I love a Tiny book. And a big collaboration.

In late 2009, in response to a Twitter message, I joined something called Bite-Size Edits.  The idea was that writers would upload stories and other contributors would make editing suggestions, which the writer would then accept or reject.  Hitrecord.org goes just a bit further.

Where Bite-Size Edits was more editing help, hitrecord.org is full-on collaboration– and not just text, but audio/visual files too.  Any kind of art is welcome– drawings, recordings, words.  But, as they warn you when you create an account, anything (including your profile pic, so think carefully!) is up for grabs.  Anything can be edited and re-submitted.  In fact, this is the whole point.

I am lucky enough to be on the list of book reviewers for a major publisher & therefore got a review copy of the latest from the hitrecord collaboration, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories.  It is indeed filled with tiny stories (some only six words) and whimsical illustrations for each.   The Tiny stories are reminiscent of the short-short story or the six-word memoir:  short, concise, and often laced with humor and wit.  Often poetic and sometimes dark, these tiny stories are just plain endearing.  I dare you to read this book and not laugh or nod in happy agreement at some point.

I was worried, as I read through the book, where all the writers & artists were listed?  At the end, there is a list of contributors and their record numbers.  Your records, I found out later, are your contributions.  Intrigued by the list of usernames and record numbers, I looked up hitrecord.org on the web.

After perusing the website for oh, say, 30 seconds, I immediately created an account on hitrecord.org.  As a writer, I have often collaborated with others.  It’s not always been pretty:  in grad school, my memoir class professor hooked me (a self-proclaimed atheist with a very sarcastic tongue) up with a young, religious and straight-as-an-arrow editor to work on a chapbook.  In my memoir, I talk about smoking weed and cursing god.  I don’t think my editor appreciated it.  As a result, the collaboration didn’t work too well.  But this type of collaboration– on the nets, and in a way anonymous– might just work.  It might work out just fine.

Any ‘record’ you post to the site– be it text, audio, visual, or any combination of these– is a record that can be downloaded and edited and changed by any other member.  It’s really freaking exciting to know that someone out there– someone you don’t know– can take something you started and turn it into something else entirely.  Open-source, creative, collaborative.  I love it.

And The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories is the result of such collaborations between 83 members.  And they all get to share in the profits:  on the hitrecord.org site, it states explicitly the percentages shared with contributors.  It’s a pretty good deal.  And the book is simply charming.  Really.

Some of my favorite Tiny Stories in the book are the darkly humored ones (the egg who optimistically follows the orange off the kitchen counter)  or the ones that reflect something much deeper about our lives (the person who doesn’t get dressed anymore because they ‘don’t feel like it’).

These are the whimsical, witty, dark and delightful stories that make up our lives. This is the first volume of Tiny Stories, and I hear the 2nd volume is in the works. I can’t wait.

PS:  here’s a link to the Tiny Stories video made by Joseph Gordon-Levitt:  Watch Here.

The Beaver

A depressed man uses a puppet (found in the garbage) as a way to deal with the “negative aspects” of his personality.  As a way to deal with the fact that he tried to commit suicide.  As a way to deal with his failed suicide attempts, failed marriage, failed business, failed fatherhood.

I’m all for alternative forms of therapy; I think Americans, in general, are way too over-medicated.  Got an ill, here’s a pill.  A pill for every  ill.  So I guess it’s refreshing to see someone talking about other therapies besides chemical ones.

The Beaver puppet is startling at first;  Mr. Black’s family is taken aback, understandably.  As is the audience.  It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable.  And just when you think you’re getting used to it, the film dives into some even weirder shit.  This movie gets really really weird.

Just like most psychiatric drugs, there are side effects to using the puppet.  The Beaver becomes a crutch;  Mr. Black becomes dependent on it. He can’t talk with out it;  hell, he can’t even have sex without the Beaver  (plushophilia, anyone??).  Mr. Black seems to be on the right track:  gets his business going again, gets his wife and one kid back.  But he’s dependent on that puppet, just as he would be on a prescribed drug.  The puppet is a symbol of modern drug therapy:  once you get on it, you can’t get off.  Eventually this happens to Mr. Black:  he can’t take the puppet off.

Several things caught my attention in this film.  First, the family’s reaction to his therapy:  skepticism at first, acceptance, then total rejection.  Work colleagues were different:  they saw the puppet as an eccentricity, until it became too horrific, and they then rejected Mr. Black altogether (how many times have we seen this in the media?).  The public loved him and his puppet until they found out just how really crazy and mental he was.  Again, sound familiar?

Mr. Black’s oldest son rejects him completely, sick or no, until the very end of the film.  Interesting that the son, too, shows signs of depression and keeps post-it notes all over his room with traits he sees in his father that he wants to avoid.  We’ve all done this, right?  But the question remains:  how will the son avoid the same pitfalls as the father?  We know that depression and other mental illnesses are genetic; we can see this in the film, but the mom (Jodie Foster) doesn’t seem quite aware of that.  She gets angry at the son for sleeping all day.  This is very familiar to me:  as a person who suffers emotionally, I’ve often felt the anger of a parent directed at me simply because I was sick.  No other reason necessary.

What is this film trying to say about depression and mental illness and our treatment of it?  The film culminates in a scene set in an institution, father and son hugging, finding common ground at last.  Is this the message?  That we can only find solutions in institutions?  That we must be taken out of society and locked up?  That no other therapies will work?

I think if the puppet is metaphor for chemical treatment of depression, then it works.  Chemicals are destructive to our minds and bodies, our relationships with others.  This still doesn’t answer the question of why he ends up in an institution, or where he goes from there.  Which leaves me wondering:  where does the field of psychiatry go from here, once we realize drugs are not the only answer?

 

Bad Religion, indeed.

How can you not love a band that dedicated an entire album to getting George W. Bush out of office?  You can’t.  Just try.

You really gotta love a guy who not only heads up a punk band, but who writes about his anarchist views regarding religion and science.  It’s quite a combo:  punk-rocker meets evolutionary biologist.  Graffin’s book, Anarchy Evolution, is a mix of science, philosophy, punk rock, and romanticized childhood. The tone ranges from sentimental (when talking about his childhood) to academic (when explaining Darwin and evolution).

It’s a nice mix, really.  There is a worldview that comes through very clear, and is mixed with song lyrics from Bad Religion– songs which are mostly about social issues.  Graffin identifies himself as a ‘naturalist’ and is eager to show the relationship between punk music and evolution.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  He never bashes other religions, but makes it clear that he bases his views on empirical evidence, only what he can see & know.

My only real concern in this book was Graffin’s position that nihilists (which he does not consider himself) are misguided and possibly mentally ill. This is dismissive, at best:  nihilism is a philosophical doctrine stating that there is no intrinsic meaning to life.  Those who suffer from various forms of depression may have a nihilist view of their own lives, but this doesn’t mean that all nihilists are depressed.  To dismiss an entire form of philosophy as misguided or mental is misguided in and of itself.

 

I plan to give this as an xmas gift to someone who loves evolution and is a bit cynical towards religion.  I think it’ll be a perfect fit.