Someone asked me the other day what I wrote (actually, I got asked that a lot this past weekend) and this prompted in me a chain reaction of thoughts which I think all writers, at some point, have. It goes something like this: well, I write that...oh and that....and I really like this and I have a story that I would like to incorporate this into but I haven't gotten to it yet....I guess I just write a little bit of everything.
The truth is, I think no writer can truly say that she only writes one particular type or genre of literature. Take, for instance, Haruki Murakami, whose voice is distinctive and whom I love dearly (well, I love his work - I've never met the man himself). Murakami's writings could be classified in a variety of ways. There is definitely a strong element of the supernatural in some of his pieces, though certainly not all of them. There can also be elements of science fiction or horror. I would say that, when it comes to creating short stories, Murakami has been one of the most formative writers upon my own work that I have thus far been exposed to, along with Ruben Dario, who wrote a truly magical collection in Azul... Ruben Dario, by virtue of his being Latin American, could possibly fall into the magical realism school of writing, but the rest of us are denied entry into said school or genre by the fact that we are not, in fact, Latin American. Which brings me to today's discovery.
It seems that there is a genre, in fact, for those of use whose stories have fantastical, surreal, or supernatural elements, but who don't neatly fall into any of the current commercial labels, such as urban fantasy, science fiction, or epic fantasy, to name a few. This genre is called slipstream. According to Bruce Sterling, courtesy of Wikipedia, slipstream is: "...a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." Other definitions include the less artistic "fantastic fiction that transcends sci-fi, mainstream fiction, or fantasy." (The last quote was courtesy of GoodReads.com. Whatever definition you prefer, slipstream seems to be dependent on a sense of dislocation felt not only by the characters, but also by the reader. To me, there is an almost fairytale-like quality, in that one is never really sure what will happen next: the universe is governed by a set of inexplicable and intuitive laws, and rational thought is often abandoned at some point, almost without you realizing.
And that brings me, finally, to the title of this particular entry.
Any art form is dependent on two things, mixed together in odd doses, depending on the artist and the nature of the work. These two things are the creative impulse - or the wine, taken from the Greek god Bacchus, a dark and earthy creator; and the skill which is acquired through experience of the craft - the honey, the carefully constructed and lightly sweet framework which allows the story to be communicated, an aspect of the sun god Apollo who shines light upon the world. Each is, of course, its own type of passion, both the methodical and the impulsive. Only with both can we carry the audience of any art form into a new landscape, suspending their hold on the real and the concrete. Once the mind lets go of what is real, it can begin to better appreciate reality. Or something like that.
Obviously, my theories on the subject are still works in progress. But I am very excited to learn a new term.
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