words words words

July 29, 2014October 20, 2014

Disney revisited

There are spoilers in here, but I guess if you’re already reading a post on Disney, you’ve seen the movies too…

And yes, the © of the pics belongs to Disney. In case someone was wondering…

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Just recently Disney came up in a conversation about plots and movies and that got me thinking…

It’s interesting how Disney heroes and heroines have changed over the decades. If you look at Snow White, there isn’t much of a conversation going on between the Damsel and the Prince. Damsel runs away from evil step-mom, hides out with seven little men, gets found out, eats apple, everybody thinks she’s dead, Prince comes along, kiss, The End.

There’s a bit more conversation between Cinderella and her Prince but it’s left to the audience to guess since they’re waltzing away and talking in the gardens. You can’t imagine any shenanigans there, though Cinderella does flee from said Prince in a could-be-a-kiss situation. As for Sleeping Beauty, they actually meet on their own, with the help of a few woodland familiars, and they dance Once upon a Dream and then just stand at that tree gazing at the castle. You can imagine the conversation:

Aurora: How beautiful!
Prince Phillip: Oh, yes, quite, but not very practical.
Aurora: Practical?
Prince Phillip: No battlements. And the moat, there’s hardly a fish in it. One well-set fire and the whole place’ll go up in smoke.
Aurora (stopped listening after ‘battlements’; sighs): It is beautiful though…
Prince Phillip (realises what he just said): Father was probably right, come to think of it…
Aurora: About what?
Prince Phillip: King Stephen is not… that is not the safest place to rule a kingdom. What was he thinking?

And so on and so forth. Actually the end of that conversation could very well be a fight, the Damsel taking patriotic side with the King – she doesn’t know he’s her dad too – and the Prince making it worse by being honest…possibly why Disney didn’t bother to have them start talking in the first place.

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Then there’s the long haul through the ‘70s and the ‘80s , where it’s more about coming of age stories, à la Arthur and Oliver Twist, but then the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, another Princess: Ariel. This time the girl sees the boy and is smitten, Daddy ain’t too impressed, wicked witch is hap-py (‘body language’). Girl gets a try to impress boy but can’t talk, poor thing, but at least they go out and see his kingdom and get a nice frog-concert and all in all there’s definitely some quality time there, which justifies some daring on the Prince’s part.

Beauty and the Beast is far more modern: slightly awkward girl moves to new stuffy provincial town (luckily no one knew about Edward and Bella back then… dear God, imagine…), can’t really see eye to eye with anyone except her books, but has the good luck of serious prettiness, which puts crazy suitor on her trail who’s so full of himself you’re just waiting for that hairy chest to burst. So the motivation is: escape, adventure, something different for crying out loud. And thus helped by crazy daddy, girl ends up in a monster place, with a monster master and talking dishes who are cheeky but sweet, and the monster is actually quite nice after all. Lots of quality time, great lighting, great music, great dancing, everyone’s happy. Then the inevitable Big Choice is made and the monster turns out to be a gentleman only for the mad-hat suitor to turn up and spoil the show. A bit of fighting and some nasty stabbing (blood! *gasp*) and you can understand the girl’s I love you, coz compared to the mad-cap provincials the monster’s quite a catch. Inevitable happy ending with very pretty prince.

On we go to Aladdin: now here’s a guy girls like to crush on: all dash and daring, wants to get on in the world because he knows his worth and he’s not bad looking either. He’s had a few scraps with the police, but he’s got a heart of gold. Then we have the Princess: serious pressure to finally get married only it’s not Mother nagging but Father getting worried, but Papa is cute and exasperated by drop-dead-gorgeous daughter, and so is entirely made out of soft spots. Naturally has a treacherous adviser who has smoldering plans re world domination. While planning to take on power with help of dashing diamond-in-the-rough, Princess decides enough’s enough, I want the real life, only to get a bit too much of said real life. She’s promptly saved by our dashing daring hottie-hero who gets a large helping of love-at-first-sight. So boy is all eyes for girl, girl has some genteel hots for boy, but psychotic royal adviser spoils it all. The rest is an adventure for both, what with the blue brassband of entertainment where it’s all about fake identities and getting the girl, until the final showdown where the Princess has a chance to go full-out Mata Hari and would have succeeded if the hero hadn’t messed it all up by falling for the act too (that ‘pussycat’ is still hilarious). In the end, you’re pretty sure guy and girl know who the other one is, there’s been a lot of fighting and forgiving, so no great worries there.

I’ll leave out The Lion King because the whole movie is about giant cats, a few hyenas, very many wildebeests, a bird, a warthog and some small hulla-dancing animal.

Now to Hercules. Never mind how they mangled the plot (Hera as mother to Hercules? P-lease!) but we’ve got a real Hero as the hero and we’ve got one sassy girl who knows what it means to have a broken heart. And she’s got some lip on her that girl, (‘Do you have a name to go with those rippling pectorals’ – Disney definitely sexed that one up). In any case, it’s about the big stuff: honour, loyalty, love and betrayal and forgiveness, next to a nastily fun Hades whose hair I’d like to borrow. By the end of it, you know Herc and Meg know how bad it can get with either, and whatever choices have been made, you can’t say they don’t know what they’re getting.

Then Pixar derailed Disney for a while, and Shrek just shredded the whole fairytale concept, but we still have a hero and a heroine, and all the problems ex-suitors and in-laws, best friends, their wives (and fire-burping kids) not to mention one’s own. Shrek takes the whole deal and runs with it, it’d take too long for that now.

Next on the list is The Princess and the Frog, and again, we have a hero who’s a bit of a twit, but a charming and good-looking one, though he knows that a bit too well (‘Kissing would be niiiiice’). And we have a no-nonsense girl who has A PLAN, only to have tall, dark and handsome frog-leap right through it. They have the whole Bayou to help them get to know each other, never mind the tongue twisters and jazzing alligators. By the end of it, the Prince learnt a few lessons and the Princess softened a bit and made some space for a life in her PLAN. By the time they have the ring on their finger, you know they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can actually see making that restaurant work the way it should. A couple as a team, that’s a first.

Onwards to Tangled, I mean Rapunzel: girl locked up in a tower but that won’t keep her from using a frying pan. Our hero is dashing and debonair, again a bit too full of himself, but with a heart of gold. I’m just realizing most later Disney heroes are a bit too full of themselves, but actually nice chaps at heart. In any case, they have a whole kingdom’s worth of time to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, by the end of which it’s actually believable when the wedding bells ring and there are white doves everywhere. A lot of team-work is needed – just to get out of that tower in the first place, not to mention blondie’s Momma issues and the boy’s dalliance with the police – so the ‘couple as team’ concept has probably come to stay.

And finally Frozen. That Elk. What’s with those two? Talk about bromance, only it’s an elk-mance or something. Anyway, so there’s two sisters, older sis has dangerous powers, little sis just wants love. Tragedy strikes, and the usual royal complications take place, and finally little sis gets into some kind of adventure after kinda-sorta falling for you-know-who… frozen and I’ll stop there because some people maybe haven’t seen it yet, and that’s enough spoilers for now. Anyway, Frozen is another gear change in the hero-heroine meta-narrative (yes, I said it) that Disney employs, which makes me really curious about the next feature film they’re going to make. A whole new world altogether.

So yeah… Disney’s changing, in baby steps, yes, but still. Let’s see where they’ll go next.

July 28, 2014February 11, 2015

don’t listen

A blank page can be an awful thing. It seems empty, but it isn’t. It’s filled with possibilities, words written, deleted, rewritten, crossed out, thought over, emphasised, loved, hated, wanted, reviled – and it never ends either.

I think the hardest part is to not listen. You know, those ‘Are you serious’ ‘Are you sure about this?’ ‘Is that good enough?’ and ‘Is that it?’ that whisper from the blankness of the page, sounding out the words in your head. And then it happens, the whispers grow louder and louder, talk, yell, shout and scream and suddenly you’re saying: ‘No no no no no no no no!’ It’s wrong! bad! awful! horrible! blergh!

Delete. Delete. Delete.

And then you’re back to square one, that blank page, that empty space that somehow is already filled with all the things you don’t want to say, all the things you wish to convey, and really need to get on the page. And the whispers just won’t go away.

So many times, too many times, listening has made me do something stupid – that is, I deleted everything in sudden horrified shame, which also meant all the words were gone, never to be retrieved, never to be seen again.

I stopped that.

I keep everything that makes me hesitate, sometimes even squirm, even the silliest scraps of words on paper. I keep them for one reason: between those words, hidden among the letters, there is usually something real, a thought, a word, a memory that I can use later when I know what it is that I’m after. It’s not always like that. Sometimes what I wrote is just really, really bad.

It’s sieving through the whispers and finding my inner compass that’s so difficult. The whispers like to override that gut-feeling that 9 times out of 10 is accurate, and even the tenth time it was right somehow. The whispers that seem to come out of the emptiness, they can get too loud, and the trick is not easy but possible: just don’t listen. Write it down. Write it all down. Even that sentence you know is silly. Even that word you just don’t want to use. Write it down. See it written out so that you know why it’s so horrible. It’s helped me countless times. In a way, when I see it written out, I finally know what’s so wrong with it. Until then it’s just words swirling in my head.

Then I let it rest for a while. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, it can go into months and years actually, but eventually I go back, and read everything one more time. It surprises me time and again how different the words look and sound just becomes some time passed. If I’m happy with it, I edit what needs editing, re-write, re-draft and re-do until it’s roughly where I wanted to be. Then I start over until I finally feel ‘Yeah… that’s about right.’ This takes time of course, and it can be (very) frustrating, but what really helps me is reading the books, poems and short stories I love best. They’re the proof that someone successfully managed to silence the whispers coming out of the (apparent) emptiness.

At one point I had something of a database of crap sentences, horrible plot twists, stupid little dialogues I wanted to turn into genuine conversations and failed, failed, failed. I keep them though, and go back to them when I can overcome the inner cringe, and sometimes – I can’t tell you how or why, there is a mystery to this craft of ours – I find that seed of thought, of feeling that I was aiming for and work from there.

July 26, 2014October 28, 2015

Words are tricky. Each one has its own character. Some come all sweet and simple, and suddenly get complicated without you knowing how it happened. Synonyms you never heard of turn up like juniper berries and pepper seeds – the taste, the flavour, is overwhelming. Meanings melt down everything in that one second you weren’t looking. And then there are those words that look perfectly solid, wonderfully whole – and they can’t even hold a sentence. Others transform in one paragraph and won’t fit anymore, no matter how you try to squeeze. They’re too there, too present, sitting there, staring you in the face, daring you to keep them there like oysters on a plate … So after all the cutting and stirring, after hours and hours of tasting, testing, and rearranging everything … it all boils down to which word fits, which one’s the right pinch of salt, and which one’s perfect, exactly what you were aiming for, exactly what you wanted.

July 26, 2014May 16, 2020

Toni’s

rain-249872 ‘People are like raindrops.’
‘Really.’
‘Yeah. If they fall too hard, they desintegrate.’
‘Simon.’
‘What? It’s true isn’t it? Imagine someone falling from -‘
‘Simon.’
‘Yeah?’

Amanda looked at Simon and decided she didn’t like him. She loved him, but she didn’t like him. He went against her grain. But she loved him. And that was just about it.

They lived in something other people called ‘flat’. It was on the first floor. It had three rooms, if you didn’t count the kitchen: living room, bedroom, bathroom. There were times Amanda found Simon sleeping in the tub. He said it was good for his back. Amanda just shook her head and asked if he wanted some coffee. He would yawn then, stretch, and ask for tea instead.

When asked about their relationship, Amanda’s general answer was, ‘I really don’t know.’ Simon on the other hand leaned back, sighed satisfied and said: ‘Amanda and I, we’re two of a kind.’ Amanda looked at him then, wondering if they really lived on the same planet.

The apartment had small windows with deep sills. Neither had much for a view, except the one in the living room. It faced the street and a small patch of green with a gnarled old appletree. Amanda called it the Sad Old Man. Simon called it ‘visceral’.

Simon used words like that. When he said ‘pneumonia’ there was just the faintest hint of a p. He didn’t grow his hair long. He was afraid Amanda would one day creep up behind him and cut it off. He smiled when a woman cried in the movies. If asked why, he said: ‘Now she’s beautiful. It’s easy if all you have to do is smile.’ Amanda sighed then as if saying: ‘You see, that’s why I don’t like him.’ But she loved him. And that was just about it.

Amanda, who was still sitting at the kitchen table, facing Simon, Amanda choked her cigarette in a pile of ash-tray stubs, let out a puff of smoke, and decided that the whole raindrop business was entirely besides the point.

‘Are you hungry?’

Simon shrugged. Oh no. Amanda knew what was about to happen. But as usual, she held a horrible fascination for the needlessness of the following… discussion.

‘Are you?’ she asked.
‘Hungry? A little.’
‘Pasta?’
‘Again?’
‘What do you want then?’
‘Dunno.’
‘I don’t think we have the recipe for that.’
‘How about eating out?’

Amanda looked up surprised. After living with Simon for so long, simple things surprised her a lot more than they used to. Only two days ago she realized that the sky really was true blue.

‘Today?’ Amanda asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s Monday.’
‘So?’
‘You hate going out on Mondays.’
‘I do not. You wanna go?’
‘Where to?’
‘Toni’s?’
‘But Toni’s is pasta.’
‘No. Toni’s is Toni’s.’

Of course. Simon only ever ate pasta at Toni‘s, but Toni’s wasn’t pasta, it was Toni’s. Ok.

‘You know what?’ she asked then.
‘What?’
‘How about some Chinese?’
‘I thought you wanted pasta.’
‘It was only a suggestion.’
‘So, no pasta.’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘But I thought you said you didn’t want to?’

Simon gave her an incredulous look, as if she had said, ‘I want to become a dentist’. When Simon answered, he spoke carefully.

‘I said: Again?’
‘Yeah, meaning you don’t want pasta again, so you want something else.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Then what did you say?’
‘I already told you: Again?’
‘Are you hungry at all, Simon?’
‘As I said: A little.’
‘So, what do you want?’
‘Pasta sounds fine.’

Amanda counted to five, then to ten. She remembered to breathe out again.

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ she asked.
‘But you know I like pasta.’
‘You like pasta.’
‘Always have. You know that.’

Ok. Enough. Amanda reached for the phone on the table. Simon asked who she was calling.

‘The Take Away.’
‘But I thought you wanted to go out.’
‘You wanted to go out. I just said ok.’
‘No, you said it’s Monday.’
‘Simon.’
‘What?’
‘Quit it.’
‘Quit what?’
‘I’m calling the Take Away.’
‘So no pasta.’
‘No. No pasta.’
‘All right.’

Amanda stopped dialling.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Go ahead, call up the Take Away.’
‘You really want to go to Toni’s?’
‘We can if you want to.’
‘Just give me a straight answer, Simon. Toni’s, yes or no.’
‘But I thought you didn’t want pasta.’
‘Simon!’
‘Ok, ok. Toni’s? No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s raining outside.’

Amanda got up and walked out of the kitchen. She didn’t call the Take Away. She put down the phone instead, put on her raincoat and trainers and walked the five minutes to Toni’s, sat down and ordered a pepperoni Pizza with extra cheese. She’d already drank half her coke before her phone rang. She didn’t answer it.

She got a text message: Whr r u?
She answered: Toni’s.

Fifteen Minutes later, Simon entered Toni’s with a wet umbrella and a plastic bag full of four boxes from the Chinese Take Away. He sat down opposite Amanda and greeted the waiter. The waiter smiled and brought him the usual, a tall glass of coke, a slice of lemon, no ice. The pizza came, Simon asked for an extra plate. They shared the pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, Chop Suey, Wan Tan and Chicken, Sweet&Sour. Nobody complained. It was, after all, Monday.