Sci-Fi and Slow Stillness
Photograph by Sigrid Estrada
I had such a
great time chatting with Mark Alpert, author of The Orion Plan and The Six
(read my reviews here and here), in New York last week that I
forgot to get a pic {Marge Simpson sound}. Mark suggested meeting on the Upper
West Side at a classic New York
diner, and it was a good place to sit down
and discuss what motivates and informs his content, themes and style.
Remember when you had to discuss “the author’s intent” in
high school English? And then you heard an author say about their book, “Oh,
well that’s great if that’s what you got out of it, but that wasn’t
intentional”? There’s a caveat in that. Those exam questions make us assume that we can ascribe
things to writers that are not necessarily there, and we should learn to drop
that presumptive approach to literature the minute we’re out of school. Case in
point: I learned things about this author that surprised me because I had reflected on his books with my own ideas about what he was trying to say in them. Here’s what I learned. [The following is a summary of what Mark Alpert said to me, and any errors or omissions are mine; as I was writing down points by hand, I don't have exact quotations for all of his responses~mea culpa.]
I knew that Alpert majored in astrophysics and neuroscience at
Princeton and is an editor for Scientific
American, yet as I said in my reviews I found the science in his books
accessible. I was a little intimidated about
interviewing this “lifelong science geek” but he was gracious, friendly and
approachable. So I plucked up my courage and asked my science question: how did he make me able to visualize and
understand the science of AI (artificial intelligence) in his novels?
Simple (says she!): he’d had to edit other people’s dense writing and
make it understandable to general readership. Because of his science background and his
MFA in writing, he could translate all those scientific submissions to magazines and enable
Luddites like me learn something about science and technology. His feeling was
that the articles he edited should be understandable (with a few visuals thrown
in) for anyone who had taken one post-secondary science course. (I did an
anthropology course—that’s as science-y as I could go.) When I asked for
examples, he told me about sexual maturation behaviour patterns in male orangutans,
the brown dwarfs, and—well, I can’t recall everything about
Einstein, but I remember getting it at the time! So if you can make dry or technical abstracts and articles about this stuff appealing to Joe Blow, you’re a pretty
clear communicator. He’s most effective because he’s enthusiastic and that certainly comes out in his fiction.
The premise of The
Orion Plan is that intergalactic communication will happen most likely if
we/they send something very small and light because that is more feasible than
a big ol’ Close Encounters type of
thing. So the recent Breakthrough
Starshot announcement about interstellar travel highlights the
demonstrated need for AI, not humans, to be sent into space. And if AI goes
where no man has gone before, it needs to be the guardian of knowledge.
Alpert’s knowledge about the actual science around such
things creates things that are more accessible to readers than made-up sci-fi stuff. Why? He says it’s because novel writing requires special
knowledge and then the desire to share that special knowledge. There’s the motivation
for writing the way he does. I think Alpert should have been a science teacher.
I wanted to know where his inspiration for writing about
mental health issues, terminal illness, addiction, handicaps and myriad social
ills came from—and why he wasn’t afraid to meet those topics head on. Lots of authors
won’t touch those issues, but Alpert tends to cover a lot of
ground in each novel. How do you do that without bringing the tone down to some
depressing chronicle about, for example, gangs, the homeless, and police and correctional system problems?
His interest is piqued by various sources: a celebrity talking
about their child’s drug addiction; news items about Rikers Island; socio-political
regionalisms he sees on his travels. He is attracted to the secret and
inaccessible aspects of life (subterranean urban infrastructure, prisons). And
he doesn’t like misinformation, so his science is not only accurate, it does
some myth busting and educating along the way. He does all this with an underlying optimism—not fairy tale endings—but he observes social issues and scientific problems and we still feel okay about the future rather than unnerved.
Our conversation morphed towards what is an obvious theme in his novels: stewardship of technology. I
wonder if tech (or more specifically STEM) will become the new currency of this
millennium, not just as money but as the means and goal of the exchange
economy itself; we pseudo-socialists already support an expanding sharing economy. In The Orion Plan, Alpert writes about how
AI has a goal for itself—resurrection of its own species—and therefore an
incentive to conquer. So maybe we would do well to be more discerning about how
and how much we use our pocket technologies. We already are seeing skyrocketing
rates of depression and anxiety, often linked to the uber-connectedness of our
lives; do we want to allow technology (and, by extension, AI) to keep
encroaching on our psyches and to essentially hand over the wheel to the little
green men inside the microchips? We need to look at technology more critically
and philosophically. Luddite I may be, but I love my smartphone and all the
advantages we have in modern society, so I’m not going all Amish on you. But
there is other life out there, as Alpert illustrates; it just might not be in
the water-based life forms we are looking for closer to home.
Finally, I asked him what he, as an author, would like to
tell us editors (since it might seem like we are the ones doing the telling all
the time). He said the thing he thinks is paramount is that we flag the speed
bumps and reader turn-offs we see in a manuscript, which an author might leave
in due to their own assumptions and blinders. We don’t have to necessarily
suggest the fix for each one, but we do need to make sure the author is
handling the potential jolt to the reader. Agreed—a good editor should do
that. But he also said it is important for authors to participate in writers’
groups; again, not to get fixes handed to them, but to get fine-grained
encouragement from other readers.
Good news: The Six’s
sequel (called it!), The Siege, will be
out July 2016. Bad news: I also want to read The Omega Theory so now I don’t know which one to read first. First
world problems, I know.
Photo by Joan Marcus
When I was in NYC, I saw Jesse Tyler Ferguson in Fully
Committed at the Lyceum. [Somehow we got tickets for
the same night in the second last row of the balcony and the matinee audience’s gales of
laughter sealed our decision at the box office. But other theatre-goers were happy to see that Christian Bale was only sitting one row ahead of us and that therefore there is justice in the world.] Everybody knows and loves him as same-sex dad
Mitchell from Modern Family. In this
1999 Becky Mode play, he portrays the harassed and verbally abused reservation agent for
New York’s snootiest (fictional?) restaurant and all the characters who phone
him. The last time I saw such one-man energy was Alan Cumming’s Macbeth in 2013. Although
popular drama rather than Shakespeare, this one-act romp through F-bombs and
Society’s complete jerks was very creatively handled (including Derek McLane’s set) and demonstrated Tyler Ferguson’s
elasticity and his ability to pull off comedy outside of pre-taped TV. Really,
really fun. I suspect the run will be extended.
I’m always on the hunt for music like that of my classical hero, Arvo Pärt: I’m fairly sure I have almost all of his music, but I like minimalist composition and have found some new gems this year. So, while in the Big Apple, I wanted to interview
composer Ola Gjeilo about his new eponymous CD, but he couldn’t meet with anyone “not set up by the record company” (Decca).
I’ve never heard of an artist not wanting free publicity—i.e. it’s not a paid
gig for me—and a click on my signature-linked website would have indicated I
have a background in theology, choral singing and working at a classical-music
magazine, which I would say is apt for review of sacred choral music.
The album Ola Gjeilo, recorded with Voces8, Tenebrae and the Chamber
Orchestra of London, is pretty (although it’s not minimalist). He has an audio/video sampler out, of which “Uri Caritas” is clearly the featured (and best) piece. Unfortunately, I
don’t think he got the best promotional advice, starting the trailer by
saying his name and morphing into nature footage. Maybe nature informs his
music, but it sure doesn’t inspire this shopper. The album cover, however, is
outstandingly cool. And cool is where classical music has to keep heading towards,
if artists are to make a better living at it.
On the crossover section of his web page, I much preferred the electronica/ambient/jazz instrumental Departures single (reminded me a bit of my Garbarek/Hilliard Ensemble CD, Officium) to the piano/guitar track, Shades of Violet. Anyway, I won’t go
into the previous choral or piano recordings (although I did like “The
City/Credo” on Sunrise), but I did
listen to the new CD which he was kind enough to iTunes-send me. “Ubi Caritas”
was my favourite piece on the album and I liked the “Sanctus.” “The Spheres”
reminded me of the kind of soundtrack you’d find on a movie like Lord of the
Rings; that’s not a bad thing, but I found it hard to reconcile it with the
idea of sacred or at least contemplative music. By the time I listen to “The Ground,” I’m thinking
of modern inspirational anthems such as Paul Winter’s “The Blue Green Hills of
Earth,” which have their place but I don’t find them spiritually inspiring. And
the “Serenity (O Magnum Mysterium)” did not stop me in my tracks, which, by its title, I had expected it to. Perhaps I’m being unfair in having preconceived
notions about the work (see paragraph 2). But I do feel a little hoodwinked: I
heard an ad for it on our local classical music station (Classical 96.3FM, not CBC sadly) and it definitely promoted it as a more sophisticated work. I’d classify this album as “classical light"; think The Piano Guys. Nice, just not entirely my cup of tea.
I watched two DVDs
about said-hero: The Lost Paradise: Arvo
Pärt/Robert Wilson, a documentary by Gunter Atteln; and Adam’s Passion, the production itself of the
world premiere in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2015. Maybe I am comparing apples to
oranges with Gjeilo vs. Pärt, but I didn’t have access to conversation with the
former and these documentaries made me feel like I did with the latter. The documentary is a sympathetic look at the composer whose music
is said to be the most often performed in the world. He is portrayed as humble,
simple and very human. Likewise, his personal theology (likely influenced
through his Orthodoxy) seems to me pared down and scripturally faithful. As various interviewees say about his music, no note is random or unintentional; there is a focus on the spaces between the notes (rests); and an emotional calm and stillness is accomplished in his compositions. There
are some loose ends in this portrait of the composer—if the goal was only to
document the making of the premiered work (see below), they should have
edited out some undeveloped references to his personal life. But it is a
fascinating look at this very private individual and the collaboration with Wilson on this concert/show.
Adam’s Passion is a work amalgamating “Adam’s Lament”
and others of his pieces into a presentation stage directed by Robert Wilson. This was performed at the Noblessner
Foundry, a former Russian
submarine factory, now an appropriately poignant shell of a
building for this work. It is an accompanied work largely of slow-moving “actors” (dancers?)
and of light. Despite the large scale of the space, the work is
exquisitely intimate. It is mostly sparse but becomes more operatic and by the end it made
me think of van Gogh, with perhaps allusions to Jacob’s Ladder, a Trojan
horse and an apocalyptic cloud in the last scene. The intimacy of it also made me wonder what it
would look like if choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey and filmmaker Jaco Van
Dormael, the folks who did Kiss and Cry at CanStage, did a production
of it. If, as Ruby Mercer said, “opera is love, sex and violence set to good
music,” Adam’s Passion is like a Bill
Viola video set to beautiful sacred music. In other words, minimalistically
sublime. Highly recommend both DVDs. Watch the trailer here
and get sucked in.
A note on coincidence.
Take a look again at the cover of The
Orion Plan. Now look at the photo below. A thumbnail? Nope. A photograph I
took in 2005 to accompany an excerpt of “Before the Marvel of This Night”
(1981, by Jaroslav J. Ajda, American Lutheran pastor and poet):
"Then tear the sky apart with
light…"
Photo by V. Wells, 2005.
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