MUSIC, ART AND WORDS

Public radio and television often ask for contributions to keep their stations and channels alive. We’re asked what our lives would be like without the arts—I began to consider all the ways fine art has influenced my career as a writer.

After washing my face, brushing my teeth and throwing on my “work” clothes, the first thing I do in the morning—even before brewing coffee—is adjust the dial on our radio to our listener funded classical music station. Often a favorite composer’s work is played encouraging a quick sit-down at the computer and prompting page after page from a now psyched up author. Weekends—a change of pace—I listen to Jonathan Schwartz as he plays and talks about musical comedy and jazz greats. He plays Sinatra and Clooney, the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald and the singer’s singer Mabel Mercer and I inhale the music and lyrics of Rogers and Hart, Kern and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim—oh what lyrics, oh what words—the stories that are told in verse and refrain. What would I do without those stations?

Then there are our museums where I wander through gallery after gallery and lose myself in another land, another century, and another time. I stop and study sculptures of character and nuance—creations that evolve from marble, clay and metal when touched by the shaping hands of masters. Admire and sometimes fall in love with the perfect hero—a hero that I can only dream and write about. Self-interpret paintings that cover every taste from Renaissance to folk to modern to impressionist and the art of early Greeks, Romans, Africans, Asians and perhaps pre-historic ancestors whose DNA I may carry today. When I contemplate a photograph—I receive an impression of time, place, fashions, faces and bodies—the where, when, why, and who that germinate an idea or answer a question that triggers a story or article.

Books mean the most to me. Words make me dream with their brushstrokes of light and darkness, add a glimmer of hope to a sorry period in life, encourage a smile or gales of laughter, launch a voyage into the unknown. Words may lull me to sleep or make me think, imagine and believe. Books open my mind to the possible and—sometimes what I thought impossible becomes viable. Writers make use of a palette of words—words with colors vibrant and tender, charged with passion—words that open a door to another universe. 

What do the arts mean to you?

ESPIONAGE

Until and unless, an author achieves financial success with his or her writing—a second job is a necessity. Man may not live by bread alone but a few meals a day keep the stomach from growling. Some writers work as editors or teachers, we have an ex marine biologist in the group, several Carina authors are technical geniuses, I sang for my supper. But is there anyone here who ever considered spying? Would you be willing to Infiltrate the International Spy Museum and test your nerve, memory and gut instinct with hands-on exhibits, video and audio displays and touch-screen computers? Potential recruits are taught to use surveillance, photography, audio-capture equipment and disguise.
In the heart of Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown, a building filled with intrigue, treachery and terror draws enthusiastic fans, fascinated by the game of espionage, into a world of conspiracy. Can a novice learn to pick a lock? Bug an office, set up a listening post, and hack into a computer?
The father of our country, George Washington, authorized a spy network in New York in 1777. A letter exhibited at the museum illustrates his skill in the art of deception. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln hired Alan Pinkerton to organize our secret service. The all-seeing eye, Pinkerton’s symbol, led to the tag Private Eye, popular in genre novels, and noir films.
The museum’s artifacts include cameras that can be hidden in a cigarette pack, a wristwatch or a buttonhole in a coat. Cigarette guns, lipstick guns, a ring gun and a single shot device hidden inside a tube of skin cream seem like toys but all were carried by agents and are displayed at the museum. Russia’s KGB examined the exploits of Ian Fleming’s Agent 007 James Bond and our intelligence agencies studied and were inspired by his Aston Martin DBS that sported innovations such as a machine gun, bulletproof shield and dashboard radar screen.
James Fenimore Cooper wrote a novel, The Spy, in 1821; Joseph Conrad penned The Secret Agent in 1907. Alfred Hitchcock frightened the film-going public with The Man Who Knew too Much featuring Peter Lorre as the evil antagonist and North by Northwest with Cary Grant portraying a man mistaken for a spy.
Graham Greene’s The Third Man brought Orson Welles to the screen in 1949 with a part said to be modeled on the Cambridge spy, Kim Philby. The chase through Vienna’s sewers remains a classic. John Le Carre’s novels introduced George Smiley and we avidly read Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth; authors of books that send a chill up our spines and sell in the millions.
Television introduced Mission Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Avengers with Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee, and I Spy with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby to the then small screen—before Cosby became America’s much loved doctor and father. These shows led to spoofs like Get Smart, written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry starring Don Adams as Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. More recent send-ups of the genre include the Austin Powers and Spy Kids motion pictures.
How about it writers? Do you have an itch for espionage? Can you use your book as a cover? Ouch!

Bests,

Elise