{"id":6550,"date":"2011-07-21T01:15:21","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T09:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/?p=6550"},"modified":"2012-09-08T17:15:42","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T01:15:42","slug":"guest-post-the-advantage-of-other-brains-by-lauren-beukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/articles\/guest-post-the-advantage-of-other-brains-by-lauren-beukes\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post | ‘The Advantage of Other Brains’ by Lauren Beukes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zoo<\/a>I\u2019ve often joked about how much I need clones. But alas, like time machines and teleportation devices, photocopy-style human cloning just isn\u2019t there yet (unless you believe the dubious claims of the Raelian cult). Luckily I\u2019ve got something even better than an army of Laurenz: a collection of brilliant brains. <\/p>\n

It would be neat if they were brains in jars, directly hooked up to word processors to churn out pages while I sleep, but I suspect that probably takes a lot of electricity and probably a mad scientist to maintain them \u2013 and mad scientists and their inevitable slobbering loathsome assistants cost a lot to feed.<\/p>\n

So, nope. I\u2019m talking the kind of brains that walk around in people casings \u2013 the kind that feed themselves because they have jobs and credit cards. And when it came to writing some of the additional materials for Zoo City<\/em>, I was very happy to be able to raid those brains for their genius.
\n
\nWhen I was writing Zoo City<\/em> I conspired to get away from the dreaded info-dump by including found objects that cunningly extrapolated on the world I\u2019d created in which criminals are burdened with parasitic magical animals in unexpected ways. (See ‘Worldbuilding Through Found Objects’<\/a>)<\/p>\n

To explain how the planet reacted to the first outbreaks of the \u201czoo plague\u201d, I wrote a chapter in the style of an IMDB page entry on a documentary on exactly that subject, complete with p0rnbots posting spammy links, for example. <\/p>\n

When it came to writing a music magazine interview with my antagonist, the dodgy afropop producer, Odi Huron, I approached a seasoned music journo friend, Evan Milton, if I could read over some of his profiles on real South African music producers like Chicco Twala or Gabi le Roux, for inspiration. He suggested something even better. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t I write it for you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m used to collaborating. For the last five years, I\u2019ve worked as head script writer at an animation studio. My team and I don\u2019t just bounce around ideas, we send each other our scripts to tweak, polish and add extra jokes. And 97% of the time, it works amazingly well. The other 3% of the time, you smack your colleague up side the head for daring to change your line of sheer genius and revert it back, stat. <\/p>\n

Once a script is approved, it goes to design, then storyboard, then animation and the wonder of the thing is seeing what other people do with your ideas, the way they interpret it, the way they make it their own. It\u2019s a wonderful chemistry of collaboration. <\/p>\n

Inspired by Evan\u2019s suggestion, I approached the winners of the Moxyland<\/em> short story competition (winning entries are featured in the back of Zoo City<\/em>) to guest write some of the found objects chapters. I sent them all a copy of the manuscript and they discussed ideas with me and then came up with their own unique takes on my universe. <\/p>\n

The results were amazing – and, best of all, surprising. <\/p>\n

Sam Wilson<\/a> wrote one of the most poignant chapters in the book \u2013 the prison interviews – that succinctly explains what the animalled are and what their lives are like as criminals, but also victims.<\/p>\n

Excerpt from Caged: Animalled Behind Bars<\/p>\n

TYRONE JONES
\nCorcoran
\nUSA<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It\u2019s crazy in here. I know you can\u2019t tear a man from his animal. Ain\u2019t right. But some of these n***rs got real wild animals, man. One guy\u2019s got a Cougar. You can\u2019t tell me that\u2019s right, letting a prisoner walk around with a Cougar.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an order to things, too. Don\u2019t matter what you did, you got a bad-ass animal in here, you\u2019re a bad-ass too. And it don\u2019t matter how many people you killed, you got a Chipmunk or a Squirrel, you\u2019re gonna be a bitch. Way it is.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s me. I got a Butterfly. Keep it in a matchbox. I oughta be pissed off, man, you can guess what it\u2019s like being in here with a Butterfly. Except for the stuff it lets me do.<\/p>\n

See, when I go to sleep every night, I wake up as someone else. For the time I\u2019m asleep, I live the day of someone else on the other side of the world. Man, I\u2019ve been kids in Africa and India, I was once this old Chinese woman. Mostly I\u2019m poor, but sometimes I get lucky and I\u2019m rich.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m saying is, I can\u2019t hate the Butterfly. Butterfly breaks me out of here every night.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(See ex-offenders who have been through the Khulisa programme in South Africa reading from the prison diaries chapter here<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Charlie Human wrote an extract from a psychology paper that interrogates the idea of the undertow in a pitch-perfect anally academic argument. <\/p>\n

Home>>SA PSYCHWEB>>Aposymbiot Counselling Resources>>Shadow-self Absorption
\n
\nMasks of Existence: The Demystification of Shadow-self Absorption
\n
\nABSTRACT<\/strong>
\n
\nThis paper presents a case for the demystification of counselling approaches for Aposymbiot individuals who exhibit psychic trauma associated with fear of the phenomenon known psychologically as shadow-self absorption and commonly as the ‘Undertow’.<\/p>\n

Whilst acknowledgement must be given to religious organisations and lay therapists and their work with Aposymbiot individuals, psychologists cannot ignore the continuing religious stigmatisation of Aposymbiots within society and within the therapeutic community itself. Therapists who themselves, either tacitly or (in rare cases) overtly, subscribe to the idea of Aposymbiots as ‘animalled’ or ‘zoos’ and shadow-self absorption as ‘Hell’s Undertow’ or ‘The Black Judgement’ perpetuate this stigmatisation and very often fail to see the very real trauma that Aposymbiots experience as a result of lifelong anticipation of shadow-self absorption.<\/p>\n

This trauma, most often experienced as an irrefutable and ever-increasing sense of oblivion, commonly manifests as an intense obsession with self-annihilation, acted out through extreme hedonism and criminal behaviour, or as a sexualised fetish with self-destruction, as in the well-documented bacchanalia of cults such as the Blood for Severance group, who engage in mass culling of their own animals to actively invoke the terror and rapture of shadow-self absorption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Bryan Steele wrote a transcript of a rabidly right wing talk-show host decrying the animalled as devil spawn incarnate. (Unfortunately, I ultimately wasn\u2019t able to use it because it raised more questions than I had time to deal with, but I\u2019m hoping that if I ever do a sequel to Zoo City<\/em>, it\u2019ll fit right in.)<\/p>\n

\n
Robert MacNeill \u2013 “The Truth of Today\u2019s America”
\nTranscript 24\/02\/2011<\/p>\n

Robert MacNeill<\/strong>
\n“I don\u2019t hate the zoos, caller. I pity them. And I fear what they might do to our country. Look at what zoo-friendly legislature has done elsewhere around the globe. France; the Marseilles Incident cost sixteen lives because of one bad orangutan. Brazil? The drug cartels employ more violent zoos than any other single force in the country. India\u2019s new social allotment for the so-called holy hosts has caused more lower class poverty than the fall of the last ruling monarch. So, Lefty, if you are still listening, I want you to take one thing away from your attempt to derail the truth on my show… you are wrong about me! About Christianity! And about the future of our country!”<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was a risky experiment, but it paid off because I had brilliant, inspired co-conspirators who not only got where I was coming from, but who were able to claim a piece for themselves in ways I wouldn\u2019t have anticipated. <\/p>\n

If I ever do get my cloning factory set-up, I may have to clone my co-writers too, because it\u2019s definitely something I would do again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve often joked about how much I need clones. But alas, like time machines and teleportation devices, photocopy-style human cloning just isn\u2019t there yet (unless you believe the dubious claims of the Raelian cult). Luckily I\u2019ve got something even better than an army of Laurenz: a collection of brilliant brains. It would be neat if… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[118,102,116,35,4,117],"class_list":["post-6550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-angry-robot","tag-guest-post","tag-lauren-beukes","tag-urban-fantasy","tag-writing","tag-zoo-city"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n