GENREALITY

“They ought to stop playing a composer’s music as soon as the last one who knows what it means is gone.  The last one who knew the noises.  The stuff I play has hawkbells in it and mill wheels and pikes all grounding at once.  Chamber pots being emptied out of the window, banks of oars rattling into the water.  People screaming because the hangman’s just held up somebody’s heart for them to see.  I can’t hear the noises, I just play the notes.  Shouldn’t be allowed.”
***
She said, “All right.  Come on, I’ll take you where the noises are.”

–The Folk of the Air, Peter S. Beagle

In the novel The Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle, a musician who specializes in Renaissance music has a moment of doubt, knowing that the world that produced the music he loves is dead and gone, that what he plays is a frozen museum artifact rather than a living, breathing art.  That’s when his friend Julie takes him to a dance organized by a medieval recreation group, and Farrell discovers that the world lives on in a new form, and that he can experience, at least a little bit, the context of the music — the swishing skirts, the figures moving in the dance, the lights, the atmosphere.

Writing is a form of role-playing.  To some extent, we become our characters while we’re writing them.  We have to think about what they’re like, what they do, what they’d wear, what they’d say.  That all involves getting into their skin, the way an actor gets into a character’s skin.  When we’re writing fiction that takes place in another world — historical, fantastical, science fictional — we especially have to think about the world, the context, the little details that make it fully realized and not just a static picture.  Not just think about it — experience it.  Or convince the reader that we have.

Sometimes, I feel like the reason I write is a little bit backwards.  I’m not interested in the “noises” because I write.  I write because I’m interested in the noises.  Because I want to feel like I’m living in another world, living another life, at least for a little while.  Writing is one way to do this, but not the only one.

I’ve talked about my adventures with theater and role-playing games.  I haven’t talked much yet about my costuming, my horseback riding, my membership in the Society for Creative Anachronism (which Beagle’s fictional League for Archaic Pleasures is said to be loosely based on).  Or my absolute, deep and emotional love for movies like Labyrinth and the Chronicles of Narnia, Robin McKinley’s Damar books, the artwork of James Gurney or Kinuko Craft, the music of Loreena McKennitt or the very recently discovered Abney Park.

Basically, anything that even hints at telling a story, I’m all over it.

For me, it all comes from the same impulse.  It’s all about the noises.  About wanting to live in another world, at least for a little while.  It’s about giving free reign to my childhood daydreaming, when I pretended I was (at various points) Wonder Woman, President, a submarine captain, a starship captain, and so on.  I count myself extraordinarily lucky that no one ever told me daydreaming was bad.  In fact, lots of people encouraged me to get involved in theater, and to keep writing.  My imagination grew rather than atrophied.

I’ve worn a corset and hoop skirt and danced a pavan to live music.  I’ve tilted at rings on horseback.  I’ve gone on a week-long pack trip on horseback in the wilds of Wyoming.  I’ve walked the city walls in York.  I’ve fenced in a tournament.  I’ve made hand-bound books.  I’ve played a ghost on stage.  I’ve also played a singing dancing nurse from World War II.  I was once part of a Commedia dell’arte troupe.  Every Halloween, I try to come up with something a little different.  This year, it’s steampunk, which combines so many loves I can see myself getting really sucked into this aesthetic.

I get a lot of inspiration from all of this — from watching the movies, reading the books, wearing the costumes, having the little adventures, from following these impulses of the imagination.

Why am I a writer?  Because as a writer, I can do it all.

Carrie goes Steampunk

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