Where Ideas Come From, Part CXXXVI

[elfs]

I've often considered it a failing of mine that I can't draw. It's not that something that comes naturally to me. I see the world in terms of shapes, colors, perspective, but that sort-of comes naturally, so much so that it's hard to translate to the page. Instead, I believe I see the worlds in the terms I least understand, because those are the terms that I spend the most time thinking about: the motivations, especially the romantic motivations, of other human beings.

I've often wondered if other people have ever made this connection: artists make art about that aspect of the human condition they least understand. To me, the fact that people find one another and stick it out together, especially when there is no particular reason for them to do so, fascinates me, and so I write about it, circling the subject, taking it apart and putting it back together again, asking myself, "Does this make any sense at all?"

I think that's one of the reasons why science fiction appeals to me as a setting: aliens and robots have different motivations from human beings, and I get to put humans and xenos into the same room. The xenos let me take away something that is usually found in the human character and then I get to ask myself and the reader, "Is this still human enough to make the story work?" That's also why I have more women than men in my stories: men are easy to understand, women not so much. Although as I and my peers get older, that seems to be changing: the women are becoming easier to grasp (in more ways than one), the men less so.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Drawing can be taught. I can't draw to save my life, unless you want stick figures, but I can draft 'til the cows come home. But then I've been trained in drafting, whereas I have never taken a drawing class.

All of this means that I'm really good at drawing Roman and Lombardic capitals, basically. And vines. I'm very good at vines.

[rapier.livejournal.com]

Your Current Music intrigues me. Brief poking around tells me that it's a Belgian chamber choir singing pop songs? I might have to check that out.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It's one of those pieces that sounds so much better sung by someone other than the DiVinyls. There's somethnig sweetly wonderful about it when it comes from the voice of a chorus of teenage girls.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Elf, you give me hope that there is life as a smutty-minded geek after age 30 and well beyond.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[rapier.livejournal.com]

Ach, amen, sister. I'm involved with several projects set in a fantasy-sci fi setting where the technology level is right around the early 19th century, complete with archaic firearms and steam, right? And with all of us there's a heavy peer pressure to innovate while still keeping the world more or less intact. I can see so clearly some of the devices a character might develop, and I can even describe the bejesus out of it, but draw it? Good lord no. I'd love to be able to though.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[rapier.livejournal.com]

Ach, I'm jealous. I MIGHT be able to do something like that, but the extent of the latent materials in my house would be my son's enormous legos, wooden blocks, and stuffed animals.

... which makes me think that rigging up Piglet to be testing a multi-barreled percussion-fired crew-served weapon against an unsuspecting Tigger DOES sound appealing.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]