There is a piece of clay in my house. About the size of a Kiwi fruit, and shaped vaguely like one that's been a bit squashed. It is dingy-white and red, a natural clay found not far from here, and harder than stone. Never having seen a fire, it was age that hardened it. Being worked, at a nearby clay works, it was one day dropped and never again picked up.
In its surface, indented a small depth, is a perfect human thumbprint, its whorls and ridges as hard as the hubs of hell. A thousand years and change, and the thumbprint is perfect to the touch, not mating with my own but rough against it. A human presence, physical, warm if left in the sun, cold if left in the shade. To touch the dead, all I have to do is turn to the cabinets and take down this artifact. To touch the living, all the dead have to do is wait.
What meaning exists, must exist in accident. Nothing with purpose could carry so much weight.
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, December 24, 2010
Poem Published at Poor Mojo's Almanac(k)
I'm very pleased to note that one of my poems has now been published at Poor Mojo's Almanac(k): "Holiday Poem"
I've been reading Poor Mojo's for a few years now, and am delighted to now be a small part of that wonderful publication. I'm also quite pleased by the timing of this publication, being just prior to Christmas. The poem is drawn from an experience on Christmas thirteen years ago, was written around Christmas last year, and now has been published just prior to Christmas. Great, great, timing all around.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
I've been reading Poor Mojo's for a few years now, and am delighted to now be a small part of that wonderful publication. I'm also quite pleased by the timing of this publication, being just prior to Christmas. The poem is drawn from an experience on Christmas thirteen years ago, was written around Christmas last year, and now has been published just prior to Christmas. Great, great, timing all around.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sleeping, Snorting, Fucking.
This is a bit delayed, as I was waiting for the last of them to run, but I've recently had three pieces published in the lovely journal Sleep.Snort.Fuck.
You may find all three of them here: Morgan Atwood, at Sleep, Snort, Fuck
Or, in order of publication:
Magnum
Measure of Ecstasy
Taste
Hopefully needless to say, given the name of the journal, some content may be considered Not Safe For Work (/Wife/Children).
I feel spoiled to, yet again, have somewhere I really like publish my work.
(These publications also mark an interesting point for me as a poet. I once said all my poetry was non-fiction and this is no longer true. These mark the first success I've had, both in personal feelings about them and publication, with fictional poetry. I say that not to disown the themes or any unpleasantness, but more because I find the revelation of my own process a wonderful ongoing mystery.)
You may find all three of them here: Morgan Atwood, at Sleep, Snort, Fuck
Or, in order of publication:
Magnum
Measure of Ecstasy
Taste
Hopefully needless to say, given the name of the journal, some content may be considered Not Safe For Work (/Wife/Children).
I feel spoiled to, yet again, have somewhere I really like publish my work.
(These publications also mark an interesting point for me as a poet. I once said all my poetry was non-fiction and this is no longer true. These mark the first success I've had, both in personal feelings about them and publication, with fictional poetry. I say that not to disown the themes or any unpleasantness, but more because I find the revelation of my own process a wonderful ongoing mystery.)
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The Santa Fe Super Chief and Albuquerque Depot, Circa 1943
This was posted on a military forum I hang out on earlier this evening. There are quite a few history buffs, train geeks and Americana junkies there, understandably, but I was still surprised to see something so close to home getting attention. Credit for bringing it to the forum posters attention goes to A Continuous Lean, where the photo is included in a neat look at the Super Chief.
I am kind of a geek for New Mexico rail history. My great-grandfather was the head machinist at the Belen, NM yards when the roundhouse was there. I grew up with pieces of steam locomotives in my backyard. I am not a huge train nut, but there is still something about them. Trains are cool. Trains are industrial, and mechanical and engineering-in-action and magic. The history and stories surrounding the railroad industry are equally magic. If you can't see it in this photo, you're lost and will never understand.
There are so many cool things going on in this picture, I'm sort of overwhelmed by it. It is a collection of some of the most iconic American images, all together as functional elements in a piece of reality. A reality long gone, before my time.
There is, of course, that fantastic engine. Its bright red and yellow preserved in perfect Kodachrome by Mr. Delano. There are men in denim work wear, carrying lunch, pumping diesel - Working and living a hard, earned, life. Men in suits, and hats (what happened to hats?). Those fantastic automobiles when cars really looked like, and were built like, something to be valued and appreciated.
Behind all this, in Mission-Revival glory are the old Albuquerque depot and the Alvarado Hotel, both gone and replaced by a tacky facsimile. Built in 1902, the Alvarado was one of the Harvey House hotels, and among the largest and most beautiful. It was demolished in 1970 and replaced with a parking lot. The rest of the original depot burned in the late Eighties or early Nineties. The reproduction buildings were put up later, a supposed tribute to the original.
A truly great photograph. An ordinary moment, frozen on film, that has in the passage of time become an amazing moment.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The Dead Monkey Falling Down-Adobe Forge
Every good blacksmithy has a name. Mine doesn't really, since its been a transient smithy so much and will be again at some point. But, on the old home place there is a small adobe building I'm slowly renovating to be a permanent smithy for the ranch. Right now, not-quite-falling down, three walled, half-roofed and crumbling, but good things will come. There is also some sort of a monkey skull (yes, really) laying on the floor, that I'm debating nailing to a sign above the door. So, the Dead Monkey Falling Down-Adobe Forge is its name for now.
Everything is heat, light and motion. Energy and movement, fluidity and violence and everything on the edge of burning down. There are moments of sudden, zen-like, stillness on the part of the smith, but he is alone, an island in madness. While he is still, the fire will burn, the oil in his quench will smoke, the air will be filled with sound and smell. The light will flicker and dance on the broken walls and into the eternity of energy.
We are strange priests of arcane things. Of our sins we fathered the alchemists and the engineers. For a time, if it was built we had our hand in it, and then our sins outstripped us. As relics we returned to our solitary and smoky chapels. We dance, ancient in our ways and wordless prayers of struck steel.
Everything is heat, light and motion. Energy and movement, fluidity and violence and everything on the edge of burning down. There are moments of sudden, zen-like, stillness on the part of the smith, but he is alone, an island in madness. While he is still, the fire will burn, the oil in his quench will smoke, the air will be filled with sound and smell. The light will flicker and dance on the broken walls and into the eternity of energy.
We are strange priests of arcane things. Of our sins we fathered the alchemists and the engineers. For a time, if it was built we had our hand in it, and then our sins outstripped us. As relics we returned to our solitary and smoky chapels. We dance, ancient in our ways and wordless prayers of struck steel.Friday, October 16, 2009
Making Our Own Justice (A Riff on "Virtual CrowdSurfing")
The other day Steve Bodio commented on one of my entries, and noted that “...in a just world you'd be paid for this.”
I agreed, even though it wasn't my best writing (the re-write the computer ate was much better), but was dismissive too. I said, and it's true, that I'm just happy to put something into the world that will either resonate with another human being, or elucidate, inform or excite.
I come from what I've begun to describe as a lonely culture – It's sparsely populated, but it is a culture in whole - I'm proud of it and think we're all very interesting. I'm always glad to strike a chord with others who identify. And I'm thrilled if something from my culture sparks or rekindles something in someone else. That's deeply satisfying for me. At the end of the day, I write to fulfill and satisfy myself, and I'd lie if I said I didn't draw part of my satisfaction from being read. The creation is fundamental, and it drives on regardless, but it's satisfying to have a cry in the darkness answered. As a reader I've always felt I was participating in the writers finished art, rather than just receiving it – As a writer, I seek to participate with my readers not simply produce product.
But in a just world, if the participation is good, if the work is good, I should get paid shouldn't I? Of course I should. In a just world.
I'm not sure I believe the world is just. I believe the world is neutral though, and that it is up to us to make our own... whatever, really. Including justice. I believe this is true, on many fronts. As artists, we have to make a lot of things for ourselves, so what's stopping us from making our own justice? Okay, maybe not make entirely, but enable.
We can't necessarily force people to pay for our art - If we limit its availability only to those who pay we may be limiting ourselves right out of existence – But we can enable our audience, our fans and collectors, to pay us if they want to, can't we?
There are already writers with “Donate” or “Support” buttons on their blogs. They produce a lot of content, or a body of work, that is easily accessible and typically for free. No demand is placed on the audience to pay for it, but they are enabled to do so if they think its worth it.
We're also seeing novels, chapbooks and other publications, as well as music in a variety of forms, offered using a “Pay what you feel it is worth” model.
I'm finding this idea more and more attractive – Because I'd like to do this for a living, or at least part of my living. Or at least for beer money. To be able to devote more of the time and energy to writing and the rest of my art, that I end up spending on wage earning (or trying to at least).
So what's it worth to you?
Nothing? Cool. Keep reading. I'm slowly stealing your soul and corrupting your heart the more of my ideas you entertain, so it's all good. Seriously, it is all good.
You'll buy my book once I have one? Bring it around for coffee, I'll sign it.
Not a lot, but sometimes you'd pay for reading me? Awesome, thanks.
You want to be my sugar mama, support me financially and * ahem * otherwise, all for keeping up my writing? Please email at least three clear photos that aren't extreme close ups, and show you clearly in good lighting from different angles, and a list of references.
I'm being flippant here, but that is (minus the creepy uberfan sugar mama AKA Kathy Bates in Misery psycho-fan) the gist of the enabling I'm talking about.
This isn't something I'm going to implement now. Most of you don't know me, and I'm not producing content at a rate that is really befitting suggesting recompense for it. For me, now is not the time to roll this out – Just the time to start thinking about it. Mapping out how I'd like to try putting it to work.
As a writer, it's pretty easy to map.
As a blacksmith, and artist metalsmith? Not so much.
Tangible, physical, art is hard to transition into the virtual realm – Those physical materials cannot be emailed. How can I, how can my fellows, as a materials artist work with what Amanda Palmer dubs “Virtual Crowdsurfing”? That's trickier. I have several ideas, some of which I'm going to keep to myself for awhile. But, among those ideas is one of knowledge and experience sharing.
There are a lot of people who are not, and don't want to be, artists who remain intensely interested in the processes of art. There are those who want to learn about an art other than their own. Still others want to learn how to do a type of art. As artists, we can be educators about our art. Coming from the blacksmithing world, most blacksmiths are also teachers or at least have taught occasionally. I think, as with other forms of art, we aren't limited strictly to that art, in what we can teach. You can teach a great deal with art.
Couldn't a metal artist (or a wood worker, fabric artist, glass worker, etc. etc.) put out “process content”, demonstrations, tutorials, videos of the art being made (which opens up possibilities of cross-media video art), in a public fashion, and stick a donations button on their website/blog? You could take it out of the virtual world as well: A free public demo with a tip-jar set out. If I show up at an event, and forge an iron hat, won't there be someone to drop money in it? I'd like to think so.
I think this cross over into the really-real world is extremely necessary for building a fan base, and one that is rich with the actual human touch. Musicians have this made, because live shows are damn near guaranteed – They will happen, they have to. Writers can do readings, or perform poetry. Other artists have to innovate in how they reach their audience, if they want to try out the “virtual crowdsurfing” thing. Without the fan base, the people to catch you when you dive off, you'll get nowhere. (Yeah, I'm riffing on AFP here. She's right on, see my last entry and go check out her blog.)
This is an area, a realm of possibility, that I am truly excited about and actively exploring. Woe unto my other projects, I've found something else time consuming.
Update:
Some models/ideas of “virtual crowd surfing” as a writer that I think support my own:
I agreed, even though it wasn't my best writing (the re-write the computer ate was much better), but was dismissive too. I said, and it's true, that I'm just happy to put something into the world that will either resonate with another human being, or elucidate, inform or excite.
I come from what I've begun to describe as a lonely culture – It's sparsely populated, but it is a culture in whole - I'm proud of it and think we're all very interesting. I'm always glad to strike a chord with others who identify. And I'm thrilled if something from my culture sparks or rekindles something in someone else. That's deeply satisfying for me. At the end of the day, I write to fulfill and satisfy myself, and I'd lie if I said I didn't draw part of my satisfaction from being read. The creation is fundamental, and it drives on regardless, but it's satisfying to have a cry in the darkness answered. As a reader I've always felt I was participating in the writers finished art, rather than just receiving it – As a writer, I seek to participate with my readers not simply produce product.
But in a just world, if the participation is good, if the work is good, I should get paid shouldn't I? Of course I should. In a just world.
I'm not sure I believe the world is just. I believe the world is neutral though, and that it is up to us to make our own... whatever, really. Including justice. I believe this is true, on many fronts. As artists, we have to make a lot of things for ourselves, so what's stopping us from making our own justice? Okay, maybe not make entirely, but enable.
We can't necessarily force people to pay for our art - If we limit its availability only to those who pay we may be limiting ourselves right out of existence – But we can enable our audience, our fans and collectors, to pay us if they want to, can't we?
There are already writers with “Donate” or “Support” buttons on their blogs. They produce a lot of content, or a body of work, that is easily accessible and typically for free. No demand is placed on the audience to pay for it, but they are enabled to do so if they think its worth it.
We're also seeing novels, chapbooks and other publications, as well as music in a variety of forms, offered using a “Pay what you feel it is worth” model.
I'm finding this idea more and more attractive – Because I'd like to do this for a living, or at least part of my living. Or at least for beer money. To be able to devote more of the time and energy to writing and the rest of my art, that I end up spending on wage earning (or trying to at least).
So what's it worth to you?
Nothing? Cool. Keep reading. I'm slowly stealing your soul and corrupting your heart the more of my ideas you entertain, so it's all good. Seriously, it is all good.
You'll buy my book once I have one? Bring it around for coffee, I'll sign it.
Not a lot, but sometimes you'd pay for reading me? Awesome, thanks.
You want to be my sugar mama, support me financially and * ahem * otherwise, all for keeping up my writing? Please email at least three clear photos that aren't extreme close ups, and show you clearly in good lighting from different angles, and a list of references.
I'm being flippant here, but that is (minus the creepy uberfan sugar mama AKA Kathy Bates in Misery psycho-fan) the gist of the enabling I'm talking about.
This isn't something I'm going to implement now. Most of you don't know me, and I'm not producing content at a rate that is really befitting suggesting recompense for it. For me, now is not the time to roll this out – Just the time to start thinking about it. Mapping out how I'd like to try putting it to work.
As a writer, it's pretty easy to map.
As a blacksmith, and artist metalsmith? Not so much.
Tangible, physical, art is hard to transition into the virtual realm – Those physical materials cannot be emailed. How can I, how can my fellows, as a materials artist work with what Amanda Palmer dubs “Virtual Crowdsurfing”? That's trickier. I have several ideas, some of which I'm going to keep to myself for awhile. But, among those ideas is one of knowledge and experience sharing.
There are a lot of people who are not, and don't want to be, artists who remain intensely interested in the processes of art. There are those who want to learn about an art other than their own. Still others want to learn how to do a type of art. As artists, we can be educators about our art. Coming from the blacksmithing world, most blacksmiths are also teachers or at least have taught occasionally. I think, as with other forms of art, we aren't limited strictly to that art, in what we can teach. You can teach a great deal with art.
Couldn't a metal artist (or a wood worker, fabric artist, glass worker, etc. etc.) put out “process content”, demonstrations, tutorials, videos of the art being made (which opens up possibilities of cross-media video art), in a public fashion, and stick a donations button on their website/blog? You could take it out of the virtual world as well: A free public demo with a tip-jar set out. If I show up at an event, and forge an iron hat, won't there be someone to drop money in it? I'd like to think so.
I think this cross over into the really-real world is extremely necessary for building a fan base, and one that is rich with the actual human touch. Musicians have this made, because live shows are damn near guaranteed – They will happen, they have to. Writers can do readings, or perform poetry. Other artists have to innovate in how they reach their audience, if they want to try out the “virtual crowdsurfing” thing. Without the fan base, the people to catch you when you dive off, you'll get nowhere. (Yeah, I'm riffing on AFP here. She's right on, see my last entry and go check out her blog.)
This is an area, a realm of possibility, that I am truly excited about and actively exploring. Woe unto my other projects, I've found something else time consuming.
Update:
Some models/ideas of “virtual crowd surfing” as a writer that I think support my own:
Nathan Tyree is hard at work on a novel project titled “Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski Fistfight in Hell”, and has auctioned a fairly prominent role as a character in his novel via eBay. The move, apparently, has generated him some measure of buzz in addition to the immediate monetary advantage. Also apparently a burned thumb. http://waitsandbukowski.wordpress.com/
Jeremy C. Shipp is selling subscriptions to his short story writing as Bizarro Bytes, http://jeremycshipp.com/bizarrobytes.htm.
He offers multiple levels of subscription, for those wanting to offer further support, and has some interesting incentives for those who do.
Stephen Elliot, for his memoir The Adderall Diaries, used advance copies originally destined for media outlets to create a “lending library” for fans, http://therumpus.net/2009/09/about-that-lending-library-notes-on-book-publishing-in-a-socially-networked-world/
The only requirement was that the copy had to be forwarded to the next person on the list once read. His thoughts on the idea are pretty interesting. The idea has a lot of merit. Just another example of working the crowd in new and innovative ways. He's also supporting the book with a tour and getting out there, another essential element.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Amanda Palmer
I really don't remember how I discovered The Dresden Dolls, but I suspect it was through a friends Facebook status asking for a coin-operated boy. However it was, that's how I heard of Amanda Palmer, the Doll's lead singer (among other talents). Quickly the Doll's albums, and Amanda's solo effort, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, became some of my favorite music, and continue to get a lot of play. Particularly when I'm writing or being otherwise creative.
But it's only recently that I've started following Amanda Fucking Palmer's blog.
I'm not much of a fan boy. If I like someone's work, I'll promote it to my friends who share my tastes, and maybe mention it here, but not much more. I'm a quiet fan. I follow the artists artistic output, invest my money in the output I want to own or participate in, and encourage fellows to do the same, but that's the extent of it. I'm not a gushing, twitter following, fan-art making fan. It just doesn't work for me. If I follow an artist on Twitter, odds are I'll get pissed at narcissistic irreverence and nonsense and stop liking them. Same for a lot of blogs. For me to enjoy engaging with an artist I like in that fashion, something has to be different. I like artists who blog smartly.
I particularly like artists who talk about art, and the processes behind it, and within it. Whatever their art may be. Even better, artists who talk about the future of their art. Best, an artist who can talk about these things in a manner that's as inspiring as their art.
This is why I'm actually reading AFP's blog, and have linked it at right. She's fucking brilliant.
She's thoughtful, and puts a lot of her energy into her words, making the blog both enlightening and inspiring. It's something a lot of artists just can't do – Their blogs end up narcissistic or dry, or narcissisticly dry. AFP is engaging, funny, energetic, and smart. She also regularly displays a firm grasp on current, and emergent, trends and offers insights that more people should really be paying attention to.
Some of her recent blogging in particular has been excellent in terms of trends and things people should pay attention to. Her ideas and comments about how she, as an artist, is making money and the necessity of doing the work, and how others are succeeding, or can succeed, are great.
More artists need to embrace the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded by the current state of technology and communication. More artists need to stop being shy about cultivating a fan base, being involved with that fan base, and making money from that fan base. Making money is not dishonest, it doesn't dirty up the work. Everyone has a right to try to make a living from what they're passionate about. Go read, seriously. AFP is talking from the POV of a performance based artist/act like a musician, but if I find it valuable as a scribbler and metalsmith, other artists should as well. If you're a musician, video artist, writer, pounder of metal, any sort of artist who wants to make a life an an artist, her ideas are worth a look.
I find her commentary very much in keeping with my recent ideas on writing/publishing, markets and marketing there-for, and making use of available technology and the memes they enable to achieve success in genres and as artists.
On top of that, she's awesome and I enjoy her work, and the things she has to say.
(As a note: I'm thinking about putting up something for each of my recommended reads, who I haven't mentioned before at least, but don't know if I'll get to it. My recommended reading, and the blogs I follow (see profile) are all recommended, or they wouldn't be there. You should check them out.)
But it's only recently that I've started following Amanda Fucking Palmer's blog.
I'm not much of a fan boy. If I like someone's work, I'll promote it to my friends who share my tastes, and maybe mention it here, but not much more. I'm a quiet fan. I follow the artists artistic output, invest my money in the output I want to own or participate in, and encourage fellows to do the same, but that's the extent of it. I'm not a gushing, twitter following, fan-art making fan. It just doesn't work for me. If I follow an artist on Twitter, odds are I'll get pissed at narcissistic irreverence and nonsense and stop liking them. Same for a lot of blogs. For me to enjoy engaging with an artist I like in that fashion, something has to be different. I like artists who blog smartly.
I particularly like artists who talk about art, and the processes behind it, and within it. Whatever their art may be. Even better, artists who talk about the future of their art. Best, an artist who can talk about these things in a manner that's as inspiring as their art.
This is why I'm actually reading AFP's blog, and have linked it at right. She's fucking brilliant.
She's thoughtful, and puts a lot of her energy into her words, making the blog both enlightening and inspiring. It's something a lot of artists just can't do – Their blogs end up narcissistic or dry, or narcissisticly dry. AFP is engaging, funny, energetic, and smart. She also regularly displays a firm grasp on current, and emergent, trends and offers insights that more people should really be paying attention to.
Some of her recent blogging in particular has been excellent in terms of trends and things people should pay attention to. Her ideas and comments about how she, as an artist, is making money and the necessity of doing the work, and how others are succeeding, or can succeed, are great.
More artists need to embrace the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded by the current state of technology and communication. More artists need to stop being shy about cultivating a fan base, being involved with that fan base, and making money from that fan base. Making money is not dishonest, it doesn't dirty up the work. Everyone has a right to try to make a living from what they're passionate about. Go read, seriously. AFP is talking from the POV of a performance based artist/act like a musician, but if I find it valuable as a scribbler and metalsmith, other artists should as well. If you're a musician, video artist, writer, pounder of metal, any sort of artist who wants to make a life an an artist, her ideas are worth a look.
I find her commentary very much in keeping with my recent ideas on writing/publishing, markets and marketing there-for, and making use of available technology and the memes they enable to achieve success in genres and as artists.
On top of that, she's awesome and I enjoy her work, and the things she has to say.
(As a note: I'm thinking about putting up something for each of my recommended reads, who I haven't mentioned before at least, but don't know if I'll get to it. My recommended reading, and the blogs I follow (see profile) are all recommended, or they wouldn't be there. You should check them out.)
Monday, November 24, 2008
War, Cormac McCarthy and Speculative Fiction
Broke, running out of coffee and whiskey (not to mention food), and not feeling like going in to work leaves me in a random mood today. I feel rushed and pressed to do a lot of things, all on my mind at once. Yet I sit at my desk, in my broken backed chair and pursue utter randomness, looking for Black Swans.
Really, I was trying to find a Cormac McCarthy quote to use in a discussion, and it somehow led into an expanding gyre of the random. So, I'm running with it.
Blood Meridian is, without a doubt, my least favorite McCarthy novel. At least of those I have read (I have yet to read The Crossing, The Sunset Limited, Outer Dark, Cities of the Plain or The Orchard Keeper). I am not turned off by the violence, or the despairing philosophies, or any of the rest that so many others find repugnant about the book. I simply think McCarthy has done better. Blood Meridian is revisionist, a nice way of saying its historical accuracy is precisely dick, and compared to McCarthy's masterpieces such as Suttree and The Road, poorly written. It lacks the subtlety in extremes of those two novels. While they deal with extreme, and violent, situations and the wreck and ruin of human lives, Suttree and The Road do so with understatement, and the literary equivalent of negative space. The unsaid. offers little subtlety in its extremes, reveling in the violence, and base vulgarities of nearly every character. I understand the idea, the portrayal of human natures desired, but I simply find Blood Meridian to be inelegant all around. Even in Child of God, which lacks some of the subtlety of later McCarthy, there was an elegance to the handling of such extremes. I am continually mystified at people who cant get over Blood Meridian - Its just not that good. And don't even get me started on people who want to think it is an accurate historical portrayal.
With all that said, however, it has some gems in a handful of lines. And bad McCarthy is still better than a lot of other writers best. The line about war, as said by the character of the Judge, is one I have always liked.
While looking for that quote, I came across another interesting perspective on McCarthy, in particular his Pulitzer winning The Road.
I am an unabashed fan of The Road, and have recommended it to most everyone I know. Some who've taken me up on it liked it, others did not as is the way with anything. I think it is one of the best works of literary fiction I've ever read, truly a master work. But beyond that, I've thought since it first came out, that it was a bold move in literary fiction, as it is essentially speculative fiction. Science fiction, speculative fiction, SciFi, Sciffy, call it what you will, is a dirty term in literary circles. Like fantasy (thud and blunder), it is an area regarded by the literati as populated by hacks, and poor use of language, and all the other cardinal sins against literature. And, to some extent, they are right - There is a lot of really terrible speculative fiction. But there is a lot of really good speculative fiction, and plenty of writers who are far more literary and skilled at their crafting of language than a lot of the icons of literature. I personally think there are more fundamentally important works of science fiction, than there are of (at least modern) literary fiction. Perhaps only made more so by the fact that, the engineers, the scientists, the builders of our world read science fiction/speculative fiction. Their bliss, their flights of fancy, and the reflections of their hopes, dreams, failures, and losses, are all in speculative fiction. These are the people who build our world. Yet to many literati, their voices and concerns are low and vulgar, they are the unwashed rabble.
And someone, at least, has the balls to point all this out: Dipping Their Toes in the Genre Pool
I need to read A Canticle of Leibowitz again. It is a fantastic book. I was thrilled last fall when I saw it was among the required reading for a popular course at New Mexico Tech. Seeing numerous students carrying it around, dog earing pages, and talking about it was fantastic.
Really, I was trying to find a Cormac McCarthy quote to use in a discussion, and it somehow led into an expanding gyre of the random. So, I'm running with it.
"It makes no difference what men think of war [...] War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner." Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Blood Meridian is, without a doubt, my least favorite McCarthy novel. At least of those I have read (I have yet to read The Crossing, The Sunset Limited, Outer Dark, Cities of the Plain or The Orchard Keeper). I am not turned off by the violence, or the despairing philosophies, or any of the rest that so many others find repugnant about the book. I simply think McCarthy has done better. Blood Meridian is revisionist, a nice way of saying its historical accuracy is precisely dick, and compared to McCarthy's masterpieces such as Suttree and The Road, poorly written. It lacks the subtlety in extremes of those two novels. While they deal with extreme, and violent, situations and the wreck and ruin of human lives, Suttree and The Road do so with understatement, and the literary equivalent of negative space. The unsaid. offers little subtlety in its extremes, reveling in the violence, and base vulgarities of nearly every character. I understand the idea, the portrayal of human natures desired, but I simply find Blood Meridian to be inelegant all around. Even in Child of God, which lacks some of the subtlety of later McCarthy, there was an elegance to the handling of such extremes. I am continually mystified at people who cant get over Blood Meridian - Its just not that good. And don't even get me started on people who want to think it is an accurate historical portrayal.
With all that said, however, it has some gems in a handful of lines. And bad McCarthy is still better than a lot of other writers best. The line about war, as said by the character of the Judge, is one I have always liked.
While looking for that quote, I came across another interesting perspective on McCarthy, in particular his Pulitzer winning The Road.
I am an unabashed fan of The Road, and have recommended it to most everyone I know. Some who've taken me up on it liked it, others did not as is the way with anything. I think it is one of the best works of literary fiction I've ever read, truly a master work. But beyond that, I've thought since it first came out, that it was a bold move in literary fiction, as it is essentially speculative fiction. Science fiction, speculative fiction, SciFi, Sciffy, call it what you will, is a dirty term in literary circles. Like fantasy (thud and blunder), it is an area regarded by the literati as populated by hacks, and poor use of language, and all the other cardinal sins against literature. And, to some extent, they are right - There is a lot of really terrible speculative fiction. But there is a lot of really good speculative fiction, and plenty of writers who are far more literary and skilled at their crafting of language than a lot of the icons of literature. I personally think there are more fundamentally important works of science fiction, than there are of (at least modern) literary fiction. Perhaps only made more so by the fact that, the engineers, the scientists, the builders of our world read science fiction/speculative fiction. Their bliss, their flights of fancy, and the reflections of their hopes, dreams, failures, and losses, are all in speculative fiction. These are the people who build our world. Yet to many literati, their voices and concerns are low and vulgar, they are the unwashed rabble.
And someone, at least, has the balls to point all this out: Dipping Their Toes in the Genre Pool
I need to read A Canticle of Leibowitz again. It is a fantastic book. I was thrilled last fall when I saw it was among the required reading for a popular course at New Mexico Tech. Seeing numerous students carrying it around, dog earing pages, and talking about it was fantastic.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
I Get High on a Bottle of Rye, the Coyote He Gets Drunk on the Moon
I went to school for a few years when I was a kid, before I decided I'd had enough of that kind of fun and convinced my parents to homeschool. School entailed a 45 mile drive over dirt roads to get to the little town of Magdalena. School started at 8:00 AM, and ran until 4:00 pm, four days a week. This meant getting up before the sun, shivering in the cold to help my folks build fires and get breakfast on the table, and then saddling up the old Ford, using the hand-pump to fill the gas tanks from 50 gallon drums, back when gas was cheap, and a wet-line off the propane tank to fill the conversion tank in the bed. The sun was usually just breaking the Ladrone peak when we hit the outer gate, finally threatening the last glimmer of stars on the western horizon.
It was a long cold drive, and one that often didn't get completed. Snow packed into draws, filling them feet deep and impassible even to four-wheel drive. Rain washed the gullies across the road, and filled the lows with engine choking water, which soaked into foot deep mud. And in a big rain, the Rio Salado would rise from a thin salty creek to a raging demon, sixty feet across, of muddy water racing for the Rio Grande miles to the east, completely obliterating either of the small fords on the old county road. But, success or not, it was almost always a good drive, and truth be told, I rarely lamented those days I didn't get to go to school.
My dad, he was the one who usually drove, would always play music or sing old cowboy songs on the drive. I don't remember a lot of the cassettes he played, but I do remember one. It was in a scuffed case, scratches partially obscuring the liner photo of a cowboy in a vest and a big black hat sitting with his guitar in front of a sunset sky. The album was Ian Tyson's I Outgrew the Wagon. I really don't remember taking a lot of note of the songs on it then - The song I liked the best, then, of Tysons was The Coyote and the Cowboy, which was on another record - But I remember liking the music, and the liking continued.
I grew up different. I've said it before, and will continue to say it. Growing up on a working cattle ranch in the 90's is far from the common experience. More kids, I imagine, grew up in Volkswagens driving around the country with their pot smoking parents. Driving 45 miles to reach the paved road just outside town that lead to school, depending on wood fired heat in a half century old adobe, actually knowing the meaning of words like riatta, tapaderos, hackamore, morral, these were not part of the common experience of my generation. Nor was listening to Ian Tyson, because no one who didn't understand those things, would understand that music.
Tyson got his start as a folky. He wrote what has been one of the most prolific folk songs of all time, Four Strong Winds, which has been covered by damn near everybody, and was part of one of the most successful folk duo's of the era, Ian and Sylvia (with Sylvia Tyson [nee Fricker], his now ex-wife). According to some, he was even the man who introduced Bob Dylan to marijuana. And when his marriage fell apart, and the folk thing didn't work anymore, he made good on a long-standing threat and bought a ranch not far from Alberta, turning to what he had always dreamed of - Cowboying. Pretty soon in addition to running the T-Bar-Y, he was playing in a few local joints, some of his old standbys, but more old cowboy songs, and a few new ones.
Now, there is a difference between cowboy music and country music - Always has been, and always will be. Most country, despite use of the word on occasion, has little to do with cowboyography, or the cowboy way of life. More to do with farming than ranching, and far more to do with honky-tonks, fast women, fast cars, and southern rural life, than either. Cowboy music is different - It is the music of a unique group of people, doing a unique thing, in a unique place. And in the 20th century, and its successor, more rare than unique. And very very few voices ever captured it. Even fewer captured it in a way that identified not just with the classic cowboy, but the cowboy of today, that rare, and frankly flighty, individual hell bent on eking a living out of being a'horse and chasing the wild bovine. Ian Tyson has been one of those rare voices.
Tyson released two solo albums in the seventies, Ol' Eon, a far more folk sounding album, and 1978's One Jump Ahead of the Devil, leaning more to cowboy music trends, and featuring his hit Half Mile of Hell, from the sountrack to the film of the same name (about the infamous chuckwagon race at the annual Calgary Stampede). Other than that, and some TV work, he was mostly quiet, and spent his time ranching and playing the occasional live show.
In 1983 he recorded an album, in his living room, called Old Corrals and Sagebrush, that was intended mostly for friends and family. It wasn't long before someone heard it, and Tyson was staring down the barrel of a contract again. The album wasn't a big seller, but it started something. In the intervening years Tyson has released nine more albums. My favorite of these would have to be 1996's All The Good'Uns, although they all have a fairly strong place in my heart.
Tyson is, like most of the best, and truest, artists, not a man without demons. He has been almost unhesitating to be self-critical in his work, and many of his best songs reflect his depressions, entanglements with alcohol and women, and what its cost him. There are few truly happy Ian Tyson songs. He lives in a world filled with ghosts, and for good reason - His world, the world of those who understand what he sings, is desolate, and only sparsely populated with the living.
I met Ian Tyson once, when I was a kid, after a live show. He was drunk, quite literally stinking drunk, and extremely obnoxious. I am pretty sure his behavior that night, towards me particularly, cost him a manager (an author who'd become friends of my family while researching a cowboy cookbook). And to tell the truth? It never really bothered me. I've been around drunks, and obnoxious ones, often enough, and had been even by then, that beyond that evening it didn't really phase me. I am still quite fond of my autographed copy of All The Good'uns.
Tyson's last two albums haven't done as much for me as his older work, but they are still good, and speak truth (and a few entertaining lies) about a lifestyle most will only encounter through fictions of far greater proportions. His voice now, in his mid seventies, sounds weaker and reedier than ever before, but only as might be expected. If anything, he's earned it. Carrying a rare truth, about a hard and harsh world, is never easy work, and anyone who makes it to be an old man has earned his weariness. A unfair, and painfully incomplete, payment for a job well done, but nothing less than such a man might expect, and certainly nothing he's not used to.
Someday, in the not too far future, we'll lose Ian to that great unknown, when his circle is through, and he'll be another ghost on a great range already so full of them. And eventually his music will probably be forgotten. But for now, for those of us who still understand, at least a little bit, there is none better, and none other.
It was a long cold drive, and one that often didn't get completed. Snow packed into draws, filling them feet deep and impassible even to four-wheel drive. Rain washed the gullies across the road, and filled the lows with engine choking water, which soaked into foot deep mud. And in a big rain, the Rio Salado would rise from a thin salty creek to a raging demon, sixty feet across, of muddy water racing for the Rio Grande miles to the east, completely obliterating either of the small fords on the old county road. But, success or not, it was almost always a good drive, and truth be told, I rarely lamented those days I didn't get to go to school.
My dad, he was the one who usually drove, would always play music or sing old cowboy songs on the drive. I don't remember a lot of the cassettes he played, but I do remember one. It was in a scuffed case, scratches partially obscuring the liner photo of a cowboy in a vest and a big black hat sitting with his guitar in front of a sunset sky. The album was Ian Tyson's I Outgrew the Wagon. I really don't remember taking a lot of note of the songs on it then - The song I liked the best, then, of Tysons was The Coyote and the Cowboy, which was on another record - But I remember liking the music, and the liking continued.
I grew up different. I've said it before, and will continue to say it. Growing up on a working cattle ranch in the 90's is far from the common experience. More kids, I imagine, grew up in Volkswagens driving around the country with their pot smoking parents. Driving 45 miles to reach the paved road just outside town that lead to school, depending on wood fired heat in a half century old adobe, actually knowing the meaning of words like riatta, tapaderos, hackamore, morral, these were not part of the common experience of my generation. Nor was listening to Ian Tyson, because no one who didn't understand those things, would understand that music.
Tyson got his start as a folky. He wrote what has been one of the most prolific folk songs of all time, Four Strong Winds, which has been covered by damn near everybody, and was part of one of the most successful folk duo's of the era, Ian and Sylvia (with Sylvia Tyson [nee Fricker], his now ex-wife). According to some, he was even the man who introduced Bob Dylan to marijuana. And when his marriage fell apart, and the folk thing didn't work anymore, he made good on a long-standing threat and bought a ranch not far from Alberta, turning to what he had always dreamed of - Cowboying. Pretty soon in addition to running the T-Bar-Y, he was playing in a few local joints, some of his old standbys, but more old cowboy songs, and a few new ones.
Now, there is a difference between cowboy music and country music - Always has been, and always will be. Most country, despite use of the word on occasion, has little to do with cowboyography, or the cowboy way of life. More to do with farming than ranching, and far more to do with honky-tonks, fast women, fast cars, and southern rural life, than either. Cowboy music is different - It is the music of a unique group of people, doing a unique thing, in a unique place. And in the 20th century, and its successor, more rare than unique. And very very few voices ever captured it. Even fewer captured it in a way that identified not just with the classic cowboy, but the cowboy of today, that rare, and frankly flighty, individual hell bent on eking a living out of being a'horse and chasing the wild bovine. Ian Tyson has been one of those rare voices.
Tyson released two solo albums in the seventies, Ol' Eon, a far more folk sounding album, and 1978's One Jump Ahead of the Devil, leaning more to cowboy music trends, and featuring his hit Half Mile of Hell, from the sountrack to the film of the same name (about the infamous chuckwagon race at the annual Calgary Stampede). Other than that, and some TV work, he was mostly quiet, and spent his time ranching and playing the occasional live show.
In 1983 he recorded an album, in his living room, called Old Corrals and Sagebrush, that was intended mostly for friends and family. It wasn't long before someone heard it, and Tyson was staring down the barrel of a contract again. The album wasn't a big seller, but it started something. In the intervening years Tyson has released nine more albums. My favorite of these would have to be 1996's All The Good'Uns, although they all have a fairly strong place in my heart.
Tyson is, like most of the best, and truest, artists, not a man without demons. He has been almost unhesitating to be self-critical in his work, and many of his best songs reflect his depressions, entanglements with alcohol and women, and what its cost him. There are few truly happy Ian Tyson songs. He lives in a world filled with ghosts, and for good reason - His world, the world of those who understand what he sings, is desolate, and only sparsely populated with the living.
I met Ian Tyson once, when I was a kid, after a live show. He was drunk, quite literally stinking drunk, and extremely obnoxious. I am pretty sure his behavior that night, towards me particularly, cost him a manager (an author who'd become friends of my family while researching a cowboy cookbook). And to tell the truth? It never really bothered me. I've been around drunks, and obnoxious ones, often enough, and had been even by then, that beyond that evening it didn't really phase me. I am still quite fond of my autographed copy of All The Good'uns.
Tyson's last two albums haven't done as much for me as his older work, but they are still good, and speak truth (and a few entertaining lies) about a lifestyle most will only encounter through fictions of far greater proportions. His voice now, in his mid seventies, sounds weaker and reedier than ever before, but only as might be expected. If anything, he's earned it. Carrying a rare truth, about a hard and harsh world, is never easy work, and anyone who makes it to be an old man has earned his weariness. A unfair, and painfully incomplete, payment for a job well done, but nothing less than such a man might expect, and certainly nothing he's not used to.
Someday, in the not too far future, we'll lose Ian to that great unknown, when his circle is through, and he'll be another ghost on a great range already so full of them. And eventually his music will probably be forgotten. But for now, for those of us who still understand, at least a little bit, there is none better, and none other.
"We will ride to the end, on the wings of the wind, until we're home, and our circle is through. May the children read, may they understand, what is of true value, so the truth may be known. The glory of god, and the dark side of man. The one thing, they must ride on alone. And may they stay, where the river runs through, the range and the sky, buckskin and blue. May they ride to the end, on the winds of the wind, till their home and their circle is through..." 'Til the Circle is Through, Ian Tyson
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Blacksmithing
My grandfather was a blacksmith, among many other things. He was a machinist, woodworker, saddle-maker, rancher, shootist, father, husband. He was everything he needed to be, to have the life he wanted to have. A quintessential New Mexico high-desert renaissance man. The kind they don't make anymore.
He died in 1972, of cancer that did what men and cattle and austere living never had been able to, more than a decade before I was born. Growing up was like living in a burned forest of his life. The skeletal remains of his work, his things, decorated the landscape of my childhood home, and my childhood imagination. The lathe he had built from spare parts and hand-made parts, sitting hulking in the corner of the ranch workshop, dusty and partially draped in oily canvas. His forge, a great iron bowl on legs, resting under an elm tree surrounded by scattered scraps of steel and copper. The original homestead house and shed, great tumbled piles of red-rock, partial walls and tin roofs, had become his scrapyard - Home to old cars, motors, bizarre and cryptic innards from locomotives and transistor radios, great piles of scrap iron and spring steel. Rust, and earth, and rotting wood, scraps of oil cloth and canvas, mysterious handmade tools of unknown ends and meaning, bits of silver and leather, the growing green corrosion of old copper - This was how I knew my grandfather. How I felt his presence, so obvious in its absence by what he had left behind. Some of it still in use, some of it languishing, victim to entropy, abandoned by the mind that had conceived of it, and its usefulness. A mans works, like children, orphaned to the timeless hand of oxidization and death.
I grew up knowing men could make things with their hands. My grandfathers bones lying scattered around the house, my mother's art on the walls and pottery on the shelves, my fathers photographs, bridges and buildings he built, surveyors maps. I knew that these were the possibilities of human hands. So when I was fifteen, and found myself cultivating a taste in fine knives to compliment the taste in fine guns I'd been raised with, the natural path seemed to me to be making my own. I couldn't find the perfect knife for sale, or at least couldn't afford it, but I certainly felt it possible to make one.
I acquired a few more tools and set to work, quickly making a savage dent in my fathers collection of files and rasps. I initially approached knife-making via the stock removal process: Taking a raw bar or piece of steel, of roughly the desired length, width and thickness of the finished knife and simply grinding away everything that didn't look like the desired result. Although effective, and fairly common, this is a somewhat wasteful method of making anything as a good portion of the investment in raw materials ends up as dust on the floor of the shop. My learning process eventually lead me towards blacksmithing, as it allowed the best use of materials, with very little waste required. Being able to use an entire piece of steel by heating it and hammer forging it into the desired shape without the need for heavy grinding both provided a better financial return, and allowed a greater artistic range of possibility. Some shapes and angles are simply easier to forge into a piece than grind out of one.
In the late spring of my 16th year, I approached a blacksmith in the nearest town, Magdalena, about apprenticing with him. John was kind enough to allow me into his shop, to help with his projects and learn smithing in the process, while also getting to pursue my own interests at the forge as my skill improved.
John had learned to smith while in the Navy as a SeaBee. Once upon a time, large naval ships had forges inside the ship, attached to their machine shop, to facilitate the ease of repair and fabrication of parts while at sea. John was a product of this environment - It was there that he had made his first knives, and begun hobby smithing as a way to keep himself entertained and explore his creative depths. After the Navy John had continued educating himself at the forge, and refined his craft over the decades. Neither a production, nor a modern, smith John worked at the forge because he enjoyed the work, and the tradition of making much with little. His shop, built of block and wooden framing, was more reminiscent of an early 20th century mountain smithy than anything else. There was no power in the shop, electricity would only let him light the place and stay out there all night long John said. The doorway was usually open, as were windows, the regular draft allowing fresh air to continually circulate, carrying out smoke and fumes from the fire. John's forge itself was built from bricks and stone, by hand as the rest of his shop, and was fed only with coal with fuel. A hand-crank blower provided the necessary airflow to bully the fire into the required heats for smithing. Propane was a foreign idea, relegated to some of the books and issues of Metalsmith that scattered John's workbench. It was, as far as I am concerned, the best way to learn the art of blacksmithing. We used scrap materials, salvaged steel and iron, wood for handles that John had harvested himself, and did all our filing, sanding and polishing by hand. It was hard, dirty, sometimes frustrating work - And at the end of our weekly sessions I left tired, filthy, and sometimes chagrined at my own folly in the shop, which John always corrected sternly, but not wrongly.
I wish, looking back, I had spent more time there. I visited John weekly for several months, on into winter when the cold weather finally drove us out of his open, uninsulated and power-less smithy. When spring began to give way to warm days however, I failed to return. I had become invested in the other pursuits of a teenage boy, and feel victim to my own timidity as well in broaching the subject of returning. But I never forgot.
In general smithing was one of the many things I let fall by the wayside between the tail-end of high-school and beginning college. I had gathered the materials to build a forge, and made some small efforts at restoring my grandfathers forge and blower, but had never actually carried my intentions to completion. I still made knives, and still fully intended to get a forge up and running, but it just didn't happen. I let myself believe I didn't have the time, or resources, to devote to forging. Equipment languished, coal I had bought became dust in the bin, and my regrets at not continuing my smithing piled up deeper and deeper.
Finally, in the fall of '06, something changed. I'd changed schools, to be closer to home and pursuing my degree in an environment I liked better, and was spending quite a bit of time on the ranch. In mid October I went out and started rummaging among the derelict pieces of my grandfathers life, and set about cleaning up his forge. The forge itself, an iron bowl almost three feet long, two across and six inches deep, atop four sturdy legs, was in fairly good condition. The old hand-crank blower however needed more work. After several soakings in penetrating oil, and careful taps with a deadblow to loosen up old rust, I managed to free up the impeller with a final effort of elbow grease. Once free'd the impeller turned like it had never been stuck, and produced great volumes of air with even a moderate turn.
The first firing of the newly restored forge, late one cool October evening, was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had yet - I was thrilled to see my own work restore functionality to something my grandfather had built so much of his life with. Those first flames, dancing up between chunks of pinon charcoal, carried away old ghosts of neglect and regret, both for me and the tools under my hand.
Since then I have expanded my smithing from just blade-smithing into artist blacksmithing in general. Very few things are as satisfying as spending an afternoon working over a hot fire, getting covered in ash and grime, only to produce something fine, and delicate and shining, and above all, functional at the end of it. I can become lost in the work of tending the fire and shaping, directing, and cultivating hot iron into a tool or other thing of beauty - Things fall away from my mind as my hands set into their work, each blow, drop of sweat and burn from hot slag reaffirming a capability essential to every man since sun first rose on a flint knapper on some faraway plain - To be able to make the things you need, create the world you desire in your locale, to provide the life you want for you and yours. There is nothing more complete or satisfying than this.
My large forge is a permanent part of the ranch. It is both too large, and has too many ties to that place to ever be moved to town. I feel strongly about this, although its a source of regret while living in town pursuing my degree. Or, was a source of some regret. A friend's fiance, Pat, himself a blacksmith who had let his hobby lapse in pursuit of his degree, had left a small old coal forge sitting under an elm tree in his future bride's front yard, and was sad to see in languishing unused. A short time after being introduced to him, Pat gifted me with this small forge, so as to see it put to good use. Once again I had in my hands an old, but loved, tool - Once essential, now relegated to artist, hobbyist and anachronist in the majority of the world. It took some time, but I finally have fired it up, and am ready to set about using it in earnest.
Since I first came to New Mexico Tech I've been taking Metal Arts or Armor making classes offered in the fine art department of the community college. The instructor, Theresa, is one of my favorite people, and I feel comfortable calling her a friend. Since I first started learning from her, we've repeatedly discussed the addition of both propane and coal forges to her class-room. Though not one of the Teaching Assistants for her classes in past semesters, my role in the classroom has become increasingly instructive as I've stuck around longer and longer, and the interest in building forges and adding smithing to the regular curriculum has increased. A year ago, at the beginning of the fall semester, I arrived for my first day of class with four bags of quickcrete, as an incentive for Theresa to stop talking and start acting on the forge plans. A year later we still have no forge, but somehow my impulsiveness and dedication finally led me to being the only paid TA for her classes, and we're actually starting to get some work done. I've also taken a select few of the other long-time students on as semi-students of my own, to come to my house and work my forge, and learn what they can from me about smithing. It was to this end that, after I'd returned to town late one recent evening, my friend Nick, his wife Raven and I gathered in my yard under the glow of a worklight. Bags of charcoal, a shovel, a small pile of hammers, a piece of railroad rail and a heavy post were also gathered. We dug a hole, set the post, and mounted the railroad rail to it with some hastily forged clinch-nails, and built a large charcoal fire in the forge. The hand crank blower rattled a steady rhythm as its gears ran along on chipped teeth to turn the fan, driving air into the growing, cracking, sparking fire. We stood gathered around it, faces lit an orange glow, sparks reflecting in our eyes, and shared a collective smile. My neighbors were having a party, and as their house and yard filled with mostly freshmen Tech students, they observed us with confusion, question and stunned silence. No words were said across the fence, they stood back from the rising sparks, spoke in hushed tones to one another, and fell silent as the ring of hammer blows rained out all competing sound in the small space between houses. Eventually my roommate, himself an accomplished knife-maker, joined us and we four stood, working the blower, tending the fire, driving hammers into hot steel, shaping and drawing the tools of our futures, the works of our lives. We stood a separate tribe from those across the fence, speaking our own language of fire, and ash and the timeless ring of hammers.
He died in 1972, of cancer that did what men and cattle and austere living never had been able to, more than a decade before I was born. Growing up was like living in a burned forest of his life. The skeletal remains of his work, his things, decorated the landscape of my childhood home, and my childhood imagination. The lathe he had built from spare parts and hand-made parts, sitting hulking in the corner of the ranch workshop, dusty and partially draped in oily canvas. His forge, a great iron bowl on legs, resting under an elm tree surrounded by scattered scraps of steel and copper. The original homestead house and shed, great tumbled piles of red-rock, partial walls and tin roofs, had become his scrapyard - Home to old cars, motors, bizarre and cryptic innards from locomotives and transistor radios, great piles of scrap iron and spring steel. Rust, and earth, and rotting wood, scraps of oil cloth and canvas, mysterious handmade tools of unknown ends and meaning, bits of silver and leather, the growing green corrosion of old copper - This was how I knew my grandfather. How I felt his presence, so obvious in its absence by what he had left behind. Some of it still in use, some of it languishing, victim to entropy, abandoned by the mind that had conceived of it, and its usefulness. A mans works, like children, orphaned to the timeless hand of oxidization and death.
I grew up knowing men could make things with their hands. My grandfathers bones lying scattered around the house, my mother's art on the walls and pottery on the shelves, my fathers photographs, bridges and buildings he built, surveyors maps. I knew that these were the possibilities of human hands. So when I was fifteen, and found myself cultivating a taste in fine knives to compliment the taste in fine guns I'd been raised with, the natural path seemed to me to be making my own. I couldn't find the perfect knife for sale, or at least couldn't afford it, but I certainly felt it possible to make one.
I acquired a few more tools and set to work, quickly making a savage dent in my fathers collection of files and rasps. I initially approached knife-making via the stock removal process: Taking a raw bar or piece of steel, of roughly the desired length, width and thickness of the finished knife and simply grinding away everything that didn't look like the desired result. Although effective, and fairly common, this is a somewhat wasteful method of making anything as a good portion of the investment in raw materials ends up as dust on the floor of the shop. My learning process eventually lead me towards blacksmithing, as it allowed the best use of materials, with very little waste required. Being able to use an entire piece of steel by heating it and hammer forging it into the desired shape without the need for heavy grinding both provided a better financial return, and allowed a greater artistic range of possibility. Some shapes and angles are simply easier to forge into a piece than grind out of one.
In the late spring of my 16th year, I approached a blacksmith in the nearest town, Magdalena, about apprenticing with him. John was kind enough to allow me into his shop, to help with his projects and learn smithing in the process, while also getting to pursue my own interests at the forge as my skill improved.
John had learned to smith while in the Navy as a SeaBee. Once upon a time, large naval ships had forges inside the ship, attached to their machine shop, to facilitate the ease of repair and fabrication of parts while at sea. John was a product of this environment - It was there that he had made his first knives, and begun hobby smithing as a way to keep himself entertained and explore his creative depths. After the Navy John had continued educating himself at the forge, and refined his craft over the decades. Neither a production, nor a modern, smith John worked at the forge because he enjoyed the work, and the tradition of making much with little. His shop, built of block and wooden framing, was more reminiscent of an early 20th century mountain smithy than anything else. There was no power in the shop, electricity would only let him light the place and stay out there all night long John said. The doorway was usually open, as were windows, the regular draft allowing fresh air to continually circulate, carrying out smoke and fumes from the fire. John's forge itself was built from bricks and stone, by hand as the rest of his shop, and was fed only with coal with fuel. A hand-crank blower provided the necessary airflow to bully the fire into the required heats for smithing. Propane was a foreign idea, relegated to some of the books and issues of Metalsmith that scattered John's workbench. It was, as far as I am concerned, the best way to learn the art of blacksmithing. We used scrap materials, salvaged steel and iron, wood for handles that John had harvested himself, and did all our filing, sanding and polishing by hand. It was hard, dirty, sometimes frustrating work - And at the end of our weekly sessions I left tired, filthy, and sometimes chagrined at my own folly in the shop, which John always corrected sternly, but not wrongly.
I wish, looking back, I had spent more time there. I visited John weekly for several months, on into winter when the cold weather finally drove us out of his open, uninsulated and power-less smithy. When spring began to give way to warm days however, I failed to return. I had become invested in the other pursuits of a teenage boy, and feel victim to my own timidity as well in broaching the subject of returning. But I never forgot.
In general smithing was one of the many things I let fall by the wayside between the tail-end of high-school and beginning college. I had gathered the materials to build a forge, and made some small efforts at restoring my grandfathers forge and blower, but had never actually carried my intentions to completion. I still made knives, and still fully intended to get a forge up and running, but it just didn't happen. I let myself believe I didn't have the time, or resources, to devote to forging. Equipment languished, coal I had bought became dust in the bin, and my regrets at not continuing my smithing piled up deeper and deeper.
Finally, in the fall of '06, something changed. I'd changed schools, to be closer to home and pursuing my degree in an environment I liked better, and was spending quite a bit of time on the ranch. In mid October I went out and started rummaging among the derelict pieces of my grandfathers life, and set about cleaning up his forge. The forge itself, an iron bowl almost three feet long, two across and six inches deep, atop four sturdy legs, was in fairly good condition. The old hand-crank blower however needed more work. After several soakings in penetrating oil, and careful taps with a deadblow to loosen up old rust, I managed to free up the impeller with a final effort of elbow grease. Once free'd the impeller turned like it had never been stuck, and produced great volumes of air with even a moderate turn.
The first firing of the newly restored forge, late one cool October evening, was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had yet - I was thrilled to see my own work restore functionality to something my grandfather had built so much of his life with. Those first flames, dancing up between chunks of pinon charcoal, carried away old ghosts of neglect and regret, both for me and the tools under my hand.
Since then I have expanded my smithing from just blade-smithing into artist blacksmithing in general. Very few things are as satisfying as spending an afternoon working over a hot fire, getting covered in ash and grime, only to produce something fine, and delicate and shining, and above all, functional at the end of it. I can become lost in the work of tending the fire and shaping, directing, and cultivating hot iron into a tool or other thing of beauty - Things fall away from my mind as my hands set into their work, each blow, drop of sweat and burn from hot slag reaffirming a capability essential to every man since sun first rose on a flint knapper on some faraway plain - To be able to make the things you need, create the world you desire in your locale, to provide the life you want for you and yours. There is nothing more complete or satisfying than this.
My large forge is a permanent part of the ranch. It is both too large, and has too many ties to that place to ever be moved to town. I feel strongly about this, although its a source of regret while living in town pursuing my degree. Or, was a source of some regret. A friend's fiance, Pat, himself a blacksmith who had let his hobby lapse in pursuit of his degree, had left a small old coal forge sitting under an elm tree in his future bride's front yard, and was sad to see in languishing unused. A short time after being introduced to him, Pat gifted me with this small forge, so as to see it put to good use. Once again I had in my hands an old, but loved, tool - Once essential, now relegated to artist, hobbyist and anachronist in the majority of the world. It took some time, but I finally have fired it up, and am ready to set about using it in earnest.
Since I first came to New Mexico Tech I've been taking Metal Arts or Armor making classes offered in the fine art department of the community college. The instructor, Theresa, is one of my favorite people, and I feel comfortable calling her a friend. Since I first started learning from her, we've repeatedly discussed the addition of both propane and coal forges to her class-room. Though not one of the Teaching Assistants for her classes in past semesters, my role in the classroom has become increasingly instructive as I've stuck around longer and longer, and the interest in building forges and adding smithing to the regular curriculum has increased. A year ago, at the beginning of the fall semester, I arrived for my first day of class with four bags of quickcrete, as an incentive for Theresa to stop talking and start acting on the forge plans. A year later we still have no forge, but somehow my impulsiveness and dedication finally led me to being the only paid TA for her classes, and we're actually starting to get some work done. I've also taken a select few of the other long-time students on as semi-students of my own, to come to my house and work my forge, and learn what they can from me about smithing. It was to this end that, after I'd returned to town late one recent evening, my friend Nick, his wife Raven and I gathered in my yard under the glow of a worklight. Bags of charcoal, a shovel, a small pile of hammers, a piece of railroad rail and a heavy post were also gathered. We dug a hole, set the post, and mounted the railroad rail to it with some hastily forged clinch-nails, and built a large charcoal fire in the forge. The hand crank blower rattled a steady rhythm as its gears ran along on chipped teeth to turn the fan, driving air into the growing, cracking, sparking fire. We stood gathered around it, faces lit an orange glow, sparks reflecting in our eyes, and shared a collective smile. My neighbors were having a party, and as their house and yard filled with mostly freshmen Tech students, they observed us with confusion, question and stunned silence. No words were said across the fence, they stood back from the rising sparks, spoke in hushed tones to one another, and fell silent as the ring of hammer blows rained out all competing sound in the small space between houses. Eventually my roommate, himself an accomplished knife-maker, joined us and we four stood, working the blower, tending the fire, driving hammers into hot steel, shaping and drawing the tools of our futures, the works of our lives. We stood a separate tribe from those across the fence, speaking our own language of fire, and ash and the timeless ring of hammers.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Josh Ritter -
I ran across Josh Ritter a couple years ago with his song 'Girl in the War', and today got a yen to hear it again - Ended up on YouTube looking up more of his stuff. He's really good - Go, explore.
Monday, January 21, 2008
John Cale, Venus in Furs
So, here is a link to the John Cale video I want to embed but am not allowed to (for some probably asinine, venal, and petty reason on the part of the original poster [no, I dont tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, or ascribe positive motivations to random strangers, why do you ask?]). It's his performance of the Velvet Underground song Venus in Furs, with electric viola (which the original featured heavily as well, thanks to Cale). It is a radically different, and fairly pleasing, sound... despite the usualness of it.
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