Category: blog

Let’s do the time warp again

Oh lord, I have become too old for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We watched it on DVD recently and didn’t finish it. That might be because I was bone-tired from a screenplay deadline (ten or so in a row of those 4 AM days…). But I think it was because it’s a 33-year-old movie, and it shows. And I just couldn’t get past that.

But between September 1978 and May 1979, I bet I went to midnight showings of Rocky Horror at the Biograph in Chicago at least 20 times. Maybe more…

I was a freshman at Northwestern University, a thoroughly miserable experience made bearable by the friendship of Sudi Khosropur. She was awesome — and we bonded over trash TV, Rocky Horror and a mutual crush on Tim Curry. Very often on a Friday or Saturday night, we’d get dressed up in full Rocky Horror audience participation splendor and take the El down to the Biograph. I wore a black leotard, an unbuttoned white man’s shirt, a black bow tie, fishnet stockings, boots, and a black fedora. Sudi wore fishnets and heels and short skirts. We’d join the line of hundreds of people waiting to get into the midnight show. People had beer and boom boxes playing the music. We did the Time Warp out on Lincoln Ave. more times than I can remember.

And then we were in, and seated, and the crowd would buzz with adrenaline like a jet engine… and then the movie would start. And we’d yell the lines, throw the rice, hold up the newspapers, squirt the water, throw the confetti and the cards… we did it all. It was fantastic.

Tim Curry had a career as a rock musician, along with his stage and screen career, and I had all three of his albums. So you may imagine our excitement when he came through Chicago on tour. He played at the Park West. You had to be 21 to get in. We were 18. But we were determined…and not just to see the show. Sudi, who had way more guts than I did, called the venue the afternoon of the show, when we knew the band would be loading in and sound-checking, and asked for Tim Curry. She got his manager, and she told the manager that we wanted to take Tim Curry to dinner after the show.

The manager said no very nicely, as I recall.

So off we went to the show. This was in the days before the obsessive checking of ID’s, so you just had to have enough brass to act as if. I looked about 16, but I was good at appearing absolutely comfortable — and Sudi looked 21 and was very good at distracting the guy at the door while I breezed through.

We had a great time at the show, and we got to meet Tim Curry. I was appalled to see a whole contingent of people at the meet-and-greet who were dressed up in RH gear… it seemed so tacky. Sudi told Tim Curry how much she had enjoyed his performance as William Shakespeare. She got the best smile of the night.

And then the two of us went out for a 2 AM breakfast and splurged on steak and eggs. That was fantastic too.

I left Northwestern at the end of that year. And Rocky Horror was never the same for me again.

Sudi, if you’re out there, never mind about the last time we saw each other when you probably thought I was too fucking weird for words. I would love to hear from you.

Kelley and Sudi, 1979

Hollywood, here we come!

Nicola and I will read for the first time in Los Angeles at A Different Light bookstore (West Hollywood) on May 30 at 7:30 pm. I’ll be reading from Dangerous Space, and Nicola will be reading from something amazing she’s written (grin, meaning I have no idea what she’s decided).

We both love to read, and we’re good at it — so please come and hear our stories, talk to us about writing and life, and help us get a glimpse into the reality of the City of Angels. LA is one of the iconic American cities, like New York and Chicago, a city that everyone “knows” even if they’ve never been there. I’m no different — I haven’t been to LA in, I don’t know, more than 30 years, and yet I have all kinds of opinions and ideas about it (shakes head at the wackiness of being an American). I’m looking forward to it.

We’re also attending the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony on May 29 (also in West Hollywood, in an unusual instance of life being convenient…). We’ll be gussied up in our party best (it’s a big deal when they let the writers come out and play, you know? So we take it very seriously!) If you’re there, please say hello and help us enjoy the evening.

Nicola Griffith reading – May 6

Nicola will read at the Lambda Literary Awards Finalists reading at Hugo House in Seattle on May 6 at 7:00 pm. Also reading is Corrina Wycoff, finalist in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category.

Nicola will read from her kickass memoir, and it will be fun. The reading is in the Cabaret space at Hugo House, and the café very sensibly offers beer and wine for sale during the event. Please join us for an evening of good writing in a convivial atmosphere.

Tiptree Award and Honor List

I’m delighted to announce that my novella “Dangerous Space” is a Tiptree Honor List selection for 2007.

Thanks very much to the Tiptree Jury for their consideration and support, and to Aqueduct Press for publishing Dangerous Space and giving me a chance to write the story that comes closest (so far) to how I feel about music.

Congratulations to Sarah Hall, winner of the Tiptree Award for her novel The Carhullan Army.

Read all the details here.

Vid it

Have you heard of vidding?

Buy the DVDs of your favorite TV show or movie. Get a kickass piece of music. Load up some software. And put together diverse images and brief clips to make a music video. Chart your love for a character or relationship, explore a theme or arc. Express your connection to the show.

Tell your own story about the story that you love. To music that you love. How cool is that?

We have the technology these days to allow pretty much anyone with a computer to respond to art if they choose — by blogging, creating fan websites and community, mashing up, posting fan fiction, costuming, vidding. I love this. What joy, to be able to respond to what moves us.

Although I’m a writer, I don’t find my kicks in fan fiction even when it involves characters or stories that I love. My heart belongs to mashups and vidding, and when I think of responding to someone else’s art, it almost always involves music. I think I love these forms so much because they give me indirect access to something I yearn to do directly, but cannot. I can play music well enough, but I’m not a musician. I’m not an artist. But if I cannot create my own music, I can still choose to create something original and meaningful (to me) with someone else’s music.

Some feel that using images and music in this way is stealing. And technically, in fact, it is. But although I am a hedgehog (very prickly) about many aspects of nicking someone else’s art (see this, for example), in the case of using art to respond to art, well, I’m all for it. Nicola talked recently about fan fiction, and I agree with her — we should all be free to play. We should all be free to show our joy. We shouldn’t steal unpublished work, and we shouldn’t steal the financial benefits of published work. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Any artist who believes they can maintain total control over every comma or pixel or note of their work is dreaming — and so why would anyone start that fight over a three-minute music video that does nothing but show love?

This is the best vid I know of, made by y-fish. It uses clips from Firefly and Serenity, and the song “Defying Gravity” from the Broadway show Wicked. I think it’s great. If you like it, let her know.

(And if you visit y-fish’s LiveJournal, be sure to note that the first comment on this vid is from Joss Whedon, the creator (along with Tim Minear) of Firefly and Serenity, who is totally non-grumpy about this use of his work. About this love.)

I wish there were a way to respond like this to a novel or short story. Imagine. Wow. If someone did something like this in response to my work, I would cry like a baby and count myself blessed.

Dance to the music

So I did my dancing thing last night and had a blast.

The club was packed, the dance floor was heaving, and people were having a great time. DJ Stacey played Frankie Goes To Hollywood just for me. In my two sets, I got everything from “We Are Family” to “Sexyback.”

My mother was there. With her video camera and her tiger t-shirt. She got an unexpected treat when one of the other dancers dropped into her lap and started to wiggle… It was wonderful to see her smile and laugh and move to the music. She remarked on how much she loved seeing an entire room full of women who all looked so happy — and for me, the gift is that she was one of them.

And Nicola was there, which made it all the more special. She looked gorgeous, she told me I was fantastic, and she didn’t blink when other women stuffed dollar bills down my bra. (Is she a keeper, or what?) I feel very lucky indeed (no pun intended) to have such unconditional, confident love.

And good friends came to cheer me on. Thank you, thank you to Sue, Vicki, Alsia, Elbereth, Kate, Liz, and Luey for being there. Thanks for dancing (you all looked beautiful!). And thank you especially for the goodwill, and for letting me share with you some of the particular joy that dancing is for me.

Story is real

True confession time: although I’m often billed as a science fiction writer, there’s actually very little science that engages me beyond either the practical (Does it make my life better? Or If it’s broken, how do I fix it?) or the aesthetic (Meteor showers are pretty!). I have never been fascinated by science for its own sake. It is human experience that interests me, and it’s true that much of human experience is grounded in, or informed by, science — in particular, how we respond to our own biology (gender, sex, illness, dying, fear, memory…). Each practically-identical biological human mechanism — and in spite of our individual genome patterns we are 99.9% the same — is also a particular person with our own thoughts and feelings and responses, our own unique set of experiences. We are essentially the same, and a huge part of that sameness is that we hunger to be different and are yet so often terrified by difference in others. We are souls who drive, and driven by, the most complex wetware that we know of in the universe… now that’s interesting.

And so in spite of my general disregard for scientific discoveries, I am in love with the idea of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons fire in our brains when we perform an action or when we see someone else performing an action. Mirror neurons help us assign meaning to other people’s behavior. I see you and I know what your actions mean, because in my brain there is no neuronal difference between you doing a thing and me doing it myself. It feels the same to my brain.

I know what it means when you look at me with rage or hurt or bedroom eyes — because the same neurons fire when I look that way at you. I know that look. I see you pick up a baseball bat and shift your grip, heft it in that certain way, and I know the only thing you’re planning to knock out of the park is me. I know when a baseball bat turns into a weapon — and there, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because even reading a description of an action, if it is accurately and specific, fires your mirror neurons.

There are lots of theories now that mirror neurons are the basis of empathy, and that they are instrumental in acquiring language. But what they mean to me as a storyteller is that I really can show you what’s happening instead of having to always tell you.

And now I know why story works. I know why words on a page or pixels on a screen can make me feel such deep joy or sadness, can make me tremble with fear or wonder. Because when story in any medium is done right, it really does come to life inside us. For an instant, we live the story. It’s real.

And I know something else: I know why I am a writer. I know why I took an acting degree that I was so clearly at the time unsuited for. I know why I dance. I know why I sing along with U2 at the concerts.

Because story is real. When I write, when I act, when I sing in the car, when I am brave or stubborn enough to keep at it until I have been as specific and honest as I can be in the creation — when I get the story right — it fires all those fabulous mirror neurons, and those moments of story are just as real to my brain as if I were actually doing them. I am watching my life drop down an elevator shaft; I am a rock star; I am fighting for my life or struggling with love or having amazing sex or holding my breath at the immensity of some moment of everyday life in which, suddenly, everything has changed…

In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff refers to “emotions this raw.” I’ve always liked (and been grateful for) that, because it comes closest to my own ideas about what I love in story, and what I strive for in the stories I tell. I don’t give a fuck about Big Ideas. I am all about Big Feelings. Not necessarily big experiences — although I like those too — but the way that the large and the small of life can make us feel, and what we do because of or in spite of those feelings.

I’ve said that I write because I want to make people feel those things. To make difference accessible to readers — behavior and feelings that they might not otherwise choose in their own lives. To open a mainline into someone else’s personal truth. But that’s not it, or at least not the most important part. I do it because I want (or need) to feel those things myself, in ways that don’t necessarily involve actual experience. I won’t ever be a rock star, but I want the physical and psychic blast of 20,000 people singing my song to me. I don’t want people I love to die, but I respond so violently to grief in stories that it’s like I am practicing or preparing as best I can for the day when it will grab me by the throat and shake me. I can’t be an astronaut (that science thing…) but I want to see my world suspended in a deep dark universe of wonders.

And I can. We all can. We’re not limited by our own lives, by our own choices. We can live other lives and other choices too, and that’s not just an intellectual concept. It’s real. It’s as real to your brain as your last banana muffin on a warm Sunday morning, or how your sunglasses make you feel hip even when you’re just pumping gas, or the smile yesterday from that beautiful stranger on the train, or the heartstopping second before you say I love you to someone new.

And there. I just told you four little stories, and perhaps one of them was real to you. Perhaps for a second you were there. Really there.

Story is real. It makes me want to shout or dance or cry or go hug someone from the sheer joy of being human. Every story you love, whether it’s Frodo and Sam, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, or Buffy, whether it’s Shakespeare or Calvin and Hobbes, is alive and real in the amazing space inside you.

Aud for president

Nicola’s novel Always is out in trade paperback. Many congratulations to my sweetie, of whom I am overwhelmingly proud, as always.

Seriously, folks — let’s reflect. Nicola Griffith has:

  • Published five novels and a short story “conversation piece” (Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, Stay, Always and With Her Body), all of which are still in print
  • Written the coolest memoir on the planet (currently nominated for a Lambda Literary Award)
  • Edited three ground-breaking anthologies (Bending the Landscape), one of which won the World Fantasy Award
  • As a writer and editor, won a dozen national and international awards, including the Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy, Spectrum, Endeavour and Lambda Literary Award (five times…).
  • And is currently working on a book that kicks all this to the curb. I have read the first 40,000 words, and it is fucking amazing.

And now, Aud Torvingen (“one of my favorite kick-ass, super-competent, coolheaded, hotblooded, semilegal girls”1) is running for president! (And it’s not even that much of a stretch to imagine electing a fictional character right now, since it feels like we already have one in the job…)

1 Salon.com