Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Escape

When I worked a job many years ago (eons ago), I lived in a place with perfect weather all year ’round. Sometimes, when I really needed a break from work, I’d just take a two-hour lunch and go see a movie.

Somehow, a movie can solve so much it changes the nature of time a bit, because although it might be two hours long, it can take you through several years in those two hours.

Escapism is underrated among a lot of writers I know, because seriousness of purpose and all that jazz get in there and suddenly we’re arguing our own intent, which must be deep — and the gravity of the prose itself. The depth of characterization; the complexity of plot; the artistic intent; and pretty soon, our heads are far, far up our asses.

No wonder Janet Evanovich is so popular; she knows about escape. Dan Brown, too. J.K. Rowling’s a master of it.

A serious novel can be wonderful, but truth is: most of us who read just want to jump out our windows now and then and we want our books and movies and music and art to give us wings so we can fly rather than fall, or at least a cushion for the rough landing.

The human condition, no matter how hopeful, is a series of disappointments capped off by the ultimate kick in the pants at the very end of the A ticket ride. Even if you began life with an E ticket, you end up with a book full of A.

(Only people my age or thereabouts are going to understand the whole ticket lettering system so as a sidebar: it’s the way Disneyland used to sell books of tickets. The worst tickets were the A’s; I think the Dumbo ride might’ve been an A, and you got a thousand A tickets, people gave them to you as they left the park because nobody over four years old ever wanted one — whereas The Pirates of the Caribbean was an E, and these were the reason people bought the ticket books at all.)

I’m not cynical at all, believe me; I am a hopeful, upbeat guy.

I believe that behind every blue sky is another blue sky.

But sometimes, behind every cloud is yet another cloud, as well.

No point in being delusional; somehow you’ve got to grasp that life is struggle and still you can have a party for no reason now and then. The escape often allows you to deal better with the struggle, or why ever take a vacation?

I think most people I know are optimistic and full of hope because it would be far too easy to just fall out a window than to keep dealing with the yearly stresses of life.

But there are always those moments when you think the buzzard of life is tearing at your liver:

1) When you’ve gone on your 12th date with your 12th prospect and you hear from someone half your age how much in love she is with her new beau, and how love is so easy and dating is such a wonderful thing. You may be happy for her, but you wonder why you’re on the Dumbo ride and why she’s in line over in front of that fancy spooky mansion.

2) When you work a dead end job, your boss is the stupidest person you’ve ever known and you’re stuck doing his bidding, knowing that you need that paycheck and you really have no choice. And worse, he gets the 100 grand bonus each year because of the work you did, and you’re lucky to get invited to the company Christmas party. But without your spouse. Because the company’s cheap.

3) When someone you love dies and it was a crappy death. I’m sorry to say this happens more often than not, and it really brings the whole of existence into clear focus: most of life is a series of those A tickets. Somehow you have to smile at them, and appreciate them, despite how it’s not quite the ride you thought it was when you were younger. Death is the most annoying part of life; there really are very few “good deaths.” The best ones in my opinion are the ones where someone steps off a curb and a second later the 4:45 just slams into them on its way to Tarrytown.

4) When you get depressed easily; you are easily angered; you don’t understand why you get migraines and the jerk who keeps telling you that there are no such things as migraines seems to always have perfect health.

There are so many ways that life becomes a prison, an A ticket generator, a hamster treadmill. Even all those prescription drug ads; they’re preying on the A ticket-holders, or at least those who feel that’s all there is.

So escapism is vital. Our minds need it. Our bodies need the level of rest that occurs when we can escape into another realm. We need to come back to life strong and then turn those A tickets into E tickets. The human imagination is an amazing engine with a battery that can run a long time; sometimes it just needs the jumper cables of escapist literature.

I’ve seen people on the train in Manhattan, the ones who are reading. You can see in their eyes that they’re already somewhere else. They’re on the big ride into some amazing place. They put down their books and seem shocked to be back in the regular world, even suspicious of it, a bit.

And then, I’ve watched people who aren’t reading (or listening to music through ear-buds) - they look as if life just beat the crap out of them and they’re down several pints of blood. I mean, get on a subway in downtown Manhattan around 5:30 p.m. and thereafter, and you’re going to see a lot of people who look as if a truck rolled over them.

Of course, if you’re a people-watcher like me, you can get a momentary escape by just watching people on the subway!

But the readers, the movie-goers, the music-listeners, they’re in some other place, and that other place is a slice of heaven, even if it takes them into the jaws of hell. They crawl out of their skins, and into other skins, new skins, magical skins. They feel things they might ordinarily never feel; they imagine the tastes of the world; they take on the persona of the main character or singer or artist for a period of time. They co-pilot the book, with the author, toward a new landing strip.

So, I just want to remind you to make sure when you’re writing your novel (and to remind myself, as well) that we’re not just here to prove ourselves to other writers and to generally disapproving critics.

We’re here to get people out of their skins for a period of time so they’ll have the feeling that there’s more to the world than one bad day, one bad year, maybe even one not-so-great decade. We give them a doorway, we give them wings, we offer them a safe place to go to regain strength and perspective and balance so they can return to the ride of life, to the A ticket and turn it into an E, or at least learn to enjoy the ride as it is.

Storytelling is entertainment, and it’s important to the world to develop the ability to entertain in the novel as well as to find a way to express an artistic vision — because this also can provide that important escapism.

I hear writers complain about how nobody reads anymore because of TV, games, movies, and the internet.

If that’s true, it’s because we’re not providing people who might read, who are looking out that open window, with those wings, that ride, that place to go.

We’re not sending them off on that little boat to see those pirates.

We’re passing out A tickets to people who already have a handful of them. Make it E.

Now, having made you sit through this bizarre entry, go look at this trailer for a book. Is it an A or an E?

The Priest of Blood

This should open up in your media player, unless you have Mac. If you have Mac, you already feel superior to the rest of us, so yes, feel free to berate me for not having it available in a more accessible format.

Cheers,

Douglas Clegg

www.Vampyricon.com

www.DouglasClegg.com

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