Kurt Vonnegut explains drama
2009-09-01
I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything.
He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life.
He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let's look at a few examples.”
He drew an empty grid on the board, like this:
Time moves from left to right. Happiness from bottom to top.
He said, “Let's look at a very common story arc. The story of Cinderella.”
It starts with her awful life with evil stepsisters, scrubbing the fireplace. Then she get an invitation to the ball! Things look up. Then the fairy godmother makes her a dress and a coach. Even better! Then she goes to the ball, and dances with the prince! This is great! But then it's midnight. She has to go. Oh no. Sadness. Back to her humdrum life scrubbing the fireplace. But it's not as bad as before, because she's had this encouraging experience. Then, the prince finds her, and the happiness factor is off the chart! Happily ever after.
“People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.”
He wiped the board clean and said, “Now let's look at another popular story arc: the disaster.”
It's an ordinary day in an ordinary town. But something horrible happens! A child falls down a well! The whole town gathers to save her. Old grudges surface, but are belittled in the light of this tragedy. Rifts are bonded as people work together. The child is saved, and all is well. But notice it's a little better than it was before, now that this incident has brought them all closer together.
“People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.”
But the problem is, life is really like this...
Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years.
“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.
We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
This is my favorite thing you have ever posted.
I've always thought I was a character in someone else's book. Life never seems all that real to me.
When writing songs all the greats will confirm. You need a ray of hope in your song, a light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for confirming.
I have always thought this to be true. People seem to be sort of thrilled when disaster strikes, when someone dies, etc., and I've often felt that the cataclysmic event in question somehow made their own lives feel more "real". I also think that the tendency to think one is the star of one's own movie, with all the attendant drama, is both a blessing and a curse of the young in particular: A blessing, because the exaggerated sense of importance can serve to motivate dramatic and good works, and a curse in that it leads to narcissistic thinking.
My fave author always had a knack at explaining everything... R.I.P. KV I wish there were more people like him around... I read slaughterhouse 5 - It helped me write my first song
MY LIFE IS A FAIRYTALE..
So true. Reality shows are unfortunately popular because they validate the misguided presumption that life is drama.
It explains a little bit about the stories we see on the news too. Certain exaggerations at times are non-sense... we still watch it all.
Made sense in a personal way too.
Derek,
Perhaps you've known this for some time now (before the Vonnegut talk)? Only reason I ask is remembering your comment in the car through PDX that you've never been to a baseball game in your life because you never saw the point.
I loved that. Thanks for the smile this morning. Great post.
- Dan
Thanks for posting this, Derek. Very insightful. One of the best posts on this site!
Scary huh?
Insightful and very true. overreacting to happenings in our lives is the common behavior. A big deal is when someone dies. Much of what we endure is trivial and superficial. As the world evolves we are spoiled and have high expectations to find happiness, but happiness can be found from our most basic needs.
I think Shakespeare put it best - all the worlds a stage and we are but merely players
I have always felt I am on stage of life - there are no rehearsals so make it the best performance you can every single day.
Paul Saunders
I've grown to beleive that people are naturally dramatic
People are people, and they are everywhere!! ;D
Wild, like the night...so much of what we do is unconscious, it's dangerous.
I think that we have all missed the mark when it comes to the mudane tasks in our lives. Its the common everyday things we do that prepare us for greatness. Some of us spend our lives complaining about scrubbing the floors, buts it's understanding that being a master of the common is what gets us ready to be the king or the princess. King David learned to herd sheep before he killed Goliath and spent a lifetime on the run hiding from King Saul before he ever became King of Isreal. The person who understands the importance of the common task is the person that can someday become great!!! Good one Derek!!
Great article..keep them coming Derek.
As a singer and performance coach I use this information all the time. Each song is like a little drama of its own. We never sing about "Oh, I just had an ordinary day, met an ordinary guy, and kind of like him." Heck no! It's "this is the GREATEST day of my life and I just met THE ONE!" Or, "I'll never love anyone but you. My life is OVER if you go." The great singers are great story tellers. Drama all day long. Thanks for this Derek. Very inspiring.
awesome
Great post. I do think people get too caught up in the disappointment of not having a fairy-tale life. But that doesn't mean you can't have one, or can't turn the every day into something enjoyable. But you have to do it yourself, you can't wait to be rescued. Enjoy the journey more and stop worrying so much if the prince doesn't come to rescue you.
Mr. Vonnegut makes a good case for just getting over your self. Get over your self and drama disappears. But like he said, we love our drama. dale
It might have been true once upon a time in my life. When I was younger, I longed for the excitement that my future life would bring me. But now that I am older and hopefully wiser I go to great pains to take much of the excitement out of my live and strive for that boring graph above which depicts normality. What one learns, the longer one lives, is that this so-called “normality” only occurs for brief, peaceful periods of your life while reality waits patiently in the wings to kick you in the nads.
Are you posting daily now? I hope so because I've started to really look forward to your emails.
Hi Derek,
I decieded to take the "RED" pill and get out of the Matrix for good... I take joy in minimizing the Drama in my life... I can see so much clearer and can do much more with the extra time and energy....
Great article,
Dennis
This one has blown me away. It's so relevant and right on time in terms of what is happening in my life at the moment. Thanks Derek!
Heh, maybe your life is like that. Where would you graft meeting president Reagan and Neil Young, and where would you plot getting wrongly thown in Jail then being the victim of Identity Theft?
My drama quadrant looks more like the roller coaster at 6 flaggs. However I must admit that the older you get, the more the line flattens out. I guess you learn to ignore drama and not get to excited over the cool stuff, and not to depressed over the bad.
Sounds quite Orwellian doesn't it?
I can only quote Abraham Lincoln:
"People are about as happy as they want be"
Hey, I just found one glass slipper!
yes yes yes yes yes!!
i think also if we put ourselves in situations that challenge us we don't need to "create" drama....
whereas if we stay in safe, steady environments, we will create drama to fill our need for growth/change.
awesome awesome post... i would love to be in a room with kurt vonnegut + derek sivers at the same time, wow.
We are all addicted to our own brain chemistry. we seek another dopamene hit the same way as if we were on Coke or something.it could be a life cycle fairy tale.It could be a decision about the next thing you are going to do. In this case Derek you are hooked on the email responces.We don't just like to use our intellegent mind we mostly like to use our emotional mind to get La La hits frome our brain chemistry. Thats why very intellegent people can make very dumb decesions.. Thanks Russ
MY LIFE IS A DISASTER STORY!
Well articulated point, Derek.
This helps explain the imposed drama wrought as a tool of power-retention by the elite via fabricated heartless wars upon a drama-starved populous. Almost as if the pain is needed as a reminder to many that they are still alive.
I'd rather go with helping to inflict euphoria by many other possible means!
This is awesome. Kurt Vonnegut has always been one of my favorite writers. I love these emails I get from Derek, as a musician, writer, and human being I send you a big thanx
life is positive if you just consider every minute of it as a bonus. I work with a musician who is like that , a pure sunshine everywhere he plays or talks or meet people. IN his teen periods some of his best friends got shot (civil war) . He considers every minute of life ,since then, as a bonus so wants to live it positively; his music and shows are reflecting it .
One of the guys in our group frequently says: "people are starving for this stuff," meaning (imho) well-written songs that represent the drama of life in the fashion Kurt describes. Well put Kurt - and Derek.
Thanks.
Michael
Just became aware of you and your site yesterday.
I am blown away. More, Please.
But is there hope for my music if I don't need and don't have any drama?
rada
Thanks so much for Vonnegut's story. It's a great reality check!
Derek, great post. Fairy tales are not real life, but childhood stories, and religion both tell us that what we read or hear is as true as reality. We spend the rest of our lives trying to compromise which is life and which is fantasy. It is life's ultimate quest and creative impetus.
there's a great book about the universal story, it's called The Seven Basic Plots, - Why we tell stories- by Christopher Booker.
don't believe in Derek Sievers
don't believe in Kurt Vonnegut
laught and be true
Yes, I love this story (has a lot of drama in it, lol) Seriously, great one!
This is an interesting way of looking at the "isn't there more than this?" feeling. But--do you really think it can be attributed to the exposure to big stories like Vonnegut thinks? The way I understand this post, Vonnegut seems to be saying the feeling is conditioned. But maybe some of this feeling is just a natural drive?
right on again Derek...don't know who said it "people are only as happy as they make up their minds to be." no drama, just a little something in their life that keeps them afloat...ok, a ray of hope;-)
I prefer my life to be up and down and backwards and forwards rather than just a steady flat line of nothing. Not that I enjoy the lows
- BUT the lows sure do make you appreciate and milk the highs for all they are worth.
I love Vonnegut. He has a way of distilling things down to their essences.
I've given up on drama and am enjoying the miracle.
On the other hand, we also live in a society which is increasingly trying to keep everyone on that thin black line in the center--if not by incentive, by force.
(I heard Vonnegut speak in the '80s in Rochester, NY & was maybe 12 feet at most from the podium.)
The late Stephen Jay Gould, who developed the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" in evolutionary theory, might have disagreed with Vonnegut--if no reason other than Gould was far less cynical, and seemed to constantly find wonder in what we might otherwise consider "ordinary things" (even within the deflation of historical stories which become legend which then become social mythology). He might counter that much of our lives may indeed be as Vonnegut describes, but that across the span of life there are exalted moments of height and depth; and that most lives are "punctuated" by these, not a constant roller-coaster ride. But these bright spots define and bring into focus the span of the whole.
Joseph Campbell may also offer a better take on why we look beyond the mundane in human stories to "larger than life." Not because it's a human aberration due to boredom, but because it is core to our essential humanity.
Aldous Huxley also warned us about the "social engineering" prohibition of "tragedy"--to make our lives consistently gray and event-less from birth to death. But that is not our nature.
William Blake said it this way:
"It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine."
Yes, the events of most of our days are rather ordinary; we should look for "the remarkable" in those where we would otherwise overlook it. But life also can has mountains and valleys, sometimes very high and sometimes very deep. The human challenge comes in those rarer occasions in life where (Blake again) "great things happen when men and mountains meet."
You gotta love Kurt!
Art imitates life. Stories are merely art. There is no drama, just selfish people getting angry that others won't let them live their selfish lives. In other words, let's all stop pretending we're licensed shrinks using information (that's supposed to be liberating) to oppress others.
I also heard Vonnegut speak and had forgotten the part about injecting drama into our own lives...thank you for the reminder. At the same lecture he also spoke of a particular book that no one liked which started below the normal line and went downhill to the end from there...it was actually comical.
in a way, it resembles a waveform, doesn't it?
Oh come on!
A big meal has been made of the first two graphs in order to make the "real life" graph seem quite uneventful.
Reality:
People OFTEN have huge ups and downs in their lives that would make these Cinderella type stories seem like a walk in the park.
Except sometimes there is Uncommon Disaster, like your twenty-seven year old son being killed in a motorcycle accident, and then that Real Life graph has a line that dips to Despair and remains there for a very long time, if not forever. And in that situation, you never, ever believe in "happily ever after" again.
This comes at a very useful time in my life. Thank you as always.
Charlie.
Derek, Thank you, you've really struck a note with me....I've been to the bottom (drug addiction) and have pulled myself and my life back from the edge. While hitting rock bottom was the worst part of my life in a strange way it was also the best...It has allowed me to become (or try to) a better person and a better writer and performer. Until you've lost everything you don't know how lucky you really are!! I joke about "being so happy I don't know how to act" but really I do, I'm grateful for everything I have and everything I've done and now that I'm used to climbing..rising above..I'm gonna just keep on going because I know now that life has no limits no boundaries (other than the ones we create for our selves) success is more a function of breaking down the walls we create not the ones others make...
Try to grow some empathy. Tragedy does befall some. I lost three children and my life has actually been a lot like the disaster story. I'd give anything to have your stupid boring life.
werk. that's all I have to say.
M
I Love this post!
That was one of the most profound slaps-to-the-head I have ever received.
drugs, booze, food, drama. The four key addictions. If you are not addicted to one of them, you are living a very peaceful life.
Yes, people need drama and will manufacture it from relatively plain events...'cause we all like a little excitement now and then. I think Vonnegut's point is to find satisfaction in your own life, and not be downhearted that huge and thrilling events aren't happening to you all the time. So of course births, deaths, marriages, breakups always bring the drama. It's expected and it's emotional. (btw- I really like those charts for my teens, mostly as examples that you can create exciting moments in your life through working towards achieving them)
A good thought provoking article, DS.
this is insightful and amusing. been a Vonnegut fan since i first read Cat's Cradle in the mid-70s.
it all comes down to how we INTERPRET the information we experience. without interpretation there can be no meaning, but interpretation is, by its very nature, of our own creation...
It's funny when you simplify it -- But , how true. People want their lives to be more. Like when you meet a hero in real life and he turns out to be an incredible a-hole. His persona was larger than life though. In the end we are just human beings no more no less. Just because you can throw a baseball harder than most or you were born a 6 ft 8" giant made for the "grid iron" or 7 footer for basketball -- doesn't make you better than anyone else. Like the great John Lennon said in a song " you don't take nothin with you but your soul - so think!" I like to talk to people I have never met, before and after shows -- for hours. They'll say -- "wow you sing so good -they are fascinated. I tell them "God gave me a gift it's no big deal." Then I'll say "but what do you do?" People are fun to watch in general. They will eventually find ways to entertain themselves. No - just because you sing or play a mean guitar - it doesn't make anyone better or hipper. That is the illusion that's been created. We are all sewn together by some common thread I believe. Someday we'll know why.... we live till then. Like the book that's been written and stress's " Don't sweat the small things."
So true. If I would truly realize this I might be okay with the life a have, instead of always wanting more, looking for a thrill, not trusting the 'normal' stuff.
Dramatic stories condition us to expect drama in our own lives? Fun idea, but I think that's putting the cart before the horse.
Back in the ancestral environment, day-to-day survival could be pretty dramatic. "Lion ... coming right for us! Run!" "We're running out of animals to hunt and berries to gather. Oh noooo!" "Hey, there's plenty of food in this new place. Yaaaay!"
Now survival pretty much consists of going to work and shopping at the supermarket. Between the legitimate dramatic events -- births, deaths, major life transitions -- the landscape is fairly flat.
Maybe our psyche manufactures drama out of insignificant events the way immune systems in a too-sterile environment develop allergic reactions.
Derek, this is one of your best. Nice to see you on track. Thanks for helping us move the train along.
Steve
Well, these things do happen to people in countries like Cambodia, Burma, Iraq etc., etc...
I've seen this in one of his later books, an anthology or collection of some sort I think. Good old Kurt, I think Bluebeard is my fave book of his. I always felt he was telling the same story over and over, not that I minded because it was a good story. I guess if we'd seen what he and others had during WW2 maybe we'd feel the same about our little dramas 'in the grand scheme of things'.
I've had this discussion before with various friends of mine; film fans, readers and musos, about the idea of storytelling (in whatever form) as an escape and a couple of people above (Maye Cavallaro & Dale LeRoy Perry) have touched on the basic points already. One thing that always comes up is what are we escaping from to enjoy these stories so much? Is it that 'reality' or 'normality' is just disappointing? How have our expectations got so high that being in the here and now is just not enough for some people? We can never get a definitive answer of course.
Ah me, so it goes.......as the great man said ;)
people have drama because, who would they be without it???
maybe vonnegut experienced life as a flat line... but i just haven't found that to be true in my own experience.
Beyond the ups and downs of relationships, $$, etc. exists a subtle inner joy which is always present and which can be felt whenever one makes the time/ space to experience it.
& I agree with commentator #48:
"It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine."
That's a great graph. The hero's journey graph by Joseph Campbell is interesting, too. Good templates for story writing.
But for your life? Some people want to live faerie tales; some don't. Some people HAVE actual drama; some people MAKE drama.
With all due respect to Kurt (who is a wonderful writer), this is a swing and a miss of an idea.
What we want out of life are tangible sign posts along the way of our life's journey, not drama. We want moments of sublime importance to usher us into our next life phase. Drama is a poor man's substitute that doesn't quite fit the bill.
Plus - I think many of us have had too much drama in our lives and that doesn't make our lives any more like a fairy tale. It certainly doesn't fill any void either.
What we are genetically (physiogenically that is) predisposed to needing are the "magical moments of threshold crossing". Or, to use a more universal term, rites of passage.
The drama is a substitute for the fact that the predominant religion of the 20th Century and beyond (that would be Science), has stripped us of those all-important rites of passage that our psyches have relied upon for hundreds of thousands of generations, leaving us adrift is a sea of primordial subconsciousness desperately looking for signposts.
A great read is "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," by Joseph Campbell. Joe builds upon the work of Carl Jung and expands it to a point of relevance within not just the the macrocosmos of total human existence but to the microcosmos of a single life.
First things first, Mr. Vonnegut, and his ilk that seem to be disappearing more quickly than the polar ice caps, will be sorely missed and without replacement in our ADD society. The fast track to that "Cinderella" story now is to offer up your soul to the gods of Reality TV, where you can have all of the tragedy and drama you can handle, and if you survive the myriad of humiliations the "writers" have cooked up for you and your fellow specimens under the microscope of the inquiring American mind, you too can one day hope to attend parties with Kato Kaelin, the newest mother of two sets of conjoined octuplets, and Fabio. With any luck, Ashlee Simpson will be performing!
I'm awaiting arrival of the "My Dinner with Andre Action Figures."
You wanna see my arc, maybe thats why I don't need to follow football or start fights down at the pub. All peaceful here in the valley for the time being.
Great post Derek
This arc idea could be a very interesting way to access music pieces. Being a rank amateur myself, I'm not sure which parameters one would use. In motown you could look at things like #voices. There's the solo and the backup. Over the course of the song this changes. I bet there's only a couple of patterns for this in the standard motown hits. Checking out Lead Zeppelin one could probably look at orchestration. Even punk rock will have patterns that permeate the various songs. Trick is identifying which parameters make sense to chart.
Would be interested to see what a real song writer/musician can do with this type of tool
I clicked my heels together three times to get this advice - thanks!!!
Speaking of Drama, a dramatist called Jean Genet wrote:
"Be careful when you are jumping around that you don't jump into reality"
People apparently have a need for misery entertainment and joy.
As every newspaper knows across the world, misery coupled with joy sells.
Some people actually live the Cinderella life. Dramatic ups and downs.
Bloody hurts too when you fall, but great when you get back up again and win.
Best to try to keep winning and avoid the falls, lol
And we all lived happly ever after!!
My line is pretty flat. If an issue comes along, I am the type that just puts my head down and works through it. The older I get I see less drama. Except for the patrons that come to my club. Everyday is something new for them. Maybe they have soo much that the little in my life seems a bit boreing.
I can't peak for anyone else but my life so far HAS been like a drama-filled roller coaster.
I actually cherish the times I get to spend at or near the emotional median.
I think its true that most people's lives are lived out this way and that they seek out entertainment and cause themselves problems to imagine fantasies they cannot live. But in my case I am truly living a fantasy. I moved to a suburb of Buenos Aires three months ago and am the only American for miles, or should I say kilometers.
Hmmm,
Another way to look at it is through opposites. We wouldn't know what happy is if we weren't sad. We wouldn't know peace if we didn't experience drama. We wouldn't know light if there wasn't darkness. We wouldn't know what is good if we didn't experience what is bad. We wouldn't learn if we don't make mistakes.
etc.
'Normal' vs. 'Drama' is defined by whatever your personal reality is, not someone else's.
Some of us live in misery and write songs of ecstasy.
And some of us bake cupcakes. #iccbd
International Cupcake Baking Day - Sept. 5th, 2009.
Just for the sheer silliness and fun of it.
I disagree with Vonnegut - I think he just has something against drama.
Since the beginning of story telling, mankind has been conditioned to believe that life has to be a series of ups and downs and our modern entertainment, religion, government, sports, military, etc. continues to force this upon us as a preoccupation. We need to realize how to accept a utopian existence where our intelligence finds solutions. We should not be wholly obssessed with looking for and creating problems as propaganda dictates. Satanists and Christians and all other religions are all the same with their constant worshipping of good and evil. It is primitive superstition and mass stupidity.
I think this a good analogy, but not convinced of the cause and effect...that exposure to literary story telling induces drama in our lives.
I think biggest contributor to the pursuit of drama is the story telling part of our ego that naturally leads down this path, and that literary stories simply mirror our own natural inner stories.
It is our ability to detach ourselves from our own stories that brings relief from the natural pursuit of drama.
This post made me want to listen to Elizabeth Gilbert again.
Have you noticed that people who come up with these weird and wonderful (and often extremely pretentious) theories, usually have names like some kind of mad scientist?
As any decent Psychiatrist will attest, the last graph titled “real life” is how our peaks and valleys should look. Unfortunately there are many people that suffer lives that mirror the “Cinderella” graph. The pharmaceutical industry has made a fortune off of this. I know, because I was once married to someone that lived the red line that swung wildly.
My creedo: NO DRAMA!
Maybe parts of middle class Western society seem to be in a bit of a flatline during a quiet spell, but look at the wars, famines, massacres; or on a more personal scale, bereavements, repossessions, abuse, job losses. I personally knew four people who were murdered over a ten-year period in one English community (and I knew one of their murderers); all the while I had my album out on CDBaby and life seemed pretty 'normal' - except that it wasn't and rarely is. Not one of Kurt's best for me, brilliant writer though he was.
This is interesting, but frankly, I'm surprised that you'd agree with it whole-heartedly. So much of what we strive for at every stage of our lives is to do what we're passionate about.
I'd bet my 2 year-old thinks a good bowl of ice cream is pure ecstasy. When I was in high school I suppose it was athletics that gave me the biggest highs and lows (mostly highs). Of course, passions change, right? So, maybe I'd get the same high seeing one of our artists kill it on a big stage. Now that I'm a parent, I have a whole new set of things that take me from ecstasy to misery. But TO ME, caring so much about something (and doing what you care about) that I can approach the top of the chart is what life is all about. The challenge, then, becomes whether one can keep enough of a perspective to minimize the misery end of things.
So, I guess I take issue with the premise -- that my and your charts look more like a flat line than a fairy-tale. I think what's more accurate to say might be that someone else charting our lives might think they're closer to flat, but that's because they're using different inputs. There's no accounting for passion, priorities, fears, etc.
You know, we produced a play a few years ago that literally brought tears to every member of the audience (A Raisin in the Sun). Everytime I'd see the show, I'd get goosebumps and often get teary-eyed myself. And, I'd bet if there was a way to measure ecstasy, my vital signs or whatever would not be so different that my reaction to seeing the kid pulled out of the well. BOTH bring tears of joy -- it's just that one can share that ecstasy with more people in the well version since there are more shared inputs.
Hi Derek, that is so true. I personally try and live a none drama life but it's not easy, that's for sure.
Check out my video's, no drama, just funny stuff, if you need a good laugh.
www.youtube.com/guitarBeeny
This post is right on!
Sometimes, we add drama in our lives to just to feel more "alive". What a strange thing.
Vonnegut was a huge inspiration to me, and I've heard some of this before. He also said once that he believed stories could be tinkered with 'like Model T Fords'. If the ending doesn't work, unscrew it and put another ending in there. Or move it to the middle and screw the middle bit on the end. Once the magical early spark of creativity has ignited and the fire has swept through, I think, songs are exactly the same. I miss Kurt every day, but I'm so glad I have his work for company any time I need it. Thanks for posting this.
That's why I'm in the,"BLUES BUSINESS"!
When I had an opiate habit, life was a roller coaster. Felt anywhere from decent to great when I had dope, and like I was dying and in hell when I didn't. Now that the habit is 5 years behind me, I'm back to my normal state, which is usually somewhere between depressed and okay. There are some bright spots, but it's hard to hold on to the happy feeling. But now I don't have times in my life when I'm sick and miserable because of withdrawal; hope to never go through that again. Just wish I felt better more of the time.
IS THAT ALL THERE IS?
Peggy Lee
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire"
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
And when I was 12 years old, my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And so I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle.
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "is that all there is to a circus?
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
Then I fell in love, head over heels in love, with the most wonderful boy in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each others eyes.
We were so very much in love.
Then one day he went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't,
and when I didn't I said to myself, "is that all there is to love?"
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
I know what you must be saying to yourselves,
if that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me. I'm in no hurry for that final disappointment,
for I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my lst breath, I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
And so it goes ...
I like these kind of visualizing stories, as a great means to illustrate a certain point of view. Nevertheless I tend to disagree with the conclusion that we are all great pretenders. I think what people are looking for in any kind of personal drama they create for themselves (be it of the ecstasy or the agony kind) is the emotion attached to the situation.
And emotionally many of those "little stories" are absolutely big, significant and real to the person who creates them.
Someone seems to have a judgment on the stories that justify strong emotions...
Peace + LOVE = Happiness
No more Cinderella for me!
That is soo true! Very well put!
so it goes!
No, no, and again no. You've forgotten the theory of relativity: a paper cut hurts until you get a black eye.
Divorce is as painful as returning to a life of servitude after dancing with the Prince. Until your father dies.
It's all relative: people's lives ARE filled with drama. What Kurt was saying relates to the "happy ever after", that people want their lives to be like that, not the fact or fiction of whether people need or want drama.
I wasn't at the talk, so I could be wrong about this. I certainly wouldn't want to start any drama over it...
-l
Oh darn! I suppose next you'll tell us to create music because it is personally satisfying. I want to be rich and famous!!
Totally disagree with the idea of the "blah" life line. Most people have had very interesting lives, running the gamut from misery to extreme happiness, and would tell you so if you took the trouble to ask. The truth is that each person is responsible for creating his or her own wonderful reality, and there is no limit to what you can accomplish, once you decide exactly what it is you want to do!
It's not as common as Kurt made out. The clue is in the people, not the stories: some people have a high need for emotional drama; others, less.
Those with the "drama queen" gene either fill that need deliberately (e.g. career in firefighting, volunteering for suicide hotline) or else subconsciously sabotage their lives to create drama (e.g. spoiling relationships, missing deadlines).
Those without the "drama queen" gene just treat Kurt's stories as escapism; they don't expect (or want) their lives to be like that.
Well-written songs which have been arranged and played with thoughtful dynamic texturing have a plot that can take many shapes...they all go through ups and downs - dramatic ups and downs. In my years as a songwriter, recording artist and performer, I have found that people respond to this in much the same way as they do the drama in fictional stories. The only difference is that their response is more immediate and more intense because of the power of the music, itself. Daily life is sometimes lacking and we all want something to fill us or thrill us...it just feels good.
Everyday is a blessing! Yesterday while walking out of the woods in VT after planting ginseng seeds which I've done for the last 29 years at this spot, a black bear crossed my path about 200 ft in front of me. Scared the piss out of me! I didn't know whether to run like hell in the other direction or stand there. I just stood there and then after five minutes slowly and warily made my way down the trail. I didn't see it again. But it sure woke me up!
Some days are ordinary and some are full of drama.
Life is what you make it derek.
I choose to be happy ... I always have ... I had a loving mom & pop.
and one sister ... I married young. Could not have children but my loving husband made me very
happy. He died 9 years ago. I could be sad and grumpy .. but why? I'm still here and I have so many wonderful friends I never feel
alone. I miss my husband very much but with music to write, a house to run and friends who love me I'm to busy to be unhappy.
The main thing is to give as much or more love than you receive.
Frances V. Long
www.jacilynmusic.com
flong@centurytel.net
Right! The next musical I write's gonna start with a graph!
OH ever so true, I have a girlfriend
whom I like to avoid, as her life
is Peyton Place, if she hasnt got
trouble in her life she will make
trouble, I like to avoid all the
p itfalls and prefer to keep away
and live quietly from Peyton Place,
I call her THE ROCKFORD ROAD, sequel
enough for a good script, no life
isnt CINDERELLA but one can leed a
better balanced life by avoiding
certain people anyone whom makes
me feel doom and gloom I TRY to AVOID
Observed a grasshoper in a pumpkin vine blossom today...drama free, content as could be.
We could be like that.
Dramatic or peaceful, my personal reality is a fiction of my own making. Stories are all I've got.
The more conscious I become of this and the things that go along with this awareness, the more fun and exciting life gets.
This is different than being addicted to drama and personally, I think it's the way to go.
That was in one of his books. He was one of the greatest minds of American literature, a later-day Mark Twain.
I've drawn that graph myself. When I've tried to graph someone's life, they usually insist that there's some off-the-scale ecstasy point, like when they got married or found Jesus or had a baby or something. Just goes to show ya.
Very interesting.
What about other not so ordinary lives, eg Michael Jackson, what would his red line look like?
What do illicit drugs do to the red line???
Is our perception of our own red line necessarily accurate?
If you own a great guitar, and are enjoying a red line above ordinary because of the experience of owning it, but you happen to play a better, more expensive, temporarily unaffordable guitar, although circumstances haven't changed, the red line seems to plummet???
Can our attitudes raise the line in our lives simply through acceptance and making the best of what we have???
I have experienced a lifting of depression by giving up something I love (music) for a period of time.
?relevance?
Remember,Myths and Fairy Tales often speak more truth than literal events. We all live in our own self created dramas, dreams and nightmares. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye with this Cinderella chick. There is a reason generations of people love the story and the others. I think it's because they contain hidden but eternal secrets about ourselves, coded messages.
Important to understand the power of these "stories" for us writers and creators.
Thanks for something to consider.
Barry
Very cool, I love vonnegut. But...ya didn't bring it round, make a lesson out of it, ya could highlight that those little ups and downs are really quite dramatic, and to cherish those things, you could have tied it to music, and how many popular country songs tell stories about those little ups and downs and how great they really are, and how they really are better than fantasy....missed oportunity, or did you just want to mess with us?
I try to keep my little posts nice and succinct, for easy reading. One point per post. I liked how his point stood on its own. -- Derek
Oh one other thing meant to say to address KV's point directly: I think people seek drama because they fear the idea of boredom. Only the talented authors over time have been able to write the lasting stories - which never would have lasted if they were boring or as mediocre as most people choose to live. Action is one of the great keys to life - not drama for dramas sake. The action a hero takes when deeply moved is not just some empty drama. It comes from the heart. We need great stories to remind us how to take action from this powerful place because most of us don't know how to do that - so we long to witness it and we envy it when we become too distanced from ourselves. Transformation is also a big part of the action in good stories. We are inspired when we are reminded that we too can transform ourselves to act according to our truest desires.
So it goes.
Love Kurt Vonnegut & miss him a lot.
One point... considering the amplitude of the graph & that relativity thing. Our daily grind might not offer the alpine highs & lows of a Cinderalla story, but from where we sit, it's all we have. Consequently, if we want, things can look pretty abysmal - or fabulous, from here.
During my salty sailing days, when we were bitching about one thing or another, I used to delight in commenting that "worse things happen at sea."
I agree, this is your best post!Now Im curious to see what the graphics applied to my songs songs can reveal.
exactly...we're all SOLD the notion that our life is a fairy tale..
so since it isnt my best thing to do is MAKE MOUNTAINS out those little bumps on the radar and remember them in my new book coming called "flourishing in obscurity" i tell alot of "littel bump" stories hoping others can relate(i have done some fun and some odd things that were never expected- those are the gems there are people out there waiting for "a certain magical someone" who will make their life happy..happiness comes in short bursts... the gaol is to remember them so youll be able to recognise them instead of looking in the distancein the distance for the BIG one....
I made my way to Union Square years ago to see Vonnegut signing his last novel. Unfortunately by the time we arrived the event was full and we had to make do knowing he was just upstairs and purchasing pre-signed copies of the book.
As a film writer, as well as musician, I've learned the art of believable exaggeration, because people don't want reality but it must be plausible. I think this further confuses the issue and may be why I prefer all-out fantasy and off-the-wall humour that doesn't even attempt believability.
It's this need for drama and faerie tale (good or bad) that has put me in a difficult position as the someone very close has decided to fill their personal void with intense drama rather than comfortable happiness.
Yes. Its called real life. When you sit around and talk to your friends about whats happening in their lives, you would be surprised what other people have gone thru or are going thru. Appreciate the great moments that you get and try to get through the bad ones, but either way,get back up and get back on the road. I am reading Kurts Jailbird. He reminds me of your really cool uncle who spins these great tales and even when he goes off on another tale in the middle of the one he's telling, you don't care because the stories are so good.
Great post, Derek. It's particularly funny to me that those people who claim to "hate drama" are the biggest drama queens walking among us. They thrive on that high and cannot stand a calm peace in their lives. Rush junkies, one and all, but I guess that makes us humans.
I heard God created humans because he loves a good story. I will add He created songwriters to tell the story. ~ Cindy
Yes, it's true. The bumps and dips really are necessary. I like it when they're real. I hate it when they're just someone needing to create a little drama at my expense.
Nice post, thanks for sharing! My "real life" is pretty dull, same old day-to-day stuff. However, my son was just deployed to Iraq, and I've made a point of writing him a short e-mail every day to keep him "in touch" with home. In trying to make the mail fun to read, I've discovered that the day-to-day things that go on around here can be pretty entertaining! He called to thank me for all the "crazy letters" that made him laugh aloud. One man's boredom is another's drama, I guess...
And that is why you should be writing your own story like that,...rather than waiting for someone to write it for you.
Larry
We all feed on drama i guess.
Some even feed on misery,and some on flyin high above lifes realitys.
I think all this DRAMA is what makes the world colorful (if you will),Dee Meese
Reply to No. 24, Dale LeRoy Perry (2009-09-01) #28
Hey, I just found one glass slipper!
Was it half full, or half empty?
America always WAS Traditionally the "Rags-to-Riches Wonderland"..still basically IS if you ask any illegal aliens lately. So, yeah, Vonnegut's Arcs reflect a Stereotype that Hollywood's banked Millions-on.
Yet that Near-Flatline really reflects more the Truth as Life Actually IS. Let's credit another writer, Henry David Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation & go to the grave with the songs still in them."
Flatline Plots CAN be great songs, however: Witness The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby". A bit of a dirge, yet QUITE Entertaining. (Theater-wise, Ionesco's "The Chairs" was too!)
So..my conclusion: "One man's 'Flatline' can certainly be another's Roller-Coaster."
Best Wishes,
Stan
Sounds like your ready for the wisdom of Guy Finley.
my website is still under construction. Not much to see yet. more info coming soon. My thoughts on this piece; you are so right Derek. Everyone has something going on in their life. Sometimes it really is drama, but most times it's just blown out of proportion. I like everyone else had what I thought was drama, and it was to some degree. At least it would make a good movie(in my mind). However, when I started hearing other people's drama I decided my drama wasn't as
dramatic as I thought. If we all had lives like the stories we see we'd all be together in a looney bin. At least half of us. So my philosophy now is just to do what I have to do, keep the majority of my so-called drama to myself, wait til something really fantastic happens, savor that enjoyment for the split seconds you feel it and move on.
Sweet - I like this much better than Freytag's Pyramid. Do you mind if I use this in my 11th grade English class?
word.
Drama feeds creativity.
Calmness gives perspective.
The union of the highs and lows is very introspective.
I read Dan Hahn...no. 9 on this list...about Derek and baseball.
I never saw a baseball game till I was twelve. It was just a local team in the park nearby where we lived. The most wonderful smell floated in the summer night air and my friend and I met Georgio the pop-corn man, fat and jolly behind his cart. His bags of popcorn were drenched in this heavenly mix of oil and butter. His smile and laughter and yes...the smell, were even better than the taste...as good as it was...He became a great friend to us and hundreds of people in the park. The baseball game was just a background to this shining star who I'll never forget. So sometimes we don't know the point in going some place because it turns out life has something entirely different planned for us.
Be it life or cinema or song, those simple little things are what makes it worthwhile. In my opinion, Forest Gump is the best film ever made because it never strayed from the truth.In every crazy adventue he went through, Forest was always just Forest in true simplicity and wisdom.
As the graph indicates, the
the highs,lows and middles in make believe stories....are not the same in "life" ...but when magic moments happen in life...and they do-WOW! So Derek maybe one day you will simply find yourself at a baseball game and not wonder
why !
When the worse things happen to us in life, we always ask over and over again,"Why?". When the best things happen we just fly on the high and don't ask why.Stop asking questions and life becomes flatter than flat...............wich
Derek,
I've been considering the lure of the greek gods and godesses lately. These are, of course, archetypes which is alot like this idea of people seeking dramatic events. They may, unconsciously be seeking something outside themselves - something greater than themselves - something larger than life - in the dramatic experience, - the god or godess within - the divine spark. Carl Jung and others have pointed to this search for the divine in all of us.
Thanks for sharing this interesting idea. Food for thought...
Betsy Grant
I always thought organized sports was a replacement for feudalism.
Drama is the spice of life, it makes you feel alive. This was very interesting... Thanks for sending it.....wonderful reminder of the importance of the story teller and how it influences our lives.
Um...whoops. "People think their lives should be like this." Really Kurt? Or do you really mean "STUPID people think their lives should be like this". Whoops. It's a broad assumption that people want their lives to be a certain way because of the effects of performed or read drama. This point of view says that if we see,hear or read a bunch of drama with big story arcs, we'll all be unhappy. We're drawn to sports because of Cinderella?
I submit that we are drawn to drama because it is LIFE AFFIRMING, not life altering. Sorry Kurt, but your ego just got in the way.
it's true ...poeple are some time the product of their place of their child hood ...my case from a rich family in haiti ..comming to america was our parents dream..now i found it ..relatively..good but can i go talk sing about philosophy...like we do ..in this world a few are lucky to have intelligence to respect ..great minds like the story ...are writing a book soon ..
I'm not sure what all the huffing and puffing is about regarding a few generalized curves,but I've always wanted and still do want excitement and adventure in my life.So I've adopted Teddy Roosevelts philosohpy of living."Far greater it is to win glorious battles even though checked with defeat than to take rank with those poor spirits that live in that grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat."
Island Frank
Thanks for posting this. I was never aware of this talk by Vonnegut, but enjoy his understated and quite humorous explanation of why we think we need "story arc" lives. I wonder if John Cook knows that satirists rarely call other people stupid because that would defeat the purpose of crafty understatement. Besides, as a voracious Vonnegut reader, I'm pretty sure he includes himself in the category of "people who think their lives should be like this." I really miss him.
We all do feel the ache to the hero of our own story - but that drive isn't simply manufactured. The problem with Cinderella's story is not that she encourages us to desire drama - but that her life was both grand and tragic while she was more or less passive. Asking ourselves if there is more to life is the start of an exciting existential journey - accepting the flatline means you never actually live. Accepting the flatline also means you'll never be able to empathise with others whose lives are more tragic or dramatic than yours. To have a grand life on your own terms, you have to be active, assertive - you have to look for it. I don't mean you should manufacture squabbles, I mean you should ask yourself why you are here, what you are worth, and what you should do with your life - because it's over pretty quickly, and if you have a moment to reflect before you die, you'll be pretty upset if it was just a flatline.
I am amazed that with every helpful post you offer, there is at least one guy who comments telling you how you should have done it differently. Isn't it obvious you are doing all of this to help others. It's a free service you provide to help people get more out of their lives; who does that? I know I grow creatively and personally from exposure to your posts, and that is an amazing gift. Thank you sincerely.
I like the critical comments a lot. They help me see a different point of view that I hadn't considered, or help me see where I haven't explained something well enough, so it was misunderstood. -- Derek
One can never go wrong with Vonnegut! Have you read the posthumous book put out by his son?
nice job
i defintely wrote a more insightful post earlier but i forgot my email address and i guess it deleted it :(
now im being dramatic hhahaa
This one is WAY off. Vonnegut misses the point of the stories entirely. Those stories are MYTHOLOGICAL, they are guideposts on our own journey through life. The characters are archetypes; they represent different aspects of our own psyche.
Joseph Campbell's work boiled it down to the Hero's Journey. The hero (central figure) separates from the ordinary world and encounters various characters and circumstances. Midway through the journey he descends into Hell where the hard shell of his ego is broken when he comes to the realization that "...he and his enemy are not of differing species, but one flesh." Anybody who has embarked upon their own personal hero's journey knows this is the most difficult threshold to pass.
America, and much of the industrialized world, has lost its mythology. STAR WARS is just about the only work of popular culture that is seeped in mythology. I strongly suggest to you and your readers Mary Henderson's book STAR WARS: THE MAGIC OF MYTH where she compares the story line of the original trilogy to Campbell's outline of the Hero's Journey. It's an easy read and a good introduction to the subject. Then read Joseph Campbell's HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES.
Vonnegut has made the same mistake as so many others, he has misread poetry as prose. The popular ending in America of "they lived happily ever after" has been severely overblown. There are different myths for different stages in a person's life. Our bastardized popular culture has embraced only that of youth and provided a false idea that once you make some little accomplishment all your challenges are over. For that I refer you the tale of the Indra which Campbell tells so eloquently in THE POWER OF MYTH. Watch that DVD.
The problem is not the stories, it's our misunderstanding of them. Turn off the TV and read a book. We need new myths. Our lives our supposed to be filed with a certain amount, and a certain type of drama. The Darwinists with their explanations of dopamine also fail to see the larger picture. They want to reduce every human experience to simple mechanics and deny people their SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE.
I'm very disappointed that someone who was once a musician and later pioneered so much in the industry would embrace such a mechanistic view. If you ever get through the books I recommended you might also want to dust off a copy of Kahlil Gibran's THE PROPHET.
I've always liked Siddhartha.The Prophet and Moby Dick.I suppose many follow some of the above, but there are many of us who just live, swim with sharks, ride big waves and raise children.
I just finished my 26 chapter novel. It's definitely Cinderella with a major twist...complete with the happy ending!
Also just finished my comedic/autobiographical single. It's definitely 'Shockerella' with a major twist...complete with the happy ending. LOL - Need I say more?
I dunno about that "real life" chart.. I tend to like to ride up high there on the ecstasy side..not all middley and boring... and never ever tragic... reality be damned!
This is exactly right. Thanks for sharing it.
It's just like songs, they mostly have they're own story and people like to find themselves in those stories.
All the worlds a stage...to an audience of one and he can be very critical.
for a new theory of gravity to tantalise your imagination
I get his point in regards to stories versus reality but I think some people actually lead lives with big arcs. There are amazing things out there, you can really experience huge ups.(with a capital H) It is also possible to run into life damaging events easily so I guess most people lead different lives than what I see. If people read a biography of mine they would tell the story a thousand years from now. Har ahrhar harhar harha har ahr har!!!
Ah, now I see why I'm such a drama queen...
VERY interesting perspective, no doubt and I'm sure it applies to many people...as for myself, there's currently more drama in my life than I would really like, but it comes with the territory...earlier in my life, I might've wanted and expected more drama, but that might've changed. The graph of how life "really" is makes a lot of sense probably for many people.
...my two cents anyway...wait a minute a little more drama...my two BILLION pennies anyway 
...
I've often felt that Steven Speilberg made many brilliant movies (which he definitely has)...but one movie I did not like that much was "The Adventures Of Indiana Jones." The reason being was that it seemed like he was CONSTANTLY dodging some dangerous thing best as I can remember...to me it was like listening to an orchestra that is building and building and building to a point, but it never climaxes or resolves (the end of the Sgt. Pepper album...but you never hear the resolving chord at the end...orchestra just keeps spiraling upwards...) If you listen to the news or experience in real life....fires buring and headed towards your house, then there's the biggest earthquake that ever hit California happens, after that there are two comets headed to earth and there's no way to prevent them from hitting earth and destroying the planet. I think I've made my point, and of course hopefully none of these things I mentioned will happen. I get enough drama in my regular life (that can't be avoided)...that I really treasure the calm and non-drama when it happens.
Anyhow, perhaps I'm all wet here, but I guess that's my perspective these days...tho like most people I suppose we all like "pleasant" drama
I totally understand this....too bad my EX-Husband believes in the
'fairy tale' philosophy.
That's why he left and is now an EX husband...
Good one.
Sorry Derek but i will have to DISAGREE with you on this one. As that most peoples lives are closer to Cinderella's chart than that so called Real Life chart.
For example:
most people have seen people die in there lives that they have grown accustomed to.
Some might have lost there jobs.
Others have had an unpleasant childhood/unplanned pregnancy that would cause their life to start out as Cinderella but because of this they are more appreciated to the simpler things in life as they grow up and when even for a short period of time that things go there way like:dream job/ideal partner or something else that makes there life's feel completed there life suddenly becomes a fairy tale. Sounds a lot like Cinderella,doesn't it? OK,Maybe it doesn't end up the happily ever after but thats life!
The other thing is how that person deals with the obstacles that occur in there life and if they see them as being a good thing or a bad thing.Like i know someone who was in an accident and badly injured so as a result he ended up having to live back at home for a short period of time. before the accident he was like high all the time and even he admitted that if he had not practically crippled himself he would now be dead. while another one of my friends thinks that the most insignificant obstacle is a life-threatening ordeal.Thats one chart that i do NOT wanna see.
Keeping one's grin right above that line in between misery and ecstasy is alright by me. I personally don't need to dip below the line to feel even better on the up and I don't care for all the Soap type BS of the dragger downers trying to make their lives interesting by playing games with with mine.
I've known people who manufacture drama in order to get motivated or just relieve boredom.
I think my life is pretty dramatic. Everytime I write a new song or finish a great recording the line spikes at the top! Granted no one else gives a rates ass but I don't care what they think! Plus I don't bottom out all that often...
row row row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily merrily merrily merrily
life is but a dream
sorry kurt
I believe from my own experience and that of others with a similar life philosophy that if one concentrates on creating value and happiness for everyone including oneself, that life will become more dramatic - more ups and downs, somethimes intense but always managagable and the best thing - you've decided to learn how not to suffer so there is an average increase in happiness and inner strength. Most people don't realise what potential they have, so they choose undramatic lives through fear of change. Hence the last graph. My question is, what can we do in every moment to encourage people to lead big lives, where we grow ourselves as a result, fulfill our dreams etc.? The world would be a far better place. The choice is ours.
In show biz (incl. lit), vicarious experience is all
This is a wonderful post. Thanks. I will add this. All of these classic stories are expressions of fundamental archetypes of human conditions of consciousness. Carl Jung formulated these classic stores, such as the hero, the lovers, the conquerors, etc., and postulated that the stories represent the journeys our individualities take on their path to potential fulfillment. Thus, even though most of us don't actually experience the direct drama of the manifestation of the archetype, some part of us is going through a dynamic process of evolution that is truly and clearly equal to even the most majestic and dramatic story plots. Imagine the real story: An eternal, self-evolving being is manifested into corporeal reality, remembering almost nothing of past or future lives, experiences material reality according to a sensory apparatus that primarily allows credibility to 3, maybe 4 dimensions of a much larger contimuum into which he is incarnated. Over and over, through countless lifetimes of such incarnation he passes, gathering Karma, dispelling Karma, making profound personal discoveries regarding love, hate, greed, anger, passon, etc. And during most of these incarnation, up until the last few before enlightenment, he is mostly unaware of the larger scenario of his own condition. Looked at from this perspective, everyday events take on a larger dramatic value. But this in no way distracts from K.V.'s insightful and thought provoking comments.
Hell Yeah
Ups and Downs...
I don't think Kurt was a musician....
week one Warner Brothers offers to purchass a song for a major movie.
Week 2 Warner Brothers passes as it has found a more sutable cut.
Week 3 On the Bill with Deep Purple to perform a Major Concert.
Week 4 Deep Purple cancells.
Week 5 Triumph is now the headliner.
Week 6 off the bill for some more deservimg act.
Week 7 are you getting the point yet?
This is no cinderella story...lol
But keep your head up maybe someday the sun will shine again...
Plotted out in the way KV has done here, my personal "drama chart" resemble an alpine skyline! (But germane in incorporating these personal peaks and valleys into believable, grab-your-ass-and-come-along-for-the-ride fiction.) Thanks,Derek, for a new bookmark.
C
Spectator vs performer. We all must have a good reason for doing something.
Know thyself, all reason centers there!
"Who is John Galt?"
Great I Love It.
My experience is influenced by the description that I give it!
What can I notice or learn today that will empower me?
How best can I share it with others?
Every breath is a miracle!
In jamaica we said "IREE" nice!
Golly, you just discovered Todorov.
Derek i like Kurt,he must be a very interesting fellow. Thankyou for the post.I like what Jim Gibson says of the greats...Songwriters take note.The 18th century writer L.W.DELAURENCE on life says "QUOTE" The meaning of life is to express more life but,more life can only be expressed by the fulfilment of desire."UNQUOTE" Keep writing those songs
Pete.
Help I'm looking for a girl that stood me up. If anyone finds her the name is Cinderella.
Signed
The prince
Well, you are right. At some point, I wish my life to be exactly like in the fantasy stories such as Cinderella, Snow White and maybe even Sleeping Beauty. In the end, it remains fantasy, not reality. Time for us to live in reality and live peacefully.
Interesting though in addition to being a big Vonnegut admirer, I'm also a fan of Raymond Carver and enjoy his stories tremendously and I don't feel that the stories necessarily follow either arc described.
I understand the Ecstasy/Misery index but I think there are other ways to tell a story that are of interest. I also don't know that I agree with the idea that the prior to the dramatic story lives were not filled with drama. I don't think the idea to make ones life dramatic comes from a story, but instead it seems that it would come more from a person's individual make-up.
Its an interesting way to bring up a debate on the influences of environment and genetics. Personally I generally feel most things are the result of a bit of both but actually in this case it seems its more biologically heavy than environmentally influenced. To simplify - I know people who are dramatic and those who are not. They all know Cinderella. Most share common environments but for one reason or another have differing levels of need in seeking or avoiding drama.
A bit rambling I know... but its the internet... if it was concise and well thought out it wouldn't belong here... I guess what I'm saying is that on a surface level, its true that those are typical forms for plotting a story, but I don't think people react as they do or create drama in an attempt to make their lives more like Oliver Twist.
Found your site from Reddit, great article.
He probably mentioned it during the talk but he actually makes the same observations in his book A Man Without A Country and includes a few more stories (like Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Shakespeare's Hamlet). Definitely worth the read if you haven't picked it up.
Very insightful and leave it to Vonnugut to have made such a great point. Obvious some refinement and mileage varies, but the general point does drive home.
I'd agree that life imitates the movies to an extent, but Vonnegut's theory speaks more to those who go into the cinema and weep over fictitious characters yet are able to ignore real life drama all around them. They don't really "care", but like to pretend they do.
I agree with Shane that most people's lives are touched by drama. Every writer has their own perspective, and where they stand depends on where they sit. Ionesco is quite different to Vonnegut yet has more in common with Moliere or Sheridan in that they seek to lay bare aspects of society they feel "refect the grimness of our own pretensions".
I think many people like drama in stories because we identify with the characters to greater and lesser extents. People who develop a Cinderella complex have missed the point of the story: Cinderella had strength of character in a world where a girl couldn't take off on her own, go to university, and become a lawyer.(How many poor, abused girls today manage that? Not a majority.) She kept her values intact and persevered and did not despair, do crack or cut her throat. When an opportunity to get out arose, she took it and did not say, "Oh there's no point I might as well stay home, and the sisters don't want me to go anyway." She believed herself equal among men/women and went to the ball though she was constantly being told she had no value. Old story but plenty of girls today out there despair , do crack, and cut their throats.
A dramatic conflict can set an ideal for people to be inspired by and learn from, which is why Zappa and Genet feel they have to shock people out of their complacency. They know people will take Cinderella too literally so they dont give people something that will get turned into a warm dark cave "in which we may huddle with our fellows, beating on the drums that drown out the howling of the hyenas of the surrounding darkness".
perhaps that is why Andy Warhol made such long boring movies
Ha! I want the flat line type of life and no matter how hard I consciously try, I can't achieve it. But I have to admit, those ups are great!
Ma-ma-my life is a luxury, so filled with hate
I got fifty slaves heaping maggots on my plate.
From my fortress in Antarctica I watch the world die
On my Sony Trinitron that's switched to channel 5.
-GWAR Salaminizer.
gotta go with John Cook,(#145) KV even personalized his way too lineal drama lines. It's one's own interpretation, like the elephant in the room. Whether you live on emotional peaks or in valleys of desperation you are still "Man Without A Country"
But I want a story. We all probably do create drama but its probably just to get by because meager ups and downs . . . they make you wonder why you're even here and everyone wants to matter. Having an impressive life story means you mattered a little bit. Admitting that your life is just like everyone else's is enough to make you wanna jump off a bridge even if it is true and completely normal.
Apparently Kurt Vonnegut used this graphing of plot lines ideas for various purposes. I saw Kurt speak in the 1980s, and he used the graphing of plot lines in that speech as well. Although then, as in Man Without A Country, he was offering "advice" to budding writers. He didn't mention, at the time, anything about "real life". The third graph, the near straight line, referred to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
I have used this and some of Kurt's other advice to try and help budding writers in my own classroom. I still believe his best advice, to "real writers" comes from his essay, Teaching the Unteachable, "Nothing is known about helping real writers to write better. I have discovered almost nothing about it during the past two years. I now make to my successor at Iowa a gift of the one rule that seemed to work for me: Leave real writers alone." Not very helpful for an classroom teacher, but perhaps true nonetheless. At the talk I attended, however, he gave me something better with which to work. According to Kurt, at the time, there are two rules to writing. First, you have to have something to say. Second, say it.
Derek, this post was so perfect I had to mention it in my post on why I value time more than money.
It's true: people want something other than a normal life. I'm not sure anyone gets how massive swings affect one's life until you experience one.
or maybe we write the books because we crave drama.
vonnegut is the best!
Good thing he didn't draw a soap opera, it would have taken a lot of boards
I have come to agree with Mr. KV that my purpose in life is to fart around. Not much drama in that.
I for one am a fan of the tragic ending where the hero does not live happily ever after and many conflicts wind their way through time unresolved.
I don't start fights. It's always the other guy's fault.
I don't like spelling and grammar errors, especially when it is as simple as our instead of are...
Maybe this is why I can't stand watching golf on TV.
I also wonder how this ties into Christian dogma and living the supposed "Christian life." What would Christians be if they didn't have disasters to sacrifice for (or create an enemy from)?
That assumes people HAVE heard dramatic stories all their lives. Mr. V. was very much living in the present. Throughout a lot of history people were not bombarded with exciting stories for their whole existence. Communications and exposure to such at the level we know it is a recent phenomenon. But there is no evidence that they were any less interested in drama.
I don't disagree that people need drama. I just think Mr. V. should write books and leave psychology alone.
I remember the first time I saw Casablanca. I was riveted the whole time. I couldn't take my eyes off Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and Sam (Humphrey Bogart) was the man I wanted to be.
When it was over, I was so filled with what the movie was about and how it spoke to me on so many levels. I couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop talking about it. It was deep inside me. Not a day went by where I didn't think about it and what it meant to me and what it taught me.
Every person I came in contact with I had to tell them about this movie and what it had done to me. It literally changed me...not only for what it said but how it said it.
That's how I feel about Derek's "Kurt Vonnegut Explains Drama"
Good post Derek,
Personally I write my songs from the far reaches on my inner mind, I try and see how my life has thus far been played out and I see how others I know or have known have played out in my own minds eye. Reality songs with a twist are my favorite to write.
My life has been more interesting to others then to myself. It's hard to see your own life from the inside looking out.
Dramatic songs sell, love songs sell,fantasy songs sell. Real life songs sell, but the most interesting songs I've ever heard were the psychedelic type songs such as what Roger Waters and John Lennon have written over the years.
Maybe one day we'll accurately be able to view our own lives from the inside looking out.
That would be a trip!
Thanks Derek.
~Mark~
This is very interesting. I think I like the fact that it is a real, no bullshit, its not enough of that in the world. Alot of peoples menatlity is filled with the movie life.
Thanks
Bravo for braving the dark side. This is the never-spoken-about taboo that essentially underlies all in our culture. Yet it's never been popularly recognized for the ADDICTION that it truly is. And like any addiction, it's a pathology that invariably takes its toll not only on the drama perpetrator but all those around the drama. And Vonnegut? Now he's speakin' my language.
Thanks
Life-altering? Life-affirming? Both. Sort of.
We humans express life. Some people DO experience major traumas; e.g. Teddy Kennedy. How'd you like to have had that roller coaster?
True, the vast majority of people don't have roller coaster lives, but they have one thing in common: being born. The birth trauma alone is enough, and all drama comes from that.
Our predilection for drama isn't egoism or completely fantastical; it's just us expressing nature and entertaining ourselves in the process.
Wow, what a really brilliant post!
What you had to say makes total sense. It's funny that I would read something like this because it related to something I talked to my girlfriend about the other day.
What I said to her was how movies tend to glorify love and if girls think that relationships should be at that level or that standard, they have another thing coming.
Sure, the fireworks and sparks may be there initially (like the movies), but it never STAYS that way. Love changes (for some, in a good way...for others in a bad way).
The point is, life is more in the middle like your last graphic.
Thanks for the great post!
Dayne
TheHappySelf.com
Vonnegut is amazing and I'm so jealous that you got to experience him live and I didn't. Great insight!
Well done.
To get Vonnegut's direct rendition of this (rather than a very nice, albeit secondhand synopsis) pick up a copy of Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country," ©2005, Seven Stories Press. Cheers!
I love this!!! And it's so true.
Wow this will be one of the few times I disagree with you Derek. A life that drifts along with little excitement from cradle to grave seems very depressing, unimaginative, and unadventuruous. I believe it is up to each and every one of us to craft a life of grace and majesty, to become the hero of our own epic tale We can do this without creating a lot of drama around us. Sure not every moment can be filled with adventure, there will be some mundane moments, but these can just be the down times in a life that is meaningful and purposeful, becasue we crafted it to be that way of our own accord, in accordance with those things that matter most to us. A life that is lived by taking the bull by the horns is a fairytale life indeed.
Good post. I think a lot of the drama has to do with our perception of it all. Making mountains out of molehills, as they say. It's gotta be about both, I reckon. About experiencing the drama and the monotony; and sincerely letting them each hit you in whichever way the universe decides. I always say, 'You gotta believe in miracles and late fees'.
Yes! Sharon. We do have our moments of profundity. The spikes in the last graph could go a lot higher. Even the periods of normalcy can be and are spiked with bliss.
I think people live for confrontation. I think people love these stories because they can live vicariously through them.
The story arc works because we need to believe in a happy ending or else humans will have no hope. With no hope what's left?
The problem is people miss the point. The journey. People want the happily ever after but they don't know what it is. Happiness is the journey.
If you have succeded, you will get bored and you need another journey. We are never satisfied. We always want more.
Cinderella gets the prince... Now what. It dosen't end til you're dead.
People have the mis guided thought that the prize is the goal reached. It's not.
Kurt Vonnegut has always had this need to graphically explain thought. Did his beginnings in life start in Dresden?? I can't quite recall. I first read "Slaughterhouse Five" in the 1960's and have always sensed an old world romantic who knows compassion is a mighty cloud, covering all human action, like an old familiar blanket. I once sang a half chapter of one of his books to an electronic "Lay" of my own creation. I think it would please Kurt himself, but I don't know how to get through to him properly. You say, he says that people react and create drama where none exists!!..but is it not also true that people at other times don't react where & when drama really does exist. Therefore quite probably.."DRAMA IS IN THE EYE OR MIND OF THE BEHOLDER" Thus drama and beauty are affiliated, whether manifest or simply perceived; especially if your Scottish, and know your Rabbie Burns. What say thee Derek?! Want to hear my KURT VONNEGUT song ...It's called "ON THE PLANET DOKAL" ?
hmmm....But where do the fairy tales come from?
Love it call me sometime.
I think we could make a great graph indicating the ups and the downs of the comments on this post. It would look a lot like life's up and downs.
In fact,try this: Do a random search-like stumble-Upon, Digg, or the like. Read most any blog. It doesn't matter what blog it is, but there is always one or a few people who focus on one point made by the author. Any little snipet to the author of the blog could have meant very little in regard to the whole picture they were trying to convey but taken completly out of context by a reader. Said reader begins the climatic drama fest, until one of four things happen: The author removes the blog to end such drama where it began; The author tries to argue with angry dramatic reader, thus contuning the drama; Other readers contribute in beating the angry reader to a literary pulp by telling him to shut up, which creates more drama and angers everyone in turn; Lastly, all Commentary privileges are frozen, and the drama is immortalized. ***Graph that.***
I like how life gets better with time in the "reality" grid. It's true.
When I sing my songs
I let a cartoon cowboy named
''Mr. True'',
do the narrating for me.
L A M M Y
Actually this concept is part of the 'Breakfast of champions'
Buncha boloni. Stories are stories, to lift your spirits and drift you away in a wonderful situation for a little while. Whoever thinks that is what life is supposed to be like? Only those who has no idea how miserable life can be and used to be and still is in parts of the world where luxuries of modern civilization doesn't exist. Which even includes what we call 'basic human rights'!
Dear Derek, you just explained in few words the reasons why human being complains of what he reaches. I don't think fiction has to be blamed for that. We always want more and more but never look around. It's human. And this makes sense, of course, to do storytelling. Thanks, it's great!!
The belief our Prince will come keeps us all going though!
He spoke at my college. Please buy my CDs!
My chart went a little higher towards ecstacy when I read this.
Completely amazing!!! Kurt was such a genius. I love how he takes life, adds a bit of slapstick humor and yet still pulls out life. He will sorely be missed.
Well, actually I think my life is a series of all three story arcs - cinderella, common disaster, and real life, alternating sort of randomly. And I agree that during the real life parts it is hard not to yearn for the more dramatic parts!
In my case, I've searched around the Maunawili Trail for my brother Tim who disappeared in 1995, we never found him but nevertheless it was the "common disaster" story arc.
I met and married my soul mate at age 33, which felt like the cinderella story arc, and still does!
Then my sister Maud drowned in a rafting accident, which felt like another "common disaster" arc.
Just before that, I had a good run with my group Water Bear performing in upstate NY to rave acclaim - that again felt like "cinderella"... on and on...
The drama doesn't "end", that is the difference between real life and the stories, at least until I "shed this mortal coil"...
--Mer
i think he knows my girlfriends family........drama queens
So very true - especially how it tends to fluctuate.
Interesting theory of drama... drawn straight from the infundibulum. And so on...
Persprctives. Nice and real. Thanks,Derek.
ah, how i miss vonnegut's voice in this wilderness . . .
Your post has got me thinking. I'm a quiet person who generally comes across as being quite laid back HOWEVER I'm always creating drama in my mind. My life is so dramatic in my world, and if it's not there, I will create it. In my mind. I couldn't imagine it any other way. It's like I need it.
the real life curve is interesting too. life ticks along...first major experience of joy followed closely by first major experience of joyloss..life ticks along again..mid-life crisis/deathloss followed closely by discovery of selfjoy.
I think the real curve probably drops off sharply at the end though.
good post
derek.
that. what you said.
i just heard alain de botton speak to something like this on ted.com ( bit.ly/thG3c ).
self help wasn't it or it would've worked.lol
i don't know, in regards to myself, if the issue of drama is a big deal to me. everyone has their ups and downs. it seems to rise the closer we come to truth in ourselves.
i try to focus on projecting non-drama in life, pouring it into my music instead...
...allowing others' drama to be technicolor. if they need it to be...
thank you as always. for going where you go and reporting back. your experience is invaluable to me.
stefan
Congratulations. You have posted the explanation of why those of us who have unusually dramatic lives feel like freaks compared to the rest of the population.*
Tell me about everything. The third thing Mr. Vonnegut spoke about at that lecture in NY.
Speak for yourself...
While it is possibly true that many people experience "real Life" as some minor ups and down, that has NOT been my experience...
I guess mine has been a fairy tale.
I've experienced real romance, and real tragedy. Its the real deal baby! You want to live life like the movies...then get off your butt and live it!
gf parents don't like you? Elope Like I did. Want to travel the world? Do it. Like I did. Want to live in another country? Go there... Like I did!
Fairy tales have a role in our society. Like all things, everything is a tool, it is up to you to overcome your fear and live the dream that resides in your heart.
I really like his interpretation/perspective. My experience has been that the amount of drama we choose or have in our own lives is influenced from birth, the kind of family system we grow up in as well as genetic dispositions. In other words we choose our own kind of drama. Some more, some less.
this is exactly why i shove children into wells in small villages and then masquerade as a fishwife.
I love a good disaster. You finally get to meet the neighbors.
So true, So true, i see it all now! Thanks
It's like you are reading my life …
Hardly! Kurt, you are an incredibly boring person. Explains why his stories aren't that interesting.
Vonnegut went over all this stuff in Palm Sunday and again in Man Without A Country.
It was based on his rejected thesis at the University of Chicago. But what does that school know? They don't even have a football team.
My life had up and downs and deeper and higher than Cinderella's, also many people I know have a great creative turbulent lives. Do not listen to this guy
Live!
Brilliant. Vonnegut was one of the true insightful American writers, especially in his opinion and non-fiction pieces. He's dead on with this.
The real question is this: how do we celebrate the "ordinary" life? As Tolstoy is often quoted, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And an interesting story doesn't come easily from a happy family.
We should count our blessings if we're able to live ordinary lives. Thanks for sharing it.
Unless you happen to have drama in your life. My mom got brain cancer when I was nine and could not talk. Died when I was fifteen. I eloped with a musician, he became well known got into drugs, we lost a child we got a divorce. I founded company made a lot of money lost it in the dot.com crash married again he had a stroke...Children do fall down wells, people die. Drama happens some people get more than one share and some people get none.
As they say in Boston, "Kurt Vonnegut is wicked smaat!"
An interesting read indeed
Very true. People who play life safe don't have natural highs and lows and feel a need to insert artificial drama in their lives. Those who take risks don't have that need.
So…is it better, as a performer, to embrace sprezzatura so that your performances seem effortless despite the many hard hours of practice you put in? Or, is it better to play up the trials and tribulations that got you where you are, playing each complicated riff onstage with visible effort and determination like it might kill you? Therein lies the rub. Seems like both ways work; it's all in the perspective of the viewer/listener. Some like drama; others prefer effortless fluency.
I'll say one thing -- while useful in my musical career, your posts have been most useful in my interpersonal relationships and in learning to relate to other people. (Even to my mom! >;-D ) Always an interesting read!
Bravo to Kurt for saying it
Bravo to you for writing it
I have thought this since I could think rationally but never knew how to say it. A lot of people out there spending all their money and beating their heads against the wall trying to make something happen that never will.
...nice. I'm a high school lit. teacher. I plan on incorporating this into a lesson. Thanks!
Nice. What about those people who think they are destined to be great? Granted they also know tat within their lifetime and after, that recognition would never occur. What about movie stars and people in the lime light. Do they secretly have want for a regular uneventful night/day? Sometimes I think I'm in a drama, or movie or play in certain situations of my life. I know no one will ever have a glimpse of what I perceive, but I take comfort in the "sharing" of that situation. Thanks to Kurt and people like Steve, I can feel even more dismal and fall into the mechanical lament of societal manifestations. Oh, and I am only 26 so I have years of this to endure.
Kurt Vonnegut, Kurt Smonnegut, life is as stimulating or boring as you make it, and then only if your perception is as keen as your imagination.
depressing. not comforting, depressing :|
My question is simple. How can you assume Cinderella lived "happily ever after" by drawing an ongoing, upward sloping line to depict total ecstacy? The story ends after saying that, yet you assume its an ever increasing slope. You also assume "happy" means "total ecstacy" with your drawing. Your perception of "happily ever after" assumes a lot. Could it be true that happy simply means above average? In other words, couldnt happily ever after just mean above baseline?
"My question is simple. How can you assume Cinderella lived "happily ever after" by drawing an ongoing, upward sloping line to depict total ecstacy? The story ends after saying that, yet you assume its an ever increasing slope. You also assume "happy" means "total ecstacy" with your drawing. Your perception of "happily ever after" assumes a lot. Could it be true that happy simply means above average? In other words, couldnt happily ever after just mean above baseline?"
Could be, but that post wasn't about what realistically can or should, or even does, happen after the story ends, it's about the perception that people have of it. I think a line that is either ever-increasing or consistently very high represents that perception well enough.
The third graph is the only one that represents things as they realistically are or would be. The others are about how lives (or fiction, which isn't that different) are perceived.
i can't say i agree with this. it is entirely out of opinion. i can say that there have been things go down in my life that are very significant and i don't "start" things because of it. it's just something out of my control that's happened and depending on how I deal with it, it can either bring me into depression, or just knock me down for a little. But then again, I can agree with you on some levels like with some human interaction, but all in all, this does not apply to every single day.
and all of the rest of you. or most of you. O.K. maybe just a few of you..; A point is being missed here. I will leave it to you to puzzle it out.
I wonder to about the relational aspect of all of this.
It seems that folks may also create high drama so that there is opportunity to be in relation with others. I often think this is some sort of survival instinct.
Without knowing that one is accepted or thought on at all, one might cease to exist.
Thoughts?
We are each a bubble soon to break.
Live, Learn, Love.
I've long thought that much of the attractiveness of drama is the delta of going from a low to a high.
Is there any empirical data to back up that 3rd graph?
Seriously, though, I think there is a basic flaw in this concept which is the fact that the timeline in those drama graphs is very short, while the life one is very long. We all experience dramatic swings up and down at various points in our lives, but over the long haul it really is not sustainable as a way of life. As we get older, the need for stability settles in, if only as a survival instinct. This fact does not remove drama from our lives, it just gives us a little bit of shelter from the emotional impact of it.
Dear All,
We are all Cinderella. But what we have to realize is that in our lives we are constantly living with the three evil sisters, with no knowledge that the ball even exists. But I have written this comment to assure you that the ball most certainly exists, and the ecstasy attained from it is beyond anything else you could have ever imagined in this tiny little brain we're all so proud of.
So what is the ball, and how do we get invited? The ball is Krsna Consciousness and I am personally inviting each and every one of you who reads this to come join the Krishna Consciousness movement and experience trasncendental ecstasy with the king of kings for yourself.
There is a happily ever after, and we can experience this happily ever after in this life.
transcendental ecstasy for the rest of your life. It's not too good to be true. It's not a joke, or a scam, or a religious belief, or a combination of brain particles causing about happiness. It is genuine bliss and ecstasy which never ends. Never ends. Never ends. HAPPY EVER AFTER!!!
oh my...life is so dull i wish i had the buzz in it lol maby i should start to take drugs then get all depressed lol
This is brilliant, and makes so much sense. You can spend so long beating your head against a brick wall wondering why people act the way they do sometimes- I love this.
thats not at all true. drama is just as real and MUCH more common that you intend to imply.
Some of us, in search of our personal Hero story, become firemen, policemen, or paramedics, or join the Coast Guard or the Red Cross.
There are real heroes and fairy tales in our everyday lives, if we just take time to notice them.
And those who really want an interesting life can find it.
The truth is most people don't. Most people want a boring, safe, mundane life, and cling to their illusion of security at any price.
Curt Vonnegut's life is really like this...
Life, to people I've met, at one point goes off like a rocket out of control.
The beauty of well structured stories is, well, the well structuredness of it.
Wouldn't it be nice, if live was like this ...
wow... this post was like one inch of the page....and then about twelve inches worth of comments!! awesome...lol. Props to Kurt V. 4evah
I too have to say, Vonnegut is right to a point. We DO seek drama because of stories. But really, these stories, all renditions of myth and fairy tale exist BECAUSE of the drama found in our lives. All the way back to when one cave man killed another cave man's son with a stick to steal his woman.
My life has equal drama to most stories. Even, if not especially when I don't want it. Sure, it's not magic, cataclysm or high fantasy. You wouldn't see my life on HBO. But the drama is there. The life and deaths, tragedies and ecstatic triumphs.
Anyone who doesn't see the grandeur and fairy tale of his or her own life I think is suffering from something personally; not any kind of metaphysical imperative that says our lives are simply "so-so."
Thanks Derek for this, reading the comments is even better than Vonnegut's theory. For, it is only a theory. Albeit a great one.
slán from Belfast
Thank's for sharing this insightful information on your blog!
I have had a lot of drama in my life, I don't like drama. My family seems to thrive on it. I cut them off. It seems that people get bored with life and will do whatever they can to create the drama that they have in their lives and then they complain about it. I see it all the time, I recognize it for what it is a sick compulsion to create upheaval so one has a reason and right to complain about the very drama they created. I think its called insanity
Kurt where do you think existence and being comes from? How is life NOT fairy tale like (see GK Chesterton's 'The Ethics of Elfland')
Everything else has a purpose why not the imaginative fairytale seeking faculty? Maybe you're being just a little bit too smart by halves. "Unless you become like one of these little ones you cannot enter the Kingdom of God".
Use the imaginative faculty the way it is supposed to be used and you will eventually find the real thing. Peter S. William's 'Cumulative Case for Authenticity' http://www.case.edu.au/images/uploads/03_pdfs/williams-shroud-turin.pdf
Shroud of Turin New Evidence (carbon dating sample was taken from section repaired in the sixteenth century)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bg9wxYpmv0&feature=related
This is the weirdest most scientifically examined artifact on earth, and it just happens to be about Jesus' Resurrection!
Wake up people the fairytales are supposed to point us to REAL life. Dry practical atheist materialism is the flight from real life.
Kurt has woken up now - I meant Derek.
Some people have a need for drama in their lives. Some people have too much troubled in life and have no need for drama.
KV has been a dismal-er (?)
of the human spirit for decades.
He has been contradictory
and unclear, as well as
deliberately fatalistic.
I once was an unabashed fan.
"Welcome to the Monkey House" intrigued me.
"Cat's Cradle" warped my view of the world. By the time he drunkenly scrawled "Breakfast of Champions" I had decided he WAS
just the dilletante nihilist his words made me feel.
Bof K made me realise that he was a manipulating hack using the shallow perceptions of his abject audience..
while exorcising his feeble neuroses.
My opinion did not change on later works..
including "Galopolos" and "deadeye".
He has a certain value as a teacher of writing style..
but to READ his dreck is to read the hackery of commercial publishing. This is lowering the standard of a self-absorbed intelligentsia..
Obviously America and the world would not have been bleaker without him and his words..
In fact, things would probably be a tiny bit better if not for this creep who should have been an unhappy salesman somewhere in Albany New York.
And the world would not miss him in the slightest.
I saw Vonnegut give a lecture. He had a notebook full of possible subjects. He would flip through it and choose depending on how he felt that night. The night I saw him, he chose the drama subject. It was fascinating. Just like you describe it here. He jotted on the whiteboard too. And now, Derek wows me with this reference to it. I had to comment. WOW!
I think it often feels like those little jumps and falls are a huge deal because of the lack of change in daily life. It's like how in certain countries along the equator they feel 'cold' when it's 28 degrees, and 'scorching hot!' when it's 32 degrees- they're used to the average. I don't think people pretend to find things a big deal- I think they really think they are a big deal.
Thanks for the post- I loved it, and adored reading all the responses...until i thought about how vapid and cynical KV must have been at the time. Shit happens- sometimes its dramatic. Anyway, my father always taught me: Beware the profound... sometimes it can be so deep that its curled inside its own ass.
Vonnegut had a gift for simple explanations. As my life is already as full of drama as I want it to be, I have no use for anyone who wants to create any more to make their life more interesting. Would it be inappropriate to e-mail this page to them? ;)
I would like to comment on Avalanche Creed's comment and say that Vonnegut did not have nearly so "dismal" and "neurotic" an attitude as this person. I appreciate the comment and differing opinion, but we should check ourselves before we speak out against others.
thanks for your life description...
Rebecca,
Well, it was a late night vent that focused too much on the darker recollections from my readings. I agree that he is a better teacher of writing style than some staid "masters".
( like KV I stay up late and ruminate on dark things.. then reach out to someone and blurt those thoughts.)
Perhaps less than charitable.. I think KV should be reading for advanced college
and not middle school/high school.
And definitely NOT taught by shallow acamedemicians.
I think it was Breakfast of Champions that was the tipping point. It was an attempt to exorcise all his mental hiccups. He said it himself. It became a slog wading through a book that is commenting on dysfunctional philosophy, while making characters display his cranky perspectives of his own life.
The self-exposure was distracting and dismaying. I have things from all his stories, and his drawings I can still recall.
THe drawing of a HS denim jacket with the name of the school.
KV describes an inner city school trying to inspire its students with a great black american.
THey named it Crispus Attucks High School.
THe next day students had..
" Innocent Bystander High" on their jackets. KV made an amateur drawing.
Good find sir! Much appreciated. Although I must say I hope to find a sudden spike of happiness worth recording in history about someday.
Vonnegut is entirely wrong. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In fact, these stories are not appealing to us because we long to have our lives like them - but rather, because our lives ARE like them and they provide solace and catharsis.
Beautiful. Great for personal perspective, and makes me instantly feel more compassionate towards those with even larger amounts of self-imposed drama than myself.
Sooooooooo, you're saying Cinderella isn't REAL? wtf dude?
it's a sad fact that this kind of information eludes so many of us and takes a 'talk' to bring it to the surface. It gets a little tiring watching people thrive to make a drama out of every moment in their life. Every relationship, every small event is a plague of melodrama and excitement and despair.
love the way this post so clearly says it all!
Interesting. reminds me of two things: a) the graphs immediately brought to mind Gustav Freitag's Pyramid schemes he used to analyze dramatic structure of plays. b) Erving Goffman's 'The presentation of self in everyday life', illustrating beautifully how everyday life IS theater ;-)
Vonnegut's life actually WAS more dramatic then most---POW in WW2, survived the firebombing of Dresden, many bestselling books, along with the regular humdrum stuff everyone else goes through.
This is a point I often try to make with my students, but I've never done it this well.
ct
Amazing. I always knew we were somehow attracted to drama, but I could never explain it to someone this well. Definitely passing this on, thank you.
i really love this +linked+
awesome. i know so many people who are out there trying to invent some crazy drama in their lives. i wonder if it's on purpose sometimes!
This rattled around in me a few days and it made me understand better what John saw in Yoko...it was here strength to be herself and work at her art. John perhaps saw himself as drifting or flowing with the popular tide and here was an example of someone who knew how to find herself and be real and then reflect that via valid demonstrations that everyone can understand. Seeing this may have made things much clearer for him and helped him in many ways.
no more fairytale world, Cinderella's free, got a place of her own today,,,,come and go as she please
nice one
How does KV know life is like the first graph? Where did he take the first graph from?
this is cool!
Your real life graph is absurd and offensive to many who have suffered true missery or the true extacy that come from pleasure in the face of it.
If you are in any boubt of the validity of my statement please go to any child abuse group, veterans group, etc. and explain your theory.
Clearly, the thesis doesn't take into account active parenting!
I love KV as much as the next person but he was an enlightened humorist and they occasionally miss the mark. What it makes him out to be is human, ultimately, like Michael Jordan when he misses a shot; still fun to observe.
Without all the heat of judgment, it can and probably should be boiled down to this: people want to be entertained or distracted so they look to storytellers and their stories. Good and bad stories endure, often arbitrarily. People are addicted to drama in their lives because they are not yet enlightened. And even the enlightened ones have occasional lapses.
Beyond that, judgment fails.
"So it goes."
"Hi ho."
I know some drama queens (not to mention kings) who could benefit from this...
That's actually very insightful, thanks for that! I like to, when something happens, imagine a different scene in my head, making it more dramatical. Guess I like fairytales. =D
I remember going to see Kurt Vonnegut speak in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1984, when I was an undergraduate. He covered some of the same material a quarter of a century ago. But the thing that is missing from this version is the emotional graph of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' which got a big laugh from the audience.
And a group of us had a great evening in the bar afterwards, buying beers, rolling cigarettes and talking a load of old pony with the man himself.
Great post - thanks for bringing back a shining memory.
wonderful, i wish that i would have been able to hear him speak in person.
This is the most clever way of putting "life." I love this author, one of my favorite.
This seemed to be true in my younger times, I loved Cinderella.
(My apologies, this turned out to kind of a long rant/ramble)
IN DEFENCE OF CINDARELLA
I don't think I agree with Vonnegut here. Okay, the basic pattern that he's criticising certainly needed a good kick in the teeth (so the lesson would be: don't go to Walt Disney for advice on how to live your life), but the model he proposes, in my opinion, is equally flawed. It's not ecsacy or misery that govern our lives but rather equilibrium and disruption. No matter how good one's standard of life is, it doesn't lead to ecstacy except in the moment when things seem to be
improving. Same could be said of despair. Which is why all those
billionares who wind up only being millionaires after an economic
crisis kill themselves, while all those Cambodian amputee orphans who were too young to remember skipping into a landmine, don't.
To me, the more violent ups and downs are where we risk losing ourselves, but also where we taste the deeper marrow of life. Art is a meditation on that marrow. As such, I think of drama (when it's well done...) as a textbook on how to navigate the world when the tide gets a bit choppy- when the balance is thrown off- for better or worse.
Art is a way of distilling the intensity of human experience, and can kindle the fire of heart and mind, let us get a little closer to the things that mean a damn.
Vonnegut's point brings us back to the age old struggle between Apollo and Dionysus (or between Christian Bale's Batman and Heath Ledger's Joker, if you prefer). Either you can be a taoist, and hope to find the middle way (be supple like a reed in the wind, go with the flow, and all that), or you can be a sufi or a shaman and struggle to live life on the border between ecstacy and terror.
Maybe it depends on what you want to accomplish. To perpetuate the status quo, it helps not to rock the boat, accept that things go up and down, and leave it at that. But what it you don't like things as they are? In looking for the energy to change things, drama is as good a fuel as any: throwing off the balance is one way to change the way the currents run on the wider scale.
Sure, I'm as sick as anyone of people falling into an abysmal depression over deceassed pets or convulsing with rage when fast food cashiers get an order wrong, but I'm also sick of the way we downplay a lot of the deeper stuff at play in things like sex, love, and death. For example, we shy away from words like "funeral", these days: I've seen heaps of "memorials" and I've probably attended one too many "celebrations of life" but I can't say I've been to more than one, straight up, good old fashioned, wake. Throughout the span of history there were many times and places where mourning would last for years: people would tear their hair, wail in the streets, destroy their possessions- in times and places where life wasn't boring enough to bother inventing "drama." Not that I'd rather have to throw myself on my wife's funeral pyre someday, but the contrast does make me wonder: have we learned to value life less than those that came before us? What is it that makes us want to sanityze and numb our more potent sensations of joy and grief, on the one hand, and amplify the emotional weight of the mundane on the other? Are we, at the supposed height of technological civilisation, so hoplessly mediocre and uninspired?
Okay, so I took this thing way too far; it's just that, for once, Vonnegut's usual stoic: 'real life is mundane, so get over yourself' kick got on my nerves. The world is rich, hideous, poetic, beautiful, unbearable, pathetic, tragic, glorious, humiliating, and complicated, and shomehow it seems disrespectful to the glory of
existence to play all that down.
Maybe the an acceptance of the premise that 'life is ordinary' is useful if you want to be a chartered accountant or a legal secretary, but if you deal drugs, or run for political office, or live in a warzone, sleep on the street, squat in a foreclosed home, I don't think it's a helpful way to think (there are more people like that than we imagine).
I don't think stories are why people dramatize, I think that living in places where 70% of us work in the service industry, bored to death with our supposed "purpose" in life, would be a more convincing explanation. It's not that people need more ups downs, it's that they struggle to find meaning in the general balance that surrounds them. The question i'm asking is: what if selling office supplies was not what the human body was built for? Or: what if it's the world (and not us) that has the balance wrong? Like once upon a time when most Europeans spent the day sweeping out the fireplaces of their 'betters' and relying on folktales such as (the pre-disneyfied
version of) Cindarella to remind them that no person is worth more or less than any other, that the King can marry a commoner, that a kid can kill a giant. It's those kind of stories that gave birth to the French, Russian, and American revolutions (okay, we might not like how they turned out now, but maybe the important thing is to have the will to change when society gets top-heavy or stale).
Sure fairytales and folk stories might nourish the roots of false hopes, but who's to say they can't also plant the seeds of rage or ambition? After all, when a child learns from a folktale that not everyone has to accept their lot in life, is it such a stretch to think that one day, all grown up, she might put down her scrub brush, pick up a pitchfork, get up, go out, and change something?
(Thanks for the post, by the way, I may not agree, but it sure got me thinking...)
Well, maybe life as we perceive it, it is dream. When we’re dreaming, within the dream, we believe and are confidence that everything is real; but when we wake up we find the truth, it was only a dream. During the dreaming process, we were actor in our own little movie, created by us (localized consciousness). Couldn’t be possible that what we call our life is just a dream of the Cosmic Consciousness? And we just are acting representing different rolls in this big movie?
A Happy Death (Camus): shares a similar idea in the search for "happiness". We have a tendency to search for happiness where it ordinarily is found so to speak. ....and then (hopefully) we discover just how far we are from that. And yet again, hopefully, that realisation itself will provide personal satisfaction. That we understand that the stories we read of happiness do not always happen that way. Accept that. And rather than go out of our way to recreate the stories we've read over and over...we will instead work on creating our own stories. By just merely existing.
I guess you haven't been on tour for a while.
I'm not the Vonnegut fan I used to be, but this going into my English/literature class lesson plans!
Thank you for posting this. I know it is incredibly simple, but I have never thought about viewing the story line of a life in a graphic format. As simple as this is, it is also profound and enlightening. Again, Thank You!
What an absolutely wonderful article!
Makes me wonder...
Drama......we all need some sort of drama in our lives to try making ourselves feel better at some point. It makes perfect sense. Very insightful!!!
My girlfriend and I noticed this. This is why "nice guys" finish last in the dating game, why girls prefer an asshole. Very interesting article.
I would write my opinion but i think that greengnome already wrote it very very right. It's kinda unfair if we think that we shouldn't be dramatic about our life. Isn't life the most important thing in our life?
This explains my cousin the pathological liar, whose favorite movie is The Princess Bride. He wants his whole life to be a fairy tale. Indeed, it is, since so few things he says turn out to be true.
Interesting. OK Yes I agree to a point. With growth comes pain in some sort and a situation can end in a fairy tale (growing pains)
True life starts with Christ in the heart. That is no tale. It never ends. His promises are true and concrete. There is only one that never fails to let us down.
Blessings Galore. Check my hubs I hope you will be blessed
skye2day@hubpages
Interesting. OK Yes I agree to a point. With growth comes pain in some sort and a situation can end in a fairy tale (growing pains)
True life starts with Christ in the heart. That is no tale. It never ends. His promises are true and concrete. There is only one that never fails to let us down.
Blessings Galore. Check my hubs I hope you will be blessed
skye2day@hubpages
Fairy tales are like life. We struggle, we sgow-pain, we survive and we have a bit more wisdom.
Fairy tales end.
Life does not. We move on into the light if we have salation and believe in Christ. The story will always be perfect. Not because
I said so because God said so. He is the answer and the light.
Cute reference to life.
Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but MY life IS a fairy tale... ;-)
(great post, thanks for sharing!)
Simple. Profound. Compelling. And the commentary is almost as interesting as the original post. I feel like I've just had an intense conversation with countless intelligent people.
Not bad for a first experience, courtesy StumbleUpon.com. (Talk about something that can change how you educate yourself!)
Very interesting, but...
If your heart is in your dreams,
No request is too extreme.
When you wish upon a star,
As dreamers do...
Fate is kind.
She brings to those who love,
A sweet fullfillment of
Their secret longing.
Like a bolt out of the blue,
Fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star,
Your dreams come true.
Hmmm.....how does the "story" of Jesus.....and the belief in the promise of Christianity....graph there?
Same question about being Islamic.
To be sure....they both end up the same! On the upper right side of the graph.
Christians in "heaven" and Islamics where ever they go with their virgins.
I have read this a lot of times and even shared the link to a series of people.
Really cool and really true.
When I saw Vonnegut talk back in the mid 80's, he did a similar chart. Then, at one point, he added another graph to it:
-- Derek
Gregor Samsa has a miserable life (line starts low on ecstasy/misery index). Then, one day, he wakes up and he's a cockroach (line plunges off bottom of graph).
He also related a Native American story, which was a much flatter line, because each event had both positive and negative possibilities.
It made for a compelling talk.
Yeah I left out the Kafka joke because in a short essay I thought it'd distract from the point.
This is so interesting! Totally makes sense - and explains a number of people / situations in my life.
Interesting ideas as to why people go looking for pain. The affirmation of life, by either extreme is surely the point, but improvement is always claimed save for sheer failure. Either way, you need to laugh at the outcome.
Vonnegut is(was) a genius. Always 1 of my favorites, never saw that tho. Thanks for sharing!
Great post. I wonder if the normal arcs vary by astrological sign. Cancers and Geminis might have a little more variability. Speaking for myself, I am trying to live for along a normal trajectory with fewer wider swings.
OMG! This is the same lecture that forever changed the way I viewed literature! He gave the same talk at Case Western Reserve University in the late 1980s. Thanks for posting it.
Opponent Process theory
Slaughterhouse 5's graph would have spirals, loop backs, and weird break points.
I think I know a fair number of people whose lives match the "real life" graph, but who draw the drama so out of proportion they *think* their lives resemble the first two.
Great post, Derek. I appreciate the applicability to real life as well as to stories written. The visual is such a plus and something I'll be linking to so my writing clients and students can learn from Vonnegut's model here. Thank you!
Always enjoy your posts.
All the best,
Debra
Yup. Pretty funny actually.
I actually really appreciate what you wrote, very interesting and touches the surface of reality .. BUT, and it's a big but .. if you limit yourself to this "Realism" you'll never make something out of yourself .. instead of making it a true tale to be talked about .. nothing is impossible hehe ..
wow this is amazing
The human ego, instead of recognising the unity of all living things, sees itself as a separate entity to others. As Eckhart Tolle points out in his book "A New Earth", others are "most other" when they are enemies. To the ego, death is always near – eg: needing to be right in an argument – if you identify with a mental position and are wrong, your mind based sense of self is threatened with annihilation – yr ego feels it’ll die if wrong – this can lead to relationship break ups and even to wars.
When your ego feels threatened, it wants to survive at all cost.
It needs the 'drama' to assert identity as the victorious character within that theatrical production.
Another aspect of emotional pain that is part of the egoic mind is a deep seated sense of lack, of not being whole.
If it’s conscious, it manifests as a feeling of not being worthy.
If unconscious, it’s felt indirectly as an intense craving & needing.
In both cases, people compulsively gratify their ego and identify with things to fill the hole they feel, striving after possessions, money, success, power, recognition or that special relationship so they can feel better about themselves, more complete.
Tolle theorises that all humans possess a "Pain Body" - a semi-autonomous energy made up of past emotional pain.
It has it's own primitive intelligence, directed mainly at survival.
It's food is emotionally painful experiences so it thrives on negative thinking and drama in relationships.
It has an addiction to unhappiness.
So I suspect that long before there were fairytales or stories of high drama, there was already this need in people's lives for drama. TV & Hollywood movies are just throwing petrol on an already blazing fire ;-) ( I realize that this may come across as my ego wanting to be right but I won't be offended if you disagree with all of what I said
This post suck.........It make me want to kill myself.
Hang on a minute. Maybe I will read it again and feel a lot better.
Kurt Vonnegut is now and always has been one of the biggest douche bags in the country.
I fucking love this. You good sir are a genius.
Some peoples life are like stories... both those are few and far in between... unless you count the negative ones...
As life unfolds and you finally reach into the region of older age you get to ponder. Life has been a fairy tale.
True enough!
derek@sivers.org, Yes a very good way to network.. Tommy
This is why I almost exclusively read science fiction.
Derek- as usual, great stuff!
Time is the critic and common denominator. If we're uncomfortable within ourselves, we're trapped outside this present moment; hence, the future- pining for what hasn't happened (drama!)- or the past- stuck in reverse (drama!). If we accept and open ourselves to the present moment, there is... drama!
check out: www.upliftingspirits.com
So I'm not sure if one of the other hundreds comments made this point already but.. Has anyone actually read more than the popular books but this is pretty much one of his essays from "A Man with No Country". Have you read this book Derek? This seems like copyright infringement to publish this but at least you did mention it was Vonnegut's invention.
Drama Queens take note, also it makes your story look false when something unusual does happen.
I have the utmost respect for Kurt Vonnegut, but he totally missed the ball.(no pun intended) To compare a story meant for entertaining or to understand the human condition and a person's life are two totally different things.
The second story arc is, yes, commonly used in many stories because it works. It keeps the audience entertained, but to say that people strive to make their lives more dramatic so they can go through the happiness, depression cycle like little Timmy in the well, is absurd.
Life is fucked up and glorious all at the same time.
Try this on for size, little Timmy falls into a well, the whole town struggles and faces obstacles to get Timmy out of the well, and then finally they do, and life returns to stasis. This is the recommended arc that works, which is an adaptation of the "well made play" format. What this implies is that people don't experience what little Timmy and the town went through, that they are exaggerating? Are you fucking kidding me? You think most people don't experience more emotional and fucked up shit than that? I think what Vonnegut means is that the recovery from a normal persons life is easier because there is no storyline to support. What he means to say is that everyday people experience things like I got into a car accident, I lost my job, I got a job, I broke it off with my girlfriend, she broke it off with me can not be compared to the cataclysmic event of Timmy being trapped in a well, because these instances one can easily bounce back.
If you don't know people that have been raped(which is way more drama than little timmy trapped in a fucking well) or, someone awaiting a prison sentencing for a crime they did or did not commit, or someone watching a loved one die slowly right in front of them from a deadly disease, Then my friend you have lived a sheltered life, and haven't experienced much. And there's an infinite amount of extreme happy occasions, like a achieving a long sought after goal, or finding the one that you love. These situations can make or break you forever, in some cases, and in some extreme cases can cause mental illness for most of ones life.
Those two examples from Vonnegut are for entertainment purposes only. They are designed to keep an audience entertained. People only compare their insignificant events to stories because it's meaningless and it's coincidental.
One time I hit a deer and it was dead and lying in the middle of the road, and I walked over to it and as I hovered over it, it felt my presence, got up, and ran off. And I remember thinking, well if I had put it in my car it would have been like that scene in Tommy Boy.
However, my best friend's wife was murdered and he thought about getting revenge, but I know that the last thing that went through our minds were, "hey that's just like Max Payne or the Punisher.
I have studied theatre, Play, and literature for a long time. But to say that a "normal person"(which I don't know what the fuck a normal person is) doesn't deviate from the stasis line is preposterous and ignorant.
And I just stumbled across this and all of you piss me off!!!
Lol i think the comment above me is hilarious, cause reacting that extremely to a stupid StumbleUpon site is exactly what he was stating. haha
the explanation is very vague and non-realisitic,though the idea is rite.We need drama and hope of making it big.In today's world everyone has a chance to make it big.its easier than evr
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Very nicely done!!
All he was saying:
"Pop culture creates unhappiness"
The reason we love the drama is because of the hope of ever evasive happy ending...
YES, cool
Well chad, what a dick you are..."I have studied theatre..." Grow up and just get it into your intellectually challenged head that we all have opinions and just because yours doesn't agree with his doesn't mean yours has got to be the correct one. Its called "DISCUSSION"! Or would you call that "PREPOSTEROUS"! Look at what everyone else has written on the real topic (and no, its not all about you) and engage a little grey matter on a witty and intelligent comment of your own. I'll speak more slowly for you chad. N-o o-n-e c-a-r-e-s w-h-a-t y-o-u s-a-y.
life is like a storyline
Yes life is full of drama and faith has a way of putting it together and some people are gifted in putting it back to life.
why is drama considered bad nowadays? is it the slang interpretation, aka, drama = instability/anger/unrealism? C'mon! as people we crave variety at times, for instance, in the form of vacations, holidays, sunshine, rain, puppies, music, art, new recipes, etc. to feed our minds AND souls! all of these things are inherently dramatic because they're different and have the potential to MOVE you. think of the best sunset you've ever experienced! wow! drama! now, i agree picking fights and whatnot to spice things up is negative, aka bad drama. I don't want to live on a constant roller-coaster like that. However a comfy, dull flat-line-as-Life existence does not appeal to me whatsoever. apparently it doesn't appeal to me not many others. songs, stories, poetry, theatre, travel, restaurants, nature, art, etc, etc. etc. are dramatic, and good. drama does NOT always = bad. just my two cents.
jackdoors the sheer number as they fly away together left with a deathening sound
wasps
will carry on before they die all
off make sure they are covered
to stop them to die off
sparrow hawks
perfectly small long legs
chase with their feets
grappling hold of there catch they dutch and dive
incredible bird
birds of prey falcon
bbc uk
so many migrating birds fluttering
please help the animals before
they all die off
and leave us
gina
My ex-wife thinks life is one big soap opera. She creates drama where there is none. It may seem harmless to some, but where there are young children involved it is inappropriate to say the least, and potentially quite dangerous.
while i recognize mr. vonnegut's genius in his writting ability, this explanation is somewhat short-sighted. He neglects to include nonfictional stories of heroism in history (and note, I do not limit history to the distant past). This explanation would make it seem as though the average life seems worse than it is simply because of imagination and fiction; the truth of the matter is most people are too lazy, stupid, weak, and/or afraid to actually do anything of any worth. Those who do are not so effected by such fairy tales. The real key would be to find something heroic in your own life and stop giving a shit about immortality (i.e. preservation in history via the retelling of your tale)...it sounds like a vonnegut might have let some of his subconscious narcissism out.
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises, please.
Silent.
Hi-ho.
I am a HUGE fan of Kurt Vonnegut and unfortunately never heard him speak live (I was going to the UCLA event and he passed the month prior)-and have read all his books, some over and over.
Thank YOU for sharing this little tidbit from him. Now you have another fan, too!
My students think reality television is reality and try to make their lives more dramatic. I hate it when they describe moments in their lives as being "just like a movie." No, your life is like life.
Love the explanation. Simple, effective, visual and true. Most people are bored to tears with their own lives so they create drama to bring a dramatic effect to their life. If option A is boring and B is drama queen then I vote for option C. Make a positive difference in the lives of others and your life will be very interesting.
Still thinking about this one Derek,
But I like the Joe Campbell line of thought too.
My take on that would be that the hero saga within all of our collective DNA exists, whether or not it is realized in physical life situations, to help us grow into adulthood and eventual wisdom.
That our lives are relatively short is the reason for an apparent lack of frequency of the extremes.
As far as Kurt's theory goes, I think it's not that people expect their lives to be like the stories. But rather that they actually ARE like the stories sometimes and there is a junkie like need to experience that feeling more often than may be natural.
My life really is a fantastic adventure with a great storyline!
There is too much drama and starlust in the world. I prefer to live the simpler life and, as W.Blake articulates so succintly in his verse, I aim:
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of (my) hand,
And eternity in an hour."
This is appalingly true.
Poeple always gotta have something to worry about. And if there isn't hey let's make one up!
I have not read through all the squillions of comments here so forgive me if someone has said this already...
Does this concept kind of over look the reality that most people do face some pretty tragic events of challenges in their lives, deaths, cancers, tsunamis, poverty, etc etc.
Perhaps these stories reflect the unavoidable tragedy that exists in human life and the fairy tale part of it is the hope that we will overcome, which many do and become more resilient for it.
...Just an idea
Yes, sadly, the real life graph made me laugh---so depressingly true. That's why it's good to write novels.
One of the earlier comments (#13 by Paul) talked about Shakespeare's idea that all the world's a stage, and Paul said he tries to give the best performance every day. I really like this I idea but I had a thought to add to it: even the actor playing the villain can give a good performance. Don't try and be good, necessarily. Just be the best representation of who you are, and good things will happen
Wow, great post. I never thought of the drama aspect of our lives like that, because honestly, I try to keep drama out of my life as much as I can. Atleast, the pointless gossip drama that always seems to occur.
While I agree that life has no coherent plot structure, I disagree that life need have contrived narrative to range in emotion. In my days I've built towers of bliss and dug tunnels of despair. This is not because I am a character in some divinely orchestrated story. It is because even the mundane, even the common is dramatic to the one experiencing it.
Take angst. Everyone catches it, and when we recover we laugh and mock ourselves. Such a token, conceited emotion, we say. And yet, while the dread takes us its power is realer than any second-hand falsehood that Vonnegut might write.
A professor friend once compared life to driving across the state of Kansas: pretty dull for the most part but with the odd tornado thrown for a periodic burst of sheer terror.
I love everyone who is one this page. and that's drama. my biggest drama here is the face the simple inspiring story degenerated into nothing. am i creating drama by sharing this? Putting down the amazing system of the internet?
THis hit me man. peace
I think the reason that my life has felt so manageable despite some rough times is that I never have unrealistic expectations. That way I am rarely disappointed.I always love to be surprised... Although I have to admit, little drama in Romanceis quite nice... (for a while!)
A great post. It's interesting I was trying to explain how my past relationships worked for a friend by showing similar graphs just a day before stumbling upon your post.
I just entered this forum & find it incredibly interesting.
There is drama in every life, % wise is dependent upon how dull or 'normal' the rest of ones' life is...
I think that this was one of the more interesting blogs I read in a while. Fascinating. I think I agree with this, I mean let's face it - most of use would love living in a fairytale.
leoraigarath.deviantart.com
Make sense.
Whatsmore maybe maybe there more to this article than the eye meets
I absolutely love this post not only because it makes intuitive sense, but because there is psychological research to back up the notion that the lower your expectations the happier you'll feel. I spend a lot of my time teaching people how to meditate and the biggest complaint I hear from new meditators goes along the lines that it's boring and they don't want to let go of their ambition or drive.
I guess it takes some time to learn that doing something for the pure joy of doing it and not worrying about whether you are going to make it actually feels a lot better. If you like playing the guitar, then play the guitar but don't worry about whether you will become a rock star (I couldn't help thinking of the formula used for "Behind the Music" when I read this post).
It's actually quite liberating to let go of your need for drama.
I also posted a link to this article on my blog because I think my readers will enjoy it as much as I have (let me know if it's okay that I posted one of your diagrams with the link - if not I'll take it down for you).
this article appeals to idiots
I have to start reading more vonnegut, his books are unreal and this must have been an amazingly inspiring talk you went to.
This is true if we graph our entire lives - or perhaps even a year. But we live life each day and the graph within a day might well more closely resemble the fairytale graph, depending on how busy our lives are, or how poorly we interact with others.
Most people live quite dramatic lives - just listen to your neighbours arguing next door and reflect on your own pettiness.
Whether our highs and lows each day are as notable as, say, meeting Mr. Right or being turned back into a pumpkin, is another matter. But daily we seem to think so.
ok then explain that to the starving people in all over the word and tell them that they are the way they are because they try to live in a fantacy world
Interesting... as a side note, how do you feel putting a (C) copyright with your name on something that was said by Kurt Vonnegut?
Great post Derek!
As i move ahead into my fairy tale there was something sobering yet positive about this post... plus i love Kurt Vonnegut ad Derek is totally awesome!
Well, that just about explains this:
http://www.io.com/~jlockett/RPG/HEGGA/Stuff/frp-plots.html
Nice, just the naked truth!
well sometimes i like to eat potatoe chips and others i like to run throuhg the scholl halls nude screming anarchy
May I point out that if we all accepted life with it's little ups and downs and never experienced drama . . . well, thats BORING. The greatest men in the world and those who have made a difference are those who have had drama.
Winston Churchill was know for great bouts of depression, as was Edison
Most of the great men who signed the Declaration of Independence, experienced great drama in their lives - such as the War for Indepence, losing their fortunes, and some of them, their lives.
Even Infamous People - Al Capone, John Wilkes Booth, Black Beard, etc - experienced great drama in their life.
People long for drama, and to be a character in the stories they love because drama is what gets us up in the morning. If I knew that everyday would be the same, get up, eat, go to work, get off, buy groceries, eat, watch tv, go to bed, I would kill myself and take a chance at the next life having alittle variety. After all it is the spice of life!
But I did like your graphs!
Calm thought.I like it.
I think another reason people need drama in there lives is when they grew up with drama. They often don't realise it, but something seems missing without all the yelling or problems and they tend to invite dramatic people, roller-coaster relationships, and problems into their lives to fill the gap. They get bored in a problem free relationship because they are not used to that. Sometimes people are more comfortable in their "discomfort zone".
How happy you are is dependant on what your norm is. Even the princess will go into a deep depression after her fairy tale life becomes the norm. It's the rock star syndrome, where people who get everything they want no longer appreciate what they have when they run out of new exciting experiences, and so they turn to happy pills or just kill themselves.
everybody gets what they want.
Sometimes when I misplace my keys and then find them it's just like when the boy falls into the well.
Kudos to Kurt for rationalizing life.
why shouldn't we try to make our lives into a fairy tale? Why would anyone not want drama, ups, downs, ecstasy, grief?
Funny the only narrative that no one wants to follow is Harold Pinter's narratives
I have been criticized for being a realist my entire life. In fact to me people who are "depressed" are truly people who tend to see through the lie of the illusions people want to paint in life. I like reality I don't like hype and people who like drama really bother me yet it seems more and more people have patterned their lives in this manner.
I sense this goes back to the Victorian period when life was hard and dull and terrible thing happened a lot to "shock" people. They would read books to escape and that book turned into a TV which is not the internet. People had to hide from the grim realities of their lives and this became a habbit. We also got addicted to the Victorian storylines in many ways in which you have pointed out here in what Mr. Vonnegurt said.
And people will seek out poor choices in jobs, relationships, drug addiction, ignoring their children whatever on a large or small scale ( even a small thing like restricting things from people like love) to create a hunger a need in others i.e. drama. It is so much more interesting to NOT address a need than to address one.
I do think, however, this is much deeper than we realize. It has to do with scripting behaviors. While I was working with high functioning autistic children for many years it was labeled "behavioral scripting" a child will instruct a playmate or an adult..." I say this and then you say that". The child will become upset when you do not return the response that they have asked you for many times and has to be taught people have many choices in their behaviors not just one.
I think a story is like the comfort of a mothers arms , a security blanket we know what will happen. That is why many men and women are happy to have a mental affair with a someone who will never speak to them in real life than connect deeply with a real person..fear of loss, the unknown, etc.
People can put the play on in their head and have tons of fun and never have to pose any real risk most prefer it. They need "stories" to motivate their mundane life in fact. They can be their own director in their head.
People choose partners based on the resemblance to family members again with this scripting like behavior in mind. In the "normal" population the scripting is different however it is like casting the members of your own play. A woman who resembles your favorite Aunt or or a husband who plays the guitar like your Grandfather. It is like we are recasting the part because the primary lead is gone and so we need an understudy to do continue the show.
Story lines run the way we dictate relationships, "I do this then you do that" is common and when one person breaks "the rule" is is really a break out of character and is seen as unpredictable therefore as dangerous and rouses anger. All because people want things to fit their idea of how the world should work and therefor how their partner should work. It is why robotic sex partners are portrayed in the future as equal if not better than real partners--predictable in every way... programable.
So not only, like you posed to wonderfully in this post, do people need the story line they also need to the characters as well in their drama.
And as a postscript, If you might ever feel someone doesn't like you for who YOU are you might be onto something actually...
Oh and response to the comment about Churchhill and Blackbeard etc... history probably was not so dramatic when you were there..it is how we write history that is what makes the story of it. In fact after having personally researched many stories of people's lives the inaccurate details of how things are written to "juice things up " are amazing. You have to go back into the real person letters and files written in their own hand to get a better idea of the real situation. Most people writing a book are writing a story even the non fiction ones. Because real life just isn't very interesting many times even with famous figures so things have to be made up or moved around.
Excellent, excellent blog post! I might add that we humans are also hardwired to pay close attention to drama because in our evolutionary environment, any drama we witnessed would almost certainly involve people or events directly connected to us. And we are, I believe, so fascinated by the stories you so succinctly summarize because we experience the rush without the risk, like riding a roller coaster allows us to experience the thrill of rapid, jarring movement that to our ancestors would have meant death or severe injury. Similarly, we can enjoy the drama of a movie or TV show without worrying about it affect us in reality.
The person who understands the importance of the common task is the person that can someday become great!Some of us spend our lives complaining about scrubbing the floors, buts it's understanding that being a master of the common is what gets us ready to be the king or the princess.
a Dutch writer once said something along these lines:
"It's the tragedy of many writers they don't see the literary treasures hidden in their so called everyday lives."
or in my words: fuck "this life is boring" shit. mine's up and down. so is yours.
just get over your fears and do shit- time seeps away no matter what.
back to writing!
Never looked at life drawn and illustrated out so clearly..This is great stuff and thanks Derek!
I agree. This is the best thing you have ever posted, Derek.
Damn! I fell down the Well and the town still hasn't noticed!
This so depressing... But it is the truth. There's no escaping it. I've never really thought that life is nothing but another part of humanity. One ends, another begins. A constant cycle. And we're all part of it.
Kurt Vonnegut used to go to Writers Guild meetings in his pajamas and bathrobe...and he's giving ME advice on drama in life?
What he really taught was don't invent a drama you can't handle.
It's always worked for me.
I think that lifes ups and downs are a little more scewed than he show.
Love this post. I'm gonna be pretty busy reading all this stuff. Derek, you are my new hero.
Kevin Ward
I've read this post many times. The problem is that I truely do lead a very dramatic life and nobody believes me! Not the life of Cinderella....don't want that life anyway. But somehow, drama seeks me out and I never seem to be able to avoid it!
I feel like this post needs a part 2!
It will be on my mind all day now) Cheers
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Can't remember the author of this book, but it doesn't mean being dispassionate about the life you live. Just responding within a healthy continuum that doesn't get all dramatically out of whack, about events that usually don't merit such responses....There are the times when life is more than a glitch, and there is temporary crisis... but these are rare... most is just adjusting to the currents of life, and maintaining equilibrium....
Derek,
All anyone has to do to experience drama (the thrill of victory; the agony of defeat) is .....
....start a business. Period.
The reality is, sports and other amusements are a proxy for really executing, now, in reality.
Dan Mezick
very true. my life is LIKEE a fairytale. people expect everything to work out all the time because of past fables. make your own fable then life will be great!!
I'm one of those people that pretends there is drama when there is none.
But somehow I convince a few readers with a few adjectives (and the lure of a great beer) that it is important and dramatic!
And for now, that's good enough for me.
oh, my gosh... I've never thought of it that way, but it's so true!
Ran across this post as a random Stumble!
Excellent - I've read quite of few of Vonnegut's books and articles, but have never heard him speak (which probably won't be happening for obvious reasons).
Although - Vonnegut's life might fall more in the "Fairy Tale" category than most people's lives.
Vonnegut's a genius. Enough said.
they use this same diagram to explain why people use drugs
Where would we be if we didn't inject a little drama in our lives, be it real or imagined?
that is what people worried about after the Guttenberg printing press - that people won't be satisfied anymore with real life. but if you hear a child laugh (or make anyone laugh), or go for a hike in a beautiful place, or caress your loved one...you'll see that life is quite satisfying
Really insightful! Loved it =]
I think there is some denial going on here. Where are death and illness on these time lines?
Imo people have a roller coaster ride in life and look for some guidance and a way to forget the ups and downs of life with fiction.
99.99999% of the People are just plain ordinary. Occasionally one is born that has extra ordinary potential. IF they happen into a situation where they can call on that potential, and save the day or what ever, someone tells the story and if it gets told enough someone will eventually write it down. Of course embellishments are a natural part of the evolution of a Hero and the creation of a myth.
the graphs showing drama and disaster are incomplete.If drawn further they end up the same as the graph of every day life.The town/village is at a higher level initially,but that rise becomes, over time, the new norm.Even "happily ever after" is not actually "ever after".That was only thought of in the days before sequels.
You may actually now visualize those highs and lows as just a magnified look at the smaller bumps of the supposedly "typical" graph of life.We all have real drama in our lives.People we know die,lose jobs,fight in wars.The dragons each of us are charged to slay are real to us.
That is not to say that we do not sometimes seek"drama" outside of the flow of normal life.I remember when I was younger actually saying to someone that my life had become dull and that I was going to make an unwise decision just to "add some drama" to my life.I succeeded.It turned out to be dramatic not only in my own life, but it was dramatic in many others also.The drama would be labeled tragic.
Yet would it by anyone else be labeled tragic? Or just a small rut or bump along a relatively flat line on that bar graph of life?
i feel we make these stories because of a deeper meaning though, when humans do not have crisis in their lives they have to create it because solving conflict is how we learn, we want drama and more excitement so we can receive the benefits of overcoming said problems and expanding our minds.
This is classic.
this is so true and awesome...
I went to a 12-step program to stop from being attracted to the drama that addicts bring into your life. To get off the rollercoaster.
But I am a six-time cancer survivor. It's hard to get rid of drama when the cancer keeps coming back!
Vonnegut's explanation is so real! Also, I like the way his "ordinary life" chart edges higher (towards the ecstasy end) as we grow older.
Derek,
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is insightful.
However, if there is one comment I can make - it will be about the graph that is shown for the "real life." It looks like the ups and downs in real life are very minor compared to what's shown in the movies.
Unfortunately, that is not true. Ask someone who lost his job or got dumped by his boyfriend/girlfriend and the pain they go through is real and it is in no way a small bump in the road.
Having said that, I love the graphs and thanks for sharing.
Best,
Rajesh
Rajesh - I think he'd argue that these things are actually no big deal. So you had a breakup or got fired, it's not the end of the world, you'll get over it. Also see my favorite fable. -- Derek
Life isn't so normal... what about drugs, near death experiences, war and genocide. What would someone's graph look like if they haven't eaten for days and then get a good meal or someone that looses his/her legs or entire family in a single act of hate. there are so many things in this world. The only thing I can agree with in this paradigm is the fact that life isn't a fairy tale.
fanEFFINGtastic!
Love the article, love the graphs, and I'm still a sucker for a good story. There's a bit of magic to looking at the ordinary and seeing the extraordinary.
Great post!
there's no such thing as a normal life. he reads books and studies so much he didnt experience much
Ehhh i like to think of my life a little more up and down than that still without drama. But maybe hes referring to the general population? Or maybe just his life was that boring.
It's a story. Something needs to happen, surely that's the point? I could tell you a story about how I've just taken a sip from my cup of tea, but it's not exactly riveting is it? Real life isn't fiction. It's mundane sometimes, in fact a lot of the time. These stories are a break from the inane narratives of everyday life, something has to happen. We're not trying to live in a fairytale at all, we're just enjoying a good writer spinning a good yarn to break the spiral of boredom. It's a good spot I grant you, but it's no more insightful than that.
I like.
I learned a lot from this.
you can't say peoples lives are actually like this, pretty linear with some ups and downs but nothing in comparison to the "fairytale's" we grew up idolizing... if people create these situations (ie fights, and romances) then doesn't that make them true??
truth is beauty, beauty is truth- creating these situations makes them true so art is probably imitating life more than we think...
Very Cool man, This is so true! People do love to think their lives are supposed to be crazy fairy tale.
Real life is way too different from fantasy!
Very thought provoking
I am a dramatist and poet. My life is always exciting because I make it up as I go along.
I think that life is merely a waterfall. At birth, you're at the top and as you grow older you contionously fall through the water, eventually drowning in the end.
I think those that argue are lives ARE and should be an Adventure that mimics Vonneguts graph are missing the point.
The more subtle experiences in our lives don't rival the cataclysmic events in legends, but many people like to exaggerate their life events to be larger than life.( but if put in a story would be somewhat ho-hum)
The point is.. Why not enjoy life and not exaccerbate the lows, and also enjoy the highs.. Don't live "dramatically" making inconsequential events bigger than they are. And enjoys the blessing you've that have been bestowed upon you.
Use some of that energy fueling your drama to help others.
If you live in the U.S., no matter what tragedy happens to you, you're probably living 1000 times better than most people in 3rd world countries. So why the drama?
I think it's interesting but I respectfully disagree.
Some up's and downs but nothing to go down in history?? I dont see how someone could accept that. I realize I am only 19 and have yet to live a full life, but try to keep and open mind.
I know for a fact, as im sure many of you do, that I will remember certain events for the rest of my life. Death and life certainly do "go down in history".
"Drama" is not something you can always create, a lot of the time "drama" finds you. Thats not to say we all have BIG dramatic story ARCS like cinderella, but everyone has an arc...no straight lines in the world I live in...
I understand that he is trying to convey the idea that people prop up events that put them at the center of the universe, and make their events larger than life. But the truth of the matter is, some events are larger than life, and I think its wrong to dismiss all lives as a straight line with no "drama" or significant events. I feel like he is conveying the idea that our lives are reduced to happy or sad, and there is no significance in the individual.
Write down all the things that seem like a big deal to you now at 19, and seal them in an envelope. Open the envelope in a year and you'll realize they weren't as big a deal as you thought. Re-open the envelope in 10 years and you'll laugh at how they used to seem like a big deal at all. Re-open in 20 years and you'll actually get nostalgic for the days when you thought anything was that big of a deal. -- Derek
Friday June 18 2010 6 - 10 pm
a multiemedia exhibit and performance
Mills Community House
Benzonia, MI
6 mediums, 7 artists, great local cuisine and wine....
Lore
I just wanted to say Thank You for the insight...and not just this post, but all of them. I discovered your blog a couple of days ago and am enjoying it immensely...very refreshing and enlightening.
Vonnegut's theory on drama makes sense - and it's a perspective I hadn't considered. We are story-loving creatures by nature...hard-wired for it.
I was contemplating "drama creation" after just watching a friend willfully tank her life - an addiction to drama.
The funniest example I've seen was when I went into the hospital for a double mastectomy. I was passing out booby lollipops to the nurses and doctors...a nurse walked in and said she heard what I was doing and had to come see for herself (here's the drama) - she said she had to come see this because SHE was having a really bad day!
(All I could think was, "Wow, I've got cancer, three aunts my age (young) - all dead from the same disease, I'm having a double mastectomy...and YOU're having a bad day?!? ---- You're day must REAllY suck!)
Thanks again for sharing your gifts!
Best,
Sandra
yes our lives feel very boring and insignificant. right? But Kurt Vonnegut said that for thousands of years the same story arc has been going on for thousands of years. but it is his interpretation that we have a problem when we want our life to to be like a great story. I disagree. I think we story lovers are on to something even if we aren't aware of it. The famous writer C.S lewis had a quote which i don't know word for word but I will paraphrase. he said to the effect. " practically Every desire that humans have there is a thing to full fill that desire. if we are hungry there is food to eat. If we are tired than we have sleep, then he says that there are desires that he has that nothing on this earth can fulfill. he concludes that there must be something that will fulfill thoses desires aswell.
So what i am saying is that the need for our ancestors to tell us great stories is not a problem but a clue, that our desire for a great story or epic is essential because there must be a greater story we are involved in that we are clueless too. Kinda like when you are in a math course that you are not qualified for because you haven't learned the basics. but for those who did learn all the math prior to this course,the seemingly hard math makes perfect sense for them and they are able to do it. Or when you arrive at a movie 40 minutes late. you have no idea what the hell is going on but there is this nagging urge to understand it and find the meaning of the movie you are watching.
I believe it is the same for our life. When we really look at the world and ponder it, we have to come to some conclusions. Obviously something bigger is going on here. How do you explain flowers,horses, insects " that can fly!" etc There's so much skill invloved on this planet that there must be something greater going on. It's as if we are dropped on a stage not knowing the script, therefore we can;t interpret what is going on, we have no clue.
But that doesn't mean our lives are supposed to be meaningless.
I think that’s backwards. People need drama, therefore they came up with fiction. The need for things to make sense came first; fiction is its consequence, not its cause.
So what caused the need for drama? IMO it’s an inevitable byproduct of a brain that can spot patterns and do logic – i.e. of thinking, of being a thinking animal. I think, therefore I want life to make sense, therefore I get annoyed that it doesn’t, therefore I make up stories.
i love fairy tales and myths ; they offer the purest of archytypical images to learn from, to apply to our lives to dis-create the drama we infuse it with....
unfortunately, when we continue to tell our drama stories, i wonder if it is indeed a deep seated need to keep ourselves from ourselves
just a personal note on vonegut jr, (i think he is survived by his son) . his former residence, a rather large house with a larger backyard in iowa city iowa was the site of the annual may day event. I drank his beer many a time at the same house. the parties stopped some fifteen years ago along with his life. another point vonegut survived a lifetime chainsmoking habit, unlike orwell.
thats why we need to add a little imagination to our reality, make choices that lead to the type of adventure we crave. thats how ive decided to live my life. im 19 and by the time my life is near over i will have a book written about my life. full of adventure and truth and fantasy. because thats gonna be how i see it how i live it. and i bet itll be a best seller. just wait and see.
In the event I jump off a cliff and get the same high as Cinderella momentarily maybe you'll change your mind. Otherwise, I will blame you for writing this. If my life turns into a complete boredom, and nothing exciting ever shivers up my spine, or makes me smile.
I came across this post via StumbleUpon today. I'm a Writing Tutor at a University in SC. In 1997, Vonnegut visited our school and gave this same lecture; we actually have the board he drew the graph on framed. It's hanging in our Writing Center now. I shared this link on our Facebook today, because many of our students no longer know what the graph means. Thanks for helping us share the knowledge!
I wish I could recall who sent me here, (via Twitter). I'm so glad they did. This is such a thought-provoking post. Thanks so much for that!
What a humdrum view of life, there can be nothing more exciting than life, any life and for the most of there is incidents of love and tragedy, success failure, the highs and lows are all there, everyone's felt like they cannot go on, everyone has felt like they're having the greatest day of their life. This seems like pseudo-intellectualism and is really just pessimistic. Sorry, but life is so much more than a straight line with a couple of squiggles for the odd variation.
More to it than that though. These 'arcs' or archetypes of the hero story are universal bc they ring true to humans - have no time to elaborate but check out Joseph Campbell..."The Hero With A Thousand Faces"...ALL our lives mirror the hero's journey in big ways or small ways. That's why we're drawn to story-telling.
I hold advanced degrees in playwriting: my life is a drama every day.
In fond memory of Mr. Vonnegut, who gave me "Cat's Cradle" at just the right time.
This is great! but whats wrong with a little adventure? Life is too boring, we gotta make it into something fairy-tale-ish even if it is just something unreal seen in movies.
This is an amazing interpretation.It is for first time that i have seen someone explaining a scenario with this kind of graphs.Our life is just ordinary with small ups and downs.But thoughts within us makes it a big and then whines.Those who lives practically,will take it lightly and move on with caution.Yeah people love action and drama cos,there is nothing like that in life.When i see my mom watching some drab soap opera's,i can sense,that she is trying to live some exaggerated lifestyles of women through thoughts and tears.When life is stressful,i wondered why she hates soemthing cheerful.Tragedy sells big time,thats the moral of the story.
Just wanted to say "AMEN"! This is priceless.
thank you Mr Vonneget for Slaughter house 5.
I would also like to thank you for this article (both the author and presenter).
Most people live lives of quiet desperation so they need their highs and lows.This is why drama is such a mainstream subject of TV, films, books etc and why one of the first things I do each morning is to check the news for something interesting!
God's Story of creation, mankind's original glory, the fall of mankind, and its ultimate redemption through Christ is a story full of similar drama, and I think the reason we have always been drawn to these kinds of stories is because ultimately we are haunted by that story.
The problem is, that people decide what matters to them, and if they care deeply about sports, then the stories of those sports become important. Plus, don't act like World Wars I and II didn't happen.
While I agree with the central premise of this post, I'm left wondering if this is a problem or if its the central motiving factor for action.
If we were not motivated by a belief that normal life could be comprised of grand expressions of drama, who why would anyone aspire to greatness. And where would the connection to tragedy be? Where would we find the connection that inspires people to get up and help?
And what is life without drama and hope? If you don't see life as an adventure, why bother to participate? I guess what I mean to say is, if people didn't believe in fairy tales why would anyone ever leave the house?
Cheers,
-=Daniel=-
I saw him deliver the same lecture years ago. He was excellent! In the one that I saw he also charted The Metamorphosis, which he depicted with a starting point slightly below the middle line and which dropped off the chart on the first page and stayed bad forever. His point in this lecture was that great literature employs ambiguity to force the reader into participation in the text. He put Hamlet on the chart and explained that each major event which motivated the plot could not be characterized as clearly good or bad (eg the ghost at the beginning) and therefore Hamlet appeared as a flat line in terms of happiness/unhappiness or good/bad, leaving the reader to decide the true nature of the story.
It was a great lecture.
Really? I wish my real life looked that calm. I can point to at least 5 real life, big happenings that would drop that nice red line to the bottom of the Y axis and stay there for a very long period of time before returning to baseline. Must be nice to have a calm life.
Jayson above makes a good point. I think the variable missing is how close ones perception of misery and Ecstasy is. Another words, where more people can take the blow of daily life and put less weight in its ups and downs, others, the ups and downs reflect more severely. Also, ones level of severity and ecstasy differs too. What may get one person excited (normal person winning a million dollars) might not excite another person (a billionaire winning a million dollars). Life is a bit more dynamic.
I love Vonnegut. I saw him speak at UVa about 20 years ago, and he used the same drama arc example, except he finished it a bit differently.
Instead of fairy tales, he speculated on how the greatest work of literature would look on the grid. He chose "Hamlet."
At the beginning, Hamlet's father has been killed. Line starts at the bottom. And, of course, everything that happens in the story to him is terrible, so the line runs straight across the bottom to the end. Hilarious!
Nice post, but I think he has it backwards. Drama came first and that's why we have the well of stories, mythologies, etc., from which we all draw. These are explanations of life, amplified, of course, but explanations nonetheless that both explain experience and help shape how others interpret it.
In the final graph, the line does vacillate between ecstasy and misery, but not much beyond the baseline. Perhaps in the grand COLLECTIVE narrative that we create in our vast cultural networks, that may not seem like the pumpkin at the ball or the 8th ring of hell-- the minuscule amount of derivation from the baseline, that is-- but in each of our individual daily existences (our everyday lives) these "small" derivations seem quite LARGE.
So, I think Vonnegut has it backwards here, IMO. People don't invent fights because of the grand narratives/myths that define our cultural history. It's not that we are trying to make our lives into fairy tales. Rather, fairy tales, and the stories, myths, proverbs that produce/are produced by our culture grow out of people trying to understand their original experience.
You know what story I always liked? The Hobbit. Dude just wants to be left alone, and enjoy his tea...but *nnnooooooo*...life has to come interfere and make everything needlessly dramatic.
That's my life.
‘Drama’ is a construct of the narcissistic ego. People are in love with their dramas and nurture them whole heartedly. When one takes responsibility for one’s own experience of life it is discovered that drama is created for the 'juice' of it. At this realization the motivation to create drama in one’s own life will unravel and over time the propensity toward this type of self stimulating and manipulative behavior will dissolve into the nothingness from whence it came. :O) Something to note is that few (very few) would ever have the insight (or ask for the insight) into how to diminish and dissolve the self created drama in one's life and most, given the tools to do so, would simply use the tools to spin yet another yarn of drama thereby stepping off the true path to enlightenment.
I disagree with this explanation. People don't feel the need to create drama due to a warped perception of what they think life is meant to be like. You trying to tell me that the story of Cinderella (or similar) invented drama in people's lives? Of course not. I think that some people feel the need to create or exaggerate drama in there lives because it provides them with stimulation. It gives them something to talk about.
Traffic Jams reflect this thought as well.
1. accident happens
2. people slow down to look at traffic in hopes that they "accidentally" see something gruesome or dramatic.
a. In this way they are absconded of all responsibility of actually seeking out drama, it "just happened."
3. person is - 90% of the time - NOT rewarded with gruesome or dramatic.
4. person creates misery for others and themselves
Ironically the drama they create is in the extreme overreaction of others to a traffic jam.
this is excellent, made me realize an important truth about todays society.
Amazing article. Very few impress me --> You have surpassed.
Pretty interesting post and comments here, took a while for me to read through all of it. Admittedly, I like a bit of drama in my life because it makes everything more interesting despite causing a lot of problems.
I blogged about Kurt Vonnegut once, in that he wrote they dug the coal from beneath WV and one day the state became a sinkhole. Today they just knock the top off the mountains. Messy business, commerce. I worked 23 solid years putting together computer applications. This year, 2010, I have nothing but failure. All of a sudden I became less than important to companies. I personally am giving my time over in new Open Source projects, hoping for a little cash. It was always the work that gave me peace. Thanks for reaching out. Best Wishes!
For people comparing their own lives to this concept, another side:
please consider separating the physiological aspects of daily life from the psychological for a moment....and give biology its due.......... so that the more one can lead a good healthy lifestyle, diet, meditation, exercise, etc. no drugs; the more one's body is prepared to ride the tide of "drama" and "stress", resilient to the extremes so that one can cope with the lows and not get too amped up about the highs. ...daily happiness can be a natural component of life.
With your brain and body functioning on that calmer, more harmonious plane, the psychological drama will naturally not be as "charming" to the nervous system, so behavior will gradually tend to lead to more happiness.
"Why stir the pot", when there is an easier way to experience the journey.
And so it goes - KV
I thought something was wrong with me, because I'm telling people all the time that "It's just not that serious..." and they give me strange stares or think that I am not empathetic. This is not the case at all.
I have realized that the things that I thought were crucial at 16 were just trivial. As you get older, your perspective changes and you begin to realize, "And this,too, shall pass..."
I just try to get as much enjoyment out of life each day as possible. Sure, there are ups and downs, but that's just life. I get my doses of drama from the books I read.
I am exploring this world of drama...in real life and internally. Situations arise in life and I am learning how to be able to look at these situations from a variety of perspectives...but all in all I would prefer the situations didnt arise at all.
I prefer open and honest communication...I am not a fan of drama in life. I actually enjoy the commonplace things in life, harmony and of course love to feel some excitement.
I dont believe life is a game.
love happens when we can meet each other in very simple ways.
This means that my life is a waste...
Kurt Vonnegut has no clue as to what real life is about. To call 'Real Life' mundane is gaseous and linear at best.
I can understand his problem, since he seems to have never smelled or seen an exotic celestial flower nor felt it's influence.
"A straight line has an invisible depth that few can see or follow" Why? It knows it's destination and is content to keep its mysteries and strength to itself.
Another example of judging the 'Dancing Man' and Cinderella without appreciating Attitude; the means of innovation and altitude.
i have got to admit...this has kind of depressed me...i know its true, but...i wish it wasn't
Maybe. And that's what choice is all about. We get to choose the stages we will watch, the stages we will be a part of, and the stages we will choose to walk away from or ignore.
Its really depressed me.
oh i could only dream of that flat line life... no mine is pretty much a roller coaster graph
I have heard this described before as the Disney Princess syndrome but I really like the graphics used to illustrate it. It adds a nice dimension to it.
yes people are sad and useless ....except for very few examples !!
So in all, don't care too much enjoy life as it comes to you....whatever happens gives u an experience to make your future better...
Derek! I don't know where you found people whose real life is represented by the third graph!
Either I hang exclusively with dramaticians and heroes, or life is a little more dynamic that this.
There is a grain of truth to this, especially for humanistic thinkers but what I have experienced since being born again as a Christian 17 years ago at age 42 is that life's many undramatic highs and lows that most people experience have INFINITE POWER and MEANING when we become aware of the awe inspiring dramatic power that our creator has to change our lives for the better WHEN WE LET HIM! Yes folks, what the Bible says IS actually true, incredible and REAL! I am so grateful that I finally discovered that and came out of the constant disappointment born of my former spiritual ignorance.
genius. it makes drama queens look really pathetic. and it makes me want to avoid being one. i'm reserving my drama for my screenplay...
Love what Abby just wrote. She's so right and so very few people attain the level of communication with the Holy Spirit. It's a lonely place when we know where Home IS and we still live here... AND we know we're on a mission and we can't change a single person that we come in contact with. The best that we can do is to continue to tell people about the Truth; and each time that you do, it's like putting a 'spiritual deposit' into an aggressive growth mutual fund. In turn, you'll see your spiritual power increase! So, do not be dismayed. Live life in an even keel... risking "it" all to share what's happening in your life.
THAT being said, those people in my family that CONSTANTLY keep their noses in "romance novels", then try to extract and replicate some of the drama in their books into our lives: well, these people drive me insane, on a personal level. Your article helped point out how literally devoted and stuck some people can become on drama. Thank you so much for putting a visual perspective on drama in the lives of those that "could/can" affect us.
Right now, because I've shared Truth with so many, and I've called out my siblings, with very crass language because I could not stand their drama, deceit, lies, and b.s. As it is now, they've all disowned me. And now, that I basically have their drama out of my life, I actually like my immediate family again! No one's picking on my daughter or husband. No one to for me to listen to pumping negative b.s. into my mind. And LIFE is FINALLY rocking steady and ENJOYABLE. I never would have 'thunk' that TOTAL EMOTIONAL DISTANCING would GIVE ME CLARITY.
Your article gives about as much visual clarity and credence to the kind of life that I am experiencing for the first time in my life.
How did I come to this place? My mother died and I was pushed to do something morally wrong and I called every single family person out about their thought processes about life. I then had a few rather curt blunt things to say that left no stone unturned. Sometimes I wish I kept some of what I was thinking to myself. But in retrospect, I have no regrets.
I was a vonnegut fan back in my early 20's. He has a pessimistic view on the world. He is right about many things. Who wouldn't be depressed knowing about the shit we are in?
Regarding this chart: Not always so. My life has been very much like Cinderella and the well tale. Before something truly dramatic happened I did make unnecessary drama though. I think that most people do until they actually have something to cry about. One would hope that people could feel the gravity of tragedy in their lives and have it be a catalyst for change.
He has been in a couple movies.
I love this and I totally agree.
Well Derek you keep stunning me with great thoughts, ideals and now my favorite writer Vonnegut!!!
You are quite the inspiration and thanks for emailing me. On Kurt: I wish I was lucky enough to attend his lecture. But back to the comments: I think everyone's life has a mixture of all the above. The sad part truly is the dramatoids, the ones that will invent/create drama about regular mundane stuff and build years of conflict over it. I, for one, like excitement, joy (find the good stuff, the happy side of the coin)and pleasure in the rare moments when other humans don't have hidden agendas and share kindness instead of criticism.
WoW its like saying, as the ice cream sales go up there are more cases of drowning.... does ice cream sale drown people ... noooo both happen in summer time.. the Cinderella is so famous cause people could relate to the troubles in life and it gives them hope that there will be good things in their life... the story is not about drama, just about hope. we humans don't need drama in our life but in order to deal with the drama we all look for positive ways. make drama exciting so dealing with it would be fun.Be a little posive dude, we don't need drama just need to get through it.
Kurt Vonnegut should find other ways to be famous :/
It's funny how this post is still getting comments. I believe most people who are responding negatively do not get the point.
Everybody's life is filled with ups and downs, very personal - EXTREME - ups and downs, but we are a part of nature. On this scale of nature, of the way things work, obviously the human race is extraordinary, but drama is something we created. That is the point.
Does your cat stage shows? Nah.
She/he is too busy being mystified by life. As we all should.
Excellent! Many thanks!