Behind the Wizard's Curtain by Kathryn Magendie
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy & Friends quake and quiver and stare in respectful awe at The Great Wizard. The curtain hasn’t yet been thrown back to show the little old man who hides behind a great fiery bravado. But once he is exposed, the magic and mystery vanish, and he is no longer viewed in awe or revered as The Great One. Just a man with a few fantastical tricks up his sleeve, which he uses to his advantage. Forced to come out, he must show his true self, which all along, was wonderful indeed.
Sometimes it’s like this for writers. Or, maybe I should say it was like this for writers. There was a time when they could hide behind their protective curtains, flipping levers, pressing buttons, and employing devices to project a certain enigmatic aura about themselves. But somewhere along the way, with the Internet, social networking blogs, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, writers could no longer hide so easily. Most all is exposed these days, and the reading public often demands and is granted more access to peer in at just who and what is behind the writer’s larger than life image.
Writers are increasingly pushed out into the world, blinking in the sunlight, their mouths opened in soft O’s of surprise, turning this way and that at all who stare at them and say, “Wait just a minute here—behind that curtain is just . . . you? What’s so special about . . . just you?” Like the Wizard, the writer must explain him/herself and then offer up gifts to show that they really do have something more to give. Not just flash and thunder, but something more—what, what, they ask. What more exactly do readers want? Our heart, our brain, our courage . . .
I don’t know what it felt like to be an author during the Wizard Times. My experiences have all been after the curtain was thrown back and the controls were set to “off” and the fiery veil died down to embers. I have been the little old man from the beginning—exposed.
Artists, actors, musicians, writers, athletes—all have had the Wizard’s curtain pulled back, leaving them vulnerable to speculation, observations, and opinions—often times exceedingly cruel— in a way that is much more public and personal than ever before. How many times have you heard someone speak about the “downfall” of a “celebrity” with a little too much glee in their voice? Or a sense of “Huhn, they thought they were SO smart and SO important—now look at them. They’re only just a little old man and not a Great Wizard after all! How Pa-The-Tic!”
What goes up must come down. The bigger they are the harder they fall—you’ve heard all the clichés. There were those halcyon days before, when that writer/actor/singer/musician/athlete followed their own yellow brick road searching for the Wizard—some to unseat him, some to find out his magic to take for their own, some to find heart or courage or knowledge or home.
The stakes seem higher now, the road longer, and the expectations bigger. What's a poor Wizard to do?
Don’t fret, though. There will be a new day in the Land of Oz—old ways always give way to new, and things cannot stay the same because the Land of Oz is changing. Meanwhile, our Dorothy dons her ruby slippers and clicks her heels three times. There's no place like home; there's no place like home; there's no place like home . . . .But even home has changed, for Dorothy herself has seen the other side, seen behind the Wizard's curtain.
Kathryn Magendie is a novelist/editor living in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. Her short stories, essays, poems, and nature-inspired photographs have been published in online and print publications. Magendie's published novels (BelleBooks/Bell-Bridge Books) include: "The Graces Series:" Tender Graces and Secret Graces ( the third Graces to be released in 2011); and Sweetie. Her novella, Petey, in the anthology The Firefly Dance with authors Sarah Addison Allen and Augusta Trobaugh will be released summer 2011. Visit her website and blog and follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
I've been writing for weeks and feel just like I'm hiding behind the curtain. I've peeked out to post things on Twitter, little on Facebook, and suppose it's time tocome out "blinking in the sunlight." I must admit, there are plenty of days when I long to be like the Wizzard.
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Great way to put it!
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