2013 – Page 2 – The Constant Harper

If Music Be The Food of Love…

The official poster hints at the madcap tone of Joss Whedon's film. — The official poster hints at the madcap tone of Joss Whedon’s film.

Play on.

When Shakespeare wrote that line for Count Orsino in Twelfth Night, it was meant to suggest a strategy for ending, rather than prolonging, the pain that love can sometimes cause. Frustrated by his inability to win the love of the bewitching Olivia, Orsino thought to make himself sick of love by feasting to excess on sappy love songs.

Of course, it didn’t work out as he’d planned. That’s the thing about love. Planning rarely helps.

But when it comes to producing Shakespeare’s works, brilliant planning certainly pays, as is evident in last year’s delightful film version of Much Ado About Nothing by director Joss Whedon.

Whedon assembled a cast of veteran actors, most of whom have worked with him on one or more of his earlier successes (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, The Avengers). He shot the film in black and white, in less than two weeks, on a miniscule budget. He saved money by using his own home as the set. And he wrote all the music for the film, adding lyrics by William Shakespeare. The result is astonishing.

To my mind Shakespeare is the literary equivalent of Paris. Ideally, everyone should experience it at least once. Even if you don’t understand the language, you can figure out what’s going on.

Sophisticated and modern, yet timelessly classic, Whedon’s Much Ado stands out from some other recent film versions of Shakespeare because Whedon didn’t attempt to dazzle with special effects or dumb down the language to attract the tweeting masses. He simply let the words carry the plot, which is driven by the age old engines of duplicity and desire.

Whedon is a master storyteller. So was Shakespeare. And together, they are really something.

Paint Me A Picture

Even in the rain the models in Renoir's "Boating Party" represent a sunny ideal. — Even in the rain the models in Renoir’s “Boating Party” represent a sunny ideal.

Among the many unintended consequences of the government shutdown here in D.C. has been the rise in attendance at the city’s privately run museums.

Art lovers looking for somewhere to get their gaze on have been flocking to places like the Corcoran Gallery (which has funding issues of its own), the Textile Museum (soon to be relocated on the GW campus) and the Phillips Collection near Dupont Circle.

The Phillips is perhaps the most beloved gallery in town, not least because it’s home to one of the world’s most beloved paintings, Renoir’s joyous celebration of all things French, “Luncheon of the Boating Party.” That this famous and priceless work can be seen in such an intimate and exquisite setting as the Phillips is one of the wonders of living in this Capitol city.

So much of D.C.’s tourist zone is writ large, in grand marble monuments and stern statues of famous men. It’s refreshing to step into a place devoted to a more private, personal artistic vision.

I’ve taken Renoir’s masterpiece for granted for years, like a beautiful world I can escape into whenever I need a dose of romantic optimism. But I will never look at it in quite the same way again, thanks to author Susan Vreeland, whose historical fiction novel I just finished reading. Vreeland has made a good career out of researching and imagining the stories behind some famous paintings. Her Girl in Hyacinth Blue, based on the painting by Johannes Vermeer, was a bestseller and established Vreeland as a meticulous and gifted storyteller.

I never read Girl. In general I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, which usually feels a bit neither-this-nor-that to me. I like my fiction fictional, all the way through. But I understand how readers who long to know more about beloved artists could be attracted to a fictionalized account.

I read Vreeland’s Luncheon of the Boating Party not because I was curious about Renoir, the man. I was curious about the people in the painting. The scene is so relaxed and carefree, the models all look like people who would be fun to hang out with. And this is what makes Vreeland’s Luncheon a success. The story doesn’t simply dwell on the Renoir’s struggle to raise the money to buy his paints and pay for the models and the tremendous amount of food that was consumed during the eight sessions of posing. Nor does it focus entirely on the thematic and philosophic issues that were dividing the up and coming artists of that time in France, when the sense of “la vie moderne” was challenging the old constructs of French society and art.

At one point in the novel Renoir says, “I despise the idea that paintings are investments.” I’d be curious to know if this is an actual quote Vreeland found in a letter or diary. One wonders what Renoir would think of the modern marketing of art.

What makes the novel live and breathe are the portraits Vreeland paints with words of the models themselves and how they interact with each other, and, most of all, how their affection for Renoir and his for them produces the magical chemistry that you can see in the painting. A thousand little brushstrokes coalesce to give an unforgettable impression of a joyous afternoon.

It looks like the sort of party to which we’d all like to be invited. Thanks to Renoir we can at least imagine ourselves there. And thanks to Vreeland, we know the names of all the guests.

Kith and Kindle

A young woman begins a journey that takes her far, far from the beaten path in The Greening. — A young woman begins a journey that takes her far, far from the beaten path in *The Greening*.

My new book, The Greening:At The Root, is now available on Kindle.

I don’t own a Kindle myself, yet. But I’m beginning to see the light. Though no electronic gadget will ever supplant my love of genuine page-turning, there’s no denying that e-books are, if not the way of the future, at least the way of the moment.

So, for those of you who like to travel light and still pack a whole library in your carry-on, you can now find another one of my books on the endless virtual shelf.

Enjoy!

This Is Your Life

everyday-rainbow — Every rainbow is a small miracle.

Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel The Age Of Miracles takes off from a simple premise, the sort of “what if?” that has inspired science fiction writers for decades. What if the Earth’s rotation slowed? What if, gradually, but unmistakably, the sunlit days grew longer, the dark nights correspondingly longer, and cooler?

From this seed of possibility any number of mutant futures could be imagined. In these days, when young adult dystopian fiction is the leading edge of publishing trends, such a plot could have been milked for a franchise by a writer less concerned with exploring the subtleties of human nature under stress. But Walker, a deft and capable plot spinner, is also a thoughtful and caring observer of the paradox of human existence. Just because we know we’re doomed doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

Through the eyes of the 11-year-old narrator Julia, a lonely girl in Southern California, we see the hairline cracks in society widen as the days lengthen to 30 hours, 50 hours and beyond. When the government steps in to try to impose order on a world which no longer runs on clock time, the divisions between schools of thought lead to irreparable fractures in families and communities. However, no government can impose order on the natural world, and as the food supply and all living things including plant life are imperiled by the slowing, a miasma of gloom settles over much of the world.

But of course, to a lonely girl with a crush on a boy, all the world’s problems are mere background. Up to a point.

Walker’s brilliance shines in the way she shows her young protagonist coming to terms as she navigates not only the ordinary uncertainties of adolescence, but the terrifying new normal of loss.

For a while as I was reading the book I almost lost heart. I usually get my fill of depressing ideas reading the daily news. But I stuck with Walker, hoping she might have some miracle planned for the ending. And even though she didn’t give me the candy-coated over-the-rainbow finish I might have chosen, she left me with a lot to think about.

As her sensitive and warm-hearted heroine recounts the tale from her perspective as an adult, the story is saturated with the sense of “if we’d known then what we know now,” a common enough phenomenon among those who’ve experienced the bittersweet sensation of 20-20 hindsight. By pointing out the amazing beauty of the world which vanished during her lifetime, Julia reminds the reader that that same amazing world is still here now. We might even still have a chance to save it if we don’t kill each other off first.

Many of us live in a state of constant expectation, looking for miracles or waiting for them on the horizon of some afterlife. But in the meantime we overlook the everyday miracles with which this planet is blessed. Sunrise daily, starlight, trees and birdsong, breezes and butterflies, babies of all kinds. Music.

We already live in an age of miracles.

Recipe for a “Great Dark Birthday Cake”

In the eyes of a child even a small pond can seem an ocean.

Shuffle the deck of time and space.
Stir in a cup of memory, a teaspoon of hope.
Add two cups of terror,
one stick of courage and a teaspoon of tears.
Beat in two or three hearts.
Bake in moonlight until shimmering with stars.

And there you have it. A recipe for an adult novel by Neil Gaiman.

In the last thirty years the dean of darkly romantic graphic comics and adult fairytales has proven that he can write about anything. Love, torture, family dynamics, urban decay, pastoral bliss, you name it. And all with the lyrical touch of a natural bard.

In his latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, touted as his first “adult” novel after years of putting out works mainly for young readers, Gaiman returns to his strong suit. The Ocean is a mythic tale of childhood fear that reinterprets the trope of the evil nanny, setting it in terms of interdimensional magic and horror.

Gaiman so vividly captures the sense of peril that lurks beneath the supposedly carefree time of childhood that I found I couldn’t read it just before going to bed. I made time for daylight reading in order to finish it the first time. Then I had to go back and reread the last two chapters to run my mental fingers over the scar. It’s not a story I’ll forget.

But most of all I want to remember the ending. Gaiman writes with a poetic lyricism that makes me stop every few pages to savor a line, an image: “The cloudless sky was splashed with stars beyond all counting.”

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is probably not a book for young readers. But anyone who has survived being young can relate to the seven-year-old protagonist’s struggle to understand what is happening and to find a way to stop the threat to himself and his family.

Gaiman balances the darkness in his novels with an almost palpable sense of security. As the little boy recalls being in the home of the wise woman who helps him: “I felt safe. It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into that one place, that one time.”

Not every child is granted such a gift of emotional safety. We live in world where monsters prey upon children every day. The world changes constantly; still it hasn’t changed enough.

Gaiman reminds us that there is work to do, but he does more than that. He sprinkles stardust to light the path out of darkness. He invites us to explore “patterns and gates and paths beyond the real.”

But you might want to bring a flashlight.

Hook, Line and Thinker

salmon-ladder — At the salmon ladder at the Ballard Locks in Seattle a ranger explains the salmon life cycle. Photo by Bill Harper

Much as I admire Melville, I’ve never been passionate about fishing.

But I do think there’s something at once mystical and primal about the attempt to catch a creature you can’t quite see.

However, when I recently watched the film version of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, I wasn’t motivated by any high-minded appreciation of the spiritual dimensions of the sport of fly fishing. I saw that Emily Blunt was in the cast. That was enough for me.

It didn’t hurt that Ewan McGregor was also in the film, playing a socially challenged Scottish fisheries expert. I went into it expecting a modestly entertaining film and was pleasantly surprised. I even learned a bit about salmon, a thing I wouldn’t have thought possible after my years in Seattle.

The somewhat far-fetched plot revolves around a project financed by a fabulously wealthy Yemeni sheikh whose dream it is to make salmon fishing possible in the Yemen.

If you are like me, your knowledge of the exact location of the Yemen is sketchy at best. But if you guess that it’s mostly hot and dry, that’s close enough to be getting on with the movie version. The film ripples along, bubbling smoothly over the bureaucratic and logistic hurdles of the proposed project, and casting a wry light on the cynical political posturing that goes on far from the salmon beds.

I enjoyed the movie so much that I promptly went out and read a copy of the novel by Paul Torday on which the film was loosely based. Operative word: loosely.

The first half of the novel is more or less faithfully followed in the screen version. Yet as the plot becomes more complex, and the shadows lengthen, the novel winds up with a significantly different outcome. Not altogether bad. But not the soft-focus, convenient dramatic turning point, uplifting emotional payoff that typifies the usual indie rom-com. Instead, the novel ends with an air of possibility. It’s like a Zen exercise in faith.

The charismatic Sheikh Muhammad whose philosophical conversation is reminiscent of the cryptic stylings of Yoda, remains the calm center in spite of the gathering storm of media nonsense. Among the many truisms he utters is: “Without faith there is no hope and no love. Faith comes before hope, and before love.”

I thought about that one for a long time after I closed the book. I’d like to think that inside every devoted fisherman there is that element of faith that precedes love. But then, maybe that’s just the fisher in me dreaming of salmon in the desert.

Shattered

sun-mosaic — A mosaic sun brightens the cloudiest days at the Takoma Park Community Center.

There’s a gentle mist falling outside on this cool September day. It’s not the steady rain the garden needs, barely enough to soften the air, lower the temperatures, and dampen the birdbath. But it’s a soothing kind of benediction after the bright sun and insistent breeze of the last few days. The tiny drops hardly make a sound as they fall.

It was a quiet summer here in D.C.. After last summer’s record-breaking heat and dramatic derecho it’s been kind of a surprise to have so few crashing thunderstorms. Perhaps Mother Nature felt She’d made her point last year.

The memorable moments of each season, each year, hold our attention only until the Next Thing comes along. We are creatures of limited attention spans, and easily diverted by shiny spectacle and the continuous rain of catastrophic events around the world. The work of repairing and renewing is constant. Some lament the loss of what cannot be restored. Others see new possibilities in every change.

The ability to rebound after loss or injury is one of humankind’s most encouraging qualities. I love it when people don’t fold in the face of adversity, or stop learning after they leave school, or stop caring after their hearts get broken.

Sometimes beauty is born from wreckage.

Not long after I moved to Seattle I read Stephanie Kallos’s wonderful novel “Broken For You.” The story, with its Seattle setting and compelling characters, deals with the difficulty of recovering from tragedy, a common enough theme in much literature, but the way Kallos used the medium of mosaic art as a metaphor for transformative healing really spoke to me. All my life I’ve been drawn to mosaic works, especially those which breathe life and beauty into otherwise drab surfaces.

In Philadelphia, for instance, whole blocks have been transformed by the quirky thought-provoking mosaic murals of artist Isaiah Zagar. Using broken bits of mirror, ceramic and glass to create uplifting designs in formerly neglected inner city neighborhoods, Zagar was a pioneer in the field of public art made by and for the people, unsubsidized by government or corporate sponsors.

Such gifts of beauty, produced by the patient process of putting together tiny pieces of color to make something hopeful and inspiring, help us to heal and deal with the continual barrage of violence that threatens our world. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes—the hurricanes, the floods, the crazed gunmen. The instinct to run and hide is strong, and perhaps vital to our continued existence.

But just as vital is the instinct to pick up the pieces and rebuild, to reach out to the hurt and lost and help find the way to a brighter day. Humanity is a big puzzle. Sometimes it’s hard to know where you fit in. Sometimes you have to step back to see the big picture. And other times you just have to start by picking up a little piece and doing what you can where you are.

bee-mosaic — Pull yourself together and brighten the corner you're in.

The Font and the Fury

bookstore-cat — Bookstore cats are a breed apart.

While recovering from another losing battle between me and the Microsoft Word system that rules my computer I recently read Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, a literary pick-me-up about book lovers, computers, and the curious obsessives who thrive in the shadows of secret libraries.

What’s not to love, right?

Mr. Penumbra’s, as the name suggests, explores the uneasy interface between old school wisdom keepers and the new technocracy, with its wide open, full-throttle approach to problem solving. The story unfolds somewhere between genres, being neither a conventional mystery, nor a whiz-bang thriller. Some critics have compared it to recent novels such as Erin Morgenstern’s delightfully atmospheric The Night Circus and Neal Stephenson’s weighty Reamde. Yet, although the plot includes a hint of romance and a suggestion of immortal aspiration, it’s more Encyclopedia Brown than Thursday Next. The geek protagonist is a Leonard, not a Sheldon.

In truth, the soul of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore has less to do with technological or magical wizardry than it has to do with the clunky magnetism of age-old fonts.

That’s right. I said fonts. And this is where the Word Warrior in me lifted her shield and sword and embraced the cause.

A good book is a fine thing, but a great font is a rare and precious tool. Unfortunately the Word version on my computer thinks it knows what’s best for me when it comes to fonts. Anyone who has tried to format a document using Microsoft Word has probably grappled with the maddening “helpfulness” of its system. Sometimes, in my dark moments, I long for a typewriter. But then, I never did learn to type, so the computer is really a much better tool for me. If only Word wouldn’t keep second-guessing what I’m trying to do.

Ah well. As they say, if uppity technology is your problem, you don’t have problems.

However, if you, like me, find yourself in need of a lift after a vexing session with your computer, you could do worse than dip into the pages of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

And, bonus happy points: the cover glows in the dark. Oh yeah. That’s technology anyone can love.

Dig In

Dew-Garden — Chris Parsons' magical art glistens in the early morning dew.

My current fave nightstand book is a small square chunk titled “The Garden Book,” which might seem unimaginative as titles go, but trust me, like the library in Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University, it’s much bigger on the inside.

The book (published by Phaidon) offers an illustrated survey of 500 of the world’s most influential gardeners. There are 500 photos, each accompanied by a tantalizingly brief paragraph about the designer or the garden.

Those who have never attempted to make a garden from scratch might be bored already, but for those of us with calloused hands and dirt under our fingernails, this book offers a stunning, inspiring, and humbling glimpse at the breathtaking scope of gardening ambitions.

Some of the gardens included are famous, others not so much. Some are modern, severe and tightly controlled. Some are wildly romantic, lush and drunk with blooms. There are examples of amazing artistry, such as Chris Parsons’ dew garden, a work of ephemeral beauty created by brushing a design on a dew-soaked lawn. Other effects take years to achieve, such as the cloud hedge at Schoten Garden in Belgium.

cloud-hedge — The cloud hedge in Schoten Garden, Belgium.

Anyone who has waited years to see a particular plant reach its peak will marvel at the patience and vision of some of these gardens. Of course, not all of us have the resources to produce anything on the spectacular scale of La Reggia di Caserta, with its nearly two-mile-long canal and water-staircases in Naples. But then, that garden was built to impress kings. We who simply aspire to produce a pleasant spot for an al fresco lunch may be content with more modest achievements.

I’ve been gardening so long, I sometimes wonder why I can’t seem to do a better job of it. Yet no matter how boldly I start out in January, planning and plotting, by September the decline is unmistakable. Some years it’s drought. Other years bugs, or blights, or heat, or cold, or fill in the blank with the personal melt-down of your choice. And, of course, the clock is ticking the whole time. You can tell yourself there will be another spring, another summer, but, you know, immortality isn’t as easy as it looks on the big screen.

Yet, in this respect, my little garden book offers a kind of sustaining perspective. Among the many gardens depicted are some whose best days were many centuries ago. Not much is left of Apadanus Palace, the once-magnificent garden showcase of Darius the Great in Persepolis. Around about 1450 B.C. Darius’s terraces and reflecting pools were the talk of Persia, yet now only the stone stairs and a few pillars remain as evidence of his personal paradise.

The fleeting nature of, well, Nature, is both its charm and its ineffable mystery. And now it’s September. The days grow shorter. The angle of the sun casts long shadows across the garden, gilding the bright leaves, the russet grasses. There’s a different kind of energy in the air as autumn begins its mellow drawing in. Somehow, even though the garden is winding down, I feel excited already about the next season.

It’s like baseball, only better. In gardening, everyone wins.

Borrowed Scenery

willow-curtain — A willow curtain provides sylvan solitude.

Willows don’t get much attention in late summer. They usually get a brief spotlight entrance in early spring, when they race into leaf before most other trees have gotten out of bed.

But for me the charm of the willow doesn’t let up, even after all the headliners of spring—the flowering cherries and plums and dogwoods—steal the show. Long after those prima donnas have vanished behind their rather ho-hum summer foliage, the willows retain their unmatched grace and style. Whether swaying in the lightest breeze or backlit by the sun, willows can light up a landscape.

As an urban gardener I appreciate the subtle power of “borrowed scenery,” the Japanese landscape concept in which small gardens are designed to take advantage of the beauty surrounding them. In the country this can mean framing a mountain view, or an open vista to a pastoral scene. In the city, where plots are small and houses close together, such grand scenery is less likely to be available, although some cities, Seattle for instance, enjoy an abundance of mountain and water views.

Still, the idea behind the borrowed scenery strategy is that the beauty of a given yard depends not only on the work you put in yourself but the choices that your neighbors make. I’m grateful to the gardeners on my block, whose thoughtful tree and shrub selections provide an endlessly variable and interesting backdrop for my own small garden.

Cooperation and consideration are the rootstock of good neighbors. I take my hat off to the gardeners who plant nice things by the sidewalk, who replace boring lawns with vibrant combinations of colorful foliage and blooms, who cherish the amazing trees in their yards.

And a special tip of the trowel to the visionary neighbors who planted a wonderful willow tree in their backyard years ago. That green curtain lights up my world.