The Prince's Speech

I had one of those “the world is full of holes” experiences last night while at my fourth viewing of the movie “The King’s Speech.”  It was generated by my having gone completely fangirl over Colin Firth two months ago, after seeing this movie for the first time. 

Firth is an actor I hadn’t noticed much until “The King’s Speech” (not every female goes bonkers over “Pride and Prejudice” or “Bridget Jones”). Two factoids, one from a magazine article and one from a fansite, connected in my brain this time when Bertie, the Duke of York, finally plays that record he made in Lionel Logue’s studio … and hears himself speaking Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech without hesitation or flaw.

Factoid from article: Firth’s performance of “Hamlet” while studying at the Drama Centre “was the stuff of drama school legend.”  I can believe that.  Factoid from fansite:  Firth was set to finally, finally perform Hamlet professionally in 2001 for a new theater company headed by a former Director of the Drama Centre.  Then Firth had to withdraw because a film’s shooting schedule was moved up.  He wrote a very nice apology to the theater company and the ticketholders, but Lord, I can just imagine what life was like around his house for the next month or so. 

Now to “The King’s Speech.”  When the Bertie’s recitation of “To be or not to be” played on the gramophone, it struck me that this is the first time the public has heard Colin Firth speak those lines. 

The significance of this is that we, the movie audience, only heard Bertie’s reading – because there is no “Colin Firth Hamlet” shading our reception of the words.

Call me over-particular, but that was such a critical moment in the story, any tiny thing that could have prevented the audience from being wholly involved with Bertie would have warped the experience of the rest of the movie.  If a memory of seeing “Colin Firth’s Hamlet” had intruded, the performance would have been compromised.

(Sure, they could have used a different passage of Shakespeare, but it wouldn’t have fit the story, the characters, or the theme even half as well, would it?)

In YU I have Ross Lamos pause, astonished by a realization of the details and choices that led to him to stand in the Albert Jarro gallery holding a tray of exquisite, dangerous jades.   As Shakespeare said through Hamlet, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends / rough-hew them how we will.”

Holes in the world open up, and it feels like we're being torn open, sometimes. But what future might be pouring in? We certainly can't know at the time.

I remember some great actor, maybe Albert Finney, years ago, playing Hamlet as being age fifty or past, with a production interpretation built around that.  Never say never, Mr. Firth!

Another Rave Review for YU

Alan Chin is a well-known GLBT novelist and blogger. His review of YU: A Ross Lamos Mystery is now online and will appear in four publications under his byline.

Give it a look!  He makes me blush with happiness.

Oh, and -- ads for the book are in the current issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, now on news stands through April; and in both print and online versions of The Other Paper, an alternative weekly out of Columbus, Ohio.

On the Page Again

Just got notified that my short story, "The Stronger," will be published this Spring in the 2011 edition of the Bacopa Literary Review, a print journal out of Gainesville, FL. 

"The Stronger" is the title story of my 4-story collection that I privately call the Papaw Project.  Back in 2007, I found stashed carefully in a trunk several short memoir story-sketches my grandfather had written in the 1930s, sketches which thinly fictionalized his family legends and his own experiences growing up as a bookish farm boy in Southern Indiana just before World War I.

Some quality of half-seen treasure in these sketches called out to me, the middle-aged granddaughter.  I chose four of them and took the fictionalizing further.  Fiction is not only the lie that tells the truth, it is the lie that reveals the truth.  I have now finished 2 stories, am rewriting a third, with the fourth in outline, waiting.

And now the title story will see the light of day!  Thank you, Bacopa Literary Review!  I will be back here with more information about where this journal can be purchased.

On the Air Again

I had another interview on WFHB's "bloomingOUT" LGBT talk show, on January 6. 

I stand under the B in LGBT, and it was fun to talk with host Helen Harrell about finding liberation to write about desire for men, in the voice of a gay man -- the permanently fabulous Ross Lamos.

Blogger isn't allowing me to use the "Link" feature on the toolbar, so here's the URL:

http://wfhb.org/news/bloomingout-january-6-2011

What Readers Are Saying

Seven  reviews are now up at Amazon.  Five are 5-star, two are 4-star.

Jeffrey W Miller gets it, like totally:  

"Faithfully captured, the dynamics of both time periods make the novel a living landscape for the exploration of hidden histories and personal revelation. The mystery of the self is still alive in the modern world. Through this novel, the question is opened, what events and relationships do we each still carry from our own reincarnational pasts that continue to influence and direct our lives today? And if discovered, what knowledge would arise to change us?"

What the Queer JuBu Said

Mark Horn, author at Another Queer Jewish Buddhist has posted his review of YU: A Ross Lamos Mystery .

I'm giddy that he liked the book. But what's even cooler is that reading it spurred him to go on a search for other gay-Asian-supernatural-historic-revenge-reincarnation-romance fiction. Apparently there's more of it out there than you would think. I didn't even know it was a subgenre; I was just going on what the story of YU demanded that I write.

Mr. Horn does a fine service for readers of gay relationship fiction, and slips in a plug for his own story in this subgenre, which appeared in a 2006 anthology Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling. He says of that story,

"Musuko Dojoji was a retelling of a thousand year old Japanese folktale (Musume Dojoji) framed by a contemporary gay love story. The folktale is connected to the contemporary story by a reincarnation motif. I wrote this story out of love for my late boyfriend, Hiroshi Aoki, as a way of keeping his memory alive through our shared love of folktales and mysticism. It was one way of honoring our connection -- a connection I always felt was something that went beyond my limited understanding of reality."

Although, like some of you, I already have too many unread books on my shelves, side tables, and floor, I can see that there are a few more to be added, from the tempting gems Mr. Horn has found for us.

The Heart of Recognition

Ever wondered just how the Buddhist lamas of the Himalayas search out and recognize reincarnated masters in chubby baby boys between 12 and 18 months old?

I just discovered a 2008 documentary film, "Unmistaken Child," which follows a young Nepalese monk as he searches and tests the possible reincarnation of his beloved master lama, whom the monk had attended for most of his life.

While the search, test, and recognition process is followed and revealed in a respectful, unobtrusive way, it is the monk's journey from heartbroken grief at his master's death, to hope and then joy at finding the child-form of his master, that is the most compelling part of this film. This young monk had been a boy when he began attending the elder lama, and wound up as the nurturing mother-father, "Big Uncle," to a bright two-year-old boy.