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desire is the root (of misery's flower)
Feb. 19th, 2012 01:45 pm*******************
this fandom is an embarrassment of riches, and i keep it that way by not reading EVERYTHING a fab author writes at once. greed is not good, not when resources are precious and scarce, and with as much great writing there is in this fandom, it is a finite resource so-- i savor every bit of greatness there is and re-savor it sometimes, in favor of reading something new from an author i love. that's how you don't burn yrself out, ladies and gentlemen.
Second Map of the World by ~Candle_Beck
Redefinition by ~Whereupon
History of Love by ~Glassy Skies
sorry if this post makes no sense or feels abrupt or whatever, but i'm just attempting to jot down random impressions in a semi-coherent stream-of-consciousness manner.
i often think Candle Beck's writing is the handsome young brother of Glassy's gorgeous, graceful writing. like, they both have poetry in their DNA, but Candle is more of a non-annoying, non-pervy (yeah, even with the Wincest) version of Hemingway and Gauguin if he'd been a writer not a painter and Johnny Cash if he'd gotten into prose, and Glassy is much more Fitzgerald and Lorca and Nin and Artemisia and Camille Claudel. Whereupon lies somewhere between those two sensibilities in a way that's all hir own (and i'm not saying that Artemisia is like Claudel and that Cash is like Hemingway, but that-- idek-- *shrugs* that's what comes to me when I read their stories).
anyway, i'd read Candle_Beck's story before, but i decided I wanted to read it again because of what Albert Brooks said in the recent Oscar Round Table about the difference btw great actors and good actors. like, Christopher Plummer talked about the great rage, great temperament as the mark of being a great actor. Albert Brooks and Gary Oldman on the other hand spoke about great actors as being able to live truthfully in fictitious circumstances, but without filling out all the blanks for the audience. Leaving spaces empty for the audience to fill in with themselves. And this is what Candle Beck does and what Whereupon does and what Glassy Skies does. They give generously, but they know the genius of restraint, of not whoring and shoving and spreading so much out that nothing is left for the imagination. In those quiet seemingly blank spaces the reader has room to speak and think and feel and take away.
in Candle's story, we are introduced into the cataclysmic moment when Sam accidentally reveals his romantic love for Dean. this has been done in a million different ways, and yet, you read the story and it feels completely fresh and new because --yeah, while we might suspect that everything will be alright and they'll get together in the end (though you never know with Candle 'cause zie likes to fuck wichu) the story illustrates that moment in between wanting and knowing yr love is reciprocated. and we've all gone through this, the yearning for love, even if it's like totally directionless and you have no actual object of love to pine for. it's the universality in the story that makes it so powerful, not the fact that these are two specific dudes going for the incest because nobody should live alone and die alone and be so bereft. (the canon allows for this because the canon allows for superhuman emotional stregth that does not exist irl.) and yet Candle doesn't neglect the two dudes in order to show this love-yearning, because zie doesn't niss seeing the trees for the forest and vice versa.
in Glassy's story, well. Glassy loves to talk about loss...because when you talk about loss you talk about love at its most intense and brightest. there's no loss without love, not rly. that's why Buddha advices letting go of desire. without desire there's no pain. without desire though, a fierce and all-consuming desire, we have no stories. think about it. remember the last time you read and was interested in a story where the characters didn't want anything, weren't propelled by any driving purpose. yeah. here Castiel is losing his omniscience and what does it mean for a creature like him to no longer remember everything? who are we without our canon of memories? idk. it's fucking scary, is what is is, and heartbreaking.
from ~Whereupon's Redefinition:
Love, as far as he's concerned, has nothing to do with marriages and mortgages and those stupid songs about growing old together. He gets the songs about hanging out with some girl, about thinking she's hot and wanting to sleep with her and then sleeping with her and wishing that could last forever, he really does, but that isn't love, not the way he understands it. Love is staying up all night and pretending not to look at the clock the whole time, waiting for somebody to get home, like keeping vigil ever made a damn bit of difference; love is pulling the trigger again and again until it feels like your arm is going to break, so that when it isn't practice, when it's real, you won't miss. Love is going hungry so that somebody else can eat, and love is telling lies so that somebody else can sleep, and love is wanting a better life for somebody else. Love is the ashes-and-whiskey, gut-punched feeling when they finally get it, and love is not asking them to turn it down, and love is feeling like a fucking asshole for being even just a little happy when they come back.
While definitions are found in dictionaries, this is why i listen to great music and read wonderful poems and novels and fanfics and watch films. for these redefinitions that both narrow down meanings to specific fictitious lives and circumstances and deepen and widen meanings, revealing them in the most personal/universal of ways so that they apply to us/everyone.
these fics are rated: all the star-eyes. *_*
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