Category Archives: Under the Green Desk Lamp

‘Under the Green Desk Lamp’ is a regular feature here on Brad OH Inc. This category is the place for any sort of random musings to come off the reporting desks here at Brad OH Inc., and may cover such varied topics as philosophy, society, media, music, etc.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the articles of ‘Under the Green Desk Lamp’ are not necessarily the views and opinions of Brad OH Inc.

The Evocation Series- ‘Straight Time’

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The following post is part of ‘The Evocation Series’. Click Here for more information about the project, and to learn how to get involved yourself!

Bruce Springsteen- ‘Straight Time’

Song Link

There is a precarious balance we all must face. It’s a struggle, whether conscious or not, to maintain the equilibrium between our compulsion for virtue and our desire for self-betterment. Certainly, these are not antithetical concepts, but the world can surely make them feel so at times.

In the darkness before dinner comes,
Sometimes I can feel the itch.

We all make sacrifices. With each effort to stay on whatever path seems best, we watch other opportunities slip away. Old friends, cherished memories, lost loves—all fade into the distant past, like fog giving way to morning light, we are left to what we have chosen, and must leave the rest behind.

But you get used to anything,
Sooner or later it becomes your life.

It works, for the most part. We go along our path, and we seldom pause to question it. We stick with what works, and slowly we close the door on all those other potentials—dreams on the wind; childish, silly things.

Seems you can’t get any more than half free,
I step out onto the front porch, and suck the cold air deep inside of me.

Then, there are those other times. Suddenly, all those forgotten potentials seem like just yesterday. The knot of conviction loosens, and those old fantasies feel so close to your grasp, it would take but the smallest slip to reach out and take hold. And at what cost, exactly?

If we’re lucky, we will never know.

Got a cold mind to go tripping cross that thin line,
I’m sick of doin’ straight time.

Push it down baby, bury it deep. A mind in turmoil is quick to question its course, to debate and dissect all the small decisions which have set us upon our present heading. But a placid mind, reassured by peace and comforted by contentment, may move past this unease, and with sufficient will and wisdom, will let those fleeting moments pass.

-Brad OH Inc.

Chekhov’s Gun is Bullshit

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‘Chekhov’s Gun’ is a dramatic principle for writers, meant to teach us that ‘every element of a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed’ (Source).

In its most basic form, it famously states that if there is a gun on the wall in one chapter, it must go off in a later chapter. Otherwise, it should not be there.

What a load of bullshit!

While certainly well-intentioned—for it is good to avoid the extraneous, and reductive editing is almost always the surest route to perfection—the principle at its simplest entirely ignores the myriad reasons to include such an item in a story.

To say that a gun must go off or not exist at all is to limit the writer’s freedom and usher all creative narration into cookie cutter niches of content. Guns must equate to shootouts. Attraction must result in sex. Loss must evoke retribution or vindication. It’s all very formulaic, and in the end we end up with a far less promising array of potentials.

The notion itself only attempts to force stories and thought into a more linear pattern, allowing less growth in exchange for more action. It’s predictable, trite, and self-limiting.

Let us look briefly to an example. The Bruce Springsteen song ‘Galveston Bay’ (Link) tells the story of two Americans with very different experiences of the Vietnam war and its resulting influx of immigrants. Le, a native of Vietnam, flees his war-torn country for the alluring promise of America. Billy sees the immigrants coming and changing the life he’d always known. When, at the end of the song, Billy waits for Le in an alley with a Ka-bar knife, Checkhov’s principle would clearly state that the knife must come into play.

But it doesn’t. Billy slips the knife back into his pocket and lets Le pass—finally understanding the joint nature of their struggles, and realizing that his destructive impulse was not a true solution.

This is a far more interesting and dramatic narrative than another simple back-alley knifing. Had the knife not been included, we would struggle to understand the tension and conflict of Billy’s mindset. Had it been used, we would not see his development.

So, dear writers, while catch-all principles can serve as useful reminders, let us not fall into the habit of taking them as sacrosanct. Tiny details can serve to develop character, and show choices far beyond their most obvious functions. Guns aren’t always fired, hurt doesn’t always result in glory, and kisses, sadly, aren’t always forever. Sometimes, they are simply experiences we must pass through, learning what we can.

After all, owning a gun can tell you a lot about a character, but the decision not to use one when provoked can show you far more. We should always be mindful of this.

-Brad OH Inc.

The Evocation Series- ‘Nightfall’

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The following post is part of ‘The Evocation Series’. Click Here for more information about the project, and to learn how to get involved yourself!

Blind Guardian- ‘Nightfall’

 Song Link

Arda, the world in which J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth is set, was once a more beautiful and perfect place. The elves were invited West to the undying lands by the rulers of the land, the Valar, to join in the eternal bliss of the two trees. But jealousy and strife were sown by the Dark Lord Melkor, who destroyed the two trees of Valinor and set off a series of events which would leave the world forever changed.

All hope’s lost it can’t be undone

They’re wasted and gone.

Mourning, the elves sought desperately to return to the way things were, but found it impossible. Greed and pride prevented any solution, and the elves soon learned that there are some wounds too deep to heal, and that even the greatest of graces in their world were not beyond the taint of darkness.

The light she once brought in

Is gone forevermore.

But Fёanor, the king of the Noldor elves, could not accept this loss. For Melkor had also stolen the Silmarils, those three jewels created by Fёanor, which held within them the very light of the two trees. Fёanor was enraged by this transgression, and against the advice of the Valar swore a holy oath to retrieve them from Melkor at all cost.

The words of a banished king

“I swear revenge”.

This oath was unforgivable, and all the Noldor who followed Fёanor were banished forever from the undying lands of the Valar—doomed to toil eternally on their hopeless quest in the dark lands of Middle-Earth to the east. Some turned back, but others refused to see their kin march into doom unaided, and set out across the seas and ice to what fate might await them.

Never trust the northern winds

Never turn your back on friends.

What became of them? Well, they died. Over the centuries, almost to the last, they were slaughtered and watched their kingdoms burn and friends fall as the devastation of Melkor came to fruition. But their oath held them, and never could they return to the undying lands.

Nightfall

Quietly crept in and changed us all

Nightfall

Immortal land lies down in agony.

Loss can be a cruel thing indeed, and many of us in this world will see the things we hold dearest taken from us, devalued, or destroyed. But it is in these times when our faith in decency must be the most powerful. For to allow the sting of death and time to turn us away from what is good and enduring is the most painful loss of all.

-Brad OH Inc.

EViL

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In the great old stories, it’s never hard to spot the source of evil. It may be a winged beast, or a black rider, or a simple, unblazoned ring sitting on a table, just waiting to change the world…

In reality, however, it’s rarely so easy. Evil may take many guises, and come from any direction. Is evil inherent to humanity? Can it ever be prevented?

Education, equal opportunity and the provision of basic needs and human rights is the most obvious answer, for by removing the greatest temptations towards desperate actions, we are most likely to see them decrease. Yet there seems to be an evil in this world which pervades and permeates even the best intentions. It sprouts up no matter what we do. It finds the cracks, or makes them, and it’s dark blossom unfolds often where it is looked for the least.

Traditionally, there are two ends of the polarity in response. One is to be jaded and fearful, rejecting everything different lest it bring evil in with it. This may prevent the terror from without, but it transforms the hearts of people, and creates hatred and evil within.

The other side would be unending faith in the goodness of human kind, sometimes to the open denial of the gathering clouds. This is idealistic, and often this school of thought is quickly met by the bitter reminder that in the end, best intentions cannot ward off evil acts.

We cannot be too careful, or too careless. Vigilance is the price of peace, and those who would deny the presence of evil may soon suffer its harsh truth.

Alas that we do not have a ring to focus on and destroy. Evil is a more insidious thing than that, manifested most often in the sins of pride, greed, and avarice—the strongest motivators of human vice. We cannot see it, nor cast it into the volcano to banish it forever.

Yet the discerning heart can feel it grow. Where will it strike? None can say.

Still, if you pay attention, you can feel the tension in the air, smell the fresh tinders and see the sparks dancing against the black night sky. Old threats and bedtime stories are alive again. Evil grows…now is the time for heroes.

-Brad OH Inc.

The Evocation Series- ‘Space Oddity’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

The following post is part of ‘The Evocation Series’. Click Here for more information about the project, and to learn how to get involved yourself!

David Bowie- ‘Space Oddity’

Song Link

The mind can be a sanctuary at times, especially when the world outside seems a dark and unwelcoming void. But like many sanctuaries, its isolation can also be suffocation, and its secrets are strange and surprising even to its own inhabitant.

It’s a terrifying balance to strike—between the darkness without and the cold serenity within. We all feel like that sometimes, and though it is an experience shared by most everyone, this makes it no less horrifying.

Check ignition,
and may God’s love be with you.

 It’s no easy task—to turn away from the chaos of the world without and face instead the calamity within. To surrender to our own uncertainty has been described as both a depressing submission and an inspiring act of faith or self-realization. Of course, neither perspective makes the deed any easier.

But to tread this line with grace is a most worthy endeavour. Despite the tribulations of the waking world, it is a thing we all must brave. But to do so with vigour and agency, we must also master our inner selves. It’s a fine line to be sure, but the potential payoff is well worth the venture.

 I’m floating in a most peculiar way,
And the stars look very different today.

 It’s a rare and wonderful thing when it’s pulled off just right. To equally know ourselves and our reality is a path tread most often by the shamans and philosophers of the world. For the rest of us, we can hope, at the least, to understand some small part of it before we go.

Darkness is as unavoidable as light, its counterpart—and it is just such a truth which might illuminate the greater realities of the world…the connections which exist within, but which can be understood only in moments of rapture, or surrender.

 Planet Earth is blue,
And there’s nothing I can do.

We all die alone, and to face this is the truest challenge and most necessary condition of being alive. Feeling hopeless, but finding contentment in that? Sometimes, there is nothing more liberating than to acknowledge our own powerlessness.

-Brad OH Inc.

Greed and the Village

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Green DesklampSometimes, I like to think about society as a simple tribal village. It strips the world of its artifice, and takes us back to human-kind at it’s most basic. Raw and primitive. Simple.

And that’s exactly what many issues are from this perspective: Simple.

Without the nuance of modern day polarities, we can see things a bit more clearly. The significant moral leaps people manage to self-justify may be laid bare by a more straight-forward allegorical perspective.

For instance, we can easily agree that freedom is a virtue to be celebrated—but, not total freedom. Let’s explore that with an example. Imagine you are lying asleep on your dirt floor, above you nothing but the countless stars of the prehistoric night sky. You’re covered with a torn animal hide, and lay near enough the dying embers of the night’s fire to provide sufficient protection from the chill of night. In this scenario, you would certainly not want your neighbour to have the freedom to creep up as you slept and take a rock to your head just to obtain that crappy lion skin you call a bed.

Would you?

Most of us don’t need a cave man metaphor to get behind the basic idea of laws, no doubt. Shame on you that did.

But not everything is quite that clear, and the complexities of modern society make it far more difficult to discern the moral imperatives beneath the daily milieu. How do we suss out the decent path in something as complex as corporate economics, or systemic injustice?

Well, let’s imagine that for a moment. Take that same sleepy village of knuckle-dragging cave-people. Say that, as you sleep, one of the villagers has the initiative to wake up early, and gather up all the useful plants anywhere near your hut. Then he breaks your legs so you can’t gather the far away plants. Finally, he generously offers to sell you some of his extra plants in exchange for your wife and children.

You see, at some point, a free market which is free to extort and dominate no longer looks very much like freedom at all when you really boil things down.

Taking this analogy a bit further, we might ask: Just what do we want for our fellow savage villagers? Well, at first glance they don’t seem like an overly pleasant lot. They’re brutish and violent, and certainly don’t seem very smart.

I suppose that education would be a good place to start then.

Ensuring health and security is likely to make them less desperate and prone to violence of course, and some laws to protect from exploitation or economic coercion certainly seem sound.

But we don’t live in a village anymore, we live on a planet. And it would seem, somehow, that there is a disappointing lack of people who truly want any of those things for their neighbour. So then, what does this portend for our coming sleep beneath those countless stars?

The lion skin frays. The embers sputter and smoke.

…The night grows dark.

-Brad OH Inc.

‘Alas for Gondolin’

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Green Desklamp

Now I look back to Gondolin,

That city bright and fair.

With endless song and shining towers,

And fountains crystal clear.

Its seven gates had warded us,

From the darkening and doubt.

And in our hidden valley dear,

We shut all others out.

Built so proud upon its hill,

A beacon true and sure.

That song and jest and merriment,

Through madness might endure.

We raised it up from barren stone,

To stand the test of time.

Its towers gleamed beneath the sun,

And love and peace were mine.

But where love blossoms

Envy too, takes root in hearts less fair.

The serpents came, and brought their ruin,

And laid my city bare.

So through the mountains we did fly,

To safety in the south.

Where still remained a people free,

Upon the Sirion’s mouth.

But as I passed I turned once more,

My fear and doubts to tame.

No city white did meet my sight,

Nothing but smoke and flame.

The cries I heard, the screams and clash,

The death of all I’d known.

That hope for all should sunder one

From his beloved home.

At last my gaze turned to the West,

Where the setting sun grew dim.

And there I dreamed I saw a star.

…Alas for Gondolin.

-Brad OH Inc.

The Evocation Series- ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’

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Green DesklampThe following post is part of ‘The Evocation Series’. Click Here for more information about the project, and how to get involved yourself!

Bruce Springsteen- ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’

 Song Link

 I started this blog in 2012, over five years ago now. At the time, I had several reasons for doing so—the undeniable trendiness of blogs in 2012 notwithstanding. First, I wanted to hone and perfect my craft, and weekly writing was good for that. Second, I wanted to establish some online presence to support my nascent writing career. The third goal was a bit less humble than the others. I wanted to change the world.

Well, there can be no doubt about it, the world has changed indeed. Even as I and many other have done our best to warn the masses of old fears and new disasters alike, the course of history has turned about once more, and again we flirt with the tired mistakes of the past.

‘The highway is alive tonight,
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes.’

‘Fight the good fight’, that’s what they tell you. It falls upon every man and woman to live as the model they want for the world; to call out injustice from the dark corners it hides and to uproot hatred wherever it takes seed.

A better world has been the outstanding promise we have all waited for. From the cradle to the grave, we’ve heard the stories of good prevailing, and the reward of the righteous. No good actions are ever done for hope of reward to be sure, and yet as time draws on and the hold of decency wavers on a razor’s edge, hope itself begins to diminish.

‘Waitin’ for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last,
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass.
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land,
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand.’

It’s easy to begin wondering what it’s all for. One might close their eyes for just a moment, and find the world has grown so dim that to open them again makes little difference. It’s easy to get lost, to doubt, and to fear.

This must never stand. For the final death-knell of decency will surely be when the last decent person loses their will to fight. When common concessions like ‘good-enough’ or ‘the lesser of two evils’ become acceptable mantras for those capable of dreaming bigger and better.

‘Now Tom said, “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy,
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries.
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air,
Look for me Mom I’ll be there.
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand,
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand.
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free,
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”’

We are what we are. Further, we are when we are, and where we are. The why of it is irrelevant—we must only serve as we are able.

-Brad OH Inc.

…And a Happy New Year

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Green DesklampEvery year around this time, I used to write a reflective piece about the year just passed. I was never certain if it was a celebration of the new, or an elegy for the old. Either way, the yearning has left me over time. New Years, after all, is much like any other day when we really boil it down. No magical thinking will ensure that resolutions are kept, and no turn of a calendar will ensure a change of the heart.

We are this day, what we will be tomorrow, and have been yesterday. If that doesn’t suit us, then it behooves us to make the changes necessary not in starry-eyed declarations of intent, but rather as daily practices and improved habits.

Next year, we at Brad OH Inc. have plenty to look forward to. We’ll be maintaining our regular articles, debuting some exciting new themes, and continuing to seek publication for our debut novel, ‘Edgar’s Worst Sunday’ (Link).

On top of that, work continues on our next novel, and this is something which brings us particular joy. Writing is going well, and no doubt within this year we’ll be sharing exciting news, updates, and perhaps even some snippets from the novel itself.

But until that time, while it’s true that today is indeed the start of a new year, remember also that today is a new day, and so too shall tomorrow be. Make the most of it my friends, I sure know I intend to.

Happy New Year to all!

-Brad OH Inc.