Writing, The Art Of Healing

It was said by Ernest Hemingway that, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn … it’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that.” In Ernest Hemingway, A Reconsideration, Philip Young qualifies Hemingway’s quote. “This rather loose overstatement is generally taken to mean that Huckleberry Finn is the source for the natural, colloquial, and nonliterary prose style in which most modern American Literature, and particularly Hemingway’s is written.

Mark Twain who was disillusioned by the disappearance of the American Frontier, found life closing in on him all around found Huck Finn. Huckleberry found the big muddy and his raft. Every time his world closed in on him, a push of the raft found he and Jim in a fast moving river with trouble far behind them. Our hero never grows past young adulthood and at the crucial growth time he introduces Tom Sawyer.

Hemingway embellishes upon the Huckleberry character by creating his early Nick Adams and his difficulties at The Big Two Hearted River. Nick’s struggle to cross the river is generally attributed to Hemingway’s attempt to heal from his wounds received July 8, 1918 at Fossalta di Piave. Hemingway was wounded badly and for a time assumed to be beyond hope. It is said 277 pieces of shrapnel were removed from him. Psychologically, Nick almost doesn’t make it across the river. Through Nick and The Big Two Hearted River, Hemingway confronts his demon and seemingly keeps it at bay.

Writing is a form of healing, and history is full artists desperately trying. Living is hard, you have to try and survive. In your struggle, if it becomes too difficult, you can Just Open A Vein,like a quote by Red Smith in a book edited by William Brohaugh. Albert Bianchine

"Words. They Are The Key."

Those simple words were destined to spawn my writing career. At a very young age, my Grandmother would buttonhole me and force me to sit and take the word power tests in Readers Digest Magazine. My Grandfather introduced me to the Western Novel soon after I had put down my Curious George books.

After abandoning my dreams of running away to join the circus, I picked up my young manhood dreams from Zane Grey the Western Novelist. I remember distinctly in his novel entitled, Wyoming, the scene opening with the Cowboy standing on the desolate plains. “Sand, sand blowing, shifting like a silver silken sea of clouds.” I was mesmerized and bitten by the great American expansive west.

Laughed out of my grade school music days for playing The Streets of Laredo as my favorite song, I took my album (yes, one of those vinyl plastic things), stuffed it in my backpack and headed for the school bus home. There I was on the bus, a Cowboy Hat wearing outcast, a drifter who didn’t fit in. It was the beginning of the character I was to create and become in my fiction writing. The self-styled lone wolf, I took up skiing and quickly exhausted the eastern mountains.

I soon found myself, Stetson hat and knapsack looking out over the great American plains of Wyoming. The big horns looming large on the horizon, with the Tetons and Jackson Hole Ski Area not far down the road. My knapsack harbored my marbled black and white composition book filled with doodles and short stories. Consumed and possessed by the adventure of the mountains, I lived the life that I had read about in the Westerns. I skied as many of the American Rockies as I was able. I was always trying to find the words to paint the beauty I was fortunate enough to live every day.

Writers are word stackers, shapers, like “Sand, sand blowing, shifting like a silver silken sea of clouds.” Just ask the self-styled lone wolf, the drifter and outrider of society who just stepped off The Streets of Laredo in their mind. Albert Bianchine

"My Bad, But I have An App For That."

When I worked as a performer with the Beaver Creek Children’s Theatre in Avon, Beaver Creek, and Vail, Colorado, we worked in conjunction with Disney and Sport Goofy (Goofy on Skis.) We had several programs for vacationing families, especially the children. We offered a family night out with a picnic in a theatre at Piney Lake, a serene setting in the Rocky Mountains. We also offered a kid’s night out at a local theatre in Vail Village, that allowed families and evening out while their children were entertained. The cast was a wonderful array of people that told elaborate stories and performed skits with approved Disney Characters like Sour Dough Pete, and Sure Shot Shirley.

Many of the stories were performance stories with, audience participation. It struck me that inevitably many of the young children stayed at the back seats of the auditoriums and played with their video games and had no participation with the groups. Unless you physically removed the video games from the children, there is no way they would watch the performances or participate in them(with former parental approval.) They were social outcasts that didn’t interact with any of their peers or the social group.

Now flash forward twenty-five years. Those very same children are now CEO’s and General Managers of many companies. They are supremely technically gifted and computer literate and they have ipods, blackberries, and ipads. Their devices ring, beep and buzz to tell them where they should be with whom they should be and what they should be talking about. If they make a mistake or their device doesn’t remind them. They look at you with a far away distant stare and say, “My Bad.” But you know what?

I have an app for that. You guessed it. My blog.

Albert Bianchine

I Own Those Words

How far do you allow an editor to go with your creation? This is something that you need to discuss with your editor in advance. I was watching the Celebrity Apprentice the other night and found this question in my mind. The premise of the show was that the teams would take a novice country star and make them over. This would include hair and clothing, as well as preparing them for an interview with People Magazine. This was a great opportunity for the young singers, and two of the competitors performing the makeovers were popular rock stars.

It was clear that the male singer was stuck in his style and not willing to wander out of his box. I thought, "what's the point in participating in such an opportunity, if you're not willing to allow the pros to make you over?"

That's my point here. Anyone who has ever edited my writing has more experience than me. I have to trust that they know when to remove excess wording, when to correct my punctuation and grammar, and how to dress up or excite what I've written.

For me, editing the story out of my story isn't welcome editing. For example, if I write about my life as a child, and I mention the smell of the night blooming jasmine plants outside of my bedroom, they are here to stay. They are a major factor in my childhood memories. No matter what an editor has to say about that, I own those words. If I haven't misspelled them or used them in the wrong context, leave them!

To all of you wonderful and hard working editors out there ... I love and appreciate you, but sometimes you've just got to butt out!

Telluride Writing

I always thought that drumming was a foolish part of the Alive Tribe movement. The Alive Tribe has characters named Truth and Joyous Spirit. Drumming was not for me.

I went to a writing conference in Telluride, Colorado many years ago. Before attending, I climbed to the top of Rabbit Ears Pass just outside of town to sit and meditate on the coming workshop. I stayed up to watch the sunset, then ran back down before dark.

Part of the conference included a segment on performing. Reading my writing in front of a group has always been difficult for me and I wanted to polish that skill. The closer that the time came to stand before the audience, the more nervous I became. It was very difficult to walk across the stage and begin reading White Dreams, but I was able to do so. Was I afraid? Yes. Did I eventually overcome the fear? Yes, I did. Not only did I overcome my stage fright, but I took a hike to a waterfall drumming session with Joyous Spirit. It was relaxing, and enlightening. The sound of the waterfall, and the rhythm of the drumming together were very soothing.

After having my spirits lifted, I walked back into town to a local bookstore. Upon entering, my eyes flashed on the book, The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. There was something special about his picture, so I bought it.

My life has changed dramatically since then, and I am now a practicing Yogi with the Self Realization Fellowship. I met and married my wonderful wife at a job in Aspen several years later, after she questioned the secretary about a letter from the Self Realization Fellowship that I had received. She had surfed at the beach in front of the Ashram that is now named Swamis. I distinctly remember her saying, “ I will take you there and show you.” I didn’t think she meant it at the time, and after discussing it with her years later, I found out that she hadn’t. There was a spirit greater than us at work.

Upon arriving to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the name of my guru, Paramahansa Yogananda had been left written in the sand in front of his favorite meditation bench. We took it as a sign of a blessing and went through with our plan to elope in Lake Tahoe. We have been happily married for fourteen years now.

Foolish Drumming at a writing conference with Joyous Spirit, indeed. It opened my chakras that had been closed. Perhaps attending writing groups are good for me, even if I hadn’t thought so. Albert Bianchine

Resistance To Writing

I’m reminded of a scene in some B grade sci-fi movie that I have watched somewhere along the way. A creep of an alien is yelling at some human.

“It is futile to resist silly human!”

I am and have been resisting. Oh yes, I have the anchor out and have pulled the sails down on my little writing ship and blog. It is amazing to me that I would elect to neglect the only vehicle that I currently have up and running at my disposal.

It hasn’t always been that way. When I was living in Vail and working as a waiter, I became involved in reading books to children in the Library. I even went as far as starting a Vail Writing Group where none had previously existed. Motivated, to say the least, and eager to do anything to be involved with other writers. What happened to that spirit? I called myself a struggling writer and poet then. I was working on Of Mountains and Men that I published in August, 2009. I went to local Café’s and read my poems trying them out on others while learning to perform. It was great fun and I met many interesting people. So the question still is; What happened to change all that?

Was it my ranch, the horses, the goats, my job? It would be easy to blame those things. I could conjure up a million excuses why I stopped writing and performing, but that would be just what they were. Excuses lacking action! “Anything lacking action is doomed to failure, silly human.” It doesn’t take an alien in a space ship to get it. If I didn’t go to the library and sit in one of those great curvy chairs that lets you type on a typewriter (yes I am that old that I started writing before laptops) I wouldn’t have had enough material to edit into the shape of a book, let alone publish it.

Let’s go back further. If I didn’t go to Universities as a young man and take poetry writing workshops and write about what the Professors asked me to write about, I wouldn’t have had the raw poems to even think about editing.

Ok, so by now you are waiting on the point. The point is, have you met me? Have you read my blog lately? The resistance to good blogging on the suggestion of my wife by wanting to write stiff, stuffy, upper lipped fiction leaps off the page at you. Perhaps one should read what they are writing more often and learn from their mistakes.

Writing Is Writing Is Writing

My wife Kathy is an analytical critical personality. She is a teacher and a writer of informative articles on Ezine. I am a poet and a dreamer and I write fiction. So often I set out to write a blog, I know our blog is primarily about writing for writers about writing. In my latest blog attempt I began writing a wonderfully sentimental piece about our rescue ranch and my first white Appaloosa named Snowy.

When Kathy said, “What the hell are you writing Al, our blog is about writers and writing." I respond by saying,” Whatever,” and get angry and don’t want to write a blog. I am instead off on a fantastic stroll down memory lane and wondering how I could possibly turn it in to a great piece of fiction. If I tweak the truth just a little here and add some description there, because everyone knows that detail make the lie more believable, I just might have something saleable.

My question then becomes is writing about writing not writing fiction, or a memoir, or just writing about becoming a writer? I just want to write more prolifically and better. When I sit down to write, am I undisciplined if I go off on a memoir, and turn it in to a fiction piece titled, Snowy Got His Wings? Isn’t creativity and outlet for simply creating and if you push and step beyond the whiteness of the page aren’t you writing? Al Bianchine