The Writing Life: reflections by a working writer. The Writing Life

Reflections of a working writer, a university screenwriting professor, and the editor of Oregon Literary Review.

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Charles Deemer

Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

The eagle flies!

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Ron Silliman, contemporary poetry and poetics

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literary links, amusements, politics, rants

Darren Barefoot
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Rob's Writing Pains
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Cara Swann, fiction writer, journalist, "reflections on humanity, random news & my life."

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The Writing Life...
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

"All my best friends are writers and are dead."
A friend over beer, Berkeley, winter, 1959

"And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?"
The Half-Life Conspiracy

After October 31, 2006,
new posts are published at


The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

 
Saturday, January 21, 2006  
Portland
Despite my love-hate relationship with the theater community here, I like many things about Portland. One of them is that it has a 24/7 jazz station (actually out of nearby Gresham). On Saturday and Sunday mornings they play Dixieland.

What is it about Dixieland that even the blues makes you feel good? I used to cry in my booze listening to Little Walter and other Chicago blues artists. The blues in Dixieland makes you stomp your feet, even if the tempo is slow. The music somehow raises my spirits, no matter what the emotional content is.

I want to write a dixieland chamber opera, whatever that is. An opera with an appropriate story and the musical feel of dixieland, yet within the opera genre.

In two years, probably, we are selling out wonderful little house at the edge of city limits and buying a condo somewhere closer in to services within walking range. Maybe we'll cross the river and move to Vancouver, Washington. Washington is a more progressive state than Oregon is. Most folks think the opposite but they don't know their history. Free blacks taking the Oregon Trail immediately fled Oregon Territory for the Washington Territory, where they could own land. In the 1920s, the KKK elected the governor of Oregon -- not over race but over the public education issue, the KKK being staunchly anti-Catholic. Bottle bills and assisted suicide are the exception, not the rule, in Oregon political trends. Oregon has an especially dismal record in supporting the arts. On a per capita basis, it's down at the bottom somewhere. That's why I was so blown away as a juror for Illinois, learning how much the arts commission there supported the arts. I remember seeing the states ranked some years back and Oregon was next to last.

Like many states, such as California, Oregon is at least two states in terms of value and belief systems. Here there is Portland and the upper Willamette Valley and everywhere else. So it's misleading to talk about state trends when you're in the liberal progressive zone, I admit.

The best things about Portland are its free public transportation system and its location, just a short drive to snow and beach, desert and rivers. My friend Dick, an Idaho patriot, used to say, "I like Oregon but I hate Oregonians."

For me personally, the best thing here is the university. This has become my true home in Portland. No love-hate here, all love. If we move to Vancouver, I can still take public transportation to the university. I think I'll keep teaching until it stops being fun. This year has been one of my best so far, in terms of my own enjoyment of the work at hand. I think the students are getting better. No idea why but it sure seems that way. Good students are a joy.

1/21/2006 10:12:00 AM | 4 comments

Comments:
Charles:

Weren't you developing an idea for a Dixieland Chamber Opera at one point?

I'm still interested.
 
Yes, such an idea is on the back burner.
 
Hi, Charles.

You are seriously considering moving to Vancouver from Portland, because you like the state of WA over OR???

How does Vancouver USA stack up against Portland, culturally and otherwise?

-eric p
 
Vancouver per se is not more "cultural" than Pdx -- but it's next door to Pdx, so nothing is lost. The state of Washington funds the arts so much better than Oregon, that I'd have many more grant opportunities, etc, should I want to take advantage of them (which I don't think I would). It's a personal thing. I want to leave Portland yet be close enough to teach at PSU and avoid divorce (my wife would never go too far from Pdx) ... so Vancouver seems a good compromise. But so would McMinnville, say.

Vancouver, by the way, is an up and coming place. The time to have moved there was 3 or 4 yrs ago, now it's "discovered" and housing costs have skyrocketed. It has the best, most modern movie house in the state, called Cinetopia. Pdx will be copying it soon I'm sure.

Only neighborhood left in Pdx that is like NW in the 70s and early 80s is St John's and N along Mississippi Ave, the new avant-garde arts scene. Everything else is gentrified and yuppiefied and overly priced. Great for young stock brokers, though. It's becoming their kind of town.
 
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