Category: Thoughts

Half-a-year

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

Today is basically half a year of my posting every day. It’s… unbelievable. I wasn’t sure that I’d make it this long keeping up with daily posts. You get in a groove.

Admittedly, some days are harder than others. Some days I’ve found no time to write, heading from one gig to another. Some days I’ve been able to queue up a week’s worth of posts in one sitting.

One or two days, I just got it in under the wire.

This is a bit of a milestone for me, and thank you for taking any time to read this at all. It’s my practice and testing area; an avenue for thoughtfulness and experimentation; and a crucible of trying to come up with the right word for the right situation. But it’s been one-hundred eighty-three days, and damned if I’m not looking forward to the next six months.

Huh… How about that?

Making history

by MAÔ, posted in Inspiration

History is not made by those trying to make history. Rather, it is crafted by those trying to improve a problem.

The Wright Brothers saw the flying contraptions of the 19th Century and wondered, “What if they could be controlled while in the air?”

Thus, beginning with the Wright Glider in 1902, airplane controls saw the ability to manipulate roll, pitch, and yaw. They weren’t trying to become historical aviators. They wanted to fix a problem they identified in aviation, and they did.

Revisitations

by MAÔ, posted in Organization

There’s a collection of things that I intended to return to at some point. An inbox with flagged messages dating back to 2013. Folders with articles and scraps of papers and clippings from newspapers and magazines. All of it held my interest long enough for me to say, “I’ll return to this.” And yet, the stream keeps coming and revisiting any of it seems, at best, questionable.

And yet, there’s the possibility that something in there will spur something here. So I hold onto it.

Some book I read suggested that you should keep a tickler file, containing those things of interest to you that you may want to return to someday – given you have the time. Just make sure you make the time.

Zombies

by MAÔ, posted in Social

Heard this piece from The Why Factor on BBC World Service, all about zombies. It was the noise at the start that got me – this sort of clicking, vocal low growl. It was a little unsettling. But listening through, it got me thinking.

It seems that AMC’s The Walking Dead led this current phase of popularity, and while I thought that maybe the zombie was waining, it seems to still be going strong. Last year’s Zombieland 2 (which I still haven’t seen), popular games like The Last of Us, and the white walkers from HBO’s Game of Thrones all point to a strong showing by the reanimated corpse.

The zombie, and the wider horror genre, is a cyclical beast. While zombies have been en vogue starting from the October 31, 2010 airing of Days Gone By, the first episode of The Walking Dead, they were made popular first, and in their current iteration, by George Romero in his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Though Romero lost the rights to that film, it became a lucrative franchise for him as he created five more films in his Dead Saga. Dani Di Placido at Forbes wrote this history of the zombie legend following Romero’s death in 2017.

Before Romero, Americans knew of the zombie mostly from White Zombie, a 1932 film about a Haitian honeymoon with voodoo and raised corpses. The Haitian zombie wasn’t bloodthirsty – it was merely a resurrected person to be used as a slave by a sorcerer. Director Wes Craven revisited this aspect of the zombie legend in 1988’s The Serpent and the Rainbow. In A History of Zombies in America from NPR’s Rachel Martin and Rund Abdelfatah, the Haitian beginnings of zombies are explored in depth.

Through the 80s and the 90s, zombies got more of a B-movie treatment. Slasher films were the mainstay, with films like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Sleepaway Camp following up on the popularity of 1978’s Halloween. The masked killer got a revamp in 1996 with Wes Craven’s Scream, ushering in a smarter, meta-version of the slasher film.

While the film industry wasn’t doing great with zombies, video games were killing it. The Resident Evil series, started in 1996 for Playstation, was immensely popular and eventually got its own film adaptations as well. Additionally, new life for the zombie came in the 2000s, including the 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and the 2004-remake of Dawn of the Dead. In 2003, Robert Kirman began the long-running series Walking Dead for Image Comics, which would be adapted to television by AMC.

And books as well get the zombification treatment, with popular novels like Max Brooks’s World War Z, Stephen King’s Cell, and M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts, not to mention the Seth Graham parody mashup of Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

So while I echo Romero’s sentiment that the zombie genre has become overrun in recent years, there is still plenty of material to pull from for a bevy of stories to tell about the living dead. I suppose horror, and its fan-base, is just waiting for the next resurgence – maybe it’ll be Universal Monsters this time around.

Further reading:

Writing is easy…

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

“Writing is easy. Just put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and start bleeding.”

– Thomas Wolfe

This quote has come up a few times, one a variation credited to Hemingway, others to authors I’ve not known before. But the quote has been rolling around in my head for days.

I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and I felt a very intimate sense of who she was, how she suffered, and what the journey meant. She bled, literally on the trail, and figuratively on the page. She exposed who she was.

It’s my intention to do the same, but in the writing, I always feel a bit of a filter in place. Not so much a mask of how I want people to see me, but more a guardedness about letting anyone become too intimately aware of my existence. Some sort of desire to remain among the transient awareness of reality.

It’s partially to blame for the vagabonding spirit I suppose. Anywhere I go, I can just as suddenly depart. While I’ve made many friends along the way, and good ones, any of them will say that I’m a shit-communicator when it comes to keeping in touch. Family likewise feels I stay distant, and I do.

I’m hopeful my summer will reveal more about me than I understand at this point. Cautiously optimistic, as anywhere you go, there you. But among the work requirements and the exploration, I’ll be sitting down at the computer and trying my best to bleed.

Here’s to whatever may come.

Weekly Rundown

by MAÔ, posted in Social, Writing

I’ve not been wholly satisfied with the Weekly Rundowns, so I may be changing them a bit here in the near future. Still playing with form, so we’ll see how it lands. But for now, here’s some stuff for you:

Reading: Locke & Key Vol. 1 from IDW Comics, written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. And there he was again, this Joe Hill. Son of Stephen King, and prominent storyteller himself, has created a lot of buzz with Netflix’s adaptation of Locke  & Key. I think I became familiar with the series while reading the recent Hill House collaboration with DC Comics: Basketful of Heads, Daphne Byrne, et al. NOS4A2 was on AMC last year, and now Netflix has Locke. I watched it, I enjoyed it, and I wanted to see how close it got to the source material. I read Volume 1, and it’s close enough to be familiar, but different enough that I enjoy reading the comics even after watching the series.

Listening: Honestly, nothing with any repetition. No new music this week, though Flora Cash’s Somebody Else and Fun.’s 2012 album Some Nights have been in my head this past week.

Doing: Packing. With my months away quickly approaching, it’s been important to put as much as I can in storage, free up space around the house. I wanted to have a yard sale before leaving, but it’ll have to wait until I get back.

Sharing:

Taking it slow

by MAÔ, posted in Advice

Some things are meant to be fast. Races, for one. Even given the wisdom of “slow and steady…”, one must have the speed to win a race.

Manufacturing relies on the fastest possible systems to create the best possible good. When speed increases result in a decrease in quality, they know they’ve gone too far.

But other things are better, even only enjoyed, if done slowly. I’m reminded of the Japanese tea ceremony, which can clock in at about four hours.

Speeding it up would ruin the ceremonial aspect of it. It would be sipping a Lipton Brisk purchased at the Circle K. It wouldn’t be the same.

So when pushing through to the finish, be sure to ask yourself whether this would be better served by taking it just a little slower.

News cycles

by MAÔ, posted in News

The 24-hour news cycle is constantly updating, altering, and becoming more like a social media feed than a traditional news source.

That’s because the way we consume our news has changed, partially because the way we live our lives has changed. Morning routines don’t regularly include the newspaper, but almost consistently involves the mobile device.

What constant streaming of coverage provides is not up-to-date information (though occasionally it is), but rather an addiction to instant gratification. We feel we know, because we keep tuning in, or scrolling down.

It misses the connective processes that traditional news coverage would allow for. The coverage, interpretation, and conversation surrounding events. Now in its immediacy, the conversation is over almost as soon as it’s begun. And the interpretation doesn’t get a very long gestation period.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: slowing down allows for a more informed population.

First steps

by MAÔ, posted in Inspiration

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days. – Voltaire

There are many first steps we take. Every day is a first step, if we let it be. Don’t hold yourself back. Don’t be the only block to your success, your future, or your happiness.

The rest of your days depend upon that first step.