a question for an artist

Temperatures have dropped even lower here--around −7° C--but it is sunny and brilliant. I trudged out on errands--get cash, buy a ham hock, drop book and DVD at the library, and down Lonsdale to the liquor store for scotch and wine. When I pay attention, I'm quite sure-footed and not given to falling. I trod carefully over the patches of smooth, hard-tramped ice, mainly at intersections.

Still embroiled in my copywriting assignment, I am still drifting with The Mission. Not entirely: I'm still keying notes first thing in the morning (after switching on the heat throughout the house and making the coffee), from Uriel's Machine, which I bought at this time last year.

"Uriel's machine" is their name for a device the authors theorize was specified in the "Book of the Heavenly Luminaries" portion of the Book of Enoch--a simple observatory that can be set up at any latitude to create an accurate calendar for that latitude. (Uriel was the angel who enlightened Enoch about the heavens.) The depth of the astronomical understanding underlying it, coupled with the great simplicity of its design (a matter of setting vertical sticks in holes along an arc), point to the sophisticated engineering intelligence behind it.

Lomas and Knight, the authors, believe that devices like "Uriel's machine" were used at the henge-type megalithic monuments of the British Isles--of which there are remains for more than 40,000. There is strong evidence that the so-called Grooved Ware People, a seemingly quite advanced culture that lived in Western Europe about 5,000 years ago, used observatories and may even have built scientific stations--which is what the complex at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands appears to be (dated to 3215 BC), with thoughtfully made uniform apartments for occupants who apparently neither farmed nor hunted, but ate meat that had been specially transported to the site.

All of this is of keen interest to me. Enoch was of special interest and importance to the Essenes, who feature prominently in my story. I chew through the material, comparing it to what I already know, slowly working toward my own theory of what happened.

In all, I sense that a great deal of knowledge has been lost over the millennia. And while we're smug about our scientific progress, we should remember that the kinds of knowledge we seek--the very questions we ask--would have been considered uninteresting to people in the ancient world.

This is illustrated with a great example by the Frankforts, quoted by David C. Lindberg in The Beginnings of Western Science. If I keeled over now at my keyboard, my body would be taken to a morgue and autopsied to find the cause of death. The doctor would discover evidence of, say, a massive heart attack, and write this on the death certificate. Problem solved.

An ancient person looking at the situation would be very dissatisfied. The question asked by the modern doctor is not interesting to him. The modern scientist is looking for an answer to this: "To what general class of phenomena does this particular case belong?" When he finds that, he regards his job as done.

The ancient person asks a different question: "Why did this man die in this way at this time?"

It's a very different question. The ancient person is interested in the meaning of an event--its significance. Science has very little to say about this. It's a question for an artist. Or perhaps for a shaman. But it deserves to be answered, don't you think?

writing for dollars

More copywriting.

What is copywriting, you ask? My favorite definition: "writing for results". That is, it is writing intended to persuade people to do something specific. Usually it refers to advertising: getting people to buy something, or call someone, or visit a website. It is one way for a writer to earn money from writing.

I became interested in it one day in September 2003 while I strolled up Lonsdale Avenue in the afternoon sun. Passing the window of McGill's Stationery, I saw the title Start & Run a Copywriting Business in the rotating book-rack. I stopped, thought, then decided to go in and take a look at it. I picked up the book, written by Canadian copywriter Steve Slaunwhite, and published by the Self-Counsel Press, a small press located here in North Vancouver. The book seemed serious and sincere--not a come-on about how to make $$$ in your spare time. If you can write, and are disciplined enough to be self-employed, you can be a copywriter. Intrigued, I bought the book and started reading.

Slaunwhite makes copywriting seem a very reasonable, doable thing. I became mildly excited at the possibility of having an income-generating business that I could pursue without having to actually return to the wage-labor force. I started buying other books on copywriting and taking still others out of the library. I researched it just as I research anything else, typing up notes and creating folders on my PC.

Following the advice in the books, I started putting out feelers among people I knew. I became derailed somewhat when my friend Harvey died and I became involved in administering his estate, but eventually one of my contacts, a Vancouver copywriter named Patrick Cotter, when overloaded with work one day in 2004, referred a job to me. A U.S. client of a Vancouver web-development firm needed copy for their new franchising website. I sent some writing samples to the client, and was hired. I wound up writing all the copy for the website of Archadeck of Richmond, Virginia (go ahead--check it out).

I enjoyed the experience very much. I never thought I would be interested in writing ad copy or promotional copy; I had always hated ads and made endless satirical attacks on them when I was a kid. Plus the advertising industry is notoriously sleazy--even worse than television, supposedly. I can't stand sleaze.

But the best copywriting authorities point out that the typical high-profile "Madison Avenue" ad is not really representative of most copywriting, and indeed does not represent good copywriting for the most part. High-priced ads tend to be clever and slick, but they don't necessarily sell. They're about image: the image of the client, and even more the image of the ad agency. Think about car ads on TV: has any of those ever made you want to buy one of their cars? They certainly haven't with me. Narcissistic displays, full of sound and fury--and we all know what that signifies.

In fact, some part of me positively likes advertising--as a concept, an industry. When I read about how the new mass-media technologies of radio and television were made possible by advertising, I was excited. It seemed like a fantastic fit between technology and the means to make it commercial, viable. I even like the idea of that progressing further: I really like the concept of "product placement"--drama productions receiving money for placing products in the show. Some people regard that as cheesy, but not me. That way you can have heightened realism and no commercial breaks. From the advertiser's side it's a dream come true: Harrison Ford might drink a Coke while playing a character, whereas he would probably never do an ad for Coca-Cola at any price.

When I've mentioned copywriting to TV-writing colleagues, I've expressed it this way: "Instead of having lots of writers chasing a few dollars, as in TV, you have a few writers chasing lots of dollars."

Works for me.

working with symbols

I'm back.

Lately, as I rehabilitate myself after my long hiatus, I have been confining my blog posts to weekdays. Yesterday I missed again due to a time squeeze in the afternoon: Kimmie and I were to head out to my mother's place to join two of her sisters, here on their first visit from Ontario, for dinner. Mindful as ever of getting my reading-time in, I went to my reading-chair early and never got to the blog.

I haven't been doing much on my book for the past week or so, focusing mainly on this copywriting gig. In a burst just before lunch yesterday I did manage some more notes in my steadily growing Notes document for chapter 25 (49 pages and counting, I'm almost embarrassed to admit--though quite a few of those are extracts from research books). I just repeated and consolidated to myself some of my thoughts about the imagery and symbolism of this chapter and therefore of the work as a whole.

And what exactly is a symbol, anyway? I must have some definitions of it around...

I turned to the bookcase and pulled out my old hardback copy of Jung's The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. I checked the index for "symbol", and, among many other entries, there was this in the chapter called "Spirit and Life" (slightly compressed):

By symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in language. Spirit that can be translated into a definite concept is a psychic complex lying within the orbit of our ego-consciousness. It will not bring forth anything, nor will it achieve anything more than we have put into it. But spirit that demands a symbol for its expression is a psychic complex that contains the seeds of incalculable possibilities. The Christian symbols’ power changed the face of history.

In this context he is talking only about symbols of the spirit, but what he says goes for other symbols too--they express the inexpressible. They are the best way of saying something that cannot be said. Their very lack of explicit meaning makes them more meaningful than conventional signs--"symbols" in the everyday sense.

Since, in storytelling as in all true art, nothing is as it appears, this means that everything is a symbol. And therefore symbolism is another rack of tools in the writer's workshop. These are the tools I've been working with lately.

laziness vs. fun

The last day of an extra-long holiday weekend for Kim. It's been another splendidly sunny one, and quiet, with a sense of post-holiday rest and inertia out there.

I spent more time preparing my copywriting notes, in case the project goes forward (I still haven't heard back from the client on that). I find it hard to concentrate on my creative writing when business needs to be taken care of. So, since I had the energy and desire to push forward with the business stuff, I did. I want to lean into my inclination that way more: to do what I feel like doing, have the energy for. It's the most productive way to work and live. In my life I have tended to slog, often pushing myself to do things I didn't really feel like, in order to get them done, or simply to convince myself that I'm not lazy.

Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins (and incidentally: the animal was named after the sin, not vice versa), but what exactly is sloth?

In the Buddhist context, laziness is everything we do in order to avoid practicing meditation or studying the dharma. So: our career, building houses, getting a PhD, making $25 million--all lazy. They are lazy because they do nothing for us at the moment of death and beyond: only the practice and study of dharma can help us with that. Stripped of all our possessions, achievements, and even our body, our mind goes naked into the beyond to face its destiny. Therefore, only the work we have directly done on our mind is of any use at that point.

My own, perhaps neurotic definition of laziness is probably something like: a reluctance to do tasks that are not fun. This leads to a belief that only unfun things count as "work", and therefore a tendency to push oneself to do things one doesn't enjoy, in order to gain some kind of merit. Things that one enjoys are seen as entertainment and "fun time", and therefore don't count as work. One must defer those things until one has done a certain amount of drudgery.

This attitude does lead to the adolescent condition of being in a mess: dirty dishes piled up, garbage overflowing, bed unmade.

One aspect of Buddhist training for me has been to expand the notion of "fun": doing dishes is fun, if you have the right attitude. In having the courage to step over one's habitual disinclination, one discovers an energy arising from the act of uplifting one's surroundings, and a special heightened awareness that occurs when experiencing the result: that feeling of pleasure at being in a cleaned-up environment. The environment supports a more alert, aware frame of mind.

But another factor is that I want to get out from under the Puritan disapproval of enjoyment. Like most people--I think all people--I enjoy being productive. Why not do those productive things that I enjoy, at the moment I want to? For me, highlighting dense books and typing up the notes is fun--something most people would regard as drudgery. And when you're having fun, you get a lot done.

So: today was about preparing forms and documents for marketing and copywriting. It was fun.