Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Dan O’Shea’s blog, Going Ballistic, got my attention today. He pondered the question of whether or not writing can be taught. He cited several writers and each of their takes on the subject, and they more or less agreed: good writing can NOT be taught. It has to come from within. Dana King added a comment that the same is true for a musician.

Well, this is where I come in. I’m an author now, but I spent decades as a professional musician, and I can say that I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above. Up to a point.

When I was 13, my mother made me take piano lessons. Now, we had a piano in the house and I was always fiddling with it, but couldn’t really play anything of any consequence. On top of that, at age 13, I had other things on my mind way more compelling than major scales. But Mom ruled, so I took the lessons.

Fortunately, my teacher was a guy who worked in the Post Office and played in a little trio on weekends. They did old standards and jazz and whatnot. He didn’t know from classical. One night a week, he would come to the house and show me how to make chords. “This is a C chord, Mike,” he would say before hitting another one. “And this is an F chord.” He got me to listen to the intervals between these chords and how one resolves into the other. Anyway, without getting too technical, what he did was, he effectively taught me to play by ear.

I can’t overstate the significance of this. Within about two or three weeks, I could string a couple of chords together and make a half-assed attempt at a song that was on the radio!  Holy shit! The light clicked on, and from that moment forward, my Mom never had to make me practice again. I was all over that piano.

One night, some eighteen months later, my teacher announced to me that this would be my final lesson. “What, are you leaving town?” I asked. He said no, he just didn’t have anything more to teach me and he didn’t feel he would be earning the money my parents paid him to carry it any further (BTW, he was getting $1 per lesson. That’s one dollar.). Seventy-some-odd little half-hour lessons, and it was all over. So I felt like I was in a rowboat being pushed off into an unstable sea, as he stood on the dock waving goodbye.

Remember what I said about practice? That’s what I did from that day on. Every chance I got. When my parents would go out for the evening, I’d sit at the piano trying out new stuff. And they certainly didn’t mind. They thought it would be just great if they could pull me out for company and have me play a little tune. You know, be the hit of the party. Little did they know I’d been bitten and they’d created the Wolfman.

When I started playing for a living, I took a portable piano with me out on the road so I could practice in my hotel room late at night with headphones. I even took a turntable with me to cop stuff from records (yes, I’m that old!).

Now, you could say that my teacher just guided me rather than taught me, since I had the aptitude for it already, and you may be right. But when he showed how to listen for those chord changes, I put that down as pure teaching. That was something I was just totally unaware of.

So now, I’m writing. My first novel was picked up by a publisher and is coming out this year. I’ve got two more right behind it and working on a third. The writing thing took me a lot longer to pick up, since I didn’t have anyone to show me anything or give me guidance. But I believe I had the ability deep down inside myself, struggling to get out. The cry of the artist, you could say.

Or as Dan O’Shea says, the magic is in the repetition somewhere.

Time for a little BSP. Here’s a link to an interview I did with The Examiner.

http://shar.es/mXyXX

There’s a blog today on The Outfit–A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers, written by David Heinzmann, which grabbed my interest. David mentioned that he was born and raised around Peoria, a solid middle-American town if ever there was one. On a recent visit, he noticed that what once was a lonely country road outside of town, rolling through miles of boundless cropland, is now a busy thoroughfare linking suburban subdivisions to the city proper. Of course, he lamented this change.

Naturally, this isn’t a new story. Many people have seen drastic changes to their hometowns over the years. But David went on to ponder this a little more, concluding that he can’t set any of his writing in Peoria, that it’s all set in Chicago and other locales of his adulthood. Peoria isn’t the same as when he was a kid, he says, and neither is he.

I had never really thought about my hometown as a locale for my writing, and now I know why. It’s a little place called Seneca Falls, nestled in the heart of the Finger Lakes District of central New York State. Back then, its population was 7000, and it bustled with manufacturing activity. Several large factories were there, employing most of the locals and pumping money into the economy. Unlike David’s experience, the town looks almost exactly the same as when I grew up there so very long ago.

Except that today, most of the factories have closed or moved away. The population is still 7000, but they’re on the ropes. Very little money is circulating and the people wear the hard times on their faces. Like so many fading mill towns, Seneca Falls lives in the shadows, on a slippery slope to oblivion.

When I was growing up there, I had no awareness of anything, especially anything regarding the rhythms of life that we all eventually learn. But through reading, television, and looking at maps, I slowly became cognizant of a wider world, a world that called to me all through my adolescence. I figured out that I had to answer the call, so by the time I went away to college at age 17, my mind was made up. I never returned there to live.

Many of the places I lived since then (and there have been somewhere around a dozen) have provided me with great settings for my novels. But I absolutely cannot write anything about Seneca Falls. Because like David, I’m not the person I was during those formative years. Back then, I saw things through the clear prism of childhood, of innocence, before I knew anything about mean streets or good whiskey or dangerous women.

But once I eased into adulthood, and I felt the toxic kiss of corruption, I learned a lot of what I needed to know in order to write crime fiction. I learned it in cities like New Orleans and Las Vegas and even Key West. My novels are set in those cities, and others, because my life in those places, and the choices I made while traveling this long road, transformed me into the man who is writing this today.

As David Heinzmann so aptly put it, I’m writing about places, not where I came from, but where I came to. And most of them exist in a sort of moral twilight.

How about you? Did you leave your hometown? Do you write about it now? Or do you write about the places you came to?

Jeff Pierce of The Rap Sheet (http://therapsheet.blogspot.com) has named me, along with six other unfortunates, to participate in the Bald-Faced Liar (aka “Creative Writer”) Blogger Award.  Never being one to sidestep a chance to lie, I gladly accepted. There are a few simple rules, and they are:

• Thank the person who gave this to you. (Thanks, Jeff.)
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog. (OK, done.)
• Link to the person who nominated you. (Check.)
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. (See below.)
• Nominate seven “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you have nominated them.

After careful thought, I decided that six lies would be too easy, so I have elected to tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.  The truths are all absolutely true, but please don’t ask me to elaborate on any of them. Can you guess which is the lie?

1. During my poker career, I once won a large pot from actor James Woods.

2. Back in my musical career, I once played piano behind Jerry Lee Lewis.

3. Also, back in my musical career, I often played in a bar in Honduras frequented by “death squad” members.

4. When I was in college, I was in several classes with Bill Clinton.

5. I was arrested in Zimbabwe as a “provocateur”.

6. While in Port Of Spain, Trinidad, I once danced with Miss Trinidad (of the Miss Universe contest, where she went on to finish 2nd).

7. I know, without doubt, who was behind the JFK assassination.

Okay, there you have it. Step right up and take your guess. Meanwhile, the other writers I am nominating are (drum roll, please):

Tom Piccirilli (The Last Kind Words), Morgan St James (The Seven Deadly Samovars), James Scott Bell (Plot & Structure), Charlie Stella (Johnny Porno), John McFetridge (Let It Ride), Vegas Linda Lou (Bastard Husband: A Love Story), links posted to the right.

Today I spotted a blog by Peter Rozovsky on the Detectives Beyond Borders site, in which he proclaimed He Hit Me by the Crystals to be the greatest noir song ever written. I’d never heard the song before, so I listened to it and it was plenty dark, let me tell you. Peter didn’t mention that the Crystals also recorded Then He Kissed Me, so maybe they were into some kind of career-long story arc, but I’ll leave that for the Crystals purists to dwell on.

It got me thinking about noir songs in general, and after considerable thought, I would nominate the Marty Robbins classic, El Paso, as the greatest noir song of all time.  Written and recorded by Robbins in 1959, it’s set in the lawless West of the late 19th century. Don’t let that fool you, though. This tune is strictly noir from start to finish.

Guy walks into a bar, spots a hot-blooded Mexican babe, watches her dance, gets ideas. Of course, in true noir fashion, you know he’s totally fucked right out of the chute.  Anyway, after a few drinks, he argues over her with another guy. The quarrel escalates until BANG!  Our guy shoots him dead. The dead guy has friends, though, and they begin to move in on our noir protagonist. He runs out the back, steals a horse, and rides away into the night, followed by this makeshift posse.

He gets away clean and is headed for New Mexico when he’s overcome with pangs of love/lust for the girl. Finding that he just can’t bring himself to leave her forever, he heads back to El Paso and to the cantina where she dances. As he does, he’s surrounded by his pursuers, who shoot him down. Mortally wounded, he lies there as the girl rushes to his fallen figure. As he takes his final breath, she kisses him goodbye.

Fade to black.

Cut! Print it!

What makes this even more compelling is this little followup story.

Many years ago, when I was playing music for a living, I did a show with Marty Robbins and he told me he believed that he was that cowboy/central character in a former life! As in “reincarnated”, and he said his memories of that incident were so clear, so strong, that he was able to write a timeless song like El Paso, giving it such a vivid feel. He explained to me exactly what it felt like to watch the girl dance and how he got excited over her, then how shocked he was immediately after killing the other guy during their argument.

I have a noir novel coming out this year called The Take, and I don’t mind admitting that it was heavily influenced by two lines in El Paso:

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina, wicked and evil while casting a spell.

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden. I was in love, but in vain I could tell.

I even named the girl in my novel Felina.

Come on, you’ll have to admit, that’s pretty noirish. But maybe you’ve got a nomination or two for Greatest Noir Song of All Time.

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story.  He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most:  his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him.  A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed, and his soul has a price.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon (The Angel’s Game)

Okay, so I’m browsing the blogosphere and I come across Linda Lou, Live from Las Vegas. I know Linda and I check in with her humorous blogs every now and then, but tonight I was stopped cold. I had found a soul mate. Someone who doesn’t think that Cirque du Soleil represents the ultimate, unsurpassable form of human entertainment in the entire history of the universe.

I started coming out to Las Vegas in 1998 to play poker, and by the time I moved here in 2006, I was coming for two weeks every month. And I can say without hesitation that the number one topic of conversation that I encountered in this town during all those years was the awesomeness of Cirque du Soleil, and the number two topic was how said awesomeness was not to be questioned.

At first, I didn’t know what Cirque was, but then it was explained to me. It sounded like just a bunch of acrobats jumping around to flashy lighting and edgy music, but no, I was told. It’s much more than that. It’s awesome. What a spectacle! You have to see it! Like, I’ve seen Mystere and O four times each. Oh, and Zumanity! So sexy!

I couldn’t put it together in my mind why an acrobat show would affect otherwise rational people in such a way. I mean, hadn’t they ever seen that stuff on Ed Sullivan? (Of course, then I remembered, most of them weren’t around for Ed Sullivan) But I wondered how the whole concept ever got a foothold in Las Vegas to begin with. Then I figured out the probable scenario.

Steve Wynn opens the Mirage in 1989 to great fanfare. He hates traditional Las Vegas entertainment. He wants desperately to break with the Jewish comedian/Italian singer syndrome that had the Las Vegas Strip locked in a choke hold for decades. Realizing that much of his high-end business will be coming from non-English speaking countries (ie, Asia), he searches for a form of entertainment which these people can appreciate (read: where they don’t have to understand English). Siegfried and Roy fit the description, and they become a hit, but then Presto! Along comes Cirque du Soleil and Wynn has reached Nirvana. Just use the same concept of acrobats jumping around over and over again in different shows with different lighting and music, and he’s struck gold!

So, I resisted these shows for years, but like Linda Lou, I was presented with the chance to see Love at no cost. Ooh, this one’s different, the Cirquers all said.  You’ll love it! This one is the Beatles! And it’s just…it’s just so different!

The Love sound system, which was the greatest I’ve ever heard, was truly the star of the show. But basically, it was what I had feared:  acrobats jumping around and flying through the air to Beatles music and flashy lighting. The live presentation drew absolutely no connection whatever to the Fab Four, despite their very left-handed, European attempts to do so. I’m quite sure the upcoming Viva Elvis show will be more of the same.

I know that, as Las Vegans, we’re all supposed to genuflect at Cirque’s altar, spending $150 each time out. We’re supposed to bring all of our out-of-town friends there, and then we must dutifully spread the gospel of how we very nearly saw God at the Ka show, or how our lives were totally, awesomely nourished and renewed at O. But like Linda, I just don’t get it.

Sorry, everybody.