The Edge of the World

Some day I’m going to write something about the edge of the world.  Actually, I’ll probably write several somethings about the edge of the world.  It’s such a philosophically ripe concept.  I mean, you can think of it as an ending, but by definition an ending implies that there was a beginning at some point, somewhere along the way, and if you look at it from another point of view, all endings beg new beginnings.  And that brings up the question:  what kind of a beginning starts at the end of the world?

What I’m seeing in my mind, is basically a cliff edge, but at the top there’s grass and trees and animals and people, of course, but down in the bottom it’s all fog and mist and no one can see what’s below for miles and miles.  It’s like an ocean of fog, and they call it the edge of the world.  Well, the story idea I’ve got in mind starts with the main character jumping off the edge of the world.  Not sure why she jumps yet.  I’m torn between having it be forced, like she’s running away from something, and having it be a choice, like she wants to see what’s out there.  Another idea would be starting with having her attempt to kill herself, but I’m nervous about writing that kind of thing, because it’s very intense in a lot of ways and I want to be able to do that subject the justice and seriousness it deserves.

So, anyway, that’s the idea so far.  Not sure if it’ll ever turn into anything, but I needed a topic to blog about this week, and this was all I had.  Hopefully it was worth your time. 

Getting Lost in Writing and Vice Versa

I was talking with a friend the other day about philosophy and the meaning of life and explained that the reason I decided not to major in philosophy (and the reason that I do not allow myself to study it at all) is that I am afraid I would get lost in it and never come back and never be able to fully function in reality.  I’m the same way about art as well.  Latin, on the other hand, is something I enjoy and I can get lost in, but I can always come back whenever I need/want to.  Reading is harder to come back from, but the book always ends eventually anyway, which means that I will have to come back no matter what, so I don’t mind that pleasure either.

When I considered my relationship with Writing, I came to a conundrum:  I’m not sure whether it’s me who’s lost in my writing or if it’s my writing that’s lost in me.  I can sit down with a computer, or with pen and paper, or with the notepad feature on my cell phone, or even just the inside of my own head and compose any amount of writing and be completely lost in it.  When the inspiration passes, I come back to reality and am no longer lost in my writing.  However, I also often notice myself narrating my life and the lives of those around me without really thinking about it – as if I suddenly realized the pattern of my own breathing or the sound of my own heartbeat.  It’s constantly in the background, rasping and drumming as the bass-line of my existence.

So far, I have come up with two possible answers.  One is that I am already so overly consumed with writing (and always have been since I first understood the concept of storytelling) that I am already completely lost in it and will never come back (though, clearly, I can still function in reality quite well).  The second possible answer is that while I can get myself lost in my writing sometimes, my writing can also get itself lost in me.

That idea makes me wonder about existence in general and what would it be like to be just a character in someone’s book, at the mercy of some anonymous god I had never met but who controlled every aspect of my life?  How much free will do we as authors really give our characters and how much of that free will do those characters really accept and exercise (if they are truly capable of it at all)?  I am a big believer in developing your characters and allowing them to drive the plot and the story along as much as possible, and refraining from “divine intervention” whenever you can, but I wonder sometimes how much of that is illusion and how much of it isn’t.

A Brief Review of Clash of the Titans by a Classicist

My husband and I saw Clash of the Titans this evening in 2-D and liked it just fine.  I had to pretend I knew nothing about Greek Mythology for two hours in order to enjoy it, but I expected that.  I think it would have been better if they had just given the characters different names and tweaked the costumes and place names a bit.  It would have freed the plot up a little more (not that they seemed to care much what the original plots were in the original mythology anyway.)  The special effects were fantastic, of course, and I think it would be worth spending the extra couple of dollars to see it in 3-D if you’re into that kind of thing, but I did not feel like the 2-D experience was lacking because it was in 2-D.  I did feel like it leaned toward the cliché, the expected, and deus ex machina types of things, but I also expected that (this is a story based on Olympian Mythology – you just can’t tell that kind of story without some sort of deus ex machina creeping into it at least a little).

The thing that really made the movie for me was one scene in the  middle (and I won’t tell you exactly what it was because I do not want to spoil it for you) that refers to the older Clash of the Titans movie from 1981 that wowed the world with the equivalent of 3-D CG at the time, which was claymation.  When this reference scene came up in the newer movie, I laughed out loud for at least a minute or two straight.  That one scene was worth the entire two hours and all eleven dollars.

My recommendation is this:  Watch the old one first, and then go see the new one.