She is Risen

http://www.sheisrisen.com is exactly one week away from its first birthday so now would be a good time to discuss the few yet significant bits of progress that have been happening with poorly kept secret project that is “Baby Girl” as well as what I hope will be a better explanation of what the project means.

In the unlikely event that anyone has been visiting this site other than spam bots out to sell cheap Viagra or exotic dildos to my readers (I sift through dozens of such ads in the comment section of this blog every week and as I read about the beauty of dildos written by someone who does not understand English, I see an unintended abstract mastery of the language to which I can never hope to aspire; Sascha Baron Cohen has nothing on these guys), you may have noticed a page link tucked away over in the right hand column titled “Baby Girl part 1.”  A single click later, you see that “part 1″ is in fact that first seven pages of what is now the first draft of “Baby Girl.” 

The current format for the story is a first person narrative within a first person narrative (Anna Thomas is telling the story to you, the reader, and Cub’s first person narrative is being conveyed through Anna) has taken a looooooooooong time to hash out.  Yeah, I know it seems obvious now, but you have no idea how difficult it is to figure these things out unless you’re starting it from scratch. 

There have been other fragments and scraps of this story handed around over the course of this year and as the few of you who’ve been with this project since the beginning know, the current tone, voice and format of “Baby Girl” is nothing like those early notes and thank goodness for that.  Writing from a place of despair is just as much a fool’s errand as trying to find inspiration from a place of total contentment.  I’m now in a place where I’m finally feeling happy for the first time (thanks in no small part to the patience and support of my wonderful girlfriend who is essentially my partner in this process, getting first look at every excerpt and the most credence when it comes to criticism) and I have the benefit of hindsight and (I hope) perspective which makes this an even handed story even as it crawls like a junky towards a place of healing and redemption.

Of course, that’s not to say that this narrative will be a zen meditation free from blood and thunder drama.  It would make for a boring read if that were the case.  Eggs have already been broken towards the thickening of this omlette and more are still to come.

There’s also the matter of how to address the inspiration for this story and its characters.  This narrative will include a disclaimer which assures all readers that this is in fact a work of fiction.  The irony, of course, is that I may begin “Baby Girl” with a prank disclaimer that I may use to open all of my future fiction, “Based on a true story.”  I always find it funny how much credulous audiences can be when works of fiction begin with those terms.  Hey, even documentaries are inherently dishonest so how much stock can you really put into a second (or third or fourth) hand account in writing or a movie which is no better than a dramatization?  The truth with my writing, of course, is somewhere in between.  In fact, it may encompass the entire grey area in between solid fact and complete fabrication.

The problem comes when a disclaimer has to add, “Any resemblance between the characters in this narrative with persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”  Well, that would be total bullshit on my part since I not only know exactly who the people are I’m writing about, but they are certain to recognize themselves if they were to read it.

So, here is my personal disclaimer, a rewritten and condensed version of which will almost certainly precede the final version of “Baby Girl.”

This story is a work of fiction based explicity upon dreams I have had and the memories of people I have known and loved.  Names have been changed for artistic intent and in some cases, names and motivations have been deliberately swapped.  In some of those cases, I’ve mixed and remixed identities to underscore personal or thematic parallels between certain characters.  In other cases, I’ve done it arbitrarily in the same way that our subconscious seems to randomly remix our lives in dreams.  There may be meaning or valid analysis to be gleaned from the randomness, but that doesn’t mean that I consciously intended it.  Of course, as someone who delights in obsessively “reading too deeply” into just about anything, you’ll seldom find a meaning or possible explanation for any element of this story which hasn’t already occured to me at some point. 

The narrator, Anna Thomas, is my alter ego and that’s not something I’ve ever bothered to disguise.  I’ll leave the discussion of her gender for another time (although the most obvious one within the framework of the story is that although Anna is romantically and sexually interested in women, no one ever considers her to be a real man…which is, needless to say, something I can relate to).  Aside from Anna, pretty much every character in the story is based on a real person (even if some, or even everyone to some extent, is a composite) except for Cub.  Cub (aka. Alice Star among other aliases), the titular character in “Baby Girl” is the only one that I pretty much invented out of thin air.  She started out as a private joke in that I wanted to give the “child phobic” character of Emma O’Toole a baby, but like all babies, she continued to grow and grow and grow. 

“Baby Girl” starts off in a bar which represents a state of mind (yes, it’s that kind of story).  Anna Thomas is a sentient memory of a woman trapped in a forgotten corner of her ex-lover’s mind.  Cub is the daughter of her ex-lover who is merely visiting the sprawling reaches of her mother’s mind (yes, it’s that kind of story) to seek out this secret woman.  As the story begins, both women share memories which blossom into vivid reality around them.  Such is the promise and perils of spending time in a location composed of pure thought.  You can visit your dreams and memories (or the dreams and memories of others) with no more than a thought to conjure them, but it’s easy to get completely lost since there is no map for the human mind (especially when one consciousness mixes with a second…and a third….and a possible fourth).

So, once the rules are established (as happens a page or two beyond the seven pages currently available to you), “Baby Girl” becomes the story of people exploring their memories while quickly becoming aware that no memory can really be trusted as fact.  At the same time, I’m exploring my own memories as I write this, but always with the understanding (and not so secret satisfaction) that I can twist and reshape them as I see fit.  Because if I pretended to write my actual memoirs of events as they actually happened, it would still be a lie despite my best efforts to keep that from being the case.

And so it goes.  As I continue to dream “Baby Girl” into being, I am always wrestling with the question of how tactful to be.  Of course, like one who claims to fight for sobriety while knocking back shot after shot of liquor, it seems to be a game I’m playing to lose.  And as detail after detail spills onto the page, those who are following this work in progress may assume that I am cheerfully losing the battle with tactlessness and really only pay lip service to it as a way of mocking it.

I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I value sobriety and no matter how drunk on this drama and the resulting dream that I may seem, one day I will inevitably wake up and I will be sober.

—

“It’s human to lie. We can’t even be honest with ourselves.”  –The Commoner, quote from Akira Kurosawa’s “RASHOMON”

“I don’t mind a lie. Not if it’s interesting.” –The Commoner, quote from Akira Kurosawa’s “RASHOMON”

“Just do me a favor.  Don’t try too hard to be truthful.  You’ll leave out important details if you do and you’ll end up lying anway.  Just tell me the story as you remember it and let me decide what to believe.”  Cub aka. Alice Star, quote from Tom Kessler’s “Baby Girl”

http://akirakurosawa.info/forums/topic/rashomon-the-audiencethe-truth-and-the-baby