jodyrathgeb

  • Home
  • About me
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Blog
  • Mosaic Catalog
  • Mosaic Gallery

Born in a bar

1/29/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
 It's said that writing is a solitary profession, which is mostly true. No writing gets done when we are being social and interacting with other people.
   For me, though, the social situations feed the writing. So many of my short stories have their seeds in bar talk, discussions around my table or in observations where people gather.
   I realized this in a recent assignment on Black History Month for Quail Bell Magazine. Always taking the less-traveled path, I chose to focus not on American black history but on my explorations of history in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I paired a flash fiction piece, "Slave Hands," with an explanation of the story's genesis in two different bar conversations. (The companion pieces will be found in February at www.quailbellmagazine.com)
   That work got me thinking about other stories I've written that have their primary origins in bars and other social gatherings. I looked at my story list and found seven more that "began" as comments or discussions at North Caicos bars and restaurants (Big Josh McIntosh's, Pelican Beach and the now-gone St. Charles) and four more from my Aloe House table.
   Not everything I've written comes from table/bar talk, but enough does that I can see my coming visit to North Caicos as creative fodder. I've been hiding from the cold in my Richmond apartment too long, letting social media take the place of real socializing.
   And interestingly, I don't have one piece of writing that owes its start to Facebook!

0 Comments

Carpe diem

1/22/2015

0 Comments

 
   Coincidence or cosmic message? Could be either, but I prefer to think of the latter when the same words of wisdom seep into life from several directions.
   Those words are "seize the day," or "carpe diem" in Latin. Somehow, they've worked their way into our mundane slog through January here at 20th and Grace streets.
   Perhaps Tom and I have been more receptive to the message because of an ongoing discussion about his retirement. There has, after all, been a certain amount of "How long can I (you) endure in a job that no longer has joy?"
   Into that conversation came news that one of Tom's former colleagues, younger than us, had died suddenly. "Carpe diem," I said into the phone when Tom called to share the news.
   That same say, when I picked up our mail, I unfolded The Economist to see its headline, "Seize the Day."
   The concept is by no means new, either in culture or to me. Horace wrote "carpe diem" in his Odes, and the idea in Hebrew translates to "If not now, when?" My first encounter was in studying 17th-century poetry.
   "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying" (Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time).
   "Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime." (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress).
   Long out of use, carpe diem rushed back into popular culture in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society, with a teacher played by Robin Williams exhorting his students to seize the day. The more modern expression is "live in the moment."
   In January 2014, I wrote in this blog, "Don't tell me to live in the moment. The moment is cold." A year later, I'm getting and sharing the opposite message.
   Very interesting. Perhaps I just needed the reminder that my annual rant against the weather is silly within the greater scheme of things. It's nice to be reminded to seize the day.
   Even if it is a frosty, foggy gray one.

0 Comments

Curiouser and curiouser

1/15/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
   Did you hear the one about the agnostic who was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan?
   They burned a question mark on his lawn.
   Ba-dum-dum.
   Hey, don't blame me for the joke. I'm just repeating it as a lame way of getting into the topic of questions.
   I originally thought of doing a blog full of the questions that pass through my mind on a daily basis. But I realized that observations such as "Why do so many women worry about their butts looking big, then wear rear-hugging leggings and yoga pants in public?" or "Why are people still talking on their phones and texting while driving?" would only become a list of peeves. Instead, questioning itself became interesting.
   The question mark could be my personal symbol. In many ways I am still that tedious 3-year-old asking "Why?" until my frustrated mother would exclaim, "Because!" It's no surprise that I gravitated toward language and art instead of math and science. Questions that lead to more questions are more interesting to me than ones that lead to answers.
   Although I often resisted thinking of myself as a journalist, the profession is a no-brainer for the curious. Asking questions and sharing other people's answers have been quite fulfilling.
   Getting the answer, in my mind, is less important (and fun) than asking the questions. And that is the basis of my fiction, too, which asks all sorts of odd things: Is a certain way of grieving culturally ingrained, or can it be changed? How can a man compete with his wife's soul mate? How does a young person live with hope on a dying island?
   As Jimmy Durante said, "I got a million of 'em." Not jokes, questions.
   Now it appears that asking questions makes other people think you're smart. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explored how people project intelligence, and it turns out that attempts to "look smart" by using big words or putting on a serious face usually have the opposite effect. Instead, those who appear intelligent are the ones who say, "I don't know" and ask questions.
   How about that? Who knew?


0 Comments

Moi aussi

1/8/2015

2 Comments

 
Picture
   Within a week, we've gone from the ridiculous to the tragic. Journalists everywhere had a grand old time with Kirby Delauter's threat to sue a newspaper for unauthorized use of his name. It was so much fun to mock a man who doesn't understand what being a public official entails.
   It was not so much fun to contemplate what happened at Charlie Hebdo, where men who don't understand satire and don't respect freedom of speech killed 12 people.
   I once thought that being a writer was a relatively safe occupation. And for me, it has been. The worst I've had to deal with was angry letters and phone calls about my restaurant reviews. But in the world outside my inky cocoon, writing, drawing and broadcasting were becoming unsafe: Salman Rushdie, journalists as hostages, beheadings and now a lethal attack on a magazine.
   The pen is mightier than the sword? Hmm.
   I feel much like I did in May 1970 when, poised to graduate from high school and go on to college, my classmates and I learned about Kent State. How chilling to think that getting an education might also get you killed.
   I don't have much to add to the discussions currently going on about Charlie Hebdo, but I do want to note that in this age of digital virality, when derivative entrepreneurs like Emerson Spartz (of Dose.com) worship traffic, hits and shares over original and meaningful content, it appears that real creators aren't so passé after all. Maybe we still are relevant. Relevant enough to kill.
   Je suis Charlie.

2 Comments

Sing it with sass

1/3/2015

0 Comments

 
   A song for Epiphany:
   We three kings of Orient are
   trying to smoke a rubber cigar.
   It was loaded; it exploded!...
   Angels we have heard on high.
   If you remember guffawing over that one in the schoolyard, you probably recall other classics like "On Top of Spaghetti," "Found a Peanut" and "Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts."
   Do kids still share these slightly subversive songs? Or is Weird Al Yankovic the only survivor of a golden age of novelty songs?
   There used to be so many of them, regularly hitting the airwaves to add laughter to that democratic transition from Big Band and crooners to rock 'n' roll.
   In addition to alternative lyrics for well-known songs, there were narratives based on samplings of Top-40 hits ("The Flying Saucer"), nonsense-added tunes (Spike Jones' "Chloe") and just-plain-weird originals ("The Witch Doctor").
   I grew up on these things, reading parody songs in Mad magazine, giggling at "The Billboard Song" ("smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigley's spearmint beer") and learning such lyrics as "Oo ee oo ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla big bang." A friend and I even "wrote" a couple on our own: "Traffic Noise" (to the tune of "Candy Girl") and "My Medicine's Back" (to the tune of "My Boyfriend's Back").
   Novelty songs drifted into the 1970s with "The Streak" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," but as music became a fragmented menu of satellite radio and personalized playlists, the shared laughter began to die down. It's up to Weird Al now.
   Perhaps it says something about me that I remember all this, but I think the dearth of novelty songs today also says something about our national character. Have we lost the ability to laugh at ourselves and with each other? Is there no room for silliness any more?
   Or is it simply that our shared sense of humor has moved from music to videos and Facebook memes? If that's the case, this blog says a fond goodbye to Guitarzan and hello to the cat on the Roomba.

0 Comments

    Archives

    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    May 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

    Categories

    All
    Aging
    Air-conditioning
    Aloe House
    Animals
    Artists
    Bahamas
    Beaches
    Beliefs
    Birds
    Book Marketing
    Book Publishing
    Books
    Carnivals
    Cats
    Characters
    Chick Lit
    Christmas Cards
    Cleaning
    Cliches
    Computer Failure
    Concrete
    Corner Stores
    Creativity
    Downsizing
    Editing
    Exercise
    Family Traditions
    Fish Eye Lens
    Fish-Eye Lens
    Flexibility
    Food
    Forgetfulness
    Friendship
    Gardening
    Grammar
    Greece
    Halloween
    Halupki
    Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
    Hurricane Irene
    Hurricane Sandy
    Interviews
    Island Economies
    Island Living
    Islands
    Island Traditions
    Island Trivia
    James River Writers
    Jimmy Buffett
    Journalism
    Liberal Arts
    Mosaic Art
    Music
    Nanowrimo
    New Orleans
    New Perspectives
    North Caicos
    North Caicos
    Onomatopoeia
    Organization
    Parrot Heads
    Photos
    Pirates
    Pop Culture
    Publishing
    Punctuation
    Purple Martins
    Readership
    Regional Vocabulary
    Richmond
    Rituals
    Sampler
    Scrabble
    She Pirate Of The Taino Islands
    She-Pirate Of The Taino Islands
    Shockoe Bottom
    Shoes
    Short Stories
    Social Media
    Song Lyrics
    Spaces
    Structure
    Tcspca
    Technology
    Thanksgiving
    Tools
    Towels
    Travel Writing
    Turks And Caicos
    Turks & Caicos
    Weather
    Women On Writing
    Words
    Work Styles
    Writer's Block
    Writing
    Writing Fiction
    Writing Tools

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly