boatbird

A Note at the Beginning

2012-01-24T12:56:00.001-08:00

The essays and notes here are to be ignored by anybody with a sense of humor or who has no time to read, not stories, but about stories. These writings are not entertaining or exciting, nor will they offer solace to unhappy and stifled lives, or beauty tips to men who are learning to be beautiful. What they are is a bunch of tedious and sometimes stilted attempts exploring the techniques and dangers of walking on stilts along a balance beam; a balance beam, across of which is glory, and below which is – oblivion.

What I mean to say is, that these writings are a bundle of essays produced by a young writer concerning the craft of storytelling in books, in performances, in movies.

At the beginning, I might as well say what the approach is.

Firstly, I'll look at story structure, how it's built, what the acts are, what the conflicts are, what possible inciting incidences may are swaggering about the text. I'll be looking at the technical side of the story because I believe that the better the technique of crafting a story, the more engaging the story is.

Further explanation: by technical, I mean a group of techniques that have been found to keep the reader reading and invested (conflicts, goals, plots; you know, stuff that sometimes fall by the wayside in modernist, post-modernist, post-post critiques, so eager as they are to get to the meat of a story's overt significance and embedded significance). By engagement, I mean the reader is more likely to finish the story than to rest it on the bedside, to be buried under more promising books and the undeniable judgment of dust.

Secondly, does the story matter to the reader?

This is a bit of the X-factor, but generally I'm asking a story whether or not it is presenting ideas and a worldview which are stimulating intellectually, emotionally, or morally. Some stories don't stimulate readers in any of these ways, and some stories contain worldviews that I disagree with. For an example of both – Transformers 3! What I learned from Optimus Prime there was that I should never trust the hesitations and debates that happen in a democracy, but that the only people who can protect a country are its elite military troops who ignore the governments commands. An embedded worldview. One I find disagreeable. Not to mention the reduction of sexual dynamics to dork-gets-wins-trophy-girl-ism, a typical cinematic treatment. And one with which I quite disagree.

Good examples also abound, though I won't put them here. I'll write about them on this site. And as for unpacking this X-factor, of what makes a story matter, I won't jump into dissecting that here. Partly, because I don't know what it is. Maybe largely. But I have my hunches, and the purpose of this blog is follow those where they lead.

Shadow Puppet Video, August '09

2010-02-27T14:10:00.000-08:00

PS: Ursula LeGuin has kindly linked this site to her website!
Let me post a link for her website here and complete the circle.
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/New.html

A Nativity

2009-12-29T19:20:00.001-08:00

Boatbird Puppet Ideas

2009-10-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

"Gold-blue light was curling round him;

no dour wind sapped his sails;
Kirjava did not put on his heavy jacket,
though the morning wind carried a chill.

Birdhunter, leaning on the mast,
his hands on ropes and himself loosely hanging from them,
eyes forward on the East, and thinking;
his face taut, a hole where his heart had been."

"The wolf engulfed him
in its giant paws,
the two, wrestling and intertwined,
began to fall a great d i s t a n c e
between earth and sky.

They fell
through fleshy membranes of atmosphere
through flashes of fire
through air, and wind, and clouds.

Punching, snarling, kicking
towards the distant yawning ground."

Here are two pictures of Kirjava returning to Amalthe without his heart, and Annakir watching on from the shore.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Seven: The Open Sea

2009-10-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

"In that light, all form of man sloughed off the thing that came towards Ged. It drew and shrank and blackened, crawling on four short taloned legs. But still, it came forward, lifting up to him a blind unformed snout without lips or ears or eyes."
Above, Ged's shadow.

In this final installment, Ged seeks his enemy by sailing over the Open Sea. He does not, though, do this alone: he is accompanied by his friend Vetch, seen below with his sister Yarrow in their home.

And, at last, we have the homecoming, Ged and Vetch returning to the world in the ship Lookfar, and Yarrow, seeing them from the shores of Iffish.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Six: Hunting

2009-10-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

The stranded old couple on an islet west of Karego-At.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Five: The Court of the Terrenon

2009-10-06T12:54:00.001-07:00

"- Change yourself! Change yourself, they are coming! - Serret shrieked, seizing his arms and pointing to the tower that stood behind them like a tall white tooth in the dusk. From the slit windows near its base dark creatures were creeping forth, flapping their long wings, slowly beating and circling up over the walls toward Ged and Serret... They were botched beasts, belonging to ages before bird or dragon or man, long since forgotten by the daylight..."

Above, botched beast in flight;
below, Ged's shadow surprises and attacks him in Osskill.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Four: The Dragon of Pendor

2009-10-06T12:53:00.003-07:00

Pending.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Three: Roke

2009-10-06T12:53:00.001-07:00

Pending.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part Two: Ogion

2009-10-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

Ged tries to learn how to become a great wizard from the mage Ogion. To his disappointment, though, instead of learning great spells, he spends most of his time walking in the woods and tending goats. In these photos, we see a younger Ged, with a single hawk symbol.

A Wizard of Earthsea; Part One: Gont

2009-04-26T17:13:00.002-07:00

A Wizard of Earthsea is a novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin. We adapted the novel into a shadow play serial throughout the summer. Much thanks to Mrs. Le Guin, and all the puppeteers, musicians, and voices that made this series happen! Pictured above is Ged, or Sparrowhawk, against the backdrop of a partial map of Earthsea. Inset in his figure you can see two hawk symbols - one made of light, the other of dark.

"In those days, the Kargad empire was strong..."
Foreign soldiers arrive to Gont in packs, seeking to burn and murder.

Robert Creeley Poems

2009-04-26T17:13:00.001-07:00

The Death of Balder

2009-04-26T17:12:00.002-07:00

Students from Bell Language School

2009-04-26T17:12:00.001-07:00

The Namer Comes to Town

2009-04-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

The Namer sings,

We see your ugly form.
Your eating us won't prevent this;
we won't stop watching you.
With our bodies gone,
then our eyes will be in the night,
our eyes will be in your skin.

Oh, pig,
we see you with thousands of eyes.
We see you absolutely naked.
Did you ever ask why we watch,
why we never turned away?

The Girl Who Became a Cat

2009-04-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

This was our first shadow puppet play. It's about a girl, Aneia, who has a gift - she can change into whatever creature her heart desires. She feels pretty special because no one else she knows can do likewise. Poor Aneia, when a handsome young musician, who can also become different, fantastic animals, comes to town! Now, if only her heart's desires matched her own.