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well this post ran away on me a bit
14 Mar 2013 12:32 amWriting update: 67 words on the Merlin fic, and even that was a struggle.
~
One reason for this is that I write best in the evenings, and instead of settling down to write with a glass of wine after dinner tonight, instead I saw a local production of Les Mis with my family.
It was very good, and I had the usual number of Strong Opinions about every aspect of everything, but -- something about this production made me think about how I'd stage it in a modern setting, which I'm sure has been done, but suddenly I desperately want a female version of Javert: the unmocked law, with her power suits and her tight bun and her slash of lipstick. The law pulling the pins out of her hair, exhausted as evening bleeds into night, watching the stars through the window of her office.
Of course by this point I wasn't staging it any more, I was thinking about how to write it down. You can't have the narrative that is Les Miserables (book or musical) take place in our era, obviously, but the people are translatable and so are the messages. Legality is a luxury; obsession will grind down your bones and idealism is not enough; our little lives don't count at all, except when they do.
I'd write Javert, who has clawed her way to the top by being above reproach in a way that no man has ever had to be; who was a rare, successful product of the system, and who believes in the system's rules in the way that you do when you've inhaled them, fed on them, let them hold you upright. Javert who looks at Fantine and despises her so that she doesn't have to feel nauseated, terrified, I was born inside a jail; Javert who has to punish Fantine because if she admits that bad luck has brought the woman low then she's admitting that she herself could have ended up in the same place. Javert who has spent her entire life not becoming her own mother.
And at the same time I'd write Grantaire, who sees too much and thinks too much and touches his life lightly, with fingertips, so as not to be entangled. Grantaire who is addicted to wine and to cigarettes and to the endlessly fascinating faces of passionate people. Who warms himself at the flames of another man's articulate beauty and doesn't think too much of it when he takes the warmth home with him and sweats through all of his sheets; who accepts without struggling the full force of his unshakeable love and handles it the same way as everything else: with fingertips. Burning them at every turn. Hoping and hoping-not to sear away the whorls and leave the nerves numbed.
And for the third thread of it I'd complicate the uncomplicated Cosette, burrow down into her generous heart and find her secrets, wrench her into the world and watch for the glowing, curious, furious spark that remains when the rest of her has been rendered down. I'd give her her Marius, and that girl from her childhood whose dark eyes she's never forgotten. I'd give all three of them to one another and let them hold hands on poorly-lit streets, marching, afraid, in love.
It'd be a story about trapped people, longing.
~
One reason for this is that I write best in the evenings, and instead of settling down to write with a glass of wine after dinner tonight, instead I saw a local production of Les Mis with my family.
It was very good, and I had the usual number of Strong Opinions about every aspect of everything, but -- something about this production made me think about how I'd stage it in a modern setting, which I'm sure has been done, but suddenly I desperately want a female version of Javert: the unmocked law, with her power suits and her tight bun and her slash of lipstick. The law pulling the pins out of her hair, exhausted as evening bleeds into night, watching the stars through the window of her office.
Of course by this point I wasn't staging it any more, I was thinking about how to write it down. You can't have the narrative that is Les Miserables (book or musical) take place in our era, obviously, but the people are translatable and so are the messages. Legality is a luxury; obsession will grind down your bones and idealism is not enough; our little lives don't count at all, except when they do.
I'd write Javert, who has clawed her way to the top by being above reproach in a way that no man has ever had to be; who was a rare, successful product of the system, and who believes in the system's rules in the way that you do when you've inhaled them, fed on them, let them hold you upright. Javert who looks at Fantine and despises her so that she doesn't have to feel nauseated, terrified, I was born inside a jail; Javert who has to punish Fantine because if she admits that bad luck has brought the woman low then she's admitting that she herself could have ended up in the same place. Javert who has spent her entire life not becoming her own mother.
And at the same time I'd write Grantaire, who sees too much and thinks too much and touches his life lightly, with fingertips, so as not to be entangled. Grantaire who is addicted to wine and to cigarettes and to the endlessly fascinating faces of passionate people. Who warms himself at the flames of another man's articulate beauty and doesn't think too much of it when he takes the warmth home with him and sweats through all of his sheets; who accepts without struggling the full force of his unshakeable love and handles it the same way as everything else: with fingertips. Burning them at every turn. Hoping and hoping-not to sear away the whorls and leave the nerves numbed.
And for the third thread of it I'd complicate the uncomplicated Cosette, burrow down into her generous heart and find her secrets, wrench her into the world and watch for the glowing, curious, furious spark that remains when the rest of her has been rendered down. I'd give her her Marius, and that girl from her childhood whose dark eyes she's never forgotten. I'd give all three of them to one another and let them hold hands on poorly-lit streets, marching, afraid, in love.
It'd be a story about trapped people, longing.