Earlier this summer, I wrote a review of Cargo, a zombie film starring Martin Freeman. I was taken with the film for two reasons: Martin Freeman's amazing acting, not a usual thing in a zombie film, and the film's ending, which blew me away. Without wanting to give too much away, I would simply say that the ending is redemptive in a heart-breaking way. The father (Freeman) finds a way to protect his baby daughter that reaches, not just beyond his own death, but beyond his descent into a fate worse than death. I was stunned by the film.

There's a reason for my being stunned, and it wasn't merely the sensation of 'something new' about it in an artistic sense. It's been a couple of months since I saw that film, and I'm still thinking about it. The feeling – the affect – of that ending still sneaks up and takes me unawares at unguarded moments. I'm still processing that film in my mind. And I know why: that film articulated, for me at least, a new place in the human psyche. I didn't know that place was there. Now I do. I am edified by it.

More and more recently, I'm learning from people in various areas of human experience that they suffered in their childhood, youth, or young adulthood because they were in a condition that they couldn't name. They experienced visions, but no one else did, and they thought they were going mad. They were gay, or transgendered, or asexual, and nobody understood. Even Betty Friedan, a comparatively well-off American woman in the 1950s, called the malaise that afflicted her 'the problem that has no name'.

All of these people had two things in common: they suffered from the inability of their worlds to accommodate them. And the situation was made worse by their inability to articulate their suffering.

They needed mapmakers.

Kingsley Amis wrote a series of essays about science fiction with the title New Maps of Hell.

JM Barrie wrote this:

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

JM Barrie, Peter Pan (Thanks to Gutenberg.org, as always.)

The human psyche is a maze of possibilities. A society never quite manages to include all of the productive ones, although the good ones try to include an expansion programme. No society ever manages to keep out the destructive ones, either, although the attempt tends to take up far too much time that should have been allocated to more joyful pursuits. But neither of those tasks can be accomplished without good maps: words that show us where these places are inside ourselves. Maps require explorers and cartographers: people who boldly go, and take meticulous notes.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

Romans 10: 13-15, Authorised Version

The Bible, like all good collections of wisdom, recognises the need for mapmaking and mapmakers.

You know what I'm going to say next. Yes, writers are mapmakers. Actually, all artists are mapmakers. A painting, a statue, a piece of music, a dance, a graffito. A performative act. A carefully-designed building. All of these can make new places in our heads. Even if the place looks like this.

These works can redefine our physical as well as our spiritual landscapes. Take the Eiffel Tower? Can you imagine Paris without it? At first, the natives thought it was an eyesore. Do you know the song 'Changing' from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George? The painter and his mother debate the aesthetics of change to music that brings a tear to the eye. If we didn't have the word 'nostalgia', how could we talk about our sense of space/time?

People tell me that the best language for discussing quantum physics is Navajo. I don't know any Navajo, alas, and quantum physics usually gives me a headache during my semi-annual attempts to grok the subject. But Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters helped. A lot.

There are modern philosophers who debate issues concerned with time travel. Yes, I know, but they do occasionally get grants…. Anyhow, when they do, how do they explain their theories to each other? They often use science fiction examples to make their meaning clear. A lot of them use Star Trek: The Next Generation because of its accessibility and almost academic approach. The general public does exactly the same. There's a whole Reddit thread devoted to 'Glitches in The Matrix', a concept that they couldn't have articulated as easily without a series of popular films. And even the US military talk about 'Groundhog Day', although to me, they miss the point.

Why do we judge unadventurous fiction by saying, 'The settings are familiar, the characters clichéd, the sentiments trite…'? Because every time we read, we hope: we hope that somebody will make us a map to the place that we didn't know was a place. To the place where we feel something we don't have a name for yet. That this stranger, this writer, will help us expand our personal map. Because once we can find that place, and can name that feeling, we can act on our knowledge. We can expand our horizons.

Here's an exercise: pick a film or television show from the past. Any story you like, as long as it was made before you were born. You can do it with periods you were alive to experience, but it's harder. Watch the film, and make notes. Notice every time you become impatient with the story or the characters. Notice places where you say to yourself, 'Wait! Don't you know better than that? Why do you assume such a stupid thing about people/nature/the laws of physics?' Particularly notice places where you are embarrassed for the characters because you know something they don't. For example: the young heroine grows from a hoydenish child to an accomplished young lady, and her loving guardian offers to marry her. The film treats this as a touching and beautiful development, while you are inwardly screaming for the police…. You'll find more moments like that than you think you will.

Why do I want you to do that? So that you can become up-to-date and politically correct? I hope you know me better than that by now. I want you to do this so that you will always remember your role as mapmaker. Yes, crashing through the underbrush is difficult. You get frustrated, and tired, and bug-bit. You might feel the urge to go back to the familiar pub. But keep on slashing with that machete. You may think you're lost in the undergrowth, but you're really blazing a trail for others.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

24.09.18 Front Page

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