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D. Gilbert Trout is the illegitimate son of Kurt Vonnegut's
famous character, Kilgore Trout. Consequently, he's a half-fictional
bastard. Like his father, he is a writer of science fiction, horror, and
fantasy that is often full of good ideas, but is poorly developed and
executed. He lives with his wife and imaginary friends in a small town in
Southeast Ohio USA dubbed “The Thirteenth Most Haunted Place on Earth” by the
British Society of Psychical Research. He enjoys Hermetic research, whip
artistry, and writing about himself in third person.
Lastly,
never let it be said that D. Gilbert Trout has ever let anything so boring,
mundane, and tedious as the truth get in the way of telling a good story.
Trout
expounds, “A little about me, (that “Daniel Trout” rather than my pseudonym/alter-ego
“D. Gilbert Trout.” We are ever so slightly different...for which there
are reasons, but anyway…) in addition to my writing pursuits, I am also a
graphic designer, media producer and filmmaker, and have called Athens home for
about 20 years. I try to specialize in working for small businesses and
non-profit organizations for my video and media design work. I'm
currently in the editing phases of a feature documentary about the Athens Local Food Movement that has been a LONG process of four years thus far.
And
yeah, that "whip artistry" thing in the above bio...I am sort of
obsessive about bullwhips. Indiana Jones was a pretty big influence on me
growing up. I've worked with a great number of the world’s finest whip
performers, and have spent some time teaching cowboys how to crack whips, and
working horses so that they don't spook as easy around loud noises, (you never
hit an animal with a whip - at least not the kind I use - it's strictly a noise
maker). I could go on for hours about
that. I only mention it because it might be of interest to your
equestrian contacts, but is pretty much outside the scope of any sort of
interview you might want to do.
My experience with horses is pretty narrow. I've ridden, but not as much as I'd like, (and I admit that most of my time in the saddle, the horse is in charge.) I've worked with a couple cowboys, teaching them to crack a whip, (out at Smoke Rise a number of years ago, as it helped add "Atmosphere" to the tours,) and have done a couple whip demonstrations and impromptu lessons to visitors out at Last Chance Corral to people who had traveled far to adopt a horse, (and had made charitable donations to help fund the work Victoria Goss and staff do out there) and I've stood in a ring cracking a whip in the direction of a horse that was spooking easy to sudden noises...The rider, FAR more the equestrian than myself, steadily reassuring that there was nothing that was going to harm the animal, so ever so slowly, the horse no longer jumped or flinched when I cracked a whip. But I do give lessons and do demonstrations to try to dispel a good amount about the negative image the bullwhip has mistakenly developed over the years...”
My experience with horses is pretty narrow. I've ridden, but not as much as I'd like, (and I admit that most of my time in the saddle, the horse is in charge.) I've worked with a couple cowboys, teaching them to crack a whip, (out at Smoke Rise a number of years ago, as it helped add "Atmosphere" to the tours,) and have done a couple whip demonstrations and impromptu lessons to visitors out at Last Chance Corral to people who had traveled far to adopt a horse, (and had made charitable donations to help fund the work Victoria Goss and staff do out there) and I've stood in a ring cracking a whip in the direction of a horse that was spooking easy to sudden noises...The rider, FAR more the equestrian than myself, steadily reassuring that there was nothing that was going to harm the animal, so ever so slowly, the horse no longer jumped or flinched when I cracked a whip. But I do give lessons and do demonstrations to try to dispel a good amount about the negative image the bullwhip has mistakenly developed over the years...”
When did
you realize you wanted to become a writer?
I
think I've always been a storyteller, and I really consider myself more of a
"Storyteller" than a "Writer," because there are some
stories I just don't think translate as well to prose as they do to spoken word
or motion picture, or animation...what have you. And I do...or have
done...work in all of those varied media to tell my own stories or to tell
someone elses. It's all storytelling.
I
have always LOVED stories, and there have always been stories rattling around
inside my head that managed to get out in some way or another. All of my
playing as a child involved these complex narratives. It was never just
"Cop/Robber" "Good Guy/Bad Guy" games with me. I
wanted to establish motivation and further define relationships between these characters in our roleplay
that would be an ongoing evolution between "Play Sessions."
There was no "reset switch" at the end of recess. When we
went back out on the playground, we picked up where we left off. No
"New Game." At least, not in the "D. Gilbert-Verse."
I think how I wanted to play was often very confusing to many other five
and six year olds, and I was considered kinda weird. I wasn't
particularly aware that I was doing it either. It was just as confusing
to me that they would find the "Bang! Bang! I Gotcha!" types of
roleplay interesting at all. That sort of thing bored me greatly, as did
sports. I didn't care about football, basketball, or baseball, (still
don't actually.) I was always more interested in sword fighting and
such. I didn't want to be a
quarterback in the NFL, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, (or, more often than
not, Darth Vader.)
The
actual road to being a "Writer" is a bit more complex. It's
been a long and winding path. I can't exactly tell you when I started writing
down stories, because it seems I was doing that as far back as I can remember.
But the stories typically reflected whatever I was interested in at the
time; Comic Books, Doctor Who, (the
original series. I'm a fan of the new one as well, but my love of Doctor Who goes back almost 36 years!)
Sci Fi, Horror...And I tended to mimic whatever writer I was in love with at
the time, so lots of silly British verbiage and tropes while reading Doctor Who and Douglas Adams, while a
bit more grim and gritty while reading Batman
comics by Alan Moore and Frank Miller.
I
was actually more interested in being a performer than a writer while I was
growing up. I did a bunch of musical theater in junior high and high
school, and I actually started college as a theater major. That lasted
about a year. It just hadn't dawned on me that I wasn't cut out for
theater as a career, because after 6
weeks of rehearsal, 2-3 weeks of performances, and some matinees, I was pretty
sick of doing the show. That's the exact opposite
of what you want as a working
actor. You want to stay in the
role, and keep that show going as
long as you can, because that means a steady paycheck and not having to go
through the torture of endless auditions.
Even
when I had decided not to be an
actor, it didn't sink in that part of the reason for that was the reluctance of
spending my life telling someone else's stories, and that I would be telling
those same stories over and over every night. That came
later. I decided that what I really
wanted to do was direct, so I began to study video production as a stepping
stone into film. Along the way, I completely fell in love with the
flexibility and immediacy of video and never went on to actual film, (which seems to have been a good thing, as there's not
much left shot on actual film
anymore.) Most of my work in that arena has been corporate, educational
or informational. I did tinker with narrative fiction screenwriting, but
never really fully developed anything.
Again,
in hindsight I understand why, but at the time I found my hesitation to produce
fiction fairly frustrating. Dramatic media production, (whether TV or
feature film,) is a very collaborative process. It is lots of people with lots of different visions and ideas creating one thing. Now, I love to create, collaborate, and build
shared universes. But my problem is I want to do it all! The actor
in me wants to play this role that
I've written, but I also want to
direct, I also want to be the camera
operator, I also want to edit...
It's
not even a game of "It's my ball,
and you'll let me do it my way or
I'll take it home!" It's that I love doing all of those things, and asking me to pick just one is very
difficult. Very early in my video production journey, a guy I greatly
admired said to me "KNOW IT ALL!," meaning learn every position in a production crew...not only to find what you really want to do and to make yourself
more valuable as a professional, but also
so when you step into the director's chair, you know exactly what every member of your crew has to deal with, and you
know exactly how to make your vision
manifest through them. I kinda took that to the extreme, and "KNOW
IT ALL" became "DO IT ALL!" I love too many positions in
that process to pick just one.
So,
while I've worked with a good number of people to bring their creative stuff to life, I haven't worked with too many other
folks on my own stuff.
I
was still writing through all of that; Short stories, scraps of ideas, fan
fiction and other derivative stuff...Nothing I actually had any plans on seeing
the light of day. I was just writing because I enjoyed it. I also
spent about 8 years teaching college full-time while finishing up a Masters
degree, so I was really busy with too much other stuff to consider publishing anything but academic non-fiction.
A
number of years ago, I started to put together a pitch for a TV series, and had
developed a good amount of a pilot script and a "Series Bible" (the
"Shared Vision" guide that the showrunners put together so the
executives, the production crew, the staff writers, etc. are all on the same
page as to what the series is about,) before I realized it was really too ambitious to do myself, and
getting any studio to back it would be impossible without considerable
compromise. I wasn't willing to make those compromises, so I began
working on it as a novel, and it was while I was hammering it out that I
decided that I really liked my prose, and perhaps there was a market for it,
(though it did take a couple other shifts in my thought patterns to actually
take steps toward publication, but we'll get to that.)
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What books
have you written?
To
date, just one… My first published work,
A Study in Gray, came out in May of this year, (2014.) I
self-published through Amazon CreateSpace, and it's currently available through
my website, dgilberttrout.com,
and through Amazon.com. You can also pick up copies in the gift shop at
Stacked Stones Retreat in the Hocking Hills, and there are plans to make it
available through a couple local retail bookstores here in Southeast Ohio.
It
is the first in my ongoing series, The
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Mysteries which are probably best described as
the "Paranormal Detective" genre, though I don't think it's quite as
formulaic as many other book series in that genre, (or if it is, it's formulaic
in very different ways.) Most other "Paranormal Detective"
fiction out there, especially by Indie Authors, is in the style of Harry
Dresden or Anita Blake, where the detective is some paranormal creature or has
some bizarre, tainted past that ties them forever to mayhem and magic.
But it seems to me that characters like Harry Dresden...himself a wizard...and
Anita Blake...Martial Artist Necromancer Vampire Hunting Badass
Extraordinaire...should be the SUBJECT of paranormal investigation, not the
ones doing the digging, and these type of series often take place in alternate
worlds that have different histories and rules than our own.
Don't
get me wrong, I LOVE that genre! In fact, I am working on a number of
World-building projects of my own, but MY paranormal investigators are just
"regular joes" that live in the same world that you and I do.
They get up in the morning, take a shower, have a bowl of cereal, a cup of
coffee, and go out trying to earn a living like the rest of us. It's just
their job that's kinda weird. They don't have spells, or swords, or magic
powers, (though Rosie is a pretty good shot with a pistol) their only
advantages in dealing with the madness are their wits, their experience and
their friends...
The
series follows two guys; Stan "Rosie" Rosencrantz and his partner
Jack Guildenstern, college buddies who investigate events of Grand High
Weirdness; Hauntings, UFO sightings, Psychic Phenomenon, Monsters, etc.
I
describe it as being one part Dashiell Hammett's Spade and Archer, and one part
Neil Simon's Oscar and Felix, and then throw in some creepy "Weekly World
News" headlines for good measure. It's funny, it's scary, and
hopefully folks find it entertaining.
Something
else I should point out about Jack and Rosie living in the "Same
World" we do. I base the scenarios in the Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern books, on actual reports. In addition to many other things
I've mentioned from my childhood, I Was a Teenage Agent Mulder. I was
studying reports of bizarre hauntings, UFO activity, Close Encounters with
aliens, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster from a VERY early age....reading
books on the subject right alongside Amelia Bedelia and Dr. Seuss. As a
little kid of age 8, I was pretty excited that I live just up the river from
Mothman's stomping ground, if that gives you some idea.
Something
that's always frustrated me about the "Paranormal" and
"Horror" genres is that the reports of actual events are often more
terrifying and bizarre than ANYTHING that could dreamed up in the imagination
of the author, (note that I am talking about reports of actual events...I'm not
saying that they really happened as reported, but I've seen too much from too
many intelligent, sensible people who have nothing to gain and everything to lose
in making these apparently outlandish claims. So, while many reports are
pranks and hoaxes, there is no doubt to me that many of these folks did indeed
experience something extraordinary. What it ACTUALLY was is all
conjecture, and whether the actual explanation is mundane or earth-shattering
doesn't matter. The fear, the awe, and the astonishment are real.)
I
hope to capture at least part of that Grand High Weirdness in my writing.
The general premise of A Study in
Gray is based directly upon the experiences of dozens of
self-identifying "Alien Abductees." It does however diverge
quickly and considerably as on page one, we find our hero driving down the
Pennsylvania Turnpike at three in the morning with a woman asleep in the passenger’s
seat, head wrapped in tinfoil, and a dead alien rolling around in the trunk...
I
think that gives you a good idea of what to expect from the book.
What are
you currently writing?
I'm
currently working on a couple things. The second "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern" book, Tomb of the
Adena, which I hope to have ready for human consumption by May or June of
2015. This adventure will take Jack and Rosie to an archeological dig in
Southeast Ohio where the investigation of some very strange artifacts leads to
even more strange phenomena that the Ghost-hunting Gumshoes are brought in to
consult in on. It will have a bit of an Indiana Jones feel to it, (or at
least Jack WANTS it to have an Indiana Jones feel.) There are other books
in the series planned out beyond that, but it's not like J.K. Rowling or George
R. R. Martin where events DIRECTLY follow one another in an extended plot arc
across several books. The R+G adventures are much more in the style of
Sherlock Holmes and the pulp novel series of the '50's and '60's where there
may be SOME continuity between books, but for the most part, they are meant to
stand independently of one another.
I'm
also writing Book 1 of a Post-Steampunk series I've been working on. I
say "Post Steampunk" because it takes place in the early years of an
alternate 20th Century, in which many developments of "Steampunk
Genre" technology occurred, but have since been supplanted by the technological
genius of Nikolai Tesla. In MY universe, it was Tesla's visions of the
future rather than Tom Edison's that became the basis for the technological
revolution. It is Tesla that is touted as the most brilliant man in the
world, and Edison who died a pauper.
So,
Electricity is generated via harnessing the Earth's own magnetic field,
hydroelectric power, etc. etc. and rather than Edison and Westinghouse
spreading wide the "For Profit" model. Tesla's almost endless
supply of power is made free for all the world who wish to use it and AC
current is beamed directly to devices "wirelessly" via a network of
towers like the one Tesla actually experimented with at his Wardenclyffe
facility in upstate New York, (and functions similarly to our cellular data network,
except providing power, not communication.)
With
electricity being a readily available nigh-on "Universal" natural
resource, there is a fairly dramatic shift in the socioeconomic face of Europe
and North America. The Great War does not happen as it does in our world,
and an EU-like alliance of nations, known as The Europa Republique comes into
existence.
I'm
not really giving anything away by talking about this. Everything I just
told you is really just the backdrop to a coming-of-age story about Colin
DeVere, a kid who goes off to rescue the love of his life from being used as a
political pawn, and all the people he meets and the adventures they all have
along the way. The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stuff I've written
primarily for adults, as there's some mature subject matter and some fairly
coarse language. The Europa books will be tween-friendly, but will
hopefully be engaging enough for adults as well.
I
really want to get Tomb of the Adena out
before I worry too awful much about that, but look for at least a PREVIEW of Chasing Europa with the release of Tomb.
There.
I think I've shilled enough.
What are
you currently reading?
Mostly
non-fiction. I'm currently reading a number of books on European
Renaissance Magic, Alchemy, and Swordplay for a project that's still somewhat
hush-hush, a bunch on Tesla and pre-WWI Europe, and both the Thule and Vril
Societies in post WWI for Europa. I'm reading a bunch of somewhat
"Fringe Anthropology"/Hidden History material about pre-historic
earthworks in the Midwest and the people who may or may not have built them to
further flesh out Tomb of the Adena.
I
have a few fiction books that are waiting patiently to be read, but I have no
idea when I'm going to get to them. They've been sitting there quite a
while as well. I'd really like to appear to be incredibly dedicated and
say that EVERYTHING I've mentioned is solely for my fiction writing, but alas,
that's not it entirely. I have strange obsessions, and unfortunately with
a lot of these topics, once you start digging that rabbit hole, it just gets
deeper and deeper.
My
wife seems to have infinite patience...
Who is
your favorite author?
There
are a bunch. The first one that always springs to mind is Clive
Barker. If there was anyone who I ever wanted to write like, it would be
Clive. His writing is so incredibly visceral...repulsive and sexy at the
same time. The musician Tom Waits once said "I like beautiful
melodies telling me terrible things." That's how Clive's prose
is. He writes such eloquent filth.
I'm
also a big fan of Vonnegut. That should be obvious, but Kurt's incredible
honesty and simplicity just bowl me over while barely containing this barbed
satirical wit. Kurt also is the inspiration for my work in so many ways, which
I'll get to in a minute.
I
think that Alan Moore has been a big influence on ME more so than anything I've
written or that I'm working on. Moore tends to be touted as this 20th
century genius that redefined comic books as literature. If you ask Alan,
he'll probably just tell you that he writes comics and "Funny books."
He's rather non-assuming like that, but he has this grandiose strut and
ego as well that make people either like him or hate him, (which I relate to,
or at the very least STRIVE to relate to.) I honestly prefer Alan WRITING
about his writing than the writing itself. His stances on writing,
creating art, magic and defining our own reality resonate VERY deeply with
me. I think that I could probably sit down to a meal with Clive Barker
and even the late Kurt Vonnegut, and be able to carry on at least a passably
intelligent conversation. I think I would be nervous and star-struck to
sit down with Alan Moore.
Your Dad
is an author, too. Did he influence your writing career?
OK...On
the subject of creating magic and defining our own reality, I really need to
come clean about a couple things.
First
of all, let me tell you a little about my father, who is quite the
character...literally.
Kilgore
Trout was an awful father, or at least, I imagine he was because I never knew
him. Additionally, he was not the most upstanding of citizens. He
spent a significant amount of time living in basements in Illium and Cohoes,
New York, and it appears that he was the ONLY American to be convicted of
treason during the Korean War.
However,
he was a rather prolific writer. The current tally is that he wrote over
117 novels and 2000 short stories. I think one of the best descriptions
of his writing is that he had GREAT ideas, but lacked either the talent or
motivation to see them through effectively. Nevertheless, he has a very small
but fiercely loyal fanbase...or he did..until October 15th 2004, when he
consulted a New York Psychic who informed him that George H. W. Bush would be
elected for a second term to the Presidency. That night, rather than
facing four more years, he topped himself off in his basement in Cohoes by
drinking Drano.
The
epitaph on his tombstone reads "Life is no way to treat an animal."
Another
bit of trivia. My father, Kilgore Trout, was also entirely
fictional. He was a character that the aforementioned Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
created as a rather unflattering caricature of his friend and fellow writer,
Theodore Sturgeon. In later appearances, Trout almost became a cypher for
Vonnegut himself: A chain-smoking shabby man with many regrets and a keen
intellect coupled with a rather low opinion of himself.
Vonnegut
also really liked to blur the lines between the worlds that existed in his head
and the world his head existed in. Kurt himself appeared in his book Slaughterhouse Five. The book's
protagonist, Billy Pilgrim encounters the author as a scared young American
World War II soldier, cowering in fear and cold in a burned out building during
the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut also appears directly in his novel Breakfast
of Champions, of which Kilgore is one of the main characters. To sum up
quickly, Vonnegut strolls right up to his character, Kilgore Trout, and
declares him a free man, no longer slave to the whim of the author and free to
define his own destiny rather than succumb to a fate of Vonnegut's devising.
That, Vonnegut thought, was the end of it.
But
it wasn't quite that simple. Kilgore Trout wasn't so much a free man as a
free agent, and just because Vonnegut no longer manipulated Trout's life, that
didn't stop other two-bit hacks with a typewriter and corrective fluid from
trying their hand.
The most well-known of these is Philip Jose' Farmer's attempt, which resulted in the novel Venus on the Halfshell. The least well known of these resulted in me.
The most well-known of these is Philip Jose' Farmer's attempt, which resulted in the novel Venus on the Halfshell. The least well known of these resulted in me.
Breakfast of Champions came out in 1973. I
came out in 1974.
My
mother, a rabid Vonnegut fan, wrote what would today be considered an erotic
piece of fan-fiction featuring Kilgore, and nine months later, there I was.
Now,
before it gets too deep in here, (too late) I really should get to the coming
clean part. After being a storyteller for as long as I can remember, a
"Writer" (in terms of being "Published" anyway) and a
"Media Professional" for the better part of two decades, I see myself
as a professional liar. But a lie can be a really precious thing as long
as everyone's in on it. It's the lies that only a few are in on...the
governments, the corporations, the special interest groups...that are
damaging. Those are lies to CONCEAL the truth. Art creates lies
that REVEAL truth.
Now,
I like facts, don't get me wrong. Facts are very important things in
medicine, legal matters, police work, etc. Facts are ESSENTIAL. I
am not a police officer. Nor am I a doctor or lawyer, (often to my
mother's chagrin.) I am a proud storyteller.
If
Kilgore's epitaph is about how the ASPCA should boycott life, then mine should
read, "Never let anything as boring and mundane as fact get in the way of
telling a good story."
But
to tell the truth, (which is a funny thing to say after spinning that yarn)
Kilgore did give me the tools I needed to write.
Now
I'm being completely honest in saying that I don't use a "Pen Name."
The name on my birth certificate is not all that different from the name
on the cover of my book. I've been asked, "any relation to Kilgore
Trout?" on more than one occasion, (a display of wit I find refreshing
compared to the more common, "Ya like fishin'?" or "I caught
your cousin the other day!") I always try to answer smarm with
smarm, and so the tale of a half-fictional bastard was born. But, truth
be told, I think there are many aspects of my biography that sound like
fiction, so maybe there's something to it.
I
also have a lot in common with Kilgore in terms of how I view my own
writing. I think I have good ideas that I often don't feel I have the
skill to pull off as a writer. As a result, I have a lot of fragmentary
stories and undeveloped ideas, and very little finished material.
With
a portfolio of over 2000 short stories and over 100 novels, Kilgore, fiction or
otherwise, did not have this problem. It seemed to me that I either
needed to be a better writer, OR I needed lower standards.
So,
rather than approach my writing AS myself, I invented a fictional character to
write THROUGH. I'd had this story about a detective driving down the
Pennsylvania Turnpike with a dead alien stinkin' up his trunk clanging around
in my head for years. I'd written about half of it down, and knew where
it had to go. The story is written from one of the detective's
perspective, so why don't I go one level deeper? Write AS the character D
Gilbert Trout writing AS the character Stan Rosencrantz? Inception
Authoring!
It
was a silly idea. I didn't take it seriously or expect anything to come
of it, but I tried it anyway.
The
half-manuscript to A Study in Gray had
been sitting on my hard drive for years, waiting for the real guy to finish
it. I gave D. Gilbert a crack at it on a Friday, and there was a finished
first draft on the following Monday.
It's
neurotic as hell, but it worked.
I
have one more quote from Vonnegut, my "Literary Grandfather," and
it's my favorite of all of his, (and there are so SO many,) and this really
summarizes everything about my approach to who I am and ESPECIALLY how I write:
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend
to be."
Somehow, I
think you must have poetry in you as well. Can you share a favorite poem of
your own creation?
If
I have poetry in me, it traditionally has a hard time finding its way
out. I don't consider myself a poet, and I've never liked anything I've
written as "poetry." I do enjoy turning a good alliterative or
evocative phrase, but in terms of writing poetry with rhyme and structure, I'm
awful. I really admire poets that can express so much while still
building their sentences within the confines of a structure like a quatrain,
couplet, or iambic pentameter. If any of my prose has a poetic color to
it, then it's obviously been a good day.
What
instruments do you play?
I
used to sing a lot...like semi-professionally back in the early days of
college, but years of disuse have pretty much got my pipes pretty rusty.
These days about the only singing I do is in the shower. Beyond that, I'm
a drummer. I'm very specific about that. I'm a "drummer,"
not a "percussionist". Percussionists are musicians.
Drummers are guys who hang around with musicians and hit things with
sticks. I used to do some Middle Eastern drumming for belly dancers here
in Southeast Ohio, but I haven't done that for a few years now.
And you
are a Whip Artist! When did you become a whip artist?
I've
been fascinated with the bullwhip since 1981 when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. I wasn't that
into Cowboys and Indians growing up. I like Zorro, but all I knew was the
Disney version, and Guy Williams never used a whip on-screen that I
remember. So, in that opening scene set in the jungle where Indy whips
the gun out of the guys hand...where the whip gets its big close-up even before
Harrison Ford does...I was completely blown away!
That
began a long process of trying to figure out how it worked. I had all
sorts of crappy whips growing up: Cheap goatskin with guts made of sisal rope,
home-made whips made from braided shoestrings... just utter crap.
Then
about 11 years ago, I decided to do something completely insane for my 30th
birthday, and I took a 2-day long bullwhip handling workshop from a guy over
near Dayton [Ohio], (some people go on drinking binges, some throw huge
parties, or jump out of airplanes...Me...I get bullwhip lessons.)
Gery Deer is a whip coach from Jamestown,
Ohio who has a lot of the same problems that I do. He couldn't decide
what he wanted to be when he grew up, so he did everything! (and he's still a
very good friend. He compartmentalizes his various careers a bit more
than I do; including whip artistry. Since then, I have had the honor of working with some of the best whip
performers and whip makers in North America; Guinness World Record holders,
Hollywood stunt people, cabaret and burlesque performers, wild west show folks,
martial artists...All amazing people who share the unique passion for this
archaic tool! The whip is rather unique. Every culture that
domesticated herd animals on the planet developed a whip of some kind, and if
you look at cultures that historically had no contact with one another, you'll
still find similarities in their whips. This wide diversity has also
unfortunately created a great number of misconceptions about whips, their use,
and how they work.
Contrary
to common belief, using a bullwhip properly is not cruel. The bullwhips I use
are of an Australian design and construction technique, (and are the same ones
that you see in the Indiana Jones and Zorro movies, in fact I have bullwhips
from the folks who made them those films,) and these types of whips were never
designed to be used to strike an animal or a person. They're designed to
be noise-makers. The cracking sound that they produce occurs when the tip
of the whip breaks the sound barrier. Herd animals tend to shy away from loud
noises, so if you crack a whip to one side of them, they tend to go the other
direction. So, crack the whip behind them, you get the herd moving
forward. If the herd starts veering off to the left, crack the whip on
that side of them, and they'll start meandering to the right.
That's
not to say that a whip wouldn't cause a lot of pain and damage if you hit
something or someone with it. As I said, the tip of the whip is breaking
the sound barrier. That's a minimum of about 768 mph at sea level, or
about 1200 feet per second, which is faster than the muzzle velocity of any
commercially available handgun round. The tip of the whip may only be a
twisted piece of string tied to the end of a slightly thicker piece of leather
or nylon cord, but at that speed, it can cut flesh like a hot knife through
butter. You don't want to use that on cattle. If you're a cowboy
driving a herd of cattle to market, and you're actually smacking and animal
with a bullwhip, it will A) Damage the hide and the bruise or cut into the
flesh of the animal, thereby reducing the quality of the leather and meat and
consequently the market value, and B) most likely cause a stampede, which may
likely kill you, your fellow cattlemen, and probably several head of cattle in
the process. Really dumb. However, using a bullwhip for what it was
designed for...making noise...is probably the safest, most humane method of
moving cattle over land for long distances. I've trained a couple local
cowboys that work on ranches here in Southeast Ohio to use a bullwhip, and I've
worked with a trainer or two to help a horse get over being spooked by loud
noises.
All
in all, that might seem somewhat boring, but the whip is such a mystery.
As I said, every culture developed their own designs, their own preferred
material and construction methods, and refined them over time. That
development was mostly through trial and error because while we've had
supersonic whips for at least the last thousand years, it was as recently as
1958 when scientists figured out that the crack was caused by the whip breaking
the sound barrier.
I
know it seems very strange to call a bullwhip "subtle," but the act
of working with one is an exercise in subtlety, minimalism, and "Zen"
like centering. Over the years, I've studied martial arts on and off, Tai
Chi, Karate, I've done Kendo, (Japanese Fencing,) Olympic style fencing,
studied renaissance and medieval sword combat, (both theatrical and
competitive,) tactical handgunning, etc. etc. etc. ALL this stuff, and I
have connected with nothing in the same way that I've found with the bullwhip.
Any idiot can get a whip to crack, but to manipulate the whip with minimal
effort, precision and accuracy...It's like dancing at the speed of sound.
In
addition to all my other insanity, I teach whip artistry and provide private
coaching to performers, dancers, actors, martial artists, and just folks who
want to take it up as a hobby. My website for THAT is http://mach1whips.weebly.com
As a
filmmaker/produce/graphic designer, what projects have you completed?
The
big thing that we're still currently hammering out is a documentary about the
local food community here in the Athens area of Southeast Ohio. The
website: http://www.handtomouthfilm.com/
It's
really an amazing story, and with all of the attention right now on big
corporate farming, Monsanto, GMO vs. Organic, all the "Free Range"
scandals, etc. I think what it has to say is more important than
ever. Locally producing food is a currently a big movement here in the
US, and Athens has been doing it...and doing it well...for about two or three
decades now. I really think our community is one of the most viable, (if
not THE most viable,) working model for building a dynamic, diverse, and
thriving local food economy with very little resources other than sweat equity.
Other
than that, I've done work for local non-profits and small businesses to promote
their services or projects. Not a lot the general public would have
seen. Hand to Mouth is my first feature length project intended for large
distribution.
Do you
have advice for novice writers?
I
don't know that I'm much more than a novice writer myself really, but I will
take some old advice and flip it around. We've all heard people say
"Write what you know." I agree with that in principle, but
unfortunately that often means that people are writing some fairly mundane
things. However, NOT writing what you know is FAR far worse and you end
up with prose that is as bad as those procedural medical and police dramas that
are obviously pulling stuff out of their ass, or Science Fiction so horrible
that you just cannot suspend your disbelief. The argument there is
always, "Well, it's a world I made up, so I decide how it works!"
Well,
OK...But that's no excuse for laziness. If you're not going to research
the ACTUAL methods and terminology, then at least have enough respect for your
audience to really think about the world you're creating so that it makes sense
within its own continuity.
So,
rather than saying "Write what you know," which can be, (and often
is,) an excuse for laziness, I prefer to say "Know what you write."
Know your world, know your characters, know it all inside and out.
Even if it's not something you ever plan on actually writing into the fiction,
know it.
You
can look at these beautiful worlds like Rowling's Potterverse, Tolkien's Middle
Earth, and Frank Herbert's Post-Butlerian Jihad "Dune" universe, and see how they have endured, (at least
Tolkien and Herbert have endured. "Harry Potter" is still a relative newcomer to the game, but I
have no doubt that Rowling's legacy will endure for generations, as Tolkien
has.) There's a reason for that. I know that I reread Dune every couple years because it is
such a lush, dynamic world. It doesn't matter that I know the story
backward and forward. It's like visiting Disneyland once every couple
years. You know the rides, you know what's around the corner in the Haunted
Mansion, but that doesn't take the thrill out of revisiting it.
I
also honestly believe that if you've spent time constructing the world that
your characters inhabit, it also makes it easier for you as a writer to
construct your plots and scenarios. If you know your world and
characters, you can almost just introduce your characters to the plot scenario,
and they will help in writing themselves, (though I should add that this can
backfire when you plan for A event, and the characters seem to gravitate toward
B event...so you have to compromise with C. Writing is sometimes and
exploration where try as you might, you don't control the map.)
On
top of that, I think it not only makes you a better writer but a better person
as well. I told you mostly non-fiction when you asked what I was
currently reading. I have probably read more non-fiction, hard science,
history, philosophy and religion as research for my fictional writing than I
ever did for college, and to put that into perspective, I have a Masters in Communication,
and taught college full-time for 8 years!
So,
writing should be more than just a creative outlet and income source, writing
should be a method of self-improvement. I think that should always be the
goal. Yeah, you can be emotionally drained, sleep-deprived, and a bit of
a wreck in getting your work to the state of publication, but that act should
ultimately be cathartic and you should come out of it a better person than when
you started.
GOOD
writing should elevate not only the reader, but the writer as well.
Language is the most powerful tool on the planet. Use it well.
Spread beauty.
Connect with D. Gilbert…
Connect with D. Gilbert…
http://www.dgilberttrout.com/
Tags: #dgilberttrout #whipartist #gerydeer #handtomouthfilm #astudyingray #kilgortrout #whipartistry
Tags: #dgilberttrout #whipartist #gerydeer #handtomouthfilm #astudyingray #kilgortrout #whipartistry
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