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THE MAPLEWOODS
MIRROR #24 - April 2008
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for past issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
In This Issue:
About Life
(Springsteen’s Return to Los Angeles)
About Death (Notes
from a Healthcare Assistant)
The New World in Publishing:
· Part One
· Part Two
Save the Date: June 13th
ABOUT LIFE (SPRINGSTEEN’S RETURN TO
L.A.)
My spring quarter UCLA
class was cancelled at the end of March—not enough people signed up—so
rather than be depressed, I logged onto to Ticketmaster and found I was
able to get two tickets to Bruce Springsteen in Anaheim on Tuesday, April
8, a night I normally would be teaching. Ann had never been to a
Springsteen concert before, so here was a chance to take her and witness
the Boss through her virgin eyes.
This was my eighth concert of his since
1982. A person we met at a food stand inside the Honda Center said
this was his forty-eighth concert since 1979. There are many
others like him. In November, I wrote about what fueled my love of
Springsteen’s music—his passion, drive, and poetry—but I perceived with
this latest concert another element, powerful and subtle, that propels
people to flock to concerts time and again.
My brother and his wife also went for their
first time. They knew someone in the music business and wrangled
incredible tickets for themselves, five rows up from the stage to one
side. We were in the rafters, but in the center of the sightline, and
I wasn’t unhappy in the least. Everyone we met around us had seen him
before, and they were excited. You’d think we were seeing a guru.
There is one song that Springsteen always plays
at each concert: “Born to Run.” People pump their fists into the air
in rhythm. At times, Springsteen doesn’t sing it at all. He
lets his audience do the work, especially for the phrase “tramps like us,
baby, we were born to run.” The song, like “Thunder Road,” is about a
guy talking a girl into hopping onto his motorcycle and taking off.
“Born to Run” opens vividly, contrasting day and night:
In the day, we sweat it
out in the streets of a runaway American dream.
At night, we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines,
sprung from cages out on Highway 9,
chrome wheeled, fuel injected
and steppin' out over the line.
The song quickly feels like the anthem it’s
become. The daily grind “rips the bones from your back; it’s a death
trap,” but as long as you see you have a choice in things, you can leave
and someday “we’re going to get to that place where we really want to go
and we’ll walk in the sun.” It’s upbeat.
Springsteen’s optimism, however, is never far
from deep darkness. Sometimes his songs, such as “Point
Blank," say it directly as in the lines, “You wake up and you're
dying / you don't even know what from.” A little bit later in the song
comes:
These days you don't
wait on Romeo's
you wait on that welfare check
and on all them pretty things that you can't ever have
and on all the promises
that always end up point blank, shot between the eyes.
Point blank like little white lies you tell to ease your pain.
His song “The River” stays with me because of
the picture he paints of young optimism quickly overshadowed by life’s
events. The narrative of two young happy lovers turns quickly in this
stanza:
Then I got Mary pregnant
and, man, that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
We went down to the courthouse,
and the judge put it all to rest.
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle,
No flowers, no wedding dress.
Life doesn’t get any easier, and the narrator
has a question later that reverberates: “Is a dream a lie if it don't come
true, or is it something worse?”
These songs are necessary for the Springsteen
fan because like everyone else at one time or another, we’ve all met harshness,
unfairness, even trauma. However, it’s Springsteen’s conviction that
you have power to make things better. You can choose to focus on the
good. I realized this in the song “Badlands” when I again saw the
audience pumping their fists in the air and singing strongly. The
narrator is “caught in a crossfire I don’t understand,” but he says in
refrain that “I don’t give a damn.” Why? He believes in a lot
of things, including:
I believe in the love
that you gave me.
I believe in the faith that could save me.
I believe in the hope,
and I pray that some day
it may raise me above these Badlands.
My favorite line, and one I could hear everyone
shout was, “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”
Ann, my brother, and his wife all said they
felt caught up in everyone singing. They didn’t know the words, but
they could not help but feel drawn in. I saw the same thing when I
visited a gospel church several years ago. Everyone was singing
along, feeling spiritual and sure things could be good. At the end,
we were all hugging each other.
In our society where shopping has become a way
to avoid the fears of sickness and death, Springsteen reminds his
listeners, yes, there’s darkness on the edge of town, but you can rise
above it. Come on up for the rising; lay your hands in mine. It
ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.
Setlist for April 8
concert:
Thunder Road
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
Gypsy Biker
Murder Incorporated
Magic
Atlantic City
Candy's Room
Reason to Believe
Prove It All Night
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Brilliant Disguise
The Ghost of Tom Joad (w/ Tom Morello)
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
Out in the Street
* * *
Meeting Across the River
Jungleland
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
American Land
ABOUT DEATH (NOTES FROM A HEALTHCARE
ASSISTANT)
From the last issue of The Maplewoods
Mirror, my thoughts on the last stage of life brought a number of
responses. One came from Katherine Smith, who was assisting my mother
in recovering at home. Katherine wrote, “I’ve finally had time to
read your excellent newsletter. The years I wrote newsletters were
some of the richest of my life. When I married an executive, I
retired from writing, and enthusiastically entered an affluent, exciting,
and demanding new life. That phase of life also reintroduced me to
the responsibility of caring for elders, the calling that has always been
mine, although I didn't yet recognize that truth.
“My husband and I both had aging parents, and
we became caretakers for the elderly rather than becoming parents
ourselves. I wasn't happy about that at the time, but I have come to
realize that life happens, and one must go with the flow.
“I have had several careers, but life has
continued to present me with the opportunity to serve the elderly and/or
those who are in the last phase of their life. I now realize there is
no greater preparation for that final journey which we all eventually
take.
“The discoveries you made about our individual
and societal unpreparedness for humanely serving the aged are all too
typical. Our country is finally having to face up to this lack, and
is now floundering in a belated attempt to meet the needs of an aging
population.
“Living and dying gracefully is within our
individual power. Deep thought and careful planning for our
inevitable death will lift a great burden from those we love. When and how
we die may not be within our conscious choice; however, our attitude about
dying is totally within our control. A peaceful exit is the gift we
give ourselves and others.”
I’m reminded of two of my friends who’ve
died. The first is Bob Lee, the co-writer of Inherit the
Wind. Even though he knew his liver was shutting down in 1994, he
was still able to laugh—even about his cancer. He indeed gave himself
the gift of peace. The other was Jules Engle, who taught at CalArts
until age 94 and had managed his life well. One hot week in 2003, he
didn’t turn on his air conditioner—he hated it for some reason—and the heat
pulled him down. He went fairly quickly during a week in the hospital.
On his deathbed, feeling alert, he nonetheless marveled at one of my
photographs of a sandstone arch at Arches National Park. He loved the
composition. He, too, seemed calm. At his funeral, we didn’t
throw handfuls of dirt into his grave. We threw rose petals.
Philosopher Martin
Heidegger felt we cannot fully live unless we confront our own
mortality. What I’m now confronting is the idea that we may not go
necessarily easily or peacefully—and what to do? I don’t know, other
than I have noticed that older people who exercise regularly tend not to
become as frail quickly. I’ve joined a gym.
Until recently, it seemed to me the end comes
for most people two ways: some catastrophe like a stroke or heart attack
takes you quickly, or some long-term disease like Alzheimer’s takes you
slowly. What I hadn’t seen until lately is there are a large number
of people who simply get frail. They’re perfectly lucid, but they
cannot be independent as they’ve been most of their lives. They can’t
drive, they may not be able to manage finances as they once did, and their
own medication has become too complex—and too dangerous if
mismanaged.
My mother, at least for now, is in this
category. She realized in February that five months after open-heart
surgery, she still couldn’t do many things and that she needed to get
stronger, so she checked herself into assisted living that specializes in
physical therapy. She hopes to go home in a few months.
I don’t have answers. I don’t know how,
if you’re in pain, you can go gracefully. Then again, Ann’s mother
Marie had been in pain with pancreatic cancer, and after a rough number of
rounds of chemotherapy, she felt good enough to suggest a walk on the beach
with us on the Olympic Peninsula, across the bay from Seattle where she
lived. It was a windy day when we walked with her, but she had a
wonderful smile.
I took a photo of she and Ann on that beach
that reminded me instantly of Skagen, Denmark, and, in particular, of an
1893 painting by P.S. Krøyer titled, “Summer evening on Skagen’s south
beach with Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer.”
A month later, in hospice care at home, Marie
opened her eyes, waved Ann and Ann’s brother Charles over, blew them
kisses, and passed.
May you compose a poem, visualize a painting,
or blow kisses when you exit.
THE NEW WORLD IN PUBLISHING (Part One)
If you’re over 35, have you noticed that
younger people are not buying CDs? They’re perfectly content to own
only digital files. According to Entertainment Weekly, CD
sales for 2007 were down 19% from the year before. Even though
digital sales of albums have increased, total album sales with both forms
combined, digital and physical CDs, were down 15% from the year before. The
spiral downward started in 2000.
The book world is changing, too. If
you’ve been on Amazon lately, the Kindle is touted, and people I’ve heard
who’ve bought one seem to like it. I like the physical touch of
books, though—the varying size of them, the type of paper they use, the ink
on the page. I read with two pens—a highlighter for marking lines I
adore and wish I wrote, and a Tul .5 mm ink pen to note structure, or
points, or questions I have. I don’t keep my books pristine. I
jump right into them and mark them up.
The Kindle has ways to do both, too, which I’m
glad to hear about. Who knows, maybe I’ll join in someday, but
digital files don’t look as warm and friendly as books on a shelf. I
can gaze anytime to my bookcases and know I’ve read all those books.
I can gaze at my CD tower, too, and say these are albums I like.
What’s changing rapidly, though, in my favor is
akin to what I read recently in the Los Angeles Times about
28-year-old singer Ingrid Michaelson. Her self-produced album, Girls
and Boys, has sold 160,000 CDs in the U.S. to date thanks to her song
“Keep Breathing” being discovered on her MySpace page and used in a key
scene in the finale of Grey’s Anatomy last season. In
addition, her first single, “The Way I Am” was used in an Old Navy sweater
commercial. Both brought her attention to her album and now to her
tour.
Ingrid
Michaelson
Similarly my books that are produced by White
Whisker Books, a company I started, mirror the way bigger publishers do
things. Having been a senior editor at one of the first computer book
publishing companies, Prelude Press, I learned how to create and market a
professional book, and now I use that knowledge for my short stories.
One of the first things I did was register my company with the Library of
Congress so that my books can get Library of Congress control numbers.
What I do not do is what too many new authors
are too quick to do: upload their manuscript at a book company like iUniverse
and create a book without any of the intermediate steps. Too many
print-on-demand books are failures from the start—a failure to be succinct,
a failure to be readable, a failure to be edited, a failure to be a good
value for the money. Throw on a cheesy cover and call it a
book. No.
A good book is well-edited, well-designed and
marketed smartly. Marketing requires reviews and publicity before a
book comes out. It does an author little good to start marketing
after the book is available. My books are in Books in Print
and can be ordered from any bookstore.
I remember one of my professors, David Scott
Milton, once said that if you are a ballerina, you are old at 25. If
you’re a writer, you’re young at 50. In fact, writers may only be
getting into their groove at 50. I’m hoping to be getting into my
groove.
NEW WORLD (PART TWO)
In a recent USC panel on publicity and
publishing (which you can see by clicking
here), the panelists were asked how important are covers?
They all said reviewers are not influenced by covers but that covers can be
important in marketing.
While I was in grad school, I’d become a book
reviewer when one of my professors thought a report of mine could be
published, and I should send it to a local paper as a sample of my
reviewing. Sure enough, the two places I sent it to in Los Angeles,
the Daily News and the now-late Herald-Examiner, both used me
as a reviewer.
In those days, books came to the papers in
cartloads. I’d go into a giant closet and select from hundreds of
books that came in over the last few weeks. Most of the books had
plain paper covers in green or brown with the book title and publishing
information on top. Going into that closet saddened me slightly
because I knew I could give attention to just one book that week. I
was looking for a possibly good read out of hundreds. I’d have to
base my choice on title name, author’s name, and sometimes a
synopsis. I knew, too, that each paper ran only a handful of reviews
each week, and clearly there were many books that would not get read in
that closet.
Since then, there are far fewer book reviews in
newspapers and magazines, and the number of books published has only
grown. Los Angeles Times Book Review editor David Ulin, a part
of the above panel, said he receives about 200 new books a week.
Maybe twenty books are reviewed a week. That means 90% do not get
attention. It’s perhaps why fancy covers are now on books sent to
reviewers, too. Few covers come in brown or green as in the old days.
Thus, I needed to get a cover designed for both
the Advanced Reading Copy and the final. My book designer, Daniel
Will-Harris, works unlike many other graphic designers. He reads an
entire book first to see if any imagery might come up that he can use for a
cover. After he read Months and Seasons, he gave me about
eight covers ideas to consider. From those eight, I selected four
that intrigued me for different reasons.
 
 
I sent the covers above to a number
of friends and acquaintances to get feedback. I wanted to know why
someone preferred one cover over the others.
This time, I received passionate defenders for
each cover. Their reasoning was sound. More people selected the
one with the chicks and the magnifying glass than the others, but the
reasoning people used on the others gave me pause. Everyone seemed to
be right.
Daniel at first didn’t sound a preference, but
after I had him adjust a few of the covers, he made it clear he liked the
one with the magnifying glass—that it had the most personality, that it
mirrored the spirit of the book, and that it connected with my last book.
After he bumped up the type size a little, that’s the one I selected.
The publication date is June 13, but it should
be out before then. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
SAVE THE DATE
Months and Seasons
will debut at the Beverly Hills Public Library with a reading, book signing
and reception on Friday, June 13 at 8 p.m. The Beverly Hills
Library is located at 444 North Rexford Drive at the corner of Rexford and
Burton Way. Santa Monica Boulevard is just to the north. For a map to
the library,
click here. Or use this:
I’m worried that enough people won’t show up,
so I’d really love to see you there.
Until next time,
Chris
"All good books have one
thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened."
~ Ernest Hemingway
For
reviews or more information on either of my two books below, click on the
cover.
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