Death gives meaning to life

Roy Batty is pissed. He is the peak of what a replicant can be. Brilliant and reflective. Handsome and powerful, a physical specimen.

But despite his near perfection—his is a light that burns twice as bright—he is, like the flesh and blood humans he is designed to replicate, mortal.

His maker, Dr. Eldon Tyrell of Tyrell Corporation, has programmed the replicants with a short lifespan. Roy wants more, telling his maker, “I want more life, fucker” (one cut of the film substitutes, “father,” which makes the point of who he is addressing even more blatant). 

But more life is beyond Tyrell’s power. So Roy crushes his head like an egg.

His rage is understandable. We’ve all raged at the finitude of life. If you live long enough you see grandparents, aunts, parents, friends--hopefully not children—perish, and deal with grief of separation that may be eternal.

Roy’s life burns twice as bright, as does his incandescent rage at his maker. But is it possible he is mistaken, his anger misplaced? And that he should be, perhaps, grateful?

Roy’s death is beautiful. The speech he gives, reportedly ad-libbed, is perhaps the most powerful and poignant scene in the film. Ridley Scott made some interesting, purposeful choices with how he filmed it.

Death is necessary. Without it, life lacks meaning.

Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death explains that we are limited beings with unlimited horizons, and so live in a constant state of terror (often subliminal) about our own impermanence and insignificance. That all we do—witnessing attack ships off the shoulder of Orion, for example—will all be lost when we pass. And nothing will have come of it.

Yet a life without death represents a different kind of terror.  In The Denial of Death Becker describes the concept of a transference object, which is a person, institution, or idea onto which an individual projects their need for meaning, security, and immortality.

My personal transference object is J.R.R. Tolkien. I happen to like very much what JRRT has to say about death. Tolkien writes that Iluvatar, the creator, gave Men the gift of mortality, setting them apart from the Elves, who are bound to the world until its end. Elves may be immortal, but they are also weary and burdened by time; their spirits are tied to the fate of Arda (the world), and they experience sorrow and loss without the release of death. Men, on the other hand, are granted the ability to leave the world—and their destiny beyond it remains a mystery, even to the wise.

This idea is most clearly articulated in The Silmarillion, where death is described not as a curse but as a “gift” that allows Men to transcend the world and return to Iluvatar in a way the Elves cannot. But as Morgoth corrupts the world, Men come to fear death, forgetting its intended grace. Instead the Numenoreans strive in vain for immortality.

Tolkien calls death a great gift, the greatest given to men. It breaks the cycle of worldly attachment and offers the hope of something greater. In Tolkien’s Catholic worldview, this aligns with the idea that death is a passage, not an end. It is the one thing that prevents stagnation, that pushes us toward humility, courage, and faith. 

Death, for Tolkien, is the door through which true transcendence is possible. Interestingly, both Becker and Tolkien believed that human culture, politics, the stuff around us, was not the way to ultimate meaning. We must shift our perspective towards the cosmic. This mirrors my pursuit of identifying my values and searching for meaning in the symbolic world of ideas rather than the physical. We'll never find meaning here, not even in rings and Silmarils.

Death makes life meaningful, because without it spending time with people does not come with a cost. Without death, any achievement could be unlocked in time. Everyone would eventually share the same experiences, and memories, as they’d explore every crevice of the planet. Because you could in theory do everything, nothing would be unique, or special. Including any given human life. 

You would never have to think about whether you want to spend your time reading a book, or watching a movie, because you could consume all of them. You could choose not to spend time with a loved one and instead watch 200 straight hours of Netflix, because you could spend as much time as you wanted, later. I am not sure love as we know it would even exist; we’d get bored with our life-mate and take up the next.

So death is a gift. It’s a mighty paradox, and I almost feel ashamed, flippant, at writing that. I am quite certain that when I lose someone dear, I will be devastated. I can’t even contemplate my own death, and potential eternal separation from everyone I love.

Yet on a relatively rational day like today I believe it to be true. The abstract knowledge of my own death motivates me to appreciate the warm spring sun coming through the window on my face. It motivates me to write this essay. “Blessed” with immortality and lacking any urgency, why not write it tomorrow, or tomorrow, or … never?

Part of me wonders if I’m not just rationalizing my own terror, the knowledge that I one day too will depart down The River of No Return. 

Would I accept  immortality were it offered to me, if some AGI were able to stop aging and keep us forever young? I don’t know. 

But today, at least? I believe death is a gift.

Roy’s memories are not lost like tears in rain because his story remains. Deckard is the witness, and we are the witness of the film. His death and all deaths are tragic of course, but it’s also the ultimate gift for humanity, which makes more Roy never more human than at that very moment.

And perhaps his soul, symbolized by the flight of the dove, is saved.

***

Holy crap I’m writing about some heavy topics these days. I seem to have no choice, just following the muse. I suppose this is what happens when you’re north of 50 and an empty nester, dealing with a death in the family and others suffering with old age. But the spring is here and I’ve got a lot to be grateful for.

The Knight stands against nihilism

Excellent book... unfortunate cover blurb.

“It is honor, Able. A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. If his honor requires him to fight, he fights. He doesn’t count his foes or measure their strength, because those things don’t matter. They don’t affect his decision.”

The trees and the wind were so still then that I felt like the whole world was listening to him.

“In the same way, he acts honorably toward others, even when they do not act honorably toward him. His word is good, no matter to whom he gives it.”

--Gene Wolfe, The Knight

Character matters. There is truth in the world of ideas. 

I was listening to a podcast the other day. One of the guests--an author, self-described philosopher, and entrepreneur—concluded a view of the world I find abhorrent: Objective truth does not exist, values are manufactured and none better than others, and the purpose of life is maximizing personal happiness. 

I’m leaving this dude’s name out because I don’t know him, and I’m attacking the idea, not the individual. But I do wonder: How do you end up in your mid-50s endorsing nihilism? Cheerily admitting there are no such things as absolute moral values … which means that everything is in theory permitted? It’s a train of thought that leaves dragons hoarding wealth they’ve ruthlessly abstracted from others, swelled with hubris, unable to see that their gold is derived from the thankless labor of uncountable generations who built civilization, created the human project from squalor, and allow for the existence of privileged coastal millionaire elites.

Few openly admit to nihilism, but many act that way.  “I’ll extract wealth from the less fortunate, because no one is watching. And after all, it’s technically legal and I can get away with it.” 

We each have the freedom to construct our own meaning and live our own lives as we see fit … except when that freedom infringes on or destroys other’s lives. The strong are obligated to lift up the sick, weak, and needy. Because it’s honorable to do so. And I would argue, an obligation that is an objective truth of the human condition. How long does this last if everyone behaves like a selfish douche canoe?

Imagine if Able of the High Heart was a nihilist? It would make a much different book than Gene Wolfe’s The Knight. 

The story centers around a small boy who enters through a portal from our world to Mythgarthr, a world of high fantasy, gods, magic, monsters… and stouthearted knights. After an encounter with an elflike being, Disiri the Mossmaiden, Able rapidly grows into a powerful man and embarks on a journey into knighthood.

This sudden transformation means we get a uniquely compressed character arc. Able goes from an adolescent experiencing the vicissitudes of life, to young man called to perform duties to others, to grown man called to service to his own heart and conscience. From learning from others to teaching others the way. As we all should, objectively. Because if we don’t do this, we’ll leave the next generation in shambles. Which should concern you unless you’re a nihilist and think that death and life are one and the same.

Of course, we’re never going to be perfect. We throw away much for pleasure. Reject responsibility to others because it doesn’t maximize our momentary well-being. As Able does with the vixen of the woods. This is part of growing up. I think we all have to indulge in pleasures of the flesh. 

But at some point adults realize it’s time to fight the dragon. 

As noted recently I struggle with Wolfe. I find him needlessly opaque and allusive, at times impenetrable. Not so much with The Knight, which I enjoyed, if not unreservedly. Even here Wolfe does not make the journey easy for the reader. The story is told in an epistolary/letters from Mythgarthr to modern earth style which I don’t love, which leaves important sequences glossed over or relegated to the background. Able often for example will completely gloss over a battle, and only later do we realize the extent of his heroism through offhand remarks from observers after the fact. 

… but that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Knights with a code of honor don’t crow about their accomplishments. They don’t virtue signal on Instagram and sell self-help books as they lead deeply insulated, selfish lives. That would be … dishonorable. 

There’s much other great stuff in here that make the The Knight a memorable journey. Wolfe-ian symbols I’m quite certain I failed to grasp. When Able plunges three times into a deep pool, beyond air and endurance, to retrieve his armor and sword, and hears the horns of Aelfrice/elfland, we feel a mythic power we cannot articulate, literally and metaphorically deep. But one lesson we can be sure of: Unless you confront the metaphorical dragon it becomes terribly real.

I’m sure I will tackle The Wizard after a palate cleanser. For now something a bit lighter is in order.

Some interpretations of the ambiguous ending of The Green Knight (2021)

If you haven’t seen The Green Knight, and don’t wish to be spoiled, stop here before you enter the Green Chapel and its perils. Thou hast been warned.

The 2021 David Lowery written and directed film The Green Knight is an interesting, inventive take on the old poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” 

It’s beautifully rendered. You can’t take your eyes off it. It also sticks with you, in part due to its ambiguous ending, which is very much open to interpretation.

Here’s a few thoughts I had from a recent re-watch. And yes, I seem gripped again by my annually recurring year-end fascination with King Arthur.

Needless to say spoilers coming. 

***

Brief recap: The plot of The Green Knight (book and film) centers around the arrival of a massive, green-skinned and armored knight in King Arthur’s court on Christmas. He offers up a challenge: Any knight can strike him a blow with sword or axe from which he will not flinch, save that he will return the blow one year hence.

Arthur’s nephew Gawain, the youngest knight in the court, takes up the challenge and strikes a savage cut that sends his head tumbling to the floor. Then, to the horror of all in the hall, the mysterious figure picks up his severed head and turns to leave the stunned court, but not before reminding Gawain he must ride out to his chapel in a year to complete the challenge.

Gawain commits, and embarks on a series of adventures en route. In one of these he is given a green belt/sash that renders him invulnerable to any blow. An obvious, unforeseen advantage in a contest of his sort. But also, unfair and dishonorable.

In the poem, Gawain leaves on the sash, and receives a nick on the neck as a rebuke.

In the film, Gawain removes his sash after an agonized internal struggle, then turns to await the blow. One we’re not sure lands, because the film ends before we see it.

So, does Gawain get his head cut off?

I don’t believe that’s what actually matters. What does is his decision moments prior.

Earlier in the scene Gawain asks an existential question as he stares death in the face: “Is this really all there is?”

This is not (merely) a question concerning the end of his own life, but the possibility of a life without meaning, one ruled by the material laws of nature in which purpose and beauty and meaning are empty and meaningless, and death and decay our only masters. The type of world described by the dragon in John Gardner’s Grendel: “It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen.”

If he leaves on the sash, he will be invulnerable, but also will have fatally compromised the only virtue that matters in such a world: His integrity. 

Gawain has a flash of what would happen should he leave on the sash: he becomes a king of a fallen kingdom, a dishonorable ruler, haunted by his choice over the long years until the kingdom falls, corrupted.

Ultimately he chooses honor. Does that cost him his life?

The film offers some clues. “Well done my brave knight,” the green knight says, after Gawain removes the sash. And then, the final cryptic line of the film: “Now, Off With Your Head,” which obviously implies he’s a goner. 

After all, a blow is due in return per the sacred rules of the game. Honor demands it.

However, the Green Knight delivers the final line with a good natured, light-hearted spirit, indicating that any blow will be only lightly given, which would make it true to the poem.

As important as this (obviously) is for Gawain and his future, I’m not sure it matters either way. 

Even if Gawain loses his head, the message of the film can be interpreted as profoundly hopeful. 

Let’s start with the idea that the Green Knight represents nature. If so, his acknowledgement of Gawain’s selfless act implies there is honor embedded in nature. It is not an abstract, empty term rendered meaningless by postmodernism, it is as real as the grass under our feet, the rotation of the earth and its seasons. We just have to make the choice.

Though there is a far bleaker interpretation. There may be honor but it ultimately doesn’t matter, nature is going to kill you in the end anyway. It’s all a cosmic joke.

But maybe we should still act honorably anyway, because doing so is its own reward.

Regardless, I believe Gawain's transformation from shiftless coward to noble knight suggests that facing death with dignity is essential to living a meaningful life.

What do you think?

I welcome any thoughts on this.

Humans are meant to do hard things

In my professional life I serve a profession called medical coding. No need to look it up; it’s quite niche and rather impenetrable to the outsider, though very important to the quality and financial health of hospitals.

I hear complaints all the time from medical coders about the difficulty of the work, and proposed fixes that would make everything better.

“If only the doctors would document acute systolic heart failure!” “If only the official coding guidelines were clearer about which diagnosis to report as principal!” “If only the insurance companies and hospitals could all agree on the definition of sepsis… 

… then all our problems would go away!”

I don’t blame them for lodging these complaints, or for wanting fixes.

But what they don’t realize is they’d be replacing their day-to-day problems with a much bigger problem. Removing all the hard things would cost them their jobs. Because medical coding could be safely automated away.

And it would also cost them part of their life’s purpose, and stunt their development toward becoming an actualized human being.

I agree that their work is complex and often quite frustrating. Byzantine and possibly overly and needlessly complex in some aspects. 

In need of some fixes.

But in general I see things with a different lens.

These “problems” are a good thing. Hard is a good thing.

Coding is not only a well-paying career, but for many actually meaningful too. Granted not for all; many consider medical coding, clinical documentation integrity and other like/adjacent professions (trauma/oncology registry, for example) mere work. They’d rather be doing something else, they work for the money and for the weekend.

But others have launched meaningful careers, made lifelong personal and professional relationships, in this line of work. Grew as people, became better versions of themselves, through the struggle of mastering their profession. 

As have I.

What happens if it all goes away? And the machines take the work?

You might say, this is just how the world is, and how professions evolve. One line of work is replaced by another, displaced by technology. Some “optimists” argue: We can now spend our time doing more meaningful work instead of these lower-order tasks.

There is some truth to this, but this line of reasoning falls apart when entire human skillsets are outsourced to machines.

Let’s use the example of something more meaningful to readers of this blog: Writing and the visual arts.

If I just enter a series of prompts, and then prompt the AI for additional clarity, and publish a book in a weekend, this is not a meaningful achievement. If I can summon Dall-e to create an image, I did not create the art, the machine did.

You put in no sweat equity worthy of celebration. Had no stumbles, and failures, and doubts, and anxieties that, when you finally overcame them and published the work, made it your crowning achievement. Regardless of whether you ever sold a copy you did something amazing.

You created something and did something hard. You.

We need to do hard stuff.

Doing hard work will disproportionately reward people with greater ability. This leads to inequity … but that’s the way it has to be.

We don’t need to spend all our waking hours doing hard things (I would not be opposed to a four day workweek, for example). Nor am I calling for an end to technological development. Some jobs will inevitably be eliminated by labor saving technology. We don’t need to return to the good old days of horse-drawn wagons and polio.

If we could replace meaninglessly hard work, I’d be in favor of any such labor-saving device. I’m sure the suffering laborer would too.

But no one seems to have a plan for a world post work. Or far more frighteningly, life without difficulty. No one has addressed the fundamental underlying truth that doing hard things is good for us.

There is no intellectual I’m aware of who has painted a compelling--let alone non-dystopic and sane—picture of what a post-scarcity society would look like, and what it would mean for human flourishing. Could we still create believable, heartfelt art without any relationship to struggle? If we didn’t even know what struggle was, because everything was easy, available with the push of a button?

I would not call such a society a utopia, but a terrible dystopia. 

The most beautiful human art is about struggle, and loss, and sometimes overcoming it. Even if the victory is only temporary.

Without anything hard to do, we’ll all be eating soma.

Our modern problems with reading

We don’t have infinite time. The amount of reading attention any new book must compete with is getting progressively smaller. So we have to be selective.

It’s basic math.

Robert E. Howard read Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack London and H. Rider Haggard (and many, many authors besides, but bear with me as I make this point).

Michael Moorcock read Howard and his contemporaries C.L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith… but is obligated to read ERB and London and Haggard.

Writers today read Moorcock and his contemporaries Karl Edward Wagner and Jack Vance and Poul Anderson. But also should read Howard and Moore and Smith … and ERB and London and Haggard.

The demands on new generations of readers multiply. What about readers and writers three generations from now?

Oh, and we all must read the classics. Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Hemingway.

Make sure you read outside your genre. One should read history, too. 

The accumulated reading, generation on generation, cannot continue. The math doesn’t add up. How many books can anyone read in a lifetime?

Some books must fall by the wayside.

This is just the beginning of the problem. We have many more demands on our attention than previous generations. Movies, TV, video games, TTRPGs, YouTube, doom scrolling, etc., all compete for our attention during “free” time. And despite all the breathless predictions of the techno utopians, we don’t seem to be working any fewer hours.

That means we’ve got choices to make. As you get older, you realize you cannot fritter your time away. It’s far too precious.

So, what are we to do?

My advice: Read what you want. Just read, as long as its not Reddit forums or Twitter threads.

Read new sword-and-sorcery or read the classics. Read comic books, or graphic novels. Just make sure it’s something someone has created, with care. 

Don’t listen to what other people think. I don’t. Because I’ve read enough to spot illogic and ad hominem and the rest. 

Just because a book is old, published 60 or 80 or 400 years ago, does not render it out of date. C.S. Lewis tells us to rid yourself of “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.”

And our age is prone to its own illusions.

Anything still in print 60 years after it was published is probably worth your time. Because it survived the test of time. The books that influenced your favorite author(s) are probably worth reading too, even if out of print. 

But don’t feel obligated to plow through classics that are going to kill your love of reading, either. 

Read what interests you, and carry that fire against public opinion. Which is often shit.

That’s another benefit of reading widely and deeply—read enough good stuff and you’ll develop a sensitive and accurate bullshit detection meter.

"All truth is relative" is not true

“All truth is relative.”

This comment was posted on a message board I frequent, in a conversation in which I was a part, and the person who wrote it apparently expected it to go unchallenged—as if lobbing a hand grenade into a room might go unchallenged. 

I disagree with this statement and here explain why in detail, which I could not do there.

Truth is relative in many circumstances. Two longtime spouses quarreling over who should clean the garage is a hard situation to untangle, and the truthful answer to the question: Who should clean it? very relative. Perhaps the man agreed at one point to handle all outdoor work, the wife indoor, and the garage is some liminal space that could be either. Perhaps the wife is (understandably) angry with the man because she has done all the cleaning and he has not held up his end of the social contract.

The world is full of countless, similar examples where both sides seem right, or at least share a version of the truth that point to a conclusion that all truth is relative. These range from small and domestic to the largest scale, i.e., wars between great powers.

However, there comes a point where truth is no longer relative. And when disagreement on what is true is dangerous, even hideous, and cannot go unchallenged. Particularly when applied to morality, which I believe at certain levels passes into an objective truth. At least, objective enough that we must all embrace it.

For example, take the following statement: Dashing an infant’s head against a wall is bad.

Is this only relatively true, based on the circumstances? Is bashing an infant to death permissible, even good, in some circumstances?

Or, It’s acceptable not to rescue a someone drowning in a pool. Is it OK to watch someone drown if the suit you're wearing is of sufficient high quality? When you’re perfectly capable, because you don’t want to get your nice clothes wet?

Of course, we can get absurd here on some theoretical, abstract plane that will never occur in real life (“what if you knew the baby would grow up to be Hitler?”) (“what if you thought your suit would weigh you down and you might drown?”) etc.? You might as well just say, “well I think we’re all living in a simulation and so nothing is real, and nothing matters!”

The fact is, we cannot know these things, and everyone with a healthy mind should recoil from these assertions. And that truth is truth.

On a philosophical/logical level, the statement “all truth is relative” is untenable, because it would mean truth can never be known—which is a statement of absolute truth. It's not a coherent statement, but a self-contradiction.

If you argue that "all truth is relative" because truth can only be understood through the subjective lens of an individual, that has a kernel of truth... but if everyone else sees the facts differently you are very likely, objectively wrong, and have misapprehended the truth. Which exists independent of you.

But the more important Truth of the matter is, having a coherent and broad set of rules about ethics and social mores that values human life is entirely necessary for a functioning culture. For example, if we can’t say, “hard work and discipline is a virtue,” but equally value sloth, then things will fall apart, very quickly. And life will become a hellscape. And I think even the postmodernists would agree that an ordered life is better than anarchy and apocalyptic disintegration.

“Truth is relative” allows you to absolve yourself of adult responsibilities. It might make you popular at parties of high culture. But it doesn’t do well when it meets reality. 

We need responsible people to avoid the descent into barbarism. Which, despite my love of sword-and-sorcery, is not an outcome I find acceptable.

Objective mortality exists, regardless of culture or upbringing, faith, creed, or race. 

If you lack the capacity to understand this, a few things are at play that are worth looking into. 

• You may be mentally deficient, in which case you are worthy of sympathy and social support.
• You are weary of life and in a bad place, as I have been at points in my life. You have my sympathy; keep fighting and one day you will emerge from this malaise.
• You might be a postmodernist thinker, and simply enjoy arguing in the abstract. In which case, I will simply disagree and take my ball somewhere else.

However, if you refuse to recognize and differentiate good behavior from bad, and actively seek to tear down the social fabrics that allow us to enjoy some measure of order and security, I’m quite comfortable calling you a psychopath. If you desire to burn down the courts and our system of law and order, please read Grendel and start over at Go. Do not collect $200. You have embraced the Dragon, have arrived at the point where naked Power is the only arbiter of truth, hoarded gold the only value, and revealed yourself as the monster. 

The good news is, there is always a path back to the truth for those willing to seek it. This too, is true.

Railing against AI art

I hate computer generated art* and worry very deeply about what a future dominated by artificial intelligence will look like. Both for artists, consumers, observers, fans, and anyone who cares about human creativity in general.

One of the regular YouTubers I enjoy watching is Rick Beato. Rick serves up long form, in depth interviews with artists whose work I admire (recently Sting, and Billy Corgan for example). He attracts great guests because he’s not a quack, or a conspiracy theorist. His large following (3.3M) appreciates his candor, personality, passion, and sharp insights into what makes certain songs, albums, or artists great. Moreover through his talent he replicates many of those sounds in the studio with a guitar or keyboard.

But in his most recent video he touches on something that has occupied my mind more and more these days. “How Auto-Tune Destroyed Popular Music” includes a discussion of generative artificial intelligence music companies set to unleash music wholly made by AI. “The selling point of generative AI is that no musical knowledge or training is necessary. Anyone can potentially create a hit song with the help of computers that evolve with each artificially produced guitar lick or drum beat,” Beato says.

Yuck. Sounds fucking awful.

A quick recap of where we’re at:

• Humans can prompt AI programs (i.e., Midjourney, etc.) to generate pictures, for example sword-and-sorcery images that look a lot like something Frank Frazetta or Ken Kelly might have created, while also being something new. Many of these are pretty good.
• ChatGPT is authoring stories with just a few prompts. Not as good, often poor, but in some cases passable… and this technology will get better.

I fail to see how any of this is good for art.

The argument about “democratizing music” is horseshit. Yeah, let’s bypass the cost of having to pay for a studio drummer and democratize the cost of a recording studio for the struggling musician… but now let’s cut out the song writer and the singer as well, and proceed straight to entering prompts in a computer.

My best friend’s son is just starting to learn the guitar. Even though he’s just 13 he’s gotten pretty good… because he’s put in hours of practice. It’s awesome to watch him grow, but also fair to ask: Why bother, kid?

Are human beings supposed to consume computer developed art, and embrace it with our soul (if you believe we have one, and are not just flesh and blood robots)?

What about guys like Beato? Are they supposed to analyze computer generated art? Who are they going to talk to… some nerd who input the prompts, or the software engineer who designed the program? Or maybe some version of HAL 9000?

At that point, why have humans at all? Should we just accept our robot overlords?

Where is the place for high, noble art in all of this?

The real crime is that all of these algorithms are based off mass data that is taken from original work by human beings who will never be acknowledged or compensated for their efforts. Google has floated a repeated claim that all information should be “free,” and all of the world’s library digitized. But they and a handful of other large corporations are the ones getting rich from this process. Beato asks the same: “Really the only question is, who gets paid for it? Who are the songwriters? Are they the programmers that program it?”

And this is just art. No one is really talking about deep fakes, and the destruction of what is truthful through the production of fake news, and the subsequent loss of our grasp on reality.

I think AI has amazing potential for improving the quality of human lives, and in many ways already has. If an AI can detect cancers unseen by a radiologist’s eye, that’s a technology I want deployed STAT. I’m in favor of self-driving cars that reduce the human error that leads to most roadway fatalities. Let’s get cheap self-driving cars out there, even if they cost drivers’ jobs.

But art? Art is not a tool; art is created by humans and enjoyed by humans. Creating art, and putting in the hours to do so, is a meaningful act, i.e., meaning-generative. It’s one of the few refuges of meaning we have left. What’s the point of art without a human mind behind it, guiding its creation?

Call me an old fart but a world where we consume AI generated art is not one I want to live in. I’m glad I have my old CDs and will just sit in my corner and listen to them. And go see cover bands that cover the old shit I like while refusing to auto-tune their voices.

I have tried to embrace new tech, and have (laptop, cell phone, reasonably modern car) but general AI seems to me a bridge too far, and one we should not cross--at least without some serious thinking about the economics and societal impact.

Yup, first post of 2023 and I’m officially an Old Man Who Shouts at Cloud.

*I make an exception for CGI, etc. that adds detail to sets and supplements the work of human actors. 

Raging against Twitter and the dying of the written word

“Does anyone go sit down and read an entire blog post anymore? Most people aren’t going to go read an entire 500 word blog.”

These sentences were posted, unironically, on LinkedIn by a VP of Marketing (B2B, SaaS, and other fancy business acronyms). Just yesterday. He seems to have quite a following too. This post got many “likes.”

As the young kids say, “I’m shook.”

We’re now officially at the point where information must fit into a Tweet, or a 60-second TikTok video, if it is to be read or consumed. No one has longer than that to spend on learning, apparently.

Makes sense, we’re all too “busy” these days to possibly read something 500 words long. Not quite 2 pages in a book.

“Too busy.”

Too busy doing … what?

We’re not too busy. We’ve been hijacked into thinking we are. By our devices, by sensory overload, and the accompanying mental fatigue that comes with consuming a cacophony of shit.

We’ve been trained by the limitations of the platforms on which we’re consuming surface-level content. By Twitter. And when these get old, we switch to the next platform to keep consuming. Gotta get on Mastodon, on Discord, while still juggling Facebook and YouTube. “My project will be a success once I figure out how to optimize Instagram.”

Sure it will man.

Take a look at what you’re actually doing. Scrolling your phone. That’s not busy. That’s an addiction.

You’re not making progress, or creating. You’ve become a consumer of the shallow.

Fuck that.

I’m holding the line, and you should too. On my side of the line is immersion, and an attention span. And comprehension. That’s one of the reasons why I steadfastly keep blogging, even though I’m writing to an audience so small it could comfortably fit in my living room. 

Its principle. And the people who I serve here are the ones I value. By the way, these folks have gone on to buy my book, Flame and Crimson, and I hope they choose to buy my next book too.

Not because I need the money. Because I like producing things of value, that might last, after I shed my mortal coil. You won’t find anything of lasting value on Facebook.

The “content” this VP of Marketing is talking about is not actually meant to inform, or enlighten. Its sole purpose is to grab the attention of the attention-less. It’s the equivalent of shooting colorful fireworks into the sky, a pop, a “wow.” Then … gone. It’s the type of content we consume by scrolling on our phones, skim with the eyeballs, and shed in seconds. No thought rendered, just a few seconds of time stolen from you in this “attention economy.”

But that shit doesn’t last. It's ephemera, like so much of the garbage we’re getting online. You’ve learned nothing by consuming it. In fact, you not only haven’t learned a thing, but your mind has been weakened, atrophied.

If you want to understand anything at more than a surface level, sometimes you have to … read more than a Tweet.

Finally, its not even good for the person producing it, the junior marketer who at heart wants to be a better writer. The only way to do that is to put in the work and write something with some substance and length to it. Every day.

If you want to be a good soccer player, you’ve got to put in long hours on the pitch, improving your footwork, conditioning your body.

If you want to be a good guitar player, you’ve got to learn your chords, learn how to read music, how to hear a note and replicate it with your fingers on the strings. This takes thousands of hours.

And if you want to be a good writer, you’ve got to read and write. A lot. 

There are no substitutes, I’m afraid. But that’s how it should be.

A question for the skeptics: Do you think you will learn more about fantasy fiction reading Wizardry and Wild Romance, or spending the same amount of time scrolling r/fantasy? 

An attention span is a muscle that you must cultivate, practice, and strengthen, or it will atrophy. We’re losing it, thanks to enlightened “VPs of marketing” who spread the kind of nonsense above. Who themselves think they are being “productive” by rapidly skimming their social feed on LinkedIn and liking memed photos. 

Imagine if instead of “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” Ursula LeGuin boiled down her magnificent essay into an infographic. No one would remember the fantastic advice that she herself followed to write the timeless A Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Utuan.

Imagine Tolkien trying to fit “On Fairy Stories” into a TikTok video. I’m sure someone has done this; I’m sure no one who has consumed that video remembers it. They certainly have no comprehension of what Tolkien actually wrote. They’re too busy looking at a single bone, instead of enjoying the complex soup.

I’m not immune to this. I dumped Facebook, but I’m a LinkedIn user, heavy, for work. I like some of what I see on the platform but am also dismayed by the inevitable dumbing down going on. I do too much scrolling.

To play nice for a moment, there is a place for infographics, short videos, and chopped up Twitter-esque posting. But this blanket “does anyone even read 500 word blogs” is not a sign of enlightened sophistication by a marketing pro. It’s a sign of rot. It’s the words of the athlete who no longer thinks he has to practice. Who thinks he can just show up on Sunday and win football games.

I know that guy. His name is Ryan Leaf.

Innovation is real, but you have to learn how to block and tackle. Master your craft, before you can tell others how to do it better.

A truth about writing: It’s hard. The blank page is a fearsome opponent. It challenges us with its blank stare: Better blankness than your drivel, it seems to say.

But when you beat the resistance and really get rolling the process of writing is generative. It activates parts of your brain that are numbed by scrolling, snow-blinded from the flash of images and video and sound.

We’ve got to hold the line, each in our own way, against the decline of writing and reading, and comprehension over consumption. I’m holding the line on this one. In the voice of Aragorn at the Black Gate: 

For Long Form Content! 

(Or at least, 500 words. Max).

If you want to fight this battle yourself here are some practical tips.

1. Write every morning. A good word count to aim for is 500 (yeah, that same mark no one has time to read). I'm a morning person and my mind is freshest then; write at night if you are a night-owl and/or have no other options.
2. Read every night. Opt for paper if you can get your hands on it. If not, make sure your tablet is disconnected from easy internet access. Place your phone out of reach.
3. Limit your phone usage. Instead, observe the world with your eyes. Take a walk and think. Listen to people, and see how they behave.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You’ve read more than 1,000 words in a sitting and proved that VP of marketing wrong. 

Truth

I’m almost 50 and still don’t really know who I am, and at turns, what the fuck I’m doing.

Outwardly I’m successful. Married. Two children. Nice house. Good job. Friends. A life.

All indicative of success.

But what do I stand for? What do I believe in? 

What values do I hold, not just firmly, but eternally? What torch do I bear? What lantern do I hold aloft in the prow of a ship in the night of a storm-tossed sea?

Do values even exist, in this postmodern age where objective truth is apparently a myth, and reality subjective?

Yes, they do. There are Universal Truths. From whence they derive, I’ll leave for another day. But they exist, and they are the framework for leading a meaningful life. 

I’m still figuring mine out. But here’s a hard-earned one I believe in. One I can say, you’re not moving me off of, motherfucker.

Truth is what holds civilization together. Everything depends on people who outwardly commit to a course of action and then inwardly follow through. Who don’t swindle, cheat, or otherwise elide the truth. Who resist the temptation of lying in the service of other “commitments” -- quarterly reports, shareholders, whims of their spineless, shit bosses, their cock. And commit to doing the right thing.

Even when it hurts.

Because everything depends on it.

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. 

When you don’t tell the truth, you murder something in you. 

I try to operate this way. I don’t always succeed … but I largely do. On the important matters. 

I like to think others largely abide by truth, though they often don’t, with spectacular collapses and destruction left in their wake. See the 30-year-old shitbag “genius” CEO from FTX who cost his investors billions with his lies. 

Elizabeth Holmes. Bernie Madoff. The examples stagger. Read “Rogues in the House” and you see what’s at stake.

Without a commitment to truth, everything we stand on is shifting sand. Collapse is imminent. 

Easy to say, very hard to implement. It means you must take accountability for your actions. But you've got to do it. Hold the line.

Above all, it must be Truth.

Why bother blogging? And other personal updates

Why?

Why do I continue to keep this blog?

I’ve been doing this a long time, since Sept. 2007, save for a long break circa 2013-2019 to write Flame and Crimson and tend to other matters in my life.

What is its purpose? What is my purpose, continuing to post after all these years?

Occasionally I ask myself, why bother? But such feelings always pass, and I continue my scribblings into the electronic ether. 

I don’t know why I’ve continued. But let’s see what I can come up with.

I love old authors and old bits of popular culture that are slipping away, and I want to preserve them. Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, etc. are grandmasters of fantasy and SF, towering talents better than most authors you will read yesterday, today, or tomorrow, but I’d be surprised if their combined annual sales are 1% of Brandon Sanderson. And then you’ve got dudes like Karl Edward Wagner, Charles Saunders, Gardner Fox, C.L. Moore and others who, outside of some diehard horror and S&S circles, are rapidly fading into yesteryear. I like talking about their stuff and keeping it alive, because it’s damned good, and they need champions.

I am pushing back against Twitter and the dying of the light of (semi) intelligent conversation. Not fighting Twitter in a literal sense (I have no more or less disdain for that platform than any other), but the notion that our thoughts can be compressed into 280 characters, and that history is meaningless. I’m not exactly a purveyor of profundity here, but I try to write the stuff I like to read, that has some amount of context and substance. You can see every post I ever wrote here on this site if you choose to do so, no account necessary. Does anyone read old social media posts? They are vaporware, spoon fed by algorithms over which you have no control. I don’t think they can even be searched in any meaningful way. I like that this page is static AF, boring even. Just read it and leave. But here it remains.

I am fighting the trend of “hot takes.” By which I mean, unqualified gushing praise, or unwarranted criticism, of new and hot properties, for clicks, followers, and ad revenue. My takes are about as hot as reruns of the Golden Girls. I’m OK with not having 500,000 followers as a result.

I’m stubborn. I am aware that blogs are so like, 2008 man. This platform has been supplanted not by Facebook, but by MySpace … and then Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. It’s a dinosaur way to do “this thing,” whatever that may be. I sometimes wonder if Google will just up and delete the Blogger platform. But I despise the need to obsessively create accounts on the latest and greatest platform, again and again. Why? Where does it end? Maintaining 26 social media accounts, and pouring your entire existence into a digital vortex of bullshit? I think most people would be best served picking one or two platforms and settling in. But I’m aware that patience and attention span are in short supply.

So in summary, I’m an old fart who likes old things, including evidently a fondness for outdated blogging platforms. I guess that means I’m here to stay, at least until Google says otherwise.

--

A few other matters less contemplative.

I am reading Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. I’m not much of a western reader, at all. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, a Zane Gray novel or two. Some Breckenridge Elkins… that’s about it. But this one had caught my eye (reviews exclaiming, “if you only ever read one western, make it this one,” Pulitzer Prize winner, etc.) and I needed a sword-and-sorcery break, so I pulled this one off the shelf. It was a slow slog at first, 200 pages of OK slow build, but I’m really enjoying it at the moment. Incredible character studies, outstanding portrayal of frontier life in the waning days of the frontier, some shocking violence. McMurtry skillfully puts you into what a long distance cattle drive in the 1870s/1880s must have been like. Some absolutely beautiful passages. I’m glad I’ve made the effort as the damned book is a monster (858 pages).

Simultaneous with this western foray I’m also in full-blown Halloween mode. I wrote a piece on Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” for Tales from the Magician’s Skull. Last night I re-watched The Lair of the White Worm (1988). Campy as hell, fun. Recommended. Prior to that watched “The Vampire Lovers” (1970, Hammer). Also campy and fun, and recommended. Both films star absolutely gorgeous female leads, too.

If you sign up for the mailing list (free) for New Edge Sword and Sorcery magazine you will be entered for a drawing to win a free hard copy of Flame and Crimson. I will mail the book myself, how about that? And make my mark on it, should you want that.

I am committed to going to Howard Days next year. You read it here. More to come on that later. 

I’m on Day 4 of COVID and feeling much better this AM. In another day or two at most I should be back to regular form. Note to self: Get the booster. Dealing with this is a pain in the ass. I’ve had worse cases of the flu, but COVID places your life on hold as you isolate. Not cool to miss your daughter’s senior day cross country meet.

Secret Fire

What is the “fire” borne by characters and otherwise present in the works of Cormac McCarthy and J.R.R. Tolkien?

“I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor.” – Gandalf, Fellowship of the Ring

"Therefore Ilúvatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä." ― The Silmarillion

I want to be with you.  

You cant.

Please.

You cant. You have to carry the fire.

I dont know how to. Yes you do.

Is it real? The fire?

Yes it is. 

Where is it? I dont know where it is.

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there.

I can see it.

--Father and boy, The Road

He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it.

--Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men

There’s been a fair bit written about the meaning of carrying the fire in McCarthy's The Road, and the origin of Gandalf's "secret fire," but comparably less on what the fire actually is. As I see it:

The creative impulse; the drive to make, rather than destroy. 

The life force. Life comes from somewhere, not from nothing.

That which we must pass on, to the next generation, lest we slip back into darkness. Kindness, opposing selfishness.

Hope, in dark places.

That which makes us good.

The divine spark, if you believe in that.

That it can be “carried” without outward sign tells us it is metaphorical (in Tolkien, it is sometimes more, but Gandalf still describes it as “secret,” rarely unveiled). It is something out of myth, not meant in a literal sense, but conveying a larger Truth.

Carrying means that it requires some effort to sustain. It also seems to signify it can be passed on, to another willing recipient.

I try to do good things with my life. I have been better at this at various times, worse at others. I try to teach my daughters, at least by example. Here is how you behave, watch me. I am trying to give back to others, more than I have as a younger man.

The fire flickers, I lose sight of it. I breathe into the embers, keep it kindled.

What fire sustains you?

---

I make no claim that the fire described by Tolkien and McCarthy share a similar source—though both are Catholic—only that there are similarities of expression and interpretation.

A couple good interpretations here: 

The Grey Havens, “What is the Secret Fire That Gandalf Serves?” 

The Art of Manliness: “Carry the Fire” 

Reading Plato, some observations

Confession: I’ve got gaps in my philosophy, Horatio. I have a basic familiarity with the broad tenets of some of the major schools. I have read deeper in a few areas I have found interesting, including the major works of existentialism, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the foundations of stoicism. But when it comes to the classic works my cupboard is pretty lean.

Inspired by the Online Great Books podcast, I decided to pick up Plato’s Five Great Dialogues, a book that includes the classics The Republic and The Apology. I read portions of these in high school or thereabouts, as I remembered the allegory of the cave and a few other bits. Back then I lacked the life experiences to take much from it; today I have a whole different appreciation for what these books say, and mean, and still have to teach us, thousands of years after they were written.

I won’t even bother trying to summarize what thousands of scholars and historians have already done before me, and far better, but rather just offer up a few takeaways and observations that hit home for me, personally.

Reading Plato is a cold drink of water for the soul. His dialogues are a series of questions about what life is all about, including why we behave as we do, how to govern ourselves, and in general what makes for a meaningful existence. These are written in a dialectical style. Plato’s subject, Socrates, engages in dialogues with a series of interlocutors, probing deeper at common but unexplored understandings and surface assumptions until they eventually arrive at a deep level of truth, possibly the bottom. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates says. Amen.

Plato’s theory of forms makes the case that there are transcendent ideas—justice, temperance, etc.—that transcend the physical. These ideas cannot be explained by science and studied at some atomic/structural level. But they are no less real, and in fact are more important than material existence. Some might take this theory of forms for granted, but it’s a stunning revelation, the framework upon which the rest of the book hangs.

Socrates/Plato believe in the immortal soul. We can deduce the presence of a soul by its absence (i.e., by looking upon a dead body, and finding it inert). The soul is a therefore a form. Like an odd number, it is irreducible by the presence of an even number—an even number does not destroy an odd number; in the same manner, death cannot destroy the soul, it merely parts it from the physical body. I like this, for obvious reasons.

Wisdom and truth-seeking are the highest virtues of mankind. Not "happiness" or wealth-seeking or sensual luxury. Plato believes in the existence of absolute truth and absolute beauty. Subjectivity is a form of blindness when it comes to truth-seeking. This declaration flies in the face of identity politics, which posit that every culture is morally equivalent, and that everyone’s subjective internal monologue is “truth speaking” and sacrosanct. Yes, we all have opinions, and have the freedom to express them, but some are far more worthy than others. Those that seek out absolute truth and absolute beauty, and wisdom and temperance, and make them their north star, are fit to lead, according to Plato.

Plato believes that the best form of government is a ruling class of philosopher-kings. These are chosen not by birthright, but by innate ability, and forged and tempered with exceptional physical and mental education. Rulers must exhibit a soundness of mind and body, and a willingness to sacrifice, to not even own wealth, lest they fall prey to corruption and graft. This structure transcends oligarchy and monarchy, even democracy and other forms of governance subject to nepotism and corruption. This is not a caste system, however. Children of these rulers, if unfit, cannot serve; those from warrior or merchant classes can move up into this class if they demonstrate the same fitness. Many today recoil from this portion of Plato but it is a framework worth pondering (some in fact have made the case that Plato himself did not take this too seriously, but was using the opportunity to satirize the corruption of the Athenian city-state and take the piss out of it). Nevertheless, this declaration is FIRE: “Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils—no, nor the human race, as I believe—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.”

Finally, there is heroism of the highest sort to be found in Plato. Socrates could have fled his execution, and in fact had ample opportunity to do so, but refused. He faces his death with equanimity and perfect clarity, because he has been condemned by his beloved city of Athens. To run would be to deny orderly society in favor of individual selfishness, and thereby debase himself. It’s so damned noble, exhibiting a degree of principle most will never fully comprehend, let alone live out. Yet this is what Plato encourages us to do, and what makes him worth reading today.

“Unshaken on his rocky throne above the bleak fjords”: A review of H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes

The default setting for most fantasy is a faux late-Middle Ages, generally ascribed to the period from the Norman conquest of 1066 to roughly the end of the 15th century. Hence we get novels whose characters live in sprawling, lavishly decorative castles, answer to a high king in a monarchical society, embrace chivalric ideals, and speak in an ornate language of high culture. In comparison, the coarse, rough mine of the early Middle Ages and in particular the Viking Age is relatively untapped. I enjoy the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War as much as the next guy, but I prefer the song of spear and axe, the smoke of the burning hall, and the sight of the dragon-headed longship against the backdrop of the ruins of ancient civilization.

This disparity is unfortunate, because although the number of novels set during the Viking Age is relatively low, I have generally found them to be of exceeding high quality. Poul Anderson’s Hrolf Kraki’s Saga and The Broken Sword are among the best of this smallish genre (though I’m not sure if the latter can be properly classified as set during the Viking Age, heavily Nordic-influenced though it may be). Bernard Cornwell’s ongoing historic fiction series The Saxon Stories is similarly great, devoid of ant overt references to magic but with all of the poetry of the age. I would add to that mix Harry Harrison’s The Hammer and the Cross, a fun, if savage and bloodthirsty read, while Nancy Farmer’s young adult work The Sea of Trolls is quite good and entertained me as a full-grown man. I have also heard praise from many quarters for E.R. Eddison’s Styrbiorn the Strong, which I have not read (it’s out of print and not easy to acquire).

It’s hard to say which of these Viking Age-inspired works would win a theoretical Holmgang amidst hazel rods, but having just now read H. Rider Haggard’s 1889 novel Eric Brighteyes, I can now state that any previous order I had established is deeply in doubt, so mighty is this book. In fact, I would unhesitatingly declare it among the finest works in the genre, better than Cornwell and at least as good as Anderson’s best. It may not be as much a household name as Haggard’s more famous works King Solomon’s Mines and She, but it’s nevertheless rightly considered a classic in some quarters and one of Haggard’s best.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: The Book of Merlyn and its Howardian connection

A good man’s example always does instruct the ignorant and lessens their rage, little by little through the ages, until the spirit of the waters is content: and so, strong courage to Your Majesty, and a tranquil heart.

—T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

The King Arthur myth has been told, re-told, and re-imagined countless times. I’ve read many interpretations, though far from all, from authors as diverse as Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Trilogy) to Mary Stewart (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, et. al.). But of all these, The Once and Future King and its separately published conclusion, The Book of Merlyn, is probably the most approachable version of the Arthur myth I’ve ever encountered. And it’s certainly my favorite.

For obvious reasons, I often feel a need to draw parallels between Robert E. Howard and other authors when writing blog posts over at The Cimmerian. But in this case, I didn’t have to look far, nor make any dubious, tenuous connections. At their core, White and Howard share the same pessimistic view of humanity. For Howard, barbarism was the natural state of mankind. White believed that mankind’s natural state was Homo Ferox, or “Ferocious man.” There is no leap required; these two men of different nationalities and stations in life drew the same bleak conclusions about mankind.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Reading fantasy for escape's sake

Perhaps it’s because I’m a simple man compared to China Mieville (or perhaps it’s because I’m not as passionate about politics as he), but I take pride in my ability to approach fantasy fiction with a minimum of prejudice, and to explore new worlds and new viewpoints with an open mind. In short, I like to read fantasy fiction for the element of escape that it offers.

And, unlike Mieville, I do believe that fantasy can deliver this experience.

In case you missed it, my last post included a link to an interview with Mieville, author of Perdido Street Station and The Scar. In it, Mieville argues that escape through fantasy fiction is impossible, because we, the reader, carry all our prejudices and beliefs with us (he has a lot more to say about the politics of fantasy as well, but I won’t get into those issues here). Says Mieville:

The problem with escapism is that when you read or write a book society is in the chair with you. You can’t escape your history or your culture. So the idea that because fantasy books aren’t about the real world they therefore ‘escape’ is ridiculous. Fantasy is still written and read through the filters of social reality. That’s why some fantasies (like Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) are so directly allegorical—but even the most surreal and bizarre fantasy can’t help but reverberate around the reader’s awareness of their own reality, even if in a confusing and unclear way.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Of Wolf Larsen and embracing the Howardian hero

“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf Larsen was saying. “Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten. A third of God’s angels he had led with him, and straightway he incited man to rebel against God, and gained for himself and hell the major portion of all the generations of man. Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater. But Lucifer was a free spirit. To serve was to suffocate. He preferred suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no figure-head. He stood on his own legs. He was an individual.”

—Jack London, The Sea Wolf

Occasionally when I read Robert E. Howard I wonder: What is it that attracts me to his writing? Is it his great, galloping storytelling? Yes—if pressed, I would say that this is Howard’s finest trait as a writer. Is it the swords and sorcery trappings of Howard’s Conan and Kull stories? Yes—I’ve always felt an attraction to arms and armor, lost civilizations, and monsters and magic, which is probably why I favor these characters above Howard’s others. Is it is his disdain for civilization? Yes, this too—as an office worker in 21st century America, I have my frustrating, bad days where I feel an apathy or outright disgust for “the system.”

But do I also read Robert E. Howard for wish-fulfillment, for the vicarious thrill of stepping into the personas of Howard’s self-sufficient, strong, warlike heroes? Yes, I do. When reading stories like “The Shadow Kingdom” or “The Phoenix on the Sword,” I admit to imagining myself as a larger-than-life barbarian-king from an impossibly ancient era, living by the simple, violent code, “By this axe, I rule.”

I actually arrived at this realization not while reading Howard, but while re-reading one of his favorite authors and literary influences—Jack London, and specifically London’s The Sea Wolf. In this book we’re introduced to Wolf Larsen, the brutal, iron fisted captain of the sealing schooner Ghost. London spends considerable pages trying to convince the reader of Larsen’s despicable nature. Larsen is more beast than man: He rules with an iron fist, crushing his crew brutally underfoot, particularly those who dare to exhibit a will of their own. He doesn’t truck with weakness, or morality (in Larsen’s eyes, these qualities are one and the same). He forbids his crew to go to the aid of a young crewmate, frozen with fear in the rigging (“The man’s mine, and I’ll make soup of him and eat it if I want to,” Larsen says). He scoffs at the idea of an immortal soul.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

The key to the gate of dreams

Someone asked me the other day why I named my particular bit of cyberspace "The Silver Key." As you can see from the quote at the bottom of my home page, I took the title from a short story of the same name by well-known horror/science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).

"The Silver Key" isn't one of Lovecraft's better-known tales, nor is it accorded one of his best. Famous for creating tentacled abominations from deep space (The Cthulhu mythos) and an evil sanity-blasting tome (the Necronomicon), Lovecraft is better known for stories like "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Call of Cthulhu," and "The Dunwich Horror."

Yet "The Silver Key" grabbed me from the moment I read it. It was unlike any other story in the particular collection (The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre) in which I first encountered the tale. Most notably, "The Silver Key" is not about horror. Aside from a few mentions of witches, mad prophets, and strange, unexplained disappearances (relatively tame elements for a Lovecraft story), "The Silver Key" explores one man's search for meaning in a vast, uncaring, and empty universe.

At the outset of the story we're introduced to Randolph Carter, a dreamer whose imagination has fossilized due to the humdrum routine of daily life, and the onset of middle age:

When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt those liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether. No more could his galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, or his elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, where forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon.

Carter's plight is common to that of all adults: We are taught life's facts and realities until mystery and wonder goes out of the world, and become chained down to things that are. Teachers and politicians and clergy instruct us that science and politics and traditional forms of religion are the only pursuits worth following, and that the stuff of dreams is for children. Gradually, our imaginations are choked off.

Carter tries to assimilate himself into society and embrace earthly pursuits, but without success. He eventually comes to discover that all of these "worthwhile" values and systems are empty and ugly next to the stuff of dreams:

...he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are, and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold. Then he would have recourse to the polite laughter they had taught him to use against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he saw that the daily life of our world is every inch as extravagant and artificial, and far less worthy of respect because of its poverty in beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own lack of reason and purpose.

Carter is even more disgusted with people who abandon earthly pursuits for "barbaric display and animal sensation." Finally, he comes to realize that "calm, lasting beauty comes only in a dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence."

Note that by "dream," Lovecraft does not mean the literal act of the mind while sleeping, but instead the dreams born of imagination and journeys of the waking mind. This is where I throw my support behind Lovecraft: I too wish there was more room in the world for fantasy and the stuff of dreams. I find much of what life has to offer rather shallow, unfulfilling, and spiritually empty.

Carter ultimately finds release by using a great silver key, an heirloom handed down by his grandfather and a literal "key to the lost gate of dreams." Here the tale takes a true turn into the supernatural, as Carter uses this key to pass through a strange cave in a forest slope near his family's ancestral home in the woods of Arkham, Massachusetts (Lovecraft's fictional setting for many of his stories). He disappears forever and is presumed dead by the authorities, but the narrator, one of Carter's heirs, knows otherwise:

He wanted the lands of dream he had lost, and yearned for the days of his childhood. Then he found a key, and I somehow believe he was able to use it to strange advantage.

I shall ask him when I see him, for I expect to meet him shortly in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt. It is rumored in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, that a new king reigns on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, that fabulous town of turrets atop the hollow cliffs of glass overlooking the twilight sea wherein the bearded and finny Gnorri build their singular labyrinths, and I believe I know how to interpret this rumor. Certainly, I look forward impatiently to the sight of that great silver key, for in its cryptical arabesques there may stand symbolized all the aims and mysteries of a blindly impersonal cosmos.

As I see it, the silver key from Lovecraft's tale is a symbol for the escape our dreams can offer from a mechanistic, material universe. Just as this space on the web is for me.

Why Tolkien is the man

"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it."

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Everyone to some degree or another is in "prison." It may be a lousy job, poverty, a bad relationship, an unhappy social life, or the prison that encloses all mankind--frail bodies of flesh, our own mortal coil. Tolkien, a World War I veteran who saw several of his best friends die in the muddy trenches of France, and lived through World War II and the Nazi blitz, knew that as well as anyone.

But why should we put our heads down and accept banal realities? If you don' t like the look of your prison walls, choose another path. There are other worlds to explore. Tolkien didn't like the look of our own world, so he went ahead and created Middle-Earth. Although we cannot "see" this world and the worlds of our imagination with traditional senses, they are no less real than gray prison walls. They live within our minds and hearts, and as long as we pass down great works of art like The Lord of the Rings, are eternal.