Filling our minds with stock figures: On an essay by Terry Pratchett

For the Deal Me in 2017 challenge, I read Terry Pratchett's grumpy, funny essay/rant on the clichés of fantasy fiction, and what 'fantasy' and 'escapism' mean. He calls his piece "Elves Were Bastards," to attack the cliché of the noble elves from Tolkien.

He rails against:

... so much round-eyed worship of mind-numbing myths, so much mindless recycling of ancient cycles, so much unthinking escapism.

I like how he distinguishes between meaningless escapism vs. an experience that you learn from and take something from.

But the point about escaping is that you should escape to, as well as from. You should go somewhere worthwhile, and come back the better for the experience.

And later:

The best stuff does take you somewhere. It takes you to a new place from which to see the world.

It's also a sense of wonder not limited to fictional stories.

Pratchett's repeated use 'mindless' is key. It's inevitable that we'll retell stories, but they shouldn't be expressed in rote ways, without care, thought or imagination, not if they're to be meaningful.

This got me thinking about the contents of our minds in all respects, especially our representations of other people. It would be easy to fill up on 'stock characters' - two-dimensional representations. It makes life simpler in some ways; what to think, and the right ways to act, take on apparent clarity. At the same time, it's an unfulfilling way to live. It's also like a bad diet that poisons the health of the mind. It compromises the ability to understand complex situations, in anything from politics to personal relationships.

Stock figures are stunting. If we can imagine only the 'noble elves,' we're limited, lacking in wisdom and more vulnerable to deception. The stock figures populate a deceptively simple world, and chances are if we escape to it too much, we'll stay trapped in it. One way or another, we'll suffer and allow others to suffer without understanding complex situations and the possibilities for how to act.

Two Winter Walks in NYC

One on New Year's Day, the other on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They covered different neighborhoods in Northern Manhattan, including Inwood and Harlem.

Walking from the George Washington Bridge bus station to Fort Tryon Park takes you through some beautiful residential neighborhoods in Washington Heights. These apartments aren't far from Bennett Park, which is the highest bit of land in Manhattan (just a little over 265 feet above sea level). Like other places in Washington Heights, it's a site of Revolutionary War military action (mostly Washington resisting but ultimately retreating from British forces, as they pushed him out of Manhattan).



From Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip of Manhattan, a view of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and beyond it, Marble Hill and the Bronx:

Week in Seven Words #326

jagged
This time, the flare-up is over a jar of expired sauce. He slams the jar into the garbage bag; she fishes it out and nearly slices open her hand.

overlook
He likes the kids who act out. They're more honest, he says. But what about the kids who stuff their pain so deep it eats them alive, even as they smile and get good grades?

pinpricks
At a few points during the film, the panelists pause it to take questions. Some of them respond with substantive answers. Others devote their time to protracted thanks, reeling off names. The lights over the screen sear our eyes.

riff
A panhandler wearing a Trump mask props up a sign in front of him that says "Mexican Wall Fund."

thumbing
At a meal of rituals, songs, and prayers, he keeps an eye on hockey scores, checking his phone with an exaggerated sneakiness that's meant to fool no one.

warmed
They hug, for once, in a small room saturated with cooking smells - meat sizzling, herbed potatoes softening.

yarn
We toss ideas back and forth and build a story, with joy and energy.

Week in Seven Words #325

belting
The tulips look like a tipsy choir, open-mouthed and unsteady.

executive
He practices a dramatic swivel in his parents' office chair - revealing himself to the room with menace and flair. Like a responsible adult, I suggest that he pretend to hold a whiskey glass, maybe a cigar.

pesky
She treats my emotions as an inconvenience. Like, why can't I just not have them? Consider how much simpler life would be.

plashing
The shivers of a robin in a bird bath.

pooling
Lemony willow leaves stain the pond. A child showers the ducks with gold and brown crusts.

rive
We part ways, for good I think, and all I am at this point is tired.

strides
"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll survive by pretending I do," is their way of working, and I don't know if I want to roll my eyes at them or give them a hug.

Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament (read for Deal Me In 2017)

When Beethoven was in his early 30s, he addressed a letter to his brothers explaining his withdrawal from society and misanthropic behavior.

He tells them that for several years now he’s been losing his hearing and can’t bear the thought of people finding out. He considers the humiliation, the wounds to his pride:

Oh, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.

This is a common response to personal struggles - self-imposed isolation, to spare oneself from pity or insensitive reactions. He expresses its agonies, the fear of exposure warring with the desire to be understood.

What’s most powerful in his letter is the tension between craving life and desiring an end to his suffering. He admits that he considered suicide. What mostly held him back was an urge to keep working on his music. Though virtue, too, might have played a part in holding suicidal thoughts at bay, he emphasizes the role of art even more: “Oh, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had forth all that I felt was within me.”

Continuing to live to see out one’s potential, and what one can keep bringing to the world, even in the face of suffering and uncertainty, means everything. It isn’t something that can be encouraged through platitudes or rote admonishments. It’s bloody and raw and hard-won (and can be easily lost too). It’s everything.

Beethoven lived another twenty-five years after writing this letter. Here’s his last symphony, courtesy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on their YouTube channel:


I read this letter as part of the Deal Me In 2017 challenge.

Week in Seven Words #324

braying
He bullies away the gaps in his knowledge, filling them with loudness.

dispensing
The driver reacts to the near-collision by shouting at everyone else.

follicular
Wind that could tear the hair from your scalp.

jitters
When asking for feedback on her poems, she doesn't expect a blast of criticism, but braces herself just in case. It's an act of vulnerability.

lakeside
The branch has landed in a silken reflection of trees and clouds.

perch
The tree has a bare trunk and a tangled mass of branches at the top, like a nest for a giant bird.

portraiture
I pose badly, she says. It's in the way I hold my chin, look past her shoulder, keep my lips pursed so I won't laugh. But it doesn't matter, because the end result is the same: two sets of ellipses for eyes and glasses, a beaming crescent mouth, and a nose that looks like a raven in flight. I cherish it.

Week in Seven Words #323

arcs
Pushing him on the swing, his small, solid back against my palm.

fragrance
Peeling the lid off a bin full of sheets and towels and bringing them to my nose for a deep breath.

naturally
We dissect twigs and seed pods with plastic knives that he calls "plant knives." Afterwards, he shows me some plastic animal pets, including a rat with a yellow splotch on its back that he calls a "sunspot rat." (It also has white spots on it, but he says those are there to make it look sick so other animals don't eat it.)

olfactorily
The dog is nearly beside herself with the need to press her nose into people.

points
In the first round of our drawing competition, we both draw tigers, and he declares himself the winner. Second round, after I've drawn his sunspot rat, he graciously calls a draw.

pressures
The silence of what we're not telling each other makes the car feel like it's going to implode.

stealth
They take hide-and-seek to another level, not only finding the most improbable places to hide but texting each other updates on the seeker's location.