bRAdburY

1.
I finished Fahrenheit 451 a few days ago and haven't posted about it yet. Maybe that's for the best; a couple extra days gives me more time to turn it over in my mind.

It was never assigned reading in school, so for many years the bulk of my understanding of the book was "it's about burning books". Some time during my year in Savannah I read an article about Ray Bradbury which discussed, among other things, his take on F451. That take being that to him the book is more about technology's effect on humans, not burning books. After doing my own sit-down with it, I have to say that I don't see how anyone could say it is about book burning.

The main lesson I took from Fahrenheit 451 was the value of giving your brain time to idle. It's something I need to remind myself to do every so often. I struggle to get so many things absorbed, so many things done. It's easy for me to lose sight of the benefits of slowing down and daydreaming. With a sketchbook or notebook near by, of course, but in releasing myself from obligation to them I allow my mind to make new connections and go new places.


2.
In middle school, I think, we watched a video one day that touched me deeply. It told the story of a class of school children living on some gray, gloomy, and perpetually overcast planet. Only one girl has ever been on Earth, and she is the only one who has seen sunshine and all the wonderful things it does. The plot unfolds around rumors that there is going to be a little bit of sun on this rain-soaked planet.

I didn't know until a week ago that the short film was based on Bradbury's short story All Summer in a Day (full story text).

Even better (for my nostalgia), the short is on YouTube in three parts.

The story is more nihilistic than the video. Today I wonder for the first time if there's a tiny sliver of Plato's Cave in the story.


3.
I love Ray Bradbury's writing style so much it makes me want to scream sometimes. The stories are great, and well adapted to film, but his wordsmithing is incredibly in line with my own quirk. What gives it so much life, to me, is the aspects of metaphor and imagery that can't be translated to visual media. I have a list of (children's) stories I'd like to adapt into comics/graphic novels, and while I'd love to honor Bradbury's work in that way, so much of what makes it special to me would be lost. I'll illustrate it, though. I'll illustrate the heck out of it. :)

A couple examples from All Summer:

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
...
It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering this brief spring...
...
A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran.

So much love for that. Bradbury's writing is an inspiration. Because he writes the way I think, it gives me confidence that I have the potential to be a good and successful writer.


4.
In closing, some of my favorite Bradbury quotes. I don't agree with him on a lot of topics beyond life, philosophy, and the arts, but sometimes those are enough.

All that stuff that's collected up in my head -- poetry and mythology and comic strips and science fiction magazines -- comes out in my stories. So you get to a certain age and you're like a pomegranate, you just burst. And the ideas spill out.

Bonus points for the mention of a pomegranate there. :)

First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.

is growing on me.

A new find:

I have two rules in life - to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done

And my most favorite of all, words I try to live by:

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

X.
That was fun. I should read more books so I can do it more often.

I'm going to do something scold-worthy, but Mr. Ray inspired me (guess how!), and I, personally, need it.

to hell with it (whatever it is)

.
looking over
creation
without
comprehension

.
when my face
was hidden,
insincere

.
screaming
screaming into
a favorite pillow

.
abruptly
shaken out of
deep meditation.

.
in the kitchen
waiting for tea
giving up

.
bawled through snot
and hot tears
against his chest

.
under my breath
a final
invisible
resolution

Aaaah.



(ooooo! ;D )