In 2022, writers Nathan Dean (italics) and Barry Hale1 (regular text) fell into a conversation about art, about writing, about making a living as an artist and the importance of dream-logic in fiction. In March of 2023, Nathan suggested we do it formally, as a blog, so here it is, on the off-chance others may want to join the conversation.
For Part 5, click below:
A few things come to mind as I read your last posts. Firstly, you talk of changing the status quo with your writing, but alot of your books take on a cyclic nature, or a feeling of that nothing has really changed, or is perceived to have changed; my first book (technically second, but first out there) Spectral Fathoms (which interestingly is set in a psychedelic Paris like your own Secret Cages) ends with cataclysm and nihilism. GAMMA FOUR, which was intended to be the spiritual sequel to it, which I’ve parked for now, as it doesn’t feel like my words any longer, similarly is tinged with a feeling of regrettable unchangingness, even if it does possess more literal rebellion. I wonder what cycles mean to you. I know in many faiths the karmic wheel, samsara, keeps turning, but what does this mean for the revolutionary?
Second, ol’ Werner. His talks put him into a different mind for me, which shows how much of a performance he is. And this I am learning across the gamut of artists, that they are all performances, and in truth they want to run apiaries, drink tea, be merry. The nihilism is fun to sell, but doesn’t do anything. Even Werner Herzog recognises this.
Thirdly, is the talk of poverty porn. I was chatting to my fiancée recently about our position as artists, spiritual people, but also working in medical fields, or therapeutic ones, and it came up around our class. I couldn’t see us as middle class, at all, until it was pointed out how many middle class things we possess. Now alot of this is due to a family that is very supportive, and many don’t have access to this; and I touched on the idea of the precariat in terms of our privilege and way of life–but I find this intriguing, because the blindspot for me is recognising what stability I now possess. I am so used to being a drunk artist living on benefit, hoping I won’t get kicked out of where I live, that when I cook with vegetables from the local market, et cetera, et cetera, I don’t necessarily see that I am not the man I was. I bring this up, because I talk so much from a position of anarchic, angry rebelliousness, but I do so from the comfort of a warm home, with my book cases, and an exercise bike, and cushions we bought together. And I know I haven’t earnt these things directly with my art, but rather because my partner works exceedingly hard, but it changes the environment in which my writing now sits. I say I am opposed to these middle class ways of life, and yet I seem to exist within it. But also, not, because this is a life evolved from a very different state of affairs, not the conventional pathway that the Conservatives would have people believe. I suppose, on some level, I am simply terrified of becoming too liberal.
I wrote those above paragraphs a few months (I think?) ago; I lost time to properly sit here and reply because my degree to become a counsellor came through, and now I just have to wait for NCS approval and I can begin to practice! Which is once again going to change the tapestry of how Nathan Dean interacts with the world around him–that, combined with sluicing off old behaviours picked up from childhood and alcoholism (in my case, probably the same thing) and I’m really beginning to understand the zen-like nature of the self, or rather its absence.
Pausing there, and to open up a new thread of discussion: today I saw on the side of a bus two things, an advert for The S*n, which made me laugh out loud that they are resorting to such advertising methods. Feels like a death rattle to me, and so should it. But also an advert for Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny. Looking at my comments on Werner Herzog, precariat, and metamodern middle classness, I wondered what your thoughts on the Marvel-ification of things are. What I mean by this is that I, unlike some other creatives, have absolutely no hatred for constant sequels. I adore prequels, sequels, continuations, side stories, expanded media. What bothers me is that it becomes an exercise in keeping the main character alive. Pirates Of The Caribbean was good because Jack Sparrow was a side character; when he became the lead, it lost its way (and that Depp is a horrible person). Instead, because the lead selling point now fuels the narrative, we’re stuck unable to feel where it will head next. Dial of Destiny may be great or terrible, I don’t know–but the fact remains the story should naturally evolve. I also call this the House effect, after Hugh Lauries show: you hit this point where the selling point of a show (House is a genius but breaks the rules; Luther is a genius but breaks the rules; Iron Man is a genius but breaks the rules…) gets in the way of natural development. House and Luther should have been imprisoned at their turning points, but aren’t because they have to keep being the show. The same could happen with Indiana; one day he will have to die, pass on the legacy, but if we keep just… finding ways of keeping him going, the story gets lazy and flaccid and boring. We need to be brave enough to let things naturally evolve to where the story heads next: i.e. how amazing would Luther be if he became the criminal? How amazing would House have been if he had stayed in the mental health unit?
My question, I suppose, is what do you think of this superhero comes first kind of writing, where it’s less about story and so much about character they can never leave or grow? Do you even agree this is the case?
What a bunch of interesting jump off points you offer - I don’t think I can answer coherently in any kind of linear way so I will just write about the subjects you raise.
On the Marvelisation of cinema: I know Martin Scorsese speaks very negatively about the phenomena and has declared we cannot and should not think of these films as cinema. I feel for cineastes like Scorsese and I love his work, but he’s wrong. Cinema has always been about wonder, awe, dreaming in public and SPECTACLE. From the very first Lumiere brothers movie of a train pulling into a station, which terrified its viewers who thought for a split second their lives might be in danger, cinema has been about the visceral experience. And, with marvel in particular, the characters are complex, they face moral dilemmas, hefty consequences for their actions and jeopardy. The 12 year old me is thankful for the fact I’ve lived into an age where cinema can do the comic books justice. Viva Iron Man, the Ozymandias of our age, because in the character arc of his story we see he too is a brief candle that must ultimately confront the snuffing out of its own light. AND in narrative terms, as a writer, I deeply appreciate the storylines and character development arcs that take 22 feature films to complete. And as for the spider-man franchise; it’s broken traditional cinema narrative wide open with its parallel multiverse intersectioning. In one universe he’s responsible for the death of his uncle, in another, for his girlfriend, in a third, for ending his uncle’s criminal reign, in a forth, he is a she. All are troubled souls, all have a price to pay for their unwanted special powers and all learn whether they accept their new role in society or whether they don’t; someone close to them will pay for their decision.
First jumping in, which I imagine I’ll do a lot this time: I think Scorsese is often misunderstood in terms of his comments on Marvel. What he originally said was that these films are rollercoasters, in that they are a thrill, and that I think is certainly true. Their core ideas are militaristic, jingoistic, imperial: Captain America is a white dude with a magic shield against the forces of darkness, but that very same figure is responsible (in terms of being a symbol) for the countless deaths of slaves, Native Americans, etc etc etc. I feel very much in the Alan Moore mode that these films are, on some level, just propaganda flicks for us to fund our military. In fact, I remember being told once that the reason why the military is always depicted positively in the films is because the Pentagon has a stake in their funding, whereas the TV serials do not, and thus we can get slightly more interesting narratives such as in Falcon & Winter Soldier. But even then, the anarchists have to blow up a school for literally no discernible reason, because god forbid we show that they have a better system of governance than a black president who still bombed kids–OK, rant aside, because I too love superheroic flicks, I think that they’ve advanced the medium with the 22 feature length story-telling modality, the transmedia, the multiversal logics, et cetera, but that Scorsese isn’t wrong that they are spectacles, not le cinéma, but we’re back to the age old argument of high and low art again, which is tiresome. I cried at Infinity War. Absolutely shocking it made me feel that. They win this time.
On the notion that individuals must adopt an easily identifiable persona to maintain their position in the realm of celebrity; yep, they do. But they can only succeed in that if they take a fraction of their own true personality and amplify it. So, Herzog’s nihilistic persona in his nature documentaries sticks out because of its counter-narrative to mainstream media and what audiences come to expect of presenters, BUT we’re still looking in on the true Herzog. Just like we’re looking in on the true Bono, the true Robert Downey Junior etc. They aren’t acting themselves, they’re giving dominance to that aspect of themselves that was always there. Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Ricky Gervais as iron Man would be very different, because they don’t have that aspect of character that Downey has.
I both would pay a million pounds just to know what Ricky Gervais as Iron Man (I can already hear him going “Yeah, I’m a man, a man, male, what do you mean Thor is a girl now, that doesn’t make sense, farting noises”) would be like, or cut out my eyes with a rusty spoon if it ever got made. Keanu Reeves, if I recall, was in the running for a major marvel superhero, may have been Iron Man actually. Depp, well, less said about him the better.
On Middle-class vs working-class definitions: it isn’t about how much you have or what you own or how you make a living - it’s about what doors are open to you as you take your first steps in life, the support networks around you and the wider social network you’re born into. For some, risks aren’t risks at all because they have a base position to fall back on which will always shield them from homelessness, penury, disaster. For others, they’re permanently clinging to the crumbling edge of society by their bloody fingernails all their life and they’re only ever two bad decisions from losing everything. Even those of the working class that break through into the world of opportunity that normally only the middle class can aspire to very quickly find it indicated to them in no uncertain terms that they do not belong here. They lack the acceptable social graces and social standing to ever be a true member of the gang. Many middle-class career choices are only available to those who don’t actually need to make a living from them. As I’ve said before; some of us NEED to make a living from art, because it’s the only way they can carry on doing it. Others may come and go as they please, because the income from it isn’t fundamental to their survival. The middle-class can engage because it is no sacrifice. For others, it is a life-threatening gamble to engage, because one may lose absolutely everything if one doesn’t succeed and end up so far down the ladder there’s no coming back from it. You may have your cushions, but it isn’t cushions that define the middle-class, it is the comfort of knowing that others will always have your back when you step out and take a risk - that there is no real penalty to pay for failure other than your own bruised ego.
On the fragile mortality of the Franchise identity (Indiana Jones/Jack Sparrow and James Bond): This is how impoverished the imaginations of the media companies and the general public is. And I don’t blame the public; they can only choose from what is offered. But the media companies with their stranglehold on the market, on production, marketing and exhibition outlets, could easily invest in a wider range of content; develop an audience’s taste for more quirky, deeper, more personal or experimental narrative forms. They could introduce us to an infinity of new and very different characters that helped society to understand all the different facets of itself. But they don’t. Because Indiana Jones, Jack Sparrow and Bond don’t represent the wealth of international cuisine, they represent the MacDonalds/KFC fast-food approach to cinema - they may introduce a new sauce, a peri-peri seasoning or an ancient grain-seeded bun occasionally but fundamentally you’re getting the same burger every time. Having said that, the Bond franchise (and the Dr Who franchise come to that), were clever in establishing early on that the face of Bond can change, the backstory can go through variations on a theme, and the audience will take that journey with you - in fact, encouraging the audience to anticipate who may be the next face of Bond (or Dr Who) is now a key element to the way the marketing narrative plays out. Famously, in the Daniel Craig reboot Casino Royale, the filmmakers have fun, making wry nods to previous films and previous villains all the way through it without turning it into a Carry On romp. In the marketing campaigns, the shapeshifting Bond is key to the longevity of the franchise in a way that Indiana Jones and Jack Sparrow can only dream of.
I find it interesting here that you initially begin by saying that Scorsese is wrong, that cinema was always about spectacle, but you talk of Bond and the like as fast-food film, which I think when Scorsese spoke of the rollercoaster, this is the kind of metaphor he meant. But when you talk of a fast-food, and I may be projecting, it sounds like a disparagement, is that right?
Haha, no, I don’t mean it to be disparaging, sometimes you fancy a hand-cooked vegan feast and sometimes you go for chip shop chips and mushy peas - both are delicious. Both are a sensory experience. I’m not like Scorsese; I’m less precious about where rollercoasters end and “true” cinema begins. I don’t think he’d like it if you turned that lens of analysis back on his own cinema - championing criminality, uncritical of (even wallowing in) italian american chauvinism and racism. And I say that as a massive fan of Scorsese.
And this I think is what I touch on when it comes to writing the next Indiana Jones, but having to make him look younger, having to make sure it is an Indiana Jones movie–I would be more interested in a film that starts with Jones just teaching, and he can’t leave the school, he has arthritis, he has a hospital appointment to go to, and he acts like a Charlie to a bunch of archaeological angels from his comfy office, with a groaning back, wishing he could be out there but… he just can’t. Max Landis used to play around with these kinds of ideas, but he became problematic as well, and after Blight–well. Ramble aside, I think what we’re saying is that we want to be able to eat a sloppy burger as much as a three course michelin meal, but superheroes have dominated the market so much we only get an arguably boundary-pushing (in terms of format at least) fast-food conveyer.
Incidentally, James Bond is a time lord, and I will not go back on this assessment.
Agreed
On the cyclic nature of my writing: There’s contradiction at the heart of everything in the world. The famous Thomas Jefferson quote comes to mind. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. Revolution is necessarily permanent. Stability is stagnation and stagnation is death. In my novel, Secret Cages, the loop of it represents a man locked in indecision about his future, trying to make better sense of his past, acknowledging how allowing someone in his past to define him had trapped him in an identity he wasn’t happy with; breaking free of that identity but not quite learning the lesson that it is for him to define himself - his last words in the book indicate he’ll remain paralysed until another comes along to redefine his life for him. To define himself would save his life, yet he finds himself unable to take that simple step.
In other fiction I’ve written, time loops have their role to play for similar reasons; another quote comes to mind; “Those who do not remember the past are forced to repeat it”. Loops offer a chance to rewrite our character, our role in personal and international history, but so few of us seize the opportunity to do so. Like your Herzogian people who create marketable media characters for themselves; they lock themselves into masks that prove lucrative and are then terrified to remove them for fear the new persona won’t deliver the shekels. In my fiction, cycles and loops offer characters an opportunity to slip between alternate realities and try life through different eyes; they allow me to undermine the authority of any one perception of reality and show there are other choices that can be made, other destinies waiting for us at the end of all those untrodden paths. I was once asked, knowing what I know now, what advice I’d give to my younger self. I said “take bigger risks”. Yet, knowing that, I still remain happy with the choices I’ve made. I’m grateful for the little island of stability I’ve found after a lifetime sailing the storms in a leaky second-hand boat.
I recognise your problems with Gamma Four - time passes, we change. With secret cages it was 15 years between the first and second draft. I wrote the first draft while at uni, then packed everything up in my parents’ loft while scooting off to have a life, then rediscovered the manuscript and was faced with the challenge of picking it up where I left off. It was a conscious decision to write the second draft in the voice of the first, to leave in the embarrassments of style, of ideas, the naiveties, the fictional cliches. I could have rewritten it as my older, hopefully wiser, self, but I felt it was important to stay true to who i was back then when, in the middle of the night, following an argument with my girlfriend, I stuck a sheet in the typewriter not knowing what I was going to write and typed out the first line ‘Beneath the waters of the river, trapped in the chains of the dancing weed, I listened to the rumble of my own escaping breath”. You’re someone else now. I know you struggle with the idea of breaking your conviction in the stream of consciousness approach, so there are two paths open to you as I see it;
The first is to consider the words you’ve written so far as an historic document, rediscovered, now observed and commented upon by a different you - whether that be real life you or a fictional you, writing in the present about these rediscovered words from history.
The second approach is to scrap that draft and write the whole thing again from scratch, using your current voice. Bear in mind even Kerouac’s masterpiece of stream of consciousness fiction; On The Road, went through nine separate drafts.
There is a third approach - one that might appeal to your collegiate working methods - farm it out to other writers - you could either be the story runner, laying out the narrative structure and asking others to write the chapters, or throw caution to the winds, give it out and wait to see what comes back to you.
Now, that last one is certainly intriguing. I hadn’t considered just cutting the thing up and throwing caution to the wind. Well, well, well, now you’ve got my brain ticking over.
Subscribe to The Oneiriad: Periphery to keep up to date with Barry and Nathan’s correspondence, as well as upcoming works from all the writers involved in The Oneiriad, metafiction, non-existence academic cults to join, and everything dream.
The header images for these subsequent posts are pieces by Barry himself! This issue is an image from Alex Posada’s Particle from the first Frequency Festival in Lincoln