The Shakespearian Character Test by LoudmouthLee http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=10926914448073050116

Hamlet Hark, Ye scored 47!

Ahh, You are Hamlet, the protagonist from, duh, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. You have an inherent need to wax philosophical and figure out everything… no matter how painstaking that process may be. You need to plow through all sorts of thoughts before you make a decision, and normally, you waste way too much energy in doing so.

 

Wow.  I think that is pretty balls on accurate.  And that’s not even mentioning that we both like to wear black…

Thought fragment – possibly turned into an interlude chapter in the thesis…

And the argument raged. One side didn’t mind killing anything in the womb. The other side didn’t mind killing everything else. And in the middle, trampled by many feet walking both ways, was a battered cardboard sign, written in children’s crayon, saying, “Who would Jesus bomb?”

So I got back in touch with Chicago surrealist artist, Daina (her website) and she is still interested in doing art for Souls Unsure. I’ve been sending her bits of work and character descriptions (like my post regarding my hero, the ashen angel, Syth). In that vein, below is the work I did on another of my three main characters, Crow. Epics have muses…but they never really say anything. This muse talks back and is not always truthful. He’s summoned by a voodoo priestess (her description shall come forthwith…if “forthwith” means in a day or two). So here’s my little character analysis. Enjoy Daina (and whoever else is reading)…

A Muse Most Darkly
Crow is the muse, my voice, in the epic. He brings humor, sardonic and dark and dripping with gore. He’s here to keep things honest, even if he is not honest himself, keep things from getting to didactic, protect the poem from itself, with self depreciating humor. He keeps it sharp. He’s here because the voodoo priestess, Mama Nancy, summons him to tell a tale even as it happens…

Image
Sit down silly boy. Cow is mercurial and protean, shifting like a blotch of spilled black ink over a bleached bone. He has no need for images. He’s a red eyed raven of a demon’s seeming, sitting on the bust of that pale bimbo what exploded out the sky god’s head. He’s a murder of crows waiting hungrily for a murder of you. So no images, son. They are already there, in the back your mind, where he prefers to perch and pluck shiny coins out of the dead waters.

*NOTE: Be sure to take epic poetic pains in describing other characters (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight goes on for stanzas describing the green knight’s clothing and weapons), but give no direct physical descriptions of Crow.

Not a Spirit
Crow is not a spirit, he is a symbol. He is all and nothing. He is the animal. He’s the trickster spirit of the Native Americans. He is the chthonic bird of dark omens. He is the humanoid, black feathered, death eating god worshiped by ancient cultures forgotten – The Hunger of the Skies. He is both ravens sitting on Odin’s shoulders – Mind and Memory. He is the white bird cursed black by Apollo. He is the first bird Noah sent out to find dry land (he got side tracked) and never mind that slut, the dove, who hogs all the glory. He is all these things and none of them. He is a symbol, an idea.

Hungry eyes? No…no, I said I’m hungry for eyes.
Crow loves carrion, especially eyes; he’s addicted to eyes. This hunger is one of his defining traits. Ravenous would not be too severe a descriptor. That puts an edge and suspense on everything. Even as he’s telling the story, he wants to eat everyone…he just happens to have the dignified etiquette to wait till a person’s dead. When Crow eats a creature’s eyes, he sees what they see. This is a nifty way to get exposition, change the Crow’s tone of voice, or go into first person interludes.

“When the sin lies bolder
I’ll pluck out thine eye”
-Alice in Chains, “Bleed the Freak”

Eyes of the Story
Crow’s eyes are the one’s that see the majority of the story. Even the priestess is telling what is relayed to her. Crow is her link to Sheol; her black plumed 2-way.

“If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows”
-Rev.Henry Ward Beecher

Sardonic Smile
A beak cannot smile, but Crwo does it anyway (he’s rebellious like that). He is a dark, jaded creature, like Syth, but he does not mope about it. He’s the sardonic grin and wicked laugh to Syth’s perpetual frown and groans. Together they make both masks of a theatre macabre.

“And these ye shall have in detestation among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are a destetable thing; the great vulture, and the beareded vulture, and the osprey; and the kite, and the falcon after its kind; every raven after its kind…”
-Leviticus, 11:13-15

Bird’s Eye View
Crow, when you take away all the scary flesh eating stuff, is about seeing the universe from a strange perspective. There is a crazy wisdom to being able to see the absurdity in the most serious things – all granted by having the perspective of one who can shit on the heads of everyone below.

“Then Allah sent a raven, who scratched the ground, to show him how to hide the shame of his brother.”
-The Qur’an 5:31

Black Feathers
“I am that I am,” says Crow, “I am the color of my feathers.” Crow is the color of his wings. He is the absence of light and the potential for all. He is composed of no substances but represents many. He is none of the things he stands for, and he is all of them. When God created the Heavens and the Earth – he had to start with basic black.

“A zealots stones may break my bones, but gods will never hurt me.”

I Stole the Sun
Crow is proud of the time he stole the sun (or at least conned the fat ass). He’ll tell you about it if you ask. “I gave it back,” he’ll tell you, cryptically. If you’re good, he’ll even tell you a secret. Crows are night birds. People only think they are day birds because crows don’t want you to know what they are up to at night…

“And dieing eyes consume me now
The voice inside screams out loud
I am focused on what I am after
The key to the next open chapter
Cause I found a way to steal the sun from the sky
Long live that day that I decided to fly from the inside”
–Shinedown, “Fly From the Inside”

Crow’s Voice
In this epic poem with different voices, it’s important to get a fix on how each character sounds…

Crow loves words. He’s my excuse to be more clever or cutsie with the verbiage than I might normally be in this type of a work.

“What purpose do your words have Crow?”
“What more purpose do you need than words?”

Crow is the mouth of dark humor that most of the story flows from. His language can be quite manic and mischievously playful – he likes riddles and jokes.

“How come the Vatican has lightening rods?”

His language can also be cruel, he can laugh at the things that make other cry. Crow likes giving other characters little taglines with alliteration (like “Sweet Sister” and “Ashen Angel”).

Crow can spin strands of flowing poetry…but often breaks it with harsh discords and staccato bursts of single syllable words of a harsh sound. Think “kaw-kaw-kaw!” if it were language.

Most of all, Crow’s voice is shape shifting and chaotic. It can change to fit the situation or contrast it. It is another cheat on my part as a writer, giving me latitude in how I write the story and ensuring I never get stuck or bored.

Crow also makes all kinds of crazy, contradictory, Aesop-like mythical anecdotes about himself (“Did I ever tell you how I taught the Aztecs to eat their enemy’s eyes?”). One never knows if they are true.

Crow plays with language, turning nouns into adverbs and other such tricks (“Did I ever tell you how I taught Shakespeare to turn nouns into adverbs and other such tricks?”).

All the above adds up into me not having to worry about rhyme and meter. It’s a very free verse (cause I am balls at figuring out meter). But…I have an in character reason for this to be so (see…I’m cheating again…writers, conmen aren’t we all).

You scored as Alex. You can fortify any building from a potential zombie disaster. And you have a huge fucking penis. Everyone hates you because of it. Alex 70% Kurt 60% Blow Up Doll 55% Jonathan 50% Nick 50% Bill 50% Jason 45% Ben 40% Which Of Rich’s Friends Are You Most Like (Male) created with QuizFarm.com

“I’m a cultural infidel
Painting in the dark
I’m a cultural infidel
Singin’ in the park
Socrates, hypotheses, the music of Mozart
I’m a cultural infidel
Comin’ from the heart

Free thinkin’, hood-winkin’, unblinkin’ mon
Start trouble, burst bubbles, join my caravahn
Someone’s got to talk about accountability
Someone’s got to raise some hell
I guess it could be me”
-Jimmy Buffett, “Cultural Infidel”

I headed my Grad level Shakespeare essay with a quotes from Fight Club.

I rule!

“I’m a cultural infidel
‘Believe in common sense
I’m a cultural infidel
Love the present tense
But we have to keep a lookout for those mean old backed up farts
I’m a cultural infidel
Comin’ from the heart”
-Jimmy Buffett, “Cultural Infidel”

“Looked in my laptop, what did I see?
A flashin’ message says Today Therapy”
-Jimmy Buffette, “Vampires, Mumies, and the Holy Ghost”

And so ends the first night in my week n’ a half of WRITING MADNESS. I finished reading the below mentioned (few posts down) interview with writer Alan Moore. Very interesting interview (lots of writing advice). Mr. Moore is a Brit writer who’d roughly the size of a yeti and looks roughly like Rob Zombie’s wet dream of himself. He had strange/fun things to say about writing…

“Language itself is such a fantastic phenomenon with it’s own fantastic history, you can get involved in writing to whatever depth you want, but the thing is that really you have to kind of remember the best way to do it, with all this that I’ve said about the dangers of madness, treat writing the way that you would treat a god. If you believed in such things, if you were going to devote yourself to a particular god, then that’s the best way to treat it. Treat it as if it’s not just some abstract idea of a god, treat it as if it was a real god that will maybe, if you do right by the god, will maybe grant all your wishes, will maybe lavish nothing but success and wonder upon you and, if you don’t do right by the god, will begin to fuck with you in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. Treat it like that, and you won’t go far wrong. In effect, that’s what you’re doing.”
-Alan Moore

Running has, in little bat winged increments that flutter at the ear, evolved into something that is less about me getting in shape, and more about wearing the shit out of me so that the little writing voices in my head stop long enough for me to sleep. This is helpful when you are going over the frightening details of the scene in your epic poem that shows the place in the underworld where all the unborn children go and the chattering horrors that ensue. This portion of Alan Moore’s interview really struck home…

“Writing will consume your life, because so much of writing happens in your head – you don’t need to be ‘at work’, you don’t even need to be awake. You’re not gonna get a respite from writing when your head hits the pillow, you’re not gonna get a respite from writing when you go on a holiday caravan to Great Yarmouth, or anywhere – the moon – you can’t get away from it, it’s in your head. And if it’s working properly, it’s probably obsessive. If you’ve got a story on the boil, and if you’re a writer you probably will have, you’re probably thinking about problems with that story, good things about it that you wanna enhance and make even better, and you’re probably thinking that all the time. You might be thinking that when you’re having sex. You might be thinking that when you’re eating dinner, you might be thinking that on public transport. This is something that will take over your life. Surrender. Surrender to it right from word one. Don’t fight. It’s bigger then you are, it’s more important than you are, just do what it says. Even if that seems to be completely ruining your life, do what it says. Even if it tells you to do something stupid – if it tells you to jump off a cliff, do it.”
-Alan Moore

“Had a dream last night took a time travellin’ ride
Back to my childhood where those monsters reside
They snack on innocence and dine on self-esteem
But I like to be in touch with what makes me scream”
-Jimmy Buffette, “Vampires, Mumies, and the Holy Ghost”

So the other night, in my journal (buy leather bound journals kids…it improves writing), I was writing up my voodoo priestess’s (Mama Nancy’s) Grimoire…that is, her little voodoo cook book as it were. I went over all my notes and sources and put down all the little rituals, tidbits, and dressings into one place…that way I can flip to it – say, when I get to a point in the story where she has to heal a sick child…I’ll have that at my finger tips (or at least something comparable to help me make it up).

Well, I got to the chapter on vevés. These are little sort of drawings that the priest(ess) makes with a handful ash or cornmeal or some other granular substance. It’s really a very skillful process; the drawings are complex. There is a different vevé for each Loa (the voodoo pantheon of saints and spirits). The drawings are considred powerful magic. Where the dancing and drumming in a ceremony is designed to coax the spirits to attend, the vevé obliges them to show.

Well…I like doodling in my book, so it seemed the logical thing. I drew in the vevés for the two most important Loa in my story (there were sample drawings in the book), Papa Legba and Ghedi. Papa Legba is the crossroads keeper (his saintly counterpart is St. Peter). He gets prayed to at the beginning of every ceremony, as he is the one that opens the gate to the spiritual world. I drew his first. Ghedi is the Loa of graves and death…but he’s more mischievous than morbid and is also the Loa of birth and healing (and sex…which makes sense, the psychological connection between funerals and procreation and all). I drew his.

I think I did a pretty good job. It makes the journal more interesting to look at…and maybe, in the back of my mind, I wanted to tap into something (even if it was just more creativity).

“Vampires, mummies and the Holy Ghost
These are the things that terrify me the most”
-Jimmy Buffette, “Vampires, Mumies, and the Holy Ghost”

I went to sleep that night, and had one of those dreams you have, just before you get into an actual deep sleep, the ones that are full of motions and make you jump and jerk awake again…before you go back to sleep (they’re really more of a blast of sensory input than they are full dreams).

What made this more surreal is that the dream had me in same place, in the same position as I really was (laying on my stomach, on my bed, head on my pillow), so I never really noticed that I started dreaming. This made the rest all the more frightening.

Some of the most frightening dreams are not frightening for what happens visually or narratively. A scene full of zombies can strike you as funny. It’s more of a mood, and indescribable mood or dread that suddenly hits the dream. I can’t put it in words, and really on the fact that you’ve all had dreams and so know the unexplainable aspects of them.

So I’m in my bed, in the dark, when this above mentioned dread hits me, turns the surroundings into evil, even though they don’t look any different, like a horrifying soundtrack playing, even though there was no sound. I had this immenent feeling, that SOMETHING BAD, was about to happen, something was coming for me. NOW.

In the dream, I clutched my scapular and said a prayer of protection (the Catholic kind, not the voodoo variety). And just in the middle of repeating it, something hovered behind and over me (the cause of the BAD feeling). I didn’t get a chance to turn, I just felt something buffeting and slaming into my back and head, like swatting arms, or wings.

Swat swat swat.

Scared shitless, I woke up with a jump…which was made weirder by the fact that my waking self was in the same place as the dreaming self, and so it was less like waking and more like everything going mundane again (and the sun was coming up).

I don’t remember if I actually woke up clutching my scapular.

Freaky. Chalk it up to drawing voodoo vevés in one’s journal (in the correct order no less)…or an diseased imagination on thesis overdrive…

Time to go to sleep again.

Night/morning

“It’s not the tales of Stephen King that I’ve read
I need protection from the things in my head”
-Jimmy Buffette, “Vampires, Mumies, and the Holy Ghost”

You scored as American Beauty. You are American Beauty. You are artistic and original, but not snobbish about it. Not everyone may “get you” all the time, but that’s because they haven’t taken the time to look closer at what you really have to offer. But don’t worry…they’ll find out one day. American Beauty 83% Tommy Boy 75% The Usual Suspects 75% Mallrats 75% The Exorcist 75% Gladiator 67% Old School 67% Fight Club 67% Memento 58% Wayne’s World 58% Which of Rich Funk’s favorite movies are you most like? created with QuizFarm.com

I went to see Eureka’s mystery play on Thursday. Nice job guys.

I drove home and on Friday, went to Ken’s grandfather’s funeral. I think he appreciated the gesture and it was good that a bunch of the old Wauconda crowd could be there for him.

Saturday I went to work and should have worked there after (on many things)…but I needed to see some more friendly faces…and so I went to Amy and Jeramie’s place for fun and drink (thanks guys…great hosts as always).

Now I have to hunker down, finish a Shakespeare paper, and move on in my week. I have off from work, and no other projects, so it will be just me and the thesis. Slippin’ into cold, numb, soothing work, and my head goes under…

See everyone when I surface.

I was just going through a stationary drawer, looking for something…when I came across and old manila envelope I had gotten from Dr. Logsdon a while back (I think it was used to deliver a story I had given him to look at or something). The return address has the standard Eureka Literary Magazine info and address. But the recipient address sticker reads:

Dr. Logsdon rocks!!!

You scored as Lust. Lust 69% Sloth 50% Gluttony 50% Pride 50% Wrath 19% Envy 19% Greed 13% Seven deadly sins created with QuizFarm.com