This Is Guy Tiphane Writing

The Chosen

2009-10-11T12:26:00.001-07:00

See The Chosen at TheatreWorks, Mountain View.

I’m not religious at all, so the idea of going to see a play heavy with the subtleties of Jewish teachings wasn’t appealing. But past the references to God (which in my atheistic vocabulary just means whatever someone has made up a few thousand – and sometimes not so many – years ago), The Chosen had a lot to say about fatherhood and the passing of knowledge and skill from one generation to the next. Strangely devoid of any female input, the play (and I assume the novel on which it is based) focuses on the differences between two grown boys, and the relationship with their fathers. I just remembered that in my family, one would talk to my mother to discuss an issue and possibly escalate it to my father, who was the silent one. In the play, the chosen one is an unlikely friend through whom the father and son will communicate, and who will act as a catalyst in their relationship. Finally, each son will be able to confront his father with who he really wants to become.

I also appreciated that what was being passed from one generation to another was the ability to inquire and discuss, a quality that’s often lost in our world of absolutist trends. If it was at all possible to debate the TV pundits and preachers that pollute the airwaves, they would soon find nothing to say, and the fanatics would calm down. And I would also welcome the challenges of discussion by finally admitting that the other person is just discussing the subject without trying to hurt me. That’s always a difficult issue to deal with.

I, Too, Wanna Be Punk

2009-09-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Broadway shows put me to sleep. But once in a while, they’ll put together a show that won’t let me go to sleep, like American Idiot. And it’s not only because I keep tapping feet and hands at the rapid beat of most of the songs that the musicians play really well (get the CD to compare). Personally, I don’t really care for the voices in the show, and find it more satisfying to have the original Green Day voices in my head.
So this, too, would put me to sleep if not for the visual explosion in front of me that resembles what I saw with my eyes closed the first time I heard this CD (it was something akin to those laser shows we had back in the days). Not that there are any laser shows here. The set is massive, with TV screens all over a two- or three-story high wall complete with stairs at the top of which one can observe a lone violinist is playing. The cellist travels under the stairs that the actors move around (and gets off while they transform it into a bus). The dancers execute moves I wouldn’t even dream of trying at home, and the whole choreography is fun to watch. And I really like the projections on the wall.
What I find puzzling, since I’m a wannabe punk, is that the end is anticlimactic. I didn’t want to be an American Idiot, in full agreement with the first song, didn’t want to be part of this alienation, but that’s where the show leads you. Calm down, you too tried to rebel, but look, this is Broadway after all.

Which leads me to another play I saw at NCTC, called The Little Dog Laughed, which is about actors in Hollywood who stay in their closet for fear of breaking their career, and the alienating forces that dictate a good story has to be heterosexual. My friend expressed his surprise, as it appeared anachronistic to him, but read the program notes and you’ll discover that Hollywood loves to conform, whatever the right wingers say. I thought a play like that belonged in mainstream theatres as an “issue play,” but then NCTC’s Decker theater is nice enough and located near the big mainstream opera and concert halls.

Unless you live in Potrero Hill, chances are you won’t know that there’s a small theatre on 18th Street that’s currently hosting the Asian American Theatre Company’s world premiere of a play by Philip Kan Gotanda called #5 Angry Red Drum. The title, a play on the reversed word “redrum” made famous in the movie The Shining, is more cryptic than Waiting for Godot, which you are inevitably reminded of. The play is filled with references to the well-known absurdist play, and the comical scenes (starting with Pick’s coming out of a hole in the dirt) are brutally overshadowed with scenes of conflict between two men who may or may not want to coexist. When the warmonger appears in their midst, he coaches Pick to murder Gorum. They finally kill the drummer boy, apparently because he’s different.
To many in the audience, the play illustrates the state of affairs in the twenty-first century, with wars going on that we’re trying to forget, and politically angry people who believe whatever Fox News feeds them. But beyond its meaning, the play was very well put together, and at the forefront of new theatre.

Moved Again!

2008-08-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

I got all excited by wordpress, so the blog is now moved to guytiphane.wordpress.com

Puzzle

2008-08-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

There he is, dead, alone
You cannot disturb him any more
And you think that’s how he wanted it
And you think your puzzle is incomplete.

You look above for signs of an angel
Taking away his soul
As in the image in catechism.
As in the image in catechism
You remember the angel busy cleaning your soul
But yours had cracks in it
Caused by a fall
Caused by you
Causing eternal pain
Causing unmanly tears retained

Your head bounces on an aluminum locker
Your head spins about unsaid words and questions
Locked in for eternity
Another mystery, as they had many
You had to take for granted

Your finger ventures its back
On a one-day beard
Your lips prohibited long ago
On the freshly shaven cheek
Reserved for a good housewife
Now watching your gesture

And you withdraw deeper
Into a mound of puzzle pieces
That will never come together.

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

2008-07-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

I live on the other side of the bay from San Francisco, so I listen to KALW radio. That's how I heard his name, and his voice I think. So when I stood in front of his book at Moe's one Sunday afternoon, an autographed copy, I thought I might be missing something if I stopped at the suggestion of the title: it would be a boring story of some successful marriage by perfect people.

I read the first page, and thought this might be good.

"We think we know the ones we love."

Okay, whatever, it's still a happy marriage story.

"Our husbands, our wives. We know them -- we are them, sometimes; when separated at a party we find ourselves voicing their opinions their taste in food or books, telling an anecdote that never happened to us but happened to them."

I was ready to put it back on the shelf. I think I did. I took a walk to the literary remainders, you know, the $6 Everyman Library classic that you'll get to replace the paperback version you have. "Give it one more chance," I thought.

"We think we know them. We think we love them. But what we love turns out to be a poor translation, a translation we ourselves have made, from a language we barely know."

Take a chance. Those are beautiful sentences. Get that ATM unit out and pay the nice guy at the register who will even put the penny you don't want into the donation pot for books in prisons.

I started reading, and didn't stop until my eyes could no longer stay open. This doesn't occur that often with me. The thought of going to see a movie will get me back on my feet if one sentence speaks less than enchanting words. It didn't happen. The days after that I couldn't wait to have time to read more. At the end, when I read the last word, I needed to share this incredible experience of spending a few hours with Pearlie, the narrator of this story, the more than just a wife person I would like to have here, now.

You'll find the story elsewhere, on other web sites. After a few pages, I thought, "I bet the husband is gay," and he was. But that was in the 1950's when that was hardly an option. And then they're black, and the beautiful man is white, almost stereotypically German and successful. There's Ethel Rosenberg being killed by the state because she was a good wife. There's the hysteria that makes everyone be a good citizen and follow orders (a bit like now). And there's Love, especially the one nobody talks about, with secret encounters with someone you know will never be your lover. It's amazing how the transposed heart metaphor resonates over and over in this novel.

"Perhaps you cannot see a marriage." I'm still on page one. "Like those giant heavenly bodies invisible to the human eye, it can only be charted by its gravity, its pull on everything around it." I don't know, this book is full of sentences like that. I want to reproach it that the last page doesn't have them, as if the author had decided that since you were going to close the book right then, he'd no longer talk to you. He gave you that moment when you wanted to cry for whom? A fictitious character? Ha! I wanted to. I was in Pearlie's head all the time. For nearly two hundred pages I wanted to be Pearlie, because she was a beautiful lady.

I thought, maybe I could contact that author and he'd come to my writers group, maybe even for free. Fat chance: he'll be at City Arts and Lectures with Michael Chabon. That's how good he is.

On Chesil Beach

2008-05-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

On Chesil Beach: A Novel by Ian McEwan

I love it, first because I could read it in two seatings (big novels are, how can I put it, intimidating, and lose me in the middle). OK, seriously: this is the second McEwan that I read (the other was Saturday), and every time I am enchanted by his craft, i.e. the way he forms sentences that flow and go back deep in the train of thought of his characters to tell you how they ever got where they are now. So, would anyone say, how can he keep you reading this story about the failure to have sex on the night of one's honeymoon?

For one, it talks about a huge myth, the one that makes people hang soiled sheets at the honeymooners' window in Sicily. While reading it, I thought, "shouldn't they just relax about it and talk, maybe see a counselor?" And that is what people don't do. People assume they're deficient. They build tension on trifles just because Love was suddenly distilled to intercourse and everyone has a degree of discomfort with that.

But at the end of the day, this novel is about intense love, the one that is trivialized now but that is the foundation of oneself. At the end of the day, it isn't how much sex you've had, it's about how you connected, and how you experience this abstraction called Love. When you reach the last pages of the book, that is where the author has taken you, and nothing else. There's no moral, no lesson learned, just the hint that you too, could have been so close to that ideal. I just love books like that.

Becoming a Writer

2008-04-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'll participate in a panel at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival called "Becoming a Writer," in which I should talk about my experience with self-publishing and all the steps of the seemingly infinite ladder towards making one's name emerge in a very crowded and noisy market.

Of course, I'll talk about having the book on lulu.com, more as something anyone should do if they're not going through getting their work torn apart at an MFA program to shake them out of their bad habits. We always question that, we, the beginners. We don't like to have our egos deflated as an exercise. Perhaps that distinguishes the hobbyists from the wannabe professionals.

All the same, I feel that with the Internet and people's changing habits, an Internet presence is necessary if you want to be an author and it doesn't seem you're in line any time soon for major recognition. Anyone can start a blog like this one on any free service currently available (if you don't like google, try wordpress). The harder part is to figure out how to integrate audio and perhaps video into the equation. People download lots of mp3 (even to their cars, I gather), and it would make sense to get your work in that format.

Just today I found this article in the San Francisco Chronicle's Datebook section about a writer who records his stories into free podcasts, hoping that he'll have enough of a following to get them to buy actual books. It may work. By the way, he's a graduate of the Iowa program, and I was surprised that he didn't get an automatic book deal out of that.

Here is the article:

Take my book. It's free.
Giving away books as podcasts is new way to promote sales

One also needs to get his name (and especially his web address) out there to get people's interest. That may even be a healthier lifestyle than that of the typical writer hiding in his chamber with a raven. Perhaps it means you get your name out there by writing (part-time) where it will be recognized.

sharing in the writer's market

2008-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm probably not reporting anything new by telling you about newpages.com because if you just google "literary magazines" or "online literary magazines" it shows up at the top of the results. I may even have heard about newpages.com, and it may even be in my browser's bookmarks for what I know. Except that today, faced with another rejection letter and faithful to my promise to just keep submitting the same story to other magazines, I felt overwhelmed by the number of literary magazines out there. It became even more overwhelming once I found the lists at newpages.com

A few days ago, I thought: I'll start my own! I know how to make websites, and since I even own the web site, litbazaar.com, I might as well use it. That will take a long time. And there are so many out there! How many writers can there be? Some of the most obscure (to me until now) online magazines already post "no more submissions for now, please," and it feels like arriving in a town where there's a big convention going on and no rooms in even the dingiest motel. You rent a car, because you have to go out of town and seek the "Vacancy" sign. Then you try one and they look at you and tell you they don't really have a bed for you. You don't take it personally, because the motel wants to attract a kind of clientele that does not include you.

Now if I look too deeply at a magazine I selected for its name, I find out it's based in the south, and tell myself they'd never be interested in a story that talks about a kid being stuck in a snow bank. Or would they? Maybe that qualifies as novelty.

So, seriously, what do I do?

- start my own magazine. Being its editor, I'd slip in my writing here and there
- become a novelist and withdraw for a few years until I come up with the novel that someone will surely want to publish
- look around me and find an open mic so I'll keep writing poetry with the only goal of "publishing" it at the open mic (and then on this blog). I read somewhere that people my age are past their prime as poets (an issue with the fossilization of one's language, I think), but then wouldn't it be an antidote to aging?

A decision will come soon.

Oh! newpages.com also lists independent bookshops in your town! Go there, then review the store on Yelp.

issues of the day

2008-03-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, I keep forgetting that the rest of the U.S. out there is really strange. They keep thinking whoever isn't like them, i.e. ignorant, is dangerous. It reminds me of what we learn about the Middle Ages, and frankly the U.S. has been plunging into something like its own version of the Middle Ages for a while now. It's amazing that today, with technology that would allow anyone to get a proper education, we can hear them.

There's the case of Sally Kern, a State Rep from Oklahoma spreading her message of hate and bigotry
http://www.victoryfund.org/files/listening.html

And then, much more to worry about the loss of civil liberties that is now an institution, a University professor in Florida was arrested and jailed because he's Palestinian, lost his job, has been in prison for no reason for five years...

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/al_arian_enters_19th_day_of

This is so much bigger than it seems. We see the tip of the iceberg, and we do nothing because we think Obama or Hillary will fix it. But I'm pessimistic.

It's About a Sweater

2008-03-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

Berkeley, November 16, 2002
Dear S.,
I am returning this sweater to you in this package addressed to the last place I know you lived. Yes, it is an old sweater that maybe you don’t remember, or if you do, the burden of claiming it from me was too formidable… I understand. I could not imagine trying to contact you since the day you left.

The whole letter in PDF format at www.heatingupthefog.com

Memories of a Waltz

2008-02-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

This is a revised version of the story originally published in The Bohemian:

She had recognized her music playing on the radio after hearing a few measures of it. The Blue Danube it was, unmistakably. Not everyone could, she thought, recognize this piece from its introductory notes. They always stood there on the dance floor, the men wondering how to start, when to catch the downbeat; the women patiently waiting, and hoping nobody noticed. Mrs. Brown knew her Strauss and marked the tempo by tapping her fingers on the counter of the pharmacy.

get the whole story in nicely formatted pdf format at www.heatingupthefog.com

.

tearitdown.org

2007-12-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

93106
you know? That place the Associated Press calls "gitmo" so it sounds friendlier?

While you're at it, check out another place they need to close:

http://www.soaw.org

image: meilleurs voeux

2007-12-06T16:04:00.001-08:00

Meilleurs Voeux

2007-12-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Décembre.

La nuit devenue froide et sombre
T’invite à dormir.

Des bougies et autres formes de feu
Remplissent le vide laissé
Par un soleil en vacances.

Commence l’examen
Du temps qui passe.

best wishes image

2007-12-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

Best Wishes

2007-12-05T15:29:00.001-08:00

Ah, December...

Suddenly the cooled and darkened night
Sweet-talks you
For more sleep.

Candles and other forms of fire
Fill the void
Left by a sun on holiday.

The scrutiny of a year past
Begins.

A Last Waltz, Rev. 2

2007-09-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

Her fingers dance along
The steps of her favorite waltz
Coming to her ears
Floating on a legendary river
She counts: One, Two, Three
And enters her reverie

She sees the soft green eyes
Repeats the dizzy spell
Of a night in her distant past
Rescued by his agility
The strength so subtle
Of a charming dancer
Whose name she forgot

It feels like New Year in Vienna
The images of people in black and white
The angels of her mind
Counting to midnight
On a monumental clock

Their feet glide unencumbered
On the powdered floor
A fine dancer, she thinks
The palm of her right hand
Barely touching his left
Their fingers curling
Towards a desired embrace

If only she could break the rules
But the clock strikes midnight
Her eyes open to the present
Darkness she recognizes
Aches and discomfort
A reality she can evade
Counting: One, Two, Three
To see him, touch him, feel him
Once more
Waltzing into infinity

The Night of the Shooting Star

2007-08-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

In this mid August night
Enrobed in wool
Wholly surrendered to gravity against the earth
I watch in the dark sky
Shooting stars coming alive
Each meteor begging for attention
One I follow from birth to extinction
Says to me:
"I am but a speck of light
in the vast expanse of your vision.
Why do you pay attention to me?"

I cling to the uniqueness of my star
As others display equal if not superior spectacle
To the underdog of pyrotechnics
And I make a wish that

You, the unlucky winner of fewer summers
in the lottery of life

You, who take an uneasy step every day
on a fallen staircase

You, beautiful one, robbed of your youth
be my star. Let me try to pass you

The olympic torch and hope that
one day you will run and illuminate
the sky.

Until then I replay the memory of
The night of the shooting stars in mid August.

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Hiroshima

2007-08-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

note: I read this at an open mic and it started a controversy about the justification of the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I failed to raise our consciousness to the level of what it means to be human and at either end of weapons. My personal opinion is that all weapon manufacturing, small and large, should be stopped and made illegal by all countries. Take that for a controversy. I'm sure many men will scoff at the idea, as they usually do, since they've been brainwashed from birth that one should have more weapons than the neighbors in case they used theirs. What happened to talking about our differences? What happened to trying to understand events under a different light?

Peace,
Guy

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, this child’s sixth birthday
Never happened, erased from all memory
Records pulverized by a gigantic mushroom
The fungus on humanity’s foot
As it continues trampling on
Principles, teachings, evolution
As it continues spreading the seeds
Of hatred under engineered flowers
So pretty, so noble, so smart.

Sixty years later it is history
Lessons not learned
Our daily sufferings far superior
To that of others
We play God and establish dominion
We pronounce final judgment
We rehearse the end of the world
And expect a daily prayer
From those in the shadow
Where gigantic mushrooms can grow.

What Will We Do About It?

2007-08-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

They say we replay forever in our minds
The rules learned in the first six years of our lives
The mother of all mantras, like a broken record
Images of your first fears
Seen through your first tears
Adults standing by
Deciding whether you will love or hate
Be selfish or generous
Withdrawn or outgoing
A poet or a politician
Observing chaos or causing it
An innocent bystander or a perpetrator.

Now we sit on the edge of chaos
And the voices say, “do nothing, you cannot do anything about chaos, you don’t know how to deal with chaos.”
Do we stand up, or submit?

Crafty discourse rides on the mother of all mantras, expecting complacency and extinguishing all growth of conscience, as if we were six years old.

This could be our collective age
A society unable to learn
Stuck in its fears and instincts
What will we do about it?

The Birth of a Neo-Expressionist Painting

2007-07-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Birth of a Neo-Expressionist Painting

Memories clog the channels of the mind
The fingers twitch from the need to paint
Alerting sensations to the task.

Eyes sit on the subject
A mantra meditatively clearing ideas on a false start.

A tentative dip in color
An adroit skin tone begins
In softness imagined, moisturized and hydrated.

A dissonant vase made and cracked in a virtual world
A nest in a corner of what could be love
Unseen notes from a singing voice
Floating to the suggested ears
Give the body a frisson.

A timely switch to a less dominant hand blends in
A quasi medieval being massages the back, invisible
Thrusting the body towards the viewer
An unintended provocation.

The painting is unfinished.

Gravity

2007-07-17T10:42:00.001-07:00

Gravity

Trust gravity to keep your feet on the ground

Looking down, you fail to see the attraction of the earth, of life on it, despite the many ants, ladybugs, tiny flowers, and micro-organisms busily mixing things up.

Being a distinguished person, you don't lean to better distinguish those elements of life, for fear of exposing a side of yourself other forms of life dislike.

That is gravity.

Fighting gravity keeps you out of the grave
Until it lowers your eyelids
Like the end of the day
With the sun going down
And the moon rising on the other side.

Moved for a While

2007-06-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Am I ever the computer geek. I had moved the blog to my own site, powered by wordpress, and away from big corporate control! But then I realized that it required a lot more effort to maintain and keep going than I was willing to spare. So it's all back, I think.
The blog was at www.heatingupthefog.com/blog

Your Peaceful Existence

2007-05-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

Your peaceful existence
Comes in a colorful package that you buy
And you become diffident of
The no-name brands denouncing
The dominant point of view
That war is good, out there.

In your package
Comes educational material
Justifying the building of weapons
Under a veil of good morals and principles.
Even you can shoot and kill
Under the veil.

No child is left behind
All pledge allegiance
All are given the freedom
To shoot and kill
And peace becomes the enemy,
Driven out of the classroom,
Arrested, suppressed.

You pledged never to challenge
The official view.
You pledged never to question
How many are killed in your name.
You pledged never to look
Outside your peaceful existence.

There is no money to be made in peace.
Aspiring peace leaders withdraw,
Threatened of becoming martyrs,
Their words distorted to rekindle the war effort.
War leaders continue to get
Airports, buildings, and freeways named for themselves.
They continue to call peace the enemy.
So, you say, war must be good,
And looking the other way
You return to your peaceful existence.

Self-Portrait, revised

2007-05-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Is this better?

Self-Portrait

Every morning, facing the mirror
You feel like Dorian Gray who saw in his portrait
The old, consumed man he was supposed to be.
You have seen it before,
The image you try to project,
Blending in time, growth, and decay.

Every morning you have a routine
You perform magic
And transform yourself into
What you want to be.

Every morning you select
From a wardrobe blessed by fashion
The clothes that you need
To make you part of your world.

Years spent making yourself up
And today your mask presses
Uncomfortably against your nature.
The leaks in your mind
Wet the plaster
Of your mask, and it crumbles.
You can’t find yourself in a magazine.
The lost identity never was yours.

Today, you start a new portrait
Incorporating strange features from a night filled with dreams.
You need to slow down, to let the colors blend
Allow for experimentation.
Paint
Your true self, one trait at a time,
Sometimes over another you tried and disliked.

You call it, work in progress
Vowing never to finish
Ignoring the critics
Resisting the urge to hide your portrait in the attic,
Because one day you could be Dorian Gray
Discovering your true self
And wanting to tear it with a big knife.