language | Literature and Libation

Ask Me Anything: A LitLib Q&A – Answers!

September 11, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I got so many good questions that I can’t focus on anything but answering them.

ro of FarOVale asks: “Do you read blogs written in other languages?”

I would love to read blogs in other languages. The problem is that, outside of some broken French and a few lines of Latin, I don’t speak anything but English. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life studying and trying to master my mother tongue, which didn’t leave me much mental space for the beauty and lilting grace of the myriad other languages out there. I know that I could use something like Google Translate, but then I’d lose all the nuance of the writing, which is just sad.

Melody of Melody and Words asks: “How do you use non-writing activities (such as photography) to jump-start the creative process?”

I think there are two ways, psychologically, to stir your brain into creative motion: sensory deprivation and sensory overload. It’s the difference between seeing the future in a crystal ball or seeing it in the colorful ornate drawings of Tarot cards. My brain likes overload; the more colors and textures and mental speed bumps for me to crawl over, the more stuff I have to hold onto and build from. I think that’s why I love Lego so much.

Using something like photography to jump-start the process is easy, because you’re forced to spend more time with whatever you’re taking pictures of, and as a result, building a mental relationship with that object. I’ll often get an idea for a beer short story just based on how I position a beer for a picture, or how the colors contrast between glass and background. I also then have this vivid reminder of all those ideas in the form of a picture, which almost always helps fuel the creative process down the line.

Josh of ShortOnBeer asks: “When was the first time you were proud of your writing?”

No one has ever asked me this before. I’m not sure I can find the GPS coordinates in my brain for that exact moment where I was first proud of my grammatical creations, but it was probably sometime around December 2011, when I got accepted into the Masters of Writing program at Johns Hopkins. I suddenly felt like real writers thought my writing was good enough to be compared to theirs. I’m proud of my words whenever someone says they’ve helped them or taught them something. That, to me, is the whole reason I type, to understand or help others understand.

Melanie of melanielynngriffin asks: “What is the best argument, in your mind, for each side of the question about bombing Syria in response to chemical weapons use?”

As a general rule, I remain as politically neutral as possible. I don’t like the conflict that comes with choosing a side, especially when neither side really reflects how I feel. That said, I see no best arguments for either side of this situation. It sucks, and will continue to suck, for pretty much everyone involved. While I appreciate the US trying to help out those countries who seem to desperately need it, I think the “chemical weapon” line is arbitrary, and if we really meant to help in a humanitarian way, we’d have intervened a long time ago when people were being beaten and shot to death. I’d be more inclined to support helping out the oppressed citizenry of another nation if our own country was a bliss-filled utopia, but obviously, we’ve got some serious problems of our own without sailing ships into the Mediterranean. If my vote mattered (which I’m more and more convinced it doesn’t) I’d suggest we stay home and put the money and energy towards fixing our own issues.

I’m going to lump two similar questions together here. Ryan of mouldsbeerblog, and Ginny ask: “Who is your favorite author/writer? -and- What is your favourite book/author’s work that you’ve ever read?”

This is like asking me to pick my favorite beer. There are so many options available, so many styles, so many writers who’ve written heartrendingly gorgeous prose, that it becomes nearly impossible to narrow it down to just one. So instead of picking a favorite, I’ll list some of those authors that have influenced me the most (in no particular order): Issac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Alan Poe, John Donne, Alexander Pope, Alice McDermott, Michael Pollan, Jennifer Egan, and, as much as I hate to admit it, Shakespeare. As far as the single piece that influenced me the most, I’ll have to go with “Walden” by Thoreau.

TheMadHopper of The Mad Hopper’s Blog asks: “When writing about beer and beer culture do you have a certain format you follow?”

Not really, but I may be a terrible person to ask, since I rarely follow any kind of format for anything. I think the most important thing, in general, is to do in-depth research on your topic (beyond a few Google searches, I mean) and make sure you’re respectful of the writers and people who came before you. Know what you’re talking about, and give credit where credit is due. Also, have fun. You’re writing about beer after all. As Scott at beerbecue said recently, “One can only read so many serious dissertations on beer.”

Penney of My Journey to Live an Authentic Life asks (slightly paraphrased): “How do you write about someone who has created conflict and drama (like a divorce or a bad breakup), without sounding whiny, when the experience made you become a better person?”

There is a fine line between bitter resentment and teary-eyed sentimentality, and it’s the writer’s job to walk it, carefully. I think it’s hard to approach something so raw and close to you directly. I almost always try to find some other vehicle to get into the story; something tangentially related or coming from a different perspective. By not having to just flat out tell the story and details of what happened, you can get the best ideas and insights into the piece without any of the personal baggage. The essay I wrote about my father’s passing is a good example of this “redirection.” I know I couldn’t have written that just about him and his death, so I used the star and his energy as the vehicle for something that would otherwise be far too emotional for me.

One half of Tammy and CJ of The Great Jollyhoombah asks: “What are the greatest craft beer US cities you’ve been to or know of?”

I’ve really just started my Homeric journey into the travel side of craft beer, but I’ve certainly been to enough cities to answer this question. I’m going to go with Boulder, Colorado (or really, just anywhere in Colorado) because of Boulevard Brewing, Great Divide Brewing, New Belgium, Oskar Blues, and Avery Brewing. I mean, that’s an incredible line up, and you can’t go wrong when choosing from any of these guys. Colorado is a veritable Mecca for craft beer people, so make sure you all face towards the Rockies when lifting your next pint.

Phillip McCollum asks: “If fear had a flavor, what would it taste like?”

Have you ever put a 9-volt battery on your tongue? Ever tasted that mix of metal and acid and energy that can only come from completing a circuit, using your body as the ground? Fear tastes like that.

theclocktowersunset asks: “If you ruled the world, what would you change and how would that playout?”

I would refuse to let anyone take life too seriously. It would be punishable by tickles. I’d like to think that a bit of enforced, widespread levity would make the planet much easier to live with, and on.

JHMae of byjhmae asks: “Who is your favorite Game of Thrones character?”

Beric Dondarrion closely followed by Sandor Clegane.

Thanks to everyone who asked a question. I hope I answered them to your satisfaction 🙂

Maybe ask me why I used a picture of a “No Surfing” flag in this post?

A Bubble of Collective Beer Nouns

July 12, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

If verbs are the workhorses of the grammatical world, nouns are the plows being pulled through all that fertile syntactic dirt. Nouns give us solid descriptors of people and places beyond “she” and “there”, rocky outcroppings for our minds to grab a hold of and say “hey, I know that thing!”

Even cooler than singular nouns are collective nouns; containers that hold the place for a bunch of smaller nouns, like a corny keg cradling several dozen beers. Some are so simple you don’t even recognize them: a group of people. Some are so exotic you can’t help but wonder what sinister allusion inspired its original use: a murder of crows.

There are thousands of other collective nouns bouncing around our eccentric language, most of them related to animals: a pride of lions, a school of fish, a parliament of owls, an ostentation of peacocks. The animal naming thing comes from the ~500 year old game of venery (related to “the hunt”, not human sexuality, perv), in which hunters would challenge each other to come up with the best word to capture the spirit of the animals they were hunting. T.H. White had Merlin playing the game with Arthur as part of his lessons in The Once and Future King. James Lipton’s 1968 book, An Exaltation of Larks, expanded upon the game and moved it beyond animals, and the version re-released in 1993 included lovely twists of phrase like a shrivel of critics and a blur of Impressionists.

I’d like to take it a step further. The craft beer culture is full of so many wonderful nouns – hops and malts and yeasts and kettles – but lacks the poetic collective nouns to do a lot of these beautiful people, places, and things linguistic justice. Sure, people reference our beloved beer accouterments with general collectives, but a bunch of hops is hardly elegant enough to properly represent our favorite Cannabaceae.

Here are my first 10 official additions to the world of collective beer nouns. The fun of the game is to debate and offer alternative collective nouns that better describe the singular noun, so all suggestions, rejections, and additions very welcome!

1. A tumble of pint glasses
2. An aroma of hops
3. A backbone of malts
4. A shine of brew kettles
5. A cacophony of brew pubs
6. A flocculation of yeasts
7. An infection of off-flavors
8. An oasis of kegs
9. A steep of mashtuns
10. A crown of bottle caps

If you had to add one, what would it be?

A helix of hop vines.

The Right Pair of Shoes

December 27, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

I used to live by a simple rule: never own or wear a pair of shoes that you can’t play soccer in.

Sadly, I abandoned that rule right about the time I got my first real job. While my Clarks® and Dr. Martins® are plenty comfortable, they don’t provide much fine motor control. The price we pay for fashion is steep, my friends.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that,due to circumstances beyond my control, I’m no longer much of a soccer player. I don’t have time to keep match fit, don’t live in an area that provides many (safe) opportunities to play, and I’m the walking definition of a “fall risk.” I’m ok with it, really, as I’ve come to enjoy various other activities to the same extent I used to enjoy soccer.

Despite this, I still try to keep my shoes ready, because…you never know.

Like sometimes, you’re on vacation in Arizona, about to go to the Cheesecake Factory, when your fiancée’s friend’s husband texts her to see if you’d like to play some pick-up soccer after dinner.

Happens all the time.

Being a reckless maniac, you agree, despite a lack of gear/clothes/functioning body parts. You also eat way too many fish tacos before hand, full well knowing it’s a terrible idea to sprint around with a belly full of tortillas when you haven’t played a real match in a year and a half.

This time I had some running shoes. I was as prepared as I needed to be, fish tacos be damned.

At 10:00 PM, I walked out onto a “field” that had some mobile spot lights setup on either side. The goals were of the shoddy, duct-taped-together PVC variety. We had an uneven number of players of varying skill levels. The air was a surprisingly cold 37 degrees (I had always thought the Phoenix area never dropped below 85 degrees prior to this). But all of this mattered little as soon as I got the ball at my feet.

I only knew one other player, the aforementioned fiancée’s friend’s husband, and I’d only met him two or three times. As is typical of friendly pick-up soccer, there was playful banter between the opposing teams. Jocks being jocular, and all that. As we were warming up, I didn’t pay much attention to the conversation, as I was transfixed with the ball.

Then someone said something I couldn’t ignore:

“Chicken Marsala? Yea, I love that stuff. But you’ve gotta make sure the chef cooks out all of the wine, so you don’t accidentally swallow any alcohol.”

Odd.

I laughed until I remembered where I was, and who I was with. Someone asked me if I was “LDS”, so I awkwardly laughed and said no. They were concerned with ingesting a tiny bit of cooking wine in a chicken dish and I had just finished making 5 gallons of homemade mead. Suddenly I felt very, very out of place. I was the outsider on this pitch; a foreigner in the capital of a country where he doesn’t speak the native language.

I started listening to more of the conversation. The more I heard, the more awkward I felt. I had stumbled into a long-standing Thursday night tradition whose participants were so culturally different from me I was worried they’d find out my secret and banish me from their sacred land. I stayed silent, just passing the ball around, trying to avoid being questioned too thoroughly.

I spent the first 20 minutes in the back field, passing the ball off quickly, staying away from everyone else, irrationally fearing the worst.

But then a strange thing happened: the game got underway and the verbal conversation stopped.

The language shifted to one I knew, so I began to “talk.” I spoke with chips across the field, through-balls, and curving shots on net. I questioned with give-and-gos, Cruyffs, and rushed attempts to get back and defend. It turned out we had a shared language after all, and I spoke it fluently. The other plays spoke back: cheering great plays, lamenting missed shots.

It was only a matter of minutes before I’d forgotten any insecurity, and was just playing soccer with some friends. I didn’t really know them, but we had a connection, and that was all that was necessary. I respected them, they respected me, and at the end of the night, we were little more than a mob of exhausted 20-somethings.

It had been a long time since I’d played, and all the emotions and excitement were pretty overwhelming. I was thankful that these strangers had let me play with them, despite our obvious cultural or spiritual differences. I had revived a part of me I thought long dead.

I went to sleep that night sore but contented. I slept soundly. My dreams were pleasant.

All because I had the right pair of shoes.

Cruyff? Cruyff!