Organizing a Society

One night in the hospital, I could not sleep.  I lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the nurses at their station near my room and the even breathing of my sleeping roomate.  I challenged myself to write something in my mind, to play in my mind.  What popped up were references to white coats.  I’d noticed that the doctors making rounds wore white coats of different lengths.  A nurse had explained that the shortest ones, white jackets, were worn by medical students.  A medical student further explained the hierarchy for me in terms of who works the closest to the attending/teaching physician, and that he was at the bottom, essentially there to learn.  But what fascinated me was the hierarchical organization using the lengths of the white coats, the robes of medicine.  Of course, if someone shows up in scrubs, which happens, then it’s difficult to know where that person fits into the hierarchy unless they’d also visited earlier wearing his/her white coat.  And my attending surgeon often showed up in street clothes without his white coat.

Why does this society, that of doctors and students in a teaching hospital, need a hierarchal organization?  Could it function organized in a non-hierarchical way?  Why does this society need a hierarchy? 

As a writer, I’ve found it important to think carefully about the society or community of people in which my characters exist.  In Perceval, the society, actually societies, required far more work than I’d initially thought.  The reason?  I’d chosen to create a world in the future, rather than the past or present.  The future, however, has its foundation in the past, so I could use the present day world as a basis or beginning.  Social organization will affect a character’s behavior and thoughts whether the community is a school, neighborhood, city or country.  And I needed to consider America’s social organization in 2048, Europe’s, Austria’s, and various other countries that come into play in Evan Quinn’s life.   And then there’s Evan’s professional society, i.e. a professional musician, and how he fits into how that society is organized. 

Human beings, like other mammals, like to be organized, whether it’s in the nuclear family unit or a neighborhood, by tribe or nationality.  Customs and beliefs tend to evolve within human groups, creating distinct cultures and ways of thinking and communicating.  A smaller group, e.g. a family, will have customs and beliefs consistent with any larger group in which its a member, as well as developing its own unique customs and beliefs.  So, despite the high level of organization, a high level of diversity and originality can exist within it.  In fiction, this information about a character can give him or her depth, breadth and layers of humanity and meaning that a reader can identify and connect with.

Back to the hospital in the middle of my sleepless night, I realized that a hierarchical organization to the doctors and medical students served a purpose more important than simply organization in their society.  The hierarchy is based on level of knowledge and expertise, and the white coats’ lengths identify where each coat wearer is in that hierarchy.  My surgeon’s white coat (when he wore it) was below the knee and his name and department were embroidered over the breast pocket in black, like all the other attending physicians I saw, but not like Residents below a certain level whose coats were unadorned.  These were the professors, the doctors with the highest level of knowledge and expertise.  The hem of the coats rises as we tick down the hierarchy: Fellows and post-doctorals, Residents, Interns and Medical Students.  Outside of their society, for example, when I or a nurse approached them, we would recognize their level of responsibility and decision-making according to their society.

Sleep finally came that night, but only a couple hours before my Residents arrived on their morning rounds….

Well of Creativity

Imagination: the bottomless well of human creativity.  Speculations abound as to what can enhance the imagination, “set it free,” or fuel it.  Possible methods: drinking alcohol to excess, ingesting illegal drugs or plants such as mushrooms, sex, or inducing physical pain.  Other speculation centers on the relationship between mental illness/instability and creativity.  No doubt, highly creative people can gravitate toward extremes in living and experiences and behavior.  They think outside of the box.  But does the imagination really need anything more from us than our attention and willingness to use it?

Recently, I had major surgery.  I enjoyed the mild sedation before we rolled into the surgical theater and I was very focused on my life after I regained consciousness.  The first pain medication they gave post-surgery didn’t work for me and made me ill.  My surgeon changed to morphine.  I’ve experienced morphine before, including hallucinating on it, and it wasn’t pleasant.  But this time, I controlled the administration of the drug completely through a self-doser.  I was happy.  No more pain.

But with the drug’s effectiveness came other things, such as feeling loopy.  My short term memory was shot.  Today, I remember very, very little of those first few post-surgery days when I was on the morphine.  The drug also did nothing for my imagination.  I felt as if my imagination had also been drugged into lethargy and grogginess.  My scientist friend visited one afternoon while I was on the morphine and we watched the movie Up together.  Last week I told her that I didn’t remember the movie at all because of the morphine.  She quite cheerfully responded that I could see it again as if it were the first time.  A rare pleasure.

My experience with morphine this time got me thinking about the importance of memory to imagination and creativity.  Writers, and I believe other creative artists, need memory of their life experiences, their sensual experiences, and stories on which to draw for their characters’ stories.  Memory is a partner in creativity.  For me, nothing about morphine and its effects enhanced my imagination or creativity.  I mourn the loss of my memories while on it.  But it did what it was supposed to do….

Reading as a Writer: “Ace” by Richard Carr

Compressed squares of old junked cars in straight vertical piles fill the cover of Ace, winner of the 2008 Washington Prize, and the last of the four poetry books Richard Carr published this year that I’ve now read.  The junkyard feel of the cover actually turned me off initially.  I set this book aside to read last.  As it turned out, I saved the best for last.

Piercing details and language, hallmarks of Richard’s poetry, flash on the pages, bringing images into laser-like focus.  One in particular that has stuck with me: “Mother clung to me with bird-like claws….”  This phrase beautifully captures the discomfort of a mother clinging to a child.  The image that came to my mind was of a peregrin falcon, not a sparrow.  Later in the same poem, the mother is described, “against her relentless chirping,” and suddenly the word harpie comes to mind.  This is what I enjoy about Richard’s poems.  Reading them is a descent into pleasurable free association.  He understands the power of the word to evoke.  My imagination loves it.

This collection consists of four sections, “Ace,” “Carol,” “Miss Princess,” and “Little Ace.”  Each section focuses on the section title’s character.  More than with his other books, this collection is novelistic, with emotional action moving forward through thoughts, memories, scenes, and impressions.  The momentum is dramatic.  By the end of each section, the reader has a clear picture of that section’s character, intellectually and especially emotionally.  These people are far from the hallowed halls of the Ivy League or Wall Street (not a bad thing nowadays?), revealing human survival on an almost primal level.  This poetry sometimes is like eavesdropping on a character’s mental self-talk.  Or even the murmurings between the heart and the mind.

I didn’t find any of the characters particularly likeable, although Ace’s desire to find his grandchild and forge a connection is poignant in its humanity.  Their lives exist far from my own.  And yet, I’ve met bartenders who were wise beyond any expectation, as well as jaded and wonderfully entertaining.  Richard paints a picture in this collection of the disconnections of the human heart, that immeasurable distance between people that can be shortened in a second by a compassionate smile but never completely eliminated.  A foreign country within our own, which only reminds that each person is a foreign country within a unified community.  People are people.

Back to the cover: after finishing the collection, the compressed squares of junk metal on the front cover suddenly made sense.  Stacks of junked lives that continue to exist, maybe could be saved for something, but are never thrown away.  The hard metal of emotional resilience.

I enjoyed Ace and would recommend it.  Richard Carr is a neighbor.  I look forward to his next published collection….

Update on “Two Years and Counting”

The holidays fast approach, the new year is only weeks away.  I’ve slogged along with my projects and am ready to update my “To Do” list:

The Blog Itself: After reviewing many, many themes here at WordPress, I decided that I wanted to stay with the one I have.  It’s clean, with white space for easy reading, and I like the widgets on the right.  I re-arranged those widgets and added introductory text that originally had been a subtitle.  Finding the right photo for the header gave me the opportunity to peruse dozens of photos of Vienna and I found photos of several places I love in that city.  The photo that now serves as the header photo is of the Cafe Diglas on the Wollzeile in the First District of Vienna, Austria.  The entrance is to the left and the photo has been taken from a diagonal perspective to see how the cafe stretches up the adjoining cross street.  It’s an old fashioned Viennese cafe, although it looks like they’ve spruced up the exterior.  This cafe inspired one of the cafe’s used as a location in Perceval. 

The Perceval Novels: No change in the last two months.  I continue to seek employment, so I’ll keep my writing plans on hold for the novels until that situation has been settled.

Marketing Perceval: I found another publisher to query but haven’t yet put the query package together.  I plan to complete this task before the end of the year.  I also need to develop another batch of agents to query.

Short Stories: Lots of progress here.  I’ve completed Lights and it’s ready to submit so I’ve been researching possible markets.  I submitted The Shadow to three contests, not two.  I continue to develop The Negligee and will try to get a first draft down on paper before the end of the year if not sooner.

Essays:  One of the essays I’d submitted two months ago, Waking to Mozart, was rejected.  I’m looking for other markets for it.  Future Mind was published in Mensa Bulletin in the October 2009 issue under the title Money Talks.  I completed another essay, Word Power, and submitted it last month.  I continue to work on the longer essay, Rare.  Another essay idea burbled up the other day, one considering our “supersized” society.

Memoir (book):  I continue to develop this project.  Recently played with the idea of an experience with a contest threading through the book to anchor it in the present. 

eHow.com: After a gung-ho beginning, my efforts at this website have fallen by the wayside.  I need to decide if it’s worth pursuing….

Miscellaneous: While researching short story markets, I grabbed an opportunity for a free sample copy of one of the magazines in exchange for writing a review of it here.  The magazine arrived today.  Watch for the review in the coming weeks!

So, after two months, I feel that I’ve made some progress, although I would have liked to have made more, of course.  The holidays confuse and complicate life at this time of year, as pleasant as they can be.  I am determined, however, to mail the submissions and complete the first drafts….