It's hard to describe what I'm asking for here, as it's a word or phrase for which I haven't found a term in 32 years. What, exactly, is it that Ray conveys of life, or even perception (in cases where the viewpoint character is not alive as such) that is not found, at least in such degree, in any other source?

I used to say he could describe "the empty spaces between things" as much as concrete "things," and point to the movie "Paris, Texas," as an example of this aspect of the Bradburyesque. For instance, the scene in "Paris, Texas" where the dinosaur sculptures appear. These dinosaurs are used in at least one other movie, "The Wizard," and the effect is NOT AT ALL the same. In "Paris, Texas," they have that colorful, floating, ethereal quality. It is not what is depicted so much as HOW. The whole movie is extremely Bradburyesque.

Unless I've missed something, descriptions of this type, describing not just the sights of a trip but the state of mind of one taking a trip, (not a drug trip but could in some ways be compared) first appeared in the writing of Thomas Wolfe, and was in some ways NEVER done as well since, EVEN BY BRADBURY! (Gasp!) Bradbury can move a story on a lot faster, but something about Wolfe's descriptions remains unsurpassed.

In "Elidor," by Alan Garner--a book and author I highly recommend, a sort of somewhat bleaker Bradbury--is a description (which I'll post if I find it) of desolate, half-abandoned places, ending, "These are the gates to Elidor."

What are the "gates to Elidor" in Bradbury? That hyperaware, surreal perception which sort of raises the consciousness to perceive the most ordinary things differently? By the way, I'm looking for a brief phrase such as "gates to Elidor," although if anyone wants to write paragraphs trying to sort it out, go right ahead. And don't use "magic" unless you can really creatively combine it with something else.

The contest will now commence. The best entry will be stolen by me for a book I'm writing.

(Posted 01 March 2006 07:41 AM):

Ray, as I've said many times, has that talent, possessed by a few great poets, of combining words in such a way that an entire atmosphere emerges, including sensory perceptions, that engulfs and transports the reader. In short, he can do in a short story what other writers would need a novel to do.

(Posted 19 May 2006 03:05 PM):

...He really does remember what it was like being a kid and has the unique gift of making US remember - with just the right phrases - he transports!

'Gusto!' seems to fit

I'm thinking secret enchantment but don't want anything too wifty or fairylike. I'm talking, not about invisible or nearly imperceptible impressions, but things EVERYBODY sees but very few comment upon, and then generally not eloquently.

Lookyhere!
There is a piece of music in the Harrison Ford/Anne Heche movie, 'Six Days Seven Nights' that occurs when they are both pushing a boat out into the ocean, very late at night, while airplane-wrecked on some unknown Island. It only lasts a half minute, but it is breathtaking in that it stirs strongly something inside the soul. Intrigued, I have watched that one scene to listen to the music 50 times, likely more, and each time I come away saying, "Why does it do that, affect me so powerfully? Randy Edelman is the composer, and I have discovered there are certain moments in much of his music that creates that stir in one's mind and heart. Or how about certain moments in opera? Or a sunset?

A bunch of years ago, 70's in fact, I tried starting a Bradbury fanclub of sorts, and I called it 'The Byzantium Society'.
It was a line of out of poet William Butler Yeats, of eternal youth, of unending life. Byzantium! Byzantium! Oddly enough, I attended a Bradbury speech not too long afterwards where he comes out and says he wouldn't stand for anybody starting any sort of society or a following with him as the main attraction. Either I read something into what he was saying or he really said that. The following weeek I scrapped the idea of 'The Byzantium Society'.

Recently, rummaging thru Ray's garage, Patrick came up with a small volume of poems I sent Ray years back. Perhaps Ray glanced at it and shelved it. Perhaps he merely shelved it. But I got it back, along with the note inside. I had called his attention to a poem that appeared in the small book by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was called, 'Poems of the Class of '29'. I am not going to write out the lengthy poem, but, in essence, it had to do with eternal time. And it was not about the class of 1929 but, rather, the class of '1829'. It reads, in part:

"Come, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shinng days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe."

I realized with that poem, that Green Town exists the same thruout the centuries. For some 10 year olds today there is their own Green Town they awaken to each morning.

If any of you were able to listen to the link connecting you to Bradbury's talk at the Festival of Books in Los Angeles in April, he speaks about the undiminished boy that lives with love and wonderful expectations in his heart each day, tho the outward man is failing. Mozart is said to compose at six years of age, and retained his youthful vision thru much of his works.

So, what is it, dandelion that you are looking for to explain Bradbury's "magic" that no one can seem to put their finger on? Well, it's found in so many of the places I just described. Perhaps it's what mystics call the countenance of God. Oddly, the same 'power' is demonstrated in the running, tumbling verses in scripture, thru the Psalms, thru the Epistles, where THAT 'undefined quality' is described as God penning words thru the very impotent hand of failing man, his endless character and Himself.

And then there is...
...Byzantium.

Nard, that's a great post. (You even make me want to see Six Days Seven Nights, a movie which looked and sounded terrible in all the publicity I saw when it came out.)

Well, the child is father to the man, and certainly Wordsworth understood and expressed much of what I mean as well as anybody.

And, yes, certain music and art works to transport and different things work different ways for different people. A fictional character who saw the beauty and mystery in ordinary life was Anne of Green Gables, one of the finest examples of what I mean with this.

What I'm trying for is that moment of transformation when an oppressed young soul pushes through layers of religious-induced guilt like a young flower through winter leaves reaching towards the sun's rays to realize--it's all right to ENJOY life! The realization of which makes life livable, at least enough of the time to manage. Just trying to grasp how, if at all, people reached this state before Bradbury's writing was published, and what term might be used to describe it.

There is much of Zen in his phrasing - obviously elusive. He trips through words and imagination fantastic!

He, like Cecy, is here and there, you, me, someone else, and then completely himself, like no other.

Mr. Bradbury's spirit has always worked with his hand to pen and his art will live forever! His works are like those fireflies Doug held in the Mason jar. When he was done with their glow upon his 12 year old face, he went to his bedroom window, opened the lid, and lovingly set them free into a warm, Green Town summer night to illumine the lives of an entire world.

“When the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” Leonardo Da Vinci.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

dandelion:

I can only speak for myself. I was ready to do laundry when the windows of my apartment literally blew open and the light shined like I had never seen it before and in one powerful moment, all guilt, all broken lanes to somewhere, replaced by THIS moment. God touched me and I was saved. Now the next 25 years I have been learning what it was I had experienced. A daily struggle because the old self decides to always return and haunt the dwelling of me. But it was (again) THIS moment that was experienced because I originally went out seeking what it was in Bradbury's works that made one experience such an emotional response to his words. So when I talk about religion, it is no detached reality from Bradbury. It is an integral part of the fabric of my experience in discovering him.

philnic:

I am not recommending Six Days Seven Nights. The writers decided to throw in some useless sexual scenes (and references) in the movie that, if they had been deleted, would have likely, in my opinion, done so much more to elevate the movie into a really interesting adventure as well as bring in more money at the box-office! But some of these writers are stupid when it comes to what offends the general audience of theater goers.

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
Well, the child is father to the man, and certainly Wordsworth understood and expressed much of what I mean as well as anybody.

And, yes, certain music and art works to transport and different things work different ways for different people. A fictional character who saw the beauty and mystery in ordinary life was Anne of Green Gables, one of the finest examples of what I mean with this.

What I'm trying for is that moment of transformation when an oppressed young soul pushes through layers of religious-induced guilt like a young flower through winter leaves reaching towards the sun's rays to realize--it's all right to ENJOY life! The realization of which makes life livable, at least enough of the time to manage. Just trying to grasp how, if at all, people reached this state before Bradbury's writing was published, and what term might be used to describe it.

Someone sent this to me (link at the bottom)
and I was so taken back to the Sixties, that I got out my bell bottoms and Carnaby Street cutaway black blazer and started dreamin' of white rabbits - Don't You Need Someone To Love?

Those of us who made it through this decade will feel chills of remembrance twitching down their spines as the music takes them to a forgotten era. I wasn't THERE in the sixties, too busy getting ready for the rest of my life. Now, at 64 I can feel the total release of all responsibility and begin to see what flower-power was all about. We thought we could change the world, but look what it became.
George Bush as president? Another Vietnam in Iraq? A move toward the old model of government - state sponsored religion. Did we make a better world?

No, I think not!

Maybe we had those visions due to the pink glasses and the cannabis that wafed over our senses. We seriously need to get back to changing this world, before we are gone forever.

There are those who want an Armageddon because they believe that it will take them to the Second Coming and they will be The Chosen Ones. What about the rest of us, and what if They are wrong?
Religions come and go, read your history. They all say the same thing, we are right, you are wrong. Since they have all proven to be passing ideas, I trust in the Truth of Science, since it is continually questioning and adjusting to the new information that floods into our data banks. It is not absolute, but self correcting, and thus is trustworthy.

I loved the feeling of the time, The Sixties, a newness, a fresh look at everything, equality and justice for all people, not just white Americans.
And, we were willing to stand up and fight for what we thought was TRUTH.

Now, we seem to be beaten down by the unrelentless bombardment of the establishment controlled media, that gives us our daily dose of dread and tries to move us in a direction that they sponsor,
selling us ever-larger flatscreen obscenities to pacify our brains with trivia in an artificial world that has become the drug of choice in this time.

The answer to this mind control is to do as Timothy Leary might have said: Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Out, and learn to Love one another again. Get off your ass and do something!
Who cares who wins American Idol, don't watch Dancing With The Stars, be the star and dance! Make up your own mind, use the technology of the internet to find out the Truth, don't let the media dumb us down any further than we already are, use it to become knowledgeable about the problems of the world, seek your own voice and find your own Truths.

Its The Sixties, again, and I hear Dillon in the background: " ...you better start swimmin' or you will sink like a stone, because the times they are a changin' ...."

I hope so.

L earn
O bserve
V alue
E verything

So, it is the Sixties again, for me anyway, I am alive and well and mad as hell.

I want the world that we all dreamed of to come true.

We are but dust motes on Carl Sagan's small Blue Dot of a planet in the universe, who somehow can think great thoughts and plan and build and reach out to the stars with our robotic eyes and ears to:

Learn - who we are,
Observe - that we live on a tiny speck in the midst of many that have no life on them, and thus we must
Value - each other, live by The Golden Rule, and secure our chance to search for god in the truth of our accumulated knowledge, for that is
Everything

Enjoy



http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
Phil Trask

Trasker,
We seem to be drifting off topic again, as is our wont.
I like your L-O-V-E acrostic!
I had to chuckle, though, at "Get off your ass and do something!" which could be advice really best addressed to those embracing the Zeitgeist of the '60s, especially those who've also continued to ingest cannabis!

Here's a quote I thought germane, both for content and source:

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."

- George Orwell

Now,
As to Mr. B's ineffable haecceity...?

You forget, that the generation of the Sixties, really did Do Something:

Free Speach movement,
Civel Rights movement,
Political involvement by little people who took control of many of the opportunities to serve by replacing the old guard,
Women's rights for equality, of jobs and pay, and to have a say in the use of their bodies for more than incubators of someone else's rath,

We did get up off our asses and marched and protested and stopped an unjust war in its tracks. We now have lost that sence of urgency and need to show up at the polls and reinvigorate the spirit of the American polyglot of immigrants who came here looking for a better life. Bradbury had much so say about this in the '50s and his lesson is still unlearned today, to my sorrow.

patrask. Nonsense!! What really happened is the 60's was a litmus test indicating society beginning a genuine fall off that path of sanity for many, masquerading as freedom. The 1960's paved the way for the welcome bandwagon of the Hefners and Flynts of this world, and later the Bill Mahers, who made me realize what a nut we have when he said right there on his TV program, Politically Incorrect, that US should not retaliate unless a bomb came and blasted away 1 million people. Then, he said, you knew there was a real reason to retaliate. This was not Bill Maher satire. Or super dark humor. It was what he thought. And a great mass of people nowadays listen and think the same. In our popular culture mind-set, no one knows what's right or wrong, and those in that popular culture mind-set think their idea of truth is as good as anyone else. You would be considered a fool not that many years ago. No Thanks1960's.

The new generation of Drug happy, sex happy, mockery of parents dummies, disregard for history idiots, bunch of cry babies giving birth to a generation today of Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans. It's not that they haven't been around thruout hisotry, it's that there are so gosh darn many more of them today!

By the way, just what was the original topic?

Oh, yes, what is that magic in Bradbury? God's gift. Nothing less. Period!

The word for Ray's take on life is Love.

Yes, remember that beautiful Martian story ("The Wilderness," I believe) where a husband is trying to call his wife back on earth, the connection is bad, the call is garbled, but the word "love" comes through.

The Beatles had a song "The Word Love," as well as "All You Need is Love."