“The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

There are odd little paths we walk in virtuality.

When I joined SL, I had already been a writer for most of my life. When I was very little, I would cross out the parts of my storybooks I didn’t care for and rewrite them to my liking. As a tween I wrote terribly cheesy horror stories to try and shock the adults who endured listening to them (to their credit, they pretended to be disgusted enough to sate the miscreant in me). As a full-fledged teenager, I did that whole weeping heart in my poetry journal thing. In college I learned I was never going to become the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde; that took some time to heal. As a young adult I embraced the fact that while artful talent might take its sweet time to develop, I had an inherent skill that not everyone gets a chance to wield.

As an adult I have learned that a muse is a fickle whore of a creature and you take what you can grab from her when she deigns to show herself. Between visits you take turns hating her and pining for her and stitching together the remnants of your ego in cold sweat anticipation of her return.

My particular failing is a lack of brevity. If allowed the space, I will ruin my own writing with length. Even knowing this, I never considered myself a particularly good poet, nor did I ever consider that I’d have any gift for lyrics. It was only at the coaxing of musician friends in SL that I shared some scribblings. When I did, quite unexpectedly, a whole new world of collaboration and expression opened up for me.

I have been writing with Grace and Lyndon since 2007. January or February or June depending on how you want to start counting. I shared Lugo with Lyndon that January and wrote Fallen State of Grace for the girl in February. But it was late June when I sent Boxes to Lyndon and Last Chance to Grace and first heard them put their music styles to my words.

I don’t pretend to be able to express what it’s like to hear your poetry come out of someone else’s lips in a way you never imagined it yourself. I suppose, on an intellectual level, it’s a little like watching someone you love hold your child for the first time. There is a tender pride and a confusing loss that take place in tandem. You are parting with something that will never be wholly yours again, but in that giving there’s a sense of incredible connection.

Both of them have been performing collaborative songs for four years now. Four. Years. I consider myself to be at their mercy in many ways. Without me, both of them could go on to write and perform. Without them, this strange new way I’ve found to use my inner voice would be gone. I suppose I should be frightened by that, but I’ve never felt that way. I send them my scribblings and sometimes they like them enough to imbue their magic into my words. It’s a system that suits me. But I’m never quite able to get my head around hearing them play.

For a while now, Lyndon has taken to playing our songs at open mics around Seattle. And that’s where one of his musician friends heard him play our latest song, The Dangerous, and asked for a chart so he could work it up.

So today, I opened my mail and had a link to the above youtube video. It features a guy I’ve never met, never heard, never seen until today singing words I wrote. It’s one of the most strange, surreal three minutes and fifty one seconds I’ve ever experienced. Myriad flavors of emotion I haven’t begun to identify. (Although, I need to find out how to get in touch with him, if only to find out what the hell is going on with his lamp).

I get angry and frustrated with Linden Lab, Second Life, and humanity in general. I get exhausted by my disappointment at watching so much possibility squandered.

But some days I come face to face with the paths and possibilities that keep me on this particular road, and I remind myself that no one promised it would be paved in yellow bricks or lead to bejeweled cities. But the road does weave its way into places I could never otherwise explore or encounter, and I have to concede these small moments of awe.

People often ask one another why they stay in Second Life. I have several answers, but the one that I can’t get away from is that as a creative thinker and a tentative artist, there is nothing in virtuality that offers me the at-my-fingertips tools to unfurl the creative sinew more than SL. One day maybe open sims, etc will catch up. I embrace the possibilities of what is to come. But I’ve looked around at the newborns slouching toward Bethlehem and they don’t have the juice to fill my jelly jar yet. I’m beyond the whole novelty of the environment part. I’ve logged my time in someone else’s growing pains. If it’s not ready for prime time, call me later.

From now on, I’ll have a much simpler answer.

Why am I still here? That’s just the dangerous in me.

“So when people ask me what American Pie means, I tell them it means I don’t ever have to work again if I don’t want to.” ~ Don McLean

It’s that horrible day back from a holiday weekend. You’re tired. You’re cranky. So, here’s something to get the grumpy out of you:

Now see — don’t you feel better?

“I can’t play. You’re looking at me.” ~ Jackson C. Frank

I have always been a throwback when it comes to music. I inherited albums that most of my peers in high school had never heard of. When I “came of age” in the 80s I flirted with light punk and enjoyed aerosol rock and pretended not to like any of the pop music, but what I really enjoyed and listened to over and over were my Dad’s records. Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Jim Croce, Cat Stephens, Joan Baez, etc. Bear in mind there was no Elliott Smith or Soul Coughing yet. Music in the 80s had no poetry in its soul. So I had to turn back to find it.

I can say, with some measure of confidence that I have an extensive knowledge of folk rock from the 1960s and 70s American scene. I love coffee house players and folk music festival obscure numbers, so I know a lot of songs that musicians who played the eras often haven’t heard; I pretty much operate under the theory that if it was good, I know it.

So how the hell have I never heard of Jackson C. Frank?

While watching a movie preview for an upcoming release (Martha Marcy May Marlene), there is a clip of John Hawkes playing a haunting song called “Marcy’s Song” that I’d never heard. I immediately Googled some of the lyrics and found Hawkes’ performance embedded on a site. It took some additional Googling to get the name “Jackson C. Frank” in connection with the lyrics. And then the adventure began.

Mr. Frank had one self-titled album back in 1965 which wasn’t re-released until the late 70s. It was produced by Paul Simon (Paul frikkin’ Simon). As it turned out, I had heard two of his songs without ever knowing they were his. One, “Blues Run the Game” which I’ve always assumed was one of Simon’s and “Kimbe” which I heard but didn’t know the origins of.

His story is gut-wrenching and includes being caught in a school fire at age eleven (which he survived, but was left with burns over half his body), being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, enduring homelessness and poverty in later years — as well as taking a stray pellet to the eye in his 40′s from kids messing around with pop guns at random.

You can hear the minglings of Simon influence in many of the cuts (or possibly we were hearing Frank influence in Simon’s songs, who knows?). The most poignant for me is called “I Want To Be Alone (Dialogue)” which cannot help but inspire reminders of “I Am a Rock” although this delicate plea is far more powerful than the anthem like declaration of Rock.

Part of me is thrilled to have discovered this guy; it’s like finding buried treasure in an ordinary day. On the other hand, it’s heart-breaking to know that this voice and this individual were lost into obscurity. There is such a toll taken on those for whom the world is too much with them and so often gifts and curses we can only imagine weigh them down to the bottom of their personal oceans.

“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I was little, my father was extremely fond of Don McLean’s American Pie album. Being a hippie child, I, of course, knew “American Pie,” the song, by heart, but my father maintained it was far from the best song on the record. I thought he was out of his mind.

Years later, as a teenager, I found the album hiding behind Rick Springfield’s Working Class Dog (yes, it’s a horror and a blasphemy, but it was the 80s — no one got out clean, okay?). I removed the vinyl from its sleeve upon which was printed a poem to William Boyd, and listened all the way through. After that, while I maintained a fondness for “American Pie,” I understood my father was right. There were far more interesting secrets whispering in its grooves — and not just “Vincent” (which was my father’s favorite).

I’m not sure why I identified so deeply at that youthful age with “Crossroads,” but it is a song that I come back to over and over and feel kindred toward. It speaks to me, and it always speaks the truth. While others I’ve shared it with tend to find it sad, the song always rings of hope and patience in my personal interpretation. The way forward can’t be reached by turning back, and in the end, we’ll be where we are, no matter what we may have intended. Practical. Peaceful. Perfect.

Every crossroads in life should have a sign with these lyrics printed on it. The simple reminder always makes choices so much easier.

Crossroads
Don McLean

I’ve got nothing on my mind: nothing to remember,
Nothing to forget. and I’ve got nothing to regret,
But I’m all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I’ve got;
And I know that on the outside
What I used to be, I’m not anymore.

So there’s no need for turning back
`Cause all roads lead to where we stand.
And I believe we’ll walk them all
No matter what we may have planned.

“There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain”
~ John & Paul

Salome’s Ode To Gaming Friendships and Virtual Places – Take 1

Having decided to give up on WOW and been through the detox phase with very little pang, it occurs to me that the only thing I’m really going to miss is a handful of friends — two in particular (it would be three, but I’m disqualifying one because she’s been stuck with me since high school and her friendship is not WOW-centered). My memories of these two people are heavily tinted in WOW-filtered colors. I’ll explore one later in a small rant on why I’m anti-guild. For now, I’ll focus on my “WOW best friend.”

People who do not spend a lot of time in virtuality tend to roll their eyes at the notion of friendships that develop based on a format, gaming or otherwise. The idea of a forum friend or gaming friend is less legitimate in their eyes. But, it’s really no different than a friendship that develops over shared work or living spaces. The chemistry of such friendships is always the same, physical or virtual. And, even the strongest of those friendships strain when the format is taken out of the equation. When leaving a job, for example, there are always promises to keep in touch, and often we do, but generally, we don’t. Even under the best circumstances, with effort on both sides, the relationship moves into an at-fingertips arrangement where lunches and meetings have to be scheduled and maintained; that casual familiarity of the everyday joke or encounter is removed. This is true with friends in virtual environments as well.

The randomness of how such people come into our lives, and the places that mark the important events in those relationships are just 1′s and 0′s lurking on a server somewhere. On some level we know that. But then randomness of how your dorm or cubicle mates get assigned are no less random. And a “home” is more than just stucco and cinder blocks with tar paper on top; the materials of construction do not equal “home.” Some would argue that houses and office buildings are more “real” because they are permanent, while virtual places can be destroyed in a few minutes. But anyone who has been through a natural disaster understands the foolishness of attaching permanency to physical objects as a measure of their value. Most things in life can be gone in the blink of an eye under certain circumstances. The concept that they could be lost, worn out, destroyed is what makes them all the more precious. A house can be set ablaze or foreclosed; a server can be wiped. Experience and memory are the real currency of how we assign value to the places that take up real estate in our emotional ether.

Everything beyond that is just paperwork and security measures.

The First Time I Saw Dun Modr

So, I was working up my first WOW character (human priest, of course) and even though I was in a guild, I was generally off by myself (later entry on guilds, I promise). As was my wont, I was leveling in an area about 2-5 levels higher than I should have been — my best guess is that I was between 25-27. WOW was new and shiny, I was coasting on newbie immersion and eager to see as much content as possible. I have no idea how I got to Menethil Harbor. Truthfully, everything from Fargodeep Mine to the Wetlands is a blur.

Dun Modr (Wait, Where Am I?)

At any rate, while dodging bluegill murlocs, black ooze, and mosshide gnoll-thingies I turned north up a road, entered Dun Modr and accepted The Dark Iron War quest which innocently ordered me to kill some evil dwarves. Sure, no problem.

Dark Iron War - How Hard Can This Be?

An hour (and multiple corpse runs later) I was making frequent use of four-letter words and considering giving up. The innocuous looking encampment is (or, at least, was) a devil of a place for level-appropriate characters. It’s packed tight, aggro ranges are wide and most of the mobs are linked in pulls of 2 or 3 so you can’t patiently single-kill your way through (the mid-to-low-level priest’s bread and butter method). I was getting my priest ass splattered all over the place. And I was getting grumpy in that “why am I paying money to bash my head into make believe walls” way.

I was about to die — again — when, from out of nowhere, there was a dwarf warrior beside me, tossing a group invite, which I hastily accepted. Sure, the stumpy little guy was a level below me and named after a Forgotten Realms sword, but he was warrior DPS and he killed the bad, bad dwarves that were chewing me up like it was free.

For those of you that don’t play WOW, a warrior-priest leveling team is (or, at least, was) better than peanut butter and jelly sammiches. Warriors wear a lot of armor, suck damage down like water and hold aggro (the algorithms that are used to determine which player a “monster” attacks) so a robe-wearing priest like moi can stand back and toss out heals at my leisure. With Aegis, we had 80% of the quest done in minutes. All we needed were the pesky Dark Iron Demolitionists. As it turned out, the five demolitionists were, however, a particular flavor of bitch. They were entrenched inside the tight-packed barracks buildings and there were only a scattering of them amid all the other mobs. To make matters more frustrating, they stood back and lobbed high-damage explosives while letting their little army of friends hack at you. It didn’t help that Aegis and I were under-leveled for the quest.

More four-letter words and corpse runs, only this time with a stumpy little dwarf in mail armor ghosting beside me.

Refusing to be defeated, we found a demolitionist in one of the barracks that was less populated and opted to wait out respawns and kill him over and over. We cleared all the mobs down to the bottom level where we found a handy little alcove to sit and wait for respawn so we could kill them one at a time as they reappeared. I don’t remember how long it took. Long enough for us to rattle off conversation tidbits with enough sarcasm and personal exchange to realize we enjoyed the company. We’d also exhausted all the /flirt and /joke options for our races. One of them for the human female was (I kid you not) “I need a hero” and one of which for the dwarf male was “I like my beer like I like my women: stout and bitter.” These sound bites would later become in-jokes between us.

By the time we finished The Dark Iron War and a handful of other nearby quests, we’d made friends, added one another to friends’ lists, yadda yadda. I sent him some potions. We suffered the abject horror that was completing Stranglethorn Vale (the WOW camaraderie equal of doing a tour in ‘Nam together). He left his crappy guild for my crappy guild and we alienated the other members together. Years of friendship followed and continue.

Whenever one of us would work up an alt, we’d always call or IM the other when it was time to do Dun Modr. “I need a hero” and “hey, short and bitter, get over here” were used in tells from server to server and faction to faction. Just so we could stand in the aforementioned alcove and jump up and down a few times while tossing /joke and /flirt emotes back and forth.

I cannot tell you how the poor fellow suffered. He leveled with me possessed of a patience that would make saints stand there and say “How the fuck does he do that?” He had to deal with things like:

1. I am a compulsive harvester and I will aggro an entire zone of mobs just to get that flower over there which I don’t even really need. He still has nightmares about killing packs of bats in Eastern Plaguelands because I saw a Plaguebloom node or two.
2. I cannot make two targeted jumps in succession with the WOW interface. (A fact that became painfully clear when we ran Blackfathom Deeps a few days later. He waited patiently while I fell, swam back, fell, swam back, fell… all the while ignoring the bitching and moaning of the other people we were grouped with.) You remember that early part of Tomb Raider 1 where you have to do the running jumps from pillar to pillar over the gator-infested water, timing it to miss the flames that shoot up? That took me DAYS.
3. He had to double back to get me when I inevitably got lost in anything remotely resembling a cave (actually, he learned to never run out of my sight so he didn’t have to waste time doubling back).
4. When we were using the “avoid Mazthoril cave” exploit to turn in for our Drakefire Amulets and he made it on the first try, he sat there and waited and waited and waited while I fell and retried and fell and retried and fell and healed and then remounted and retried.
5. Every time we had to run UBRS or LBRS, he went to get a drink while I missed the jump onto the frakkin’ balcony twenty times and ran back up the stupid rock into the alcove and…fell (I still maintain it’s just too damn dark in there to see the jump).

He never raised his voice. He never got all condescending and hissed and talked to me like an idiot. He knew that just because I couldn’t judge a jump didn’t mean I was stupid and it didn’t mean I couldn’t play my class. It just meant I sucked at jumping. Although on the screen it makes you look and feel like an idiot. A really, really lot.

In all fairness, he did get to mow down every mob without ever having to pause. And he knew that if I lost every other member of a party or died myself, he was likely going to be standing when the smoke cleared (my rule: when things get ugly, the tank lives, everyone else can wait for rez, corpse run, and/or suck it). This was back when priests were useful and hadn’t been busted down to second-class healers. Plus, while we were leveling he was fury. So we pretty much owned anything that looked at us funny, even when they were a few levels above us.

Aegis is one of those people who’s just instinctively good at gaming. He doesn’t have to learn it or work it like I do. He sees something once and knows how to do it forever. He knows where to go, what order to kill, where to stand, and what to ignore. He’s also evil and speaks my brand of sarcasm. When people would ask me why I so “shy” and didn’t get involved in guild events, I’d answer “I’m not shy, I just hate most people.” He was the only one in vent that knew I wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t a whiny little kid who thought his name was tattooed on my ass just because we gamed together and when someone was a dick about something he didn’t play the old boy’s club “let me take care of this” card. He just sat back quietly and let me demo the jerk if I wanted to. Occasionally he might toss out a “Dude, I really wouldn’t say that to her…” warning, but that was more for the protection of the noob trying to flex nuts at me.

I can honestly say that the biggest thing I’m going to miss about WOW, without question, is the realization that I’ll never again get a random tell that says “hey – short and bitter – get over here and help me with Dun Modr.” I even had to apply my lame video capture skills before I canceled my account so that I could go and nab a shot of the infamous alcove (after helping a random noob complete their quest).

When I cleaned out my bank vaults, one of the handful of things that I couldn’t bring myself to vendor was a stack of six Crimson Lotus — items that would show up randomly in my mail whenever he had a quest in Alterac Mountains or Desolace and one dropped. Why? Because no one thought much about them, you couldn’t buy them, and other than the token gesture between us they were worthless to the naked eye. Just like the places and experiences that people in virtual environments trade every day.

Crimson Lotus

And when you find a friend who gets that and knows how to express it, that’s the kind of thing you’re gonna miss. Just like a badly textured alcove made up of 1s and 0s.