Organization
What makes a work of art beautiful?
Our lengthy analysis of “My First Goose” should suggest to us that a good short story is, among other things, a highly organized system. Its parts feel in connection with one another. There’s very little waste or randomness. Many decisions have been made along the way, by different means, some conscious, some not. It feels fraught with intention, full if direction. It doesn’t necessarily know what it is, but it won’t settle for being, well…less coherent (organized) than it could be.
Now, this is different from saying it was all planned out. On the contrary – a good story also feels spontaneous, wild, unscripted. It seems to be arising in front of the writer as she works. We feel the writer surprising herself, being educated and guided by her own work of art. And yet, when we look closely (and slowly, as we’ve been doing) we can’t help but notice some mysterious quality that feels a lot like intelligence coursing through it.
Revising, then, might be thought of as a system for getting more organization into the little system that is our story.
Now, it’s a little nebulous, this notion of “more organization.” We know a high-organization system when we see one. We feel it. But it’s difficult to precisely articulate the qualities of a high-organization system. (Saying “inject more organization” is not so different, really, from saying, “Make it better.” Which is good advice, but not very useful.)
In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, I offered a few examples of more organized systems vs. less organized ones.
The first involved the great Charlie Chaplin. He made two fight sequences, sixteen years apart. The earlier one, filmed in 1915 (when he was 27) was The Champion. The later one appeared as a sequence in his masterpiece, City Lights, filmed in 1931, when he was 43.
The exercise is just to watch those sequences, in that order. When I checked just now, both were available on YouTube:
The Champion (the fight scene starts at about 22:00 minutes):
And here’s the boxing scene from City Lights:
It’s useful just to experience these in sequence and let the differences settle into you. I’d say we don’t even really need to articulate the differences: just feel them; let the (according to me) less highly organized fight scene resonate against the more highly organized one, then lightly ask yourself: What does it seem that Chaplin “learned” over the sixteen intervening years? What are the qualities of the more highly organized system? Where, in the less organized one, did your attention flag, and why? And (the big question): how do we imagine Chaplin went about achieving that more highly organized version? How was his mind working? By what was he steering? What were his work habits, his ingrained tendencies? What had those sixteen years taught him to honor, and what to avoid?
Chaplin was, it seems, an artist who believed in intuition – in improvising over and over until something magical happened.
“Ideas are stale things, so stale,” he said, in his famous 1966 interview with Richard Meryman. “The intellect is not too great a thing.” And: “I’m not too interested in why people laugh – only that they do. A lot of my comic business was ad-libbed. If I feel, have emotions, then one is ebullient, effervescent with ideas. I think creation comes initially out of mood….You say, “Oh God, I want to do something.”
So, presumably, both fight scenes were at least somewhat improvised. Why is one so much sharper and evocative than the other? What are the qualities of the one that makes us feel it as more organized (more shaped, more intelligent, more charged with witty intention)?
Take a look, see what you think, and I’ll have another example for us to work with next time.
P.S. Here’s the full text of Chaplin’s interview with Richard Meryman:
There’s a wonderful distillation of the interview, called “Chaplin’s Anatomy of Comedy” that comes with the Criterion Collection’s DVD of City Lights.
At the risk of overcommenting yet again, I want to share a feeling inspired by today's post (thank you, George), the film viewings, the Chaplin interview, and the rich interactions in the comments (as usual, I learn much from each of you). I'm holding an interesting new impression of how I want to approach my own writing going forward, and am compelled to share it here with the hope others might find value in it, also.
I used to own horses, and lived in that world for a time. My own best horse was one copper-colored off-track thoroughbred who helped me get through a tough set of years by using a "safety stance" to protect me whenever I would venture out to her stall at night to cry into her neck so that the kids wouldn't see me succumbing to the exhaustion of single parenting and worry.
Bear with me for a moment until I circle back from horses to writing because I think it's a good and useful comparison.
In my own opinion and experience, the best horse-rider pairs communicate really well with each other, by use of the riders legs, the horse's ears, and both of their sets of eyes and head position, among other subtle things. Usually, the kind of riding we get to see is entirely controlled by the rider (writer?) and the horse (wild story) is tolerating the control for a number of reasons. While most any "broke" horse will ride or respond somehow with a bridle on its head, because of the pressure of a bit in its mouth, it's a use of forceful intention on the part of the rider to get the horse to submit to the rider's own will. It might look elegant on its surface, sure. I think of a lot of editing like this, and I also think it's not the most beautiful, most artistic riding there is. It doesn't respect the animal as much as is possible, which I think is critical if riding (like writing) is ever to be artistic. I can watch horses on a Merry-go-Round, watch an animated movie like "Spirit", if I want mechanically "artistic". Artistic, to me, respects something natural trying to speak with its own voice not mine.
A wild horse is a thing of absolute, pure beauty to watch; however, because it is entirely free and separate from us, its stories are largely unknown to us who glimpse it in its own environment from our own very limited perspective, the horse usually communicating only with others like itself. That's ok, too, of course, even desirable to leave a wild thing to itself and merely ponder its existence.
But a genuine partnership between a trusting and joyful horse and its trusting and joyfully partnered rider is an extraordinary thing to witness and experience, a profound gift––and it's the example I want to focus upon and hold in my mind now as I write going forward... so inspired as I am today. What I want to seek in writing is something that moves between these two better-known horse worlds of wild or dominated.
A well-respected, well-handled, very sensitive horse can be ridden by a rider using no gear of any kind––not a bridle (with a bit), nor a saddle, not even a halter (no bit), especially not riding crops or spurs or anything of the like––just bareback and loose-mouthed, its rider not even holding onto its mane. A horse without gear has the capacity to run fully free, so its partnership under those conditions is really powerful to recognize. Without gear, the rider and the horse can connect and communicate with each other using just light leg pressure, resistance or relaxation in their bodies, their eyes, their heads, and maybe something more subtle than all this that is kind of hard to commuicate because I personally think it tips into a spiritual realm. The two become one for a mutual purpose that becomes a sort of restrained freedom, and a joy made partnership that both can appreciate if there's trust, respect, and good communication. Both can have a bit of say in what takes place, and it's a joy to both witness and experience this kind of artistic riding. It's as close to being accepted into the wild horse's world as a rider can become without living on an open range studying a herd. As a metaphor for our written work, riding without tools or force is the difference, I think, between a written set of operating instructions and the kind of gathering of words that dips into a reservoir of truth and feeling that moves a person to tears.
If I keep this kind of riding in mind, I feel like I'll know how to face my stories going forward when they show up, better understand how to trust them to say what they are holding inside, and let them out with their beauty intact, but then edit them with a looser rein, too; because, I want to ride my story and words a bit like a wild horse releasing its natural love of its own gifts over to me, with me as its privileged rider-witness, in partnership.
***
Not sure how I got from where I was before to where this is now, but I'm inspired by all that's happened here today, and I think it's really going to help me on my path. (Thanks for reading if you did.)
Before I engage in this activity, I just want to take a moment to say thank you, George, for your own intentionality of language in these posts. {e.g. For referring to *her* as well as *him*}.