Time's arrow

Time's arrow

The arc of a bow and its arrow are our primitive reference for fully understanding the entropy that life entails. An entropy that overwhelms—or bores, depending on so many things—even the brightest minds. I imagine this is the origin of the narrative arc of a story: cutting through space like an arrow of time. Zeno of Elea believed that time was merely a sum of static, frozen moments, failing to realize that time and motion are continuous and cannot be suspended or divided into parts. Although the mind can divide space into fixed points, according to Bergson, movement itself is pure duration. Hence the stories we tell ourselves in the present—that mixture of vanity and an obsession to spin. The falser they are, the simpler their narrative arc, and the more self-serving are their omissions—but truth floats on water like oil does. Cave paintings in France and Indonesia show that hunting images served the first storytellers long before religion centered on gods—those invisible friends with a thousand faces who eventually spread across five continents with varied rites and sacrifices designed to keep them on our side. Because even with these contrivances to ward off the fear of the dark, life was devastatingly tragic, often ending before it had truly begun. Before the advent of hygiene and antibiotics, the elderly were revered simply for surviving the chaos and uncertainty that so many others paid with their lives. The rite of passage belongs to the common monomyth of the hero. To stay alive and awake, he sheds fear like old skin to make room for indispensable courage, successfully confronting whatever harsh trials cross his path. We endow these figures with extraordinary powers, eventually worshiping them as icons and statues. The oldest texts are sacred—holy, canonical books. We see it in the Book of the Dead written on papyrus scrolls, or the spells chiseled into the stone of Egyptian sarcophagi three thousand five hundred years ago to guide a pharaoh’s great journey to the beyond. Yet the Sumerian tablets, carrying the gripping tale of the last king before the Great Flood instructing his heir on piety, ethics, and social order, sink another thousand years deeper into the night of time. From this incessant work of mapping our anxieties for the afterlife, we gradually birthed arts of magnificent depth and beauty, moving further and further away from religious issues and limitations. We now have music on demand, paintings to decipher, theater and cinema to watch. And books, when read without distractions, light up like fireflies. I confess a deep fondness for modernist novels, where storytelling doesn’t devolve into an inventory of infinite trivialities, but functions as a spell for crossing that river of time. I think of Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Sound and the Fury. But above all, I think of Proust, fragmenting the Self and prioritizing involuntary memory over the ticking of a clock. It is no coincidence that in 1928, just as literature was fracturing chronology, Arthur Eddington coined the term “the arrow of time” to illustrate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He noted that because entropy is always increasing, the universe has a distinct, irreversible direction. These reflections invariably lead me to my own second rite of passage: the fertile prospect of crossing the very same threshold I stood before thirty years ago. What I mean to say is that I still believe writing fiction is the passion that anchors my life. But for the first time, I have a clear, realistic idea of how to escape the bleak landscape of a missing readership, due to the collapse of sustained reading. More importantly, I finally possess the tools to do so with true craftsmanship. Oral storytelling is more effective than the written word. Your hearing is more laser-focused and detailed while your eyes have to deal with visual fatigue and that weak focus of the multitasking era. It isn’t bound to a paper format, and therefore the narrative isn’t condemned for commercial purposes to becoming a fat, brick-sized copy. And audio technology today is so diametrically opposed to ancient formats that I am truly remembering a future once dreamed of. I haven’t been very active on Substack lately, because having ideas and tools isn’t enough if the craftsmanship is lacking. I believe it was about six months ago that I was left awestruck listening to the immense talent of actor Will Patton, well known to audiences for narrating nearly fifty audiobooks. His whisper from six inches away feels exactly like a tired man driving down a dark, desolate road in the wilderness, attempting to carry a whole story in his arms for the young girl in the passenger seat. He spins the story in the faint light of the speedometer just to keep himself awake, wrapping her in that light sleep—a modern Gilgamesh, where holding her attention and trust is the last trial to hold onto immortality. The movie Train Dreams, based on the novel by Denis Johnson, opens with that exact voice. That foolish assertion that reading aloud should be as neutral as possible is now a skin I have shed. That is why I no longer include any background music. To say goodbye, I leave you with the narrated lines that struck me with such awe, just to make my point clear. I didn’t want to strip away the soundtrack because it is cinema. And yet, when you listen to what follows and your jaw drops to the floor, know that you are not alone in your wonder. I have been recording whispers for six months now, and I still have a long way to go. “There were once passageways to the old world, strange trails, hidden paths. You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with great mystery, the foundation of all things. And even though that old world is gone now, even though it’s been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.” Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe [https://javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Death of the Author

Sometimes, I wonder why the mere reading of some books stirs in me the irrepressible appetite for writing. Like just yesterday with Erasure by Percival Everett–the experimental novel that the latest film American Fiction is loosely based on. At the crack of dawn, while the first drops of spring rain were cleaning my dusty window, I was pounding away at my keyboard, keeping in mind the challenging question of Whit Burnett, the editor of the literary magazine Story and mentor of the young and ambitious JD Salinger, who grew resentful after Burnett rejected many of his first short stories. “Are you willing to devote your life to telling stories knowing that you may get nothing in return?” Let’s assume you have watched the film featuring Jeffrey Wright. If not, stop now and quit listening; I am going to detail the plot and hit a nerve, no holds barred. Because if I were pandering—by the strict code of artistic values I’ve carved for myself—I would not be a writer of fiction. Believe it or not, there was a time when publishers were the custodians of beauty, quality and good taste. At least, I believed the spirit of Max Perkins from Scribner’s was hovering among them. But since the invasion of smartphones that ironically made people ridiculously stupid, because of the subsequent collapse of sustained reading, actually, it’s the algorithm that knows you better than you do, feeding you like a butler. AI-generated writing is here to stay. And the same goes for every art. Without a baseline knowledge, you’ll believe anything, even that a human being of flesh and blood toiled over the page. That being said, if you really think a soulless AI narrator will eat my lunch, you are as deaf as a post. Q-tips come in handy to remove earwax! In American Fiction, a Black author with a jazzy name –Thelonious Monk Ellison– is trying to teach the southern author Flannery O’Connor in a Californian college ridden by the Woke fever. The short story written in 1955 as a brilliant satire against the Jim Crow era is titled “The Artificial Nigger”. But a white and privileged female student–according to the analytical framework of intersectionality–who did not do her homework, which is naturally reading the story, is uncomfortable with the N-word written on the board. And she denounces Monk to the dean, resulting in a disciplinary sanction. That sanction forces Monk to visit his family in Boston, where he is dealing with the problems of a middle-aged man; the slow descent of a mother into Alzheimer’s, disturbing revelations about the double life of his late suicidal father, and the sudden death from a heart attack of his sister, who has been the caregiver for years. The combination of these situations, coupled with the rejection of his last erudite book for not being Black enough, pushes him to write the Hood lit that white and privileged publishers deem genuinely Black, under the false identity of an ex-convict, with the swearword F**K as a title, recreating all the trite clichés. Drugs, ghetto life, deadbeat dads, and rappers, written in Afro-American vernacular English. So, he tackles all his problems at once with this Faustian bargain, raking in all the money he needs, with the help of his savvy agent to pay for his ailing mother’s expensive nursing home. And a Hollywood deal to free him once and for all from the drudgery of academia he has endured. The plot twists. He is invited as an “ethnic diversity” pick to join the jury for a literary prize where the prank he churned out is the runaway winner. During a break in the deliberations, he has the chance to confront his nemesis–Sintara Golden–a Black female author, who possesses an intellect and education similar to his own, but with no moral qualms about catering to the audience if that’s what the market demands. “That’s how drug dealers excuse themselves,” says Monk. That plot reminds me of my editor’s fate–pressured to publish young women’s romantic fiction not by choice, but because it was the new niche. And authors must be women, too, so the female readers can relate to them through social media. It reinforces the stale idea that if you aren’t a woman, you cannot write about women–an insult to the imagination that fuels all fiction. Gustave Flaubert must be turning in his grave. Do you remember his joyful proclamation? “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!” I think we are living in the best of worlds. We have the internet and access to a variety of cultures that our ancestors didn’t have. Yet, the audience has grown dull. Is there a correlation? I’ve written about my teenage struggle to read mighty books and the delight that went far beyond mere entertainment. It was a cultural pursuit. I wanted novels full of universal, riveting characters–not some validation of the crushing burden of growing up. Now we have labels for every alleged literary work: Hood lit, MeToo lit, Sick lit, Victimhood lit. Bookstores feel like a visit to Dr. Feelgood. It’s blatant pandering for commercial gain. The only label I accept for fiction is the original language it was written in–provided it’s one of the languages I can read without needing a translation. But I couldn’t care less about the author’s race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation; their religion, social status, or disability; their age, class, or citizenship. Because intersectionality is the relentless resurrection of the author—and the death of the text. Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe [https://javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Uncanny Wordsmith

I was a boy wonder, and I loved to hate the guts of whoever was a killjoy. And mostly, any authority figures who were poorly paid teachers, so I was bound to be self-taught. However, I had a professor who taught me to channel all that hate by reading aloud about any historical character of my choosing. Soon, I also became a performer aboard the school bus, which had loudspeakers and a microphone; I learned to read a comma and a semicolon and pause after a period without missing a beat. The bus driver cut a deal with me. I could read if I indulged him in reading his favorite book. The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz. Time after, when I began to write, all those bloody caesuras made a lot of sense. Slow reading made me pore over sentences unfolding every aspect of language; all those sensuous qualities–how many syllables a word had and how long the accent over a vowel–are likely to carry weight, give pleasure, and hold meaning. These poetic qualities are tied up as the purely cognitive. And if I think about them as a mode of communication only, those qualities would not be alive and kicking. That must explain why I feel myself accessing skills I have learned through decades-long narrator performances. I’ll read aloud and look up for the through line. At this stage, all the worms will come out of the can: tiny dialogues, unconvincing characters, sludgy descriptions, totally random, unrelated bits of crap, and b******t that have made it through what I hoped would be an astonishing copy. I have done enough awful rehearsals–I know this for real. But the pain in writing, as you know, it’s a discarding process as well. And I don’t have any partner to reassure me I will make it. Outside the box, I find myself ‘watching’ the story like an audience. Am I bored? Restless? Irritated? Would I tattoo the first line over my forearms? Don’t you dare to think like a wordsmith if you don’t bring along a hammer! Eventually, you will kill your darlings. It will be a drama otherwise. You have to let it go and move on. And I keep asking myself while gripping that hammer over the head, am I really nuts to step out of the comfort zone? Why am I doing this? Because I have no choice! I don’t stop blowing with all my strength until I hear the anvil forging from nothing, a new beat I had never heard of, that sparks of wonder, insight, and hubris that come along with it. Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe [https://javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Froth on the Daydream

I suppose it’s because I had a good night’s sleep that I feel better than yesterday. I thought I couldn’t write a single word because of the alarming lack of relevance. Writing fiction requires a massive focus on a story that sometimes makes no sense, and sometimes it truly does. Navigating between these two extremes is quite intense and certainly not for the faint of heart. I had the bad luck of growing up in a time when the plot seemed useless. In fact, I could say the novels I loved were a kind of chaotic mess. When did I begin to appreciate a plot? That’s easy! Writing my first manuscript, I ran a free-fall plot, which brought about a large number of characters. So, at the time of ending such an orgy of creativity, the protagonist looked like a bit player. Of course, that little crack went unnoticed until I began to receive the feedback of my first agent, who in a moment of candor, said: “You could have written seven novels if you had had a plot.” Needless to say, Mrs. Kerrigan was right. She had a business to run, books to pitch for big publishers, not a lab of crazy ideas, but a literary agency. A friend of mine was way more graphic: “Next time, cut the bologna in thin slices.” That was bound to happen. So, with the first lesson learned, my second novel was a tour de force. But I missed out on Cervantes’ trick of giving voice to 600 characters. On the contrary, I ran a mix of triangle affair and coming-of-age novel. And yet, I did not run the distance, the 120,000 words that make a good brick of waste paper a beautiful printed ephemera to fill the windows of a bookstore. On the contrary, I fell short because I had no idea what a canonical novel was. A behemoth of five hundred pages. Otherwise, your literary dreams will go to the pile. A younger version of me thought a page turner a thing of the past. Like when Tolstoy wrote novels like War and Peace –or Cervantes ran a carousel of freaks he certainly would have met once in the funny pages of Don Quixote. Lesson learned, the result was the corkboard, the card notes, the three acts, the rolling scenes, and the facts that give speed, flow, and beat to the characters. At the back of my desk, I want now order, not menacing chaos, which might destroy or diminish my creative efforts. No board, no compass to get through the day. And the actual version of me is making peace with the idiot I am self-portraying in this mirror of ink – or whatever are these winged words because you are hearing me. All I want is to run the distance, flow like a f*****g river if I have to, and manufacture something to remember, beyond all sorts of ephemera. Yesterday, Alan Ball was in town, the screenwriter of the film American Beauty and TV series Six Feet Under. And hearing his masterclass was certainly a shock for me. That a multi-awarded screenwriter could blame the poor creative zeitgeist in such terms was mind-blowing. And I’m quote: “It’s depressing. All they want now is something that looks like something that has been successful. The competition is fierce. Everything is tremendously oppressive. It seems that the fear that floods everything is also in the writers’ rooms and especially in the directors’ rooms. Creativity is dead. That’s why I’ve left it. I’m writing a novel. And I’m enjoying it a lot. You know why? I don’t have an opinion on what I do. No one is intervening in my creative process. For once, I am alone. For once, no one is going to control me. Anything is possible. And it’s perfect.” End of quote. I’m already handwriting word by word Allan Ball’s utterance in one of my cards, and punching it quickly on the corkboard, to avoid that such wisdom thins itself out as the foam of days. And all because of you, my silent friend. Nothing I do on a daily basis is because of me. If I had my way, I would settle for being something between a clown and a conman. And certainly I have those personal traits, given the Jungian shadow I cannot see. In moments of extreme clarity, I feel like walking home in a daze and broke after betting all my riches on the horses. Yeah, a struggling writer is closer to a professional gambler than you might think. It helps if you have plenty of courage to fail big and don’t dwell on it, or if you sell your poor soul to the very Devil. Or both. It’s always about faith. I’m not a man of the cloth, but certainly I am a man on a mission. During the pandemic while taking care of my old man, a karmic chance like no other I could imagine, what really changed me was confronting the fact of what shoes I had to fill after he passed away. After mourning him for two years, it’s time to let it go. And it’s time to reach the goal of this podcast. It wasn’t my intention to write essays or a journalist column but fiction, because that was the Substack shelf I chose. Books and Fiction. The goal was narrating my own work, and someday have it all done to upload it to the audiobooks platforms like ACX and whatnot. If Alan Ball, the guy who wrote about a plastic bag dancing in the wind as the most beautiful clip the character named Ricky Fitts could show to Jane, the ultimate and freak teen girlfriend, has switched to the art of sewing words, it’s because he trusts in the might of abstraction without limits of any given written language. The freedom you have in a blank page, the quiet epiphanies you try to tame with just words, and how much craft you put into a simple dash to elaborate a concept. I won’t miss out on those days of heaven ahead of me. Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe [https://javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Half rant, half rendition

What can I write about Lorca? He was not just a poet; he was also a dedicated pianist. Manuel de Falla was his mentor, and he learned from him about the profound songs known as Cante Jondo. Therefore, reading Lorca is an experience that evokes a deep sense of Duende, an ethereal quality that transcends mere poetry. Many scholars believe that translating Lorca into American English is an impossible task. However, if you dare to attempt it, I highly recommend reading this translation by Sarah Arvio while having a glass of red wine and some delicious Serrano ham. And perhaps, for a moment, you can channel the spirit of that young boy who found inspiration in music and transformed it into poetry. This voice crafter you are hearing will provide you with a full-blown rendition, taking advantage of my privileged condition as a transnational author. See, the translator thought Lorca never used commas or periods or full stops, but he certainly did. Like Emily Dickinson used dashes, including long ones, to create pauses, separate ideas, and add ambiguity to her poetry, a feature often lost in standardized printed versions but present in her manuscripts. I hope you find a suitable time to listen, not because you need to open the doors of perception with red wine and Serrano ham – and prosciutto does not count, because it is sweeter and more tender with a buttery texture, while Serrano ham is from Spain, is saltier and more intensely flavored, and has a firmer texture. The reason for such preliminaries is because of the magnitude of Lorca as a poet. And the tragic fate he found in the first days of the Spanish Civil War, assassinated in cold blood at the wee hours by a bunch of fascists in an unmarked place between the infinite olive trees of Granada, where since then nobody could find his lovely bones. Like the bones of 140,000 Spaniards still lost in ditches, fifty years later to this day of the passing of General Franco, who died peacefully in his bed after ruling for 39 years, while the cowards did nothing else than lie through their teeth about a resistance that only existed in their wildest dreams. Not for nothing, it is rightly said that real heroes cannot tell war stories because they die pretty soon for their exceptional acts of valor. And stolen valor is the sign of any coward that hopes you are too lazy to connect the dots and ask them why they kept their heads in the sand. Get ready and comfy to meet the beautiful mind of Federico García Lorca, a man of the short-lived Spanish Republic, and how he pictured his own demise. Dreamwalking Ballad Green I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. Boat on the sea and horse on the mountain. Shadow on her waist, she dreams at her railing, green flesh, green hair, eyes of cold silver. Green I want you green. Under the gypsy moon, things are seeing her but she can’t see them. * Green I want you green. The great stars of frost, come with fish of shadow paving the path to dawn. The fig tree rasps the wind with its rough branches, and the wildcat mountain bares its sour agaves. Who will come—from where—? At her railing she gazes green flesh, green hair, dream of the bitter sea. * Compadre! Can I swap my horse for your house? My saddle for your mirror -my knife for your blanket–? Compadre! I come bleeding from the Cabra passes. If I could, young friend, the deal would be done. But I’m no longer me nor is my house my own. Compadre! Let me die decent in my bed. A steel bed, if you please, laid with Dutch linen. Don’t you see the slash from my breast to my throat? Three hundred dark roses on your white shirtfront. Blood oozes and stinks in the sash at your waist. But I’m no longer me nor is my house my own. Let me climb way up to the high terrace. Let me climb! Let me to the green terrace. Railing of moonlight and the rushing water. * Two compadres climb to the high terrace, leaving a trail of blood, and a trail of tears. Tin lanterns trembled on the tops of roofs. A thousand glass tambourines, tore up the dawn. * Green I want you green, green wind, green branches. The two compadres climbed. The slow wind in their mouths left a strange flavor of bile, basil, and mint. Compadre! Where is she? Where’s your bitter girl? How often has she waited! How often will she wait fresh face, and black hair, on the green terrace! * Over the face of the cistern the gypsy girl swayed. Green flesh, green hair, eyes of cold silver. A moon icicle holds her, high over the water. The night was as cozy as a small plaza. Drunken civil guards pounded on the door. Green I want you green. Green wind, green branches. Boat on the sea and horse on the mountain. Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe [https://javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]