not be dying if the journalism students were getting… oh I don’t know… educated?

Now don’t get me wrong. Newspapers and journalism have more than enough things going wrong to bring themselves down from within without any outside meddling.

No wait. Let me try that again.

Now don’t get me wrong. I actually do like newspapers – at least in theory.

No wait. Third time is the charm.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not really commenting on the level of education journalism students get. I’m not even commenting on the level of education any student in this state gets. I’m not commenting on the lecturers, the politicians, the penny pinchers – anyone. I’m not commenting on any one person, group of persons or the groups those people would represent.

I’m commenting on ideas present in the social conciousness. I’m commenting on a much more complex and ongoing process. Something that has bothered me for quite some time but often gets pushed off into the too hard basket of ‘thats the way the world is’. That is the speed, dare I say alacrity, with which what is really important is discarded for what is expedient.

Expediency is something that is driving things these days. It is what causes minimal inconvenience. Before I go into that further I want to bring up a third strand to weave into the theme of the university strike and minimal inconvenience.

If I recall correctly the front page news that day was the short end of the stick that our (Queensland Australia) doctors are getting. I saw online versions of that story linked on international websites. There was a part of that story that really stuck with me and that was the way in which the doctors are exploited by their hippocratic oath and their humanity.

They get stuck working unbelievable hours. I once did a 14 hour shift and I was totally exhausted at the end of it. I don’t mean I was a bit tired – I was spent utterly and once I stopped I don’t think I could have easily gotten going again. I can not imagine how doctors are expected not to make mistakes after 60 or 70 hours with a scapel in one hand and a person’s life in the other.

But if they were to strike, if they say no, patients suffer. If they work when they are exhausted then mistakes get made and it is the patients who suffer. The doctor is left to blame himself for the mistake. What a truely horrific situation to be in as a human being.

What is important is the lives they are trying to save or improve.

That gets cast aside for what is expedient. The appearence that there are doctors on call when they are needed. What is horrific is that in order for change to take place it appears doctors need to do the expedient thing. The thing that goes against every single thing that makes them a doctor. Let patients die on the table unattended screaming for help and calling for their mother.

Get that on film and see how long it takes for public outcry to address the issues. But who wants to be the one sacrificed on the table to motivate the voting power?

So now I come back to the proposed strike by staff at the university. The lecturers assurance that my marks would not be threatened by the action seems wrong to me. For more than one reason.

If the strike occurs my marks wont suffer but my education sure will. We will lose lecture and tutorial time that we can not get back. We already have limited contact hours with the staff because they are so overworked. This is one of the reasons they are striking and now they have to make it worse?

What is important about my education will suffer but the expedient part of my education, what is says on the piece of paper, will not.

Let me be perfectly clear. I support the strike. I do not criticise it or the people striking on any level. I’m unpacking what is going on and asking you if you think this is how things should work – and not just as an isolated incident but as an idea that is happening all the time around the world.

Because I think there is something terribly wrong when we students are told our education is going to suffer but we do not mind because we will maintain our illusory credentials. Why are we all so willing to go along with it?

I think because of our humanity. The doctors can not bear to let a patient suffer so they bear a burden they should not have to. But they are human and they have limits which those burdens swiftly bring them into contact with.

We students see the academic staff suffering (which mostly goes on out of view behind a screen just like at the hospital) or experience the same conditions the staff do and can not help but be sympathetic and want change.

While there is something beautiful and uplifting about humanity that we shoulder burdens for others there is also something putrid and disheartening that so many of us have to see the suffering and the pain before we will act.

I will be ecstatic if I’m wrong but I just don’t see the strike having the result the situation warrants. This is also what is wrong with the lecturer telling us not to worry our marks will not suffer. Like the doctor with a patient the academic staff do not want to thrust the burden onto the student and will do what is necessary to minimise the impact on the student.

The humanity of the academic staff undermines the strike. I believe the people holding the purse strings are going to be aware of this and even if they do relent they are not going to do so to the degree that the situation warrants.

The academic staff should leave us on the table to die like the patient if they want a result. But that is just as unthinkable for an educator as leaving a hospital patient to die is for a doctor. Educators, like doctors, do something important.

So if there is a victory I suspect it will be the appearence of a victory. Because appearence is everything. If it appears that doctors are ready to perform surgery then all is well. It is not important that they have been taking stims to keep going and can barely function. (Wow a Babylon 5 reference in each of the last two posts!)

A pittance of what the university needs to educate will be paid, satisfying appearence. Education will not be provided as it should, saving the efforts made above and beyond the call of duty by individuals with a great sense of humanity.

Things fall apart; the centre can not hold… mere expedience is loosed upon the world. Nothing of substance can be built on it. It is illusion but it is an illusion that we are all ready to accept in meek silence and say that is ‘just how the world is’.

How much longer until what is expedient and what is important become the same thing?

It’s not really about developing my writing, if it ever was in the first place, and it has started to become a crapshoot of some of the things on my mind. That second part is either the most eloquent definition of creative writing I will ever come up with or a cry for help.

I must admit the more I learn about literature the more I see the word definition diffuse from steel reinforced certainty into cloud of vapours within which I spy a bunch of historical figures huddled over the dictionary, winking, holding a finger up to their lips conspiratorially and advising me in a hushed voice just to go with it.

Even Shakespeare made reference to the absurdity of the term genre in Hamlet. This is, I think, the literary equivalent of turning up to each and every production of the play and running through the stage without your pants, mooning the audience and collapsing backstage in hysterical laughter each time those particular lines are spoken.

Picture Shakespeare sitting barearse naked behind the castle wall set hyperventilating between strangled laughs while the actors not on stage join in the frivolity. The actors onstage wavering and stumbling over their lines because the entire backstage is hooting with laughter which is painfully shattering the illusion.

This is of course the entire backstage save the ghost who is trying to hold it in because he doesn’t want to mess up the bloody makeup again.

“Ahaha. Oh bugger.”

“Don’t worry Ghost” says Shakespeare. “Don’t take it so seriously. It’s all a lark anyway. Now where did I leave my pants?”

Genre. Crazy business. Genre is such a strange thing – it means absolutely nothing until it means something. Sort of. Just roll with it.

Vampires.

That got your attention didn’t it? I do admit the post title stole some of my thunder. Vampires are currently wildly popular, audiences are crying out for more and everybody wants to do their take on vampires.

There is even a subheading under the vampire section on tvtropes.com titled Our Vampires Are Different. This mainly details the various ways in which vampires are differentiated between various authors. Much like the concept of genre, vampires are all over the place when it comes to a definition. They are a difficult concept to nail down (or stake) in any form of certainty unless you are talking about a specific iteration or a singular text.

So with that preamble rapidly fading from short term memory let me switch to the issue that has prompted me to bring up the subject of vampires:

I am so very tired of seeing people bemoan the recent transformation of vampires from monster to sex object. Because the complaint states that the transformation is recent, and carries and anxiety about sexuality and romance in general,  the narrative under attack is said to be lesser than previous vampire fiction.

To start with let me make it absolutely clear that the supposed transformation is not recent. I shall infact go on to argue that Vampires have been sexualised from the very beginning.

This is why I crudely paraphrased a line from Full Metal Jacket as the title for this post. It ties together the sexual nature of vampires, hints as to why they are inherently sexual due to their oral activities, mentions the long time this has been occuring and it panders to my inclination to make often obscure referential wordplay under a system of logic that probably only I understand and find amusing.

(Edit: I removed the sucky sucky part from the title because it made me cringe every time I saw it. But hopefully if you know the reference you will pick up on the rest of the quote and its implications)

*pause*

The pause was for the awkward moment of silence or confusion that would have occured if this was one of my normal conversations. Zathras does not mind,  he’s even grown to like it.

*pause*

Because I have yet to see anyone call out a person who makes the claim that sexuality is something new to Vampires (except perhaps for a weak… but Dracula?) I shall give a brief history of Vampires here, in my dark barely visited corner of the internet where it will, I suspect, likely have just as much effect as if it were read by millions.

But duty calls.

Vampires have their roots in the classical period. There were plenty of various immortal creatures running around who would take an inordinate amount of interest in mortals. Seducing them, stealing their life in various ways and generally being unpleasant.

I’m playing it fast and loose but fast forward to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene published in 1590. In the figure of Acrasia there is an example, I think, of a classicaly framed proto vampire influenced greatly by the revival of Greek and Roman myth.

No I’m not going to make it easy for you. Follow the link I provided and read it if you want to keep up. But here is a passage relevant to my argument from Book 2, Canto 12.

(while hanging over a young man in a situation very reminiscient of the vampire)

73

And all that while, right over him she hong.

With her false eyes fast fixed in his sight,

As seeking medicine, whence she was stong*,

Or greedily depasturing delight:

And oft inclining downe with kisses light,

For feare of waking him, his lips bedewd,

And through his humid eyes did sucke his spright**,

Quite molten into lust and pleasure lewd;

Wherewith she sighed soft, as if his case she rewd.

* stung **spirit.

I believe this passage stands on its own as a sexualisation of a vampire like creature. I would very importantly attribute that to the specific use of sucking, in this case the life force is taken through the eyes but later it will become a much more literal sucking of life through the mouth.

There is further evidence from the fact that The Faerie Queene is allegorical and book two is themed on temperance. It’s right there on the wiki if you don’t believe me. Book two details the knight of temperance Guyon’s quest through the bower of bliss and the many temptations he faces while he is there.

The temptations take a very sexual tone and it is a landscape of the mind. Acrasia becomes a figure of temptation and thus the vampire is sexualised. Make a note of the fact that Guyon was a knight as I will come back to that shortly.

When there is any kind of excess taking place in English literature after this period it always pays to follow the breadcrumbs back to temperance. Its a concept I’ve found invaluable in understanding where texts are coming from. Hopefully you followed the link and noticed this line:

“The virtues of abstinence, chastity, and modesty are considered sub-classes of the virtue of temperance, as it governs the practice of eating and drinking, practice of sexual intercourse, and the restraint of vanity.”

What would this have to do with creatures who feed on blood, have sexual power over their prey and are typically portrayed with an unearthly beauty I wonder? The connections here are clear I think.

It probably also explains the origin of the ‘does not appear in mirrors’ part of the mythos which sounds like an adaptation of the Narcissus myth to me. Also look back to Acrasia drinking beauty in through the eyes but being unhappy afterwards as a link to vanity. There are all sorts of connections like this between the various vampire narratives.

This has become a much larger post than I originally envisioned so I shall try to wrap this up quickly. I’d like to come back to the knight and the vampire story which appears again in the Keats poem Le Belle Dame sans Merci written in 1819.

My favourite poem and poet is Christabel by Sameul Taylor Coleridge written between 1797 and 1800 which had a great effect – not just on vampires but gothic fiction in general. Christabel also has the sexualised vampire but in this case the female vampire preys upon the female victim and much has been made of this homosexualisation of the vampire mythos.

Christabel was famously read by Lord Byron to a gathering of fellow poets which is an incredibly fascinating story which I regrettably don’t think I should go off into at this moment. It does have relevance to this subject though. Do a search on the key words Christabel, Byron and Shelley. You will know the story when you see it.

But the other item worth mentioning is that Mary Shelley and Polidori was present at that reading and the group all decided to write a story after the reading. Shelley produced Frankenstein and Polidori The Vampyre.

I now want to jump ahead into the thick of gothic fiction with Bram Stokers Dracula (1897) and R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Jekyll and Hyde may seem like a strange story to drag into a discussion of vampires but hear me out.

Victorian themes are very important to the development of the modern vampire. The vampire is the nocturnal being and in many ways they are an inversion of the human. For example Death is life and life is death, they sleep through the day and live at night.

Jekyll and Hyde is the story of the doppelganger / the divided self. This is a very 19th century concept that revolves around the idea of the ‘innate duality of man’ and extreme states of mind about the self and the other.

Each person has a good side and an evil side in laymans terms. So while Jekyll and Hyde is not about a vampire it does concern an idea that helped frame vampires. The vampire is the evil other as opposed to the good self. All that is virtuous in a person is therefore inverted by conversion into a vampire.

It is inescapable for the moral and pious individual not to descend into immorality and sin upon the inversion into a vampire. Stoker’s vampire has been written as a metaphor for many of the concerns of Victorian Britain.

In the 1890′s there was a syphillis epidemic. Syphillis can be spread by sucking, biting or sharing bodily fluids. This is the origin of vampirism being a transmissible disease. It is also yet another connection to oral transmissions, oral sex and the sexual nature of the vampiric disease.

Those acts are sexual in nature, so not only is there something sexual in contracting this disease but to continue to live when you possess it you must continue to be sexual by performing a kind of oral sex, regardless of the gender of the victim, to live.

There is a sort of perverse eroticism at play here linking sex and death together. Homosexuality was a huge moral issue for the Victorians. Vampires require blood and are not bound by gender within which to engage their sexual acts. Therefore there is an implied bisexuality to the vampire.

The female vampire also came to represent the empowered woman, the opposite to the passive domestic woman and all the social anxieties that carried (phew I edited carries to carried before anyone noticed… oh no!). The female vampire is sexually and economically independent of the man something the more backwards Victorians would have found shocking but embraced because it undermines the position of the progressives.

Through vampirism the woman had been inverted from the ‘good’ self to the ‘evil’ other as those terms were percieved by the Victorians. This also taps into the temptation of the licentious woman, the Eve myth and a whole train load of other repressive baggages.

So I refute the claim that the sexualisation of the vampire is new. I can see how rapidly changing attitudes between what is and is not acceptable to put into film could spark that view.

(Edit: What I mean is not clear when I read it a second time – I’m suggesting that representations of sex have become much more explicit on publicly viewed film and television. It is not a case of the vampire fiction becoming more explicit but film and television coming much closer to accurately representing what has always been in the written fiction.)

What was previously contained within the imagination of the reader, suggested by the text or only implied by technicolor is now created in high definition.

That can be a little overwhelming on the senses, not just the inhibitions. But while the techniques and boundaries of what can be represented visually are changing the subject matter has not. I believe the examples I have provided prove that.

The sexual vampire is not grounds dismiss a narrative as a divergence from vampire literature. It is infact, and this is rather amusing given what I have said about inversion, grounds to include it into vampire literature.

Except Twilight. I’d normally consider burning a book, any book, a crime but in this case I’ll make an exception. Interesting to see Lauren Bacall weighing in on that one too.

Thus concludes this gross misuse of my education.

Oh and True Blood is awesome.

While it did have some rare moments of action it was mostly a serious film. Not serious in the sense of say Schindler’s List but in more psychological terms. I’ve seen a lot of people bashing this movie because it wasn’t the action movie they expected and that they found the dialogue tedious.

My studies in English lit predespose me to approach texts critically and I don’t find movies to be an exception to that definition of a text. But possibly because of that approach I found Inglourius Basterds an interesting exploration of what seperates the movie going audience from the in film Nazi movie going audience.

I don’t want to spoil the film for you in case you have not yet seen it but towards the end of the movie key figures from the Nazi high command end up in a movie theater to watch Goebbels latest propaganda piece and they are all hooting and cheering the violence on the screen. It is at this point Tarantino lets loose with the violence that he has been building anticipation for by only using sparingly prior to this moment.

When he does release the pressure valve the violence is completely over the top but like an addict jonesing for a hit you do not care where it comes from so long as you get it and subsequently you just let the carnage wash over you.

I think IB becomes a bit of a metafiction movie at this point in the sense that the advertising and the expectation of what you will get when you see Tarantino’s name in the credits plays a direct part in how you view the movie. There is a tangible feeling of bloodlust that builds the more Tarantino suggests violence is about to occur and I think he effectively keeps the audience at that level for the duration of the film.

What little violence that does occur before the final act is over quickly and is just enough to keep the anticipation going without really sating the desire. This is more effective than witholding violence entirely and keeps the audience off balance.

And they were definately off balance in the cinema I saw it in. There was a group of 20 somethings to my right and another group behind and to the left. Both of these groups grew bored and began to increasingly talk among themselves when the expected violence did not appear. This was irritating at the time but in reflection I also find their boredom interesting and add it to my earlier comment about the movie being metafiction.

I think this movie has interesting things to say about violence in cinema and also about Nazi Germany – particularily as depicted in film. I believe that we like to think that there is a great deal of seperation between ourselves and the individual’s in the Nazi party and this film brings those walls of seperation uncomfortably close together.

I believe this to be the reason why the movie is recieving unfavorable reviews and criticism. I think a great many people were decieved as to what kind of movie this is and have subsequently dismissed it.

This was fun so I think I’ll do more reviews in the future.

The lookout shivered in a fear cracked moan  “Oh no captain! It’s the Double Dipped Achilles!”

The captain recieved the news with his typical unshakeable stoicism. “Officer of the deck. Prepare a broadside and aim for… for the vun… for… look give me a minute to come up with something really creative.”

Just an example of a stray creative thought. I’ve been having a great deal more of them lately and I think it has something to do with this semester going much more smoothly than the last. For the past two years due to late assignments and what not I’ve been in a state of almost perpetual deadline.

I could expound upon the inner workings of that and the effect it has had but I think at this point I should just shut up about it and look forward to the future good instead of meditating on the past bad. Suffice to say that with some stresses relieved and some demons locked away I am feeling much more creative.

You could not tell that from the sparse amount of posts on this blog in the past few months but I have been much more prolific in my written notes – I even organised them – and in private communications. Creativity is definately on the up.

This is sort of inconvenient. Strange thing to say for somebody who wants to write creatively but while my stress levels are on the downturn my university workload is just kicking into high gear. Being creative only helps so much until it starts to be detrimental. Sort of like how a couple of drinks helps you play pool better than if you were sober but being too drunk to hold the cue or hit any one of the fifty nine balls on the table makes you play much much worse.

It is fun though!

Not so good when your mind wanders easily into your creative backburner. Not when you are in a lecture and you find your brain being distracted by the shiny objects in your head. You can’t even put them out sight or out of reach; and they will definately spoil your tea.

Fortitude Greg. Fortitude.

Its been quite a while since I posted anything here and I think the content of the previous post kept me away. It contained some revealing information about myself that I felt deeply ambivalent about being online. Reading over my earlier entries I do wonder what the hell I was thinking when I wrote them but the urge to delete the April 8th entry was particularily strong.

In the effort to actually have something to show for my labour I’ve deliberately resisted deleting the posts. This was a mistake with the previous post because there is more reasons to self edit than the irrational censorship of all non perfect creative work. I did not recognise that the impulse to delete the post after I had slept on it was due to the subject matter. I wrote on a subject that is very uncomfortable to me then resisted the impulse to delete it due to my commitment to resist my own intractable self censorship.

Consequently I felt uncomfortable with the blog and avoided the site entirely. Now I could make excuses up about getting into crunch time for exams and assignments as a reason why I let this project fall into neglect but I think this would be self deceptive. It would also be a missed opportunity to gain further knowledge of myself and the creative process. Hopefully now that I have deleted the source of the discomfort I can get back into regular posting with the benefit of having learned something.

Perhaps this project will not be a wash after all.

Oh and I turned 30 two days ago.

Bugger.

I was in the shower when inspiration struck. Isn’t it weird that so many people claim to have great ideas in the shower? It’s almost as though water is a good conductor of ideas as well as electricity, sharks and flesh eating bacteria. Perhaps these are all related.

Lets call this Finch’s Grand Idea Theory.

H2O + The Threat of Bodily Harm = Idea!

Example: Jaws – Star Roy Scheider, his boat sinking into the sea, comes up with a plan to kill the shark with an air tank under the threat of spending the rest of his life with the movie’s extras.

Now presumably when there is only one of the two conditions present there will be a less than ideal result. But a greater than normal inspiration quotient is to be expected when there is only one factor in play. I believe this explains the secret behind Macguyver – especially any episodes that take place on or near water. If you plan to be an Evil Overlord take note – don’t throw the plucky hero into the shark tank or drown them in a box. It is just asking for trouble.

The theory also explains the origins of such great inventions as the spear or bow as ideas conceived by primative humans while physically restraining a Sabretooth tiger as it roared spittle all over a brand new pelt in a highly preemptive attempt at digestion. As the wet, fetid breath and wickedly long incisors menaced their face they no doubt were struck by inspiration. You know… wouldn’t it be better to deal with this nightmarish claw factory at a distance? Preferably with a weapon that is compatible with cowering behind a rock across the valley yet still getting the job done?

The telescopic sight, the 105mm delepleted uranium round and the hyper velocity MIRV anti matter missile in a 6 parsec range are ideas that occurred around the same time and were stored for future use in genetic memory. Alas we killed all the Sabretooth with various long range sticks before we even reached the trebuchet.

I realise my theory does not neatly connect showering with the source of human invention. Aside from those of us with lingering feelings of danger from the night before where is the threat in a shower? Does this pastel hued chamber of hygiene pose any risk beyond forgetting to turn the cold tap?

It is possible that the really good ideas had by people in the shower have some sort of threat that has gone unmentioned or unnoticed. Perhaps the threat here is dropping the soap in a communal setting or slipping and banging your head on the soap holder that deceptively conceals a razor sharp edge under all that icky gunk.

What practical application could this theory have I prompt you to wonder? A better understanding of this theory could be crucial in the sporting arenas that tend to drench the coach with a barrel of liquid and/or precariously hoist them onto shoulders only after the game is won. Threatening to drop the coach several metres or spraying them with a fire hose before the game could see a dramatic increase in out of the box thinking as well as providing jobs for lawyers in these troubled economic times.

It has come to my attention that my esteemed colleagues in Grand Idea Theory posit that shipwrecked people dying of thirst and clinging to a log all to often have ideas that involve drinking sea water and swimming to the island that just turned up populated entirely with natives sharing a single palm leaf for clothing and that therefore my theory is utter rubbish. To these GITs I can only say that these people are polluting the evidence by mixing GIT with It’s So Crazy It May Just Work Theory and that GIT can not be found at fault when the probability matrix inherent to ISCIMJWT asserts itself in manner consistant with non narrative settings.

At any rate I’ve strayed far from my intended subject for todays post. But thats not necessarily a bad thing. I can always try to explain the spider thing next time.

I’ve just noticed these last two posts make references to soap. I swear this is coincidence and not design. I do not have a thing about soap. It is a mundane and functional item that, for some reason, is currently in vogue with the guy who does my metaphors.

Disclaimer:

I am not responsible for the use, misuse or criminal application of GIT. If a cold fusion researcher is found dead in his shower tomorrow with a freshly opened packet of razor blades I am not liable for any damages. Even if his last few moments were spent fingerpainting “Damn you Finch” on the wall of his shower its his own damn fault. Besides if he was paying attention he would have used the soap holder instead of wasting a couple of bucks on razor blades. All wrongs reserved.

]]> http://gregoryfinch.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/giant-orange-fuzzy-spiders/feed/ 0 gregoryfinch http://gregoryfinch.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/now-that-the-ground-is-broken/ http://gregoryfinch.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/now-that-the-ground-is-broken/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:44:42 +0000 gregoryfinch http://gregoryfinch.wordpress.com/?p=19 ]]> Where is it safe to stand?

I had a typical kill it with fire reaction when I revisted this page. Typical in that its a reaction I’ve grown accustomed to having when I create something.

It is somewhat like a really great night out. It feels fantastic when it is happening and somewhere along the line a drunken conversation takes place where you figure out the solution to everything ever.

Then a whole heap of hours go by in a blur and you can not remember what the solution to everything was but you would really like to forget some of the memories of your behaviour last night. Also this moment of anagnorisis takes place in an porcelain ampitheatre playing to a really rough crowd.

Okay maybe not exactly like a really great night out but the theme of something really good turning sour the next morning is what I am getting at. During this period of time something really strange occurs. Things that were totally awesome exchange jerseys with the things that I did not realise were crap at the time.

I can’t tell what is good about what I have written anymore but there is the overwhelming stench of something wrong with it. This baby is so contaminated by the bathwater that even if it is thrown out it would survive out of spite and evolve into a beastial and base creature with a grudge against pure strain humanity and a deep seated hatred of soap.

I suppose you could say my editing instinct is to nuke the site from orbit as its the only way to be sure. This would probably be a good time to reveal my perfectionist tendencies to those of you who were sleeping through the hints. I have come to be aware of this and have learned restraint when it comes to editing my work – as evidenced by the fact there is no smoking hole where this blog used to be.

Unfortunately I function as both the puppy and the owner of that puppy rubbing his nose in what he left on the carpet so he does not do it again. I’ve sometimes shared something I’ve written with a friend or family member and they have said nice things. However its hard to shake the feeling that the writing in question was once kibble despite the positive comments. This is a trap!

Is it really any good or are they just offering encouragement? Do they think it’s good but don’t know it’s actually crap? What bits were good and what horrific abominations unto the Queen’s English slithered with sinister purpose back into the shadows? Would they take the time to point out something that was bad in among the bits that were good? Is it really fair to ask this kind of a question of somebody who already has enough trouble putting up with you?

More importantly – Am I going to develop a brand new specialised anxiety because I’m publishing things here without running them through spell check?

I think the opinion of friends and family is an important thing to have but ultimately its up to you the writer to seperate the wheat from the chaff. If you really don’t know asking a friend or family member is just going to complicate the process with extra variables to consider. Plus it could put a strain on a relationship that doesn’t really need to be there.

Crap.

I guess I need to figure out someway of seperating what looks, smells and and feels like crap from what actually is crap. Well thats all from the Sysiphean Creative Writing Workshop for now. Tune in next time when I compose a thirty two thousand line epic poem in heroic couplets and forget the save the document.