Kyrie - Communication In Art (A Ramble)

I can't get over Kyrie.

For those who don't know, Kyrie is the name of my most recent novel, written November 2014. It's still in rough draft form, but I've reread it every three weeks since I finished it.

It was my first real foray into literary fiction (though I didn't realise at the time that that's what I was writing). Usually my novels are pretty plot-driven (get back to 'your' time before the plague kills you, destroy the magical jewel in the Red Cave before an entire civilisation dies, find your kidnapped wife before you go crazy with loneliness, that sort of thing), but in Kyrie, the plot mostly centered on the development of a relationship. When I wrote Kyrie, I was giving a lot of thought to the concept of being an artist -- being that weird 'unambitious' relative that everybody pretends doesn't exist, trying to distill truth and beauty into a medium of choice in a world that increasingly despises truth and beauty. And so the character Kyrie spent a lot of the book working out those same questions that I had, with the help of the book's first-person narrator, also a performing artist.

Spoiler alert: Kyrie dies before all of the questions are resolved. And that leaves her friend not only taking up the mantle of her unanswered questions, it leaves him with additional questions of his own regarding this almost-ethereal artist friend that seemed a step removed even from his world: questions about what she really knew, understood, and saw that she hadn't yet been able to communicate, as well as questions about the nature of her death (he's not convinced her death was a complete accident).

It's eerie now to think that I wrote Kyrie before my friend died (of lung failure), before my cousin died (of an asthma attack), before half my extended family died (of divorce). Kyrie's backstory involves a family whose harsh opinions she's actively trying to escape (how much do I want to escape the desolate landscape formerly known as family gatherings?) and Kyrie herself dies of an asthma attack. Again, I wrote Kyrie's death before 2015, with all the hell it would bring, dawned.

And maybe that's another part of why the writer's block is SO strong. If I write something 'bad,' in which the characters die or their families are torn to pieces... what if it actually happens in real life? I know that's pretty much impossible and the fact that Kyrie died of lung failure and then so did my friend and cousin is probably a coincidence... but when my cousin died I realised this stuff happens in real life. Real people die, and you can't get them back. Looking back, I think my treatment of Kyrie's friend's grief was actually pretty true-to-life, but to have it written in words somehow cheapens the depth of it. And here we come back to communication, truth, and beauty (not that we were actually there, come to think of it, but this is a ramble-post so let's roll with it). As a writer, how can I communicate the depths of this kind of hellish grief without cheapening it? How do I tune the phrases, the mood, the character's voice to give the proper amount of weight to it without swinging into melodramatic territory?

Music Day - Missing Person

Another piece of my childhood (and also one of the few songs on my list of songs to feature on Music Day that actually sort of applies to my life right now).

I think this was actually my introduction to Michael W. Smith. I was young -- about five -- when this was the big hit on Christian radio, and I mostly kept liking it out of nostalgia. But this is one of those MWS lyrics (and one of the very few mainstream CCM lyrics) that actually hints at the reality of being a less-than-perfect Christian whose life is not all together. Christian music needs this reminder in the worst way. We have so many songs (and, increasingly, films) that tell you 'come to Jesus and everything will be perfect,' but that's simply not true; and we as Christians need to stop perpetuating that lie. What's more, we need to stop believing it.

One of the biggest things I miss about not being ticked off at God is being able to tell people I'm praying for them. I feel like it's hypocritical for me to tell others I'm praying for them when I can't even pray for myself. But now I just feel so useless when my friends are having problems. I wish I could help -- but I feel blocked from doing the one thing that I can actually (physically) do.

Where did that person go? I used to pray about everything, all the time. I used to really believe prayer could move proverbial mountains. I used to pray for everyone who I knew needed something. Of course I would do anything I could physically as well, but if I couldn't do anything else, I would at least pray. And I don't even have that anymore. It's funny how much I miss it. But I don't know how to take it back.

There was a boy who had the faith to move a mountain
And like a child he would believe without a reason
Without a trace he disappeared into the void and
I've been searching for that missing person...

Title: Missing Person
Artist: Michael W. Smith
Album: Live The Life
Year: 1998
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Props to MWS for writing this. Most other artists could have written this song and it would have been horribly neglected (though it was so badly needed). But Michael W. Smith, with nearly two decades of CCM popularity under his belt, could write this song and get it on the radio -- despite the melancholy, 'lost' theme of the lyric -- simply because his name was attached to it. And it took off. The chorus absolutely soars. Probably one of the catchiest things mainstream CCM ever produced. Play this for anybody who listened to Christian radio in the late '90s and see if they don't belt out that chorus at the top of their lungs. The smooth melody, the yearning vocal, the vulnerable lyric (the verses are primarily spoken, adding to the vulnerable feel), the melancholy guitar riff, and even the electric organ accents could not be anything but a hit in Christian circles thirsty for something honest.

Music Day - Dig Here, Revisited

This Music Day will have a slightly different feel to it.
I featured this album once before, upon its release in June 2013. At that time in my life, I had just been accepted to college and I was in a whirlwind of terror as I realised my life was about to change very drastically (little did I know...). I had been a Daniel Amos fan for all of four months.

I liked the album quite a lot when it first came out. As a writer with a literary/poetic bent, I fell deeply in love with nearly every lyric. Terry Taylor has been writing songs professionally for over a quarter century and his ability to turn a phrase, paint a mental image, and/or juxtapose two concepts for maximum irony is very finely honed.

Even the musical backdrops captured my imagination. At that point in my life, I listened to music almost exclusively for the lyrics. If you had tried to get me into a song based on a 'really sweet guitar solo' or an 'awesome' chord progression in the bridge, well... not going to happen. I really didn't care about the music as long as it generally sounded cool as a whole. Of course, two years in a college music program has since utterly reformed the way I listen to songs, but even at the time I loved the music of this album. It was rich, it was lush, it was full-bodied, it was part Dr. Seuss, part brooding Van Gogh, part rock band, part orchestra.

Fast forward two years. Well, two and a half. A lot has happened... my beloved rattletrap gave up the ghost, I graduated from college with not only an Associate of Arts in music, but a lead role in a stage musical under my belt, I lost an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, and two good friends to death of various kinds. For the first time in my life, I have truly known heartache. Depression is one thing, heartache is another. They are intertwined, but I'm not sure they're quite the same thing.

Today I listened to this album for the first time since all those deaths. Different things catch my attention now, and other things that hit me before hit harder now. I had already noticed (how could anyone not?) that this album explores the topic of death quite a lot. On the brink of leaving my family for college two years ago, I thought I knew what that was -- the end of my old life of being surrounded by family, the end of free time. And although I'm back in Alberta with my family now, in a way I was right. Nothing is the same now as it was then, and it never will be.

To hear these lyrics again in this new reality that I can't get away from, this reality that half my family is essentially dead, hits a tender spot I walled off the night my mother texted me that my uncle left his wife:

You left me ruined on the inside
Taught me love's a wrecking crew...

I need to dream again...

So why should we take his big bitter pill
And wash it down with a bucket of our tears?

You hide Yourself away somewhere behind a thundercloud...

My heartbeat is the pounding of Your iron hand breaking me...

In my head
Here it comes
Ruthless hum of dread...

And the spot that still flames red with anger and pain from the night I begged God for a miracle and received only cold static in reply:

We were anxious for our prayers to be answered
But our angels were distracted and so slow...

The same rock that we stood on crushed us...

I've never been more alive

Now that I've died...

Another bad guy wins
More good friends die
They mounted up like eagles
Now they're dropping like flies...

In a pauper's field of dreams
I'm walking in between open-mouthed graves
Anxious to be fed...

Listening to this album today brought me a comfort that has eluded me for a year. It didn't fix anything -- my family is still in shambles. It was a temporary comfort. But there's that... I don't know, camaraderie? that comes from hearing your pain in words that someone else penned. It makes you feel not quite as alone.

Album: Dig Here Said The Angel
Artist: Daniel Amos
Year: 2013
Label: Independent release (Kickstarter-funded)
iTunes here; buy the CD from the band here. Buy the vinyl from the band here.
Lyrics for the album here (click on the song titles).

This Is How We Die

Written 29 September 2015, 11.38pm.

I mentioned in a recent post how all my creativity is gone. As if it was never there -- just gone. NaNoWriMo is coming up and although I'm coming up with the occasional one-sentence plot idea (which is almost always enough to get me a full-blown novel), none of them capture me. None of them offer characters, setting, motivation -- just a sentence of a potential plot with everything to offer and yet nothing. Usually I can't write fast enough in my notebook to keep up with the thing.

Part of it, I think, is that my novel last year (Kyrie) was so different, so intense, so poetic... it's far and away the best thing I have ever written. And I know that the next thing I write will not come close to that level. I like to think I'm okay with that -- maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But the really different thing is that even though I wrote it almost a year ago now, that book has never let me go. I have literally re-read it once every couple weeks ever since I finished it. I find myself needing to re-read it, even though I practically have it memorised, typos and all. Something about that book was the true me -- the one I've never really been able to find. It synthesized all my hopes and dreams and fear and pain and I keep coming back to it because it understands me like none of my other work has. Today, in fact, I wrote an epilogue to it (in typical Kate fashion, I didn't actually write an ending for it at the time because I couldn't think of one). Until today, I had not added a single word to that book. It's the original November 2014 rough draft that I keep re-reading.

But part of it, I think (and this now includes choreography and photography, not just writing), is that reality hit me this year. I was talking with a friend the other day and we were talking about how I often feel like I have my head in the clouds. And she said something along the line of, "Yeah... but you're at least aware of the real world." This year, though, I saw people die. I watched several marriages die, and nobody cared about them. (We should give funerals for marriages. A dead marriage kills the couple and any children and siblings(-in-law) and parents and nieces and nephews. When a person dies, it's one person. It's awful, of course. But when a marriage dies, it's akin to genocide.)

The thing is, yes, I was aware of reality, but I ran on sort of a parallel track -- a track with dreams and passion and love and hope. I touched the real world, but I wasn't locked into it. I could pull back when I felt I should. I could observe it and step in when I felt the occasion required it. Maybe it was escapism, but it kept me sane. And anyway, I wasn't pretending the real world didn't exist, I was just a step removed from all the hysteria that constantly seems to consume people (have you SEEN a Facebook news feed lately?). But now, with all those deaths in such quick succession with little to no warning, I can't get out of the real world. I can't step back into my imagination, my creative brain, my world of participation in the arts, no matter how hard I try. It's as if a door has been locked, and I'm on the wrong side of it without a spare key.

And today I realised -- this is how it happens.

This is how people become the soulless cold unfeeling drones that I so dreaded becoming. This is how it happens. People die -- real people; people you love. And then so does the artistic brain. I always thought people's spirits died when they went to college or got a 9-to-5 job. But now I've done both, and although both made my life significantly busier, it did not kill the spark of creativity, of love for life. The divorces in my extended family, however, did. Suddenly I realised nothing would ever be the same, there would always be someone missing, and no amount of art can replace them or bring them back and bridge the chasm between what should be and what is. So what's the point? Maybe there is none. (This is another one of those things which I swore I'd never say.) Maybe I just toil out the next mile at hand and I pretend the lively Kate never existed -- not in this world, because in a way, she never did. She was one step outside of it. And that one step represented an entire world of inspiration.

(Tangent: maybe that's why Kyrie resonates so much with me. The story takes place over the course of a year and a half, and it chronicles a college junior's friendship with a freshman named Kyrie, from the time he meets her till the moment of her death. It's sort of Mary Poppins-esque. And throughout the book -- mostly due to the first-person narrator -- Kyrie is often depicted as a tiny bit otherworldly. She, too, ran on a parallel track to the rest of the world.)

Music Day - Walkin' In Faith

Written 10 January 2014, 11.07pm.

Discovered this through the Frontline Records Facebook page last week. I clicked the link they posted and stuck one earbud in, expecting some decent background-music rock. Within the first twenty seconds of the song, I put in the second earbud.

This thing rocks hard, but it's melodic. It's kind of like a heavier version of White Heart, or a less over-the-top version of '80s Stryper. Think White Heart's Dr Jekyll And Mr Christian with a little more muscle (and slightly less stellar vocals, but that's only because nobody can top Rick Florian). Also, turns out these guys are Canadian, which makes them even better.

Their guitarist is awesome. His playing makes me think of Oz Fox (Stryper). It's some seriously good stuff. Usually I kind of zone out a song's guitar work (Daniel Amos and Prodigal being the only exceptions), but not with what I've heard of this band so far. This is really compelling. I can't put my finger on it, but it's darn good.

Title: Walkin' In Faith
Artist: Angelica
Album: Walkin' In Faith
Year: 1991
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

In Hiding

(Otherwise known as 'Previous Post Part II.')

I feel like I'm running in a circle. I hate harping on these deaths that have so destroyed my life, but I can't get away from them. I know I'm being annoying because that's all I talk about, all I think about, all I can see, but I don't know how to get out. It's like being stuck in a video game crash, constantly looping back to the time of death and/or destruction. And because I feel like I'm being annoying, I'm being quiet/shy/reserved/distant again. Nobody needs to hear me whine -- again -- about how stupid it all is (and yet, look what I'm doing right at this moment...).

So I'm emotionally in hiding. I spent all of four months truly out in the open and enjoying my life, and just when I was enjoying this newfound exuberant life that I didn't even know I was capable of, it all got taken away. I've hidden myself away -- again. It took over twenty years for me to feel safe enough to come out of my shell, and now it's all for naught.

And I wonder if that's not why I can't come up with anything artistic -- no choreography, no writing, no joy in dancing, nothing -- because on order to connect with people you have to be vulnerable, and right now I absolutely refuse. Nobody is allowed in anymore. I want them to be, but I can't bring myself to allow it. What if I just get close to someone and they die too? I legitimately cannot handle another death. An uncle attempted suicide not long ago, and though it was intercepted and he's still here, I almost had a nervous breakdown. I have to wall myself off; I have to not love anybody and then it won't hurt when they leave. I need to build this wall, I need to protect what remains of my heart if I want to survive. And even as I think this, I keep telling myself I can't afford to think like that. I can't go through life in a cocoon... but neither can I go through life when people keep dying and getting hurt and hurting each other and killing themselves. I can't live with or without you.

I miss the people I had before I went into hiding. But I can't connect with them. I'm too different now. I'm too pulled within myself, I'm too single-minded. I need too much of their love, and it's unfair of me to ask so much of them.

...I swore I would never say these things again.

I swore I would never succumb to feeling like nobody cared. I swore I would never shy away from people -- from my friends. I swore I would never put on the mask again. I swore I would breathe deeply in the richness of life. I swore I would live in full colour, with my heart on my sleeve. I swore I would never forget how loved I was.

Hamster Wheel

Written 14 August 2015.

Warning: whiny post.

I feel like I'm spinning my tires, in every aspect of my life.

Work: I have a decent job, and it's all right. It's hard on the body, but then so is my dream career so I can't really complain.

Spiritually: I don't even know. I just -- how do you talk to the same God who just stood there and watched a nine-year-old die in a horrific, torturous way, despite the desparate prayers of those who loved her?

Creatively: I haven't choreographed a dance in two months. I haven't had a single writing idea since I finished Kyrie last November. I don't know if it's grief or exhaustion or burnout or what, but I sit and listen to songs that I know I had ideas for and... nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens.

I've been researching what it actually takes to get into the choreography industry. Nobody actually knows. Seriously. Nobody. I've found lots of information on how to choreograph a dance (I have completed fifty-two works to date... pretty sure that's taken care of), and lots of information on what kind of salary the average big-name-dance-company choreographer makes... but nobody can actually tell you how to get from 'first piece' to 'choreographer for the Royal Ballet.' You can't expect me to believe that you just walk up to the Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet (or whichever company) and say, "Hey, so I'd like to be your choreographer," and seriously expect them to hire me right there. There's got to be a process, a ladder to climb -- but what are the steps?

This is so hard. (I know, everyone says that no matter where they are or what sort of life they have.) I'm exhausted from school -- it was invigorating for me in my self-confidence, but it absolutely drained me physically. I literally ate one meal a day and slept four hours a night (if I was lucky) for the entire second semester because I needed that time to stay on top of my homework load. And even now, four months later, I'm still feeling the effects of this. My lungs have considerably worsened. I wake up some mornings wanting to curl up and die because I'm so spent and all I've done is open my eyes. I had hoped to spend my summer practicing dance and finally getting to do some choreography now that I don't have papers and music theory hanging over my head. I have choreographed literally nothing.

Music Day - How I Wish I Knew

When I hear you crying
When I feel you dying
When your heart starts fading away
How I wish I knew what to say...

I'm actually on the other side of this song right now. The people around me are asking this question: 'what is it you want to hear?' 'why can't you just move on?'

I wish I knew too. I wish I knew how to pick up the pieces enough to stop the rage that consumes me now. I wish I knew how to be glad that my cousin is with Jesus. I wish I knew how to believe God loves me. I wish I knew what would make everything even sort of okay again.

Anyway.

This is classic Choir -- slow, acoustic guitar with intense poetic imagery.

Title: How I Wish I Knew

Artist: The Choir

Album: 

Year: 2005

Label: Galaxy 21

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Grief: Art and Time

Written 19 July 2015, 11.35pm. All references to elapsed time are based on this composition date.

Grief is a strange thing.

On one hand, I feel like I should be processing everything by creating art -- writing, dancing, something. That's how I escape everything else. But inspiration doesn't come... I'm not a total slave to 'the muse' but I've been doing this long enough that certain project ideas will sort of draw me in. I've gotten fairly good at knowing which ideas are ready to be concretely worked out and which ones need more incubation time. Lately though, there aren't really any ideas at all.

This is strange for me. Ever since I could read I've had writing ideas, and I've had choreography percolating in my head since I was seven. To suddenly not have that is so strange. It's like a part of me is gone -- gone beyond the stars where my friend and my cousin disappeared to.

I remember about five months after my friend's mother died, asking how she was doing and if she'd been doing anything artistic lately. She told me no, she hadn't really, the last time she tried to do something artistic she ended up painting an entire canvas black. It seemed odd to me at the time, but I thought Hey, people have different ways of processing grief. But now I can relate to that. The emptiness of everything, the trying to forget, the acute awareness that you feel nothing and wishing you could and then wishing you wouldn't. I almost have to forget what happened and the role they played in my life if I'm going to be able to get out of bed every morning, but if I forget them, all kinds of guilt comes crashing in on me at two-week intervals and I become a basket case. I can't go on like this.

The worst of it is when people seem to think that I should be over it. You don't get over this. You don't -- not ever. Even before it happened to me I knew that death changes everything in the lives of those close to them. And this wasn't just one... this was three in three months. The last was at the end of April... that's only two and a half months ago. Surely you don't expect me to be back to 'all's right with the world' yet? Who recovers from the death of a child? Who recovers from the death of a very close friend? Who on earth is over it in less than three months?

I know it's awkward. I know it's hard to know what to say. I've been (or at least tried to be) the comforter too. But please, please... don't expect me to be 'over it.' You don't 'get over' this. You just don't.

And in the absence of art to escape and now that I no longer even have time to listen to music anymore... don't leave me. I've lost so many people already this year, don't walk away from me if you can at all help it.

Music Day - Tears In Your Eyes

Hold on to your hats, people.

Title: Tears In Your Eyes
Artist: Undercover
Album: Branded
Year: 1986
Label: Broken Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

When I first heard this song, I didn't breathe for the entire duration of the song. It grabs you by the throat, figuratively and almost literally. It's partly because it's just so fast musically, but it's also partly because the vocal is so raw and angry. I didn't want to miss a single word. It's a manic burst of speed metal that barely makes the two-minute mark but doesn't feel that short because it's so full of sheer passion... full of love and the passion of a broken heart.

In terms of vocal delivery, the inflections remind me of ¡Alarma!-era Terry Scott Taylor of Daniel Amos (specifically this song's 'Don't say you never knew / You knew exactly what to do' with 'Dead the innocent / Gone the hour / He needs you now...' from DA's Youth With A Machine or 'Please sit up straight at the table / And eat your words' from DA's Memory Lane).

How many times will you shut the door?
How many times must I be ignored?
How many times? again I try
How many times will I get no reply?