Lamentation

Between August, 2007 and May, 2012, I taught high school English in Bradford, Arkansas.  Bradford is a small, rural community with a population of (maybe) 800 people. I enjoyed the job and learned a lot from it. Not to sound too corny or cliched, but the kids probably taught me more than I taught them. Certainly, the job influenced my perspective on many issues-- like the importance of funding public education.... But anyway.

The job, in a roundabout way, inspired my new novel Lamentation.  Particularly the setting.

Bradford's original high school building has been demolished and replaced....  But it was there for four of my five years, and in many ways, it lives on (abandoned second floor and all) as the Rohs Building in Lamentation.

Much like Jake Boyd, my novel's protagonist, I was responsible for supervising a small group of alternative school kids.  For an entire school year, every school day, I went up to the old Bradford High School building's second floor... and a few times, as I proceeded down that dim and damp hallway, it occurred to me: this place could so easily be haunted.

But the building, at that point, was not crying out to be included in a horror novel. I was working on other things, and I suppose I filed away the thought.... A few years later, after I'd quit teaching and was making my way through law school, that file folder started twitching and itching,  and when I began writing, that old Bradford building came back to me in crystal clear high definition.

Funny, the way influences work. Sometimes you recognize them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes the things you wish so badly to write about never work out-- and then a seemingly insignificant memory bubbles up, turns into a geyser, and floods your imagination.

I'm proud of Lamentation. As I state in the note at the end of the book, I grew very fond of the characters, and I enjoyed reliving my years as a teacher. And so, here's a thanks to the Bradford community and everybody I was blessed to meet, work for, and work with. The good in Lamentation is very much inspired by you (and your building).

The evil? Trust me, that's 100% from my imagination-- and I hope it scares the hell out of you.

Day Hikin'

Sometime in 2006 or 2007, I decided I wanted to hike California’s Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight states.

Why?  Years of percolating curiosity.  I traveled a lot as a kid.  My parents always made sure our family loaded up in the minivan and left the state of Arkansas for a week or two every summer.  Somewhere along the way, at a fairly young age, I saw mountains.  Real mountains—no disrespect intended toward the beautiful Ouachitas and Ozarks here in my home state.

I could write forever about travel—quality, meaningful travel that allows both body and mind to explore—being as important to children as developing a love for reading…  But I’ll go into that on a later date.

I hiked Mount Whitney (14,505') in one day during the summer of 2008.  The experience was a game changer.  The trek was twenty-two miles roundtrip.  The miles and elevation gain did a workout on this young flatlander who hadn’t really known what he was getting into, and I was exhausted to the point of being nearly catatonic when I finished.  But I felt like I’d done something, somehow, very meaningful--to myself.  If I were a wordsmith like Byron or Wordsworth, I’d have composed a hundred pages of blank verse about my experience in the Sierra Nevada that day.

Telescope Peak, Death Valley, California

Let me say this: when you’re driving along or through the Rockies or the Sierras, what you see from your car window is undoubtedly beautiful.  But you’re not really seeing the mountains.  Only by putting on your backpack, lacing up your shoes, and picking your way up through the trees to the upper slopes and the high ridges beyond can you gain proper perspective on the enormity and the beauty of the mountains.  Only then do you actually see them.

I returned to California again the next summer.  This time I hiked to the top of Death Valley’s tallest summit, Telescope Peak (11,043').  Telescope was much, much different than Whitney.  The sheer granite walls and blue alpine lakes of the Sierra Nevada were now the wooded slopes of the Panamint Range, rising from the Death Valley salt flats.  Ancient bristlecone pines lined much of the trail.  And there was pure solitude.  Whitney is always well-trodden, especially in the summer months, so much so that you must win a lottery to gain access to the main trail.  On Telescope, I think I saw one other hiker.   

The next summer, I gained the summit of Charleston Peak (11,916'), the highest peak in the Spring Mountains, just west of Las Vegas.  And in 2011 I began to focus on the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, specifically the Sawatch Range.  With Leadville as home base, I’ve thus far tackled the Rockies’ three highest peaks: Elbert (14,440'), Massive (14,428'), and Harvard (14,421').  The mountains in the Sawatch Range are true giants and are perfect hiking mountains.  There’s a fun bit of boulder scrambling near the summit of Harvard, but for the most part, in the Sawatch Range, it’s all about putting one foot in front of the other.

Mount Elbert from the Arkansas River Valley

Gaining some of the highest, most beautiful peaks in our country requires only a good pair shoes and a healthy dose of willpower.  Many of them can be done in a day.  This is not to say that you should take the mountains lightly-- do proper research, get early starts, don't get caught on a high granite ridge in the middle of a late afternoon thunderstorm....  But enjoy them.  They're very accessible.  

And they're there.

God raised up one heck of a playground on the entire western half of the lower forty-eight, and most of it is available to anybody at any time.

Get out there and explore.

It might awaken something in you that the gym is perfectly content to let lie.  

Note: Photographs are my own.  And I have many more, as well as much more information about any of the mountains or trails mentioned in this post.  Comment on this post, email me ( mnsebourn@hotmail.com), contact me via my website ( www.mitchsebourn.com ), or find me on Twitter (@mnsebourn) if you'd like to chat about mountains... or, well, anything else (within reason).

Next Note: The hike up Telescope Peak inspired my short story "Badwater," available for the Amazon Kindle.

A Lesson From T. S. Eliot

There is a passage in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that I return to frequently:

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water

This is a fine piece of writing, because it looks so damned simple.  

Unlike much of The Waste Land, this section does not bend the reader’s mind with complex phrasings and allusions.  There aren’t even any big words here….  This passage is simply a demonstration of good writing.  For those interested in studying poetry, Eliot here "puts on a clinic" regarding effective use of repetition and varying line lengths.  The smooth flow of the first section, which establishes the image of a path through barren mountains, becomes the staggering dehydration of the second section, hence its shorter lines, and the passage concludes with the blunt and cruel acceptance of reality after a blissful vision of a stream amongst pine trees: “But there is no water.”

Like I said, it looks so damned simple.  Of the passage’s 175 words, only two contain more than two syllables.  Punctuation is nonexistent.  “Water” is repeated eleven times, “rock,” nine.  Even the subject matter, on its face, is very straightforward: somebody in a barren landscape wants water.  

But in the hands of a lesser poet, twenty-seven lines about wanting water would likely induce such thoughts as, “Yeah, yeah, I got your point a long time ago.”  

But most, if not all, great writing is deceptive.  Readers don't realize how good it is until they finish and think something like, “Wow.  I could never write anything like that.  Not because the writer has a large vocabulary.  Not because the work is so long I could never find the time.  Not because the sentences coil on for pages and lose me in their complexity….  But simply because every word was in its proper place."

Great writing.  It should seem so simple. 

Random Thoughts

Left Lane For Passing Only….

I’m sick of seeing Little Rock, Arkansas ranked near the top of violent crime lists.  You’re a great little town, Little Rock.  Get it together….

Go away LED “eyebrow” lights.  You’re not cool anymore, if you ever were.  And you don’t serve a purpose….

Alas, "sport utility vehicles" are now minivans for people who don’t want minivans….

The glitchiness of Apple products increases with their prices….  

Amazon allows you to rip a digital copy of an album when you buy a CD.  Blu-Ray film releases are frequently packaged with DVD and digital copies.  Concerning books, you know....

I enjoy and support science, but the Internet of Things scares the holy living hell out of me….

The brain, as we all know, can grow fat and lazy just like the body….

I don’t want a novel’s cover to show me the main character’s appearance.  And it’s actually kinda creepy when a book cover is adorned with a random, real-life model.  These movie poster covers have consumed the young adult and indie markets…..

This is not to say that characters can never appear on book covers.  A nineties-era cover of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot depicted what I assume were the Glick boys (characters in the novel) staring out a window….  Creepy, effective.  But the cover was a painting, a subtle painting, and it in no way impacted how I visualized the characters…. 

Subtlety, by the way, is definitely dead….

While I’m on the topic of novels….  If I learn a character’s eye color within the first ten pages, I’m probably going to quit reading….

Review, ReLoad by Metallica

Back in 1997, when I was barely a teenager, I listened a friend’s copy of Metallica's ReLoad, and for the first time in my life, I was taken aback by music.  Sound corny?  A little too dramatic?  I mean, I’m talking about an album that’s been pretty much forgotten and neglected by Metallica fans and, to a large extent, by the band itself.  I’ll forgive you for thinking, “Mitch, come on.  ‘Taken aback’?  Did you forget what you’re writing about?  ReLoad.  Not Revolver.  ReLoad."

But it was true for me.  Here's a kid who’d grown up in a pretty conventional southern household, a kid who went to church most Sunday mornings, rarely missed a day of school, and listened to whatever country was on the radio when he listened to music at all.  

And then, on that day, James Hetfield's screaming straight into my ears: “Gimmie fuel, gimme fire, give me that which I desire!” and his unfiltered request is immediately followed by a fast, demonically groovy riff that caused this oh-so-sheltered little dork to drop what he was doing and pay attention.  

“Fuel” didn't kindly suggest that I leave my comfort zone (which I didn't even know I was in), it took a battering ram to its door and blew out its windows.  

After gathering the entire Metallica catalogue and listening to the hell out of it for the better part of twenty years, I have concluded that ReLoad is not Metallica's most technically impressive album. The material is straightforward, and stylistically, like Load, it sounds like the love child of Alice in Chains and AC/DC.  Nor is ReLoad Metallica’s most important album: that honor belongs to Kill’em All, as their first.  Or Ride the Lightning, for its sudden leap forward in maturity.  Or Master of Puppets, for its overall brilliance.  Or ….And Justice For All, for being a masterpiece no doubt heavily influenced by the loss of Cliff Burton.  Or maybe the self-titled "Black Album" was the most important, since it vaulted the band into the stratosphere of the rock world.  Regardless, with all those classics in their catalogue, no chance is ReLoad Metallica’s most important album.  

But it is, perhaps, their most underrated.  There is some extremely quality material here beyond the radio and concert staples— material like “Devil’s Dance,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” and “Fixxxer”— that simply, in my opinion, deserves to be remembered, appreciated, and played live.  

While more traditional in structure and sporting more discernible “hooks,” the songs on ReLoad are no less meticulously put together than the band’s classic efforts in the eighties.  The tempos are slower, but the riffs are still plenty heavy.  Lars’s drumming does what drumming should do in mid-tempo, blues-influenced hard rock: it holds down the rhythm.  And James Hetfield's lyrics….  After a slew of albums about the atrocities of war, the hypocrisy of the government, and the end of mankind, Hetfield decided, sometime around 1990, to start penning more songs about the conflicts within himself.  But the James Hetfield on ReLoad  rarely goes all-in on the “personal angst” hand; rather, he seems to remove himself one step, focussing more on the issues than himself.  He addresses potential consequences of fame in “The Memory Remains,” the calling of one’s inner demons in “Devil’s Dance,” and being suppressed by a higher power— God, drugs, parents?— in “Fixxxer.”   To this critic, James’s abilities as a lyricist improved as Metallica’s music became more straightforward.  Did he actually get better, or did the simpler nature of the music simply inspire him to open up more?  I don’t know.  Whatever the case, I’m glad it happened:

“Blood for face, sweat for dirt,

Three X’s for the stone.

To break this curse a ritual’s due.

I believe I’m not alone.

Shell of shotgun, pint of gin,

Numb us up to shield the pins.

Renew our faith which way we can

To fall in love with life again.

To fall in love with life again."

I think Metallica’s “experimental” period in the mid and late nineties was actually the band’s most honest era.  Some accused them of "selling out," getting a whiff of a million dollars with the "Black Album" and going all-in on rock radio.  I, of course, disagree.  I think the band hit their thirties and decided to not fake it.  “We’re not kids anymore,” I think they said.  “We’re successful adults, and we can’t keep acting like pissed off kids.”

Why force a passion that obviously wasn’t there anymore?  You’ve only got one chance, after all.

As Hetfield states:

"So wash your face away with dirt.

It don’t feel good until it hurts….

So take this world and shake it.

Come squeeze and suck the day.

Come carpe diem baby."

Introduction

Welcome to The Badwater Press.  My name is Mitch Sebourn, and I will attempt, here, to keep my readers entertained (and occasionally informed) by the thoughts rolling around in my head.  I will discuss my work as a writer, as a fan of music, and as a hiker.  Disclaimer: God knows what else will appear here.

Note: The name of this blog is taken from Badwater Basin, North America's lowest point, located in Death Valley National Park.  For those of you who are both mountain goats and desert rats (as I am) I can't recommend enough a visit to Death Valley National Park.  Specifically, hike to the top of Telescope Peak.  There, you'll look to the east and gaze down upon Badwater Basin, our nation's lowest point.  And on a clear day, you can look to the west and see Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48.  

You'll also experience first-hand the influence for my short story, "Badwater," available for Amazon Kindle....  See what I did there?