I’m on Talk Your Talk with my man Alaska this week. I’m the first guest on this spin off from his usual show, Call Out Culture with Curly Castro and Zilla Rocca, on which I was also the first guest. I did the artwork for their Michael Myers/Nas-themed “Killmatic” episode, too.
In this new one, we talk about my books, new, old, and not-out-yet, as well as a few high-minded social-science theories… and the raps, of course.
Quoting and paraphrasing are common in writing disciplines such as journalism and academia, but plagiarism is anathema, punishable by excommunication. While endemic to the creative practices of hip-hop, the practice of interpolation is also hotly debated. The orthodox rule there was no biting, but if you can take what someone else wrote and make it better, that’s worthy of respect. “I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard,” Rakim once rapped, “Flip it, now it’s a daily word.” Because of the perils of plagiarism, in writing practice, riffing on the work of another is not widely accepted, but it can be quite fruitful.
While some still consider the interpolation of rap lyrics an act of biting, others see such a move as metaphorical and central to the art form and indeed historical African oral traditions. In the use of allusive appropriation in hip-hop, a practitioner must make something new while still adhering to the traditions of hip-hop. In this way, lyrical allusions can be viewed a lot like the musical samples over which they’re spoken. The tension between biting and innovating has been around since the beginning of recorded rap. The lyrics to the Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” were lifted straight from the streets. The fact that those verses belonged originally to Grandmaster Caz and the Cold Crush Brothers is the oldest bit of rap lore. One person’s clever quip is another’s cliché. Novelty is as cognitive as it is cultural.
My most used example of this practice comes from Eminem. In his 2000 song “The Way I Am,” he says:
I am whatever you say I am If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
His words have their direct meaning in response to his treatment in the news media at the time, but they also allude to the 1987 rap song, “As the Rhyme Goes On,” by Eric B. & Rakim. In the earlier song, Rakim raps:
I’m the R to the A to the K-I-M If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
The line has also been flipped by Nas (on both “Got Ur Self a…” and “You’re Da Man”), Jay-Z (on “Supa Ugly”), and Curly Castro (on ShrapKnel’s “Lazy Dog”). Allusions as such pose a communicative problem in that they employ and require shared knowledge. At least a passing familiarity with the Eric B. & Rakim song interpolated by Eminem heightens its meaning, gives it another layer of significance and signification.
They’re also a great way to learn and improve your craft. Ursula Le Guin once said that while musicians practice by playing another’s music, we expect writers to just bust out with their own work from the start. Kathy Acker used to rewrite great novels as a writing practice, some of which ended up in her published books. You can write and rewrite whatever you want in your practice.
You can use allusions and interpolations yourself as a writing exercise. Take your favorite bar from a rap song or a line from a poem or a book, find the central idea, and flip it. For example, on Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome,” Chuck D raps:
When I get mad, Put it down on a pad, Give you something that you never had
I rewrote that like this:
I lace the white page When I write with rage
It might not be quite as forceful or have as much impact as Chuck’s version, but it’s mine.
Another way to approach this is by recontextualizing a lyric. You can use a bar as a jumping off point or you can introduce a bar with your own, giving the latter new meaning. This is common in hip-hop and a common exercise in improvisations of all sorts.
On the song, “Get Off My Dick and Tell Yo’ Bitch to Come Here,” a less family-friendly Ice Cube raps:
All I got is hard dick and bubblegum Just ran out, my last stick, is where I’m comin’ from
Several other rappers have interpolated this line: Blueface on “Disrespectful,” Fabolous on “Bubble Gum,” Big L on “7-Minute Freestyle,” Jay-Z on “Show You How,” Bun B “Pourin’ Up,” and Gucci Mane on “Killin’ It,” among others.
In a recent exercise, I re-introduced the second line with this one:
All this dynamite is getting quite cumbersome Just ran out, my last stick, is where I’m comin’ from
Changing the first line gives the second line a whole new context and meaning by changing what the word “stick” is referring to.
This is a good writing exercise for loosening up, for expanding your practice, or just for getting better at paraphrasing. It can also be applied as an advanced technique for hiding messages or references in your work. As in the Eminem example above, if you don’t know the Rakim lyric, you’re not in on the reference. You get left out. An allusion like this is a great place to nod to your network and to hide information from your enemies. Try it!
If you happen to try the exercise above, feel free to share. I’d love to see what you come up with.
[This exercise originally appeared on Lit Reactor.]
“A few decades ago, it became permissible for families to emigrate from the unincorporated areas of ‘reality’ into the science fictional zones,” reads the manual in Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Vintage, 2010), and lately it’s been feeling more and more like we’re slipping into an adjacently possible dimension. Consider the following scenarios:
A man is imprisoned, accused of encouraging and enabling the digital distribution of audio and video amusements. All of his property is confiscated, his assets are frozen, and before his arrest, his house is raided by armed and jack-booted storm-troopers.
A man ends his own life, having been accused of distributing information he garnered from a source that didn’t care if he freely spread their knowledge.
A man is disgraced after winning a contest that tests athletic prowess through extreme endurance on bicycles. The competitors having been fed on-the-go with concoctions made to enhance their stamina. The winner of such a race also endures side-effects that include extreme self-absorption and hubris.
The latter of these is the premise of The Supermale, a novel set in the its own future (see Raunig, 2010), by author, poet, playwright, and cyclist, Alfred Jarry. Long one of my favorite eccentrics, his passion for cycling and pistols was matched only by his appetite for alcohol and absurdity.
Alfred Jarry portrait by Picasso
Unlike his contemporaries (e.g., Proust, Gide, Valéry, et al.), Jarry’s work hasn’t lent itself to widespread study in the same way that it has widespread influence. Among his admirers were Andre Breton, Antonin Artaud, Marcel Duchamp, and Pablo Picasso. He is most widely recognized for writing the absurdist Ubu plays and inventing the science of Pataphysics.
Simply put, Pataphysics is to metaphysics what metaphysics is to physics: It’s one level up. “Pataphysics… is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics,” writes Jarry (1965), “whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics” (p. 21). He adds, “Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments” (p. 22). In what is perhaps the best example of the science applied, Dr. Faustroll, the pataphysician, even put together plans for the construction of a time machine (see Jarry, 2001, pp. 211-218). If there’s ever a scientific discovery that proves pataphysical, it’s sure to be time travel.
“Inhabitants of Universe 31 are separated into two categories, protagonist and back office.” — from Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Alastair Brotchie’s Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life (MIT Press, 2011) goes a long way to explore his life and lingering influence. Its alternating chapters — odd-numbered chapters covering anecdotal tales of Jarry’s twisted times, even-numbered ones documenting his biography proper — play on one of Jarry’s favorite tropes: the mirror or double. His life was his work was his life, and as Regent of the Collége de ‘Pataphysique, Brotchie has studied both very closely. And it shows: This bulky biography is the most complete chronicle of Jarry’s life available.
This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. — Lewis Mumford
Bringing together Jarry’s life-long loves of alcohol, bicycles, and sex, The Supermale is an allegory of extremes. As Bettina Knapp (1989) writes, “The bicycle, the Perpetual Motion Food Machine, the dynameter, and the Machine to Inspire Love suggest a takeover by the very instruments designed to alleviate pain and suffering and facilitate daily living,” At the center of this collusion of bodies and machines lies the 10,000-mile race, an analogue to the real race of similar lengthy proportions — and to the extremes winners will go to win. Knapp adds, “Even more dangerous, perhaps, is the fact that machines increasingly cut people off from nature in general and from their own nature, in particular” (p. 28). If this story and its lessons haven’t damn near come true recently, then I’m reading it all wrong.
References: Brotchie, Alastair. (2011). Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Jarry, Alfred. (1965). Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change.
Jarry, Alfred. (2001). Adventures in ‘Pataphysics: Collected Works I. London: Atlas Press.
Knapp, Bettina L. (1989). Machine, Metaphor, and the Writer: A Jungian View. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Mumford, Lewis. (1934). Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Raunig, Gerald. (2010). A Thousand Machines: A Concise Philosophy of the Machine as Social Movement. New York: Semiotext(e).
Yu, Charles. (2010). How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. New York: Vintage.
Charles Mudede is a senior editor at The Stranger, “Seattle’s Only Newspaper,” and he’s recently started doing a video series called Charles Mudede’s Book Nook. He writes,
Because a big part of the only life I’ll ever have is devoted to books, the best thing I can offer during this holiday season is a recommendation of five books you can read by a fake fire (like the one in my cottage) or gift those who happen to be close to your life or who you want to be close to your life.
The process of writing is one of those things that eludes even those of us who do it every day. Sometimes sentences just pour out of you. Sometimes you go weeks with nothing. When I’m in the flow of the sentences, I’m always trying to figure out how to make them the best I can. When I’m in the nothing of the nothingness, I’m always trying to figure out ways to recalibrate my approach. Maybe if I do that part first instead… Maybe if I sneak up on it this way… Maybe if I have a snack…
Eating and writing sometimes feel inextricably linked. They are both done sitting at a table after all. There are also so many things done in the service of eating that aren’t eating and in the service of writing that aren’t writing. I’m thinking of recipes and cooking done before eating and the cleaning up done after; the planning and research done before writing and the editing done after.
I’m writing about writing here of course, but these ideas are applicable to other creative pursuits as well. So, with lunchtime in mind, here are three food-based tips for research and editing.
Making Waffles Out of Spaghetti
After the success of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (HarperCollins, 1992), the self-help relationship subgenre shelf saw many more man-woman binary metaphors. In one such book, Men Are Like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti (Harvest House, 2001), Bill and Pam Farrel argue that men compartmentalize all the things in their lives like the griddled grid-shaped breakfast food, that they think in boxes. And women think of everything as intertwined like so many wet noodles. It’s a ridiculous analogy, but one that I thought about for years.
One day in the library on campus, while tracking down yet another citation for whatever paper I was working on, it hit me: Writing is Like Waffles, Research is Like Spaghetti. When we’re putting together the theses, arguments, paragraphs, and sections of an article, a chapter or a book, we’re compartmentalizing the information into an easily digestible, grid-like structure. The research we do in the service of those waffles is like pulling apart noodles. It’s like we’re making waffles out of spaghetti!
It’s only an analogy, but one that has helped me make sense of some of the research process.
No Brown M&Ms
Arena-rock pioneers Van Halen infamously insisted on M&Ms with the brown ones picked out, as shown below on page 40 of their tour contract. Everyone I heard tell the story accused them of being diva rock stars because everyone knows the M&M colors all taste the same.
In his 1997 memoir, Crazy from the Heat (Hyperion), erstwhile frontman David Lee Roth explains the candy-coated demand:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.
It was a colossal production, any mistake pregnant with the potential of not only crippling the show but also destruction of property or injury to person. “So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he continues, “well, line-check the entire production… They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.” It was a test. A brown M&M was an indication that everything might not be up to the requirements of the contract.
If you see a small spelling, grammatical, or factual error in a piece of writing, it makes you wonder if the piece has been edited, copyedited, or even looked over one more time before it reached you. That’s a brown M&M. It casts doubt over the whole thing. As a writer, you want to make sure you remove all of those.
Table Etiquette
Okay, I couldn’t come up with a third food-based piece of advice, but this one is close: Do a table read. One of the most satisfying things about writing scripts is hearing them read aloud by a cast. There’s also nothing more helpful in finding out what’s not working on the page. Awkward dialog, weird phrasings, and unnatural rhythms will all be evident in a table read.
For example, if you write “fill wind” when you mean to write “will find,” you might not see it on the page, and your spell-checker won’t catch it. If you read it out loud, you have a much better chance of catching brown M&Ms like that. You can do this with any kind of writing. Just read it out loud. All kinds of things you won’t catch editing on the screen or page will pop out when read aloud. I can’t recommend this enough.
