Misappropriation

Quite simply, misappropriation is using something in a way that is inaccurate in terms of when, where and why events occur; or in a way that is hurtful or defaming to a specific historical character or group or culture.

A writer who is serious about historical fiction needs to decide how closely the story's characters will interact with the real historical figures and events.  The closer the interaction, the higher the risk of misappropriating information about places,events and the lives of people who actually were alive in a specific period of history.  Ergo, a serious historical novelist must be a writer who loves research.

A well researched historical novel, with a credible bibliography becomes a source of accurate information to any writer focused on the same period or culture.  One of my favorite historical novelist is Morgan Llywelyn.  In my opinion, she has mastered the art of weaving a tale of fictional characters in the same fabric as historical characters in a respectful and professional way.

Sadly, I have also read novels that represent themselves as 'historical' when the story lacks the credibility of time, place and culture, and the plot spins in an illogical way that borders on fantasy.
True, fiction writers have 'license' to be creative.  If it's a period piece you are writing, and research is not your thing, tag your piece as adventure genre and forgo 'historical',  lest you be haunted by charges of misappropriation .

Two distinct cultures with similar histories

Writing historical fiction takes passion.  Concurrently, it is both exciting and daunting.  One must be thoroughly immersed in the culture of the characters and the period of the setting.  My passion since high school has been with the plight of the indigenous peoples of our hemisphere.  My passion as an adult has been in discovering my own roots and heritage, which I've come to assume without positive proof to be Irish.

That said, imagine my excitement when I began to see similarities betwen the two cultures.  The more research I did the more parallels I uncovered.  Both survived constant invasions from foreigners, but were steadfast in trying to hold on to their land and beliefs.  Both assimilated invaders into their cultures.  Both had theologies tied to the land, shamanic and druidic.  Christian missionaries influenced their histories.  Mounds in Tara and Mississippi still confound archeologist for explanations.  Invaders brought their wars with them,and ultimately got help from both the Irish and the Indians in their respective lands. Future references to "Indians" in this blog will focus on the Choctaw Nation.  Disputes between Irish clans and Choctaw neighboring tribes weakened their military ability to challenge invaders.  Defeat led to enslavement.  The list goes on and the message is clear, their similar history predicts their ultimate fate.

Matty's story flows to  the meeting of Irish and Choctaw.  A compelling tale!

Ready now to get serious

So, the last post in 2013.  If anybody looked, anybody at all, they likely thought I died.  Well, I didn't.  Some things took place.  Revisit Phil Ochs song "Changes", (the Christy Moore version is a good one), and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I've learned a bunch of stuff lately, so I decided to try to pump life back into this blog.  I been doing it all wrong.  Mostly dumping a bunch of old stuff and salting it every now and then with something new.  But here's my new approach.  This blog will now be dedicated to promoting the book I am writing.  I pitched the story to an agent at a recent writer's workshop, and I can only say he didn't seem disinterested.  So here's the deal; I'm going to put the creative paddles on the chest of this seemingly dead blog spot, and turn on the juice to see if anyone can detect a heartbeat.

My heart is wrapped around my story of Mathe (Matty) O'Doole, coming of age in Ireland in the 17th century.  From Amergin, the Milesian bard to Maewyn Succat, the son of a Roman magistrate, to the mythical Finn McCool, growing up in Ireland has never been easy.

In truth and in legend, Ireland has been a land of turmoil, invasions, battles, treachery and war since the island drifted away for the Eurasian continent.  The original Firbolg name of 'Eueriio' evolved to Eriu, Eire, Erin, and finally 'Ireland'.  The Romans were smart enough to call it Hibernia, and leave it alone.

It was into this land of perpetual turmoil that Matty O'Doole was born in 1633.

QUOTES OF NOTE

Been a while since I posted any quotes of the creative ilk, and some others.

I like these kind because they make infinite sense to me:

“We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.” -Andy Goldsworthy

"Everything is significant, and nothing is finally important"  John Barth

"Take your passion and let it happen." Irene Cara - 'Flash Dance'

"The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.  To live is to be born every moment.  Death occurs when birth stops.  The answer is to develop one's awareness, one's reason, one's capacity to love to such a point that one transcends one's egocentric involvement and arrives at a new oneness with the world. "   Erich Fromm - 'Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis'

"If it's surprising, it's useful."  Tom Hirshfield


"A thick skin is a gift from God" Konrad Adenauer

"The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority."
        Jean Caldwell

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts"  Ethel Barrymore

P.O.V. CICADA

                          

You humans  call it an invasion, a scourge, a plague even.  You think I've come to eat your flowers, destroy your vegetable garden, or defoliate your forests.  Most of you have no idea what life has been like for me and my kind.  So let me take a moment and tell you a little about myself.

I never knew my parents.  They were both long dead before I hatched.  On the day I was born, I fell out of a tree.  To protect my soft young body, I had to seek cover in the soil.  My first instinct was to dig.  I was lucky.  I dug for my life.  Many of my generation never got the chance.  They fell on paved surfaces, some were devoured by birds or ants, and some were attacked by spiders before they ever left their birth tree.

Our mothers knew the dangers we would face, so they laid many eggs.  They plowed them into the tender end branches of trees and shrubs.  Their ovipositors sometimes weakened the little twigs, and a passing wind broke them from the tree.  Some folks thought my mother was eating their tree , but really she was giving them a healthy pruning.  Actually, she never ate anything.

I was one of the lucky ones to fall near soft soil.  Yeah, lucky me.  My first glimpse of sunshine on the day I was born would be the last light I would see for a long time; a real long time.  I had to sacrifice light for survival.  So I dug and dug, but never for a moment was I completely safe.  Many of my siblings were stalked and devoured by voles, others were dug up or crushed by new construction.  As I grew stronger, I learned to escape these hazards.

I never had a parent to feed and protect me like my archenemy birds, or you spoiled mammals. I was totally on my own from the day I was born.  I found the nourishment I needed in tidbits of dirt in my dark world.  Slowly, I grew larger and stronger, and developed claws to protect myself and to catch food.  My luck continued for about 17 years,  I had survived!

Then something happened to me that I cannot explain.  All my life I had used the darkness of the underground as my protection.  It was weird.  My black safe haven began to feel like a dungeon.  I had to escape.  I had to go to the place that I feared the most.  Imagine my terror as I dug upward to a totally alien world.  It was against my will, but I could not stop myself.  I dug and climbed up toward the light.  I had no memory of light, or the world above ground, but still I climbed.  Deep within myself, I found the courage to come to the surface and emerge into a strange world with many of my kind.

I looked at all the others.  We were certainly an ugly bunch, all legs and claws.  Of course, strong legs, I mean, come on, we had spent our whole lives digging.  But something felt different.  I had no further desire to dig.  I wanted to climb, up a tree, up a bush, up a fence post, up a house, it didn't matter, I just knew I had to get above the ground.  So I climbed until I was exhausted.  I had to rest.  My legs were so tired I could not move them.  In fact, my legs were locked into place on the bark of my tree.  And my back started to itch, and the light no longer hurt my eyes.

Overnight, my joints felt so achy that I had to stretch.  And that's when it happened!  I heard a crunching sound as my exoskeleton cracked open and as I stretched more, I stepped out of my old dried skin and walked away with a new sleek, wet body.  It was so weird.  I felt like I was carrying something new on my back.  I wasn't sure what they were and I was a little frightened, so I tried to shake them off. I shook so hard that I lost my grip on the tree.  It was de javu.  I dreaded falling to earth again, but I didn't.  I fell up!  It was so cool!  I never had to fall again.  I could fly.  Then I did something else I had never done before.  With the joy of flying, all I wanted to do was sing.  So I sang with total joy.  As I flew and sang, I began to hear others singing, so I flew towards their song.  

Then I saw them.  The ugly mob that came out of the dirt yesterday now was a lacy winged squadron of red eyed beauties. and they could sing.  Nobody ever sang down there in the dirt.  This was special, I mean really special.  Seventeen years in the dungeon of the dirt, then all within one day, I am set free from the darkness, I get a whole new body, I learn to fly and I learn to sing.  It can't get any better than this.  But it does.  I follow one special song and I find a mate and I fall in love.  I propagate a family.  I am fulfilled.

So think about it you unappreciative mammals: if you had the chance, in one fantastic day to get a brand new body, to learn to fly and sing and to have sex, would you turn it down?  I didn't think so. 

The Ecology of Art:

ART: by definition

noun

1.  the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

2.  the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, aspaintings, sculptures, or drawings:  a museum of art; an art collection. See fine art, commercial art.

3.  a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.

4.  the fine arts  collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.

5.  any field using the skills or techniques of art:advertising art; industrial art.

Art is beautiful; or is it?  Are all beautiful things art?  Paintings are artistic, but some are not pleasant to see.  Photography is an art form, but it also captures the ugly side of life.  Do parents declare as artful, the music their kids listen to?  Are all the sounds immortalized on recordings art?  Words too are immortalized.  Is Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ on an artful plane with Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?  Does Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ stand with Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods…’?  Some call dance an art form.  Rhythmic movement, pleasing to the eye, why not?  But what of a prancing mustang stallion, or a soaring eagle?  So all things labeled as art are not beautiful and all beautiful things are not art.  Art then is the epitome of the subjective; in the eye, ear, nose or tongue (culinary art) of the beholder.  We, the beholders, the living organisms, interact with our environment and decide which of our experiences can be called “ART”.  Absolute subjectivity!

Living organisms, interacting with their environment?  That’s a definition of ‘Ecology’ and ‘Ecology’ is a science, isn’t it?  And science is objective, isn’t it?.  I am inclined to agree with a wise teacher of mine who declared that objectivity is a ‘myth’.  The root word, ‘object’ is ‘subject’ to numerous definitions.  Put the object on the table.  “Your honor, I object!”  JFK set an ‘objective’ to put a man on the moon.  An objective, a goal, a vision, unseen before fruition, ‘subject’ to much discussion and planning before achieving reality.

Art and ecology both consider composition, energy flux, niche diversity, adaptations, interpretation, structure, interdependence, change, permeable boundaries of interdisciplinary applications and resource management.  The art of science and the science of art are eternally entwined.  Technology is one of the links in the similarity chain.  Surgeons and sculptors both use lasers, as do the lighting techs for rock concerts.  The work done in artist’s studio and scientist’s labs is enhanced with computers.  A botanist performing thousands of cross pollinations to produce a black rose has no more patience than a painter assembling millions of dots of color to create a river side scene.

Artists and ecologists pursue their passions by looking at the world through an ever changing set of lenses.  Microscopes and sub-atomic colliders show that everything in art and nature are microcosmic images of what we know of as the universe.  Everything in time and space looks the same.  We need not search for inter-relationships, they are already there, all around us.

The yet unnamed novel is plodding along.  First draft of part one of three is complete, so a lot of editing on my plate.  I've been following some good advice to write 'hot' and edit 'cold'.  I've added to that knowledge with this advice, "Write like you are in love.  Edit like you are in charge."