I don't know if it's really gonna be like this, but Cavalia, a travelling horse show which is billed as a kind of Cirque de Soleil with horses, is supposed to be impressive beyond words. They claim to train their horses naturally with hand signals, and yes, I know it can be done, with years of patience. And it's a damn sight better than the foam-dripping mouths of horses with their chins cranked into their chests, hiking their knees so high they must risk injuring themselves with every performance.
You hear stories of heavy clunky boots strapped on to the feet of Tennessee Walkers, forcing them to lift their hoofs higher than they know how. Sometimes harsh chemicals are applied to their feet to blister them into obedience.
Anyway, it won't be like that tonight, as I watch in wonder on opening night of Cavalia in Vancouver. We lucked into four choice tickets from a news anchor at my daughter's workplace: all the anchors got free tickets, whereas the mere reporters, who work twice as long and hard, got doodlysquat. But fortunately, the 11:30 p.m. anchor couldn't attend, and so. . .
And so, four of us, my daughter, 7-year-old Caitlin, her little friend and I, will sit and watch (in good seats, saved for media who might write it up or broadcast a glowing report) as horses prance and dance, and riders twirl around balletically as they gallop in circles.
The horse is my totem animal, my touchstone, the essence of my soul, even though I never get to spend any time with them. This seems to symbolize the essential frustration I feel about living on planet Earth: I am forever thrust out of Eden, though there was a time when I lived there and didn't even know it.
That time whizzed by at light speed, leaving me behind to look around in bewilderment: where have all the horses gone?
This blog originally was supposed to be about The Writer's Life. Phoooey on that. If it is, it's a place to pour out the corrosive acid of having doors continually slammed in my face. The situation seems nearly hopeless, as I am long past writing for fun or amusement. An author, like an actor, is someone who has crossed a certain threshhold. Driving cab will never do it, though everyone seems to think I should just be happy I put those books out at all.
Well, maybe I should be.
Writer's workshops and conferences (and books and more books) tell you how to present your work to editors effectively. Yes. And that's about it. No one tells you how to navigate the desperate minefield of actually dealing with publishers when you are at cross-purposes with them, and when your agent continually sides with them as they slowly mangle your work to pieces.
What does all this have to do with Cavalia? Exactly nothing, except that horses, like publishing my novels, seem to be part of a great Paradise Lost that I wander around in every day. I must have had some sort of stupid expectation that I would go on publishing. I went on writing, after all, didn't I? I wrote three more books. And there they sit, warehoused.
I wonder if maybe this really is about the writer's life, as every other writer I've talked to tells the same bitter story. Yet, at the same time, someone is being published, or there wouldn't be a publishing business, would there? Well, would there?
It's just that the someone needs to be me.
You hear stories of heavy clunky boots strapped on to the feet of Tennessee Walkers, forcing them to lift their hoofs higher than they know how. Sometimes harsh chemicals are applied to their feet to blister them into obedience.
Anyway, it won't be like that tonight, as I watch in wonder on opening night of Cavalia in Vancouver. We lucked into four choice tickets from a news anchor at my daughter's workplace: all the anchors got free tickets, whereas the mere reporters, who work twice as long and hard, got doodlysquat. But fortunately, the 11:30 p.m. anchor couldn't attend, and so. . .
And so, four of us, my daughter, 7-year-old Caitlin, her little friend and I, will sit and watch (in good seats, saved for media who might write it up or broadcast a glowing report) as horses prance and dance, and riders twirl around balletically as they gallop in circles.
The horse is my totem animal, my touchstone, the essence of my soul, even though I never get to spend any time with them. This seems to symbolize the essential frustration I feel about living on planet Earth: I am forever thrust out of Eden, though there was a time when I lived there and didn't even know it.
That time whizzed by at light speed, leaving me behind to look around in bewilderment: where have all the horses gone?
This blog originally was supposed to be about The Writer's Life. Phoooey on that. If it is, it's a place to pour out the corrosive acid of having doors continually slammed in my face. The situation seems nearly hopeless, as I am long past writing for fun or amusement. An author, like an actor, is someone who has crossed a certain threshhold. Driving cab will never do it, though everyone seems to think I should just be happy I put those books out at all.
Well, maybe I should be.
Writer's workshops and conferences (and books and more books) tell you how to present your work to editors effectively. Yes. And that's about it. No one tells you how to navigate the desperate minefield of actually dealing with publishers when you are at cross-purposes with them, and when your agent continually sides with them as they slowly mangle your work to pieces.
What does all this have to do with Cavalia? Exactly nothing, except that horses, like publishing my novels, seem to be part of a great Paradise Lost that I wander around in every day. I must have had some sort of stupid expectation that I would go on publishing. I went on writing, after all, didn't I? I wrote three more books. And there they sit, warehoused.
I wonder if maybe this really is about the writer's life, as every other writer I've talked to tells the same bitter story. Yet, at the same time, someone is being published, or there wouldn't be a publishing business, would there? Well, would there?
It's just that the someone needs to be me.
When we saw Cavalia I was entranced. The horses are here... by the way, including the pony-almost-wide-enough-to-be-an-endtable... there is magic in the show. With any luck, your Caitlin and her friend will integrate into their little souls this indefinable essence of th partnership we once had with the animals... Amongst all our domesticated animals, all of them, only the horse has entered whole-heartedly into our pageantry, our solemn moments, our peaks of joy. Yeah, yeah, dogs... you say, but when was the last time you saw dogs drawing a hearse through the streets of London... it's a different partnership. Still magical, but different.
ReplyDeleteKeep writing, by the way. Stick in in drawers and filing cabinets if you must. Or just say the hellwiththemall, and self publish. Why not? Worked for Terry Fallis... And if you are focusing on the fact that someone doesn't want to publish you, you are not focused on the fact that someone might well want to read you... Or that there is a certain joy in that most solitary of vocations, wrestling alone with the written word.
Can you believe this is the THIRD time I've tried to post this? I'm getting very tired.
ReplyDeleteLovely to hear from you, especially from the perspective of a horse person. Cavalia was sort of overwhelming, with horses blurring by you so close you could almost touch them. How did they work up to a gallop at such close quarters? The trick riding was definitely very Cirque-y.
Everyone was entranced by those silvery Arabians milling around as if in a pasture, but this soon resolved into balletic movements that looked almost spontanous, led by subtle hand and voice signals. Well, not quite: there was a lead horse, an older fellow with dark mane and tail (clearly marked out for the others), who was always half a nose ahead of everyone else. This is the same dynamic as getting a fractious horse into a trailer. I don't think it was obvious to the audience however.
It's a good thing they rotate the performers, as some of it looked, if not brutal, then very taxing. "Tendons ain't pistons. Don't you know that?" (from one of the Marguerite Henry stories we used to read. I still have my threadbare copies of King of the Wind and Misty of Chincoteague.)
As for the writing - and why does this comment keep erasing itself? - it has always been vocation from the age of eight, and it has nothing to do with money or even exposure. But I need to feel I'm in the game (and game it is, in many ways). A lot of people have suggested self-publishing, but I am not sure how you get the word out. Also, I don't think you'd be reviewed in the usual sense (not that good reviews help), or be eligible for the Giller and other chi-chi things. But you never know. A few days ago I suddenly joined Facebook, and two seconds before that I had an aversion to it. It just happened.
Meantime (God, I will NOT post this a fourth time, so please let it work), Shannon has found out there is a stable out behind her woods-surrounded home in North Van. I think she sees Caitlin and I charging off on our steeds (she asked me what a mare was during the show, though, oddly, the first time she sat a horse she was totally confident and seemed to know what to do), whereas Caitlin is more at the stage of sitting on a pony being led around a paddock. Hey, nothing wrong with that, while you get used to the unfamiliar feeling of sitting on a live animal. I used to ride burros, for heaven's sake! So we will see what develops.