Sting and Annie Lennox

I bought the tickets months ago, and I'd really been looking forward to it. And the concert was great, as best as I could tell.

You see, I've never bought tickets for a concert held at the Target Center before and didn't really know what to expect. I certainly paid enough for them, but the fact is, from where we were sitting, high up above the speaker level, the sound absolutely sucked. Unless I knew the songs they were singing, I couldn't make out one word, singing or spoken. There were video screens over the stage on Sting's set, but the lighting grid blocked our view of them. And they were so far away: I would have liked to have seen the singers closer up, but we forgot to bring the binoculars.

Annie Lennox was in terrific voice and awfully fun to watch--what I could make out. (Man, I want a leather jacket like that.) It was actually a little easier to hear Sting, as he had more quiet, contemplative songs that didn't turn the arena's acoustics into mush. We certainly enjoyed it--the duet they did of Sting's song "We'll Be Together" was electrifying--but I have to admit, our enjoyment was tempered by a certain amount of frustration. Not their fault at all. Just the sound system and our seat placement. No way I could have known, really.

Heart of flesh, heart of stone

After having a dozen odd short stories and two novels published, I almost accidentally pinpointed what my fiction is about when I sat down for the very first brainstorming session on my third novel, the ice palace novel I’m sorta kinda working on now. If you remember, I traced it back to the end essay of pameladean’s book Tam Lin, where she said that book was about choosing between heart of flesh and the heart of stone that the world wants to put in. As I’ve been thinking about it more ever since I wrote that entry, I’ve realized that the stories I’ve loved the most (the ones I’ve read as well as the ones I’ve written) have always been about that.

Yesterday, I pointed to an entry about an encounter at a coffeeshop, which magdalene1 suggested could be the birth of a new love. I haven’t read all the comments that entry generated, but Rob did, and he pointed out the parody that awatson did.

I couldn’t find a more elegant contrast between a heart of flesh and a heart of stone if I tried.

The very first short story I had published was a story about a young woman who works in a munitions factory goes to visit for a day her grandmother who lives in a deserted, bombed-out city. The grandmother at the end of the story gave the younger woman her two precious teacups, all that she had left of the bygone day before the war came. I realize now that right back there at the very beginning of my career, I was preoccupied with this same theme without even knowing it. Amy Thomas (author of Virtual Girl) reviewed it, and I imagine she has no idea how much her more or less approving assessment still stings a bit, even years later. She called it "schmaltzy, but moving."

That critique, of course, was in a way a put down, and I knew it. It stung because the world doesn’t value schmaltzy (Etymology: Yiddish shmalts, literally, rendered fat, from Middle High German smalz; akin to Old High German smelzan to melt -- 1 : sentimental or florid music or art 2 : SENTIMENTALITY). pameladean was absolutely right: the world doesn't value the heart of flesh, and always seeks to replace it with the heart of stone. Look at awatson’s last paragraph: I don't know the poster of the original, and I've got nothing against them. I'm glad they see the world the way they do, and honestly, I hope their version comes true. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel briefly warmed and uplifted by their account, but then my natural bitterness got the better of me.

magdalene1 saw the couple and viewed them one way: He’s tall, with brown hair and thick glasses with black frames. She’s short and curvy, with thick curly brown hair. awatson took the very same description and saw it with different eyes, with a jeering dismissive undertone: He's lanky, with slightly greasy brown hair and thick glasses with dated looking frames. She's short and fat, with frizzy brown hair. awatson is seeing them with the bitter glass that the demons hold that W.B. Yeats talks about in "The Two Trees." (See the essay at the end of that link).

Is the romantic love that magdalene1 thought she witnessed at that coffeeshop a myth? In the great conversation between Tolkien and Lewis that led to Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, Lewis said that the story of beautiful story of Christ dying to redeem the world was a myth, and myths were merely lies, though lies "breathed in silver."

No, they are not, Tolkien replied. They are truth.

Of course romantic love is a myth. But in that myth is a truth that can comfort you when you are alone and discover that you need not be alone because someone loves you. It can keep you warm at night, it can save your life from despair, though the world will always jeer and mock and predict that everything will end up horribly. We live in a cynical age, but I’m going to continue to resist that cynicism.

Let the world sneer. I’m going to continue trying to nurture my heart of flesh and resist the heart of stone.

Edited to add: Oh dear, oh dear. I see that I've set off somewhat of a comment kerfluffle. I've been thinking about this all day and marshalling my thoughts. I have to leave work now. Rather than replying to comments on this entry piecemeal, I'll do a new entry when I get home, and perhaps this time I'll explain myself a bit more clearly.

More re: Heart of Flesh/Heart of Stone. Optimism, empathy and ethics

Lots and lots of comments on my last point. Um, where to start. I'm going to try to answer some of the comments and articulate a little bit better exactly what I'm getting at with this metaphor of "heart of flesh/heart of stone." I plunge into these explanations with trepidation, sure that I'll mess up again. Bear with me. I'll do my best.( Read more )

Eowyn Challenge Report

Have reached the Falls of Rauros today.

It's time to peel away from the rest of the Fellowship and strike out for Mount Doom.

Read about the Eowyn Challenge here and the Livejournal community here.